The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group who comprise over half of the population of Iran. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language as well as of the languages that are closely related to Persian.
Iranians or Iranian people may refer to:
The Dardic languages, or Hindu-Kush Indo-Aryan languages, are a group of several Indo-Aryan languages spoken in northern Pakistan, northwestern India and parts of northeastern Afghanistan. Rather than close linguistic or ethnic relationships, Dardic is a geographical concept, denoting the northwesternmost group of Indo-Aryan languages, There is no ethnic unity among the speakers of these languages nor can the languages can be traced to a single ancestor.
Ajam is an Arabic word meaning mute. It generally refers to someone whose mother tongue is not Arabic, as well as non-Arabs. During the Arab conquest of Persia, the term became a racial pejorative. In many languages, including Persian, Turkish, Urdu–Hindi, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Kurdish, Gujarati, Malay, Punjabi, and Swahili, Ajam and Ajami refer to Iran and Iranians respectively.
The culture of Iran or culture of Persia is among the most influential in the world. Iran (Persia) is widely considered to be one of the cradles of civilization. Due to its dominant geopolitical position in the world, it has heavily influenced peoples and cultures situated as far away as Southern Europe and Eastern Europe to the west; Central Asia to the north; the Arabian Peninsula to the south; and South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia to the east. Iranian history has had a significant impact on the world through art, architecture, poetry, science and technology, medicine, philosophy, and engineering.
Indo-Persian culture refers to a cultural synthesis present in India and Pakistan. It is characterised by the absorption or integration of Persian aspects into the various cultures of South Asia. The earliest introduction of Persian influence and culture to the subcontinent was by various Muslim Turko-Persian rulers, such as the 11th-century Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi, rapidly pushed for the heavy Persianization of conquered territories in northwestern India, where Islamic influence was also firmly established. This socio-cultural synthesis arose steadily through the Delhi Sultanate from the 13th to 16th centuries, and the Mughal Empire from then onwards until the 19th century. Various Muslim dynasties of Turkic, local Indian and Afghan origin patronized the Persian language and contributed to the development of a Persian culture in India. The Delhi Sultanate developed their own cultural and political identity which built upon Persian and Indic languages, literature and arts, which formed the basis of an Indo-Muslim civilization.
Indo-Iranian peoples, also known as Indo-Iranic peoples by scholars, or as Arya or Aryans from their self-designation, were a group of Indo-European peoples who brought the Indo-Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, to major parts of Eurasia in waves from the first part of the 2nd millennium BC onwards. They eventually branched out into Iranian peoples and Indo-Aryan peoples, predominantly in the geographical subregion of Southern Asia.
Iranian Canadians or Persian Canadians are Canadians of Iranian origin. From the 2016 Canadian census, the main communities can be found in Southern Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec. The vast majority, however, live in northern suburbs of Toronto such as Richmond Hill, Vaughan, Markham, and Thornhill, and in certain municipalities of Vancouver, including North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Burnaby, and Coquitlam. As of 2016 a total of 97,110 Iranians reside in the Greater Toronto Area, 46,255 in the Greater Vancouver Area, and 23,410 in the Greater Montreal Area, with the remainder spread out in the other major cities of Canada, based on the 2016 Canadian Census. These numbers represent the people who stated "Iranian" as their single or joint ethnic origin in the census survey.
The Iranian languages, also called Iranic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
Aryan was a self-designation by Indo-Iranian people.
Proto-Iranian or Proto-Iranic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Iranian languages branch of Indo-European language family and thus the ancestor of the Iranian languages such as Persian, Pashto, Sogdian, Zazaki, Ossetian, Mazandarani, Kurdish, Talysh and others. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the 2nd millennium BC and are usually connected with the Andronovo archaeological horizon.
Persianization or Persification, is a sociological process of cultural change in which a non-Persian society becomes "Persianate", meaning it either directly adopts or becomes strongly influenced by the Persian language, culture, literature, art, music, and identity as well as other socio-cultural factors. It is a specific form of cultural assimilation that often includes a language shift. The term applies not only to cultures, but also to individuals, as they acclimate to Persian culture and become "Persianized" or "Persified".
Iranians in the United Kingdom consist of people of Iranian nationality who have settled in the United Kingdom, as well as British residents and citizens of Iranian heritage. Iranians in the United Kingdom are referred to by hyphenated terms such as British-Iranians, British-Persians, Iranian-Britons, or Persian-Britons. At the time of the 2011 census, 84,735 Iranian-born people resided in the UK. In 2017, the Office for National Statistics estimated the Iranian-born population to be 70,000.
Ethnic groups in the Middle East, in the 'transcontinental' region which is commonly a geopolitical term designating the intercontinental region comprising West Asia without the South Caucasus, and also comprising Egypt in North Africa. The region has historically been a crossroad of different cultures and languages. Since the 1960s, the changes in political and economic factors have significantly altered the ethnic composition of groups in the region. While some ethnic groups have been present in the region for millennia, others have arrived fairly recently through immigration. The largest socioethnic groups in the region are Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds, and Azerbaijanis but there are dozens of other ethnic groups that have hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of members.
Scholars have suggested different theories for the origin of the name Kurd. According to the 19th century English Orientalist Godfrey Rolles Driver, the term Kurd is related to the Sumerian Karda which was found from Sumerian clay tablets of the third millennium B.C, while according to other scholars, it predates the Islamic period, as a Middle Persian word for "nomad", and may ultimately be derived from an ancient toponym or tribal name, either that of the Cyrtii or of Corduene, and mainstream academic opinion favours the Kurds being descended from Corduene.
The Iranian peoples or Iranic peoples are a diverse grouping of Indo-European peoples who are identified by their usage of the Iranian languages and other cultural similarities.
Tajiks are a Persian-speaking Iranian ethnic group native to Central Asia.
Aryan or Arya is a term originally used as an ethnocultural self-designation by Indo-Iranians in ancient times, in contrast to the nearby outsiders known as 'non-Aryan'. In Ancient India, the term ā́rya was used by the Indo-Aryan speakers of the Vedic period as an endonym (self-designation) and in reference to a region known as Āryāvarta, where the Indo-Aryan culture emerged. In the Avesta scriptures, ancient Iranian peoples similarly used the term airya to designate themselves as an ethnic group, and in reference to their mythical homeland, Airyanǝm Vaēǰō. The stem also forms the etymological source of place names such as Iran and Alania.
