lake urmia :دریاچه ارومیه

Lake Urmia (Persian: دریاچه ارومیه Daryâcheh-ye Orumiyeh; Kurdish: زرێچەی ورمێ Gola Urmiyê; Azerbaijani: ارومیه گولو , ارومیه گولی Urmiya Gölü, Armenian: Ուրմիա լիճ or Կապուտան լիճ; ancient name: Lake Matiene)^[1][2] is a salt lake in northwestern Iran, near Turkey. The lake is between the provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan, west of the southern portion of the similarly shaped Caspian Sea. It is the largest lake in the Middle East^[3], and the third largest salt water lake on earth, with a surface area of approximately 5,200 km² (2,000 mile²), 140 km (87 miles) length, 55 km (34 miles) width, and 16 m (52 ft) depth. 

History 

One of the early mentioning of Lake Urmia is from the Assyrian records from 9th century BCE. Here from the records of Shalmaneser III (reign 858-824 BCE) two names (place or tribe name) of Parsuwash and Matai are mentioned in the area of Lake Urmia. It is not completely clear what are the identities of these names and subsequent personal names and "kings". But Matai's are Iranian Median and linguistically the name "Parsuwash" matches perfectly with the Old Persian pārsa- an Achaemenid well-known ethno-linguistic designation.^[4] Based on  

certain historical outline of how and when the Iranian people immigrated to the Iranian Plateau in several waves along different routes, Old Persian language- the ancestor of Modern Persian was originally spoken by the people of/from "Parsuwash" who settled in Iranian Plateau sometime in early 1st millennium and finally moved down into an area where Achaemenid history began ca. 600 BCE.^[4]

The lake is named after the provincial capital city of Urmia, originally a Syriac name meaning city of water. It was called Lake Rezaiyeh (Persian: دریاچه رضائیه) in the early 1930s after Reza Shah Pahlavi, but the lake was renamed 'Urmia' in the late 1970s. Its ancient Persian name was Chichast (meaning, "glittering"--a reference to its glittering mineral particles suspended in the lake water and its shores). In the medieval times it came to be known as Lake Kabuda, or "azure," in Persian, (Gabod in Armenian).

Lake Matianus (Latin: Lacus Matianus) is an old name for Lake Urmia. It was the center of the Mannaean Kingdom, a potential Mannaean settlement represented by the ruin mound of Hasanlu was on the south side of Lake Matianus. Mannae was overrun by a people who were called Matiani or Matieni, an Iranic people variously identified as Scythian, Saka, Sarmatian, or Cimmerian. It is not clear whether the lake took its name from the people or the people from the lake, but the country came to be called Matiene or Matiane. 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Urmia