Iranian peoples
Total population | |
---|---|
Over 170 million[citation needed] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
West Asia and parts of Turkey, Caucasus and Ossetia, Central Asia, western areas of South Asia, western areas of Xinjiang (China) (Historically also: Eastern Europe) | |
Languages | |
Iranian languages (a branch of the Indo-European languages) | |
Religion | |
Predominately: 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) |
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Indo-European topics |
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The Iranian peoples[1] or Iranic peoples[2] are a diverse grouping of peoples[1][3] who are identified by their usage of the Iranian languages (branch of the Indo-European languages) and other cultural similarities.
The
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 Sakas, 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
Name
The term
There have been many attempts to qualify the verbal root of ar- in Old Iranian arya-. The following are according to 1957 and later linguists:
- Emmanuel Laroche (1957): ara- "to fit" ("fitting", "proper").
Old Iranian arya- being descended from Proto-Indo-European ar-yo-, meaning "(skillfully) assembler".[18] - Georges Dumézil (1958): ar- "to share" (as a union).
- Harold Walter Bailey (1959): ar- "to beget" ("born", "nurturing").
- Émil Benveniste (1969): ar- "to fit" ("companionable").
Unlike the
In the
In royal Old Persian inscriptions, the term arya- appears in three different contexts:[20][21]
- As the name of the language of the Old Persian version of the inscription of Darius Iin the Bistun Inscription.
- As the ethnic background of Darius the Great in inscriptions at Rustam Relief and Susa (Dna, Dse) and the ethnic background of Xerxes Iin the inscription from Persepolis (Xph).
- As the definition of the God of Iranians, Ohrmazd, in the Elamite version of the Bistun Inscription.
In the Dna and Dse, Darius and Xerxes describe themselves as "an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, and an Aryan, of Aryan stock".[26] Although Darius the Great called his language arya- ("Iranian"),[26] modern scholars refer to it as Old Persian[26] because it is the ancestor of the modern Persian language.[27]
The
The Avesta clearly uses airiia- as an ethnic name (Videvdat 1; Yasht 13.143–44, etc.), where it appears in expressions such as airyāfi daiŋˊhāvō ("Iranian lands"), airyō šayanəm ("land inhabited by Iranians"), and airyanəm vaējō vaŋhuyāfi dāityayāfi ("Iranian stretch of the good Dāityā").[20] In the late part of the Avesta (Videvdat 1), one of the mentioned homelands was referred to as Airyan'əm Vaējah which approximately means "expanse of the Iranians". The homeland varied in its geographic range, the area around Herat (Pliny's view) and even the entire expanse of the Iranian Plateau (Strabo's designation).[29]
The Old Persian and Avestan evidence is confirmed by the Greek sources.[20] Herodotus, in his Histories, remarks about the Iranian Medes that "Medes were called anciently by all people Arians" (7.62).[20][21] In Armenian sources, the Parthians, Medes and Persians are collectively referred to as Iranians.[30] Eudemus of Rhodes (Dubitationes et Solutiones de Primis Principiis, in Platonis Parmenidem) refers to "the Magi and all those of Iranian (áreion) lineage". Diodorus Siculus (1.94.2) considers Zoroaster (Zathraustēs) as one of the Arianoi.[20]
The name of
Sogdianson the north; for these speak approximately the same language, with but slight variations.— Geographica, 15.8
The Bactrian (a Middle Iranian language) inscription of Kanishka (the founder of the Kushan Empire) at Rabatak, which was discovered in 1993 in an unexcavated site in the Afghan province of Baghlan, clearly refers to this Eastern Iranian language as Arya.[32]
All this evidence shows that the name Arya was a collective definition, denoting peoples who were aware of belonging to the one ethnic stock, speaking a common language, and having a religious tradition that centered on the cult of Ohrmazd.[20]
The academic usage of the term Iranian is distinct from the state of Iran and its various citizens (who are all Iranian by nationality), in the same way that the term Germanic peoples is distinct from Germans. Some inhabitants of Iran are not necessarily ethnic Iranians by virtue of not being speakers of Iranian languages.
Iranian vs. Iranic
Some scholars such as John Perry prefer the term Iranic as the name for the linguistic family of this category (many of which are spoken outside Iran), while Iranian for anything about the country Iran. He uses the same analogue as in differentiating
History and settlement
Indo-European roots
Proto-Indo-Iranians
The Proto-Indo-Iranians are commonly identified with the
The Indo-Iranian migrations took place in two waves.
The second wave is interpreted as the Iranian wave,[45] and took place in the third stage of the Indo-European migrations[38] from 800 BC onwards.
Sintashta–Petrovka culture
The Sintashta culture, also known as the Sintashta–Petrovka culture
The Sintashta culture emerged from the interaction of two antecedent cultures. Its immediate predecessor in the Ural-Tobol steppe was the
The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare.[52] Sintashta settlements are also remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy carried out there, which is unusual for a steppe culture.[53]
Because of the difficulty of identifying the remains of Sintashta sites beneath those of later settlements, the culture was only recently distinguished from the Andronovo culture.[47] It is now recognised as a separate entity forming part of the 'Andronovo horizon'.[46]
Andronovo culture
The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local
- Sintashta-Petrovka-Arkaim (Southern Urals, northern Kazakhstan, 2200–1600 BC)
- the Sintashta fortification of ca. 1800 BC in Chelyabinsk Oblast
- the Petrovka settlement fortified settlement in Kazakhstan
- the nearby Arkaim settlement dated to the 17th century
- Alakul (2100–1400 BC) between Kyzylkum desert
- Alekseyevka (1300–1100 BC "final Bronze") in eastern Kazakhstan, contacts with NamazgaVI in Turkmenia
- Ingala Valley in the south of the Tyumen Oblast
- Alekseyevka (1300–1100 BC "final Bronze") in eastern Kazakhstan, contacts with
- Fedorovo (1500–1300 BC) in southern Siberia (earliest evidence of cremation and fire cult)[55]
- Beshkent-Vakhsh(1000–800 BC)
The geographical extent of the culture is vast and difficult to delineate exactly. On its western fringes, it overlaps with the approximately contemporaneous, but distinct,
Most researchers associate the Andronovo horizon with early Indo-Iranian languages, though it may have overlapped the early Uralic-speaking area at its northern fringe.
Scythians and Persians
From the late 2nd millennium BC to early 1st millennium BC the Iranians had expanded from the
Scythian tribes, along with Cimmerians, Sarmatians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea. The Scythian and Sarmatian tribes were spread across Great Hungarian Plain, South-Eastern Ukraine, Russias Siberian, Southern, Volga,[60] Uralic regions and the Balkans,[61][62][63] while other Scythian tribes, such as the Saka, spread as far east as Xinjiang, China.
Western and Eastern Iranians
The division into an "
Western Iranian peoples
During the 1st centuries of the 1st millennium BC, the ancient Persians established themselves in the western portion of the Iranian Plateau and appear to have interacted considerably with the Elamites and
At first, the Western Iranian peoples in the
Later on, in 550 BC,
The Greco-Persian Wars resulted in the Persians being forced to withdraw from their European territories, setting the direct further course of history of Greece and the rest of Europe. More than a century later, a prince of Macedon (which itself was a subject to Persia from the late 6th century BC up to the First Persian invasion of Greece) later known by the name of Alexander the Great, overthrew the incumbent Persian king, by which the Achaemenid Empire was ended.
Old Persian is attested in the
The early inhabitants of the Achaemenid Empire appear to have adopted the religion of
Eastern Iranian peoples
While the Iranian tribes of the south are better known through their texts and modern counterparts, the tribes which remained largely in the vast Eurasian expanse are known through the references made to them by the ancient Greeks, Persians, Chinese, and Indo-Aryans as well as by archaeological finds. The Greek chronicler, Herodotus (5th century BC) makes references to a nomadic people, the Scythians; he describes them as having dwelt in what is today southern European Russia and Ukraine. He was the first to make a reference to them. Many ancient
It is believed that these Scythians were conquered by their eastern cousins, the Sarmatians, who are mentioned by Strabo as the dominant tribe which controlled the southern Russian steppe in the 1st millennium AD. These Sarmatians were also known to the Romans, who conquered the western tribes in the Balkans and sent Sarmatian conscripts, as part of Roman legions, as far west as Roman Britain. These Iranian-speaking Scythians and Sarmatians dominated large parts of Eastern Europe for a millennium, and were eventually absorbed and assimilated (e.g. Slavicisation) by the Proto-Slavic population of the region.[8][9][11]
The Sarmatians differed from the Scythians in their veneration of the god of fire rather than god of nature, and
Throughout the 1st millennium AD, the large presence of the Sarmatians who once dominated Ukraine,
The extensive contact between these Scytho-Sarmatian Iranian tribes in Eastern Europe and the (Early) Slavs included religion. After Slavic and Baltic languages diverged the Early Slavs interacted with Iranian peoples and merged elements of Iranian spirituality into their beliefs. For example, both Early Iranian and Slavic supreme gods were considered givers of wealth, unlike the supreme thunder gods in many other European religions. Also, both Slavs and Iranians had demons –- given names from similar linguistic roots, Daêva (Iranian) and Divŭ (Slavic) –- and a concept of
The Sarmatians of the east, based in the Pontic–Caspian steppe, became the Alans, who also ventured far and wide, with a branch ending up in Western Europe and then North Africa, as they accompanied the Germanic Vandals and Suebi during their migrations. The modern Ossetians are believed to be the direct descendants of the Alans, as other remnants of the Alans disappeared following Germanic, Hunnic and ultimately Slavic migrations and invasions.[81] Another group of Alans allied with Goths to defeat the Romans and ultimately settled in what is now called Catalonia (Goth-Alania).[82]
Some of the Saka-Scythian tribes in Central Asia would later move further southeast and invade the
The modern
Later developments
The main migration of Turkic peoples occurred between the 6th and 10th centuries, when they spread across most of Central Asia. The Turkic peoples slowly replaced and assimilated the previous Iranian-speaking locals, turning the population of Central Asia from being largely Iranian into being primarily of East Asian descent.[89]
Starting with the reign of
Later, during the 2nd millennium AD, the Iranian peoples would play a prominent role during the age of Islamic expansion and empire.
Demographics
There are an estimated 150 to 200 million native speakers of Iranian languages, the six major groups of
Due to recent migrations, there are also large communities of speakers of Iranian languages in Europe and the Americas.
Ethnicity | region | population (millions) |
---|---|---|
Persian-speaking peoples
|
Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, the Caucasus, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq | 72–85[citation needed] |
Pashtuns | Afghanistan, Pakistan | 63[citation needed] |
Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Armenia, Azerbaijan | 30–40[95] | |
Baluchs | Pakistan, Iran, Oman,[96] Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, UAE | citation needed][97] | 20–22[
Mazanderanis
And Semnani people |
Iran | 5–10[citation needed] |
Lurs | Iran, Kuwait, and Oman[98] | citation needed] | 6[
Pamiris
|
Tajikistan, Afghanistan, China (Xinjiang), Pakistan | 0.9 |
Talysh | Azerbaijan, Iran | 1.5 |
Ossetians | Georgia (South Ossetia), Russia ( North Ossetia ), Hungary
|
0.7 |
Yaghnobi
|
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan ( Zerafshan region )
|
0.025 |
Kumzari | Oman (Musandam) | 0.021 |
Zoroastrian groups in South Asia | India, Pakistan | 0.075 |
Culture
Iranian culture is today considered to be centered in what is called the Iranian Plateau, and has its origins tracing back to the Andronovo culture of the late Bronze Age, which is associated with other cultures of the Eurasian Steppe.[99][100] It was, however, later developed distinguishably from its earlier generations in the Steppe, where a large number of Iranian-speaking peoples (i.e., the Scythians) continued to participate, resulting in a differentiation that is displayed in Iranian mythology as the contrast between Iran and Turan.[99]
Like other Indo-Europeans, the early Iranians practiced ritual sacrifice, had a social hierarchy consisting of warriors, clerics, and farmers, and recounted their deeds through poetic hymns and sagas.[101] Various common traits can be discerned among the Iranian peoples. For instance, the social event of Nowruz is an ancient Iranian festival that is still celebrated by nearly all of the Iranian peoples. However, due to their different environmental adaptations through migration, the Iranian peoples embrace some degrees of diversity in dialect, social system, and other aspects of culture.[1]
With numerous artistic, scientific, architectural, and philosophical achievements and numerous kingdoms and empires that bridged much of the civilized world in antiquity, the Iranian peoples were often in close contact with people from various western and eastern parts of the world.
Religion
The early Iranian peoples practiced the ancient Iranian religion, which, like that of other Indo-European peoples, embraced various male and female deities.[103] Fire was regarded as an important and highly sacred element, and also a deity. In ancient Iran, fire was kept with great care in fire temples.[103] Various annual festivals that were mainly related to agriculture and herding were celebrated, the most important of which was the New Year (Nowruz), which is still widely celebrated.[103] Zoroastrianism, a form of the ancient Iranian religion that is still practiced by some communities,[104] was later developed and spread to nearly all of the Iranian peoples living in the Iranian Plateau. Other religions that had their origins in the Iranian world were Mithraism, Manichaeism, and Mazdakism, among others. The various religions of the Iranian peoples are believed by some scholars to have been significant early philosophical influences on Christianity and Judaism.[105]
Nowadays, most Iranian people follow Islam (Sunnism, followed by Shi'ism), with minorities following Christianity, Judaism, Mandaeism, Iranian religions and various levels of irreligion.[citation needed]
Cultural assimilation
Iranian languages were and, to a lesser extent, still are spoken in a wide area comprising regions around the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Russia and the northwest of China.[106] This population was linguistically assimilated by smaller but dominant Turkic-speaking groups, while the sedentary population eventually adopted the Persian language, which began to spread within the region since the time of the Sasanian Empire.[106] The language-shift from Middle Iranian to Turkic and New Persian was predominantly the result of an "elite dominance" process.[107][108] Moreover, various Turkic-speaking ethnic groups of the Iranian Plateau are often conversant also in an Iranian language and embrace Iranian culture to the extent that the term Turko-Iranian would be applied.[109] A number of Iranian peoples were also intermixed with the Slavs,[9] and many were subjected to Slavicisation.[10][11]
The following either partially descend from or are sometimes regarded as descendants of the Iranian peoples.
- Turkic-speakers:
- Azerbaijanis: In spite of being native speakers of a Turkic language (Azerbaijani Turkic), they are believed to be primarily descended from the earlier Iranian-speakers of the region.[99][1][110][111][112] They are possibly related to the ancient Iranian tribe of the Medes, aside from the rise of the subsequent Persian and Turkic elements (changing of the native Iranian language) within their area of settlement,[113] which, prior to the spread of Turkic, was Iranian-speaking.[114] Thus, due to their historical, genetic and cultural ties to the Iranians,[115] the Azerbaijanis are often associated with the Iranian peoples. Genetic studies observed that they are also genetically related to the Iranian peoples.[116]
- Turkmens: Genetic studies show that the Turkmens are characterized by the presence of local Iranian mtDNA lineages, similar to the eastern Iranian populations, but modest female Mongoloid mtDNA components were observed in Turkmen populations with the frequencies of about 20%.[117]
- Uzbeks: The unique grammatical and phonetical features of the Uzbek language,[118] as well as elements within the modern Uzbek culture, reflect the older Iranian roots of the Uzbek people.[106][119][120][121] According to recent genetic genealogy testing from a University of Oxford study, the genetic admixture of the Uzbeks clusters somewhere between the Iranian peoples and the Mongols.[122] Prior to the Russian conquest of Central Asia, the local ancestors of the Turkic-speaking Uzbeks and the Persian-speaking Tajiks, both living in Central Asia, were referred to as Sarts, while Uzbek and Turk were the names given to the nomadic and semi-nomadic populations of the area. Still, as of today, modern Uzbeks and Tajiks are known to their Turkic neighbors, the Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz, as Sarts. Some Uzbek scholars also favor the Iranian origin theory.[123][page needed] However, another study, conducted in 2009, claims that Uzbeks and Central Asian Turkic peoples cluster genetically and are far from Iranian groups.[124]
- Uyghurs: Contemporary scholars consider modern Uyghurs to be the descendants of, apart from the ancient Uyghurs, the Iranian Saka (Scythian) tribes and other Indo-European peoples who inhabited the Tarim Basin before the arrival of the Turkic tribes.[125]
- Persian-speakers:
- The Hazaras are a Persian-speaking ethnic group native to, and primarily residing in, the mountainous region of Hazarajat, in central Afghanistan. Although the origins of the Hazara people have not been fully reconstructed, genetic analysis of the Hazara indicate partial Mongol ancestry. Invading Mongols (Turco-Mongols) and Turkic invaders mixed with the local indigenous Turkic and Iranian populations. for example Qara'unas settled in what is now Afghanistan and mixed with the local populations. A second wave of mostly Chagatai Turco-Mongols came from Central Asia, associated with the Ilkhanate and the Timurids, all of whom settled in Hazarajat and mixed with the local populations. Phenotype can vary, with some noting that certain Hazaras may resemble peoples native to the Iranian plateau.[126][127]
- Slavic-speakers:
- Croats and Serbs: Some scholars suggest that the Slavic-speaking Serbs and Croats are descended from the ancient Sarmatians,[128][129] an ancient Iranian people who once settled in most of southern European Russia and the eastern Balkans, and that their ethnonyms are of Iranian origin. It is proposed that the Sarmatian Serboi and alleged Horoathos tribes were assimilated with the numerically superior Slavs, passing on their name. Iranian-speaking peoples did inhabit parts of the Balkans in late classical times, and would have been encountered by the Slavs. An archaeogenetic IBD study found that the Slavs make a specific and recognisable genetic cluster which "was formed by admixture of a Baltic-related group with East Germanic people and Sarmatians or Scythians".[130] Although previous direct linguistic, historical, or archaeological proof for such a theory is lacking.[b]
- Swahili-speakers:
- Shirazis: The Shirazi are a sub-group of the Swahili people living on the Swahili coast of East Africa, especially on the islands of Zanzibar, Pemba, and Comoros. Local traditions about their origin claim they are descended from merchant princes from Shiraz in Iran who settled along the Swahili coast.
- Indo-Aryan speakers:
- Talpur Dynasty was an ethnic Baloch Sindhi speaking dynasty that ruled much of Sindh and parts of Balochistan during the British colonial period. It was believed that the first Baloch came to Sindh during the Little Ice Age. The Baloch in Sindh are known as the Baruch (ٻروچ).[citation needed]
Genetics
Recent population genomic studies found that the genetic structure of Iranian peoples formed already about 5,000 years ago and show high continuity since then, suggesting that they were largely unaffected by migration events from outside groups. Genetically speaking, Iranian peoples generally cluster closely with
Paternal haplogroups
Regueiro et al (2006)[134] and Grugni et al (2012)[135] have performed large-scale sampling of Y chromosome haplogroups of different ethnic groups within Iran. They found that the most common paternal haplogroups were:
- Semitic-speakingpeople, was rarely over 10% in Iranian groups.
- J2-M172: is the most common Hg in Iran (~23%); almost exclusively represented by J2a-M410 subclade (93%), the other major sub-clade being J2b-M12. Apart from Iranians, J2 is common in northern Arabs, Mediterranean and Balkan peoples (Croats, Serbs, Greeks, Bosniaks, Albanians, Italians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Turks), in the Caucasus (Armenians, Georgians, Chechens, Ingush, northeastern Turkey, north/northwestern Iran, Kurds, Persians); whilst its frequency drops suddenly beyond Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India.[136] In Europe, J2a is more common in southern Greece and southern Italy; whilst J2b (J2-M12) is more common in Thessaly, Macedonia and central – northern Italy. Thus J2a and its subgroups within it have a wide distribution from Italy to India, whilst J2b is mostly confined to the Balkans and Italy,[137] being rare even in Turkey. Whilst closely linked with Anatolia and the Levant; and putative agricultural expansions, the distribution of the various sub-clades of J2 likely represents a number of migrational histories which require further elucidation.[136][138]
- R1a-M198: is common in Iran, more so in the east and south rather than the west and north; suggesting a migration toward the south to India then a secondary westward spread across Iran.[139] Whilst the Grongi and Regueiro studies did not define exactly which sub-clades Iranian R1a haplogrouops belong to, private genealogy tests suggest that they virtually all belong to "Eurasian" R1a-Z93.[140] Indeed, population studies of neighbouring Indian groups found that they all were in R1a-Z93.[141] This implies that R1a in Iran did not descend from "European" R1a, or vice versa. Rather, both groups are collateral, brother branches which descend from a parental group hypothesized to have initially lived somewhere between central Asia and Eastern Europe.[141]
- R1b – M269: is widespread from Ireland to Iran, and is common in highland West Asian populations such as Armenians, Turks and Iranians – with an average frequency of 8.5%. Iranian R1b belongs to the L-23 subclade,[142] which is an older than the derivative subclade (R1b-M412) which is most common in western Europe.[143]
- Haplogroup E and various subclades are frequently found among Middle Easterners, Europeans, northern and eastern African populations. They are present in less than 10% of Iranians.
Two large – scale papers by Haber (2012)[145] and Di Cristofaro (2013)[146] analyzed populations from Afghanistan, where several Iranian-speaking groups are native. They found that different groups (e.g. Baluch, Hazara, Pashtun) were quite diverse, yet overall:
- R1a (subclade not further analyzed) was the predominant haplogroup, especially amongst Pashtuns, the Baloch and Tajiks.
- The presence of "East-Eurasian" haplogroup C3, especially in Hazaras (33–40%), in part linked to Mongol expansions into the region.
- The presence of haplogroup J2, like in Iran, of 5–20%.
- A relative paucity of "Indian" haplogroup H (< 10%).
A 2012 study by Grugni et al. analyzed the haplogroups of 15 different ethnic groups from Iran. They found that about 31.4% belong to J, 29.1% belong to R, 11.8% belong to G, and 9.2% belong to E. They found that Iranian ethnic groups display high haplogroup diversity, compared to other Middle Easterners. The authors concluded that the Iranian gene pool has been an important source for the Middle Eastern and Eurasian Y chromosome diversity, and the results suggest that there was already rather high Y chromosome diversity during the Neolithic period, placing Iranian populations in between Europeans, Middle Easterners and South Asians.[147]
See also
Notes
- Naqsh-e Rustam (DNa 14–15), in Darius I's inscription at Susa (DSe 13–14), and in the inscription of Xerxes I at Persepolis (XPh 12–13). In these, the two Achaemenid dynasts describe themselves as pārsa pārsahyā puça ariya ariyaciça "a Persian, son of a Persian, an Ariya, of Ariya origin." "The phrase with ciça, "origin, descendance", assures that it [i.e. ariya] is an ethnic name wider in meaning than pārsa and not a simple adjectival epithet".[24]
- ^ See also: Origin hypotheses of the Serbs and Origin hypotheses of the Croats
References
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- ^ The Encyclopedia Americana. Vol. 15. 1954. p. 306.
{{cite encyclopedia}}
: Missing or empty|title=
(help) - 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.
- ^ a b 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.
- ^ a b c 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.
- ^ 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.
- ^ a b c 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.
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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.
- ^ Emmerick, Ronald Eric (23 February 2016). "Iranian languages". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
- ISBN 978-1-56859-177-3.
(...) Iran means all lands and people where Iranian languages were and are spoken, and where in the past, multi-faceted Iranian cultures existed.
- ^ a b c MacKenzie, David Niel (1998). "Ērān, Ērānšahr". Encyclopedia Iranica. Vol. 8. Costa Mesa: Mazda. Archived from the original on 13 March 2017. Retrieved 15 January 2012.
- ^ Schmitt, Rüdiger (1987), "Aryans", Encyclopedia Iranica, vol. 2, New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 684–687
- ^ Laroche. 1957. Proto-Iranian *arya- descends from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *ar-yo-, a yo-adjective to a root *ar "to assemble skillfully", present in Greek harma "chariot", Greek aristos, (as in "aristocracy"), Latin ars "art", etc.
- ^ G. Gnoli, "Iranian Identity as a Historical Problem: the Beginnings of a National Awareness under the Achaemenians", in The East and the Meaning of History. International Conference (23–27 November 1992), Roma, 1994, pp. 147–67.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Gnoli, G. "Iranian Identity ii. Pre-Islamic Period". Encyclopedia Iranica. Retrieved 3 February 2019.
- ^ a b c H. W. Bailey, "Arya" in Encyclopedia Iranica. Excerpt: "ARYA an ethnic epithet in the Achaemenid inscriptions and in the Zoroastrian Avestan tradition. "Arya an ethnic epithet in the Achaemenid inscriptions and in the Zoroastrian Avestan tradition". Archived from the original on 3 January 2013. Also accessed online in May 2010.
- ISBN 0-7475-7683-1
- ^ G. Gnoli. "ēr, ēr mazdēsn". Encyclopedia Iranica.
- ^ a b Bailey, Harold Walter (1987). "Arya". Encyclopedia Iranica. Vol. 2. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 681–683. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 15 January 2012.
- ^ cf. Gershevitch, Ilya (1968). "Old Iranian Literature". Handbuch der Orientalistik, Literatur I. Leiden: Brill. pp. 1–31., p. 2.
- ^ a b c R. G. Kent. Old Persian. Grammar, texts, lexicon. 2nd ed., New Haven, Conn.
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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 13th 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.
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Seven groups (Iranian Arabs, Azeris, Gilaks, Kurds, Mazanderanis, Lurs and Persians) strongly overlapped in their overall autosomal diversity in an MDS analysis (Fig 1B), suggesting the existence of a Central Iranian Cluster (CIC), notably also including Iranian Arabs and Azeris. On a global scale (Fig 2 including "Old World" populations only; see S2 Fig for all 1000G populations), CIC Iranians closely clustered with Europeans, while Iranian Turkmen showed similar yet distinct degrees of admixture compared to other South Asians. A local comparison corroborated the distinct genetic diversity of CIC Iranians relative to other geographically close populations [2, 6, 44] (Fig 3 and S3 Fig). Still, genetic substructure was much smaller among Iranian groups than in relation to any of the 1000G populations, supporting the view that the CIC groups form a distinct genetic entity, despite internal heterogeneity. European (FST~0.0105–0.0294), South Asians (FST~0.0141–0.0338), but also some Latin American populations (Puerto Ricans: FST~0.0153–0.0228; Colombians: FST~0.0170–0.0261) were closest to Iranians, whereas Sub-Saharan Africans and admixed Afro-Americans (FST~0.0764–0.1424) as well as East Asians (FST ~ 0.0645–0.1055) showed large degrees of differentiation with Iranians.
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Further reading
- Balanovsky, Oleg, et al. "Deep phylogenetic analysis of haplogroup G1 provides estimates of SNP and STR mutation rates on the human Y-chromosome and reveals migrations of Iranic speakers." PLoS One 10.4 (2015): e0122968.
- Anthony, David W. (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped The Modern World. Princeton University Press.