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The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language (Farsi) and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of the greater Indo-European linguistic family. The synonymous usage of Iranian and Persian has persisted over the centuries although some modern Western sources use Iranic/Iranian as a wider term that includes the term Persian as well as related Iranian languages and ethnic groups. However, these terms have been used both synonymously as well as in a complementary fashion since ancient times; as the Ancient Iranian peoples such as the Old Persians, Medes, Bactrians, Parthians and Avesta peoples considered themselves to be part of the greater Iranian ethnic stock. The term Persian translates to "from or of 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 the Elamites), 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. Besides modern Iran/Persia, ethnic Persians are also found in Central Asia (Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) and are usually called "Tajiks" and "Farsiwans". Other closely related Iranian languages and dialects to modern Persian (Pārsi-ye Dari is one of the varieties of Persian/Iranian but due to its widespread usage as the most common Iranian language, it became synonymous with Persian), which derive from Western Middle Iranian languages, such as the Luri, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Talyshi, Tat-Persian and other closely akin Iranian languages have been mentioned as part of the Persian/Irani continuum. Some names such as "Tat", "Tajik", "Sart" and "'Ajam" have also been used by foreigners or Persians in reference to Iranians/Persians. The term Parsi, Tajik, Irani, and Tat have been used interchangeably for Persian and Iranian speakers of Iran during the Middle Ages including the Safavid and the Qajar era. The Persians of Central Asia who inhabit Tajikistan and parts of Afghanistan and Uzbekistan are also called Tajiks while the term Tajik is contemporaneously used for Iranian people who speak Pamiri languages. While a categorization of a 'Persian' ethnic group persists in the West, 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). As a pan-national group, defining Persians as an ethnic group, at least in terms used in the West, is not inclusive since the ethnonym "Persian" includes several Iranian people including the speakers of Modern Persian. Some scholars, classify the speakers of Persian language as a single ethnic unit (the ‘Persians’) and exclude those Iranians who speak dialects of Persian, or other Iranian dialects closely related to Persian; however this approach to ethnicity in Iran is erroneous, since the designation Iranian (Irani) as an ethnic term has been used by all these ethnic group in Iran, including the "Persians" irrespective of their origin, language and religion. |