Carmania was a satrap

Satrap

Satrap was the name given to the governors of the provinces of the ancient Median and Achaemenid Empires and in several of their successors, such as the Sassanid Empire and the Hellenistic empires....

y (province) of the Achaemenid Empire

Achaemenid Empire

The Achaemenid Empire , sometimes known as First Persian Empire and/or Persian Empire, was founded in the 6th century BCE by Cyrus the Great who overthrew the Median confederation...

 as well as, later on, the Sassanid Empire

Sassanid Empire

The Sassanid Empire , known to its inhabitants as Ērānshahr and Ērān in Middle Persian and resulting in the New Persian terms Iranshahr and Iran , was the last pre-Islamic Persian Empire, ruled by the Sasanian Dynasty from 224 to 651...

. The region is approximately equal to that of modern day Kermān Province in Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

. Little is known about the exact boundaries of ancient Carmania, which may have fluctuated. It is not mentioned as a separate province in translated royal Achaemenid inscriptions (it may have been part of Persis at one time) although it is mentioned by Arrian

Arrian

Lucius Flavius Arrianus 'Xenophon , known in English as Arrian , and Arrian of Nicomedia, was a Roman historian, public servant, a military commander and a philosopher of the 2nd-century Roman period...

. At the time of Alexander's invasion it was a satrapy on the Persian Gulf

Persian Gulf

The Persian Gulf, in Southwest Asia, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.The Persian Gulf was the focus of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers...

 coast west of Hormoz; it was bounded on the east by Gedrosia

Gedrosia (satrapy)

Gedrosia was a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire, corresponding to modern Pakistani Balochistan. The capitol of the satrapy was Pura which is probably identical to modern Bampûr, forty kilometers west of Irânshahr....

. Some authors, such as Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...

 called the northern deserts, which stretched as far as Parthia and Aria, “desert Carmania”, apparently to be distinguished from Carmania proper, which was a cultivated and fertile region.