Iranian

Iranians are usually translated as Iranians, but because of the historical background of Iran , they have two different meanings, so it is necessary to differentiate them.

In everyday language today, Iranians almost always refers to the people of the modern Islamic Republic of Iran . On the other hand, in history, sociology, linguistics, and anthropology texts, it is also used to refer to Iranian peoples whose mother tongue is a language belonging to the Iranian language family . They make up the majority of the population in Iran , Afghanistan , and Tajikistan, and live in Turkey , Iraq , Syria , Pakistan , Turkmenistan , Uzbekistan , Kyrgyzstan , Russia , Georgia , and China .

The etymology of Iran is the ancient Indo-Iranian word Arya, which is well known as the Aryan name.

Some scholars distinguish people from the Islamic Republic of Iran by writing "Iranian" and people of Iranian descent as "Iranic". Academically, when referring to Turkic peoples, people of modern Turkiye Republic are written as "Turkish" and Turkic peoples are distinguished by writing "Turkic", or when referring to Germanic peoples, people of modern Federal Republic of Germany are written as "Germans" and Germanic peoples. The lineage tribe follows the usage of distinguishing it by writing it as "Germanic". However, it is still not widely used.

Persian , the official language of Iran , is sometimes written as Iranian, but although it does not matter in everyday language, it is avoided as much as possible in history, language, and anthropology texts because it is indistinguishable from other Iranian languages.

Ethnic map of Iran. Pink - Persian , light blue - Azerbaijani , brown - Kurdish , blue - Ruhrian , green - Arab , grey-brown - Baluchi

Iran is a multi-ethnic country made up of several ethnic groups , and the ethnic composition in 2022 is as follows.

Azerbaijanis, the most numerous ethnic minority , are Turkic, and although there are minor ethnic conflicts, they rarely escalate into serious situations. Mojtaba Khamenei, the current supreme leader of Iran's theocratic system, is also Azerbaijani. The Gilak people, Mazanderans, Lur people, etc. are considered Iranian peoples close to the Persians and are not greatly differentiated, and historically there was not much discrimination. Karim Khan, the founder of the Zand dynasty, which is also classified as a Persian dynasty, was also a Rurian, and Reza Shah Pahlavi , the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, was actually a Mazanderan. On the other hand, Arabs, Kurds, and Baluch people have waged separatist struggles and have been severely suppressed and massacred. Even in the 2020s, there are ethnic conflicts and separatist movements, but their power is weak. However, during the 2022 Iranian protests, when the Kurds temporarily took control of some border cities, they asked the Peshmerga of Iraqi Kurdistan to intervene.

If you look at soccer players, there are surprisingly many non-Persian bloodlines. For example, Hodadad Ajizi (خداداد عزیزی) is of Turkic Hazara descent, who looks like an openly oriental , Ali Daei (علی دایی) is of Azerbaijani Turkic descent , and Andranik Teymurian (آندرانيک تيموريان) is of Armenian descent, Medi . Madavikia (مهدی مهدوی‌کیا) is of Indian descent , Sardar Azmoun is of Turkmen descent.

Although the ethnic groups are diverse, statistics show that 99% of the population believes in Islam . Among them, 90% believe in the Twelve Imams, a branch of Shia , but in terms of area, the eastern and western border areas have a significant number of Kurds/Turkmen/Baluchs who believe in Sunni Islam.

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They live mainly in northwest and northeast Iran. While the Kurds in Iraq, Turkiye, and Syria are mostly Sunni, the Kurds in Iran are mostly Shia. However, due to the nature of the Kurds, who lead a closed, self-sufficient life in isolated mountainous areas, Iranian Kurds often believe in minority sects such as Shabakism and Ali Illaikhism.

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The Baluch people are a Sunni ethnic group that is different from Iran's mainstream Shiites , and conflict is occurring due to strong separatism in Balochistan . The Baluch people within the territory of the Qajar dynasty became the Baluch people of today's Iran, and the Baluch people within the territory of the Barakzai dynasty became part of Pakistan, while the Baloch people within the territory of Balochistan, which was part of the British Indian Empire in present-day Afghanistan, became part of Pakistan .

Percentage of Arabs in Iran. They can be seen concentrated in the Khuzestan (Khojestan) region.



Unique traditional clothing of Arab women from Bushehr to Bandar Abbas[1]

In the Khuzestan region adjacent to Iraq, Arabs live and speak Arabic . The proportion is about 3%. There was once an Arabistan separatist movement, but it was suppressed and remains quiet. Conversely, Iraq also has a small number of Iranians living in the border area with Iran. These Iranian and Arab residents are considered foreign spies by Iraq and Iran and suffer discrimination. Distribution Map The Arabs of northeastern Khorasan are descendants of meritorious figures who immigrated during the Islamic conquest and played a leading role in the founding of the Abbasid dynasty during the third Fitna . However, because they have been living in isolation for so long, their cultural and linguistic identity is gradually becoming diluted.[2]

About 100,000 Arabs also live on the Persian Gulf coast and islands facing the Gulf countries. Originally, the Arabs on the Iranian Gulf coast were just as numerous as those in Khuzestan, and among them, the Hawala tribe established the Emirate of Bushehr and ruled Bahrain , dominating the maritime power of the Persian Gulf. However, due to the oppression of the Qajar dynasty in the modern era , their numbers decreased sharply as they migrated across the sea to Kuwait , Bahrain, Qatar , and the United Arab Emirates . And the proportion of Shiites in the region increased rapidly. Banu Qa'ab, who established the Emirate of Muhammad (Arabistan) in Khuzestan, also immigrated to Iraq in large numbers after the annexation of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925.



arabistan flag

Some Arabs argue that an Arab national state should be established in the Persian Gulf area on the Iranian side from Khuzestan to Bushehr or Bandar Abbas. The persecution of Iranian Arabs served as one of the justifications for the Iran-Iraq War .

They are very similar to the Gulf Arabs (especially the Shiite Gulf Arabs) in culture and language . Khuzestan Arabs are more similar to southern Iraq and Kuwait, and Bushehr Arabs are more similar to Al Ahsa & Bahrain & Qatar & United Arab Emirates.

They are one of the Ouz Turkic tribes living in the Khorasan region of northeastern Iran . The language is Turkmen , and Khorasan Turkic, one of the dialects belonging to Turkmen, is also spoken. Khorasan, originally inhabited by Turkmens , also had Persian residents, but as the Turks moved west, the Turks who settled in Khorasan intermarried with Persians. As they became mixed-race , they became somewhat Persianized in appearance and culture. The Turkmen people are largely Sunni believers and have been greatly influenced by Sufism.

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Although they are a small minority, Jews have also lived here for generations. It may be surprising, but even in Egypt and Jordan , which were at war with Israel , Jews who had been living there for a long time did not leave and remained there. Of course, they remained completely neutral during the war and lived quietly. In Israel, there was concern that they might have been massacred out of anger after the crushing defeat in the war, but local Jews testified that although people came and jeered them to leave or threw stones, there were almost no massacres. And there are more Jews living in Iran than in any of these Arab countries.[3] During the Pahlavi dynasty, Jews in Iran were in a fairly high commercial position due to their pro-American and pro-Western policies and diplomatic allies with Israel . However, with Khomeini's Iranian Revolution, the Pahlavi dynasty collapsed and the Jews coexisted without massacres or forced conversions, even though their commercial privileges were lost to the Armenians. Just looking at Persepolis, which was also released as an animation, there is a story that there was a Jewish family living next door to the main character and they became close friends, but the entire family was killed in an Iraqi military airstrike. However, anti-Semitism is also so severe that former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly speaks of Holocaust denial .

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They mainly live in the Strait of Hormuz area. As a side note, haplogroup research shows that a significant portion of Iranian black genes are mixed with Hazara genes.

Iranians, or Persians, were not originally Muslims and were forced to convert to Islam by foreign powers . However, in Iran, the fact that they believe in Shia rather than Sunni , which most Arabs believe in, seems to mean that they do not want to have the same faith as the Arabs.[4] However, this may be an interpretation based on a fragmented understanding of Iranian history. Shia became the mainstream sect in Iran after the Safavid dynasty in the 16th and 17th centuries. Throughout the Middle Ages, Iran belonged to the Hanafi culture , which placed emphasis on local customary law among Sunnis , as seen in the case where Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafi sect, translated the Quran into Persian. Nizam al-Mulk, a famous Seljuk leader , and al-Ghazali, recognized as a great scholar by Sunnis and Sufis, were also Persians. Even though Persia was Sunni, it was not necessarily friendly to Arabs. There is a famous saying left by Firdausi, a Persian poet from Khorasan who compiled the Shahnameh (Book of Kings) . “The Arabs came to this land like thieves, but they gave us the true religion.”[5]

Of course, Iranian hard-core nationalists push Zoroastrianism as the true Persian religion . Even under the theocratic government of Iran, there were quite a few people who converted from Shiite Islam to Zoroastrianism, and unlike those who converted to Christianity, they were not openly punished.[6] These hard-core Iranian nationalists are a headache for Iran's leaders because the Iranian people are very proud of being Persian and revere the unique culture of their ancestors. Therefore, leaving die-hard nationalists who convert to Zoroastrianism alone would blatantly violate national law, and punishing them could draw the attention of not only the international community but also domestic nationalists as a whole. So, unlike the way they oppressed Christian missionaries, the Iranian leadership simply ignored them outright. It didn't matter what these hard-core nationalists said, and in fact, the movement that was meant to overthrow Iran among young people failed to receive any attention and ended without achieving anything.[7]

Still, among Iranians, because of their pride in being descendants of the Persians, older conservatives even ask, 'Are the Arabs, from whom the great prophet Muhammad came, superior? Or are the Persians, who established a brilliant ancient civilization, superior?' If you ask them, most likely they will say 'Persians are superior, of course, and we are descendants of those Persians.' I will answer like this: The basis for their argument is Salman al-Farsi, a Persian who was a friend of the Prophet Muhammad . To this extent, Iranians are very proud of being descendants of the Persians and are aware of the system that they are governed by Islamic law, but hundreds of years have passed and the majority of citizens have just adapted and live in it.

Of course, the Arabs laughed at this, saying, 'What kind of Persian empire are you talking about when you finally surrendered to the Arab prophet Muhammad in religion?' Regarding this sarcasm, the Iranians may have changed their religion to Islam, but in terms of culture, Persia, along with Greco-Roman culture, has been responsible for the formation of culture and art throughout the Middle East for over a thousand years from the Arab conquest to the present. It made a huge contribution and had an important influence, Islam conquered Persia, but Persian culture conquered Islamic civilization, and at least you believe in a minority Shiite, not a majority Sunni, so even the same Islam is different from you. However, the explanation that most of Islamic learning and culture originated in Iran is not accurate, and the culture and arts of the Middle East as a whole were established in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, where university culture has flourished since ancient times, rather than in present-day Iran.[8] etc. An exception is Nishapur , which is traditionally located on the border between Khorasan and Iran. Nishapur was settled by many Roman or Greek prisoners of war from the beginning of the city's construction, and among their descendants there were those who could translate Greek into Persian or Arabic. It is said that many

In 1971, the Pahlavi Dynasty held a grand National Foundation Day event to commemorate the 2500th anniversary of the Persian Empire. A very large-scale reinaction was held and the thousand-year history of Persia was celebrated grandly, but Ruhollah Khomeini , who was in exile in Iraq at the time , fiercely criticized it as a festival of the devil . It is said that the public at the time reacted to this by casting a spell . Later, after hearing that, Khomeini, who was familiar with the public, immediately corrected his statement by saying, "You all are mistaken. I did not curse the Persian Empire and called it the devil's festival because it was celebrating it, but because it was so wasteful, I called it the devil's festival."[9] Even that statement was later officially distorted. Or, he said that it was a misunderstanding by the ignorant public and privately regretted it, saying, "What kind of bullshit did I have at that time?" To this extent, Iranians have great pride as Persians.

Iranians (Persians) are a different race from Arabs , but racially they belong to the white group , and linguistically they belong to the same Indo-European language group as Europeans. It is an Indo-Iranian language .[12]

Because the movie 300 depicts Greeks as white people with blond eyes and Persians as black people, the misunderstanding that Greeks and Persians are separate races has spread not only to the West but also to East Asia. However, among Greeks, there are fewer blonde people than Italians, and many of them look similar to Turkic people or Iranians .[13] And unlike the United States and Europe, there are not many people from sub-Saharan Africa in Iran. Some Iranians are proud that they are purely white . So in Iran, the Hollywood movie " 300 " is being criticized as a low-quality propaganda film full of historical distortions. In fact, after watching this movie in the United States, it was pointed out that the United States was in Africa, and a black man with a sword appeared as George Washington pretending to be white .

If you look at pages about Iranians on Google or YouTube , you will see a collection of photos of Iranians who look completely European, with blonde or brown hair and white skin.[14] 'This is authentic Aryan /Iranian!' It is not difficult to see articles claiming that. This is not completely wrong, considering that among the Tajik and Dardian peoples of Central Asia and the Iranian people of the Caucasus , many people have blond hair or red hair and blue eyes . Looking at mainland Iran alone, there are tens of thousands of Georgians who are similar to Europeans in Iran, and there are also 6 million Kurds . There are 20.5 million Azerbaijanis in Iran who are of Turkic descent but look no different from Europeans in appearance .[15] There are also very few blondes in Iran .

However, among Iranians, there are naturally people with similar appearances to Arabs, and in the cartoon Persepolis , which depicts the situation after the Iranian Revolution , there is a description of a girl with blue eyes, which is extremely rare among Iranians, being very popular in the village, so it appears that there are only a few people with blue eyes. Of course, if you look at the photos of Iranian models who were imprisoned for not wearing hijab, the proportions are only small, but the proportions inside the wall are not at all non-existent. Iranian female models jailed

The land of Iran/Persia was already inhabited by peoples such as Elam before the invasion of the Indo-Aryans , a people of Indo-European language origin. From the time of ancient Media , the Achaemenid Dynasty , and the Sasanian Dynasty , which are considered to be its historical origins, the Persians were already a multi-ethnic nation among Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic , and Elamite descendants. The same is true in Europe , but especially in West Asia , where numerous ethnic groups have passed through various lands since prehistoric times , and mixing, absorption, and harmonization between ethnic groups frequently occurred. Therefore, when considering national identity, cultural factors such as language, religion, and customs are important. The reason that many Iranians today have light skin and hair color is because many of the ancestors of modern Iranians had such genes, but the approach that 'only people with white skin are the true original Iranians, and all people with dark skin are Arabs , half -Turks , or fake Iranians' is unreasonable.

The problem is that the bad feelings of the overall Arabs are deep rooted, especially in order to insist on their superiority to the Gulf of the Gulf of Maeburico, especially in brown skin, and the 'Iran is now, because' Arabs must protect the lineage 'or' Turks 'dominated Iran . ' And there is a claim that you must rebuild the great Persian Empire . Although it is now suppressed by the oppressive new state system, Iran has enormous resources, population and territory, so it has enough potential to make dreams a reality .[16] In case of these dangerous claims, Iranian civil society is necessary to prevent unilateral tyranny of surrounding Turks and Arab countries.

Of course, in Iran, as in all countries, there are patriots who are abnormal and extremely degenerate, such as Hwanpa , but they are usually quiet, but they become extreme during soccer games. For example, Sardar Azmoun, the current Iranian national soccer team's mainstay player and Sunni Muslim Turkmen player , was praised as a proud Iranian when he scored a goal in the 2018 Russian World Cup qualifiers , and he received all kinds of insults and insults, such as a Sunni heretic and a useless Turk, just because he failed to score against Spain and Portugal in the World Cup finals . He expressed his grievances, saying that he never wants to play for the national team again.

As mentioned above, due to the large number of ethnic minorities in Iran, nationalism such as " pan-Iranianism " is officially prohibited. In some cases, Iranians have a sense of affinity, interest, and favor toward the Tajik people of northern Afghanistan and Tajikistan for ethnic reasons, or to the extent of pride in their homeland, and Iranian nationalism itself is still Nazi- oriented . It is not as extreme as eugenics like Aryan .

Iranians (Persians) dressed in Arab costumes in the movie 300

It is common to misunderstand Iran as Arabs, but Iran is different from the neighboring Arabs to nations , languages ​​and religions . In other words, people (Arabs vs. Persians ), language ( Arabic vs. Indian European Persian ) , religion ( mainly Sunni )[17] vs. It is divided into Shi'ite -oriented.

If you call Iran an Arab country, not only Iranians but also Arabs are offended.[18] Iran is Aryan, not Arab . In other words, although they are located in the Middle East and religiously believe in Islam, Iranians are an Aryan people, so they are genetically closer to Europeans and North Indians than to Arabs.[19] Therefore, some consider Iran to be a South Asian country rather than a Middle Eastern one. Race and religion may seem roughly similar, but in reality, Arabs and Iranians have so many similarities that they are indistinguishable in appearance, so many people think they are the same. Calling Iran an Arab is like calling Korea or Japan a Chinese.

The script used to write Persian is also based on the Arabic script , so when Koreans see it written in writing, it looks very similar to Arabic. Their religion is Islam, and from a Korean perspective, their appearance is similar, so they appear to be of the same ethnicity and language group. However, the language spoken in Iran is an Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family and an Afro-Asiatic language family. The language itself is different from Arabic , a Semitic language , and even within the same Islam, Shia , which is mainly concentrated in Iran, shows quite different aspects from Sunni Islam (such as the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism , or the difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicism). Even before the Arabs spread Islam to them, there were rich religious traditions such as Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism and customs derived from a long history, so this was significantly reflected in Iranian Islam. When the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire were rivals, Arab countries also divided sides and fought against each other. Because of that, the Sasanian Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire at the time regarded the Arab kingdoms as their vassal states.

At the time when Persia achieved a brilliant civilization, Arabs and Bedouin barbarians scattered here and there had no civilization or nation of any kind and were living a nomadic life in tribal units. They were ruled by these Arabs for hundreds of years and forced them to adopt Islam and culture, including writing, and there was a lot of blood mixing, and now, as the Arabs are becoming more prosperous due to oil, they are naturally gnashing their teeth even more.[20]

There are real Arabs living in Iran. As shown in paragraph 2.6 above, many live in Khuzestan Province, close to Iraq, accounting for about 3% of the total population (approximately 2.58 million out of 86 million).

A major cause of this misunderstanding is that Ruhollah Khomeini founded the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, and Western rightists spread photos of Tehran citizens during the Pahlavi dynasty. because it looks Persophilia accuses this of being anti-Persian and hopes for the revival of Zoroastrianism .

A video of Nazanin Noor surveying Americans about Iran

After the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979 , the right wing of the West, East Asia, and India, including the United States , still believe that the Pahlavi dynasty, which pursued secularism, made Iran beautiful against the Islamic people of Iran . This myth was reinforced by the circulation of Iranian photos in the 1970s, reinforcing the fallacy of equating Iranians with Arabs, as in the paragraph above.[21]

The collapse of the Pahlavi dynasty was not because Ruhollah Khomeini 's Islamism was accepted by the majority of Iranians, but because Mohammed Mossadeq , who had been elected by the Iranian people, was forced to step down in a coup in 1953 due to the manipulation of British and American intelligence agencies, Iranians' hatred of the West intensified, and Khomeini took advantage of this psychology to succeed in the revolution.[22]

However, current Iranians are tired of Islamist parties, including Ali Khamenei , and so the reformist Hassan Rouhani was elected president. Reform Iranians who oppose Khamenei also do not agree with My Stealthy Freedom because they do not feel inconvenienced in their daily lives even if they wear the hijab .[23] Of course, it is true that many members of Islamist political parties are elected, but the reason why they are elected is because the reformist administration period often overlaps with the U.S. Republican Party administration period, so the reform policy tends to be ineffective, and it is also because there is an aspect of controlling reformist candidates in general elections by reducing them if possible. In fact, in the 1997 and 2001 Iranian presidential elections, the reformist Hitami's vote rate was a whopping 69% and 77%. Looking at this alone, it is true that one of the reasons Iran maintains hard-line Islamist policies is that the American political world is too influenced by Jewish groups, which has become an obstacle to Iran's reformist path.

Moreover, Iranians who say they miss the Pahlavi dynasty are generally pro-Western and secular , and are usually favorable to neoliberalism or social democracy .[24] The reason reformist Iranians oppose Islamism but hate the Pahlavi dynasty is not because they are conservative right-wingers, but the Pahlavi dynasty's words and actions are more similar to the pro-Western military dictators of Central and South America or the royal families of pro-American Arab monarchies such as Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan than to Western-style democracy. This is because we know that it is similar to the fields. First of all, Mohammad Mosaddeq, who was at odds with the Pahlavi dynasty, was a secularist leftist who pursued social democracy , regardless of his pro-Western tendencies .

The fastest growing religion in Iran today is Zoroastrianism , and the atheist and skeptic population is growing even faster. #

Iranians see East Asian people as similar to Afghans . From our perspective, we don't really understand what they're talking about because it seems strange to say that they are Iranians, Afghans, or Persians, but it seems to remind us of the Hazara people in Afghanistan. However, this does not specifically ignore Asians, but also applies to other races as well . They have a deep relationship with the Caucasus region , which has a diverse racial distribution, so they tend to emphasize their ethnicity more. In fact, the culture of hating Turkic and Mongolian races in Iran boasts such a long tradition that it is often mentioned in ancient Zoroastrian literature. In medieval Iranian literature, the confrontation between noble Iran and ugly Turan (Turk) is a common theme. The Turkic countries of Central Asia , where Mongoloid traits originate, have advanced to an extreme degree of mixed race, and are infinitely close to the Caucasian lineage both in appearance and genetically, but the Turkic people, whose origins lie in the Mongoloid race of Central Asia , are viewed as quite distant. The only Asians that Iranians dislike are the Mongolians and Turkic peoples of Central Asia. This is due to the historical evil of the destruction of medieval Persian civilization and the massacre of Persians by the Mongol Empire .[25] Of course, the Khorazm dynasty that the Mongol Empire overthrew was also a Turkic conquering dynasty, but unlike the Mongol Empire, the Khorazm dynasty did not destroy the medieval Persian civilization in the first place, but rather actively inherited it, so the degree to which it was criticized by the Iranians was much less than that of the Mongol Empire. It is only criticized for providing the cause of the war with the Mongol Empire. As a side note, in The Bride's Story , Tajiks appear in volume 4 and Persians appear in volume 7.

In the Middle East, there is a common belief that there are many beautiful women among the Persians . Arabs and Turks have many fantasies about the beauty of Iranian women , and Punjabi people, the mainstream ethnic group in Pakistan, prefer them as spouses because there are many beautiful women with fair skin and sharp noses among the Persian Pashtuns in northern Pakistan.

From the perspective of Koreans and Westerners, the Tajik and Pamir people , who live in isolated mountainous areas and do not have much mixed blood, are more handsome than the Iranians, who have had a lot of mixed blood with various ethnic groups in Mesopotamia since ancient times .[26] However, it is not well known due to lack of awareness about Tajikistan. Instead, in Korea, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, where many Tajiks live, are known as countries with many beautiful women .[27]

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