133-493: No Land is a music group made up of Azerbaijani , Iranian , Kurdish and Turkish musicians and named as No Land (without a country) in reference to their coming from different cultures and geographies. It got its name from the movie No man's land at the suggestion of Sahand Lesani. No Land music group was first established in 2012 by Sahand Lesani, Mehmet Akif Ersoy and Kamil Hajiyev. Later, Çağatay Vural, Can Kalyoncu, Hazal Akkerman, Yağız Nevzat İpek and Oğuzcan Bilgin joined
266-743: A Turkic ethnic group living mainly in the Azerbaijan region of northwestern Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan . They are predominantly Shia Muslims . They comprise the largest ethnic group in the Republic of Azerbaijan and the second-largest ethnic group in neighboring Iran and Georgia . They speak the Azerbaijani language , belonging to the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages . Following
399-563: A "finer-scale picture of the genetic history of the region". A 2014 study comparing the genetics of the populations from Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, (which were grouped as "Western Silk Road ") Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan (grouped as "Eastern Silk Road") found that the samples from Azerbaijan were the only group from the Western Silk Road to show significant contribution from the Eastern Silk Road, despite
532-655: A Dari dialect. In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty , the dialect that is spoken in Tehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule, numerous Russian , French , and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology. The first official attentions to
665-418: A dictionary called Words of Scientific Association ( لغت انجمن علمی ), which was completed in the future and renamed Katouzian Dictionary ( فرهنگ کاتوزیان ). The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name Academy of Iran . It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi , and mainly by Hekmat e Shirazi and Mohammad Ali Foroughi , all prominent names in
798-505: A language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Farsi , which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. However, the name Persian is still more widely used. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that the endonym Farsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that Persian
931-417: A literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time. This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian". There are three standard varieties of modern Persian: All these three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from
1064-535: A major rebellion in Iranian Azerbaijan from 816 to 837, led an Iranian Zoroastrian commoner named Babak Khorramdin . However, despite pockets of continued resistance, the majority of the inhabitants of Azerbaijan converted to Islam. Later, in the 10th and 11th centuries, parts of Azerbaijan were ruled by the Kurdish dynasty of Shaddadid and Arab Radawids . In the middle of the eleventh century,
1197-615: A native population long resident in the area who adopted a Turkic language through language replacement , including possibility of elite dominance scenario. However, the language replacement in Azerbaijan (and in Turkey) might not have been in accordance with the elite dominance model, with estimated Central Asian contribution to Azerbaijan being 18% for females and 32% for males. A subsequent study also suggested 33% Central Asian contribution to Azerbaijan. A 2001 study which looked into
1330-536: A period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed toward a fully accepted language of literature, and which was even able to lexically satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. In the Ottoman Empire, Persian was used at the royal court, for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works, and
1463-691: A program on state TV that contained what they consider an ethnic slur. Demonstrations were held in Tabriz , Urmia , Ardabil , and Zanjan , as well as Tehran and Karaj . Police in Iran have clashed with protesting people, fired tear gas to disperse crowds, and many demonstrators were arrested. One of the protesters, Ali Akbar Murtaza, reportedly "died of injuries" in Urmia. There were also protests held in front of Iranian embassies in Istanbul and Baku . The head of
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#17327830290171596-457: A remnant of the Albanians' language. Contemporary Western Asian genomes, a region that includes Azerbaijan, have been greatly influenced by early agricultural populations in the area; later population movements, such as those of Turkic speakers, also contributed. However, as of 2017, there is no whole genome sequencing study for Azerbaijan; sampling limitations such as these prevent forming
1729-599: A speaker of Persian. Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages , which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision . The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish and Balochi are
1862-664: Is a continuation of Middle Persian , an official language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian , which was used in the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). It originated in the region of Fars ( Persia ) in southwestern Iran. Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages. Throughout history, Persian was considered prestigious by various empires centered in West Asia , Central Asia , and South Asia . Old Persian
1995-628: Is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian. Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian. Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian." The known history of
2128-657: Is a result of the medieval Arabic influences that followed the Arab invasion of Iran , and is due to the lack of the phoneme /p/ and /g/ in the Arabic language . The word Azarpāyegān itself is ultimately from Old Persian Āturpātakān ( Persian : آتورپاتکان) meaning 'the land associated with (satrap) Aturpat' or 'the land of fire guardians' ( -an , here garbled into -kān , is a suffix for association or forming adverbs and plurals; e.g.: Gilan 'land associated with Gil people '). The modern ethnonym "Azerbaijani" or "Azeri" refers to
2261-399: Is a secular system. Azerbaijan has benefited from the oil industry, but high levels of corruption have prevented greater prosperity for the population. Despite these problems, there is a financial rebirth in Azerbaijan as positive economic predictions and an active political opposition appear determined to improve the lives of average Azerbaijanis. The exact number of Azerbaijanis in Iran
2394-747: Is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan , as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran . It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet , a derivative of the Arabic script , and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet , a derivative of the Cyrillic script . Modern Persian
2527-675: Is attested in Old Persian cuneiform on inscriptions from between the 6th and 4th century BC. Middle Persian is attested in Aramaic -derived scripts ( Pahlavi and Manichaean ) on inscriptions and in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the third to the tenth centuries (see Middle Persian literature ). New Persian literature was first recorded in the ninth century, after the Muslim conquest of Persia , since then adopting
2660-425: Is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable. New Persian texts written in the Arabic script first appear in the 9th-century. The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of
2793-552: Is heavily disputed. Since the early twentieth century, successive Iranian governments have avoided publishing statistics on ethnic groups. Unofficial population estimates of Azerbaijanis in Iran are around the 16% area put forth by the CIA and Library of Congress. An independent poll in 2009 placed the figure at around 20–22%. According to the Iranologist Victoria Arakelova in peer-reviewed journal Iran and
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#17327830290172926-460: Is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 AD) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or 7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with
3059-475: Is one of Afghanistan's two official languages, together with Pashto . The term Dari , meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital Ctesiphon , which was spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of Parthia ( Parthian ). Tajik Persian ( форси́и тоҷикӣ́ , forsi-i tojikī ),
3192-585: Is one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages. According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in Southwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called Parsuwash , who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became
3325-522: Is pronounced āzar today) + -pat ( [REDACTED] ) suffix for -guardian, -lord, -master ( -pat in early Middle Persian , -bod (بُد) in New Persian). Present-day name Azerbaijan is the Arabicized form of Āzarpāyegān ( Persian : آذرپایگان) meaning 'the guardians of fire ' later becoming Azerbaijan ( Persian : آذربایجان) due to the phonemic shift from /p/ to /b/ and /g/ to /dʒ/ which
3458-512: Is significant cross-border trade between Azerbaijan and Iran, and Azerbaijanis from Azerbaijan go into Iran to buy goods that are cheaper, but the relationship was tense until recently. However, relations have significantly improved since the Rouhani administration took office. There are at least ten Azerbaijani ethnic groups, each of which has particularities in the economy, culture, and everyday life. Some Azerbaijani ethnic groups continued in
3591-495: Is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater , founder of the Encyclopædia Iranica and Columbia University 's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology , rejecting
3724-533: Is the present-day Azerbaijan Republic and Iran from 1779. Russia loomed as a threat to Persian and Turkish holdings in the Caucasus in this period. The Russo-Persian Wars , despite already having had minor military conflicts in the 17th century, officially began in the eighteenth century and ended in the early nineteenth century with the Treaty of Gulistan of 1813 and the Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828, which ceded
3857-491: The Encyclopædia Iranica notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist. The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects: More distantly related branches of the Iranian language family include Kurdish and Balochi . The Glottolog database proposes
3990-506: The Kalila wa Dimna . The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which, among others, Central Asian Turks became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regional lingua franca , a task aided due to its relatively simple morphology, and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century. In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on
4123-740: The Azerbaijan People's Government , a client state under the leadership of Sayyid Jafar Pishevari backed by Soviet Azerbaijan . The Soviet military presence in Iranian Azerbaijan was mainly aimed at securing the Allied supply route during World War II . Concerned with the continued Soviet presence after World War II , the United States and Britain pressured the Soviets to withdraw by late 1946 . Immediately thereafter,
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4256-668: The British colonization , Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent . It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors . The Bengal Sultanate witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers, and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of
4389-653: The Persians , and later by the Oghuz Turks . Considerable information has been learned about the Caucasian Albanians, including their language , history, early conversion to Christianity , and relations with the Armenians and Georgians , under whose strong religious and cultural influence the Caucasian Albanians came in the coming centuries. Turkification of the non-Turkic population derives from
4522-745: The Qizilbash , an association of the Turkoman nomadic tribes that was the backbone of the Safavid Empire. According to Soviet scholars, the Turkicization of Azerbaijan was largely completed during the Ilkhanid period. Faruk Sümer posits three periods in which Turkicization took place: Seljuk, Mongol and Post-Mongol (Qara Qoyunlu, Aq Qoyunlu and Safavid). In the first two, Oghuz Turkic tribes advanced or were driven to Anatolia and Arran. In
4655-630: The Russian Empire in the nineteenth century, the Russian authorities, who traditionally referred to all Turkic people as Tatars , defined Tatars living in the Transcaucasus region as Caucasian Tatars or more rarely Aderbeijanskie (Адербейджанские) Tatars or even Persian Tatars in order to distinguish them from other Turkic groups and the Persian speakers of Iran. The Russian Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary , written in
4788-507: The Russians , and the eventually opportunistic Afghans , who would mark the end of the dynasty. The Safavids encouraged and spread Shi'a Islam, as well as the arts and culture, and Shah Abbas the Great created an intellectual atmosphere that according to some scholars was a new "golden age". He reformed the government and the military and responded to the needs of the common people. After
4921-627: The Russo-Persian Wars of 1813 and 1828 , the territories of Qajar Iran in the Caucasus were ceded to the Russian Empire and the treaties of Gulistan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 finalized the borders between Russia and Iran. After more than 80 years of being under the Russian Empire in the Caucasus, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was established in 1918 which defined the territory of
5054-592: The Seleucids in Persia in 247 BC, an Armenian Kingdom exercised control over parts of Caucasian Albania . Caucasian Albanians established a kingdom in the first century BC and largely remained independent until the Persian Sassanids made their kingdom a vassal state in 252 AD. Caucasian Albania's ruler, King Urnayr , went to Armenia and then officially adopted Christianity as the state religion in
5187-576: The Seljuq dynasty overthrew Arab rule and established an empire that encompassed most of Southwest Asia . The Seljuk period marked the influx of Oghuz nomads into the region. The emerging dominance of the Turkic language was chronicled in epic poems or dastans , the oldest being the Book of Dede Korkut , which relate allegorical tales about the early Turks in the Caucasus and Asia Minor . Turkic dominion
5320-674: The Sultanate of Rum , Turkmen beyliks of Anatolia , Delhi Sultanate , the Shirvanshahs , Safavids , Afsharids , Zands , Qajars , Khanate of Bukhara , Khanate of Kokand , Emirate of Bukhara , Khanate of Khiva , Ottomans , and also many Mughal successors such as the Nizam of Hyderabad . Persian was the only non-European language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China. A branch of
5453-661: The Turkic , Armenian , Georgian , & Indo-Aryan languages . It also exerted some influence on Arabic, while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages. Some of the world's most famous pieces of literature from the Middle Ages, such as the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi , the works of Rumi , the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám , the Panj Ganj of Nizami Ganjavi , The Divān of Hafez , The Conference of
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5586-491: The ezāfe construction, expressed through ī (modern e/ye ), to indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system. Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian
5719-597: The " Persianized " Turko-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian during this time served as lingua franca of Greater Persia and of much of the Indian subcontinent . It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids, Buyids , Tahirids , Ziyarids , the Mughal Empire , Timurids , Ghaznavids , Karakhanids , Seljuqs , Khwarazmians ,
5852-414: The 1890s, also referred to Tatars in Azerbaijan as Aderbeijans (адербейджаны), but noted that the term had not been widely adopted. This ethnonym was also used by Joseph Deniker in 1900. In Azerbaijani language publications, the expression "Azerbaijani nation" referring to those who were known as Tatars of the Caucasus first appeared in the newspaper Kashkul in 1880. During the early Soviet period,
5985-535: The Azerbaijanis are of mixed descent, originating in the indigenous population of eastern Transcaucasia and possibly the Medians from northern Iran. There is evidence that, due to repeated invasions and migrations, aboriginal Caucasians may have been culturally assimilated, first by Ancient Iranian peoples and later by the Oghuz. Considerable information has been learned about the Caucasian Albanians including their language, history, early conversion to Christianity . The Udi language , still spoken in Azerbaijan, may be
6118-572: The Birds by Attar of Nishapur , and the miscellanea of Gulistan and Bustan by Saadi Shirazi , are written in Persian. Some of the prominent modern Persian poets were Nima Yooshij , Ahmad Shamlou , Simin Behbahani , Sohrab Sepehri , Rahi Mo'ayyeri , Mehdi Akhavan-Sales , and Forugh Farrokhzad . There are approximately 130 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians , Lurs , Tajiks , Hazaras , Iranian Azeris , Iranian Kurds , Balochs , Tats , Afghan Pashtuns , and Aimaqs . The term Persophone might also be used to refer to
6251-485: The Caucasian portion of Qajar Iran to the Russian Empire . While Azerbaijanis in Iran integrated into Iranian society, Azerbaijanis who used to live in Aran, were incorporated into the Russian Empire. Despite the Russian conquest, throughout the entire 19th century, preoccupation with Iranian culture , literature , and language remained widespread amongst Shia and Sunni intellectuals in the Russian-held cities of Baku , Ganja and Tiflis ( Tbilisi , now Georgia). Within
6384-405: The Caucasus , estimating the number of Azeris in Iran has been hampered for years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union , when the "once invented theory of the so called separated nation (i.e. the citizens of the Azerbaijan Republic, the so-called Azerbaijanis, and the Azaris in Iran), was actualised again (see in detail Reza 1993)". Arakelova adds that the number of Azeris in Iran, featuring in
6517-423: The Caucasus, despite their supposed common origin with Iranian Azeris, "occupy an intermediate position between the Azeris/Georgians and Turks/Iranians grouping". A 2007 study which looked into class two Human leukocyte antigen suggested that there were "no close genetic relationship was observed between Azeris of Iran and the people of Turkey or Central Asians". A 2017 study which looked into HLA alleles put
6650-478: The Indus basin, including those from Iran, Anatolia [Turkey] and the Caucasus, exhibit a common mtDNA lineage composition, consisting mainly of western Eurasian lineages, with a very limited contribution from South Asia and eastern Eurasia". While genetic analysis of mtDNA indicates that Caucasian populations are genetically closer to Europeans than to Near Easterners, Y-chromosome results indicate closer affinity to Near Eastern groups. The range of haplogroups across
6783-466: The Iranian Plateau into the Caucasus and Anatolia. The influx of the Oghuz and other Turkmen tribes was further accentuated by the Mongol invasion. These Turkmen tribes spread as smaller groups, a number of which settled down in the Caucasus and Iran, resulting in the Turkification of the local population. Over time they converted to Shia Islam and gradually absorbed Azerbaijan and Shirvan . Caucasian-speaking Albanian tribes are believed to be
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#17327830290176916-697: The Iranian government regained control of Iranian Azerbaijan . According to Professor Gary R. Hess, local Azerbaijanis favored the Iranian rule, while the Soviets forewent the Iranian Azerbaijan due to the exaggerated sentiment for autonomy and oil being their top priority. In many references, Azerbaijanis are designated as a Turkic people , while some sources describe the origin of Azerbaijanis as "unclear", mainly Caucasian, mainly Iranian, mixed Caucasian Albanian and Turkish, and mixed with Caucasian, Iranian, and Turkic elements. Russian historian and orientalist Vladimir Minorsky writes that largely Iranian and Caucasian populations became Turkic-speaking following
7049-426: The Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism was prominent throughout the Caucasus before Christianity and Islam. According to Encyclopaedia Iranica , Azerbaijanis mainly originate from the earlier Iranian speakers, who still exist to this day in smaller numbers, and a massive migration of Oghuz Turks in the 11th and 12th centuries gradually Turkified Azerbaijan as well as Anatolia. According to Encyclopædia Britannica,
7182-500: The Middle Ages, and is because of the lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The standard Persian of Iran has been called, apart from Persian and Farsi , by names such as Iranian Persian and Western Persian , exclusively. Officially, the official language of Iran is designated simply as Persian ( فارسی , fārsi ). The standard Persian of Afghanistan has been officially named Dari ( دری , dari ) since 1958. Also referred to as Afghan Persian in English, it
7315-426: The Nagorno-Karabakh region. The First Nagorno-Karabakh War resulted in the displacement of approximately 725,000 Azerbaijanis and 300,000–500,000 Armenians from both Azerbaijan and Armenia. As a result of 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war , Azerbaijan took back 5 cities, 4 towns, 286 villages in the region. According to 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement , internally displaced persons and refugees shall return to
7448-430: The Oghuz occupation of the region, though the characteristic features of the local Turkic language, such as Persian intonations and disregard of the vocalic harmony, were a remnant of the non-Turkic population. Historical research suggests that the Old Azeri language , belonging to the Northwestern branch of the Iranian languages and believed to have descended from the language of the Medes, gradually gained currency and
7581-429: The Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I , despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam . It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi 's Hasht Bihisht , which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the Salim-Namah , a glorification of Selim I. After
7714-459: The Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods: As a written language , Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription , dating to the time of King Darius I (reigned 522–486 BC). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran , Romania ( Gherla ), Armenia , Bahrain , Iraq , Turkey, and Egypt . Old Persian
7847-425: The Persian language, a language historically called Dari, emerged in present-day Afghanistan. The first significant Persian poet was Rudaki . He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works are versified fables collected in
7980-401: The Persian model: Ottoman Turkish , Chagatai Turkic , Dobhashi Bengali , and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian. "Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry . This is the language of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language and lingua franca under
8113-487: The Perso-Arabic script. Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly of Arabic on writing in the Muslim world , with Persian poetry becoming a tradition in many eastern courts. It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the Ottomans in Anatolia , the Mughals in South Asia, and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. It influenced languages spoken in neighboring regions and beyond, including other Iranian languages,
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#17327830290178246-457: The Qajar dynasty was soon removed in a military coup led by Reza Khan . In the quest to impose national homogeneity on a country where half of the population were ethnic minorities, Reza Shah banned in quick succession the use of the Azerbaijani language in schools, theatrical performances, religious ceremonies, and books. Upon the dethronement of Reza Shah in September 1941, Soviet forces took control of Iranian Azerbaijan and helped to set up
8379-407: The Republic of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is believed to be named after Atropates , a Persian satrap (governor) who ruled in Atropatene (modern Iranian Azerbaijan ) circa 321 BC . The name Atropates is the Hellenistic form of Old Persian Aturpat which means 'guardian of fire ' itself a compound of ātūr ( [REDACTED] ) 'fire' (later ādur (آذر) in (early) New Persian , and
8512-408: The Safavid state disintegrated, it was followed by the conquest by Nader Shah Afshar , a Shia chieftain from Khorasan who reduced the power of the ghulat Shi'a and empowered a moderate form of Shi'ism, and, exceptionally noted for his military genius, making Iran reach its greatest extent since the Sassanid Empire . The brief reign of Karim Khan came next, followed by the Qajars , who ruled what
8645-428: The Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk , commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan , known as Dari. The region, which comprised
8778-427: The Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date. "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian)
8911-407: The Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum , took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans , who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of
9044-423: The Turkic peoples of Iran 's northwestern historic region of Azerbaijan (also known as Iranian Azerbaijan) and the Republic of Azerbaijan . They historically called themselves or were referred to by others as Muslims and/or Turks. They were also referred to as Ajam (meaning from Iran), using the term incorrectly to denote their Shia belief rather than ethnic identity. When the Southern Caucasus became part of
9177-402: The Turkic settlements in the area now known as Azerbaijan, which began and accelerated during the Seljuk period. The migration of Oghuz Turks from present-day Turkmenistan , which is attested by linguistic similarity, remained high through the Mongol period, as many troops under the Ilkhanids were Turkic. By the Safavid period, the Turkic nature of Azerbaijan increased with the influence of
9310-441: The area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III . The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word * pārćwa . Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median , according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before
9443-457: The code fas for the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari ( prs ) and Iranian Persian ( pes ). It uses tgk for Tajik, separately. In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of Iranian history ; Old era being sometime around the Achaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era being
9576-477: The collapse of the Russian Empire during World War I , the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic was declared, constituting what are the present-day republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. This was followed by March Days massacres that took place between 30 March and 2 April 1918 in the city of Baku and adjacent areas of the Baku Governorate of the Russian Empire . When
9709-512: The collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in the Arabic script . From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi , which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by
9842-560: The collapse of the Soviet Union, the most popular figure depicting the number of "Azerbaijanis" in Iran was thirty-three million, at a time when the entire population of Iran was barely sixty million. Therefore, at the time, half of Iran's citizens were considered "Azerbaijanis". Shortly after, this figure was replaced by thirty million, which became "almost a normative account on the demographic situation in Iran, widely circulating not only among academics and political analysts, but also in
9975-414: The country's state broadcaster Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) Mohammad Sarafraz has apologized for airing the program, whose broadcast was later discontinued. Azerbaijanis are an intrinsic community of Iran, and their style of living closely resemble those of Persians : The lifestyles of urban Azerbaijanis do not differ from those of Persians, and there is considerable intermarriage among
10108-635: The earliest inhabitants of the region in the north of Aras river, where the Republic of Azerbaijan is located. The region also saw Scythian settlement in the ninth century BC, following which the Medes came to dominate the area to the south of the Aras River . Alexander the Great defeated the Achaemenids in 330 BC, but allowed the Median satrap Atropates to remain in power. Following the decline of
10241-652: The extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Hindi - Urdu (also historically known as Hindustani ), Punjabi , Kashmiri , and Sindhi . There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious execution in Qajar Iran and speak
10374-555: The first hypervariable segment of the MtDNA suggested that "genetic relationships among Caucasus populations reflect geographical rather than linguistic relationships", with Armenians and Azerbaijanians being "most closely related to their nearest geographical neighbours". Another 2004 study that looked into 910 MtDNAs from 23 populations in the Iranian plateau, the Indus Valley, and Central Asia suggested that populations "west of
10507-577: The formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia , and South Asia . Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia , Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to
10640-476: The formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Xenophon , a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like
10773-610: The foundations of the modern Iranian state. The Safavids, alongside their Ottoman archrivals, dominated the entire West Asian region and beyond for centuries. At its peak under Shah Abbas the Great , it rivaled its political and ideological archrival the Ottoman empire in military strength. Noted for achievements in state-building, architecture, and the sciences, the Safavid state crumbled due to internal decay (mostly royal intrigues), ethnic minority uprisings and external pressures from
10906-533: The fourth century AD, and Albania remained a Christian state until the 8th century. Sassanid control ended with their defeat by the Rashidun Caliphate in 642 AD through the Muslim conquest of Persia . The Arabs made Caucasian Albania a vassal state after the Christian resistance, led by Prince Javanshir , surrendered in 667. Between the ninth and tenth centuries, Arab authors began to refer to
11039-455: The genetic background of Azeri people". The vast majority of Azerbaijanis live in the Republic of Azerbaijan and Iranian Azerbaijan . Between 12 and 23 million Azerbaijanis live in Iran, mainly in the northwestern provinces. Approximately 9.1 million Azerbaijanis are found in the Republic of Azerbaijan. A diaspora of over a million is spread throughout the rest of the world. According to Ethnologue , there are over 1 million speakers of
11172-812: The group. No Land released their first album " Aramızda " as of 2016. The album " Aramızda " includes some of the work done since 2013 and these works generally consisted of the songs that emerged during the first formation of the group. The second album " Pusulası Kaybolmuş " was released on digital platforms on 6 February 2019. There are eight songs in the album in Turkish , Azerbaijani , Persian and Russian. Almost all lyrics were written by Kamil Hajiyev and Vugar Hasani. Azerbaijanis Azerbaijanis ( / ˌ æ z ər b aɪ ˈ dʒ æ n i , - ɑː n i / ; Azerbaijani : Azərbaycanlılar , آذربایجانلیلار ), Azeris ( Azərilər , آذریلر ), or Azerbaijani Turks ( Azərbaycan Türkləri , آذربایجان تۆرکلری ) are
11305-519: The important accomplishments of the Parliament was the extension of suffrage to women, making Azerbaijan the first Muslim nation to grant women equal political rights with men. Another important accomplishment of ADR was the establishment of Baku State University , which was the first modern-type university founded in Muslim East. By March 1920, it was obvious that Soviet Russia would attack
11438-466: The language of the Persians. Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan , the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts. The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed
11571-493: The largest ethnic group in The Republic of Azerbaijan (over 90%), holding the second-largest community of ethnic Azerbaijanis after neighboring Iran. The literacy rate is very high, and is estimated at 99.5%. Azerbaijan began the twentieth century with institutions based upon those of Russia and the Soviet Union, with an official policy of atheism and strict state control over most aspects of society. Since independence, there
11704-486: The last period, the Turkic elements in Iran (Oghuz, with lesser admixtures of Uyghur, Qipchaq, Qarluq as well as Turkicized Mongols) were joined now by Anatolian Turks migrating back to Iran. This marked the final stage of Turkicization. 10th-century Arab historian Al-Masudi attested the Old Azeri language and described that the region of Azerbaijan was inhabited by Persians . Archaeological evidence indicates that
11837-860: The last quarter of the 19th century. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages . Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran , Afghanistan , and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties , respectively Iranian Persian (officially known as Persian ), Dari Persian (officially known as Dari since 1964), and Tajiki Persian (officially known as Tajik since 1999). It
11970-432: The middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism . Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian. The native name of Middle Persian was Parsig or Parsik , after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars ", Old Persian Parsa , New Persian Fars . This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following
12103-536: The most widely spoken. The term Persian is an English derivation of Latin Persiānus , the adjectival form of Persia , itself deriving from Greek Persís ( Περσίς ), a Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa ( 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿 ), which means " Persia " (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-day Fars ). According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the term Persian as
12236-745: The much-needed Baku. Vladimir Lenin said that the invasion was justified as Soviet Russia could not survive without Baku's oil . Independent Azerbaijan lasted only 23 months until the Bolshevik 11th Soviet Red Army invaded it, establishing the Azerbaijan SSR on 28 April 1920. Although the bulk of the newly formed Azerbaijani army was engaged in putting down an Armenian revolt that had just broken out in Karabakh , Azeris did not surrender their brief independence of 1918–20 quickly or easily. As many as 20,000 Azerbaijani soldiers died resisting what
12369-456: The name of Qizilbash while the latter goes back to the name of Qajars , having presumably emerged in Chechen and Ingush languages during the reign of Qajars in Iran in the 18th-19th centuries. Ancient residents of the area spoke Old Azeri from the Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages . In the 11th century AD with Seljuq conquests, Oghuz Turkic tribes started moving across
12502-466: The nationalist movement of the time. The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the many Arabic , Russian , French , and Greek loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created
12635-499: The necessity of protecting the Persian language against foreign words, and to the standardization of Persian orthography , were under the reign of Naser ed Din Shah of the Qajar dynasty in 1871. After Naser ed Din Shah, Mozaffar ed Din Shah ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903. This association officially declared that it used Persian and Arabic as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal
12768-675: The neighboring Armenians and Georgians —was slow to develop amongst the Tatars of the Russian Caucasus. According to the 1897 Russian Empire census , less than five percent of the Tatars were able to read or write. The intellectual and newspaper editor Ali bey Huseynzade (1864-1940) led a campaign to ‘Turkify, Islamise, modernise’ the Caucasian Tatars, whereas Mammed Said Ordubadi (1872-1950), another journalist and activist, criticized superstition amongst Muslims. After
12901-518: The neighboring Turkic population than they are to geographically distant Turkmen populations. Iranian-speaking populations from Azerbaijan (the Talysh and Tats ) are genetically closer to Azerbaijanis of the Republic than to other Iranian-speaking populations ( Persian people and Kurds from Iran, Ossetians , and Tajiks ). Several genetic studies suggested that the Azerbaijanis originate from
13034-414: The next period most officially around the Sasanian Empire , and New era being the period afterward down to present day. According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language" for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian
13167-560: The northern Azerbaijani dialect in southern Dagestan , Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russian proper, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. No Azerbaijanis were recorded in the 2001 census in Armenia, where the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resulted in population shifts. Other sources, such as national censuses, confirm the presence of Azerbaijanis throughout the other states of the former Soviet Union . Azerbaijanis are by far
13300-732: The northern part of Greece). Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken. However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and throughout the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary. The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" ( Rumili Farsisi ). As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became
13433-773: The number of Azeris i.e. "Azerbaijanis" in Iran based on Iran's population demographics at 6 to 6.5 million. Azerbaijanis in Iran are mainly found in the northwest provinces: West Azerbaijan , East Azerbaijan , Ardabil , Zanjan , parts of Hamadan , Qazvin , and Markazi . Azerbaijani minorities live in the Qorveh and Bijar counties of Kurdistan , in Gilan , as ethnic enclaves in Galugah in Mazandaran , around Lotfabad and Dargaz in Razavi Khorasan , and in
13566-536: The official circles of Russia and the West". Then, in the 2000s, the figure decreased to 20 million; this time, at least within the Russian political establishment, the figure became "firmly fixed". This figure, Arakelova adds, has been widely used and kept up to date, only with a few minor adjustments. A cursory look at Iran's demographic situation however, shows that all these figures have been manipulated and were "definitely invented on political purpose". Arakelova estimates
13699-542: The official language of the Achaemenid kings. Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai , presumably Medians) are first mentioned in
13832-610: The overall clustering with the other samples from the Western Silk Road. The eastern input into the Azerbaijani genetics was estimated to be roughly 25 generations ago, corresponding to the time of the Mongolian expansion . A 2002 study focusing on eleven Y-chromosome markers suggested that Azerbaijanis are genetically more related to their Caucasian geographic neighbors than to their linguistic neighbors. Iranian Azerbaijanis are genetically more similar to northern Azerbaijanis and
13965-406: The policies of the Iranian government in Iranian Azerbaijan and increased interaction with fellow Azerbaijanis in Azerbaijan and satellite broadcasts from Turkey and other Turkic countries have revived Azerbaijani nationalism. In May 2006, Iranian Azerbaijan witnessed riots over publication of a cartoon depicting a cockroach speaking Azerbaijani that many Azerbaijanis found offensive. The cartoon
14098-412: The politically biased publications as "Azerbaijani minority of Iran", is considered to be the "highly speculative part of this theory". Even though all Iranian censuses of population distinguish exclusively religious minorities, numerous sources have presented different figures regarding Iran's Turkic-speaking communities, without "any justification or concrete references". In the early 1990s, right after
14231-694: The present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted Parthian language , which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use. New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from eastern northern and northern Iranian languages such as Sogdian and especially Parthian. The transition to New Persian
14364-525: The region between the Kura and Aras rivers as Arran . During this time, Arabs from Basra and Kufa came to Azerbaijan and seized lands that indigenous peoples had abandoned; the Arabs became a land-owning elite. Conversion to Islam was slow as local resistance persisted for centuries and resentment grew as small groups of Arabs began migrating to cities such as Tabriz and Maraghah . This influx sparked
14497-647: The region during the following centuries. Persian continued to act as a courtly language for various empires in Punjab through the early 19th century serving finally as the official state language of the Sikh Empire , preceding British conquest and the decline of Persian in South Asia. Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent. Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in
14630-460: The region may reflect historical genetic admixture, perhaps as a result of invasive male migrations. In a comparative study (2013) on the complete mitochondrial DNA diversity in Iranians has indicated that Iranian Azeris are more related to the people of Georgia , than they are to other Iranians , as well as to Armenians . However the same multidimensional scaling plot shows that Azeris from
14763-602: The reign of Sultan Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poet Hafez ; a poem which can be found in the Divan of Hafez today. A Bengali dialect emerged among the common Bengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known as Dobhashi ; meaning mixed language . Dobhashi Bengali
14896-597: The religious hierarchy". Resentment came with Pahlavi policies that suppressed the use of the Azerbaijani language in local government, schools, and the press. However, with the advent of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, emphasis shifted away from nationalism as the new government highlighted religion as the main unifying factor. Islamic theocratic institutions dominate nearly all aspects of society. The Azerbaijani language and its literature are banned in Iranian schools. There are signs of civil unrest due to
15029-490: The republic dissolved in May 1918, the leading Musavat party adopted the name "Azerbaijan" for the newly established Azerbaijan Democratic Republic , which was proclaimed on 27 May 1918, for political reasons, even though the name of "Azerbaijan" had been used to refer to the adjacent region of contemporary northwestern Iran . The ADR was the first modern parliamentary republic in the Turkic world and Muslim world . Among
15162-577: The same century, in post-Iranian Russian-held East Caucasia, an Azerbaijani national identity emerged at the end of the 19th century. In 1891, the idea of recognizing oneself as an "Azerbaijani Turk" was first popularized amongst the Caucasus Tatars in the periodical Kashkül . The articles printed in Kaspiy and Kashkül in 1891 are typically credited as being the earliest expressions of a cultural Azerbaijani identity. Modernisation—compared to
15295-577: The samples from Azeris in Northwest Iran "in the Mediterranean cluster close to Kurds, Gorgan, Chuvash (South Russia, towards North Caucasus), Iranians and Caucasus populations (Svan and Georgians)". This Mediterranean stock includes "Turkish and Caucasian populations". Azeri samples were also in a "position between Mediterranean and Central Asian" samples, suggesting Turkification "process caused by Oghuz Turkic tribes could also contribute to
15428-668: The site of a flourishing Persianate linguistic and literary culture. The 16th-century Ottoman Aşık Çelebi (died 1572), who hailed from Prizren in modern-day Kosovo , was galvanized by the abundant Persian-speaking and Persian-writing communities of Vardar Yenicesi, and he referred to the city as a "hotbed of Persian". Many Ottoman Persianists who established a career in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) pursued early Persian training in Saraybosna, amongst them Ahmed Sudi . The Persian language influenced
15561-573: The standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as Tajik ( тоҷикӣ , tojikī ) since the time of the Soviet Union . It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses
15694-777: The standard Persian. The Hazaragi dialect (in Central Afghanistan and Pakistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan), Basseri (in Southern Iran), and the Tehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility . Nevertheless,
15827-614: The term "Transcaucasian Tatars " was supplanted by "Azerbaijani Turks" and ultimately "Azerbaijanis." For some time afterwards, the term "Azerbaijanis" was then applied to all Turkic-speaking Muslims in Transcaucasia, from the Meskhetian Turks in southwestern Georgia , to the Terekemes of southern Dagestan , as well as assimilated Tats and Talysh . The temporary designation of Meskhetian Turks as "Azerbaijanis"
15960-504: The territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent areas under the supervision of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In Iran, Azerbaijanis such as Sattar Khan sought constitutional reform. The Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–11 shook the Qajar dynasty. A parliament ( Majlis ) was founded on the efforts of the constitutionalists, and pro-democracy newspapers appeared. The last Shah of
16093-664: The town of Gonbad-e Qabus in Golestan . Large Azerbaijani populations can also be found in central Iran ( Tehran # Alborz ) due to internal migration. Azerbaijanis make up 25% of Tehran 's population and 30.3% – 33% of the population of the Tehran Province , where Azerbaijanis are found in every city. They are the largest ethnic groups after Persians in Tehran and the Tehran Province. Arakelova notes that
16226-516: The upper classes in cities of mixed populations. Similarly, customs among Azerbaijani villagers do not appear to differ markedly from those of Persian villagers. Azeris are famously active in commerce and in bazaars all over Iran their voluble voices can be heard. Older Azeri men wear the traditional wool hat, and their music & dances have become part of the mainstream culture. Azeris are well integrated, and many Azeri-Iranians are prominent in Persian literature , politics, and clerical world. There
16359-485: The use of Farsi in foreign languages. Etymologically, the Persian term Farsi derives from its earlier form Pārsi ( Pārsik in Middle Persian ), which in turn comes from the same root as the English term Persian . In the same process, the Middle Persian toponym Pārs ("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars. The phonemic shift from /p/ to /f/ is due to the influence of Arabic in
16492-935: The widespread "cliché" among residents of Tehran on the number of Azerbaijanis in the city ("half of Tehran consists of Azerbaijanis"), cannot be taken "seriously into consideration". Arakelova adds that the number of Tehran's inhabitants who have migrated from northwestern areas of Iran, who are currently Persian-speakers "for the most part", is not more than "several hundred thousands", with the maximum being one million. Azerbaijanis have also emigrated and resettled in large numbers in Khorasan , especially in Mashhad . Generally, Azerbaijanis in Iran were regarded as "a well integrated linguistic minority" by academics prior to Iran's Islamic Revolution . Despite friction, Azerbaijanis in Iran came to be well represented at all levels of "political, military, and intellectual hierarchies, as well as
16625-597: Was already complete by the era of the three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, the Tahirid dynasty (820–872), Saffarid dynasty (860–903), and Samanid Empire (874–999). Abbas of Merv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the New Persian tongue and after him the poems of Hanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time. The first poems of
16758-505: Was drawn by Mana Neyestani , an Azeri, who was fired along with his editor as a result of the controversy. One of the major incidents that happened recently was Azeris protests in Iran (2015) started in November 2015, after children's television programme Fitileha a ired on 6 November on state TV that ridiculed and mocked the accent and language of Azeris and included offensive jokes. As a result, hundreds of ethnic Azeris have protested
16891-485: Was effectively a Russian reconquest. The brief independence gained by the short-lived Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918–1920 was followed by over 70 years of Soviet rule . Neverthelesss, it was in the early Soviet period that the Azerbaijani national identity was finally forged. After the restoration of independence in October 1991, the Republic of Azerbaijan became embroiled in a war with neighboring Armenia over
17024-588: Was interrupted by the Mongols in 1227, but it returned with the Timurids and then Sunni Qara Qoyunlū (Black Sheep Turkmen) and Aq Qoyunlū (White Sheep Turkmen), who dominated Azerbaijan, large parts of Iran, eastern Anatolia, and other minor parts of West Asia, until the Shi'a Safavids took power in 1501. The Safavids , who rose from around Ardabil in Iranian Azerbaijan and lasted until 1722, established
17157-525: Was most likely related to the existing administrative framework of the Transcaucasian SFSR , as the Azerbaijan SSR was one of its founding members. After the establishment of the Azerbaijan SSR, on the order of Soviet leader Stalin , the "name of the formal language" of the Azerbaijan SSR was also "changed from Turkic to Azerbaijani". The Chechen and Ingush names for Azerbaijanis are Ghezloy / Ghoazloy ( ГӀезлой / ГӀоазлой ) and Ghazaroy / Ghazharey ( ГӀажарой / ГӀажарей ). The former goes back to
17290-484: Was patronised and given official status under the Sultans of Bengal , and was a popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion. Following the defeat of the Hindu Shahi dynasty, classical Persian was established as a courtly language in the region during the late 10th century under Ghaznavid rule over the northwestern frontier of the subcontinent . Employed by Punjabis in literature, Persian achieved prominence in
17423-488: Was taught in state schools, and was also offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas . Persian learning was also widespread in the Ottoman-held Balkans ( Rumelia ), with a range of cities being famed for their long-standing traditions in the study of Persian and its classics, amongst them Saraybosna (modern Sarajevo , Bosnia and Herzegovina), Mostar (also in Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Vardar Yenicesi (or Yenice-i Vardar, now Giannitsa , in
17556-425: Was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such as rāh-āhan ( راهآهن ) for "railway", were printed in Soltani Newspaper ; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention. A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in
17689-511: Was widely spoken in said region for many centuries. Some Azerbaijanis of the Republic of Azerbaijan are believed to be descended from the inhabitants of Caucasian Albania , an ancient country located in the eastern Caucasus region, and various Iranian peoples which settled the region. They claim there is evidence that, due to repeated invasions and migrations, the aboriginal Caucasian population may have gradually been culturally and linguistically assimilated, first by Iranian peoples, such as
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