Iranian Peoples

Iranian Peoples

The Iranian or Iranic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group that comprise the speakers of Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, as such forming a branch of the Indo-European-speaking peoples. Their historical areas of settlement were on the Iranian plateau, and comprised most of Iran and certain areas of Central Asia such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and most of Afghanistan, some parts of western Pakistan, northern Iraq and eastern Turkey, and scattered part of the Caucasus Mountains. Their current distribution spreads across the Iranian plateau, and stretches from Pakistan's Indus River in the east to eastern Turkey in the west, and from Central Asia and the Caucasus in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south – a region that is sometimes called the Iranian cultural continent, or Greater Persia by scholars, and represents the extent of the Iranian languages and influence of the Persian People, through the geopolitical reach of the Persian empire.

The Iranian group emerges from an earlier Iranian group during the Late Bronze Age, and it enters the historical record during the Early Iron Age.

The Iranians comprise the Persians, Medes, Scythians, Bactrians, Parthians, Sarmatians, Alans, Ossetians and their sub-groups. The Iranians had domesticated horses, had travelled far and wide, and from the late 2nd millennium BC to early 1st millennium BC they had migrated to, and settled on, the Iranian Plateau. They moved into the Zagros Mountains (inhabited by Gutians, Kassites and others, home of the Mannaean kingdom) above the indigenous non Iranic Elamite Kingdom. For approximately 3 centuries after arriving in the region, the Medes and Persians fell under the domination of the Assyrian Empire (911-609 BC), based in nearby Mesopotamia. In 646 BC, Susa and many other cities of Elam were plundered and wrecked by Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria, allowing the Iranian peoples to become the predominant group in Iran. After the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BC, the Assyrian Empire began to unravel due to a series of bitter civil wars. In 616 BC the Median king Cyaxares threw off the Assyrian yoke, united the Medes and Persians, and in alliance with Nabopolassar of Babylon and the Scythians, attacked the civil war ridden Assyrian Empire. By 609 BC, the Assyrians and their Egyptian allies had been defeated. This began the Iranian domination in the Iranian Plateau. Persians formed the Achaemenid Empire by the 6th century BC, while the Scythians dominated the Eurasian steppe. 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 the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Indians, and Chinese. The various religions of the Iranian peoples, including Zoroastrianism, Mithraism and Manichaeism, are believed by some scholars to have been significant early philosophical influences on Christianity and Judaism. Early Iranian tribes are the ancestors of modern Iranian peoples.