Персы: история, происхождение и современность.

Iranian ethnic group who make up over half the population of Iran

The Persians<! , as well as of the languages that are closely related to Persian. The ancient Persians were originally an ancient Iranian people who had migrated to the region of Persis (corresponding to the modern day Iranian province of Fars) by the 9th century BCE. Throughout history, the Persian people have contributed greatly to art and science. Historically, however, the terms Tajik and Tat were used synonymously and interchangeably with Persian. In historical contexts, especially in English, "Persian" may be defined more loosely (often as a national identity) to cover all subjects of the ancient Persian polities, regardless of their ethnic background.

The term Persian, meaning "from Persia", derives from Latin Persia, itself deriving from Greek ([[wikt:Περσίς), a Hellenized form of Old Persian ([[wikt:𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿), which evolves into ([[wikt:فارس#Persian) in modern Persian. In the Bible, particularly in the books of Daniel, Esther, Ezra, and Nehemya, it is given as ([[wikt:פרס#Hebrew). A Greek folk etymology connected the name to Perseus, a legendary character in Greek mythology. Herodotus recounts this story, devising a foreign son, Perses, from whom the Persians took the name. Apparently, the Persians themselves knew the story, as Xerxes I tried to use it to suborn the Argives during his invasion of Greece, but ultimately failed to do so.

Although Persis (Persia proper) was only one of the provinces of ancient Iran, varieties of this term (e. g., Persia) were adopted through Greek sources and used as an exonym for all of the Persian Empire for many years. Thus, especially in the Western world, the names Persia and Persian came to refer to all of Iran and its subjects. Mazanderani, and Old Azeri. 10th century Iraqi historian Al Masudi refers to Pahlavi, Dari, and Azari as dialects of the Persian language. In 1333, medieval Moroccan traveler and scholar Ibn Battuta referred to the Afghans of Kabul as a specific sub tribe of the Persians. Lady Mary (Leonora Woulfe) Sheil, in her observation of Iran during the Qajar era, states that the Kurds and the Leks would consider themselves as belonging to the race of the "old Persians". On 21 March 1935, the then king of Iran Reza Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty issued a decree asking the international community to use the term Iran, the native name of the country, in formal correspondence. However, the term Persian is still historically used to designate the predominant population of the Iranian peoples living in the Iranian cultural continent.

Persia is first attested in Assyrian sources from the third millennium BC in the Old Assyrian form , designating a region belonging to the Sumerians. The name of this region was adopted by a nomadic ancient Iranian people who migrated to the region in the west and southwest of Lake Urmia, eventually becoming known as "the Persians". The ninth century BC Neo Assyrian inscription of the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, found at Nimrud, gives it in the Late Assyrian forms and as a region and a people located in the Zagros Mountains, the latter likely having migrated southward and transferred the name of the region with them to what would become Persis (Persia proper, i. e., modern day Fars), and that is considered to be the earliest attestation to the ancient Persian people. The ancient Persians played a major role in the downfall of the Neo Assyrian Empire. The Medes, another group of ancient Iranian people, unified the region under an empire centered in Media, which would become the region's leading cultural and political power of the time by 612 BC. Meanwhile, under the dynasty of the Achaemenids, the Persians formed a vassal state to the central Median power. In 552 BC, the Achaemenid Persians revolted against the Median monarchy, leading to the victory of Cyrus the Great over the throne in 550 BC. The Persians spread their influence to the rest of what is considered to be the Iranian Plateau, and assimilated with the non Iranian indigenous groups of the region, including the Elamites and the Mannaeans. At its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from parts of Eastern Europe in the west to the Indus Valley in the east, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen. The Achaemenids developed the infrastructure to support their growing influence, including the establishment of the cities of Pasargadae and Persepolis. The empire extended as far as the limits of the Greek city states in modern day mainland Greece, where the Persians and Athenians influenced each other in what is essentially a reciprocal cultural exchange. Its legacy and impact on the kingdom of Macedon was also notably huge, The Parthian language, which was used as an official language of the Parthian Empire, left influences on Persian, as well as on the neighboring Armenian language. The Parthian monarchy was succeeded by the Persian dynasty of the Sasanians in 224 AD. By the time of the Sasanian Empire, a national culture that was fully aware of being Iranian took shape, partially motivated by restoration and revival of the wisdom of "the old sages" and was greatly diffused among Iranians. Cappadocia in Late Antiquity, now well into the Roman era, still retained a significant Iranian character; Stephen Mitchell notes in the Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity: "Many inhabitants of Cappadocia were of Persian descent and Iranian fire worship is attested as late as 465". Following the Arab conquest of the Sasanian Empire in the medieval times, the Arab caliphates established their rule over the region for the next several centuries, during which the long process of the Islamization of Iran took place. Confronting the cultural and linguistic dominance of the Persians, beginning by the Umayyad Caliphate, the Arab conquerors began to establish Arabic as the primary language of the subject peoples throughout their empire, sometimes by force, further confirming the new political reality over the region. The Arabic term , denoting "people unable to speak properly", was adopted as a designation for non Arabs (or non Arabic speakers), especially the Persians. Although the term had developed a derogatory meaning and implied cultural and ethnic inferiority, it was gradually accepted as a synonym for "Persian" and still remains today as a designation for the Persian speaking communities native to the modern Arab states of the Middle East. A series of Muslim Iranian kingdoms were later established on the fringes of the declining Abbasid Caliphate, including that of the ninth century Samanids, under the reign of whom the Persian language was used officially for the first time after two centuries of no attestation of the language, now having received the Arabic script and a large Arabic vocabulary. Persian language and culture continued to prevail after the invasions and conquests by the Mongols and the Turks (including the Ilkhanate, Ghaznavids, Seljuks, Khwarazmians, and Timurids), who were themselves significantly Persianized, further developing in Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia, where Persian culture flourished by the expansion of the Persianate societies, particularly those of Turco Persian and Indo Persian blends. After over eight centuries of foreign rule within the region, the Iranian hegemony was reestablished by the emergence of the Safavid Empire in the 16th century. Under the Safavid Empire, focus on Persian language and identity was further revived, and the political evolution of the empire once again maintained Persian as the main language of the country. During the times of the Safavids and subsequent modern Iranian dynasties such as the Qajars, architectural and iconographic elements from the time of the Sasanian Persian Empire were reincorporated, linking the modern country with its ancient past. Contemporary embracement of the legacy of Iran's ancient empires, with an emphasis on the Achaemenid Persian Empire, developed particularly under the reign of the Pahlavi dynasty, providing the motive of a modern nationalistic pride. Iran's modern architecture was then inspired by that of the country's classical eras, particularly with the adoption of details from the ancient monuments in the Achaemenid capitals Persepolis and Pasargadae and the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon. Fars, corresponding to the ancient province of Persia, with its modern capital Shiraz, became a center of interest, particularly during the annual international Shiraz Arts Festival and the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire. The Pahlavi rulers modernized Iran, and ruled it until the 1979 Revolution.

In modern Iran, the Persians make up the majority of the population. which serves as the country's official language.

The Persian language belongs to the western group of the Iranian branch of the Indo European language family. Modern Persian is classified as a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of the Sasanian Empire, itself a continuation of Old Persian, which was used by the time of the Achaemenid Empire. The oldest attested text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription, a multilingual inscription from the time of Achaemenid ruler Darius the Great carved on a cliff in western Iran.

There are several ethnic groups and communities that are either ethnically or linguistically related to the Persian people, living predominantly in Iran, and also within Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, the Caucasus, Turkey, Iraq, and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. The Tajiks are a people native to Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan who speak Persian in a variety of dialects. The origin of the Tat people is traced to an Iranian speaking population that was resettled in the Caucasus by the time of the Sasanian Empire. The Lurs, an ethnic Iranian people native to western Iran, are often associated with the Persians and the Kurds. They speak various dialects of the Luri language, which is considered to be a descendant of Middle Persian. The Hazaras, making up the third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, speak a variety of Persian by the name of Hazaragi, which is more precisely a part of the Dari dialect continuum. The Aimaqs, a semi nomadic people native to Afghanistan, speak a variety of Persian by the name of Aimaqi, which also belongs to the Dari dialect continuum. Persian speaking communities native to modern Arab countries are generally designated as Ajam, They have had a significant role in the development of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and also played a role in the development of Iranian nationalism during the late Qajar years and Pahlavi dynasty. They are primarily located in the western regions of India principally the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, with smaller communities in other parts of India and in South and Southeast Asia. They speak a dialect version of Gujarati, and no longer speak in Persian. They do however continue to use Avestan as their liturgical language. all the way to modern Iran and others parts of Eurasia, Persian culture has been extended, celebrated, and incorporated. This is due mainly to its geopolitical conditions, and its intricate relationship with the ever changing political arena once as dominant as the Achaemenid Empire. The artistic heritage of the Persians is eclectic and has included contributions from both the east and the west. Due to the central location of Iran, Persian art has served as a fusion point between eastern and western traditions. Persians have contributed to various forms of art, including calligraphy, carpet weaving, glasswork, lacquerware, marquetry (khatam), metalwork, miniature illustration, mosaic, pottery, and textile design.

According to the accounts reported by Xenophon, a great number of singers were present at the Achaemenid court. However, little information is available from the music of that era. The music scene of the Sasanian Empire has a more available and detailed documentation than the earlier periods, and is especially more evident within the context of Zoroastrian musical rituals. Overall, Sasanian music was influential and was adopted in the subsequent eras. Iranian music, as a whole, utilizes a variety of musical instruments that are unique to the region, and has remarkably evolved since the ancient and medieval times. In traditional Sasanian music, the octave was divided into seventeen tones. By the end of the 13th century, Iranian music also maintained a twelve interval octave, which resembled the western counterparts.

The Iranian New Year's Day, Nowruz, which translates to "new day", is celebrated by Persians and other peoples of Iran to mark the beginning of spring on the vernal equinox on the first day of Farvardin, the first month of the Iranian calendar, which corresponds to around March 21 in the Gregorian calendar. An ancient tradition that has been preserved in Iran and several other countries that were under the influence of the ancient empires of Iran, Nowruz has been registered on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists. In Iran, the Nowruz celebrations (incl. Charshanbe Suri and Sizdebedar) begin on the eve of the last Wednesday of the preceding year in the Iranian calendar and last on the 13th day of the new year. Islamic festivals are also widely celebrated by Muslim Persians.