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Iranian peoples

March 11, 2023

This article is about the group of Indo-European peoples. For the inhabitants of the modern country of Iran, see Demographics of Iran.
"Iranics" redirects here. For the left-leaning italics, see Italic type § Iranic font style.

The Iranian peoples[1] or Iranic peoples[2] are a diverse grouping of Indo-European peoples[1][3] who are identified by their usage of the Iranian languages and other cultural similarities.

Iranian peoples
Iranic peoples
Regions with significant populations
Western Asia and eastern half of Anatolia, Caucasus, and Ossetia, Central Asia, western areas of South Asia, western areas of Xinjiang (China)
(Historically also: Eastern Europe)
Languages
Iranian languages (a branch of the Indo-European languages)
Religion
Predominately:
Islam (Sunni and Shia)
Minorities:
Christianity (Eastern Orthodoxy, Nestorianism, Catholicism, and Protestantism), Judaism, Baháʼí Faith, Yazidism, Yarsanism, Zoroastrianism, Assianism
(Historically also: Iranian paganism, Buddhism, and Manichaeism)

The Proto-Iranians are believed to have emerged as a separate branch of the Indo-Iranians in Central Asia around the mid-2nd millennium BC.[4][5] At their peak of expansion in the mid-1st millennium BC, the territory of the Iranian peoples stretched across the entire Eurasian Steppe, from the Great Hungarian Plain in the west to the Ordos Plateau in the east and the Iranian Plateau in the south.[6]

The ancient Iranian peoples who emerged after the 1st millennium BC include the Alans, the Bactrians, the Dahae, the Khwarazmians, the Massagetae, the Medes, the Parthians, the Persians, the Sagartians, the Sakas, the Sarmatians, the Scythians, the Sogdians, and likely the Cimmerians, among other Iranian-speaking peoples of Western Asia, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Eastern Steppe.

In the 1st millennium AD, their area of settlement, which was mainly concentrated in the steppes and deserts of Eurasia,[7] was significantly reduced as a result of Slavic, Germanic, Turkic, and Mongolic expansions; many were subjected to Slavicization[8][9][10][11] and Turkification.[12][13] Modern Iranian peoples include the Baloch, the Gilaks, the Kurds, the Lurs, the Mazanderanis, the Ossetians, the Pamiris, the Pashtuns, the Persians, the Tats, the Tajiks, the Talysh, the Wakhis, the Yaghnobis, and the Zazas. Their current distribution spreads across the Iranian Plateau, stretching from the Caucasus in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south and from eastern Anatolia in the west to western Xinjiang in the east—a region that is sometimes called the Iranian Cultural Continent,[14] representing the extent of the Iranian-speakers and the significant influence of the Iranian peoples through the geopolitical and cultural reach of Greater Iran.[15]

Name

The term Iran derives directly from Middle Persian Ērān / AEran (𐭠𐭩𐭥𐭠𐭭) and Parthian Aryān.[16] The Middle Iranian terms ērān and aryān are oblique plural forms of gentilic ēr- (in Middle Persian) and ary- (in Parthian), both deriving from Old Persian ariya- (𐎠𐎼𐎡𐎹), Avestan airiia- (𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀) and Proto-Iranian *arya-.[16][17]

There have been many attempts to qualify the verbal root of ar- in Old Iranian arya-. The following are according to 1957 and later linguists:

  • Emmanuel Laroche (1957): ara- "to fit" ("fitting", "proper").
    Old Iranian arya- being descended from Proto-Indo-European ar-yo-, meaning "(skillfully) assembler".[18]
  • Georges Dumézil (1958): ar- "to share" (as a union).
  • Harold Walter Bailey (1959): ar- "to beget" ("born", "nurturing").
  • Émil Benveniste (1969): ar- "to fit" ("companionable").

Unlike the Sanskrit ārya- (Aryan), the Old Iranian term has solely an ethnic meaning.[19][20] Today, the Old Iranian arya- remains in ethno-linguistic names such as Iran, Alan, Ir, and Iron.[21][16][22][23]

 
The Bistun Inscription of Darius the Great describes itself to have been composed in Arya [language or script].

In the Iranian languages, the gentilic is attested as a self-identifier included in ancient inscriptions and the literature of Avesta.[24][a] The earliest epigraphically attested reference to the word arya- occurs in the Bistun Inscription of the 6th century BC. The inscription of Bistun (or Behistun; Old Persian: Bagastana) describes itself to have been composed in Arya [language or script]. As is also the case for all other Old Iranian language usage, the arya of the inscription does not signify anything but Iranian.[25]

In royal Old Persian inscriptions, the term arya- appears in three different contexts:[20][21]

  • As the name of the language of the Old Persian version of the inscription of Darius I in the Bistun Inscription.
  • As the ethnic background of Darius the Great in inscriptions at Rustam Relief and Susa (Dna, Dse) and the ethnic background of Xerxes I in the inscription from Persepolis (Xph).
  • As the definition of the God of Iranians, Ohrmazd, in the Elamite version of the Bistun Inscription.

In the Dna and Dse, Darius and Xerxes describe themselves as "an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, and an Aryan, of Aryan stock".[26] Although Darius the Great called his language arya- ("Iranian"),[26] modern scholars refer to it as Old Persian[26] because it is the ancestor of the modern Persian language.[27]

The trilingual inscription erected by the command of Shapur I gives a more clear description. The languages used are Parthian, Middle Persian, and Greek. In Greek inscription says "ego ... tou Arianon ethnous despotes eimi", which translates to "I am the king of the kingdom (nation) of the Iranians". In Middle Persian, Shapur says "ērānšahr xwadāy hēm" and in Parthian he says "aryānšahr xwadāy ahēm".[20][28]

The Avesta clearly uses airiia- as an ethnic name (Videvdat 1; Yasht 13.143–44, etc.), where it appears in expressions such as airyāfi daiŋˊhāvō ("Iranian lands"), airyō šayanəm ("land inhabited by Iranians"), and airyanəm vaējō vaŋhuyāfi dāityayāfi ("Iranian stretch of the good Dāityā").[20] In the late part of the Avesta (Videvdat 1), one of the mentioned homelands was referred to as Airyan'əm Vaējah which approximately means "expanse of the Iranians". The homeland varied in its geographic range, the area around Herat (Pliny's view) and even the entire expanse of the Iranian Plateau (Strabo's designation).[29]

The Old Persian and Avestan evidence is confirmed by the Greek sources.[20] Herodotus, in his Histories, remarks about the Iranian Medes that "Medes were called anciently by all people Arians" (7.62).[20][21] In Armenian sources, the Parthians, Medes and Persians are collectively referred to as Iranians.[30] Eudemus of Rhodes (Dubitationes et Solutiones de Primis Principiis, in Platonis Parmenidem) refers to "the Magi and all those of Iranian (áreion) lineage". Diodorus Siculus (1.94.2) considers Zoroaster (Zathraustēs) as one of the Arianoi.[20]

Strabo, in his Geographica (1st century AD), mentions of the Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Sogdians of the Iranian Plateau and Transoxiana of antiquity:[31]

The name of Ariana is further extended to a part of Persia and of Media, as also to the Bactrians and Sogdians on the north; for these speak approximately the same language, with but slight variations.

— Geographica, 15.8

The Bactrian (a Middle Iranian language) inscription of Kanishka (the founder of the Kushan Empire) at Rabatak, which was discovered in 1993 in an unexcavated site in the Afghan province of Baghlan, clearly refers to this Eastern Iranian language as Arya.[32]

All this evidence shows that the name Arya was a collective definition, denoting peoples who were aware of belonging to the one ethnic stock, speaking a common language, and having a religious tradition that centered on the cult of Ohrmazd.[20]

The academic usage of the term Iranian is distinct from the state of Iran and its various citizens (who are all Iranian by nationality), in the same way that the term Germanic peoples is distinct from Germans. Some inhabitants of Iran are not necessarily ethnic Iranians by virtue of not being speakers of Iranian languages.

Iranian vs. Iranic

Some scholars such as John Perry prefer the term Iranic as the anthropological name for the linguistic family and ethnic groups of this category (many of which exist outside Iran), while Iranian for anything about the country Iran. He uses the same analogue as in differentiating German from Germanic or differentiating Turkish and Turkic.[33] German scholar Martin Kummel also argues the same distinction of Iranian from Iranic.[34]

History and settlement

Indo-European roots

Main articles: Indo-Iranians and Proto-Indo-Europeans
 
Early Indo-European migrations from the Pontic steppes and across Central Asia.

Proto-Indo-Iranians

 
Archaeological cultures associated with Indo-Iranian migrations (after EIEC). The Andronovo, BMAC and Yaz cultures have often been associated with it. The GGC (Swat), Cemetery H, Copper Hoard and PGW cultures are candidates for the same associations.

The Proto-Indo-Iranians are commonly identified with the Sintashta culture and the subsequent Andronovo culture within the broader Andronovo horizon, and their homeland with an area of the Eurasian steppe that borders the Ural River on the west and the Tian Shan on the east.

The Indo-Iranian migrations took place in two waves.[35][36] The first wave consisted of the Indo-Aryan migration through the Bactria-Margiana Culture, also called "Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex," into the Levant, founding the Mittani kingdom; and a migration south-eastward of the Vedic people, over the Hindu Kush into northern India.[37] The Indo-Aryans split off around 1800–1600 BC from the Iranians,[38] whereafter they were defeated and split into two groups by the Iranians,[39] who dominated the Central Eurasian steppe zone[40] and "chased [the Indo-Aryans] to the extremities of Central Eurasia."[40] One group were the Indo-Aryans who founded the Mitanni kingdom in northern Syria;[41] (c. 1500–1300 BC) the other group were the Vedic people.[42] Christopher I. Beckwith suggests that the Wusun, an Indo-European Caucasian people of Inner Asia in antiquity, were also of Indo-Aryan origin.[43]

The second wave is interpreted as the Iranian wave,[44] and took place in the third stage of the Indo-European migrations[37] from 800 BC onwards.

Sintashta–Petrovka culture

Main article: Sintashta culture
 
According to Allentoft (2015), the Sintashta culture probably derived from the Corded Ware culture.

The Sintashta culture, also known as the Sintashta–Petrovka culture[45] or Sintashta–Arkaim culture,[46] is a Bronze Age archaeological culture of the northern Eurasian steppe on the borders of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, dated to the period 2100–1800 BC.[47] It is probably the archaeological manifestation of the Indo-Iranian language group.[48]

The Sintashta culture emerged from the interaction of two antecedent cultures. Its immediate predecessor in the Ural-Tobol steppe was the Poltavka culture, an offshoot of the cattle-herding Yamnaya horizon that moved east into the region between 2800 and 2600 BC. Several Sintashta towns were built over older Poltavka settlements or close to Poltavka cemeteries, and Poltavka motifs are common on Sintashta pottery. Sintashta material culture also shows the influence of the late Abashevo culture, a collection of Corded Ware settlements in the forest steppe zone north of the Sintashta region that were also predominantly pastoralist.[49] Allentoft et al. (2015) also found close autosomal genetic relationship between peoples of Corded Ware culture and Sintashta culture.[50]

The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare.[51] Sintashta settlements are also remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy carried out there, which is unusual for a steppe culture.[52]

Because of the difficulty of identifying the remains of Sintashta sites beneath those of later settlements, the culture was only recently distinguished from the Andronovo culture.[46] It is now recognised as a separate entity forming part of the 'Andronovo horizon'.[45]

Andronovo culture

Main article: Andronovo culture
 
The Andronovo culture's approximate maximal extent, with the formative Sintashta-Petrovka culture (red), the location of the earliest spoke-wheeled chariot finds (purple), and the adjacent and overlapping Afanasevo, Srubna, and BMAC cultures (green).

The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Bronze Age Indo-Iranian cultures that flourished c. 1800–900 BC in western Siberia and the west Asiatic steppe.[53] It is probably better termed an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon. The name derives from the village of Andronovo (55°53′N 55°42′E / 55.883°N 55.700°E / 55.883; 55.700), where in 1914, several graves were discovered, with skeletons in crouched positions, buried with richly decorated pottery. The older Sintashta culture (2100–1800), formerly included within the Andronovo culture, is now considered separately, but regarded as its predecessor, and accepted as part of the wider Andronovo horizon. At least four sub-cultures of the Andronovo horizon have been distinguished, during which the culture expands towards the south and the east:

The geographical extent of the culture is vast and difficult to delineate exactly. On its western fringes, it overlaps with the approximately contemporaneous, but distinct, Srubna culture in the Volga-Ural interfluvial. To the east, it reaches into the Minusinsk depression, with some sites as far west as the southern Ural Mountains,[55] overlapping with the area of the earlier Afanasevo culture.[56] Additional sites are scattered as far south as the Koppet Dag (Turkmenistan), the Pamir (Tajikistan) and the Tian Shan (Kyrgyzstan). The northern boundary vaguely corresponds to the beginning of the Taiga.[55] In the Volga basin, interaction with the Srubna culture was the most intense and prolonged, and Federovo style pottery is found as far west as Volgograd.

Most researchers associate the Andronovo horizon with early Indo-Iranian languages, though it may have overlapped the early Uralic-speaking area at its northern fringe.

Scythians and Persians

 
Scythian horseman, Pazyryk, from a carpet, c. 300 BC

From the late 2nd millennium BC to early 1st millennium BC the Iranians had expanded from the Eurasian Steppe, and Iranian peoples such as Medes, Persians, Parthians and Bactrians populated the Iranian Plateau.[57][58]

Scythian tribes, along with Cimmerians, Sarmatians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea. The Scythian and Sarmatian tribes were spread across Great Hungarian Plain, South-Eastern Ukraine, Russias Siberian, Southern, Volga,[59] Uralic regions and the Balkans,[60][61][62] while other Scythian tribes, such as the Saka, spread as far east as Xinjiang, China.

Western and Eastern Iranians

The division into an "Eastern" and a "Western" group by the early 1st millennium is visible in Avestan vs. Old Persian, the two oldest known Iranian languages. The Old Avestan texts known as the Gathas are believed to have been composed by Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism, with the Yaz culture (c. 1500 BC – 1100 BC) as a candidate for the development of Eastern Iranian culture.[citation needed]

Western Iranian peoples

 
Extent of Iranian influence in the 1st century BC. The Parthian Empire (mostly Western Iranian) is shown in red, other areas, dominated by Scythia (Eastern Iranian), in orange.
 
Achaemenid Empire at its greatest extent under the rule of Darius I (522 BC to 486 BC)
 
Persepolis: Persian guards

During the 1st centuries of the 1st millennium BC, the ancient Persians established themselves in the western portion of the Iranian Plateau and appear to have interacted considerably with the Elamites and Babylonians, while the Medes also entered in contact with the Assyrians.[63] Remnants of the Median language and Old Persian show their common Proto-Iranian roots, emphasized in Strabo and Herodotus' description of their languages as very similar to the languages spoken by the Bactrians and Sogdians in the east.[29][64] Following the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire, the Persian language (referred to as "Farsi" in Persian) spread from Pars or Fars Province to various regions of the Empire, with the modern dialects of Iran, Afghanistan (also known as Dari) and Central-Asia (known as Tajiki) descending from Old Persian.

At first, the Western Iranian peoples in the Near East were dominated by the various Assyrian empires. An alliance of the Medes with the Persians, and rebelling Babylonians, Scythians, Chaldeans, and Cimmerians, helped the Medes to capture Nineveh in 612 BC, which resulted in the eventual collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire by 605 BC.[65] The Medes were subsequently able to establish their Median kingdom (with Ecbatana as their royal centre) beyond their original homeland and had eventually a territory stretching roughly from northeastern Iran to the Halys River in Anatolia. After the fall of the Assyrian Empire, between 616 BC and 605 BC, a unified Median state was formed, which, together with Babylonia, Lydia, and Egypt, became one of the four major powers of the ancient Near East

Later on, in 550 BC, Cyrus the Great, would overthrow the leading Median rule, and conquer Kingdom of Lydia and the Babylonian Empire after which he established the Achaemenid Empire (or the First Persian Empire), while his successors would dramatically extend its borders. At its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire would encompass swaths of territory across three continents, namely Europe, Africa and Asia, stretching from the Balkans and Eastern Europe proper in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east. The largest empire of ancient history, with their base in Persis (although the main capital was located in Babylon) the Achaemenids would rule much of the known ancient world for centuries. This First Persian Empire was equally notable for its successful model of a centralised, bureaucratic administration (through satraps under a king) and a government working to the profit of its subjects, for building infrastructure such as a postal system and road systems and the use of an official language across its territories and a large professional army and civil services (inspiring similar systems in later empires),[66] and for emancipation of slaves including the Jewish exiles in Babylon, and is noted in Western history as the antagonist of the Greek city states during the Greco-Persian Wars. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was built in the empire as well.

The Greco-Persian Wars resulted in the Persians being forced to withdraw from their European territories, setting the direct further course of history of Greece and the rest of Europe. More than a century later, a prince of Macedon (which itself was a subject to Persia from the late 6th century BC up to the First Persian invasion of Greece) later known by the name of Alexander the Great, overthrew the incumbent Persian king, by which the Achaemenid Empire was ended.

Old Persian is attested in the Behistun Inscription (c. 519 BC), recording a proclamation by Darius the Great.[67] In southwestern Iran, the Achaemenid kings usually wrote their inscriptions in trilingual form (Elamite, Babylonian and Old Persian)[68] while elsewhere other languages were used. The administrative languages were Elamite in the early period, and later Imperial Aramaic,[69] as well as Greek, making it a widely used bureaucratic language.[70] Even though the Achaemenids had extensive contacts with the Greeks and vice versa, and had conquered many of the Greek-speaking area's both in Europe and Asia Minor during different periods of the empire, the native Old Iranian sources provide no indication of Greek linguistic evidence.[70] However, there is plenty of evidence (in addition to the accounts of Herodotus) that Greeks, apart from being deployed and employed in the core regions of the empire, also evidently lived and worked in the heartland of the Achaemenid Empire, namely Iran.[70] For example, Greeks were part of the various ethnicities that constructed Darius' palace in Susa, apart from the Greek inscriptions found nearby there, and one short Persepolis tablet written in Greek.[70]

The early inhabitants of the Achaemenid Empire appear to have adopted the religion of Zoroastrianism.[71] The Baloch who speak a west Iranian language relate an oral tradition regarding their migration from Aleppo, Syria around the year 1000 AD, whereas linguistic evidence links Balochi to Kurmanji, Soranî, Gorani and Zazaki language.[72]

Eastern Iranian peoples

 
The Eastern Iranian and Balto-Slavic dialect continuums in Eastern Europe, the latter with proposed material cultures correlating to speakers of Balto-Slavic in the Bronze Age (white). Red dots = archaic Slavic hydronyms
 
Archaeological cultures c. 750 BC at the start of Eastern-Central Europe's Iron Age; the Proto-Scythian culture borders the Balto-Slavic cultures (Lusatian, Milograd and Chernoles)
 
Silver coin of the Indo-Scythian king Azes II (reigned c. 35–12 BC). Buddhist triratna symbol in the left field on the reverse

While the Iranian tribes of the south are better known through their texts and modern counterparts, the tribes which remained largely in the vast Eurasian expanse are known through the references made to them by the ancient Greeks, Persians, Chinese, and Indo-Aryans as well as by archaeological finds. The Greek chronicler, Herodotus (5th century BC) makes references to a nomadic people, the Scythians; he describes them as having dwelt in what is today southern European Russia and Ukraine. He was the first to make a reference to them. Many ancient Sanskrit texts from a later period make references to such tribes they were witness of pointing them towards the southeasternmost edges of Central Asia, around the Hindukush range in northern Pakistan.

It is believed that these Scythians were conquered by their eastern cousins, the Sarmatians, who are mentioned by Strabo as the dominant tribe which controlled the southern Russian steppe in the 1st millennium AD. These Sarmatians were also known to the Romans, who conquered the western tribes in the Balkans and sent Sarmatian conscripts, as part of Roman legions, as far west as Roman Britain. These Iranian-speaking Scythians and Sarmatians dominated large parts of Eastern Europe for a millennium, and were eventually absorbed and assimilated (e.g. Slavicisation) by the Proto-Slavic population of the region.[8][9][11]

The Sarmatians differed from the Scythians in their veneration of the god of fire rather than god of nature, and women's prominent role in warfare, which possibly served as the inspiration for the Amazons.[73] At their greatest reported extent, around the 1st century AD, these tribes ranged from the Vistula River to the mouth of the Danube and eastward to the Volga, bordering the shores of the Black and Caspian Seas as well as the Caucasus to the south.[74] Their territory, which was known as Sarmatia to Greco-Roman ethnographers, corresponded to the western part of greater Scythia (mostly modern Ukraine and Southern Russia, also to a smaller extent north eastern Balkans around Moldova). According to authors Arrowsmith, Fellowes and Graves Hansard in their book A Grammar of Ancient Geography published in 1832, Sarmatia had two parts, Sarmatia Europea[75] and Sarmatia Asiatica[76] covering a combined area of 503,000 sq mi or 1,302,764 km2.

Throughout the 1st millennium AD, the large presence of the Sarmatians who once dominated Ukraine, Southern Russia, and swaths of the Carpathians, gradually started to diminish mainly due to assimilation and absorption by the Germanic Goths, especially from the areas near the Roman frontier, but only completely by the Proto-Slavic peoples. The abundant East Iranian-derived toponyms in Eastern Europe proper (e.g. some of the largest rivers; the Dniestr and Dniepr), as well as loanwords adopted predominantly through the Eastern Slavic languages and adopted aspects of Iranian culture amongst the early Slavs, are all a remnant of this. A connection between Proto-Slavonic and Iranian languages is also furthermore proven by the earliest layer of loanwords in the former.[77] For instance, the Proto-Slavonic words for god (*bogъ), demon (*divъ), house (*xata), axe (*toporъ) and dog (*sobaka) are of Scythian origin.[78]

The extensive contact between these Scytho-Sarmatian Iranian tribes in Eastern Europe and the (Early) Slavs included religion. After Slavic and Baltic languages diverged the Early Slavs interacted with Iranian peoples and merged elements of Iranian spirituality into their beliefs. For example, both Early Iranian and Slavic supreme gods were considered givers of wealth, unlike the supreme thunder gods in many other European religions. Also, both Slavs and Iranians had demons –- given names from similar linguistic roots, Daêva (Iranian) and Divŭ (Slavic) –- and a concept of dualism, of good and evil.[79]

The Sarmatians of the east, based in the Pontic–Caspian steppe, became the Alans, who also ventured far and wide, with a branch ending up in Western Europe and then North Africa, as they accompanied the Germanic Vandals and Suebi during their migrations. The modern Ossetians are believed to be the direct descendants of the Alans, as other remnants of the Alans disappeared following Germanic, Hunnic and ultimately Slavic migrations and invasions.[80] Another group of Alans allied with Goths to defeat the Romans and ultimately settled in what is now called Catalonia (Goth-Alania).[81]

 
Hormizd I, Sassanian coin

Some of the Saka-Scythian tribes in Central Asia would later move further southeast and invade the Iranian Plateau, large sections of present-day Afghanistan and finally deep into present day Pakistan (see Indo-Scythians). Another Iranian tribe related to the Saka-Scythians were the Parni in Central Asia, and who later become indistinguishable from the Parthians, speakers of a northwest-Iranian language. Many Iranian tribes, including the Khwarazmians, Massagetae and Sogdians, were assimilated and/or displaced in Central Asia by the migrations of Turkic tribes emanating out of Xinjiang and Siberia.[82]

The modern Sarikoli in southern Xinjiang and the Ossetians of the Caucasus (mainly South Ossetia and North Ossetia) are remnants of the various Scythian-derived tribes from the vast far and wide territory they once dwelled in. The modern Ossetians are the descendants of the Alano-Sarmatians,[83][84] and their claims are supported by their Northeast Iranian language, while culturally the Ossetians resemble their North Caucasian neighbors, the Kabardians and Circassians.[80][85] Various extinct Iranian peoples existed in the eastern Caucasus, including the Azaris, while some Iranian peoples remain in the region, including the Talysh[86] and the Tats[87] found in Azerbaijan and as far north as the Russian republic of Dagestan. A remnant of the Sogdians is found in the Yaghnobi-speaking population in parts of the Zeravshan valley in Tajikistan.

Later developments

The main migration of Turkic peoples occurred between the 6th and 10th centuries, when they spread across most of Central Asia. The Turkic peoples slowly replaced and assimilated the previous Iranian-speaking locals, turning the population of Central Asia from largely Iranian, into primarily of East Asian descent.[88]

Starting with the reign of Omar in 634 AD, Muslim Arabs began a conquest of the Iranian Plateau. The Arabs conquered the Sassanid Empire of the Persians and seized much of the Byzantine Empire populated by the Kurds and others. Ultimately, the various Iranian peoples, including the Persians, Pashtuns, Kurds and Balochis, converted to Islam, while the Alans converted to Christianity, thus laying the foundation for the fact that the modern-day Ossetians are Christian.[89] The Iranian peoples would later split along sectarian lines as the Persians adopted the Shi'a sect. As ancient tribes and identities changed, so did the Iranian peoples, many of whom assimilated foreign cultures and peoples.[90]

Later, during the 2nd millennium AD, the Iranian peoples would play a prominent role during the age of Islamic expansion and empire. Saladin, a noted adversary of the Crusaders, was an ethnic Kurd, while various empires centered in Iran (including the Safavids) re-established a modern dialect of Persian as the official language spoken throughout much of what is today Iran and the Caucasus. Iranian influence spread to the neighbouring Ottoman Empire, where Persian was often spoken at court (though a heavy Turko-Persian basis there was set already by the predecessors of the Ottomans in Anatolia, namely the Seljuks and the Sultanate of Rum amongst others) as well to the court of the Mughal Empire. All of the major Iranian peoples reasserted their use of Iranian languages following the decline of Arab rule, but would not begin to form modern national identities until the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Demographics

See also: Iranian Plateau, Demographics of Iran, Ethnic minorities in Iran, Ethnic groups in West Asia, Demographics of Afghanistan, Ethnic minorities in Azerbaijan, Demographics of Azerbaijan, Demographics of Turkey, Demographics of Tajikistan, Kurdistan, Ossetia, Demographics of Pakistan, Demographics of Syria, Demographics of Iraq, and Peoples of the Caucasus
Further information: Iranian citizens abroad and Kurdish diaspora

There are an estimated 150 to 200 million native speakers of Iranian languages, the six major groups of Persians, Lurs, Kurds, Tajiks, Baloch, and Pashtuns accounting for about 90% of this number.[91] Currently, most of these Iranian peoples live in Iran, Afghanistan, the Caucasus (mainly Ossetia, other parts of Georgia, Dagestan, and Azerbaijan), Iraqi Kurdistan and Kurdish majority populated areas of Turkey, Iran and Syria, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. There are also Iranian peoples living in Eastern Arabia such as northern Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait.

Due to recent migrations, there are also large communities of speakers of Iranian languages in Europe, the Americas.

List of Iranian peoples with the respective groups's core areas of settlements and their estimated sizes
Ethnicity region population (millions)
Persian-speaking peoples Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, the Caucasus, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq 72–85[citation needed]
Pashtuns Afghanistan, Pakistan 63[citation needed]
Kurds, Zaza,[92][93] Yazidis, Shabaks Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Armenia, Israel, Lebanon, Georgia 30–40[94]
Baluchs Pakistan, Iran, Oman,[95] Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, UAE
15
20–22[citation needed][96]
Gilakis, Mazanderanis

And Semnani people

Iran 5–10[citation needed]
Lurs Iran, Kuwait, and Oman[97]
026
6[citation needed]
Pamiris Tajikistan, Afghanistan, China (Xinjiang), Pakistan 0.9
Talysh Azerbaijan, Iran 1.5
Ossetians Georgia (South Ossetia),
Russia (North Ossetia), Hungary 		0.7
Yaghnobi Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (Zerafshan region) 0.025
Kumzari Oman (Musandam) 0.021
Zoroastrian groups in South Asia India, Pakistan 0.075

Culture

See also: Proto-Indo-European society
 
Nowruz, an ancient Iranian annual festival that is still widely celebrated throughout the Iranian Plateau and beyond, in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Iranian culture is today considered to be centered in what is called the Iranian Plateau, and has its origins tracing back to the Andronovo culture of the late Bronze Age, which is associated with other cultures of the Eurasian Steppe.[98][99] It was, however, later developed distinguishably from its earlier generations in the Steppe, where a large number of Iranian-speaking peoples (i.e., the Scythians) continued to participate, resulting in a differentiation that is displayed in Iranian mythology as the contrast between Iran and Turan.[98]

Like other Indo-Europeans, the early Iranians practiced ritual sacrifice, had a social hierarchy consisting of warriors, clerics, and farmers, and recounted their deeds through poetic hymns and sagas.[100] Various common traits can be discerned among the Iranian peoples. For instance, the social event of Nowruz is an ancient Iranian festival that is still celebrated by nearly all of the Iranian peoples. However, due to their different environmental adaptations through migration, the Iranian peoples embrace some degrees of diversity in dialect, social system, and other aspects of culture.[1]

With numerous artistic, scientific, architectural, and philosophical achievements and numerous kingdoms and empires that bridged much of the civilized world in antiquity, the Iranian peoples were often in close contact with people from various western and eastern parts of the world.

Religion

Main articles: Ancient Iranian religion and Iranian religions
 
The ruins at Kangavar, Iran, presumed to belong to a temple dedicated to the ancient goddess Anahita.[101]

The early Iranian peoples practiced the ancient Iranian religion, which, like that of other Indo-European peoples, embraced various male and female deities.[102] Fire was regarded as an important and highly sacred element, and also a deity. In ancient Iran, fire was kept with great care in fire temples.[102] Various annual festivals that were mainly related to agriculture and herding were celebrated, the most important of which was the New Year (Nowruz), which is still widely celebrated.[102] Zoroastrianism, a form of the ancient Iranian religion that is still practiced by some communities,[103] was later developed and spread to nearly all of the Iranian peoples living in the Iranian Plateau. Other religions that had their origins in the Iranian world were Mithraism, Manichaeism, and Mazdakism, among others. The various religions of the Iranian peoples are believed by some scholars to have been significant early philosophical influences on Christianity and Judaism.[104]

Nowadays, most Iranian people follow Islam (Sunnism, followed by Shi'ism), with minorities following Christianity, Judaism, Mandaeism, Iranian religions and various levels of irreligion.[citation needed]

Cultural assimilation

See also: Turco-Persian tradition, Persianate society, and Sarmatism
 
Bronze Statue of a Parthian nobleman, National Museum of Iran
 
A caftan worn by a Sogdian horseman, 8th–10th century

Iranian languages were and, to a lesser extent, still are spoken in a wide area comprising regions around the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Russia and the northwest of China.[105] This population was linguistically assimilated by smaller but dominant Turkic-speaking groups, while the sedentary population eventually adopted the Persian language, which began to spread within the region since the time of the Sasanian Empire.[105] The language-shift from Middle Iranian to Turkic and New Persian was predominantly the result of an "elite dominance" process.[106][107] Moreover, various Turkic-speaking ethnic groups of the Iranian Plateau are often conversant also in an Iranian language and embrace Iranian culture to the extent that the term Turko-Iranian would be applied.[108] A number of Iranian peoples were also intermixed with the Slavs,[9] and many were subjected to Slavicisation.[10][11]

The following either partially descend from or are sometimes regarded as descendants of the Iranian peoples.

See also: Old Azeri language and Origin of the Azerbaijanis
    • Azerbaijanis: In spite of being native speakers of a Turkic language (Azerbaijani Turkic), they are believed to be primarily descended from the earlier Iranian-speakers of the region.[98][1][109][110][111] They are possibly related to the ancient Iranian tribe of the Medes, aside from the rise of the subsequent Persian and Turkic elements (changing of the native Iranian language) within their area of settlement,[112] which, prior to the spread of Turkic, was Iranian-speaking.[113] Thus, due to their historical, genetic and cultural ties to the Iranians,[114] the Azerbaijanis are often associated with the Iranian peoples. Genetic studies observed that they are also genetically related to the Iranian peoples.[115]
    • Turkmens: Genetic studies show that the Turkmens are characterized by the presence of local Iranian mtDNA lineages, similar to the eastern Iranian populations, but modest female Mongoloid mtDNA components were observed in Turkmen populations with the frequencies of about 20%.[116]
    • Uzbeks: The unique grammatical and phonetical features of the Uzbek language,[117] as well as elements within the modern Uzbek culture, reflect the older Iranian roots of the Uzbek people.[105][118][119][120] According to recent genetic genealogy testing from a University of Oxford study, the genetic admixture of the Uzbeks clusters somewhere between the Iranian peoples and the Mongols.[121] Prior to the Russian conquest of Central Asia, the local ancestors of the Turkic-speaking Uzbeks and the Persian-speaking Tajiks, both living in Central Asia, were referred to as Sarts, while Uzbek and Turk were the names given to the nomadic and semi-nomadic populations of the area. Still, as of today, modern Uzbeks and Tajiks are known to their Turkic neighbors, the Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz, as Sarts. Some Uzbek scholars also favor the Iranian origin theory.[122][page needed] According to another study conducted in 2009, she claimed that Uzbeks and Central Asian Turkic peoples clustered genetically and were far from Iranian groups.[123]
    • Uyghurs: Contemporary scholars consider modern Uyghurs to be the descendants of, apart from the ancient Uyghurs, the Iranian Saka (Scythian) tribes and other Indo-European peoples who inhabited the Tarim Basin before the arrival of the Turkic tribes.[124]
  • Persian-speakers:
    • The Hazaras are a Persian-speaking ethnic group native to, and primarily residing in, the mountainous region of Hazarajat, in central Afghanistan. Although the origins of the Hazara people have not been fully reconstructed, genetic analysis of the Hazara indicate partial Mongol ancestry. Invading Mongols and Turco-Mongols mixed with the local Iranian population. for example Qara'unas settled in what is now Afghanistan and mixed with the local populations. A second wave of mostly Chagatai Turco-Mongols came from Central Asia, associated with the Ilkhanate and the Timurids, all of whom settled in Hazarajat and mixed with the local population. Phenotype can vary, with some noting that certain Hazaras may resemble peoples native to the Iranian plateau.[125][126]
  • Slavic-speakers:
    • Croats and Serbs: Some scholars suggest that the Slavic-speaking Serbs and Croats are descended from the ancient Sarmatians,[127][128] an ancient Iranian people who once settled in most of southern European Russia and the eastern Balkans, and that their ethnonyms are of Iranian origin. It is proposed that the Sarmatian Serboi and alleged Horoathos tribes were assimilated with the numerically superior Slavs, passing on their name. Iranian-speaking peoples did inhabit parts of the Balkans in late classical times, and would have been encountered by the Slavs. However, direct linguistic, historical, or archaeological proof for such a theory is lacking. [b]
  • Swahili-speakers:
  • Indo-Aryan speakers:
    • Sindhis: Though today the Balochis are only 3.6% of Sindh's population, the population is actually higher, nearly 40%, most of whom don't speak Balochi anymore.[129] Many Balochis such as the Zardaris and the African Baloch Makranis came to Sindh to find jobs and eventually founded the city of Karachi.[130] The Talpur Dynasty was an ethnic Baloch Sindhi speaking dynasty that ruled much of Sindh and parts of Balochistan during the British colonial period. It was believed that the first Baloch came to Sindh during the Little Ice Age. The Baloch in Sindh are known as the Baruch (ٻروچ).

Genetics

Further information: Genetic history of the Middle East
 
Population genomic PCA, showing the CIC (Central Iranian cluster) among other worldwide samples.

Recent population genomic studies found that the genetic structure of Iranian peoples formed already about 5,000 years ago and show high continuity since then, suggesting that they were largely unaffected by migration events from outside groups. Genetically speaking, Iranian peoples generally cluster closely with European and other Middle Eastern peoples. Analyzed samples of ethnic Persians, Kurds, Azeris, Lurs, Mazanderanis, Gilaks, and Indian Zoroastrians, cluster tightly together, forming a single cluster, known as CIC (Central Iranian cluster). Compared with worldwide populations, Iranians (CIC) cluster in the center of the wider West-Eurasian cluster, close to Europeans, Middle Easterners, and South-Central Asians. Iranian Arabs and Azeris genetically overlap with Iranian peoples. The genetic substructure of Iranians is low and homogeneous, compared with other "1000G" populations. Europeans, and certain South Asians (specifically the Parsi minority) showed the highest affinity with Iranians, while Sub-Saharan Africans and East Asians showed the highest differentiation with Iranians.[131]

 
Tajik people from Afghanistan
 
Tat men from the village of Adur in the Kuba Uyezd of the Baku Governorate of the Russian Empire

Paternal haplogroups

Regueiro et al (2006)[132] and Grugni et al (2012)[133] have performed large-scale sampling of Y chromosome haplogroups of different ethnic groups within Iran. They found that the most common paternal haplogroups were:

 
Kurdish people celebrating Nowruz, Tangi Sar village.
  • J1-M267; commonly found among Semitic-speaking people, was rarely over 10% in Iranian groups.
  • J2-M172: is the most common Hg in Iran (~23%); almost exclusively represented by J2a-M410 subclade (93%), the other major sub-clade being J2b-M12. Apart from Iranians, J2 is common in northern Arabs, Mediterranean and Balkan peoples (Croats, Serbs, Greeks, Bosniaks, Albanians, Italians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Turks), in the Caucasus (Armenians, Georgians, Chechens, Ingush, northeastern Turkey, north/northwestern Iran, Kurds, Persians); whilst its frequency drops suddenly beyond Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India.[134] In Europe, J2a is more common in southern Greece and southern Italy; whilst J2b (J2-M12) is more common in Thessaly, Macedonia and central – northern Italy. Thus J2a and its subgroups within it have a wide distribution from Italy to India, whilst J2b is mostly confined to the Balkans and Italy,[135] being rare even in Turkey. Whilst closely linked with Anatolia and the Levant; and putative agricultural expansions, the distribution of the various sub-clades of J2 likely represents a number of migrational histories which require further elucidation.[134][136]
  • R1a-M198: is common in Iran, more so in the east and south rather than the west and north; suggesting a migration toward the south to India then a secondary westward spread across Iran.[137] Whilst the Grongi and Regueiro studies did not define exactly which sub-clades Iranian R1a haplogrouops belong to, private genealogy tests suggest that they virtually all belong to "Eurasian" R1a-Z93.[138] Indeed, population studies of neighbouring Indian groups found that they all were in R1a-Z93.[139] This implies that R1a in Iran did not descend from "European" R1a, or vice versa. Rather, both groups are collateral, brother branches which descend from a parental group hypothesized to have initially lived somewhere between central Asia and Eastern Europe.[139]
  • R1b – M269: is widespread from Ireland to Iran, and is common in highland West Asian populations such as Armenians, Turks and Iranians – with an average frequency of 8.5%. Iranian R1b belongs to the L-23 subclade,[140] which is an older than the derivative subclade (R1b-M412) which is most common in western Europe.[141]
  • Haplogroup G and subclades: most concentrated in the Caucasus,[142] it is present in 10% of Iranians.[133]
  • Haplogroup E and various subclades are frequently found among Middle Easterners, Europeans, northern and eastern African populations. They are present in less than 10% of Iranians.

Two large – scale papers by Haber (2012)[143] and Di Cristofaro (2013)[144] analyzed populations from Afghanistan, where several Iranian-speaking groups are native. They found that different groups (e.g. Baluch, Hazara, Pashtun) were quite diverse, yet overall:

  • R1a (subclade not further analyzed) was the predominant haplogroup, especially amongst Pashtuns, the Baloch and Tajiks.
  • The presence of "East-Eurasian" haplogroup C3, especially in Hazaras (33–40%), in part linked to Mongol expansions into the region.
  • The presence of haplogroup J2, like in Iran, of 5–20%.
  • A relative paucity of "Indian" haplgroup H (< 10%).

A 2012 study by Grugni et al. analyzed the haplogroups of 15 different ethnic groups from Iran. They found that about 31.4% belong to J, 29.1% belong to R, 11.8% belong to G, and 9.2% belong to E. They found that Iranian ethnic groups display high haplogroup diversity, compared to other Middle Easterners. The authors concluded that the Iranian gene pool has been an important source for the Middle Eastern and Eurasian Y chromosome diversity, and the results suggest that there was already rather high Y chromosome diversity during the Neolithic period, placing Iranian populations in between Europeans, Middle Easterners and South Asians.[145]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ In the Avesta the airiia- are members of the ethnic group of the Avesta-reciters themselves, in contradistinction to the anairiia-, the "non-Aryas". The word also appears four times in Old Persian: One is in the Behistun inscription, where ariya- is the name of a language or script (DB 4.89). The other three instances occur in Darius I's inscription at Naqsh-e Rustam (DNa 14–15), in Darius I's inscription at Susa (DSe 13–14), and in the inscription of Xerxes I at Persepolis (XPh 12–13). In these, the two Achaemenid dynasts describe themselves as pārsa pārsahyā puça ariya ariyaciça "a Persian, son of a Persian, an Ariya, of Ariya origin." "The phrase with ciça, "origin, descendance", assures that it [i.e. ariya] is an ethnic name wider in meaning than pārsa and not a simple adjectival epithet".[24]
  2. ^ See also: Origin hypotheses of the Serbs and Origin hypotheses of the Croats

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Further reading

 
Wikisource has the text of The New Student's Reference Work article "Iranians".
  • Anthony, David W. (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped The Modern World. Princeton University Press.
  • Balanovsky, Oleg; Zhabagin, Maxat; Agdzhoyan, Anastasiya; Chukhryaeva, Marina; Zaporozhchenko, Valery; Utevska, Olga; Highnam, Gareth; Sabitov, Zhaxylyk; Greenspan, Elliott; Dibirova, Khadizhat; Skhalyakho, Roza; Kuznetsova, Marina; Koshel, Sergey; Yusupov, Yuldash; Nymadawa, Pagbajabyn; Zhumadilov, Zhaxybay; Pocheshkhova, Elvira; Haber, Marc; a. Zalloua, Pierre; Yepiskoposyan, Levon; Dybo, Anna; Tyler-Smith, Chris; Balanovska, Elena (2015). "Deep Phylogenetic Analysis of Haplogroup G1 Provides Estimates of SNP and STR Mutation Rates on the Human Y-Chromosome and Reveals Migrations of Iranic Speakers". PLOS ONE. 10 (4): e0122968. Bibcode:2015PLoSO..1022968B. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0122968. PMC 4388827. PMID 25849548.

March 11, 2023
iranian, peoples, this, article, about, group, indo, european, peoples, inhabitants, modern, country, iran, demographics, iran, iranics, redirects, here, left, leaning, italics, italic, type, iranic, font, style, iranic, peoples, diverse, grouping, indo, europ. This article is about the group of Indo European peoples For the inhabitants of the modern country of Iran see Demographics of Iran Iranics redirects here For the left leaning italics see Italic type Iranic font style The Iranian peoples 1 or Iranic peoples 2 are a diverse grouping of Indo European peoples 1 3 who are identified by their usage of the Iranian languages and other cultural similarities Iranian peoplesIranic peoplesRegions with significant populationsWestern Asia and eastern half of Anatolia Caucasus and Ossetia Central Asia western areas of South Asia western areas of Xinjiang China Historically also Eastern Europe LanguagesIranian languages a branch of the Indo European languages ReligionPredominately Islam Sunni and Shia Minorities Christianity Eastern Orthodoxy Nestorianism Catholicism and Protestantism Judaism Bahaʼi Faith Yazidism Yarsanism Zoroastrianism Assianism Historically also Iranian paganism Buddhism and Manichaeism The Proto Iranians are believed to have emerged as a separate branch of the Indo Iranians in Central Asia around the mid 2nd millennium BC 4 5 At their peak of expansion in the mid 1st millennium BC the territory of the Iranian peoples stretched across the entire Eurasian Steppe from the Great Hungarian Plain in the west to the Ordos Plateau in the east and the Iranian Plateau in the south 6 The ancient Iranian peoples who emerged after the 1st millennium BC include the Alans the Bactrians the Dahae the Khwarazmians the Massagetae the Medes the Parthians the Persians the Sagartians the Sakas the Sarmatians the Scythians the Sogdians and likely the Cimmerians among other Iranian speaking peoples of Western Asia Central Asia Eastern Europe and the Eastern Steppe In the 1st millennium AD their area of settlement which was mainly concentrated in the steppes and deserts of Eurasia 7 was significantly reduced as a result of Slavic Germanic Turkic and Mongolic expansions many were subjected to Slavicization 8 9 10 11 and Turkification 12 13 Modern Iranian peoples include the Baloch the Gilaks the Kurds the Lurs the Mazanderanis the Ossetians the Pamiris the Pashtuns the Persians the Tats the Tajiks the Talysh the Wakhis the Yaghnobis and the Zazas Their current distribution spreads across the Iranian Plateau stretching from the Caucasus in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south and from eastern Anatolia in the west to western Xinjiang in the east a region that is sometimes called the Iranian Cultural Continent 14 representing the extent of the Iranian speakers and the significant influence of the Iranian peoples through the geopolitical and cultural reach of Greater Iran 15 Contents 1 Name 1 1 Iranian vs Iranic 2 History and settlement 2 1 Indo European roots 2 1 1 Proto Indo Iranians 2 1 2 Sintashta Petrovka culture 2 1 3 Andronovo culture 2 2 Scythians and Persians 2 3 Western and Eastern Iranians 2 3 1 Western Iranian peoples 2 3 2 Eastern Iranian peoples 2 4 Later developments 3 Demographics 4 Culture 4 1 Religion 4 2 Cultural assimilation 5 Genetics 5 1 Paternal haplogroups 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 Sources 10 Further readingName EditThe term Iran derives directly from Middle Persian Eran AEran 𐭠𐭩𐭥𐭠𐭭 and Parthian Aryan 16 The Middle Iranian terms eran and aryan are oblique plural forms of gentilic er in Middle Persian and ary in Parthian both deriving from Old Persian ariya 𐎠𐎼𐎡𐎹 Avestan airiia 𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀 and Proto Iranian arya 16 17 There have been many attempts to qualify the verbal root of ar in Old Iranian arya The following are according to 1957 and later linguists Emmanuel Laroche 1957 ara to fit fitting proper Old Iranian arya being descended from Proto Indo European ar yo meaning skillfully assembler 18 Georges Dumezil 1958 ar to share as a union Harold Walter Bailey 1959 ar to beget born nurturing Emil Benveniste 1969 ar to fit companionable Unlike the Sanskrit arya Aryan the Old Iranian term has solely an ethnic meaning 19 20 Today the Old Iranian arya remains in ethno linguistic names such as Iran Alan Ir and Iron 21 16 22 23 The Bistun Inscription of Darius the Great describes itself to have been composed in Arya language or script In the Iranian languages the gentilic is attested as a self identifier included in ancient inscriptions and the literature of Avesta 24 a The earliest epigraphically attested reference to the word arya occurs in the Bistun Inscription of the 6th century BC The inscription of Bistun or Behistun Old Persian Bagastana describes itself to have been composed in Arya language or script As is also the case for all other Old Iranian language usage the arya of the inscription does not signify anything but Iranian 25 In royal Old Persian inscriptions the term arya appears in three different contexts 20 21 As the name of the language of the Old Persian version of the inscription of Darius I in the Bistun Inscription As the ethnic background of Darius the Great in inscriptions at Rustam Relief and Susa Dna Dse and the ethnic background of Xerxes I in the inscription from Persepolis Xph As the definition of the God of Iranians Ohrmazd in the Elamite version of the Bistun Inscription In the Dna and Dse Darius and Xerxes describe themselves as an Achaemenid a Persian son of a Persian and an Aryan of Aryan stock 26 Although Darius the Great called his language arya Iranian 26 modern scholars refer to it as Old Persian 26 because it is the ancestor of the modern Persian language 27 The trilingual inscription erected by the command of Shapur I gives a more clear description The languages used are Parthian Middle Persian and Greek In Greek inscription says ego tou Arianon ethnous despotes eimi which translates to I am the king of the kingdom nation of the Iranians In Middle Persian Shapur says eransahr xwaday hem and in Parthian he says aryansahr xwaday ahem 20 28 The Avesta clearly uses airiia as an ethnic name Videvdat 1 Yasht 13 143 44 etc where it appears in expressions such as airyafi daiŋˊhavō Iranian lands airyō sayanem land inhabited by Iranians and airyanem vaejō vaŋhuyafi daityayafi Iranian stretch of the good Daitya 20 In the late part of the Avesta Videvdat 1 one of the mentioned homelands was referred to as Airyan em Vaejah which approximately means expanse of the Iranians The homeland varied in its geographic range the area around Herat Pliny s view and even the entire expanse of the Iranian Plateau Strabo s designation 29 The Old Persian and Avestan evidence is confirmed by the Greek sources 20 Herodotus in his Histories remarks about the Iranian Medes that Medes were called anciently by all people Arians 7 62 20 21 In Armenian sources the Parthians Medes and Persians are collectively referred to as Iranians 30 Eudemus of Rhodes Dubitationes et Solutiones de Primis Principiis in Platonis Parmenidem refers to the Magi and all those of Iranian areion lineage Diodorus Siculus 1 94 2 considers Zoroaster Zathraustes as one of the Arianoi 20 Strabo in his Geographica 1st century AD mentions of the Medes Persians Bactrians and Sogdians of the Iranian Plateau and Transoxiana of antiquity 31 The name of Ariana is further extended to a part of Persia and of Media as also to the Bactrians and Sogdians on the north for these speak approximately the same language with but slight variations Geographica 15 8 The Bactrian a Middle Iranian language inscription of Kanishka the founder of the Kushan Empire at Rabatak which was discovered in 1993 in an unexcavated site in the Afghan province of Baghlan clearly refers to this Eastern Iranian language as Arya 32 All this evidence shows that the name Arya was a collective definition denoting peoples who were aware of belonging to the one ethnic stock speaking a common language and having a religious tradition that centered on the cult of Ohrmazd 20 The academic usage of the term Iranian is distinct from the state of Iran and its various citizens who are all Iranian by nationality in the same way that the term Germanic peoples is distinct from Germans Some inhabitants of Iran are not necessarily ethnic Iranians by virtue of not being speakers of Iranian languages Iranian vs Iranic Edit Some scholars such as John Perry prefer the term Iranic as the anthropological name for the linguistic family and ethnic groups of this category many of which exist outside Iran while Iranian for anything about the country Iran He uses the same analogue as in differentiating German from Germanic or differentiating Turkish and Turkic 33 German scholar Martin Kummel also argues the same distinction of Iranian from Iranic 34 History and settlement EditIndo European roots Edit Main articles Indo Iranians and Proto Indo Europeans Early Indo European migrations from the Pontic steppes and across Central Asia Proto Indo Iranians Edit Archaeological cultures associated with Indo Iranian migrations after EIEC The Andronovo BMAC and Yaz cultures have often been associated with it The GGC Swat Cemetery H Copper Hoard and PGW cultures are candidates for the same associations The Proto Indo Iranians are commonly identified with the Sintashta culture and the subsequent Andronovo culture within the broader Andronovo horizon and their homeland with an area of the Eurasian steppe that borders the Ural River on the west and the Tian Shan on the east The Indo Iranian migrations took place in two waves 35 36 The first wave consisted of the Indo Aryan migration through the Bactria Margiana Culture also called Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex into the Levant founding the Mittani kingdom and a migration south eastward of the Vedic people over the Hindu Kush into northern India 37 The Indo Aryans split off around 1800 1600 BC from the Iranians 38 whereafter they were defeated and split into two groups by the Iranians 39 who dominated the Central Eurasian steppe zone 40 and chased the Indo Aryans to the extremities of Central Eurasia 40 One group were the Indo Aryans who founded the Mitanni kingdom in northern Syria 41 c 1500 1300 BC the other group were the Vedic people 42 Christopher I Beckwith suggests that the Wusun an Indo European Caucasian people of Inner Asia in antiquity were also of Indo Aryan origin 43 The second wave is interpreted as the Iranian wave 44 and took place in the third stage of the Indo European migrations 37 from 800 BC onwards Sintashta Petrovka culture Edit Main article Sintashta culture According to Allentoft 2015 the Sintashta culture probably derived from the Corded Ware culture The Sintashta culture also known as the Sintashta Petrovka culture 45 or Sintashta Arkaim culture 46 is a Bronze Age archaeological culture of the northern Eurasian steppe on the borders of Eastern Europe and Central Asia dated to the period 2100 1800 BC 47 It is probably the archaeological manifestation of the Indo Iranian language group 48 The Sintashta culture emerged from the interaction of two antecedent cultures Its immediate predecessor in the Ural Tobol steppe was the Poltavka culture an offshoot of the cattle herding Yamnaya horizon that moved east into the region between 2800 and 2600 BC Several Sintashta towns were built over older Poltavka settlements or close to Poltavka cemeteries and Poltavka motifs are common on Sintashta pottery Sintashta material culture also shows the influence of the late Abashevo culture a collection of Corded Ware settlements in the forest steppe zone north of the Sintashta region that were also predominantly pastoralist 49 Allentoft et al 2015 also found close autosomal genetic relationship between peoples of Corded Ware culture and Sintashta culture 50 The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare 51 Sintashta settlements are also remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy carried out there which is unusual for a steppe culture 52 Because of the difficulty of identifying the remains of Sintashta sites beneath those of later settlements the culture was only recently distinguished from the Andronovo culture 46 It is now recognised as a separate entity forming part of the Andronovo horizon 45 Andronovo culture Edit Main article Andronovo culture The Andronovo culture s approximate maximal extent with the formative Sintashta Petrovka culture red the location of the earliest spoke wheeled chariot finds purple and the adjacent and overlapping Afanasevo Srubna and BMAC cultures green The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Bronze Age Indo Iranian cultures that flourished c 1800 900 BC in western Siberia and the west Asiatic steppe 53 It is probably better termed an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon The name derives from the village of Andronovo 55 53 N 55 42 E 55 883 N 55 700 E 55 883 55 700 where in 1914 several graves were discovered with skeletons in crouched positions buried with richly decorated pottery The older Sintashta culture 2100 1800 formerly included within the Andronovo culture is now considered separately but regarded as its predecessor and accepted as part of the wider Andronovo horizon At least four sub cultures of the Andronovo horizon have been distinguished during which the culture expands towards the south and the east Sintashta Petrovka Arkaim Southern Urals northern Kazakhstan 2200 1600 BC the Sintashta fortification of ca 1800 BC in Chelyabinsk Oblast the Petrovka settlement fortified settlement in Kazakhstan the nearby Arkaim settlement dated to the 17th century Alakul 2100 1400 BC between Oxus and Jaxartes Kyzylkum desert Alekseyevka 1300 1100 BC final Bronze in eastern Kazakhstan contacts with Namazga VI in Turkmenia Ingala Valley in the south of the Tyumen Oblast Fedorovo 1500 1300 BC in southern Siberia earliest evidence of cremation and fire cult 54 Beshkent Vakhsh 1000 800 BC The geographical extent of the culture is vast and difficult to delineate exactly On its western fringes it overlaps with the approximately contemporaneous but distinct Srubna culture in the Volga Ural interfluvial To the east it reaches into the Minusinsk depression with some sites as far west as the southern Ural Mountains 55 overlapping with the area of the earlier Afanasevo culture 56 Additional sites are scattered as far south as the Koppet Dag Turkmenistan the Pamir Tajikistan and the Tian Shan Kyrgyzstan The northern boundary vaguely corresponds to the beginning of the Taiga 55 In the Volga basin interaction with the Srubna culture was the most intense and prolonged and Federovo style pottery is found as far west as Volgograd Most researchers associate the Andronovo horizon with early Indo Iranian languages though it may have overlapped the early Uralic speaking area at its northern fringe Scythians and Persians Edit Scythian horseman Pazyryk from a carpet c 300 BC From the late 2nd millennium BC to early 1st millennium BC the Iranians had expanded from the Eurasian Steppe and Iranian peoples such as Medes Persians Parthians and Bactrians populated the Iranian Plateau 57 58 Scythian tribes along with Cimmerians Sarmatians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea The Scythian and Sarmatian tribes were spread across Great Hungarian Plain South Eastern Ukraine Russias Siberian Southern Volga 59 Uralic regions and the Balkans 60 61 62 while other Scythian tribes such as the Saka spread as far east as Xinjiang China Western and Eastern Iranians Edit The division into an Eastern and a Western group by the early 1st millennium is visible in Avestan vs Old Persian the two oldest known Iranian languages The Old Avestan texts known as the Gathas are believed to have been composed by Zoroaster the founder of Zoroastrianism with the Yaz culture c 1500 BC 1100 BC as a candidate for the development of Eastern Iranian culture citation needed Western Iranian peoples Edit Extent of Iranian influence in the 1st century BC The Parthian Empire mostly Western Iranian is shown in red other areas dominated by Scythia Eastern Iranian in orange Achaemenid Empire at its greatest extent under the rule of Darius I 522 BC to 486 BC Persepolis Persian guards During the 1st centuries of the 1st millennium BC the ancient Persians established themselves in the western portion of the Iranian Plateau and appear to have interacted considerably with the Elamites and Babylonians while the Medes also entered in contact with the Assyrians 63 Remnants of the Median language and Old Persian show their common Proto Iranian roots emphasized in Strabo and Herodotus description of their languages as very similar to the languages spoken by the Bactrians and Sogdians in the east 29 64 Following the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire the Persian language referred to as Farsi in Persian spread from Pars or Fars Province to various regions of the Empire with the modern dialects of Iran Afghanistan also known as Dari and Central Asia known as Tajiki descending from Old Persian At first the Western Iranian peoples in the Near East were dominated by the various Assyrian empires An alliance of the Medes with the Persians and rebelling Babylonians Scythians Chaldeans and Cimmerians helped the Medes to capture Nineveh in 612 BC which resulted in the eventual collapse of the Neo Assyrian Empire by 605 BC 65 The Medes were subsequently able to establish their Median kingdom with Ecbatana as their royal centre beyond their original homeland and had eventually a territory stretching roughly from northeastern Iran to the Halys River in Anatolia After the fall of the Assyrian Empire between 616 BC and 605 BC a unified Median state was formed which together with Babylonia Lydia and Egypt became one of the four major powers of the ancient Near EastLater on in 550 BC Cyrus the Great would overthrow the leading Median rule and conquer Kingdom of Lydia and the Babylonian Empire after which he established the Achaemenid Empire or the First Persian Empire while his successors would dramatically extend its borders At its greatest extent the Achaemenid Empire would encompass swaths of territory across three continents namely Europe Africa and Asia stretching from the Balkans and Eastern Europe proper in the west to the Indus Valley in the east The largest empire of ancient history with their base in Persis although the main capital was located in Babylon the Achaemenids would rule much of the known ancient world for centuries This First Persian Empire was equally notable for its successful model of a centralised bureaucratic administration through satraps under a king and a government working to the profit of its subjects for building infrastructure such as a postal system and road systems and the use of an official language across its territories and a large professional army and civil services inspiring similar systems in later empires 66 and for emancipation of slaves including the Jewish exiles in Babylon and is noted in Western history as the antagonist of the Greek city states during the Greco Persian Wars The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was built in the empire as well The Greco Persian Wars resulted in the Persians being forced to withdraw from their European territories setting the direct further course of history of Greece and the rest of Europe More than a century later a prince of Macedon which itself was a subject to Persia from the late 6th century BC up to the First Persian invasion of Greece later known by the name of Alexander the Great overthrew the incumbent Persian king by which the Achaemenid Empire was ended Old Persian is attested in the Behistun Inscription c 519 BC recording a proclamation by Darius the Great 67 In southwestern Iran the Achaemenid kings usually wrote their inscriptions in trilingual form Elamite Babylonian and Old Persian 68 while elsewhere other languages were used The administrative languages were Elamite in the early period and later Imperial Aramaic 69 as well as Greek making it a widely used bureaucratic language 70 Even though the Achaemenids had extensive contacts with the Greeks and vice versa and had conquered many of the Greek speaking area s both in Europe and Asia Minor during different periods of the empire the native Old Iranian sources provide no indication of Greek linguistic evidence 70 However there is plenty of evidence in addition to the accounts of Herodotus that Greeks apart from being deployed and employed in the core regions of the empire also evidently lived and worked in the heartland of the Achaemenid Empire namely Iran 70 For example Greeks were part of the various ethnicities that constructed Darius palace in Susa apart from the Greek inscriptions found nearby there and one short Persepolis tablet written in Greek 70 The early inhabitants of the Achaemenid Empire appear to have adopted the religion of Zoroastrianism 71 The Baloch who speak a west Iranian language relate an oral tradition regarding their migration from Aleppo Syria around the year 1000 AD whereas linguistic evidence links Balochi to Kurmanji Sorani Gorani and Zazaki language 72 Eastern Iranian peoples Edit The Eastern Iranian and Balto Slavic dialect continuums in Eastern Europe the latter with proposed material cultures correlating to speakers of Balto Slavic in the Bronze Age white Red dots archaic Slavic hydronyms Archaeological cultures c 750 BC at the start of Eastern Central Europe s Iron Age the Proto Scythian culture borders the Balto Slavic cultures Lusatian Milograd and Chernoles Silver coin of the Indo Scythian king Azes II reigned c 35 12 BC Buddhist triratna symbol in the left field on the reverse While the Iranian tribes of the south are better known through their texts and modern counterparts the tribes which remained largely in the vast Eurasian expanse are known through the references made to them by the ancient Greeks Persians Chinese and Indo Aryans as well as by archaeological finds The Greek chronicler Herodotus 5th century BC makes references to a nomadic people the Scythians he describes them as having dwelt in what is today southern European Russia and Ukraine He was the first to make a reference to them Many ancient Sanskrit texts from a later period make references to such tribes they were witness of pointing them towards the southeasternmost edges of Central Asia around the Hindukush range in northern Pakistan It is believed that these Scythians were conquered by their eastern cousins the Sarmatians who are mentioned by Strabo as the dominant tribe which controlled the southern Russian steppe in the 1st millennium AD These Sarmatians were also known to the Romans who conquered the western tribes in the Balkans and sent Sarmatian conscripts as part of Roman legions as far west as Roman Britain These Iranian speaking Scythians and Sarmatians dominated large parts of Eastern Europe for a millennium and were eventually absorbed and assimilated e g Slavicisation by the Proto Slavic population of the region 8 9 11 The Sarmatians differed from the Scythians in their veneration of the god of fire rather than god of nature and women s prominent role in warfare which possibly served as the inspiration for the Amazons 73 At their greatest reported extent around the 1st century AD these tribes ranged from the Vistula River to the mouth of the Danube and eastward to the Volga bordering the shores of the Black and Caspian Seas as well as the Caucasus to the south 74 Their territory which was known as Sarmatia to Greco Roman ethnographers corresponded to the western part of greater Scythia mostly modern Ukraine and Southern Russia also to a smaller extent north eastern Balkans around Moldova According to authors Arrowsmith Fellowes and Graves Hansard in their book A Grammar of Ancient Geography published in 1832 Sarmatia had two parts Sarmatia Europea 75 and Sarmatia Asiatica 76 covering a combined area of 503 000 sq mi or 1 302 764 km2 Throughout the 1st millennium AD the large presence of the Sarmatians who once dominated Ukraine Southern Russia and swaths of the Carpathians gradually started to diminish mainly due to assimilation and absorption by the Germanic Goths especially from the areas near the Roman frontier but only completely by the Proto Slavic peoples The abundant East Iranian derived toponyms in Eastern Europe proper e g some of the largest rivers the Dniestr and Dniepr as well as loanwords adopted predominantly through the Eastern Slavic languages and adopted aspects of Iranian culture amongst the early Slavs are all a remnant of this A connection between Proto Slavonic and Iranian languages is also furthermore proven by the earliest layer of loanwords in the former 77 For instance the Proto Slavonic words for god bog demon div house xata axe topor and dog sobaka are of Scythian origin 78 The extensive contact between these Scytho Sarmatian Iranian tribes in Eastern Europe and the Early Slavs included religion After Slavic and Baltic languages diverged the Early Slavs interacted with Iranian peoples and merged elements of Iranian spirituality into their beliefs For example both Early Iranian and Slavic supreme gods were considered givers of wealth unlike the supreme thunder gods in many other European religions Also both Slavs and Iranians had demons given names from similar linguistic roots Daeva Iranian and Divŭ Slavic and a concept of dualism of good and evil 79 The Sarmatians of the east based in the Pontic Caspian steppe became the Alans who also ventured far and wide with a branch ending up in Western Europe and then North Africa as they accompanied the Germanic Vandals and Suebi during their migrations The modern Ossetians are believed to be the direct descendants of the Alans as other remnants of the Alans disappeared following Germanic Hunnic and ultimately Slavic migrations and invasions 80 Another group of Alans allied with Goths to defeat the Romans and ultimately settled in what is now called Catalonia Goth Alania 81 Hormizd I Sassanian coin Some of the Saka Scythian tribes in Central Asia would later move further southeast and invade the Iranian Plateau large sections of present day Afghanistan and finally deep into present day Pakistan see Indo Scythians Another Iranian tribe related to the Saka Scythians were the Parni in Central Asia and who later become indistinguishable from the Parthians speakers of a northwest Iranian language Many Iranian tribes including the Khwarazmians Massagetae and Sogdians were assimilated and or displaced in Central Asia by the migrations of Turkic tribes emanating out of Xinjiang and Siberia 82 The modern Sarikoli in southern Xinjiang and the Ossetians of the Caucasus mainly South Ossetia and North Ossetia are remnants of the various Scythian derived tribes from the vast far and wide territory they once dwelled in The modern Ossetians are the descendants of the Alano Sarmatians 83 84 and their claims are supported by their Northeast Iranian language while culturally the Ossetians resemble their North Caucasian neighbors the Kabardians and Circassians 80 85 Various extinct Iranian peoples existed in the eastern Caucasus including the Azaris while some Iranian peoples remain in the region including the Talysh 86 and the Tats 87 found in Azerbaijan and as far north as the Russian republic of Dagestan A remnant of the Sogdians is found in the Yaghnobi speaking population in parts of the Zeravshan valley in Tajikistan Later developments Edit The main migration of Turkic peoples occurred between the 6th and 10th centuries when they spread across most of Central Asia The Turkic peoples slowly replaced and assimilated the previous Iranian speaking locals turning the population of Central Asia from largely Iranian into primarily of East Asian descent 88 Starting with the reign of Omar in 634 AD Muslim Arabs began a conquest of the Iranian Plateau The Arabs conquered the Sassanid Empire of the Persians and seized much of the Byzantine Empire populated by the Kurds and others Ultimately the various Iranian peoples including the Persians Pashtuns Kurds and Balochis converted to Islam while the Alans converted to Christianity thus laying the foundation for the fact that the modern day Ossetians are Christian 89 The Iranian peoples would later split along sectarian lines as the Persians adopted the Shi a sect As ancient tribes and identities changed so did the Iranian peoples many of whom assimilated foreign cultures and peoples 90 Later during the 2nd millennium AD the Iranian peoples would play a prominent role during the age of Islamic expansion and empire Saladin a noted adversary of the Crusaders was an ethnic Kurd while various empires centered in Iran including the Safavids re established a modern dialect of Persian as the official language spoken throughout much of what is today Iran and the Caucasus Iranian influence spread to the neighbouring Ottoman Empire where Persian was often spoken at court though a heavy Turko Persian basis there was set already by the predecessors of the Ottomans in Anatolia namely the Seljuks and the Sultanate of Rum amongst others as well to the court of the Mughal Empire All of the major Iranian peoples reasserted their use of Iranian languages following the decline of Arab rule but would not begin to form modern national identities until the 19th and early 20th centuries Demographics EditSee also Iranian Plateau Demographics of Iran Ethnic minorities in Iran Ethnic groups in West Asia Demographics of Afghanistan Ethnic minorities in Azerbaijan Demographics of Azerbaijan Demographics of Turkey Demographics of Tajikistan Kurdistan Ossetia Demographics of Pakistan Demographics of Syria Demographics of Iraq and Peoples of the Caucasus Further information Iranian citizens abroad and Kurdish diaspora There are an estimated 150 to 200 million native speakers of Iranian languages the six major groups of Persians Lurs Kurds Tajiks Baloch and Pashtuns accounting for about 90 of this number 91 Currently most of these Iranian peoples live in Iran Afghanistan the Caucasus mainly Ossetia other parts of Georgia Dagestan and Azerbaijan Iraqi Kurdistan and Kurdish majority populated areas of Turkey Iran and Syria Tajikistan Pakistan and Uzbekistan There are also Iranian peoples living in Eastern Arabia such as northern Oman Bahrain and Kuwait Due to recent migrations there are also large communities of speakers of Iranian languages in Europe the Americas List of Iranian peoples with the respective groups s core areas of settlements and their estimated sizes Ethnicity region population millions Persian speaking peoples Persians Persians of Iraq Achomi people Ajam of Bahrain Ajam of Kuwait Tajiks Farsiwan Tats Dehwar Iran Afghanistan Tajikistan the Caucasus Uzbekistan Bahrain Kuwait Iraq 72 85 citation needed Pashtuns Sarbani Durrani or Abdali Yusufzai Bettani Ghilji and Lodi Karlani Afghanistan Pakistan 63 citation needed Kurds Zaza 92 93 Yazidis Shabaks Iran Iraq Turkey Syria Armenia Israel Lebanon Georgia 30 40 94 Baluchs Pakistan Iran Oman 95 Afghanistan Turkmenistan UAE 15 20 22 citation needed 96 Gilakis Mazanderanis And Semnani people Iran 5 10 citation needed Lurs Iran Kuwait and Oman 97 026 6 citation needed Pamiris Sariqoli Shughni Wakhi Oroshori Yidgha Munji Tajikistan Afghanistan China Xinjiang Pakistan 0 9Talysh Tats Azerbaijan Iran 1 5Ossetians Digor Iron Jasz Georgia South Ossetia Russia North Ossetia Hungary 0 7Yaghnobi Uzbekistan and Tajikistan Zerafshan region 0 025Kumzari Oman Musandam 0 021Zoroastrian groups in South Asia Parsi Irani India Pakistan 0 075Culture EditSee also Proto Indo European society Nowruz an ancient Iranian annual festival that is still widely celebrated throughout the Iranian Plateau and beyond in Dushanbe Tajikistan Iranian culture is today considered to be centered in what is called the Iranian Plateau and has its origins tracing back to the Andronovo culture of the late Bronze Age which is associated with other cultures of the Eurasian Steppe 98 99 It was however later developed distinguishably from its earlier generations in the Steppe where a large number of Iranian speaking peoples i e the Scythians continued to participate resulting in a differentiation that is displayed in Iranian mythology as the contrast between Iran and Turan 98 Like other Indo Europeans the early Iranians practiced ritual sacrifice had a social hierarchy consisting of warriors clerics and farmers and recounted their deeds through poetic hymns and sagas 100 Various common traits can be discerned among the Iranian peoples For instance the social event of Nowruz is an ancient Iranian festival that is still celebrated by nearly all of the Iranian peoples However due to their different environmental adaptations through migration the Iranian peoples embrace some degrees of diversity in dialect social system and other aspects of culture 1 With numerous artistic scientific architectural and philosophical achievements and numerous kingdoms and empires that bridged much of the civilized world in antiquity the Iranian peoples were often in close contact with people from various western and eastern parts of the world Religion Edit Main articles Ancient Iranian religion and Iranian religions The ruins at Kangavar Iran presumed to belong to a temple dedicated to the ancient goddess Anahita 101 The early Iranian peoples practiced the ancient Iranian religion which like that of other Indo European peoples embraced various male and female deities 102 Fire was regarded as an important and highly sacred element and also a deity In ancient Iran fire was kept with great care in fire temples 102 Various annual festivals that were mainly related to agriculture and herding were celebrated the most important of which was the New Year Nowruz which is still widely celebrated 102 Zoroastrianism a form of the ancient Iranian religion that is still practiced by some communities 103 was later developed and spread to nearly all of the Iranian peoples living in the Iranian Plateau Other religions that had their origins in the Iranian world were Mithraism Manichaeism and Mazdakism among others The various religions of the Iranian peoples are believed by some scholars to have been significant early philosophical influences on Christianity and Judaism 104 Nowadays most Iranian people follow Islam Sunnism followed by Shi ism with minorities following Christianity Judaism Mandaeism Iranian religions and various levels of irreligion citation needed Cultural assimilation Edit See also Turco Persian tradition Persianate society and Sarmatism Bronze Statue of a Parthian nobleman National Museum of Iran A caftan worn by a Sogdian horseman 8th 10th century Iranian languages were and to a lesser extent still are spoken in a wide area comprising regions around the Black Sea the Caucasus Central Asia Russia and the northwest of China 105 This population was linguistically assimilated by smaller but dominant Turkic speaking groups while the sedentary population eventually adopted the Persian language which began to spread within the region since the time of the Sasanian Empire 105 The language shift from Middle Iranian to Turkic and New Persian was predominantly the result of an elite dominance process 106 107 Moreover various Turkic speaking ethnic groups of the Iranian Plateau are often conversant also in an Iranian language and embrace Iranian culture to the extent that the term Turko Iranian would be applied 108 A number of Iranian peoples were also intermixed with the Slavs 9 and many were subjected to Slavicisation 10 11 The following either partially descend from or are sometimes regarded as descendants of the Iranian peoples Turkic speakers See also Old Azeri language and Origin of the Azerbaijanis Azerbaijanis In spite of being native speakers of a Turkic language Azerbaijani Turkic they are believed to be primarily descended from the earlier Iranian speakers of the region 98 1 109 110 111 They are possibly related to the ancient Iranian tribe of the Medes aside from the rise of the subsequent Persian and Turkic elements changing of the native Iranian language within their area of settlement 112 which prior to the spread of Turkic was Iranian speaking 113 Thus due to their historical genetic and cultural ties to the Iranians 114 the Azerbaijanis are often associated with the Iranian peoples Genetic studies observed that they are also genetically related to the Iranian peoples 115 Turkmens Genetic studies show that the Turkmens are characterized by the presence of local Iranian mtDNA lineages similar to the eastern Iranian populations but modest female Mongoloid mtDNA components were observed in Turkmen populations with the frequencies of about 20 116 Uzbeks The unique grammatical and phonetical features of the Uzbek language 117 as well as elements within the modern Uzbek culture reflect the older Iranian roots of the Uzbek people 105 118 119 120 According to recent genetic genealogy testing from a University of Oxford study the genetic admixture of the Uzbeks clusters somewhere between the Iranian peoples and the Mongols 121 Prior to the Russian conquest of Central Asia the local ancestors of the Turkic speaking Uzbeks and the Persian speaking Tajiks both living in Central Asia were referred to as Sarts while Uzbek and Turk were the names given to the nomadic and semi nomadic populations of the area Still as of today modern Uzbeks and Tajiks are known to their Turkic neighbors the Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz as Sarts Some Uzbek scholars also favor the Iranian origin theory 122 page needed According to another study conducted in 2009 she claimed that Uzbeks and Central Asian Turkic peoples clustered genetically and were far from Iranian groups 123 Uyghurs Contemporary scholars consider modern Uyghurs to be the descendants of apart from the ancient Uyghurs the Iranian Saka Scythian tribes and other Indo European peoples who inhabited the Tarim Basin before the arrival of the Turkic tribes 124 Persian speakers The Hazaras are a Persian speaking ethnic group native to and primarily residing in the mountainous region of Hazarajat in central Afghanistan Although the origins of the Hazara people have not been fully reconstructed genetic analysis of the Hazara indicate partial Mongol ancestry Invading Mongols and Turco Mongols mixed with the local Iranian population for example Qara unas settled in what is now Afghanistan and mixed with the local populations A second wave of mostly Chagatai Turco Mongols came from Central Asia associated with the Ilkhanate and the Timurids all of whom settled in Hazarajat and mixed with the local population Phenotype can vary with some noting that certain Hazaras may resemble peoples native to the Iranian plateau 125 126 Slavic speakers Croats and Serbs Some scholars suggest that the Slavic speaking Serbs and Croats are descended from the ancient Sarmatians 127 128 an ancient Iranian people who once settled in most of southern European Russia and the eastern Balkans and that their ethnonyms are of Iranian origin It is proposed that the Sarmatian Serboi and alleged Horoathos tribes were assimilated with the numerically superior Slavs passing on their name Iranian speaking peoples did inhabit parts of the Balkans in late classical times and would have been encountered by the Slavs However direct linguistic historical or archaeological proof for such a theory is lacking b Swahili speakers Shirazis The Shirazi are a sub group of the Swahili people living on the Swahili coast of East Africa especially on the islands of Zanzibar Pemba and Comoros Local traditions about their origin claim they are descended from merchant princes from Shiraz in Iran who settled along the Swahili coast Indo Aryan speakers Sindhis Though today the Balochis are only 3 6 of Sindh s population the population is actually higher nearly 40 most of whom don t speak Balochi anymore 129 Many Balochis such as the Zardaris and the African Baloch Makranis came to Sindh to find jobs and eventually founded the city of Karachi 130 The Talpur Dynasty was an ethnic Baloch Sindhi speaking dynasty that ruled much of Sindh and parts of Balochistan during the British colonial period It was believed that the first Baloch came to Sindh during the Little Ice Age The Baloch in Sindh are known as the Baruch ٻروچ Genetics EditFurther information Genetic history of the Middle East Population genomic PCA showing the CIC Central Iranian cluster among other worldwide samples Recent population genomic studies found that the genetic structure of Iranian peoples formed already about 5 000 years ago and show high continuity since then suggesting that they were largely unaffected by migration events from outside groups Genetically speaking Iranian peoples generally cluster closely with European and other Middle Eastern peoples Analyzed samples of ethnic Persians Kurds Azeris Lurs Mazanderanis Gilaks and Indian Zoroastrians cluster tightly together forming a single cluster known as CIC Central Iranian cluster Compared with worldwide populations Iranians CIC cluster in the center of the wider West Eurasian cluster close to Europeans Middle Easterners and South Central Asians Iranian Arabs and Azeris genetically overlap with Iranian peoples The genetic substructure of Iranians is low and homogeneous compared with other 1000G populations Europeans and certain South Asians specifically the Parsi minority showed the highest affinity with Iranians while Sub Saharan Africans and East Asians showed the highest differentiation with Iranians 131 Tajik people from Afghanistan Tat men from the village of Adur in the Kuba Uyezd of the Baku Governorate of the Russian Empire Paternal haplogroups Edit Regueiro et al 2006 132 and Grugni et al 2012 133 have performed large scale sampling of Y chromosome haplogroups of different ethnic groups within Iran They found that the most common paternal haplogroups were Kurdish people celebrating Nowruz Tangi Sar village J1 M267 commonly found among Semitic speaking people was rarely over 10 in Iranian groups J2 M172 is the most common Hg in Iran 23 almost exclusively represented by J2a M410 subclade 93 the other major sub clade being J2b M12 Apart from Iranians J2 is common in northern Arabs Mediterranean and Balkan peoples Croats Serbs Greeks Bosniaks Albanians Italians Macedonians Bulgarians Turks in the Caucasus Armenians Georgians Chechens Ingush northeastern Turkey north northwestern Iran Kurds Persians whilst its frequency drops suddenly beyond Afghanistan Pakistan and northern India 134 In Europe J2a is more common in southern Greece and southern Italy whilst J2b J2 M12 is more common in Thessaly Macedonia and central northern Italy Thus J2a and its subgroups within it have a wide distribution from Italy to India whilst J2b is mostly confined to the Balkans and Italy 135 being rare even in Turkey Whilst closely linked with Anatolia and the Levant and putative agricultural expansions the distribution of the various sub clades of J2 likely represents a number of migrational histories which require further elucidation 134 136 R1a M198 is common in Iran more so in the east and south rather than the west and north suggesting a migration toward the south to India then a secondary westward spread across Iran 137 Whilst the Grongi and Regueiro studies did not define exactly which sub clades Iranian R1a haplogrouops belong to private genealogy tests suggest that they virtually all belong to Eurasian R1a Z93 138 Indeed population studies of neighbouring Indian groups found that they all were in R1a Z93 139 This implies that R1a in Iran did not descend from European R1a or vice versa Rather both groups are collateral brother branches which descend from a parental group hypothesized to have initially lived somewhere between central Asia and Eastern Europe 139 R1b M269 is widespread from Ireland to Iran and is common in highland West Asian populations such as Armenians Turks and Iranians with an average frequency of 8 5 Iranian R1b belongs to the L 23 subclade 140 which is an older than the derivative subclade R1b M412 which is most common in western Europe 141 Haplogroup G and subclades most concentrated in the Caucasus 142 it is present in 10 of Iranians 133 Haplogroup E and various subclades are frequently found among Middle Easterners Europeans northern and eastern African populations They are present in less than 10 of Iranians Two large scale papers by Haber 2012 143 and Di Cristofaro 2013 144 analyzed populations from Afghanistan where several Iranian speaking groups are native They found that different groups e g Baluch Hazara Pashtun were quite diverse yet overall R1a subclade not further analyzed was the predominant haplogroup especially amongst Pashtuns the Baloch and Tajiks The presence of East Eurasian haplogroup C3 especially in Hazaras 33 40 in part linked to Mongol expansions into the region The presence of haplogroup J2 like in Iran of 5 20 A relative paucity of Indian haplgroup H lt 10 A 2012 study by Grugni et al analyzed the haplogroups of 15 different ethnic groups from Iran They found that about 31 4 belong to J 29 1 belong to R 11 8 belong to G and 9 2 belong to E They found that Iranian ethnic groups display high haplogroup diversity compared to other Middle Easterners The authors concluded that the Iranian gene pool has been an important source for the Middle Eastern and Eurasian Y chromosome diversity and the results suggest that there was already rather high Y chromosome diversity during the Neolithic period placing Iranian populations in between Europeans Middle Easterners and South Asians 145 See also EditGreater Iran List of ancient Iranian peoples List of Iranian dynasties and countries List of geographic names of Iranian origin Pan IranismNotes Edit In the Avesta the airiia are members of the ethnic group of the Avesta reciters themselves in contradistinction to the anairiia the non Aryas The word also appears four times in Old Persian One is in the Behistun inscription where ariya is the name of a language or script DB 4 89 The other three instances occur in Darius I s inscription at Naqsh e Rustam DNa 14 15 in Darius I s inscription at Susa DSe 13 14 and in the inscription of Xerxes I at Persepolis XPh 12 13 In these the two Achaemenid dynasts describe themselves as parsa parsahya puca ariya ariyacica a Persian son of a Persian an Ariya of Ariya origin The phrase with cica origin descendance assures that it i e ariya is an ethnic name wider in meaning than parsa and not a simple adjectival epithet 24 See also Origin hypotheses of the Serbs and Origin hypotheses of the CroatsReferences Edit a b c d Frye R N IRAN v PEOPLES OF IRAN 1 A General Survey Encyclopaedia Iranica Vol XIII pp 321 326 Retrieved 30 December 2012 The Encyclopedia Americana 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6759149 PMID 31550250 Seven groups Iranian Arabs Azeris Gilaks Kurds Mazanderanis Lurs and Persians strongly overlapped in their overall autosomal diversity in an MDS analysis Fig 1B suggesting the existence of a Central Iranian Cluster CIC notably also including Iranian Arabs and Azeris On a global scale Fig 2 including Old World populations only see S2 Fig for all 1000G populations CIC Iranians closely clustered with Europeans while Iranian Turkmen showed similar yet distinct degrees of admixture compared to other South Asians A local comparison corroborated the distinct genetic diversity of CIC Iranians relative to other geographically close populations 2 6 44 Fig 3 and S3 Fig Still genetic substructure was much smaller among Iranian groups than in relation to any of the 1000G populations supporting the view that the CIC groups form a distinct genetic entity despite internal heterogeneity European FST 0 0105 0 0294 South Asians FST 0 0141 0 0338 but also some Latin American 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Europe and the Caucasus European Journal of Human Genetics 20 12 1275 1282 doi 10 1038 ejhg 2012 86 PMC 3499744 PMID 22588667 Haber Marc Platt Daniel E Ashrafian Bonab Maziar Youhanna Sonia C Soria Hernanz David F Martinez Cruz Begona Douaihy Bouchra Ghassibe Sabbagh Michella Rafatpanah Hoshang Ghanbari Mohsen Whale John Balanovsky Oleg Wells R Spencer Comas David Tyler Smith Chris Zalloua Pierre A 28 March 2012 Afghanistan s Ethnic Groups Share a Y Chromosomal Heritage Structured by Historical Events PLOS ONE 7 3 e34288 Bibcode 2012PLoSO 734288H doi 10 1371 journal pone 0034288 PMC 3314501 PMID 22470552 Di Cristofaro Julie Pennarun Erwan Mazieres Stephane Myres Natalie M Lin Alice A Temori Shah Aga Metspalu Mait Metspalu Ene Witzel Michael King Roy J Underhill Peter A Villems Richard Chiaroni Jacques 18 October 2013 Afghan Hindu Kush Where Eurasian Sub Continent Gene Flows Converge PLOS ONE 8 10 e76748 Bibcode 2013PLoSO 876748D doi 10 1371 journal pone 0076748 PMC 3799995 PMID 24204668 Grugni Viola Battaglia Vincenza Hooshiar Kashani Baharak Parolo Silvia Al Zahery Nadia Achilli Alessandro Olivieri Anna Gandini Francesca Houshmand Massoud Sanati Mohammad Hossein Torroni Antonio 18 July 2012 Ancient Migratory Events in the Middle East New Clues from the Y Chromosome Variation of Modern Iranians PLOS ONE 7 7 e41252 Bibcode 2012PLoSO 741252G doi 10 1371 journal pone 0041252 ISSN 1932 6203 PMC 3399854 PMID 22815981 Sources EditAnthony David W 2007 The Horse The Wheel and Language How Bronze Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped The Modern World Princeton University Press Anthony D W 2009 The Sintashta Genesis The Roles of Climate Change Warfare and Long Distance Trade In Hanks B Linduff K eds Social Complexity in Prehistoric Eurasia Monuments Metals and Mobility Cambridge University Press pp 47 73 doi 10 1017 CBO9780511605376 005 ISBN 978 0 511 60537 6 Banuazizi Ali and Weiner Myron eds The State Religion and Ethnic Politics Afghanistan Iran and Pakistan Contemporary Issues in the Middle East Syracuse University Press August 1988 ISBN 0 8156 2448 4 Beckwith Christopher I 16 March 2009 Empires of the Silk Road A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0691135892 Retrieved 29 May 2015 Burrow T 1973 The Proto Indoaryans Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 105 2 123 140 doi 10 1017 S0035869X00130837 JSTOR 25203451 S2CID 162454265 Canfield Robert ed Turko Persia in Historical Perspective Cambridge University Press Cambridge 2002 ISBN 0 521 52291 9 Chopra R M Indo Iranian Cultural Relations Through The Ages Iran Society Kolkata 2005 Curzon R The Iranian People of the Caucasus ISBN 0 7007 0649 6 Derakhshani Jahanshah Die Arier in den nahostlichen Quellen des 3 und 2 Jahrtausends v Chr 2nd edition 1999 ISBN 964 90368 6 5 Diakonoff Igor M Kuz mina E E Ivantchik Askold I 1995 Two Recent Studies of Indo Iranian Origins Journal of the American Oriental Society American Oriental Society 115 3 473 477 doi 10 2307 606224 JSTOR 606224 Frye Richard Greater Iran Mazda Publishers 2005 ISBN 1 56859 177 2 Frye Richard Persia Schocken Books Zurich 1963 ASIN B0006BYXHY Hanks B Linduff K 2009 Late Prehistoric Mining Metallurgy and Social Organization in North Central Eurasia In Hanks B Linduff K eds Social Complexity in Prehistoric Eurasia Monuments Metals and Mobility Cambridge University Press pp 146 167 doi 10 1017 CBO9780511605376 005 ISBN 978 0 511 60537 6 Harmatta Janos 1992 The Emergence of the Indo Iranians The Indo Iranian Languages PDF In Dani A H Masson V M eds History of Civilizations of Central Asia The Dawn of Civilization Earliest Times to 700 B C UNESCO pp 346 370 ISBN 978 92 3 102719 2 Retrieved 29 May 2015 Kennedy Hugh The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates Longman New York NY 2004 ISBN 0 582 40525 4 Khoury Philip S amp Kostiner Joseph Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East University of California Press 1991 ISBN 0 520 07080 1 Koryakova L 1998a Sintashta Arkaim Culture The Center for the Study of the Eurasian Nomads CSEN Retrieved 16 September 2010 Koryakova L 1998b An Overview of the Andronovo Culture Late Bronze Age Indo Iranians in Central Asia The Center for the Study of the Eurasian Nomads CSEN Retrieved 16 September 2010 Kuznetsov P F September 2006 The emergence of Bronze Age chariots in eastern Europe Antiquity 80 309 638 645 doi 10 1017 S0003598X00094096 S2CID 162580424 Mallory J P 1989 In Search of the Indo Europeans Language Archaeology and Myth London Thames amp Hudson ISBN 978 0 500 27616 7 Mallory J P 1997 Encyclopedia of Indo European Culture Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 1884964985 Retrieved 15 February 2015 Mallory J P Mair Victor H 2008 The Tarim Mummies Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West Thames amp Hudson ISBN 9780500283721 McDowall David A Modern History of the Kurds I B Tauris 3rd Rev edition 2004 ISBN 1 85043 416 6 Nassim J Afghanistan A Nation of Minorities Minority Rights Group London 1992 ISBN 0 946690 76 6 Parpola Asko 1999 The formation of the Aryan branch of Indo European In Blench Roger Spriggs Matthew eds Archaeology and Language Vol III Artefacts languages and texts London and New York Routledge Iran Nama Iran Travelogue in Urdu by Hakim Syed Zillur Rahman Tibbi Academy Aligarh India 1998 Riasanovsky Nicholas A History of Russia Oxford University Press Oxford 2004 ISBN 0 19 515394 4 Sims Williams Nicholas Indo Iranian Languages and People British Academy 2003 ISBN 0 19 726285 6 Schenker Alexander M 2008 Proto Slavonic In Comrie Bernard Corbett Greville G eds The Slavonic Languages Routledge pp 60 121 ISBN 978 0 415 28078 5 Sussex Roland Cubberley Paul 2011 The Slavic Languages Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 29448 5 Waldman Carl Mason Catherine 2006 Encyclopedia of European Peoples Infobase Publishing ISBN 978 1438129181 Retrieved 16 January 2015 Further reading Edit Wikisource has the text of The New Student s Reference Work article Iranians Anthony David W 2007 The Horse the Wheel and Language How Bronze Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped The Modern World Princeton University Press Balanovsky Oleg Zhabagin Maxat Agdzhoyan Anastasiya Chukhryaeva Marina Zaporozhchenko Valery Utevska Olga Highnam Gareth Sabitov Zhaxylyk Greenspan Elliott Dibirova Khadizhat Skhalyakho Roza Kuznetsova Marina Koshel Sergey Yusupov Yuldash Nymadawa Pagbajabyn Zhumadilov Zhaxybay Pocheshkhova Elvira Haber Marc a Zalloua Pierre Yepiskoposyan Levon Dybo Anna Tyler Smith Chris Balanovska Elena 2015 Deep Phylogenetic Analysis of Haplogroup G1 Provides Estimates of SNP and STR Mutation Rates on the Human Y Chromosome and Reveals Migrations of Iranic Speakers PLOS ONE 10 4 e0122968 Bibcode 2015PLoSO 1022968B doi 10 1371 journal pone 0122968 PMC 4388827 PMID 25849548 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Iranian peoples amp oldid 1142868574, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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