Ahvaz city, capital of Khuzestan province, southwestern Iran. Ahvaz is situated on both banks of the Karun River where it crosses a low range of sandstone hills. The town has been identified with Achaemenid Tareiana, a river crossing on the royal road connecting Susa, Persepolis, and Pasargade. Ardashir, the Sasanian king who rebuilt the town, named it Hormuzd Ardashir. He dammed the river, providing irrigation water, and the town prospered. When the Muslim Arabs conquered it in the 7th century, they renamed it Suq al-Ahwaz Ahwaz is the Arabic name for the local warlike tribe that gave its name to the historical region of Khuzestan. Arab historians of the 12th century described Ahwaz as the centre of a large sugarcane- and rice-growing area irrigated by a system of great canals from a dam constructed across the river on solid rock.
Karun River, Persian Rud-e Karun, ancient Ulai, or Eulaeus, river in southwestern Iran, a tributary of the Shatt al-Arab, which it joins at Khorramshahr. It rises in the Bakhtiri Mountains west of Eṣfahan and follows a tortuous course trending basically southwest. The Karun’s total length is 515 miles (829 km), though the direct distance from its source to the junction with the Shatt al-Arab is only 180 miles (290 km). Its catchment basin up to Ahvaz has an area of 22,069 square miles (57,059 square km), of which 7,000 square miles (18,130 square km) belong to its main tributary, the Dez. Most of the area is mountainous, forming part of the limestone Zagros ranges.
Susa, also called Shushan, Greek Susiane, modern Shush, capital of Elam (Susiana) and administrative capital of the Achaemenian king Darius I and his successors from 522 BCE. It was located at the foot of the Zagros Mountains near the bank of the Karkheh Kūr (Choaspes) River in the Khuzistan region of Iran. The archaeological site, identified in 1850 by W.K. Loftus, consists of four mounds. One held the citadel and was excavated (1897–1908) by Jacques de Morgan, who uncovered, among other objects, the obelisk of the Akkadian king Manishtusu, the stele of his successor Naram-Sin, and the code of Hammurabi of Babylon. A second mound to the east was the location of the palace of Darius I and was excavated by Marcel Dieulafoy. A third mound to the south contained the royal Elamite city, while the fourth mound consisted of the poorer houses.
