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The Persians are an ethnic group that lives mainly in Iran, in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, and Uzbekistan. In Central Asia they are called Tajiks. Their language, called Persian or Farsi, is from the Indo-Iranian family of languages. The group is descended from the Aryans, an Indo-European people that migrated to Iran from Central Asia c. 1000 BC. The first record of the Persians comes from an Assyrian inscription from the 800s BC which calls them the Parsu and mentions them alongside another Aryan group, the Madai ( Medes).The Persians became the rulers of a large empire under the Achaemenid dynasty in the sixth century BCE. Over the centuries Persia was ruled by various dynasties; some of them were ethnic Persians (the SassanidsThe Sassanid dynasty (also Sassanian was the name given to the kings of Persia during the era of the second Persian Empire, from 224 until 651, when the last Sassanid shah, Yazdegerd III, lost a 14-year struggle to drive out the Umayyad Caliphate, the fir, BuwayhidThe Buwayhids were a Shi'ite Muslim tribal confederation from the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. The Buwayhids conquered Persia in the early 900s, and were themselves conquered by the Seljuk Turks after 1037. Persian history.s, SamanidThe Samanid dynasty (819-999) was a Persian dynasty in Central Asia, named after its founder Saman Khuda. They revived Persian traditions and language after the Arab invasion of Iran. Their capitals were Bukhara, Samarqand and Herat. The Samanids were thes, and others), and some of them were not (the Seleucids, Seljuk TurksThe Seljuk Turks ( Turkish: Selcuk Arabic: Saljuq al-Saljiqa Persian: Saljuqiyn also Seldjuk Seldjuq Seljuq were a major branch of the Oghuz Turks and a dynasty that occupied parts of Central Asia and the Middle East from the 11th to 14th centuries. The S, MongolsThe Mongol Empire was founded by Genghis Khan in 1206. At its height, it was arguably the largest contiguous empire in human history, stretching from Southeast Asia to Europe, covering 13. 8 million square miles or more than 35 million square kilometers., Safavids, and others).
The Persian civilization spawned three major religions: ZoroastrianismZoroastrianism was adapted from an earlier, polytheistic faith by Zarathushtra ( Zoroaster) in Persia between 1400 and 1200 BC (although, in the absence of written records, some scholars estimate as late as 600 BC). Its alternative name, Mazdaism comes fr, Mithraism, and Manichaeanism. All of these reflect the extreme dualism of Persian culture.
According to the 2004 CIA World Factbook, 51% of Iran's current population is ethnic Persians. Other estimations put the figure as high 70%. Many other ethnic groups are represented in Iran, including the non-Persian Aryan group, the Gilaki; the Turkish-descended Azerbaijanis, Kurds, and Turkmens; and a few Arabs and other minorities. See Demographics of Iran for more detail.
See Also
Iranian ethnic groups
