Naqadeh (; ; ), formerly known as Sulduz, is the main town of Naqadeh County, West Azerbaijan Province in Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 72,975, in 18,320 families. Name Naqadeh is the current name of the town (and county). The former name, known as Solduz (also spelled Sulduz, in Kurdish: Sundus), in reference to the Mongol Sulduz tribe, may have replaced an older name (now lost) during the reign of the Ilkhanid ruler Ghazan in 1303. Geography Naqadeh is situated on the bank of the Bayzawa river, encompassing an old artificial mound. The county in which Naqadeh is located is to the south-west of Lake Urmia on the lower course of the Gadar river. Demographics The town has a Shia Azerbaijani (Karapapakh) majority, with a Sunni Kurdish minority. The main Kurdish tribes are the Mamash and Zerza, while the Mangur and Mamachi tribe have had a historical presence in the town. Assyrians and Jews formerly populated the town as well. The Lazarist missionary movement led by Augustin-Pierre Cluzel was moreover active in the town in the 1840s. Before the 19th century, the town was mostly Kurdish, before the Karapapakhs were settled in the town. In the 1930s, Shahsevans from Hashtrud arrived to the town as well. In 1979, it was estimated that Azerbaijanis constituted 65% of the population, while the remaining portion was Kurdish. In 1985, researcher Richard Tapper stated that the Azerbaijanis were nearly Kurdified culturally and linguistically. History In 1303, during the reign of Ilkhanid ruler Ghazan, the area comprising Naqadeh County was distributed in fiefs. According to the orientalist Vladimir Minorsky (died 1966), citing the 16th-century Kurdish prince and writer Sharafkhan Bidlisi, during the rule of the Turkoman Aq Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu (in about the 15th century), "i.e. Jong after the Čōbānīs had disappeared", the Kurds of the Mukri occupied the county of Naqadeh, and its old inhabitants were most likely "reduced to servitude". Minorsky, citing a mutilated and undated part of Bidlisi's work, narrates that a certain Budak of the Kurdish Baban tribe captured the county in which Naqadeh is located from the Qizilbash. This event may refer to one of the abrupt outbursts of skirmishes which occurred on the Safavid frontier. In 1828, following the Treaty of Turkmenchay, Iranian crown prince Abbas Mirza handed over the district in which Naqadeh is situated as a fief to 800 Turkic Karapapakh families and