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Iranian peoples, or Iranic peoples, are the collective ethnolinguistic groups who are identified chiefly by their native usage of any of the Iranian languages, which are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages within the Indo-European language family.
The Proto-Iranians are believed to have emerged as a separate branch of the Indo-Iranians in Central Asia around the mid-2nd millennium BC. At their peak of expansion in the mid-1st millennium BC, the territory of the Iranian peoples stretched across the entire Eurasian Steppe; from the Danube in the west to the Ordos Plateau in the east and the Iranian Plateau in the south.: "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."
The ancient Iranian peoples who emerged after the 1st millennium BC include the Alans, the , the Dahae, the , the Massagetae, the Medes, the , the Persians, the Sagartians, the Saka, the Sarmatians, the Scythians, the , 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 Eurasia, was significantly reduced due to the expansion of the Slavs, the Germanic peoples, the Turkic peoples, and the Mongolic peoples; many were subjected to Slavicisation (1977). 9780804709101, Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804709101 and Turkification. Modern Iranian peoples include the Baloch people, the Gilaks, the Kurds, the Lurs, the Mazanderanis, the Ossetians, the Pamiris, the Pashtuns, the Persians, the Tats, the Tajiks, the Talysh people, the Wakhi people, the Yaghnobis, and the Zazas. Their current distribution spreads across the Iranian Plateau stretching from the Caucasus in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south and from eastern Anatolia in the west to western Xinjiang in the east covering a region that is sometimes called Greater Iran, representing the extent of the Iranian-speaking peoples and the reach of their geopolitical and cultural influence.: "Iran means all lands and people where Iranian languages were and are spoken, and where in the past, multi-faceted Iranian cultures existed."
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:
Unlike the Sanskrit ārya- ( Aryan), the Old Iranian term has solely an ethnic meaning.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. Today, the Old Iranian arya- remains in ethno-linguistic names such as Iran, Alans, Ossetians, and Iron dialect.H. W. Bailey, "Arya" in Encyclopedia Iranica. Excerpt: "ARYA an ethnic epithet in the Achaemenid inscriptions and in the Zoroastrian Avestan tradition. Also accessed online in May 2010.Dalby, Andrew (2004), Dictionary of Languages, Bloomsbury,
In the Iranian languages, the gentilic is attested as a self-identifier included in ancient inscriptions and the literature of Avesta. The earliest epigraphy attested reference to the word arya- occurs in the Bistun Inscription of the 6th century BC. The inscription of Bistun (or Behistun; ) describes itself to have been composed in Arya language. As is also the case for all other Old Iranian language usage, the arya of the inscription does not signify anything but Iranian. cf. , p. 2.
In royal Old Persian inscriptions, the term arya- appears in three different contexts:
The trilingual inscription erected by the command of Shapur I gives a more clear description. The languages used are Parthian, Middle Persian, and Greek. In Greek inscription says "ego ... tou Arianon ethnous despotes eimi", which translates to "I am the king of the kingdom ( nation) of the Iranians". In Middle Persian, Shapur says "ērānšahr xwadāy hēm" and in Parthian he says "aryānšahr xwadāy ahēm".MacKenzie D.N. Corpus inscriptionum Iranicarum Part. 2., inscription of the Seleucid and Parthian periods of Eastern Iran and Central Asia. Vol. 2. Parthian, London, P. Lund, Humphries 1976–2001
The Avesta clearly uses airiia- as an ethnic name (Vendidad 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"). In the late part of the Avesta (Videvdat 1), one of the mentioned homelands was referred to as Airyanem Vaejah 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).
The Old Persian and Avestan evidence is confirmed by the Greek sources. Herodotus, in his Histories, remarks about the Iranian Medes that "Medes were called anciently by all people Arians" (7.62). In Armenian sources, the Parthians, Medes and Persians are collectively referred to as Iranians.R.W. Thomson. History of Armenians by Moses Khorenat’si. Harvard University Press, 1978. Pg 118, pg 166 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.
Strabo, in his Geographica (1st century AD), mentions of the Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Sogdians of the Iranian Plateau and Transoxiana of antiquity:The "Aryan" Language, Gherardo Gnoli, Instituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, Roma, 2002
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 Province, clearly refers to this Eastern Iranian language as Arya.N. Sims-Williams, "Further notes on the Bactrian inscription of Rabatak, with the Appendix on the name of Kujula Kadphises and VimTatku in Chinese". Proceedings of the Third European Conference of Iranian Studies (Cambridge, September 1995). Part 1: Old and Middle Iranian Studies, N. Sims-Williams, ed. Wiesbaden, pp 79-92
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.
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.
The Indo-Iranian migrations took place in two waves. The first wave consisted of the Indo-Aryan migration through the Bactria-Margiana Culture, also called "Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex," into the Levant, founding the Mitanni kingdom; and a migration south-eastward of the Vedic people, over the Hindu Kush into northern India. The Indo-Aryans split off around 1800–1600 BC from the Iranians, whereafter they were defeated and split into two groups by the Iranians, who dominated the Central Eurasian steppe zone and "chased the to the extremities of Central Eurasia." One group were the Indo-Aryans who founded the Mitanni kingdom in northern Syria; () the other group were the Vedic people. Christopher I. Beckwith suggests that the Wusun, an Indo-European Caucasian race people of Inner Asia in Ancient history, were also of Indo-Aryan origin.
The second wave is interpreted as the Iranian wave, and took place in the third stage of the Indo-European migrations from 800 BC onwards.
The Sintashta culture emerged from the interaction of two antecedent cultures. Its immediate predecessor in the Ural-Tobol steppe was the Poltavka culture, an offshoot of the cattle-herding Yamna culture that moved east into the region between 2800 and 2600 BC. Several Sintashta towns were built over older Poltavka settlements or close to Poltavka cemeteries, and Poltavka motifs are common on Sintashta pottery. Sintashta material culture also shows the influence of the late Abashevo culture, a collection of Corded Ware settlements in the forest steppe zone north of the Sintashta region that were also predominantly pastoralism. Allentoft et al. (2015) also found close AuDNA genetic relationship between peoples of Corded Ware culture and Sintashta culture.
The earliest known 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.. Sintashta settlements are also remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy carried out there, which is unusual for a steppe culture..
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. It is now recognised as a separate entity forming part of the 'Andronovo horizon'.
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, Srubna culture in the Volga-Ural River interfluvial. To the east, it reaches into the Minusinsk depression, with some sites as far west as the southern Ural Mountains, overlapping with the area of the earlier Afanasevo culture. Additional sites are scattered as far south as the Koppet Dag (Turkmenistan), the Pamir Mountains (Tajikistan) and the Tian Shan (Kyrgyzstan). The northern boundary vaguely corresponds to the beginning of the Taiga. In the Volga basin, interaction with the Srubna culture was the most intense and prolonged, and Federovo style pottery is found as far west as Volgograd.
Most researchers associate the Andronovo horizon with early Indo-Iranian languages, though it may have overlapped the early Uralic languages-speaking area at its northern fringe.
The archeological features of the Yaz culture are seen as the results of the intrusion of nomadic Indo-Iranians from the northern Andronovo culture and their interaction with indigenous traditions from the preceding BMAC culture.
Scythian tribes, along with Cimmerians, Sarmatians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea. The and Sarmatian tribes were spread across Great Hungarian Plain, South-Eastern Ukraine, Russias , Southern Russia, Volga, Uralic regions and the Balkans,Carl Waldman, Catherine Mason. "Encyclopedia of European Peoples", Infobase Publishing, 2006. p 692Prudence Jones. Nigel Pennick. "A History of Pagan Europe", Routledge, 11 okt. 2. p 10Ion Grumeza "Dacia: Land of Transylvania, Cornerstone of Ancient Eastern Europe", University Press of America, 16 May 2009. pp 19–21 while other Scythian tribes, such as the Saka, spread as far east as Xinjiang, China.
At first, the Western Iranian peoples in the Near East were dominated by the various Assyrian people empires. An alliance of the Medes with the Persian people, and rebelling Babylonians, Scythians, , and Cimmerians, helped the Medes to capture Nineveh in 612 BC, which resulted in the eventual collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire by 605 BC.A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 1964 The Medes were subsequently able to establish their Median kingdom (with Ecbatana as their royal centre) beyond their original homeland and had eventually a territory stretching roughly from northeastern Iran to the Halys River in Anatolia. After the fall of the Assyrian Empire, between 616 BC and 605 BC, a unified Median state was formed, which, together with Babylonia, Lydia, and Ancient Egypt, became one of the four major powers of the ancient Near East
Later on, in 550 BC, Cyrus the Great, would overthrow the leading Median rule, and conquer Lydia and the Babylonian Empire after which he established the Achaemenid Empire (or the First Persian Empire), while his successors would dramatically extend its borders. At its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire would encompass swaths of territory across three continents, namely Europe, Africa and Asia, stretching from the Balkans and Eastern Europe proper in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east. The largest empire of ancient history, with their base in Persis (although the main capital was located in Babylon) the Achaemenids would rule much of the known ancient world for centuries. This First Persian Empire was equally notable for its successful model of a centralised, bureaucratic administration (through under a king) and a government working to the profit of its subjects, for building infrastructure such as a Chapar Khaneh and royal road and the use of an official language across its territories and a large professional army and civil services (inspiring similar systems in later empires),Schmitt Achaemenid dynasty (i. The clan and dynasty) and for emancipation of slaves including the Jewish exiles in Babylon, and is noted in Western history as the antagonist of the Polis during the Greco-Persian Wars. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was built in the empire as well.
The Greco-Persian Wars resulted in the Persians being forced to withdraw from their 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 Behistun Inscription (c. 519 BC), recording a proclamation by Darius the Great. "Avestan , etymology and concept by Alexander Lubotsky" – Sprache und Kultur. Akten der X. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, 22.-28. September 1996, ed. W. Meid, Innsbruck (IBS) 1998, 479–488. . Retrieved 4 June 2006. In southwestern Iran, the Achaemenid kings usually wrote their inscriptions in trilingual form (Elamite language, Babylonian and Old Persian)R. G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, texts and lexicon. while elsewhere other languages were used. The administrative languages were Elamite in the early period, and later Imperial Aramaic,R. Hallock (1969), Persepolis Fortification Tablets; A. L. Driver (1954), Aramaic Documents of the V Century BC. as well as Ancient Greek, making it a widely used bureaucratic language. Greek and Iranian, E. Tucker, A History of Ancient Greek: From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity, ed. Anastasios-Phoivos Christidēs, Maria Arapopoulou, Maria Chritē, (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 780. Even though the Achaemenids had extensive contacts with the Greeks and vice versa, and had conquered many of the Greek-speaking area's both in Europe and Asia Minor during different periods of the empire, the native Old Iranian sources provide no indication of Greek linguistic evidence. However, there is plenty of evidence (in addition to the accounts of Herodotus) that Greeks, apart from being deployed and employed in the core regions of the empire, also evidently lived and worked in the heartland of the Achaemenid Empire, namely Iran. For example, Greeks were part of the various ethnicities that constructed Darius' palace in Susa, apart from the Greek inscriptions found nearby there, and one short Persepolis tablet written in Greek.
The early inhabitants of the Achaemenid Empire appear to have adopted the religion of Zoroastrianism. "Kurdish: An Indo-European Language By Siamak Rezaei Durroei" – University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics. . Retrieved 4 June 2006. The Baloch people who speak a west Iranian language relate an oral tradition regarding their migration from Aleppo, Syria around the year 1000 AD, whereas linguistic evidence links Balochi language to Kurmanji, Soranî, Gorani and Zazaki language. "The Iranian Language Family, Khodadad Rezakhani" – Iranologie. . Retrieved 4 June 2006.
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 Ancient Rome, 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 Early Slavs-Slavs population of the region.
The Sarmatians differed from the Scythians in their veneration of the god of fire rather than god of nature, and women's prominent role in warfare, which possibly served as the inspiration for the Amazons. At their greatest reported extent, around the 1st century AD, these tribes ranged from the Vistula River to the mouth of the Danube and eastward to the Volga, bordering the shores of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea Seas as well as the Caucasus to the south. Their territory, which was known as Sarmatia to Greco-Roman ethnographers, corresponded to the western part of greater Scythia (mostly modern Ukraine and Southern Russia, also to a smaller extent north eastern Balkans around Moldova). According to authors Arrowsmith, Fellowes and Graves Hansard in their book A Grammar of Ancient Geography published in 1832, Sarmatia had two parts, Sarmatia Europea and Sarmatia Asiatica covering a combined area of 503,000 sq mi or 1,302,764 km2.
Throughout the 1st millennium AD, the large presence of the Sarmatians who once dominated Ukraine, Southern Russia, and swaths of the Carpathians, gradually started to diminish mainly due to assimilation and absorption by the Germanic peoples Goths, especially from the areas near the Roman frontier, but only completely by the Proto-Slavic peoples. The abundant East Iranian-derived toponyms in Eastern Europe proper (e.g. some of the largest rivers; the Dniestr and Dniepr), as well as loanwords adopted predominantly through the Eastern Slavic languages and adopted aspects of Iranian culture amongst the early Slavs, are all a remnant of this. A connection between Proto-Slavonic and Iranian languages is also furthermore proven by the earliest layer of in the former. For instance, the Proto-Slavonic words for god (*bogъ), demon (*divъ), house (*xata), axe (*toporъ) and dog (*sobaka) are of Scythian origin.
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 dualism, of good and evil.
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, Huns and ultimately Slavic migrations and invasions.A History of Russia by Nicholas Riasanovsky, pp. 11–18, Russia before the Russians, . Retrieved 4 June 2006. Another group of Alans allied with Goths to defeat the Romans and ultimately settled in what is now called Catalonia (Goth-Alania).The Sarmatians: 600 BC-AD 450 (Men-at-Arms) by Richard Brzezinski and Gerry Embleton, 19 August 2002
Some of the Saka-Scythian tribes in Central Asia would later move further southeast and invade the Iranian Plateau, large sections of present-day Afghanistan and finally deep into present day Pakistan (see Indo-Scythians). Another Iranian tribe related to the Saka-Scythians were the Parni in Central Asia, and who later become indistinguishable from the Parthian Empire, speakers of a northwest-Iranian language. Many Iranian tribes, including the , Massagetae and Sogdiana, were assimilated and/or displaced in Central Asia by the migrations of Turkic people tribes emanating out of Xinjiang and Siberia. "Jeannine Davis-Kimball, Archaeologist" – Thirteen WNET New York. Retrieved 4 June 2006.
The modern Sarikoli in southern Xinjiang and the Ossetians of the Caucasus (mainly South Ossetia and North Ossetia) are remnants of the various Scythian-derived tribes from the vast far and wide territory they once dwelled in. The modern Ossetians are the descendants of the Alano-Sarmatians,James Minahan, "One Europe, Many Nations", Published by Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000. pg 518: "The Ossetians, calling themselves Iristi and their homeland Iryston are the most northerly Iranian people. ... They are descended from a division of Sarmatians, the Alans who were pushed out of the Terek River lowlands and in the Caucasus foothills by invading Huns in the 4th century CE. and their claims are supported by their Northeast Iranian language, while culturally the Ossetians resemble their North Caucasus neighbors, the and Circassians.From Scythia to Camelot by Littleton and Malcor, pp. 40–43, . Retrieved 4 June 2006. Various extinct Iranian peoples existed in the eastern Caucasus, including the Azaris, while some Iranian peoples remain in the region, including the Talysh people "Report for Talysh" – Ethnologue. Retrieved 4 June 2006. and the Tats "Report for Tats" – Ethnologue. . Retrieved 4 June 2006. found in Azerbaijan and as far north as the Russian republic of Dagestan. A remnant of the Sogdians is found in the Yaghnobi-speaking population in parts of the Zeravshan valley in Tajikistan.
Starting with the reign of Umar in 634 AD, Muslim began a conquest of the Iranian Plateau. The Arabs conquered the Sassanid Empire of the Persians and seized much of the Byzantine Empire populated by the Kurds and others. Ultimately, the various Iranian peoples, including the Persians, Pashtuns, Kurds and Balochis, converted to Islam, while the Alans converted to Christianity, thus laying the foundation for the fact that the modern-day Ossetians are Christian. The Iranian peoples would later split along sectarian lines as the Persians adopted the SHIA Islam sect. As ancient tribes and identities changed, so did the Iranian peoples, many of whom assimilated foreign cultures and peoples.The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates by Hugh Kennedy, (retrieved 4 June 2006), p. 135
Later, during the 2nd millennium AD, the Iranian peoples would play a prominent role during the age of Islamic expansion and empire. Saladin, a noted adversary of the , was an ethnic Kurd, while various empires centered in Iran (including the Safavid dynasty) re-established a modern dialect of Persian as the official language spoken throughout much of what is today Iran and the Caucasus. Iranian influence was also an principal factor in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Turks integrated Persian into their court, governance, and daily life. Supported by the sultans, nobility, and spiritual leaders, Persian was promoted as a second language, intertwining with Turkish and greatly influencing Ottoman cultural traditions. However, a heavy Turko-Persian basis in Anatolia was set already by the predecessors of the Ottomans, namely the Sultanate of Rum and Anatolian Beyliks amongst others) as well to the court of the Mughal Empire. All of the major Iranian peoples reasserted their use of Iranian languages following the decline of Arab rule, but would not begin to form modern nationalism identities until the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Inspired by European and Turkish Nationalism, Reza Shah Pahlavi's regime crafted an artificial narrative of Iranian history centered on Persian ethnic unity over 2,500 years. This contradicted the historical reality, as previous Iranian dynasties, such as the Qajar dynasty and Safavid dynasty, were of Azerbaijanis origin, and the Persian Empire itself historically united diverse peoples through imperial administration and Persian language as a lingua franca rather than ethnicity. This nationalistic approach extended as far as to the Gulf Arab states where the Iranian migrants lived; as such, anything that happened in Iran that was annoying to these countries, the pressure was immediately put on Iranians living in Bahrain, in Kuwait, or the rest of the Gulf in general. Alt URL Reza Shah's policies were mainly influenced by Aryanism, a Colonialism-era ideology linking language with ethnicity. This framework, which tied the Indo-European language family to an imagined migration of an Aryan nation, shaped nationalist projects in Europe and Iran. Aryanism conveniently justified European colonial views of Indian and Persian civilizations while influencing Iranian nationalism to adopt an exclusionary identity framework. Author Mehran Kokherdi Author states that the term Persians is used to refer to all groups with original Parsi roots, including the inhabitants of villages scattered across Persia who still speak their Middle Persian. However, the term has also come to describe the populations of major cities (e.g. Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan) more broadly, who consist of a blend of various ethnic groups, all unified by their use of New Persian—a Iranian Persian that incorporates elements from Arabic, Turkish language, French language, Russian language, Mongolian, and Parsi. Based on their shared language, the people of Iran generally identify them as Persians. This leads many scholars to believe that the term "Iranian" is more encompassing and inclusive of these various ethnic groups (Iranic people, and ethnic groups in Iran). It's worth noting that many groups such as the Kurds, do not refer to themselves as such (Persian), despite their Iranic/Iranian roots.
Due to recent migrations, there are also large communities of speakers of Iranian languages in Europe and the Americas.
| + List of Iranian peoples with the respective groups' core areas of settlements and their estimated sizes | |||||
| Dehwar people | ? | Persian language with a dialect known as Dehwari language | & ( region) | ? | |
| Farsiwan | ? | Persian language with a Kabuli, Khorasani dialect | ? | ||
| Achomi people(Laristanis/Khodmoonis) | Western Iranian, Persians tribe (Ira and Utians) | Achomi language/Lari, a Branch of Southwestern Middle Persian, in addition to Persian language (Iranian Persian), and Arabic (Gulf Arabic) | Primarily Southwestern (Irahistan, Larestan region). Notable presence in Shiraz Alt URL and Arab Gulf states , , , , ). | 0.5–1,000,000 | |
| Basseri | Western Iranian, Persians tribe (Pasargadean) | Basseri dialect | Southwestern , Fars province, Shiraz | 72,000 | |
| Gilaki people, Mazanderanis And Semnani people | Western Iranian, Possibly Medes / Parthia | Gilaki language, Mazandrani, Branches of Northwestern Median language/Parthian... | Northwestern | 5–10,000,000 | |
| Kurdish people; Zaza people, Yazidis, Shabaks | Western Iranian, Medes | Kurdish language, Northwestern
| Historical Homeland: , , , ( Kurdistan) Notable presence in: , , , and . | 30–40,000,000 A rough estimate in this edition gives populations of 14.3 million in Turkey, 8.2 million in Iran, about 5.6 to 7.4 million in Iraq, and less than 2 million in Syria, which adds up to approximately 28–30 million Kurds in Kurdistan or in adjacent regions. The CIA estimates are – Turkey: Kurdish 18%, of 81.6 million; Iran: Kurd 10%, of 81.82 million; Iraq: Kurdish 15–20%, of 37.01 million, Syria: Kurds, Armenians, and other 9.7%, of 17.01 million. | |
| Feyli | Western Iranian, possibly Medes / Parthia | Feyli or Ilami | , | 1,500,000 | |
Lurs
| Western Iranian, Elam, Kassites, Gutian people, and possibly Persians | Luri language, a branch of Southwestern Middle Persian with close kinship to New Persian | Historical Homeland: , Lorestan region. Notable presence in: , , (Bakhtiaris), and | . | 6,000,000 |
| Baloch people | Western Iranian, possibly Medes / Parthia (?) | Balochi language | Historial Homeland: & ( region) Notable presence in: , , , , , . | 20–22,000,000 | |
| Iranian Azeris
| Western Iranian, possibly Medes / Parthia | Old Azeri (extinct), Talysh language, Tati | , | 1.5,000,000 | |
| Tajik people | Eastern Iranian, Sogdia and the Bactria. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan : country studies Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, page 206 | Persian language aka New Persian (Dari, & Tajik language) | , | 8-15,000,000 (2024) | |
| Yaghnobi people | Eastern Iranian, Sogdian language | Yaghnobi language, a descendant of Eastern Iranian Sogdian language | and (Zerafshan River) | 25,000 | |
| Pashtuns | Eastern Iranian, Various groups | Pashto | , | 60-70,000,000 | |
Pamiris
| Eastern Iranian, Saka (Scythians), Tocharians, Dardistan tribes, as well as pre-Indo-European groups. | Pamir languages | , , (Xinjiang), | 300,000–350,000 | |
| Ossetians | Eastern Iranian, Iazyges tribe of the Sarmatians, an Alans sub-tribe, which split off from Scythian. | Ossetian language | (South Ossetia), (North Ossetia), | 700,000 | |
| Kumzari people | Various ? | Kumzari language | (Musandam) | 5,500 ~ | |
Zoroastrianism
| Western Iranian? Persian tribes? | Avestan (liturgical language), Zoroastrian Dari (Iranis) | , | 202,604 ~ |
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. 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.
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.
Nowadays, most Iranian people follow Islam (Sunnism, followed by Shi'ism), with minorities following Christianity, Judaism, Mandaeism, Iranian religions and various levels of irreligion.
The following either partially descend from or are sometimes regarded as descendants of the Iranian peoples.
The BMAC population largely derived from preceding local Copper Age peoples who were in turn related to Neolithic farmers from the Iranian plateau and to a lesser extent early Anatolian farmers, as well as West Siberian hunter-gatherers. The samples extracted from the BMAC sites did not have derived any part of their ancestry from the Yamnaya people, who are associated with Proto-Indo-Europeans, although some peripheral samples did already carry significant Yamnaya-like Western Steppe Herders ancestry, inline with the southwards expansion of Western Steppe Herders from the Sintashta and Andronovo cultures towards Southern Central Asia at c. 2100 BCE.
The Yaz culture of Margiana, Bactria and Sogdia was characterised by a combination of BMAC and Andronovo ancestries. Likewise, a 2022 study also shows that the ancestry of modern Tajiks and Yaghnobis largely formed during the early Iron Age by a mixture between these two groups.
Two large – scale papers by Haber (2012) and Di Cristofaro (2013) 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:
A 2024 study by Vallini et al. stated that ancient and modern populations in the Iranian plateau have a similar genetic component to the Ancient West Eurasian lineage which stayed in the 'population hub' (WEC2). But they also display some ancestry from and Ancient East Eurasians via contact events starting in the Paleolithic.
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