History
See also: Persian Empire, History of Iran, History of Tajikistan, History of Uzbekistan, and History of Central AsiaThe Persians are believed to be descendents of the Aryan (Indo-Europeans) tribes that began migrating from Central Asia into what is now Iran in the second millennium BCE The Persian language and other Iranian tongues emerged as these Aryan tribes split up into two major groups, the Persians and the Medes, and intermarried with minority peoples indigenous to the Iranian plateau such as the Elamites. The first mention of the Persians dates to the 9th century BCE, when they appear as the Parsu in Assyrian sources, as a people living at the southeastern shores of Lake Urmia.
The ancient Persians from the province of Pars became the rulers of a large empire under the Achaemenid dynasty (Hakhamaneshiyan) in the 6th century BCE, reuniting with the tribes and other provinces of the ancient Iranian plateau and forming the Persian Empire. Over the centuries Persia was ruled by various dynasties; some of them were ethnic Iranians including the Achaemenids, Parthians (Ashkanian), Sassanids (Sassanian), Buwayhids and Samanids, and some of them were not, such as the Seleucids, Ummayyads, Abbasids, and Seljuk Turks.
The founding dynasty of the empire, the Achaemenids, and later the Sassanids, were from the southwestern region of Iran, Pars. The latter Parthian dynasty arose from the north. However, according to archaeological evidence found in modern day Iran in the form of cuneiforms that go back to the Achaemenid era, it is evident that the native name of Parsa (Persia) had been applied to Iran from its birth.
Read more about this topic: Persian People
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)