Persians

Persians (/ˈpɜːrʒənz/ PUR-zhənz), or the Persian people (Persian: مردم فارس), are an Iranian ethnic group from West Asia. They are indigenous to the Iranian plateau and comprise the majority of the population of Iran. Alongside having a common cultural system, they are native speakers of the Persian language and of the Western Iranian languages that are closely related to it. In the Western world, "Persian" was largely understood as a demonym for all Iranians rather than as an ethnonym for the Persian people, but this understanding shifted in the 20th century.

The Persians were originally an ancient Iranian people who had migrated to Persis (also called "Persia proper" and corresponding with Iran's Fars Province) by the 9th century BCE. They came from an earlier group called the Proto-Iranians, who likely split from the Indo-Iranians around 1800 BCE. Together with their compatriots, they established and ruled some of the world's most powerful empires, which are well-recognized for their massive cultural, political, and social influence in the ancient Near East and beyond. The Persian people have contributed greatly to art and science, and Persian literature is one of the world's most prominent literary traditions both inside and outside of Iran. The regional prestige of their civilization was the basis for the development of many noteworthy Persianate societies, especially among the Turkic peoples, throughout Central Asia and South Asia.

In contemporary terminology, Persian-speaking people from Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are known as Tajiks, with the former two countries having mutually intelligible Persian varieties known as Dari and Tajiki, respectively; whereas those from the Caucasus (primarily in the Republic of Azerbaijan and in Dagestan, Russia), albeit heavily assimilated, are known as Tats. Historically, however, the terms Tajik and Tat were used synonymously and interchangeably with Persian. Many influential Persian figures hailed from outside of Iran's modern borders—to the northeast in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and, to a lesser extent, to the northwest in the Caucasus proper.