Alamut-e Gharbi District

Alamut-e Gharbi District (Persian: بخش الموت غربی, meaning "Western Alamut District"), formerly Rudbar-e Shahrestan District, is a district (bakhsh) in Qazvin County, Qazvin Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 16,255, in 4,667 families.[1] The District has one city: Razmian. The District has three rural districts (dehestan): Rudbar-e Mohammad-e Zamani Rural District, Rudbar-e Shahrestan Rural District, and Dastjerd Rural District. According to some sources, the majority of people in northern Qazvin (Alamut) are Tats who speak a dialect of the Tati language.[2][3][4][5][6][7] However, other sources claim that the majority of people in Alamut are Mazanderani[8] or Gilaks who speak a dialect of the Mazanderani language or Gilaki language.[9][10] According to some linguists, the term ‘Tati’ was used by Turkic speakers to refer to non-turkic speakers.[11][12][13] This could explain why some sources claim the people of Alamut are Tats, while others claim they are Mazanderanies or Gilaks. Likely, the ‘Tats’ of Alamut are Mazanderani[14] or Gilak speakers who have been labeled as Tats as historically they were considered Mazanderani or Gilaks.[15][16][10]