| Total population | |
|---|---|
| Over 170 million[citation needed] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| West Asia, incl. eastern Anatolia and parts of the Caucasus; parts of Central Asia, incl. western Xinjiang; and western parts of South Asia (Historically also: Eastern Europe) | |
| Languages | |
| Iranian languages | |
| Religion | |
| Majority: 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) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Indo-Aryan peoples (via Indo-Iranians) |
| Part of a series on |
| Indo-European topics |
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The Iranian peoples,[1] or the Iranic peoples,[2] are the collective ethno-linguistic groups[3] who are identified chiefly by their native usage of any of the Iranian languages, which are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages within the Indo-European language family.
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 Danubian Plains 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 Saka, the Sarmatians, the Scythians, the Sogdians, and likely the Cimmerians, among other Iranian-speaking peoples of West 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 due to the expansion of the Slavic peoples, the Germanic peoples, the Turkic peoples, and the Mongolic peoples; 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 – covering a region that is sometimes called Greater Iran, representing the extent of the Iranian-speaking peoples and the reach of their geopolitical and cultural influence.[14]
- ^ Frye 2004.
- ^ von Schierbrand 1922, p. 306.
- ^ Young, T. Cuyler Jr. (1988). "The Early History of the Medes and the Persians and the Achaemenid Empire to the Death of Cambyses". In Boardman, John; Hammond, N. G. L.; Lewis, D. M.; Ostwald, M. (eds.). Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean c. 525 to 479 B.C. The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 11 (2 ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 1. ISBN 0-521-22804-2.
The Iranians are one of the three major ethno-linguistic groups who define the modern Near East.
- ^ Beckwith 2009, pp. 58–77
- ^ Mallory 1997, pp. 308–311
- ^ Harmatta 1992, p. 348: "From the first millennium b.c., we have abundant historical, archaeological and linguistic sources for the location of the territory inhabited by the Iranian peoples. In this period the territory of the northern Iranians, they being equestrian nomads, extended over the whole zone of the steppes and the wooded steppes and even the semi-deserts from the Great Hungarian Plain to the Ordos in northern China."
- ^ "A Persian view of Steppe Iranians". ResearchGate. Retrieved 10 August 2019.
- ^ Brzezinski, Richard; Mielczarek, Mariusz (2002). The Sarmatians, 600 BC-AD 450. Osprey Publishing. p. 39.
(...) Indeed, it is now accepted that the Sarmatians merged in with pre-Slavic populations.
- ^ Adams, Douglas Q. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Taylor & Francis. p. 523.
(...) In their Ukrainian and Polish homeland the Slavs were intermixed and at times overlain by Germanic speakers (the Goths) and by Iranian speakers (Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans) in a shifting array of tribal and national configurations.
- ^ Atkinson, Dorothy; Dallin, Alexander; Lapidus, Gail Warshofsky, eds. (1977). Women in Russia. Stanford University Press. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-8047-0910-1.
(...) Ancient accounts link the Amazons with the Scythians and the Sarmatians, who successively dominated the south of Russia for a millennium extending back to the seventh century B.C. The descendants of these peoples were absorbed by the Slavs who came to be known as Russians.
- ^ Slovene Studies. Vol. 9–11. Society for Slovene Studies. 1987. p. 36.
(...) For example, the ancient Scythians, Sarmatians (amongst others) and many other attested but now extinct peoples were assimilated in the course of history by Proto-Slavs.
- ^ Roy, Olivier (2007). The New Central Asia: Geopolitics and the Birth of Nations. I.B. Tauris. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-84511-552-4.
The mass of the Oghuz who crossed the Amu Darya towards the west left the Iranian Plateau, which remained Persian and established themselves more to the west, in Anatolia. Here they divided into Ottomans, who were Sunni and settled, and Turkmens, who were nomads and in part Shiite (or, rather, Alevi). The latter were to keep the name 'Turkmen' for a long time: from the thirteenth century onwards they 'Turkised' the Iranian populations of Azerbaijan (who spoke west Iranian languages such as Tat, which is still found in residual forms), thus creating a new identity based on Shiism and the use of Turkish. These are the people today known as Azeris.
- ^ Yarshater, Ehsan (15 December 1988). "AZERBAIJAN vii. The Iranian Language of Azerbaijan". Encyclopædia Iranica. Archived from the original on 11 June 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
- ^ Frye 2005, p. xi: "Iran means all lands and people where Iranian languages were and are spoken, and where in the past, multi-faceted Iranian cultures existed."