Mashhad | |
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Mashhad (Persian: مشهد, romanized: Mašhad [mæʃˈhæd] (listen)), also spelled Mashad or Meshad, is the second-most-populous city in Iran and the capital of Razavi Khorasan Province. It is located in the northeast of the country. It has a population of 3,001,184 (2016 census), which includes the areas of Mashhad Taman and Torqabeh. It was a major oasis along the ancient Silk Road connecting with Merv to the east.
The city is named after the shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia Imam. The Imam was buried in a village in Khorasan, which afterward gained the name Mashhad, meaning the place of martyrdom. Every year, millions of pilgrims visit the Imam Reza shrine. The Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid is also buried within the same shrine.
Mashhad has been governed by different ethnic groups over the course of its history.
El Paso | |
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El Paso (; Spanish: [el ˈpaso] "the pass") is a city and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, in the far western part of the state. The 2019 population estimate for the city from the U.S. Census was 681,728, making it the 22nd-largest city in the United States, the sixth-largest city in Texas, and the second-largest city in the Southwest behind Phoenix, Arizona. Its metropolitan statistical area covers all of El Paso and Hudspeth Counties in Texas, and has a population of 840,758.El Paso stands on the Rio Grande across the Mexico–United States border from Ciudad Juárez, the most-populous city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua with 1.4 million people. Las Cruces, in the neighboring U.S. state of New Mexico, has a population of 215,579. On the U.S. side, the El Paso metropolitan area forms part of the larger El Paso-Las Cruces combined statistical area, with a population of 1,060,397.These three cities form a combined international metropolitan area sometimes referred to as the Paso del Norte or the Borderplex. The region of 2.5 million people constitutes the largest bilingual and binational work force in the Western Hemisphere.The city is home to three publicly traded companies, and former Western Refining, now Marathon Petroleum, as well as home to the Medical Center of the Americas, the only medical research and care provider complex in West Texas and Southern New Mexico, and the University of Texas at El Paso, the city's primary university.