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This article is about the Persians, an ethnic group. For the ancient empire, see Persia.
The Persians are an ethnic group that lives mainly in Iran, in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, and Uzbekistan. In Central Asia they are called Tajiks. Their language, called Persian (local name: Farsi), is from the Indo-Iranian family of languages. The group is descended from the Aryans, an Indo-European people that migrated to Iran from Central Asia c. 1000 BC. The first record of the Persians comes from an Assyrian inscription from the 800s BC which calls them the Parsu and mentions them alongside another Aryan group, the Madai (Medes).
The Persians became the rulers of a large empire under the Achaemenid dynasty in the sixth century BCE. Over the centuries Persia was ruled by various dynasties; some of them were ethnic Persians (the Sassanids, Buwayhids, Samanids, and others), and some of them were not (the Seleucids, Seljuk Turks, Mongols, Safavids, and others).
The Persian civilization spawned three major religions: Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and Manichaeanism. All of these reflect the extreme dualism of Persian culture.
According to the 2004 CIA World Factbook, 51% of Iran's current population is ethnic Persians. Other estimations put the figure as high 70%. Many other ethnic groups are represented in Iran, including the non-Persian Aryan group, the Gilaki; the Turkish-descended Azerbaijanis and Turkmens; and a few Arabs and other minorities. See Demographics of Iran for more detail.
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