Persians

Lore & Background

The Persians are descended from ancient Iranian peoples who migrated to Persis (also called 'Persia proper' and corresponding with Iran's Fars Province) by the 9th century BC. Although Persians, Kurds, and other Iranian tribes originally migrated from Central Asia to Iran in the second millennium BCE, genetic evidence suggests that modern Iranians are mostly descended from the ancient indigenous populations of the Iranian Plateau, rather than being primarily descended from only Central Asian migrants, depending on the ethnic group. Alongside the various ethnicities and cultures that they were contemporaries with, they established and ruled some of the world's most powerful empires. The ancient Persians played a major role in the downfall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Medes, another group of ancient Iranian people, unified the region under an empire centered in Media, which would become the region's leading cultural and political power of the time by 612 BC. Meanwhile, under the dynasty of the Achaemenids, the Persians formed a vassal state to the central Median power. In 552 BC, the Achaemenid Persians revolted against the Median monarchy, leading to the victory of Cyrus the Great over the throne in 550 BC. The Persians spread their influence to the rest of what is considered to be the Iranian Plateau, and assimilated with the indigenous groups of the region, including the Elamites and the Mannaeans. At its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from parts of Eastern Europe in the west to the Indus Valley in the east. The Achaemenids developed the infrastructure to support their growing influence, including the establishment of the cities of Pasargadae and Persepolis. During the Achaemenid era, Persian colonists settled in Asia Minor. Following the Macedonian conquests, the Persian colonists in Cappadocia and the rest of Asia Minor were cut off from their co-religionists.

Reader's Guide

In contemporary terminology, Persian-speaking people from Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are known as Tajiks, with the former two countries having mutually intelligible Persian varieties called Dari and Tajiki, respectively; whereas those from the Caucasus (primarily in the Republic of Azerbaijan and in Dagestan, Russia), albeit heavily assimilated, are known as Tats. Historically, however, the terms Tajik and Tat were used synonymously and interchangeably with Persian. Many influential Persian figures hailed from outside of Iran's modern borders—to the northeast in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and, to a lesser extent, to the northwest in the Caucasus proper. Additionally, several ethnic Persian dynasties ruled Greater Iran from outside of modern-Iran's borders. The Samanid Empire, whose founder Saman Khuda hailed from Balkh, ruled much of Greater Iran from Bukhara (present-day Uzbekistan). The Saffarid dynasty governed much of Greater Iran from Zaranj (present-day Afghanistan), and the Ghurid dynasty ruled parts of Greater Iran from Firozkoh (present-day Afghanistan). The former two dynasties contributed significantly to the restoration of the Persian language and identity following the Arab conquest of Persia, with arguably the most important outcome being the Samanid patronage behind the composition of the Shahnameh.

Did You Know?

• The term 'Persian' derives from Latin, itself deriving from Greek, a Hellenized form of Old Persian, which evolves into modern Persian.
• In the Western world, 'Persian' was largely understood as a demonym for all Iranians rather than as an ethnonym for the Persian people, but this understanding shifted in the 20th century.
• On 21 March 1935, Reza Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty issued a decree asking the international community to use the term 'Iran' instead of 'Persia' in formal correspondences.
• Persian literature is one of the world's most prominent literary traditions both inside and outside of Iran.