What is Persian?

1.1 The place of Persian among the families of languages

Persian is a member of the Indo-European family of languages. Indo-European is one of the most widely spoken and diverse families of languages in the world today. It includes, among others, the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Latin, etc.), the Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, etc.), the Germanic languages (English, German, Swedish, etc.), the Celtic languages, Baltic languages, Greek, Armenian, and Albanian. All of these languages, as well as some extinct languages like Tocharian and Illyrian, are thought to originate with a single prehistoric language called Proto-Indo-European, which was spoken between 3000 and 5000 years ago.

The branch of Indo-European that Persian belongs to is known as the Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan branch. It includes both the Indic languages (Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, etc.) spoken in northern India today and the Iranian or (also called Aryan) languages. Persian is the most widely spoken of the Iranian languages today. Other modern-day Iranian languages include Pashto, which is spoken in much of Afghanistan; Tajik, spoken in Tajikistan; and Kurdish, which is spoken in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. There are also several Iranian languages spoken by certain tribes in Iran such as Luri, Baluchi, and Tat. In the past, there were other Iranian languages such as Avestan, the language of the Avesta, a sacred text of the Zoroastrian religion, which was the dominant religion in Iran before the Islamic conquest.

Persian has undergone many changes in the past two millennia, the most significant of which has most certainly been the influence of Arabic since the Islamic conquest of Persia in the year 650. Over the years, Persian has borrowed up to half of its vocabulary from Arabic as well as certain grammatical elements. This impact of Arabic is profound not only because of its magnitude but because the sounds and syntax of Arabic, a Semitic language, are so different than those of Persian. Since the Middle Ages, Persian has been written in a modified form of the Arabic alphabet, although in pre-Islamic times it was written in an older alphabet known as Pahlavi.

1.2 The distribution of Persian

Persian is mostly spoken in Iran. Only about half the population there speaks Persian as a native language, but virtually all educated Iranians are conversant in it. Persian is also spoken as a minority language in Afghanistan, Iraq, Tajikistan, and the Gulf states. In some of the Gulf states, it is spoken by more than 5% or even 10% of the population. In recent years, immigration from Iran has led to the creation of Persian speaking communities in many countries, especially the United States, Europe, Australia, and Israel. The largest urban community of Iranians outside of Iran is in the Los Angeles area, which boasts much Persian cultural life. The largest concentration of Persian speakers outside of Iran, however, is in Afghanistan. Persian speakers in Afghanistan tend to be local ethnic Pushtuns of a relatively educated urban background.

There are several dialects of Persian spoken today. Most are regional dialects spoken in different parts of Iran. A distinct dialect of Persian is also spoken in Afghanistan and a simplified dialect is spoken by people of Iranian descent living in the Gulf states. The most widely spoken dialect is the dialect spoken in Tehran. However, the type of Persian generally taught in schools and universities in Iran and around the world is the standard Dari dialect, which is understood by educated Iranians everywhere. Persian speakers in Afghanistan also call their dialect Dari, but it is distinct from standard Dari. The differences between Dari and Tehran Persian are not great. Some regional dialects may differ more. By and large, the situation is much more manageable than the state of diglossia existing between Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects of Arabic.

1.3 Iranian vs. Persian identity

Iranian (also called Aryan) peoples first crossed the Indus river into the Iranian plateau almost 3000 years ago. The Persians have been the most influential of these peoples and their language has long since served as the common language among Aryans. The name Persian or Farsi is taken from the province of Fars in southern Iran. This region is the cradle of the Persian language and of the Persian empires of old. However, from their earliest days, the Persian empires were not merely Persian ethnic enterprises but conglomerate federations among various Aryan peoples. The name Iran is derived from “Aryan,” indicating a broader ethnic identity. The first Persian dynasty, the Achaemenids, began when Cyrus the Great united the Persians and the Medes in 550 B.C.E. Often, each people had their own king, while the Persian king was known as “king of kings of the Aryans.”

Thus the Iranian national identity has always been that of an ethnic federation and not a nation state. As a modern country, Iran was first known by Westerners as “Persia,” but Reza Shah Pahlavi officially changed it to “Iran” in 1935 to emphasize this difference. Since then, the name Irani or Iranian has come to refer to the civic identity of Iran as a country. The older Aryan remains a collective term for all ethnic groups who speak Iranian (Aryan) languages, many of whom, such as Pushtuns and Tajiks, are native to other countries.

Iran itself remains a multi-ethnic nation. Sizable minorities speak Azeri, Arabic, Kurdish, Armenian and other languages. Many of these groups are not Aryan. Many are not Shiite and some, like the Armenians, are not Muslims. Iran also has the largest Jewish community of any Muslim country today. Yet all Iranians call themselves Irani, regardless of their native language, ethnicity, or religion. This sense of purely civic identity is unique in the Middle East and has provided a national stability that has weathered well through much war and political instability. Despite other problems, Iran has seldom suffered inter-ethnic rivalry or secessionism. At the center of this stability, however, is the unquestioned supremacy of Persian. Iranians with no other ethnic background do not think of themselves as “ethnically Persian,” although this is technically what they are. All Iranians see Persian culture as their own, even if it is not their only culture. Persian is the official language of Iran and it is spoken by most of the population of over 67 million people even though it is the native language of only just over half of them.

1.4 Islamic vs. Persian identity

The Persian Sassanid dynasty that had been a dominant empire in the Middle East was defeated by the Muslim Arabs in the seventh century and Iranians enthusiastically embraced Islam. Persian language and culture went into a decline for several hundred years. During this time, Arabic was the language of study for both religious and secular purposes. Persian remained a spoken language only and even so was greatly influenced by Arabic. The earlier Persian writing system was forgotten as was much of the pre-Islamic religion and folklore. Only in the tenth century did a number of Persian poets and intellectuals begin to use the Arabic writing system to write Persian. It was in this period that much of the “classical” Persian poetry was written by such poets as Hafez, Sa'di, and Ferdowsi. While all of these men were devout Muslims, they actively attempted to stem the flood of Arabic loanwords into Persian and also to revive and preserve certain cultural aspects of pre-Islamic Persian folklore. Ferdowsi's epic Shahnameh or “Book of Kings” tells the legends of pre-Islamic Persian dynasties. There is little historic evidence of the kings described in the Shahnameh. The intention was clearly to create a mythic past within a Persian cultural tradition in a language as uninfluenced by Arabic as possible.

The history of Persian language, culture, and politics since the Middle Ages can be seen as a struggle between the Arab/Islamic and Persian/nativist identities. The country, the language, and the culture are inseparably both Persian and Islamic. On the one hand, the Arab conquest of Iran and the Arabic influence on Persian were followed by a resurgence of Persian cultural nationalism. However, this nativist rebirth led to a greater influence of Persian culture on the Arab and Islamic world as a whole, which led to a closer integration of Persian identity within Islam. In addition to exporting much of their own art (such as miniature painting), architecture, and legal traditions to the larger Islamic world, Persians also excelled in a number of crafts and innovations that were not originally Persian. Persian carpets, for instance, were adapted from traditional designs that had been introduced into the Islamic world via Turkic tribes from central Asia. However, the sophisticated workshops of the Medieval Persian cities set new standards and styles in the art form.


An example of Persian miniature painting.

The Arabic writing system, which had been adopted from the Arabs, was also taken by Persian calligraphers to new levels. Persians even developed a particularly ornate calligraphic style, the so-called nasta'liq shekasteh, which is used almost exclusively for Persian. A semi-antique Persian carpet with nasta'liq shekasteh calligraphy can be seen at the top of this handbook.

The kings of the Safavid dynasty in the late Middle Ages attempted to remove their country from Arab political influence by converting from the majority Sunni Islam to the Shiite minority. This gave the Safavids independence from the rule of the Sunni Arab Caliphs. However, this new independence now made Iran into a new religious center for Shiites all over the Islamic world, as it remains to this day. It also allowed the Persian kings to engage in conquests of their own and create a sizable empire to the East. Unlike the pre-Islamic Persian empires, which were largely Aramaic speaking, this new Islamic Persian empire brought the use of Persian as a language of state and high culture to the cities of Central Asia and the Indian sub-continent. Thus, while Islam was the cause of the massive Arabic influence on the Persian language, it was also the cause of the spread of Persia outside of Iran for the first time in history. It is for this reason that Persian is still spoken among non-Iranians in Afghanistan and that Hindi to this day has so many Persian loanwords. Most of the Arabic loanwords in Hindi entered that language by way of Persian.

In the twentieth century, the kings of the Pahlavi dynasty sought to rid Iran of Arabic influence, including a campaign to replace Arabic loanwords with older Persian ones or new Persian words derived from native roots. Like the Medieval cultural nationalists, they were only partially successful. The Pahlavis also sought to use pre-Islamic Persian monarchial symbols to solidify their rule. This backfired terribly and was followed by a resurgence of Islamicist anti-monarchical sentiment which culminated in the end of the monarchy and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran after the revolution of 1979. The new regime sought to re-emphasize the Islamic identity of Iran at the expense of its nativist identity. However, this campaign too was only partially successful. For instance, in the 1980s, the regime sought to suppress celebration of now ruz, the traditional Zoroastrian new year that most Iranians still celebrate as a national holiday. Iranian identity remains both Persian and Islamic at the same time. This duality is often inherent in the Persian language. In recent years, one can get a good idea of a Persian speaker's political orientation by counting how many Arabic loanwords he uses in public speech.

The dual nature of the Persian language is deeply ingrained, though. Just because Persian is so heavily influenced by Arabic does not mean that Persian speakers know Arabic. Khomeini himself once wrote a book in Arabic in order to solidify his credentials as an Islamic jurisprudent. However, Khomeini's conception of Arabic was so heavily Persian that the book later had to be “translated” into Arabic so that Arabs could understand it. At the same time, even those Persian speakers who attempt to consciously rid their speech of Arabic words are often unaware of just how many words of their language are of Arabic origin.

Given the heavy Arabic influence on Persian identity, foreigners might be forgiven for confusing Iranians with Arabs. However, there is no surer way to insult an Iranian than to call him an Arab.