West Persia (Differently)

West Persia is a country in the Middle East. It borders Syria and Byzantium to the west, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to the northwest, Turkmenistan to the northeast, East Persia to the east and Saudi Arabia to the southwest. It is bounded by the Caspian Sea on the north and the Gulf of Aden on the south.

Officially a Zoroastrian country, West Persia is known for its religious and civil traditions. It has a high weekly attendance to and is considered by many the modern successor of the Achaemenid and Sassanid empires.

History
The modern states of West and East Persia formed in 1712, with the split of the Second Sassanid Empire, a government under which they were united until then. Although that division was motivated mostly by administrative problems, the two new Persias ended up taking very different political, social and cultural paths the following centuries. While the east became increasingly secular and populist, eventually falling to a socialist regime in the 1920s, the west remained a very conservative and religious society.