List of countries and territories where Persian is an official language

The following is a list of sovereign states that have Persian as an official language.

Persian Linguasphere

Legend

  Official language

 : Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan

  More than 1,000,000 speakers

 : Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Russia, United States

  Between 500,000–1,000,000 speakers

 : Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Iraq

  Between 100,000–500,000 speakers

 : Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Australia, Israel, United Kingdom, Sweden, Bahrain, India, Canada, Kuwait

  Between 25,000–100,000 speakers

 : Oman, France, Syria, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Netherlands, Armenia, Austria, China, Turkmenistan, Italy, Finland, Spain, Norway

  Fewer than 25,000 speakers / none

 : Other countries

Official language

Countries and territories where Persian is a de jure official language

Country	Region	Total population	Persian speakers
			L1	Total
Iran	West Asia	83,783,945^[1]	50,568,000^[2]	~70,000,000^[3]
Afghanistan	South Asia	32,890,171^[4]	16,650,000^[5]	~30,000,000^[6]
Tajikistan	Central Asia	9,313,800^[7]	6,373,834^[8]	~9,300,000^[3]
Dagestan^[9]^[10]	Eastern Europe	3,132,268^[11]	2,010^[12]	~2,100
Total		129,020,184	73,593,834	109,300,000

Significant minority language

Countries where Persian is a significant minority language

Country	Region	Population	Persian speakers
			Population	Percentage
Uzbekistan	Central Asia	34,412,349^[13]	1,544,700^[14]–10,000,000^[15]^[16]^[17]	4.8–30%
Bahrain	West Asia	1,592,000^[18]	100,000^[19]	14%^[20]

Other countries with significant numbers of Persian speakers

Country	Region	Population	Persian speakers
			Population	Percentage
Pakistan	South Asia	227,000,000	1,000,000^[21]–1,500,000^[22]	0.44-0.66%

Historical language

Indian subcontinent

 

Persian poems in Taj Mahal

Main article: Persian language in the Indian subcontinent

Before the British colonised the Indian subcontinent, Persian was the region's lingua franca and a widely used official language in what are now north India and Pakistan. The language was brought into the region by various Turkic, Persian and Afghan dynasties, in particular the Turko-Afghan Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Dynasty. Persian held official status in the court and the administration within these empires and it heavily influenced many of the local languages, particularly Urdu and to some extent modern standard Hindi.

Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in the extent of its influence on the languages of the Indian subcontinent. Many of these areas have seen a certain influence by Persian not only in literature but also in the speech of the common man.^{[citation needed]} Persian exerted a strong influence on Balochi (an Iranian language) and Urdu, and a relatively strong influence on Pashto (another Iranian language), Punjabi and Sindhi. Other languages like Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Kashmiri and Bengali also have a considerable amount of loan words from Persian.

Persian's official status was replaced with English in 1835 by British East India Company. After 1843, Hindustani and English gradually replaced Persian in importance in the Indian subcontinent as the British had full suzerainty over the Indian subcontinent.^[23]

Ottoman Empire

Persian was one of the influential languages of the Ottoman Empire along with Ottoman Turkish and Arabic. It was initially used by the educated in northern portions of the Ottoman Empire before being displaced by Ottoman Turkish.^[24] Throughout the vast Ottoman bureaucracy Ottoman Turkish language was the official language, a version of Turkish, albeit with a vast mixture of both Arabic and Persian grammar and vocabulary. Educated Ottoman Turks spoke Arabic and Persian, as these were the main foreign languages in the pre-Tanzimat era, with the former being used for science and the latter for literary affairs.^[25]

The spread of the Persian language through Rumi shrines made it the dialect of the Sufism. The Ottomans promoted and supported the Persian language. The reborn evolution of the Persian etymology and its impact on the Turks’ literature and culture reached perfection in the Ottoman Royal Court and the Sufis’ Khanqahs. Sultan Bayezid II (1448- 1512), was in correspondence with the divines and the men of letters of Khorasan, including the poet Jami.^[26]

See also

• List of countries where Arabic is an official language

References

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2. "Persian, Iranian". Ethnologue. Retrieved 11 December 2018. Total Persian dialects in Iran.
3. "Adult literacy rate, population 15+ years (both sexes, female, male)". UIS Data Centre. UNESCO. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
4. [Estimated Population of Afghanistan 2020-21] (PDF) (Report) (in Arabic and English). Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 July 2020. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
5. "Afghanistan". Worldmeters. www.worldmeters.info. Retrieved 2019-05-30.
6. Reinman, Suzanne L. (2010-09-21). "The World Factbook". Reference Reviews. 24 (7): 7–8. doi:10.1108/09504121011077057. ISSN 0950-4125.
7. "Агентии омори назди Президенти Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон / Агентии омори назди Президенти Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон". www.stat.tj. from the original on 13 December 2009. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
8. [Population Census and Housing Fund The Republic of Tajikistan in 2010] (PDF). stat.tj. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-01-16.
9. Constitution of the Republic of Dagestan: Chapter I, Article 11: "The state languages of the Republic of Dagestan are Russian and the languages of the peoples of Dagestan."
10. "Tat, Muslim". Ethnologue. Retrieved 9 March 2021.
11. "Оценка численности постоянного населения по субъектам Российской Федерации". Главная::Федеральная служба государственной статистики. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
12. Tat, Muslim, Ethnologue, Retrieved 7 March 2021
13. . stat.uz. Archived from the original on 20 January 2019. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
14. . www.stat.uz. Archived from the original on 22 August 2018. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
15. Jonson, Lena (1976) Tajikistan in the New Central Asia, I.B.Tauris, ISBN 085771726X, p. 108: "According to official Uzbek statistics there are slightly over 1 million Tajiks in Uzbekistan or about 3% of the population. The unofficial figure is over 6 million Tajiks. They are concentrated in the Sukhandarya, Samarqand and Bukhara regions."
16. Richard Foltz (1996). "The Tajiks of Uzbekistan". Central Asian Survey. 15 (2): 213–216. doi:10.1080/02634939608400946.
17. Cornell, Svante E. (2000). . European Security. 9 (2): 115. doi:10.1080/09662830008407454. S2CID 154194469. Archived from the original on 5 May 2009.
18. (PDF) (in Arabic and English). Kingdom of Bahrain - Central informatics Organisation. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 February 2017.
19. The Ajam of Manama
20. Toorani, Mohamed (2015-10-30). "International History Blog: The Ajam of Manama". International History Blog. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
21. "Persian". plc.sas.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2022-06-04.
22. "Pakistan". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2022-06-04.
23. Clawson, Patrick (2004). Eternal Iran. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 6. ISBN 1-4039-6276-6.
24. Spuler, Bertold [de], translated from German into English by Muhammad Ismail Marcinkowski [de]. "Persian Historiography Outside Iran in Modern Times: Pre-Ottoman Turkey and Ottoman Empire" (Chapter 13.5). In: Persian historiography and geography. Pustaka Nasional Pte Ltd, 2003. ISBN 9971774887, 9789971774882. Start: 68. CITED: pages 68-69. -- Original German content in: Spuler, Bertold. "Die historische und geographische literatur in persischer sprache." in: Iranian Studies: Volume 1 Literatur. BRILL, 1 June 1968. ISBN 9004008578, 9789004008571. Chapter "Türkei", start p. 163, cited pp. 163-165. Content also available at ISBN 9789004304994, as "DIE HISTORISCHE UND GEOGRAPHISCHE LITERATUR IN PERSISCHER SPRACHE." Same pages cited: p. 163-165.
25. Küçükoğlu, Bayram (2013). "The history of foreign language policies in Turkey". Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 70 (70). Elsevier: 1090–1094. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.01.162. - From: Akdeniz Language Studies Conference 2012 - Cited: p. 1091.
26. "Persian Language in the Court of Ottomans". hamsayegan.com. 4 November 2016. Retrieved 16 September 2020.