Oshnavīyeh

Oshnavieh lies on the Qadar Chay southwest of Lake Urmia, where the valleys rise toward the mountains bordering Mesopotamia. Known in Syriac as Ashna, it was an early centre of the Church of the East. After the Mongol invasions it became for a time the seat of the metropolitan of Assyria. Medieval rulers contested the town and the neighbouring Urmia basin, a meeting place of Kurdish mountain country and the routes across Azerbaijan.