Photos of lake Urmia before revolution

But the Matai were Medes and linguistically the name Parsuwaš matches the Old Persian word pārsa, an Achaemenid ethnolinguistic designation.The lake was the center of the Mannaean Kingdom. A potential Mannaean settlement, represented by the ruin mound of Hasanlu, was on the south side of the lake. Mannae was overrun by the Matiani or Matieni, an Persian people variously identified as Scythian, Saka, Sarmatian, or Cimmerian. It is not clear whether the lake took its name from the people or the people from the lake, but the country came to be called Matiene or Matiane, and gave the lake its Latin name.The Battle of Urmia was fought near the lake in 1604, during the Ottoman–Safavid War of 1603–1618.In the last five hundred years the area around Lake Urmia has been home to Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Persians, Assyrians, and Armenian