Qom vs Izmir

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Qom (Persian: قم‎ [ɢom] (listen)) is the seventh largest metropolis and also the seventh largest city in Iran. Qom is the capital of Qom Province. It is located 140 km (87 mi) to the south of Tehran. At the 2016 census, its population was 1,201,158. It is situated on the banks of the Qom River. Qom is considered holy in Shi'a Islam, as it is the site of the shrine of Fatimah bint Musa, sister of Imam Ali ibn Musa Rida (Persian: Imam Reza; 789–816). The city is the largest center for Shi'a scholarship in the world, and is a significant destination of pilgrimage, with around twenty million pilgrims visiting the city every year, the majority being Iranians but also other Shi'a Muslims from all around the world.

Qom is also famous for a Persian brittle toffee known as sohan (Persian: سوهان), considered a souvenir of the city and sold by 2,000 to 2,500 "sohan" shops. Qom has developed into a lively industrial centre owing in part to its proximity to Tehran. It is a regional centre for the distribution of petroleum and petroleum products, and a natural gas pipeline from Bandar Anzali and Tehran and a crude oil pipeline from Tehran run through Qom to the Abadan refinery on the Persian Gulf. Qom gained additional prosperity when oil was discovered at Sarajeh near the city in 1956 and a large refinery was built between Qom and Tehran.

Source: Wikipedia

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İzmir (UK: IZ-meer, US: iz-MEER, Turkish: [ˈizmiɾ]), often spelled Izmir in English, is a metropolitan city in the western extremity of Anatolia. It is the third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara, and the second largest urban agglomeration on the Aegean Sea after Athens, Greece. In 2019, the city of İzmir had a population of 2,972,900, while İzmir Province had a total population of 4,367,251. İzmir's metropolitan area extends along the outlying waters of the Gulf of İzmir and inland to the north across the Gediz River Delta; to the east along an alluvial plain created by several small streams; and to slightly more rugged terrain in the south.In classical antiquity the city was known as Smyrna ( SMUR-nə) – a name which remained in use in English and various other languages until around 1930, when government efforts led the original Greek name (Greek: Σμύρνη, romanized: Smýrni/Smýrnē) to be gradually phased out internationally in favor of its Turkish counterpart İzmir. However, the historic name Smyrna is still used today in some languages, such as Armenian (Զմյուռնիա, Zmyurnia), Italian (Smirne), and Catalan, Portuguese, and Spanish (Esmirna). Smyrna has more than 3,000 years of recorded urban history, and up to 8,500 years of history as a human settlement since the Neolithic period.

Lying on an advantageous location at the head of a gulf running down in a deep indentation, midway along the western Anatolian coast, it has been one of the principal mercantile cities of the Mediterranean Sea for much of its history. İzmir hosted the Mediterranean Games in 1971 and the World University Games (Universiade) in 2005. The city participated in Climathon in 2019.The city of İzmir is composed of several metropolitan districts. Of these, the district of Konak corresponds to historical İzmir, with this district's area having constituted the city's central "İzmir Municipality" (Turkish: İzmir Belediyesi) until 1984. With the formation of the "İzmir Metropolitan Municipality" (Turkish: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi), the city of İzmir at first grouped together its eleven (initially nine) urban districts – namely Balçova, Bayraklı, Bornova, Buca, Çiğli, Gaziemir, Güzelbahçe, Karabağlar, Karşıyaka, Konak, and Narlıdere – and later consolidated them with an additional nine of the province's districts outside the city proper. In 2013, the passing of Act 6360 established all thirty of İzmir Province's districts as part of İzmir's metropolitan area.

Source: Wikipedia