The 31 Provinces of Iran

Iran is divided into 31 provinces, called ostân (استان) in Persian. Each has a capital city and a governor-general appointed by the central government. They range from Tehran, with over 13 million people, to Ilam, with under 600,000, and the current total of 31 dates from 2010, when Alborz province was split off from Tehran.

How the provincial system works

Iran is a centralised state. Each province is run by an ostândâr (استاندار), a governor-general nominated by the Ministry of the Interior and approved by the cabinet. Below the province come counties (shahrestân), each with a governor (farmândâr) and a main town; then districts (bakhsh); then rural districts (dehestân) and villages. Cities and villages elect their own councils, which choose mayors, but budgets and major decisions are largely controlled from Tehran. Provinces do not have their own parliaments, though each elects members of the national Majlis and of the Assembly of Experts according to its population.

The number of counties keeps rising as parliament creates new ones, often after local campaigns, because county status brings offices, jobs and budget lines. For the same reason, proposals to split large provinces such as Kerman, Fars and Isfahan come up regularly.

From ten numbered provinces to thirty-one

Iran’s modern provinces date from a law of 1937 under Reza Shah, which replaced the old system of large governorates, such as Azerbaijan, Khorasan and Fars, with ten provinces, at first known by number: the First Province, the Second Province and so on. Names returned over the following decades, and provinces were divided as the population grew. Several new provinces were created after the revolution: Ardabil (1993), Qom (1995), Qazvin and Golestan (1997). In 2004 the vast Khorasan province was split into Razavi Khorasan, North Khorasan and South Khorasan, and in 2010 Alborz, centred on Karaj, became the 31st. Our history page on Reza Shah’s reforms explains the centralising project behind the 1937 law.

All 31 provinces

Population figures are 2023 estimates based on Statistical Centre of Iran projections, rounded to the nearest thousand; the last full census was in 2016. Areas are in square kilometres. Provinces are listed by population.

What the table shows

Iran’s population is very unevenly spread. Tehran and Alborz together cover less than 2 percent of the country’s area but hold about a fifth of its people. The largest provinces by area, Kerman, Sistan and Baluchestan, South Khorasan, Fars and Razavi Khorasan, are mostly desert or mountain, with people concentrated in oasis towns. The Caspian provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran are small but densely settled.

The provinces also map, roughly, onto Iran’s ethnic and linguistic diversity. Azerbaijani is the main language in East Azerbaijan, Ardabil and Zanjan and widely spoken in West Azerbaijan, Qazvin and Hamadan; Kurdish in Kurdistan, Kermanshah and parts of West Azerbaijan and Ilam; Luri in Lorestan and neighbouring provinces; Baluchi in Sistan and Baluchestan; and Arabic in parts of Khuzestan. The pages on the people of Iran and languages of Iran look at this in more detail. For place names in English and Persian, see Iranian cities in English, and for the capitals themselves, start with Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan.