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PERSIANS 605
Iran and Afghanistan, the Persian-speaking inhabitants, 23 million in Iran, and
600,000 in Afghanistan (where they are generally known as Farsiwan or Parsi
wan, i.e., Persian speakers) comprise nearly 50 percent of the population.
(Tajik, who speak various dialects of Persian, are treated separately here.)
Persian belongs to the Indo-lranian branch of the Indo-European family of
languages and is related to such diverse languages as English and Bengali. It is
the official language of Iran, the language of Iran's government bureaucracies,
educational institutions, the mass media and literature. Dari, a dialect of modern
Persian, is the language of the elite in Afghanistan. Standard Persian, called
Farsi by its speakers, stems from Pahlavi, also known as Middle Persian, which
was the language of the Sassanian period (AD. 224-642) prior to the Arab
conquest of Iran in the seventh century. During the succeeding centuries, Pahlavi
underwent structural transformation by absorbing large amounts of Arabic elements.
The rapid diffusion of Arabic, however, owed its success not so much
to political domination by the Arabs as to Iranian men of letters who adopted
Arabic as their literary medium.
Language was not the only profound change caused by the Arabs. The Islamization
of the Persians was even more consequential. Their religion before the
advent of Islam was Zoroastrianism, a belief system based on an eternal conflict
between the forces of good and evil. As a universal doctrine, it recognized Ahura
Mazda as the God of Good and the Divine Light. (An estimated 50,000 Zoroastrians
known in Iran as Gabres and concentrated in the area of Yazd and
Kerman; a much larger number known as Parsees form small, tightly knit economic
and political elites in South Asia and East Africa.) Today nearly all
Persians are Shia Muslims of the Ithna Ashari denomination.
The Persians were not the earliest inhabitants of Iran. Archeological investigations
near Behshar on the Caspian coast indicate that as early as 10,000 B.C.
the Iranian Plateau was already settled by a hunting and gathering people who
in many ways resembled those of the Upper Paleolithic Europe.
At the beginning of the third millennium B.C., a new ethnic element of Indo-
European origin appeared. The newcomers probably left their Eurasian plains
in southern Russia as a result of population pressure. Archeological evidence
supports the theory that they were pastoralists affected by drought and in search
of pasturage. They came in successive waves but split into two sections. The
western branch rounded the Black Sea and spearheaded into Asia Minor; the
eastern branch consisted mainly of warrior horsemen who went around the Caspian
Sea into the plateau, supplanting the indigenous populations.
The beginning of the first milennium B.C. marked the arrival of the Iranians
(Aryans). Like others of Indo-European origin who came before them, they
penetrated the Iranian Plateau in waves lasting several centuries, apparently using
the same Caucasus and Transoxiana routes as the earlier invaders. They were
pastoralists and, to a lesser extent, agriculturalists.
The Iranians consisted of several tribal groups: Medes, Persians (Parsa), Parthians,
Bactrians, Soghdians, Sacians and Scythians. Over the next four cen-