Covering an area of 19,086 square kilometers, Ilam Province is located in the western Iran. According to the latest divisions of the country in 1996, the cities of the province are Ilam, Mehran, Dehloran, Dareh Shahr, Shirvan-Chardavol, Aivan and Abdanan. Ilam is the capital city of the province. This province is neighboring the Khuzestan Province in the south, Lurestan Province in the east, Kermanshah Province in the north and Iraq in the west with 425 kilometers of
common border. In 1996 the population of the province was 488,000 of which 53.2% were urban dwellers and 44.6% resided in rural areas and the rest were non-residents.
From geological point of view, there are two parallel folds in the northwestern and southeast of the province which belong to the Mesozoic and Cenozoic periods. The northern and northeast parts of the province are mountainous and western and southwestern parts are low lands. The most important heights of Ilam Province are Kabir and Dinar Mounts. There are some small plains in the mountainous areas of the north and northeast of the province like Halilan, Shirvan-Chardavol, Ilam, etc. In southwestern and western parts of the province, there are vast plains with a warm climate like Dehloran and Dasht Abbas which join the Khuzestan Plain in the east.