Persians Articles from SEXGRINDER.COM Free Article Directory

Search our Site:

Persian identity, at least in terms of language, is traced to the ancient Indo-European Aryans who arrived in Iran circa 2000-1500 BCE. Starting around 550 BCE, from the province of Fars, the ancient Persians spread their language and culture to other parts of the Iranian plateau through conquest and assimilated local Iranic and non-Iranic groups over time. This process of assimilation continued in the face of Greek, Arab, Mongol and Turkic invasions and continued right up to Islamic times.^[1][2]

Numerous dialects and regional identities emerged over time, while a Persian orientation fully manifested itself in Iran and Afghanistan by the 20th century, mirroring developments in post-Ottoman Turkey, the Arab world and Europe. With the disintegration of the final Persian Empires of the Afsharid and Qajar dynasties, Afghanistan and territories in the Caucasus,^[3] and Central Asia either became independent from Iran or incorporated into the Russian Empire.

The Persian peoples emerged as an eclectic collection of groups with the Persian language being the main shared legacy. Diverse populations in Central Asia, such as the Hazaras show traces of Mongol ancestry, while Persians along the border with Iraq have ties to Iraqi Arab Shia culture. Regional dialects spoken by Tajiks in Afghanistan show an ancient affinity with the dialects spoken in Khurasan and Tabaristan. As Persian was the lingua franca of the Iranian plateau (the highlands between Iraq and the Indus) it has come to be used by numerous groups as a second language including Turkic and Arab groups. While most Persians in Iran adhere to Shia Islam, those to the east remain followers of Sunni Islam. Small groups of Persians continue to follow the pre-Islamic faith of Zoroastrianism in Iran, and in Pakistan and India where usage of the Persian language is largely for liturgical purposes.

While a categorization of a 'Persian' ethnic group persists in the West, Persians have generally been a pan-national group often comprised of regional peoples who rarely refer to themselves as 'Persians' and sometimes use the term 'Iranian' instead. The synonymous usage of Iranian and Persian persisted over the centuries despite the varied meanings of Iranian, which includes different but related languages and ethnic groups. As a pan-national group, defining Persians as an ethnic group, at least in terms used in the West, is problematic since Persians are as varied as groups such as Arabs.

Persians Subcategories Persians Articles