Iquitos

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

a town in the Peruvian department of Loreto, on the left bank of the Marañon, about 75 miles above the mouth of the Rio Napo. It has an active trade; the imports are exchanged mostly for india-rubber. Pop. of District (1917) 120,000. IRAK AJEMI (ē-räk' äj'e-mē) (Persian Irak), a central province of Persia, nearly coincident with ancient Media; area, 138,190 square miles; pop. (estimated) over 1,000,000. A great portion of the surface consists of elevated table lands, but there are also numerous fertile valleys only partly cultivated. The E. parts are occupied by the extensive salt desert of Dasht-i-Kavir. The industries are cloth and carpets, and the making of glass and porcelain. The province contains the principal towns of the kingdom, including Teheran, the capital, and Ispahan. IRAN. See PERSIA. IRANIAN (i-rā'ni-an) LANGUAGES, a family of languages belonging to the Indo-European stock, closely allied to the Indian group, and called by some philologists Persian, from the best-known member of the family. The two oldest known the cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Bactrian or Zend, the latter the language in which the Zend Avesta or sacred writings of the Parsees is composed. The Middle Iranian languages are the Pehlevi, and still later the Parsee, which are preserved in the commentaries to the Zend Avesta. The latter approaches pretty closely to the modern Persian. The most important of the New Iranian languages is the modern Persian, in which has been produced a very rich and celebrated literature. The Afghan or Pushtu, and the dialects of the Kurds, form separate branches of the Iranian family.