Persian People - History

History

See also: Persian Empire, History of Iran, History of Tajikistan, History of Uzbekistan, and History of Central Asia

The 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.