Weather Forecast in Urmia City

Urmia (pronounced [oɾumiˈje] ( )) (Azerbaijani/Persian:اورمیه or ارومیه;Kurdish: Wurmiya/Raziya; Aramaic: ܐܘܪܡܝܐ‎; Armenian: Ուրմիա) variously transliterated as Oroumieh, Oroumiyeh, Orūmīyeh and Urūmiyeh, also formerly known (during the Pahlavi Dynasty, 1925–1979) as Rezaeyeh, Rezā’īyeh, Rezâiyye (Persian: رضائیه‎) is a city in and the capital of West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. At the 2012 census, its population was 1,265,721 with 700,000 households.

The city lies at an altitude of 1,330 m above sea level on the Shahar Chay river (City River). Urmia is the 10th most populated city in Iran. The population is mostly made of Azeris, alongside with minorities of Kurds, Assyrian Christian and Armenian.

Urmia is situated on a fertile plain called Urmia Plain, on western side of Lake Urmia; and eastern side of Turkish border and marginal range of mountains.

Urmia is the trade center for a fertile agricultural region where fruit (especially apple and grape) and tobacco are grown. An important town by the 9th century, Urmia was seized by the Seljuk Turks (1184), and later occupied a number of times by the Ottoman Turks. Urmia was the seat of the first U.S. Christian mission in Iran (1835). Around AD 1900, Christians made up more than 40% of the city's population, however, most of the Christians fled in 1918 as a result of Ottomans' massacres against Assyrians and Armenians. According to another source, around 1900, 40% of the population of the region was Christian (Assyrian and Armenian) and the city itself had an Assyrian population of 600 or 7,500 by another estimate.