Variav is a village in Surat District, Gujarat, India. Variav is on the right bank of Tapti River. Variav was recently added to the region of Surat Municipal Corporation, and is now a suburb of Greater Surat.
Variav is a village in Surat District, Gujarat, India. Variav is on the right bank of Tapti River. Variav was recently added to the region of Surat Municipal Corporation, and is now a suburb of Greater Surat.
==History== Variav is an ancient village of some historical importance in the district of Surat, which has been a major port city. As a result, international interaction of people of Surat is common and they traveled for business to far lands and many foreigners came to India via Surat. The people of Variav in particular are known for their welcoming attitude towards immigrants. As early as the seventh century CE it was the place of choice for migration by the Zoroastrians fleeing the fall of the Sassanid Empire. The arrival of Zoroastrians in India is documented in Qissa-i Sanjan, and the date of first arrival is variously interpreted as being 936 AD, 765 AD and 716 AD. Others have noted a gradual period of immigration between the 10th and 12th centuries. Similarly, many Memons who came from Sindh were also welcomed in Surat. Traders and religious scholars from Turkey, Central Asia and Middle East also settled in Surat and many Muslim Surtis and Variavwala trace their ancestry to these immigrants though many Muslims may also just be descendants of sons of soil whose family may have converted to Islam from Hinduism. These Muslim families can be traced in Variav from the 12th century at least with influence of Turkey and Central Asia and many families of Variav have undertaken the tradition of having a Hafiz ul Quran in their family.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).