The Great Khorasan's heritage of the Geopolitical rivalry; " Great Game"

The great Khorasan is a historical region, which in a vast part of its history is entirely located in the domain of Persia. It spans what is now most of Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, and the southern parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Besides, terms such as "Great Iran", "Great Khorasan", "Great Sistan" and "Great Balochistan" lead us to a historical era which includes all the nineteenth and a part of the twentieth centuries. From the view of periodic Geopolitical divisions, this era is called colonial Geopolitical era. The most significant Geopolitical rivalry which led to transformations in the "Great Persia" inherited from Naderi empire and its historical territory including "the great Khorasan" was the Geopolitical rivalry between the two colonial powers of the era, i.e. Russia and Britain, which was known as "the great game".Having a historical outlook and using a descriptive-analytic method, this paper analyses the effects of the great game Geopolitical rivalry on "the great Khorasan", as one of the historical territories of "the great Persia". "The great Khorasan", due to its geographical position, the weakness of Qujar government, and other historical and geographical factors received the most impacts from the geopolitical rivalry of the "great game". The most important of these impacts were the disintegration of the "great Khorasan", the superimposition of international borders on the province together with territorial and border differences, division of some peoples based on the marked and limited borders, the establishment of intermediate Afghanistan with a pack of international and geographic challenges, marking of the present day borders of central Asia countries which used to be within the Soviet Union internal structure, and trying to alienate the history and character of the disintegrated parts of "the great Khorasan".Many of these problems which have their roots in the rivalry of the "great game" are yet unsolved and face the countries that are the outcome of the great Khorasan's disintegration. Keywords: Great Khorasan, Great Game, Colonial Geopolitics era, Superimposed boundaries.