Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Persians" in English language version.
Persian Architecture.
Persian rugs.
music of persia.
The Pahlavi language (also known as Middle Persian) was the official language of Iran during the Sassanid dynasty (from 3rd to 7th century A. D.). Pahlavi is the direct continuation of old Persian, and was used as the written official language of the country. However, after the Moslem conquest and the collapse of the Sassanids, Arabic became the dominant language of the country and Pahlavi lost its importance, and was gradually replaced by Dari, a variety of Middle Persian, with considerable loan elements from Arabic and Parthian.
People unable to speak properly. Refers to non-Arabs. Connotes cultural and ethnic inferiority. Adjectival form: ajami. Principally used to designate (and eventually synonymous with) Persians.
(...) and Tat (a variety of Persian) (...)
The Northwestern outpost of Persian is Caucasian Tat Persian (...)
It embraces Gilani, Ta- lysh, Tabari, Kurdish, Gabri, and the Tati Persian of the Caucasus, all but the last belonging to the north-western group of Iranian language.
The largest group of people in present-day Iran are Persians (*q.v.) who speak dialects of the language called Fārsi in Persian, since it was primarily the tongue of the people of Fārs."
Conversely, the Nehāvand sub-province of Hamadān is home to ethnic Persians who speak NLori as a mother tongue. (...) The same is true of areas to the southwest, south, and east of the Lori language area (...): while the varieties spoken there show more structural similarity to Lori than to Persian, speakers identify themselves as ethnically Persian.
The name of Fārs is undoubtedly attested in Assyrian sources since the third millennium B.C.E. under the form Parahše. Originally, it was the "land of horses" of the Sumerians (Herzfeld, pp. 181–82, 184–86). The name was adopted by Iranian tribes which established themselves there in the 9th century B.C.E. in the west and southwest of Urmia lake. The Parsua (Pārsa) are mentioned there for the first time in 843 B.C.E., during the reign of Salmanassar III, and then, after they migrated to the southeast (Boehmer, pp. 193–97), the name was transferred, between 690 and 640, to a region previously called Anšan (q.v.) in Elamite sources (Herzfeld, pp. 169–71, 178–79, 186). From that moment the name acquired the connotation of an ethnic region, the land of the Persians, and the Persians soon thereafter founded the vast Achaemenid empire. A never-ending confusion thus set in between a narrow, limited, geographical usage of the term—Persia in the sense of the land where the aforesaid Persian tribes had shaped the core of their power—and a broader, more general usage of the term to designate the much larger area affected by the political and cultural radiance of the Achaemenids. The confusion between the two senses of the word was continuous, fueled by the Greeks who used the name Persai to designate the entire empire.
In 550 B.C. Cyrus (called "the Great" by the Greeks) overthrew the Median empire under Astyages and brought the Persians into domination over the Iranian peoples; he achieved combined rule over all Iran as the first real monarch of the Achaemenid dynasty. Within a few years he founded a multinational empire without precedent—a first world-empire of historical importance, since it embraced all previous civilized states of the ancient Near East. (...) The Persian empire was a multinational state under the leadership of the Persians; among these peoples the Medes, Iranian sister nation of the Persians, held a special position.
By mid-Safavid times the usage tājik for 'Persian(s) of Iran' may be considered a literary affectation, an expression of the traditional rivalry between Men of the Sword and Men of the Pen. Pietro della Valle, writing from Isfahan in 1617, cites only Pārsi and ʿAjami as autonyms for the indigenous Persians, and Tāt and raʿiat 'peasant(ry), subject(s)' as pejorative heteronyms used by the Qezelbāš (Qizilbāš) Torkmān elite. Perhaps by about 1400, reference to actual Tajiks was directed mostly at Persian-speakers in Afghanistan and Central Asia; (...)
The Achaemenid clan possibly ruled over the Persian tribes already in the 9th century B.C., when they were still settled in northern Iran near Lake Urmia and tributary to the Assyrians. Of a king with the name Achaemenes there is no historical evidence; but it may have been under him that the Persians, under the pressure of Medes, Assyrians, and Urartians, migrated south into the Zagros region, where they founded, near the Elamite borders, the small state Parsumaš (with residence at present-day Masǰed-e Solaymān in the Baḵtīārī mountains, according to R. Ghirshman).
Of the numerous Iranian tribes who had settled in Iranian plateau, it was the Medes (...) who grew in power and achieved prominence. (...) Finally in 612 B.C.E. and in alliance with the Babylonians, he attacked the Assyrian capital, Nineveh. Their combined forces succeeded in bringing the Assyrian Empire down, thus eliminating a power that had ruled with ruthless efficiency over the Middle East for several centuries. (...) Achaemenes (q.v.; Haxāmaniš), eponymous ancestor of the Achaemenids according to Darius I, formed a kingdom in the Elamite territory of Anshan in Fārs as a vassal of the Median king (...).
The inscriptions of Darius I (...) and Xerxes, in which the different provinces of the empire are listed, make it clear that, between the end of the 6th century and the middle of the 5th century B.C.E., the Persians were already aware of belonging to the ariya "Iranian" nation (...). Darius and Xerxes boast of belonging to a stock which they call "Iranian": they proclaim themselves "Iranian" and "of Iranian stock," ariya and ariya čiça respectively, in inscriptions in which the Iranian countries come first in a list that is arranged in a new hierarchical and ethno-geographical order, compared for instance with the list of countries in Darius's inscription at Behistun (...). All this evidence shows that the name arya "Iranian" 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 Ahura Mazdā. (...) Although, up until the end of the Parthian period, Iranian identity had an ethnic, linguistic, and religious value, it did not yet have a political import. The idea of an "Iranian" empire or kingdom is a purely Sasanian one. (...) It was in the Sasanian period, then, that the pre-Islamic Iranian identity reached the height of its fulfilment in every aspect: political, religious, cultural, and linguistic (with the growing diffusion of Middle Persian). Its main ingredients were the appeal to a heroic past that was identified or confused with little-known Achaemenid origins (...), and the religious tradition, for which the Avesta was the chief source.
Only the official languages Old, Middle, and New Persian represent three stages of one and the same language, whereas close genetic relationships are difficult to establish between other Middle and Modern Iranian languages. Modern Yaḡnōbi belongs to the same dialect group as Sogdian, but is not a direct descendant; Bac-trian may be closely related to modern Yidḡa and Munji (Munjāni); and Wakhi (Wāḵi) belongs with Khotanese. (...) New Persian, the descendant of Middle Persian and official language of Iranian states for centuries, is today spoken widely in and outside Iran in a number of variants.
Safavid inscriptions on the pre Islamic monuments (e.g., Persepolis and Bīsotūn) perhaps presage that wholesale adoption of and identification with ancient Iran that later characterized the Qajars, but there are not enough inscriptions to clinch the point. (...) An unexpected burst of activity in secular architecture marks the 17th century. Bridges which have wider functions than carrying traffic were built, reviving Sasanian custom (...). (...) Qajar decoration is usually unmistakable. Simple, rather strident tiled geometric or epigraphic designs in small glazed bricks were especially popular. The repertory of cuerda seca tiles now included episodes from the epic and legendary past, portraits of Europeans, scenes from modern life, and the country's heraldic blazon of the lion and the sun (...). Pavilions and palaces bore figural paintings which revived Sasanian royal iconography (Negārestān palace, Tehran) or betrayed the influence of European illustrated magazines or painted postcards depicting landscapes and tourist spots (...).
Typical of comparable nationalist historiographies in the early part of the 20th century (e.g., Greek, Italian, Egyptian, and Turkish), the state-sponsored historical narrative under the Pahlavis decidedly favored highlighting the might and glory of the ancient Persian empires, as supported by new archeological and textual evidences. (...) Moreover, promotion of the ancient past as a wholesale propaganda tool in the service of the state engendered nationalistic pride that proved detrimental to dispassionate historical inquiry. (...) The most visible change in the nationalist historiography under Reżā Shah was emphasis on the pre-Islamic, and particularly the Achaemenid, past.
