Nika Tanya Vahdat

Persian people
This article is about Persians. For the usage of Persian people as a pan-ethnic group designating the people of modern Iran (Persia), see Iran.
... Persians

Zoroaster Cyrus Darius Xerxes Artemisia

Mithridates II Mithridates VI Shapur Reza Shah Mani

Khwarizmi[1] Hassan-i Sabbah Rudaki Rhazes Farabi[2]

Ferdowsi Alhazen Biruni[3] Avicenna Nizam al-Mulk

Khayyam Ghazali Nezami[4] Attar Saadi

Tusi Rumi Hafez Mumtaz Mahal Amir Kabir

Mosaddegh Shajarian Hayedeh Farhadi Hatami
Total population
ca. 81 million
Regions with significant populations
Iran
(2011 estimate ) 47,513,000-50,629,000 [5][6]
Afghanistan 14,917,696
(including Tajiks) [7]
Tajikistan 6,094,132
(including Tajiks) [8]
Uzbekistan
(suggestive estimates) 1,406,430
3,000,000
(including Tajiks) [9]
[10]
Iraq
(suggestive estimates) 500,000
1,000,000 [11]
United States 331,000 [12][13] [14]
United Arab Emirates 238,250 [15]
Germany 200,000 [16][17]
Canada 173,760 [18][19]
Bahrain 172,000 [20]
Russia 170,000 [12][21]
Qatar 160,000 [22]
Languages
Persian (varieties of Dari, Hazaragi, and Tajiki), Luri, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Talyshi and other closely akin Iranian languages

Religion
Majority Islam (Shia Islam - mainly Twelver and Ismaili, Sunni Islam, Sufism), minority Bahai, Christianity, Judaism[citation needed], and Zoroastrianism

Related ethnic groups
Other Iranian peoples, Nuristanis, Dards, Azeris, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Iraqis, Bahranis

The Persian people[23] are an Iranian people who speak the modern Persian language[24] and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages.[25][26] Their origins are traced to the ancient Iranian peoples, themselves part of the Indo-Iranian branch of the greater Indo-European peoples.

The term Persian translates to "from Persis" which is a region north of the Persian Gulf located in Pars, Iran. It was from this region that Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid empire, united all other Iranian empires (such as the Medes), and expanded the Persian cultural and social influences by incorporating the Babylonian empire, and the Lydian empire. Although not the first Iranian empire, the Achaemenid empire is the first Persian empire well recognized by Greek and Persian historians for its massive cultural, military and social influences going as far as Athens, Egypt, and Libya.[27]

Besides modern Iran (Persia), ethnic Persians are also found in Central Asia (Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) where they are usually called "Tajiks" and "Farsiwans", as well as in southern Iraq (Babylonia), a region which has been historically an integral part of Persia. Some names such as "Tat",[28] "Tajik",[29] "Sart" and "'Ajam"[30] have also been used, especially by Arabs and Turks, in reference to Persians. The terms Parsi, Tajik, Irani, and Tat have been used interchangeably for Persian and Persian-speakers during the Middle Ages, forexample in the Mughal, Safavid and Qajar[31][32] era. The Persians of Central Asia who inhabit Tajikistan and parts of Afghanistan and Uzbekistan are also called Tajiks,[33][34][35] while the term Tajik is contemporaneously also used for Iranian people who speak Pamiri languages.

Persians have generally been a pan-national group often comprising regional people who often refer to themselves as "Persians" and have also often used the term "Iranian" (in the ethnic-cultural sense)[citation needed]. Some scholars, mechanically identifying the speakers of Persian as a distinct ethnic unit (the ‘Persians’), exclude those Iranians who speak dialects of Persian, However,this approach can be misleading, as historically all ethnic groups in Iran, were always referred to, collectively, as Iranians (Irani).[36]

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