Esfarayen County (Persian: شهرستان اسفراین) is a county in North Khorasan Province in Iran. The capital of the county is Esfarayen. At the 2006 census, the county's population was 119,152, in 30,307 families.[1] The county has two districts: Central District and Bam and Safiabad District. The county has two cities: Safiabad and Esfarayen.
Ethnography
Esfarayen is the most important Persian-speaking town and locality of far northwestern Khurasan. The surrounding mountains and deserts have become totally Kurdish and Turkmen in their ethnicity and language. It was only Esfarayen that resisted the flood of violence that swept away the ancient and sedentary Persian speaking farmers and town folks of northern Khurasan, starting with the Mongol invasion, coming of the destructive Turkic tribes, and finally the massive murder and depopulation of northern Khurasan in the 18th and 19th centuries in the hands of Turkmen raiders and slave catchers. Khurasani Persians were found in great numbers at the slave markets of Khiva and Kashgar in China in the late 19th century, being sold by the Turkmens. Esfarayen preserves what the entire northwestern Khurasan (include the whole of southern half of Turkmenistan must have looked like before the avalanche of the Turkic nomadic invasion began in the 11th century.
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