Urmia is a city in and the capital of West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. Urmia is situated at an altitude of 1,330 m above sea level, and is located along the Shahar Chay river on the Urmia Plain. Lake Urmia lies to the east of the city, with the mountainous Turkish border to the west.Urmia is the 10th most populated city in Iran. At the 2012 census, its population was 1,265,721 with 700,000 households. The city's inhabitants are predominantly Azeris, who live alongside minorities of Kurds, Assyrian Christians and Armenians.The city is is the trade center for a fertile agricultural region where fruit and tobacco are grown. An important town by the 9th century, Urmia was seized by the Seljuk Turks, and later occupied a number of times by the Ottoman Turks. Urmia was the seat of the first U.S. Christian mission in Iran. Around AD 1900, Christians made up more than 40% of the city's population, however, most of the Christians fled in 1918 as a result of Ottomans' massacres against Assyrians and Armenians in the Armenian Genocide and Assyrian Genocide. According to another source, around 1900, 40% of the population of the region was Christian and the city itself had an Assyrian population of 600 or 7,500 by another estimate.
