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-*The nation changed its name officially in 1935 from Persia to Iran, a variation of the word Aryan, one of its principal peoples. This was done in part to point up the ethnic contrast with its Semitic neighbors. Though Moslem, Iran is not Arab, a fact that has saved it from the Nasser-sponsored troubles that have rocked the rest of the Middle East. -Far more beautiful: the ancient tiled mosque city of Isfahan to the south, which in the 16th century reign of Shah Abbas was a greater city than Elizabethan London.