Talk:Persians/Archive 8

This pages need serious considerations of revisal.
An ethnic group means sharing a large element of genetic relation amongst its members. Afghans (Tajiks included) are closer related to Northwest South Asian populations GENETICALLY, than to Iranian populations.

http://www.zackvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/genome_Zack_Full.txt.cleaned_BGA_4.png

Iranians, on the other hand, genetically cluster with South Caucasians, Anatolians, and Mesopotamians. The only relation Tajiks have with Persian Iranians is a shared language and somewhat-shared literary culture. Other than that, the genetics prove that they are not closely related groups. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moonstone1889 (talk • contribs) 03:14, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

This pages need serious considerations of revisal.
i agree, this article need serious consideration as soon as possible for revisal

the article is totally misleading. tajiks and afghans should have their own article and like other nations, persians (or iranians) should have an article of their own. perisan is only an ancient name for iranians. please consider correcting the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sadra2011 (talk • contribs) 11:10, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Exactly, this really is extremely misleading. There already is a "Persian language" page- the ethnicities are distinct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moonstone1889 (talk • contribs) 23:27, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

request of an administrator
Please revert this article, this article is full of errors. iranians and afghans are two different nationalities and ethnicities. they can not be mixed according to wikipedia rules and according to the fact that persian (iranians) and afghans are not the same thing and can not be in the same category. thank you--Rambodnikraftar (talk) 09:50, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Second Paragraph Should Be Deleted
"Afghanis, better known as Afghoonis or Efis and Afaghaneh, are not part of the Persian people and they are acting as wannabe persians, they are not proud of their nation and we Iranians hate them hate them hate them."

This should be taken out of the article, for obvious reasons/ SonomaLass (talk) 20:51, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

afghoonis are not Persians
afghanis are not persians, austrians speak german but are not germans and they do not consider themselves as germans, they are neither considered germans by the people of germany, the people of switzerland speak french but they are only swiss and it is wrong to call the swiss peoiple as french people. the people of belgium speak dutch, but they are not dutch or netherlanders, the people of brazil speak portuguese but they are not portuguese people. they are brazilians speaking portuguese. the people of ghana speak english but they are not english. and finally the afghans speak a dialect of persian. but they are not persians racially or ethnically or historically. afghans are ethnically and racially a mixed nation. the tajiks, are related to people of central asia, to the people of uzbekistan, turkmenistan and tajikistan. the tajiks of afghanistan look exactly the same as tajik and uzbeks because they are the same. the hazaras are not related to the iranian or persian race, they are of mongol origin, their hazaragi language which is a dialect of dari language, is heavily mixed with the momgolian languiage, their look and appearence attest to the fact that they are only assimilated mongols. even the word hazara is a millitary unit which describe that they were a part of the mongol chengiz khan army who destroyed civilization of iran including nishabur and tus and many other cities of khorasan. (khorasan is in iran and is iranian, not afghani or afghanistan).

tajiks are iranized or persianized central asians, like uzbeks are turkified central asian people. tajik is NOT a synonym of persian or iranian, tajik only refered to people of central asia which became iranized, even the tajiks of china which speak and iranic language which is not persian language, they the tajiks of china are called tajiks by the chinese government, this is because they speak an iranic language, whether be persian or what else. the term tajik were invented by the turkic speaking central asian to differentiate themselves from the iranic speaking central asians, even when the northwestern iran was turkified the turkic speaking iranians called the iranian speaking iranians tats, which means non.turk. tajiks was at the beginning only meaning non turk and later was used to call the iranic speaking central asians. the words tats and tajiks are etymolically related but two totally different things, like the words dutch and deutsch is etymologically related but dutch mean netherlander and deutsch mean german, tats are iranians speaking iranians living in turkic areas of iran, tajiks are iranic speaking central asians neighbur with turks of central asia.

so the conclusion is that tajik do not mean iranian, even if it was meaning iranians (which it is not) it would be a linguistic term, like germanic, which do not mean german, and slavic which do not mean slovakian.

the aryans where living in southern russia over 3000 years ago, and 3000 years ago they migrated due to the cold weather, one part of the aryan people migrated to north india, today the people of north india, and pakistan and bangladesh which where later splitted from the northern india, today these countries, bangladesh, pakistan and india are the ancient aryans who migrated to the ganges palin. and one part of the aryan race migrated to iran, they became divided to three tribes, one persian tribe, who migrated to southern iran, one was called median who migrated to central iran, and one who called parthians and migrated to a region in northeastern iran which they later called parthia, parthia was neighbur of central asia, turkmenistan to the north, exactly the todays turkmen.iranian border to the north, parthia was in east limited to hariva, which is todays afghanistans herat province. so the iranian race, people, nation, ethnicity was limited to todays border of iran, and afghanis are not iranian by ethnicity.

khorasan was a term which was invented by the sassanid iranians, in presassanid times it was called parthia, which was called because of the parthians which where iranians and aryans, but in sassanid times they called it khorasan, meaning the place of sunrise, meaning east in old persians, because khorasan was located in eastern iran, at the same time, they called the western part of iran khorbaran, meaning west, they called todays iraq which was then part of iran and western iran as khorbaran. later in islamic times, khorasan was used to refer to parts of turkmenistan and afghanistan, but the real and original khorasan was still iran.

the most important thing is that let alone the fact that afghanis are not iranian or persian, they are even not considered persian by the iranian people. if you tell an iranian that an afghan is persian, he will be surprized and he or she will not like that and will not accept that. so the afghanis (those who call themselves persians) they are not persian, they are only wannabe persians, they shoukd be proud of their afghan and tajik nation and ethnicity, because as long as they are acting like wannabe persians, the iranians and afghans wil not have a good friendship relation, why iranians do not think the same of iraqis or azarbaijanis, or pakistanis, as they are thinking of afghans, because these countries are not wannabe persians despite the fact that iraq was called dele iranshahr, or heart of iran in sassanid times, despite that the most famous persian poet is an azarbaijani called nizami ganjavi, he has statue in many countries, and pakistanis having contributed to persian literature and civilizaiton

every language is beautiful on earth, but some languages are melodic and musical, and persian is one of the most melodic languages, and when some europeans or westerners say that persian is a beautiful language they only mean the language of iran, and not afghanistan, because it is the the farsi language which is meldodic and musical, the afghanis speak and pronounce the dari accent totoally different, and you can not hear the farsi or iranian accent from them when they talk.

the most correct persian dialect is the tehrani persian, and the most original and real persian dialect is luri and bandari, lari, and dezfuli dialects, because these dialects are descended from middle persian, or pahlavi as it was called. and the orginal persian language before the current language was pahlavi, the speakers of the mentioned languages and cities are still in the same area and region where pahlavi or middle persian was spoken, bccause it was spoken in southern iran especially fars and khuzestan province.

so dari is not the original persian language as someone claim, dari is mixed heavily with turkmen and uzbek and pashtun and mongol and hindi words, so you can not say that the farsi language is mixed and unreal, but dari is real and unmixed.

the dari word which is mentioned by some authors has not anything to do with afghanistan, because it was in 1960 the afghan state changed the name of the language from tajiki to dari, so dari is originally an iranian word, not afghan, even hafez have talked about dari and he did not mean anything afghan, and even the farsi dialect of zartoshtians in kerman and yazd todays is called dari by themselves. even many kermanis and yazdid call their sweet persian dialect and accent dari, and they are not afghans. they are iranians.

it is not only the afghan that have adapted the culture of iran, and it is not the only afghans that have history shared with iran, the whole europe share the history of roman empire, even egypt and libya and libanon and iraq and azarbaijan and armenia and georgia share history with iran, afghanistan was never part of iran, it was part of iranian empires, the iranian empire included many nations and countries.

the article about persian people, should be changed to iranian people, and personalities of todays iran, should be mentioned in the artike and have pitcures, not only ancient persons, and the article should be name iranian people, also called persians. because every nation and country have article on wikipedia, but the iranian people do not have. and one other article should be created for the afghans mentioning afghan personalities and subjects related to todays afghanistan.

because afghans and iranians, despite speaking closely related languages, are two different nations and ethnic groups, and are not the same people as the article claims.

--Iranmehr27 (talk) 04:49, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Welcome Iranmehr27. That's a bit of an unexpected screed.  Is it in response to something in the article?
 * You seem to be relying on some particular definitions. That's OK, but you should be clear about these definitions, and cite their source.
 * "Afghans are not Persians" is a justifiable statement, but it is not that simple. There are Persian people who are also Afghan.  Some Afghans are Persian, unless you choose a very restrictive definition.
 * You are touching upon some subtle issues of balance between overlapping articles, and much you say has merit. Have you carefully compared the current states of Iranian peoples, Iran, and this article, Persian people.  What's one thing to change first?  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:29, 23 July 2014 (UTC). And Greater Iran. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:36, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

as i argued in the text and i prooved that afghans are not persians by the ethnic definitoion, because they are iranized and persianized central asians, like uzbeks who are turkified central asians, they where formerly called sarts because they changed their name to uzbek and tajik.

the people of iran was NOT At All and never called tajiks. the word used for iranians was ajam or ajami, because when the arabs were conquering iran, they called them ajams, meaning non arab at the beginning and later it was restricted specifically to iranians. so the iranians was only called ajams. they where never called tajiks. only the central asians who got iranized were called tajiks by their turkic neighboors.

and yes the most restrictive defintion of the word persian is that persian is a person from iran, espeicially in united states, most iranians self identify as persians, and the iranians in the US are known as persian by most americans, and persia is the former name of iran, and persian is the former adjective of iran, and since the second shah of the last iranian monarchy, in 1960 declared that both persia and iran can be used as synonyms, so the word persian is only the synonym of iranian, and iranians, whithou regard of ethnicity are persians. because persian is only a synonym adjective of iranian. you can not say googoosh and dariush, iranian most famous female and male singers who are ethnically azarbaijani, and shapour bakhtiar, a Lor and nima youshij, founder of modern persoan poetry, you can not say these people are not persians. they are as persian as other originally persian speaking personalities.

so according to the most correct, accepted and famous definition the term persian excludes afghans. because the word persian is a synonym of iranian. it is only some afghans who like to be called persians. no other person consider them as persians. --Iranmehr27 (talk) 06:02, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

my former text was in response of the unsigned comment> beginning with Kind Regards

every nation and people on earth have article on wikipedia, even stateless people like gypsies and assyrians have, but iranians have not their own article on wikipdeia. i request some administrator of wikipedia to change the name of this article to iranian people. and the article be limited to iranian and not afghans. because the germans and austrians, or swiss and the french, and portuguese and brazilians, and even americans and english people are not mixed in their articles of wikipedia. this article is totally misleading.

i know that many afghans would like to be considered persians, but by most correct and accepted definition they are not regarded as persians. even in this article they are not fully acknoledged as persians. If Really afghans are persians, then please add some pictures of afghans, like the persident hameed karsay, or add some pictures of afghans singers, politicans, directors, and actors side by side with the iranians personalities in the image section on the top of the article. please do that, this article should either be for iranian people and if if you mix iranians and afghans here, then please add pictures of afghans also, one of the persons who should have picture on this article is hameed kasay, because he is the most famous afghan person.--Iranmehr27 (talk) 06:14, 23 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Afghans, in general, are not Persian, agreed. Never in dispute.
 * What seems contentious is that there are Persians who are Afghan. Does an Iranian stop being Persian by travelling, by emigrating, or by being born outside Iran?
 * I understand the term "Persian" to refer to ethnicity, a concept that is never clean, and that the counting of Afgan Persians as Persians is an acknowledged grey zone. I understand that "Persian" is proudly distinguished by self-identifying Persians in contrast to "Arab", but that the Iranian/Afghanistan boundary of Persians is not so clear.  Similarly with Turkmenistan, although Persian communities there are in smaller numbers.  To confuse strict synonymy with Iranian, note that proud Persians look back over thousands of years of cultured civilisation.   --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:35, 23 July 2014 (UTC)


 * There's also some confusion here about how we work. "Proving" on this talk page is what we call WP:Original research, and arguments like the one above needs to be supported by sources meeting our criteria at WP:RS. It looks as though sources may not be unanimous and is there is a dispute we follow WP:NPOV. Dougweller (talk) 10:42, 23 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Dougweller. Actually, Iranmehr is almost completely wrong. Because he does not understand the difference between "culture", "ethnicity", "nationality", and "citizenship", etc. His talking about Aryans etc. ist just as wrong as the rest (just for his information: the ethnonym "Afghan" derives from Sanskrit "Aśvakas" (and contains the Skt. Ashva, "horse"), once designating the so-called Kshatriya warrior class of Hindu-Aryan society. Keeping that aside, he also does not understand that not all Afghans (in der mondern sense) but only Tajiks, Aimaq and - at best - Hazaras are considered "Persians". His comment that Persians in Iran have never been known as "Tajiks" shows his ignorance of historical facts. As late as 1895, it was noted by German encyclopedist Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus that the Persians in Iran are known as "Tajiks": Die Bewohner (s. Tasel: Asiatische Völkertypen, Fig. 13, Bd. 1,S. 984), deren Gesamtzahl jetzt auf etwa 9 Mill. geschätzt wird, teilen sich in zwei Hauptmassen: Ansässige (Tadschik) und Nomaden (Ilat oder Ilyats). Die Tadschik, die mit verschiedenem sremdem Blute vermischten Nachkommen der alten Perser, Meder und Vaktrier, bilden, wie in Ostiran und in Turan, die Hauptmasse der seßhasten, Ackerbau, Gewerbe und Künste treibenden Einwohnerschaft und sind Schiiten. (source). Brockhaus correctly defined the "Tajik" as the Persian-speaking, sedentary, Shia and majority population of Iran - unlike the "Ilat Turks" who were by then still a politically dominant minority, forming the ruling houses and the majority in Persia's military. As for AUstrians and Germans: it's only because of WW2 that Austrians do not want to be called Germans anymore, beucase they do not want to take responsibility for the war crimes (even thout Adolf Hitler himself was an Austrian). The official name of the country is derived from "Deutsch Österreich", meaning "German Eastern Empire", and as late as the 60's the Austrians were still widely known as "Austrian Germans". There is an excellent article about this complex topic in the German Wikipedia: de:Österreichische_Identität. Nations and nationalities change constantly, neither nationality not ethnicity are constant. I encourage everyone to read Benedict Anderson's "Imagined communities". --Lysozym (talk) 09:09, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

afghanis are not Persians
No Lysozym i am not almost completely wrong, actually you know that my knowledge is almost entirely true and correct thats why you did not dare to say it is completely wrong, you say it is Almost completely wrong, but believe me whatever what i said is based on the general historical sources, so you are wrong, not me. i doubt you yourself understand the meaning of the culture, ethnicity, nationality and citizanship, but you can be sure that afghanis (your nationality) is neither persian or iranian in the contexts of citizenship, ethnicity, nationality. only the culture of afghans is iranian, but you can not say afghans are iranian or persian because they have some elements of iranian culture, many nations in west asia have iranian or persian cultural elements but are not iranians,example the azaris or iraqis. by the way culture have many definitions, i once read that culture have as much as 300 definitions. no you are not considered persian by any book, nation, organization or history and last but the best one by iranian people. the afghan tajiks are ethnic relatives of other tajiks and uzbeks of central asia, and hazaras are ethnic relatives of mongols. and neither tajiks or hazaras have the iranian or persian appearence. none of them look iranian or persian, the fact is that, at least in my opinion pakistanis and indians, despite being little more colored than iranians, they, indians and pakistanis look iranian and persian.

no it is you that are ignorant to historical facts, even if one or some author or writer said that iranians are tajiks this does not make iranians tajiks

Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus perhaps he called some people tajiks, but that does not mean he meant the tajiks of central asia or the tajiks of tajikistan or afghanistan.

in the army of safavid empire there where two grouups who made the army of the state, one groups were turkic speakings, they became knows as torks, and one groups were speaking iranic languages, this groups of army consisting of iranic speaking groups of iran, they became known as tajiks, again i say, tajiks here only is a linguistic term to differentiate turkic speaking and iranic speaking groups. it is a difference between germanic and german, and iranian and iranic. so the author Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus only called a group of the iranian safavid army as tajiks, this was not a term which was widely used, it was only used to differentiate turkic and iranic speakers in his book. So the Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus, meant only iranic speakings peoples by the terms tajik, and he meant iranic speaking groups like lors, because they did not speak turkic, Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus did not mean anything afghan or tajikistani.

but> here you are not only claiming and wanting to be a persian, your claims are bigger, you even claim and want the iranian nation to call themselves tajiks. so you want afghans to call themselves persians, and you want iranians to call themselves tajiks, all this shows a inferiority complex of the people who have such a funny, wrong and meaningless claims.

i dont care if afghans call themselves aryans or not, i am not trying to convince or force you to dont call yourself aryan, and even if i convince you that afghans are not aryans, i can not stop other afghans to say or think they are aryans.

so you can keep saying or considering yourself aryan, but according to the history, afghans are not aryans, aryans are the people of ancient north india and iran, and two countries splitted from north india, pakistan and bangladesh, so the fact is that, at least in my opinion who have read many books, the fact is that aryans are the people of india, pakistan, bangladesh and iran. the people of these 3 first countries, despite being little darker, are still looking like iranian people, this mean they may have been one people before splitiing and dividig.

at least in my opinion, afghans are not aryans, and what is that so important about aryans, in my opinion the pakistanis are aryans, but they dont care at all about aryan, they are proud of their nation and culture and dont discuss so much about aryan, and even indians and iranians, only the nationalists talk about aryan, the general indian or iranian nations are not so busy about the aryan race despite being the true aryans.

the only people who are not aryans and like to be wannabe aryans are afghans. it is better for afghans to be proud of their current culture, than a thing that existed 3000 years ago. in farsi we say, dashtam dashtam hesab nist, daram daram hesab ast, meaning it is not important what you had, it is important what you have now.

i am residing in a country that a famous magazine for 10 years ago, the magazine wrote that iran is an arab nation, this is totally wrong, everyone knows that, so after 10 years the magazine said iran is an arab nation, iran is still not arab and did not became an arab nation,iran is stlll a persian nation and not arab, what i mean by mentioning this is that you can not change reality and history, in persian language we iranians say, ba kesafate sag darya kasif nemishe, meaning with the dirt of a dog, the sea does not get dirty. meaning you can not change reality.

so you can never change the reality that afghans are not persians, even if you convince the magazine new york times to write that afghans are persians you can not change reality and history. hehehe because afghans and tajiks are not persians, they are persianized (linguistic term) central asians.

be proud of your culture, not claim being another nationality or ethnicity, and do not claim and say iranians are tajiks or were known as tajiks for 100 years ago, this is not a relevant or actual issue. all of these show your inferiority complex

Uh dude - genetically speaking Pashtuns and Tajiks are both considered "Iranian peoples". Genetically they are very close to Eastern Persians, as all have R1a1-M17 as their patrilineal DNA marker, along with North Indians and Pakistanis. There is nothing "Turko-Mongol" about the Tajiks. The term "Tajik" was historically used to refer to Persian-speakers in Central Asia. The term "Khorasan" historically covered western half of what is now Afghanistan, along with Balkh, Turkmenistan and northeastern Iran. Central Asia, btw, was once populated primarily by Iranian peoples like the Sogdians, Parthians, Bactrians, Chorasmians, Hepthalites and, most importantly, the Scythians. After the Turkic expansions during the latter end of the first millennium CE, these groups gave way to a Turkic culture and identity but the people didn't disappear, instead intermarrying with the invading Turks to form the modern Turkic groups of south-Central Asia. If there's a reason Uzbeks and Turkmen don't look as strongly Mongoloid as, say, the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, its because they have a mixed ancestry, being partially descended from the region's original Iranian-speaking inhabitants in addition to the Turks. The Tajiks of Tajikistan tend to be somewhat mixed I concede but the ones in Afghanistan are not. They are, for all practical purposes, Caucasian in appearance. Genetically they carry R1a1 which is common among Indo-European speakers in Eurasia. As for whether they are ethnically the same as Persians, well, Tajik used to refer to Persian-speakers. Their ancestry was another matter but most scholars conclude that they descend from Iranian peoples who adopted Persian, like the Bactrians and Hepthalites. Indeed, it is believed the Tajiks are really Persianized Bactrians, who were an Iranian people closely related to the Persians, Medes and Scythians. Pashtuns are an eastern Iranian group but still Iranian and culturally related to the Persians, Tajiks, Kurds, Baloch, etc. Essentially they are all "Iranian people" and follow common customs such as Nowruz, speak related languages, and share a common Zoroastrian background prior to Islam. So your entire screed is off base and silly. Hurvashtahumvata888 (talk) 03:28, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

pashtuns and tajiks are not Persians or Iranians
Oh dude, genetically speaking norwegians, danish, swedes, icelanders, dutch, belgium, swiss and austrians and english peoples are all germanic peoples, and they are not germans, neithr they consider themselves german. there is a difference between german and germanic, german means someone from germany, germanic means someone speaking germanic languages, all abovementioned countries speak germanic languages and they are still not german. pashtuns and tajiks are iranic peoples, what does iranic mean here? iranic here is a linguistic term, meaning that they speak languages descending from old iranian languages. iranic here does not mean iranian. so pashtun and tajiks are iranic peoples and this does not make them iranians, because iranian is a person from iran.

pashtuns and tajiks being iranic people does not make them genetically iranian. because genetic definition of iranian is restricted to the citizens and borders of iran. the aryans splitted when they were migrating southward, one group went to india and one group went to iran (current borders of iran), the group which came to iran were divided to three groups, one parthian, which came to the border of todays three khorasan provinces of iran, i mean parthia, because parthia is a former name of khorasan before sassanid times, the parthia was in east limited to afghan border and in north to the turmen border, accuratley the present border of iran with afghanistan and turkmenistan. so the aryan parthian tribe was limited to iran and khorasan in iran, it did not include afghan and turkmen lands. another group were called medes, they went to western and central iran, and another group who founded achaemenids dynasty went to souther iran and province of fars or pars. the aryan tribes of pars, medes and parthians are the precursor and origin of the iranian race and these three tribes formed the iranian nation. because these three aryan tribes migrated to iran and all of these three tribes ar limited to current iranian borders.

so pashtuns and tajiks, are not iranian because they are iranic and iranic means a person who speak iranic languages. pashtuns and tajiks are not genetically related to iranians, because iranians are aryan race orginating from the three aryan tribes who migrated to iran, but pashtuns and tajiks are central asian descending from bactrians and sogdians. bactrians and sogdians despite being iranic they were not aryan and iranian genetically because sogdians and bactrians are not one of the aryans tribes who migrated to iran. only pars and medes and parthians were aryans and founded the iranian nation.

afghan tajiks are related to tajiks of tajikistan, and they have mongolic influence, many tajiks look mongol, despite not being a direct descendant of mongol invaders.

khorasan is a TERM made by IRANIANS, i mean iranian SASSANID dynasty, so this name is iranian and allways remain iranian and iranians own this term, not afghans. khorasan was a term made by sasanian persians to former province of parthia which is still in current iranian border. during islamic rule parts of turkmenistan and afghanistan were considered as part of khorasan but the true historical khorasan/parthia was and is still in iran. at the present time there is not khorasan in afghanistam, only iran have a region and province called khorasan. and iran will never let afghans to steal this name. but they can continue to claim, if you claim something it does not mean it is yours, so afghans, keep claiming khorasan khorasan, keep saying khorasan khorasan, but khorasan is still in iran and owned by iranians, and khorasan was always part of iran. even the first capital of khorasan was merv, wich is located in turkmenistan. but turkmens are not claiming khorasan is turkmen. so it is better for afghans to dont talk about khorasan anynmore, because khorasan is in iran and owned by iranians and historically was only in iran. and the term was coined by sasanid persians, khorasan means east in old persian, because it was located in eastern iran, so the term khorasan says itself that it is East Iran, and khorasan is stil located in east iran. afghanistan was not east iran, afghanistan was located in aniran, meaning non-iran in sassanid times, because it was located in central asia and turan, central asia and turan was not considered iran by sasanid persians and thats why they called it noniran or aniran. but iraq was called dele iranshahr, meaning heart of iran.

pashtung celebrating nowruz does not make them iranians, many nations share cultural elements but this does not make them one people, so dont say pashtuns are iranians and put pashtuns and iranians in the same category. because pashtuns are not iranians despie celebrating nowruz.

sogdians and bactrians were not related to persians, persians were aryans in iran. but sogdian and bactrian were central asians and not aryans.

so your entire screed is off base and silly.

this was an answer to Hurvashtahumvata888

Request of an Wikipedia Administrator
I request some administrators of wikipedia to change the name of this article to iranian people and limit the article to iranian people. Because iranians and afghans can not be mixed here. this is totally wrong. An administrator did that but was later reverted by some afghan wannabe iranians. even afghans are not fully acknowledged as persians in this article, because although in terms of population statistics, it is mentioned at the top of the article how many percent are afghans, but they dont have any pictures of afghan people. because no afghan dare do that and afghan know that if he add pictures of afghans by side of iranian people, it will make people laugh. so please i request an admin of wikipedia to change the name of the article to iranian people and delete every thing about afghanistan, because every nation in the world have wikipedia article but iranians dont have, like the articles of french, italian, norwegian or swedish peoples.

and create an article for afghans of their own.

fuck afghani afghoonis, they are not persian. this article needs every word about afghan to be deleted. fucking afghanis. efis.

afghans should stop mentioning the word iran and approach an iranian to talk to, otherwise we iranians will hate them more. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rambodnikraftar (talk • contribs) 05:19, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Picture box update
Some of these pictures need to go as they aren't necessarily world famous. I'm thinking about Nazanin Afshin Jam and Jalil Zandi in particular. How about we add some famous political figures like Mohammad Mossadeq or Ayatollah Khomeini. How about famous Persian prose writers like Sadegh Hedayat? What do you guys say?Hurvashtahumvata888 (talk) 03:28, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Hurvashtahumvata888 add some pictures of afghanis. haha, for example homyd kharzay, it will make people more laugh. add afghani pictures.

afghanis claiming being persian and iranians. as long as afghoonis are claiming persian they are not respected by us iranians and are hated more. mongolid afghanis. you dont have a pride in yourself thats whay you claim being another nation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Khajevand2010 (talk • contribs) 12:49, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Resetting the table
I have manually archived the old discussions on the talk page since the forum like posts interspersed with obvious trolling and insults were not conducive to improving the article, which is the raison d'etre of article talk-pages. If something useful was lost in the process it can be recovered from hArchive 8. Editors are welcome to resume discussion of any content issues, but they should familiarize themselves of talk page guidelines as well as wikipedia's general content and behavioral policies. If a issue is not settled by discussion here, please follow one of the dispute resolution processes. Abecedare (talk) 18:47, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Any collage here?
Does someone prefer a collage to be labelled in this article? -- 115ash →(☏) 11:35, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Change pictures
We need to change some of the pictures in the montage. Really how famous are Anousheh Ansari and Pierre Omidyar? Compared to major Persian cultural figures like Googoosh, Leila Forouhar, Mohsen Namjoo, Ahmed Shamlou, Sadeq Hedayat, Forough Farrokhzad, etc. Also key politicians like Mossadeq, the Shah, Khomeini, etc regardless of whether you personally like them or not.
 * User:Iranmehr2015, I tend to agree, that the montage is not the best. Can you suggest some portraits that would be good to include?  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:37, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

afqans are not persians
persian is a synonym of iranian. in united states the iranians call their country iran and they call themselves persian americans. the iranian film (kasi az gorbehaye irani khabar nadare) is called (no one knows about persian cats) in english. iran have always been the native name of iran but former western name was persia, but now persia and iran are synonyms since 1960 since the iranian then king declared that both names can be used interchangably. afqans are not persians. but they are wanna be. please dontmox us iranians with afqans. it is better for afqans to be proud of their nation in sted being claiming part of iranians.

create an article about the IRANIAN nation and redirect persian with the iranian article and delete everything about afqan. and IF REALLY AFQANS ARE PERSIANS SO PLEASE MAKE THE ARTICLE MORE FUNNY AND PUT PICTURES OF AFQAN PEOPLE IN THE IMAGE SECTTION SIDE BY SIDE WITH IRANIANS. iranian is a synonym with persian. afqans are not related to us. they even do not speak farsi their language is dari. croatian and bosnian are not called serbian and urdu is not called hindi. and swedish is not called danish. stop wannabeness.--Iranmehr2015 (talk) 05:00, 26 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Replied at User talk:Iranmehr2015. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:49, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Reversions on this talk page
I reverted some of the edits of an indef blocked user since their comments mostly consisted of harassment and/or obscene comments. If any valid comments were removed, they should be dealt with individually of the whole of the comments. IE, if you must restore comments, please be sure that they are relevant, and not nonsense. -- Orduin  Discuss 17:02, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Some block evasion here by User:Cantoun1000. See . Thanks. -- Orduin  Discuss 19:33, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 20 August 2015
in the “Perian people” page it says pers was in North part of Persia or Iran, it’s wrong! It was and still is in the south part of the country thank you thank you, shohreh vaziri

2001:558:6020:118:6D41:9986:219:40A9 (talk) 04:34, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:26, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Persian people. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090504165437/http://www.iranica.com:80/newsite/articles/v13f3/v13f3004b.html to http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v13f3/v13f3004b.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20071118230746/http://www.iranica.com:80/newsite/articles/v6f5/v6f5a025.html to http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v6f5/v6f5a025.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 10:57, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The second of these changes by Cyberbot is fine, but the first one simply replaced a dead link to the original source with a dead link to the Wayback Machine, so I have reverted the change and added . The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 12:08, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for the deletion of all the galleries of personalities from the articles about ethnic groups
Seemingly there is a significant number of commentators which support the general removal of infobox collages. I think there is a great opportunity to get a general agreement on this matter. It is clear that it has to be a broad consensus, which must involve as many editors as possible, otherwise there is a big risk for this decision to be challenged in the near future. I opened a Request for comment process, hoping that more people will adhere to this proposal. Please comment here. TravisRade (talk) 23:05, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
 * That is not an RfC and it doesn't follow the RfC process. It's just a collection of opinions and has no authority. Liz  Read! Talk! 23:15, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The RfC was opened correctly. please comment at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ethnic_groups. Dkfldlksdjaskd (talk) 09:30, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Tat and Judaeo-Tat
It is true that these two languages are derived from a form of Early New Persian, but to go so far as to call these languages 'varieties of Persian' is a bit far-fetched. It is not any more of a variety of Persian than Dutch is a variety of German. Most of the sources presented in the corresponding articles have little do with the subject: Minorsky is a historian, not a linguist; Kerslake is a Turcologist, whereas Windfuhr and Borjian call it 'Tati Persian', but that may just be a term, as they never actually state that Tat is a 'variety of Persian' (just like Azeri is sometimes called 'Azeri Turkish', without suggesting that it is a 'variety of Turkish'). None of the experts who have published books and articles dedicated entirely to Tat (Miller, Gruenberg, Authier, etc.) refer to it as 'a variety of Persian'. What is worse is that this article claims Tat and Judaeo-Tat to be languages 'spoken by the Persian people', which is simply not true: there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Tat-speakers of today identify with Persians, not to mention Judeo-Tat-speakers most of whom today live in Israel and who have always had a very strong Jewish identity. Parishan (talk) 01:44, 28 January 2016 (UTC)


 * , excuse me, didn't see you had opened a new section here in the meantime. Thanks. While your assessment might be correct, I think its not correct to simply blanket remove it based on what Ethnologue tells. Regarding your statement that there is no evidence that Tat-speakers of today identify with Persians - well, I'd like to ask the same thing regarding "Hazaras", who actually have totally different origins (and virtually everything) as compared to Persian people, but who are simply lumped here based on the fact that they speak a dialect of Dari. Do you think many (or better said: any) people consider the Hazara people to be "Persians" outside of Wikipedia? What the Tats have in support though furthermore, is their origin, apart from their language which is often classified as, (alternatively) a dialect, variety etc. of Persian. - LouisAragon (talk) 01:51, 28 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I also just added two extra references, one by Dalby (linguist) that clearly mentions that its a variety, and Windfuhr (linguist) that further back up the claims. - LouisAragon (talk) 02:10, 28 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I do not know much of the Hazara identity, but in the case of the Tat language, I did cite reliable authors who have done extensive fieldwork regarding this language group and collected rich ethnographic material, no part of which suggests that there is any reason for the Tat language to be described as 'a language spoken by the Persian people'. All of the mentioned sources (Miller, Gruenberg, Authier) indicate total lack of intelligibility between Tat and Persian and none claims that Tats have any 'special connection' to Persian-speakers on the identity level, other than acknowledging that the two languages are related. In fact, the biggest sociolinguistic study of the Tats, that by Clifton et al. (2005), does not even mention the word 'Persian'. No reliable source refers to Tat as 'a variety of Persian': Dalby and Kerslake have nothing to do with Iranian studies, Minorsky is not even a linguist, Windfuhr may use the term 'Tat Persian', but he never uses the term 'variety'. The belief that Tats descended from pre-Islamic Persian settlers is just a hypothesis; the Tat language (Caucasus) article, for example, claims that they are native to the Caucasus, which means their language may simply be the result of contacts with Iran (the case of Tat-speaking Jews and Tat-speaking Armenians simply confirms that). No common identity, no common language, dubious common origin - why is their language listed in this article? Parishan (talk) 02:18, 28 January 2016 (UTC)


 * You mentioned names of authors; not quotes, not passages, not pages, not anything. Not even titles. I claim alot by just mentioning names of authors. Second, the fact that someone highly accredited like Dalby is not "specialized in Iranian history" doesn't mean we can't use him as an authority. Who says so? Is there any WP that says that its not allowed? The same goes for Kerslake. Windfuhr (1979, 2013) on 2 occasions clearly states that its a form of Persian, or in fact, simply Persian;
 * Tat- Persian spoken in the East Caucasus -- Gernot Windfuhr, "Persian Grammar: history and state of its study", Walter de Gruyter, 1979. pg 4
 * The Northwestern outpost of Persian is Caucasian Tat Persian -- Windfuhr, Genot (2013). Iranian Languages Routledge. ISBN 978-1408102145 page 417
 * Or is he also not allowed to make a statement, according to you?
 * And once more, for the record;
 * (...) and Tat (a variety of Persian)...(...) -- Dalby, Andrew (2014). Dictionary of Languages: The definitive reference to more than 400 languages. Bloomsbury Publishing. page 109
 * - LouisAragon (talk) 02:46, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

The three notable sources are:
 * Gruenberg, Alexander. (1966). Tatskij jazyk [The Tat language]. In Vinogradov, V. V. (ed.), Jazyki narodov SSSR. Volume 1: Indoevropejskie jazyki, 281-301 - Stating that "the Tat language belongs to the Southwest group of Iranian languages and is close in its grammatical structure and lexical content to the Persian and Tajik languages" (p. 232); no indication of it being a 'variety'.
 * Miller, Boris (1929). Taty, ix rasselenie i govory [Tats, their settlements and language varieties]. Izvestija obščestva obsledovanija izučenija Azerbajdžana, #8 - Stating that Tats were most likely indigenous Caucasian population that later acquired an Iranian language due to Iran's influence (p. 11), that Tats of Khizi for the most part considered themselves indigenous with only occasional migrants from Iran (p. 6) and that Tats of Lahij did not trace their ancestry to Iran at all (p. 8), and neither did Tats of Absheron (p. 5).
 * Authier, Gilles (2012). Grammaire juhuri, ou judéo-tat, langue iranienne des Juifs du Caucase de l'est. Wiesbaden: Reichert - Stating that "Judaeo-Tat has no particular affinity with the Persian varieties, spoken until recently by Jews of Bukhara, Yazd, Isfahan, Kerman, Hamadan, Kashan, and Nahavand. Contrary to these, Judaeo-Tat is a different language which is not intelligible with Standard Persian".

All of them acknowledge that Tat is related to Persian, but none of them claim that Tat is a 'variety of Persian'. In this case they are more reliable than Kerslake or Dalby, because not only are the latter two much less qualified to make statements with regard to Tat (neither of them has done any research on Tat or cited any reliable sources), but also because putting Kerslake and Dalby above real fieldwork experts on Tat violates WP:UNDUE. As for Windfuhr, I am afraid I have to say this for the third time: he never describes Tat as a 'variety of Persian'. He may call it 'Tat Persian', but that is just a name; just like Azeri is sometimes called Azeri Turkish, without suggesting that Azeri is a 'variety of Turkish'.

Another point that you should probably not ignore: even if Tat is indeed 'a variety of Persian', it is still unclear why an article about Persian people should refer to it, because 'speaking Persian' does not necessarily mean 'being Persian'. Parishan (talk) 03:58, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

First, never restore disruptive edits like this again. Your revert just restored those stuff. That user is blocked due to his non-stop disruptive edits and there is a SPI case about him. Next time, just restore your own edits if you think they're correct. I reverted your edit, because you ignored the main article of those languages and you removed some content based on your personal analysis (your edit summary). Second, Ethnologue is a questionable source and you can't decide about languages/dialects just because of it. For example, see this discussion. What do you think about Glottolog's classification system (See Tat entry)? Very different. As you see, none of them can be used as a perfect standard for the classification. We should consider works by expert scholars in Iranian languages (for this case, Persian language), neither Ethnologue nor Glottolog. Third, I agree with this part of your concern: Do any Persian/Persian-speaking ethnic groups use Tat language or not? We can discuss it. But other parts of your concern are just your personal opinion (e.g. the name of Tat Persian is something similar to other alternative names such as Azeri Turkish and etc). The classification of Tat language is irrelevant to this article and should be discussed on its own talk page or on Persian language discussion if you think current classification needs more clarification. Because this article is about an ethnicity or ethno-linguistic group not about dialects/varieties of Persian language. LouisAragon provided good sources and if you don't agree with him, request a third opinion. --Zyma (talk) 11:33, 28 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I do not understand what "good sources" you are talking about. You cannot refer to "the main articles" to prove that what is put in this article is accurate. We will deal with "the main article" in its own time. So far, I have cited three authors (see above) who are recognised international-level specialists on the Tat language. And no, we are not discussing the ethnicity here: we are discussing language, because Tat is listed in the article as "a variety of Persian", which all specialists who have worked directly with Tat disagree with. This is not "my personal opinion". Parishan (talk) 05:53, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 August 2016
Prinsofpersia1999 (talk) 15:42, 19 August 2016 (UTC) Afghanistan Persian People: 14 Million (2015)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: as you have not cited reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to, or changed in, any article. - Arjayay (talk) 15:50, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Tat is a seperate language, and Persian is not a variety of Tat, but rather Tat originated from Persian
In the sidebar where it says languages, it says: "Persian(variety of Caucasian Tat

Firstly, this is incorrect, since Tat is a language that originated from Persian, NOT the other way around, and I wouldn't call it a variety since it is a seperate language, might as well be calling English a variety of Sanskrit. Also, I think it should be removed, since Caucasian Tat is irrelevant to the Persian ethnic group since Persians don't speak Caucasian Tat, Tats do, and Tats don't identify with persians, it's completely irrelevant and it's misinformation.

172.58.217.17 (talk) 19:16, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Why did they not showed the Tajik people of Afghanistan and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the stats
Seriously why did they changed it?! It was good like it was before where every Persian was counted up (also in Afghanistan,Tajikistan,Uzbekistan,Bahrain and so on) Please correct the stats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajiks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Prinsofpersia1999 (talk • contribs) 15:43, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Major article overhaul
Through careful research, I’ve presented a completely revamped version of the article in certain critical parts that were seriously lacking in content. The Persian identity has been reconstructed over the course of the people’s long history in at least a few key times, e.g., there is a distinctly pre-Islamic Persian identity that is markedly different from the subsequently remodeled Persian identity after the fall of the ancient empire. Genghis Khan’s invasion of the region in the 13th century and ensuing Persianization of the Mongol Hordes throughout the following centuries introduced yet another layer of complexity into the Persian ethos. This trend of change continued to take place after the Safavid conquest of Iran in the early 16th century, which had a Turkish element at its core. Thus, no one person can act as a gatekeeper and say that A is an ethnic Persian, but B is not. This is a completely mistaken approach to the issue. The only thing that is undeniable by everyone is that there are certainly "Persianized" groups of people, such as the Hazaras of Afghanistan who trace their roots back to the Mongolian invasion. Aside from this, simply grouping all Persian-speakers beyond Iran's present-day borders as "Persianized," or simply as "Persian-speakers," is just as misled. Please discuss here before removing the edits. Thank you. --570ad (talk) 21:09, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

At the present time, there exist a well-recognized population that is considered Persian. This population has officially been recognized as a distinct ethnocultural group, with a defined identity. Pretty much the same account corresponds to any other community around the globe that is considered an ethnic group. Regarding that, this article excludes Tajiks, Hazaras, and any other distinct Persian-speaking ethnic group. — Within the very cited references,  they are identified by their own ethnocultural names, and here there are articles exclusively created for them. In addition, the statistics of other countries (which are added to the infobox of this article) are either about the entire diaspora (not Persians exclusively) or backed-up by some unofficial and biased sources (such as "farsinet"). Thus, until we get some valid information, this sort of data would be removed.
 * What you have provided here is a total firsthand POV, and does not have an official validity.

—Rye-96 (talk) 11:14, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Plus, read this section which is on JoshuaProject.net.
 * Before restoring these contents, consider providing some valid reference within this discussion. Any lack of cooperation would be considered vandalism.


 * It's not a "total firsthand POV," I'm not sure if you even read the edits. Wholesale removal of the content without reading what's been added or changed is counterproductive. For example, I expanded the restrictive definition currently in the article in the opening paragraph:
 * "The Persian people ( – Pārsiān; 'Persians') are an Iranian ethnic group native to the landmass of the ancient Persian Empire that chiefly makes up today’s Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, as well as the southern parts of Turkic Central Asia and who share a common Persian ancestry and cultural system. They are native speakers of the modern Persian language, as well as closely related dialects and languages."


 * So the Persians are not native to this region? The Persians are in fact native to the Iranian Plateau and the regions that were part of the eastern province of Greater Khorasan. Moreover, I myself emphasized the point about Persianized people vs. ethnic Persians--at least we see eye to eye on this point. However, before the recent edits were made that are presently pushing your conception of what a Persian is, the article did include Tajiks as part of the Persian race. In fact, the term itself referred to Persians for hundreds of years already, and this is clearly documented in established sources:
 * According to Encyclopaedia Iranica:
 * "By the eleventh century (Yusof Ḵāṣṣ-ḥājeb, Qutadḡu bilig, lines 280, 282, 3265), the Qarakhanid Turks applied this term more specifically to the Persian Muslims in the Oxus basin and Khorasan, who were variously the Turks’ rivals, models, overlords (under the Samanid Dynasty), and subjects (from Ghaznavid times on). Persian writers of the Ghaznavid, Seljuq and Atābak periods (ca. 1000–1260) adopted the term and extended its use to cover Persians in the rest of Greater Iran, now under Turkish rule, as early as the poet ʿOnṣori, ca. 1025 (Dabirsiāqi, pp. 3377, 3408). Iranians soon accepted it as an ethnonym, as is shown by a Persian court official’s referring to mā tāzikān “we Tajiks” (Bayhaqi, ed. Fayyāz, p. 594)."
 * So I ask again, what are you guys arguing? "Tajik" has been understood as a clear synonym for Persian for centuries. Are a couple of Wikipedia editors now aiming to redefine the term as well as who is Persian and who isn't? The edit log clearly shows many other users (as well as this very talk page, see above) wondering why specifically the Tajiks' mention has been scrubbed from this article--so this is not my own POV that I'm providing. Thus, you see the point of why it can easily be viewed that you and others are POV-pushing your own mistaken rendition of what defines being Persian. What you are stating is a hypothetical situation that currently exists, namely that just because of political events that took place in the Persian world over the past few hundred years with the creation of the Afghan/Pashtun state (Hotaki Dynasty) that essentially carved out Khorasan out of then-Iran, you're saying after that moment, the people living in the Iranian side were Persian, but that the ones after that date who were outside of Iran magically became non-Persian. Does this make any sense to you or anyone else? Herat in today's Afghanistan is known as the Pearl of Khorasan, with a long history of Persian civilization and contribution to the people. Balkh, also in modern-day Afghanistan, was the cultural epicenter and the birthplace of some of the biggest Persian personalities that have ever lived dating back into even pre-Islamic times. What you all are essentially saying is that before 1709, everyone in these lands was Persian, as is evidenced by the "Persian" label prominently attached to every single person's Wikipedia page who was from Greater Khorasan (e.g., Rumi, Avicenna, Rudaki, Khwaja Abdullah Ansari, Al-Farabi, etc., the list literally goes on and on because of how vast a cultural impact this region has had in all aspects of Persian life, as well as the greater Muslim population at large, see People from Khorasan).
 * We're talking about Scientists, Philosophers, Islamic Scholars, Poets and artists, Historians and political figures all who hailed from Khorasan and who were undoubtedly Persian, but what I fail to understand is why their homeland ceased becoming Persian, as well as the ethnic Persians that are currently still living there, now in your eyes. So I won't get into an edit war on the main article and revert anything back yet, but I think it's important that you realize where "this side" of the argument is coming from.
 * Also, I apologize for the "Joshua Project" reverts--I don't consider that website as a legit source either. It must have resurfaced during the re-establishing of the table and other edits. The point was to bring the table back, which included the number of Persians in other nations/areas beyond modern Iran. --570ad (talk) 20:16, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * One more thing: I think it's important to discuss the Iranocentricism in this article, as clearly, this is a huge issue and it's surprising that it wasn't mentioned in the article before. -570ad (talk) 20:33, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Collecting a hodgepodge of documents related to the Medieval era to push a POV is an obvious violation of WP:OR. —Rye-96 (talk) 13:39, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You need sources which explicitly state that the modern-day Tajiks, Hazaras, et cetera are lumped under the Persian ethnic group.


 * Oxford English Dictionary: "Per·sian ˈpərZHən/ noun: 1. a native or inhabitant of ancient or modern Persia (or Iran), or a person of Persian descent." I'm done arguing with idiots, have a nice day. -570ad (talk) 19:49, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Issue of Persians beyond Iran's present-day borders
''The below was erased as being posted by a SP account. I am restoring it and taking responsibility for it. I think there is an issue here worth addressing, though 570ad has been taking it too far, imo. Maybe a calmer contributor could state that editor's position better. The current lede wording "an Iranian ethnic group native to Iran who are native speakers of the modern Persian language" seems far to restrictive.'' Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:40, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

User LouisAragon is erasing the table with the numbers of Persians in the different countries that lie beyond Iran's present-day borders. These countries make up what used to be part of the Persian Empire's eastern heartlands known as Khorasan and they include Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to name a few. The wrong logic that people who speak Persian as their mother tongue in these countries are somehow different from the true definition of Persian is more of a topic for a political debate vs. what the established notions are and have been. Therefore, erasing 40 million people from this page based on this dilutes the factual content of the article, especially given the fact that there are countless historical figures within the history of Persian people who hailed from Khorasan (the bulk of which is modern-day Afghanistan). We are talking about huge figures like Rumi, Avicenna, Omar Khayyam, among many others. As the article for Greater Khorasan states, "Khorasan has had a great cultural importance among other regions in Greater Iran," which actually understates the region's immense impact on the culture of Persia as a whole. And so all of these people after the fall of the Persian Empire who were left beyond modern day Iran's borders became non-Persian? They still speak Persian as their mother tongue, they are still Persian culturally, linguistically, historically, and all aspects of their lives are "Persian," yet they magically became "non-Persian" according to one person. I don't think it is up to anyone to say who is and isn't Persian, when the fact is, these Persian people of Khorasan are the direct descendants of the figures mentioned earlier, and building a wall to keep them out, so to speak, is a Trumpic thing to do that is not based on any actual fact. So I urge you to please stop removing the table with the numbers of Persians beyond Iran's modern day borders, as these people are part of the historical "Greater Iran," whose ancestors have made significant contributions to the identity of the Persian race. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 570ad (talk • contribs) 13:39, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you Tiptoethrutheminefield for your help, I and others appreciate it greatly and hope that the page can be restored with the correct information. 570ad (talk) 18:20, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree with 570ad and I'm pretty shocked to see the article vandalized like this, and that too by the will of just two users. It should at least be clarified in the article somewhere that the definition of 'Persian' has been changed over time. It does not make any sense to call Tajiks non-Persian yet go on to 'claim' Rumi and Avicenna as Persian. If, according to this article, Persians are only from modern day Iran, it gives the impression that these past historical figures were also from modern day Iran, which is obviously not true. People like Rumi are called Persian because it was a cultural-linguistic marker, not ethnic - if you're now changing it to be an ethnic identity then you can also remove from your article any references to historical figures who weren't from modern day Iran. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.98.4.100 (talk) 21:57, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Major article overhaul
Through careful research, I’ve presented a completely revamped version of the article in certain critical parts that were seriously lacking in content. The Persian identity has been reconstructed over the course of the people’s long history in at least a few key times, e.g., there is a distinctly pre-Islamic Persian identity that is markedly different from the subsequently remodeled Persian identity after the fall of the ancient empire. Genghis Khan’s invasion of the region in the 13th century and ensuing Persianization of the Mongol Hordes throughout the following centuries introduced yet another layer of complexity into the Persian ethos. This trend of change continued to take place after the Safavid conquest of Iran in the early 16th century, which had a Turkish element at its core. Thus, no one person can act as a gatekeeper and say that A is an ethnic Persian, but B is not. This is a completely mistaken approach to the issue. The only thing that is undeniable by everyone is that there are certainly "Persianized" groups of people, such as the Hazaras of Afghanistan who trace their roots back to the Mongolian invasion. Aside from this, simply grouping all Persian-speakers beyond Iran's present-day borders as "Persianized," or simply as "Persian-speakers," is just as misled. Please discuss here before removing the edits. Thank you. --570ad (talk) 21:09, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

At the present time, there exist a well-recognized population that is considered Persian. This population has officially been recognized as a distinct ethnocultural group, with a defined identity. Pretty much the same account corresponds to any other community around the globe that is considered an ethnic group. Regarding that, this article excludes Tajiks, Hazaras, and any other distinct Persian-speaking ethnic group. — Within the very cited references,  they are identified by their own ethnocultural names, and here there are articles exclusively created for them. In addition, the statistics of other countries (which are added to the infobox of this article) are either about the entire diaspora (not Persians exclusively) or backed-up by some unofficial and biased sources (such as "farsinet"). Thus, until we get some valid information, this sort of data would be removed.
 * What you have provided here is a total firsthand POV, and does not have an official validity.

—Rye-96 (talk) 11:14, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Plus, read this section which is on JoshuaProject.net.
 * Before restoring these contents, consider providing some valid reference within this discussion. Any lack of cooperation would be considered vandalism.


 * It's not a "total firsthand POV," I'm not sure if you even read the edits. Wholesale removal of the content without reading what's been added or changed is counterproductive. For example, I expanded the restrictive definition currently in the article in the opening paragraph:
 * "The Persian people ( – Pārsiān; 'Persians') are an Iranian ethnic group native to the landmass of the ancient Persian Empire that chiefly makes up today’s Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, as well as the southern parts of Turkic Central Asia and who share a common Persian ancestry and cultural system. They are native speakers of the modern Persian language, as well as closely related dialects and languages."


 * So the Persians are not native to this region? The Persians are in fact native to the Iranian Plateau and the regions that were part of the eastern province of Greater Khorasan. Moreover, I myself emphasized the point about Persianized people vs. ethnic Persians--at least we see eye to eye on this point. However, before the recent edits were made that are presently pushing your conception of what a Persian is, the article did include Tajiks as part of the Persian race. In fact, the term itself referred to Persians for hundreds of years already, and this is clearly documented in established sources:
 * According to Encyclopaedia Iranica:
 * "By the eleventh century (Yusof Ḵāṣṣ-ḥājeb, Qutadḡu bilig, lines 280, 282, 3265), the Qarakhanid Turks applied this term more specifically to the Persian Muslims in the Oxus basin and Khorasan, who were variously the Turks’ rivals, models, overlords (under the Samanid Dynasty), and subjects (from Ghaznavid times on). Persian writers of the Ghaznavid, Seljuq and Atābak periods (ca. 1000–1260) adopted the term and extended its use to cover Persians in the rest of Greater Iran, now under Turkish rule, as early as the poet ʿOnṣori, ca. 1025 (Dabirsiāqi, pp. 3377, 3408). Iranians soon accepted it as an ethnonym, as is shown by a Persian court official’s referring to mā tāzikān “we Tajiks” (Bayhaqi, ed. Fayyāz, p. 594)."
 * So I ask again, what are you guys arguing? "Tajik" has been understood as a clear synonym for Persian for centuries. Are a couple of Wikipedia editors now aiming to redefine the term as well as who is Persian and who isn't? The edit log clearly shows many other users (as well as this very talk page, see above) wondering why specifically the Tajiks' mention has been scrubbed from this article--so this is not my own POV that I'm providing. Thus, you see the point of why it can easily be viewed that you and others are POV-pushing your own mistaken rendition of what defines being Persian. What you are stating is a hypothetical situation that currently exists, namely that just because of political events that took place in the Persian world over the past few hundred years with the creation of the Afghan/Pashtun state (Hotaki Dynasty) that essentially carved out Khorasan out of then-Iran, you're saying after that moment, the people living in the Iranian side were Persian, but that the ones after that date who were outside of Iran magically became non-Persian. Does this make any sense to you or anyone else? Herat in today's Afghanistan is known as the Pearl of Khorasan, with a long history of Persian civilization and contribution to the people. Balkh, also in modern-day Afghanistan, was the cultural epicenter and the birthplace of some of the biggest Persian personalities that have ever lived dating back into even pre-Islamic times. What you all are essentially saying is that before 1709, everyone in these lands was Persian, as is evidenced by the "Persian" label prominently attached to every single person's Wikipedia page who was from Greater Khorasan (e.g., Rumi, Avicenna, Rudaki, Khwaja Abdullah Ansari, Al-Farabi, etc., the list literally goes on and on because of how vast a cultural impact this region has had in all aspects of Persian life, as well as the greater Muslim population at large, see People from Khorasan).
 * We're talking about Scientists, Philosophers, Islamic Scholars, Poets and artists, Historians and political figures all who hailed from Khorasan and who were undoubtedly Persian, but what I fail to understand is why their homeland ceased becoming Persian, as well as the ethnic Persians that are currently still living there, now in your eyes. So I won't get into an edit war on the main article and revert anything back yet, but I think it's important that you realize where "this side" of the argument is coming from.
 * Also, I apologize for the "Joshua Project" reverts--I don't consider that website as a legit source either. It must have resurfaced during the re-establishing of the table and other edits. The point was to bring the table back, which included the number of Persians in other nations/areas beyond modern Iran. --570ad (talk) 20:16, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * One more thing: I think it's important to discuss the Iranocentricism in this article, as clearly, this is a huge issue and it's surprising that it wasn't mentioned in the article before. -570ad (talk) 20:33, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Collecting a hodgepodge of documents related to the Medieval era to push a POV is an obvious violation of WP:OR. —Rye-96 (talk) 13:39, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You need sources which explicitly state that the modern-day Tajiks, Hazaras, et cetera are lumped under the Persian ethnic group.


 * Oxford English Dictionary: "Per·sian ˈpərZHən/ noun: 1. a native or inhabitant of ancient or modern Persia (or Iran), or a person of Persian descent." I'm done arguing with idiots, have a nice day. -570ad (talk) 19:49, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Issue of Persians beyond Iran's present-day borders
''The below was erased as being posted by a SP account. I am restoring it and taking responsibility for it. I think there is an issue here worth addressing, though 570ad has been taking it too far, imo. Maybe a calmer contributor could state that editor's position better. The current lede wording "an Iranian ethnic group native to Iran who are native speakers of the modern Persian language" seems far to restrictive.'' Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:40, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

User LouisAragon is erasing the table with the numbers of Persians in the different countries that lie beyond Iran's present-day borders. These countries make up what used to be part of the Persian Empire's eastern heartlands known as Khorasan and they include Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to name a few. The wrong logic that people who speak Persian as their mother tongue in these countries are somehow different from the true definition of Persian is more of a topic for a political debate vs. what the established notions are and have been. Therefore, erasing 40 million people from this page based on this dilutes the factual content of the article, especially given the fact that there are countless historical figures within the history of Persian people who hailed from Khorasan (the bulk of which is modern-day Afghanistan). We are talking about huge figures like Rumi, Avicenna, Omar Khayyam, among many others. As the article for Greater Khorasan states, "Khorasan has had a great cultural importance among other regions in Greater Iran," which actually understates the region's immense impact on the culture of Persia as a whole. And so all of these people after the fall of the Persian Empire who were left beyond modern day Iran's borders became non-Persian? They still speak Persian as their mother tongue, they are still Persian culturally, linguistically, historically, and all aspects of their lives are "Persian," yet they magically became "non-Persian" according to one person. I don't think it is up to anyone to say who is and isn't Persian, when the fact is, these Persian people of Khorasan are the direct descendants of the figures mentioned earlier, and building a wall to keep them out, so to speak, is a Trumpic thing to do that is not based on any actual fact. So I urge you to please stop removing the table with the numbers of Persians beyond Iran's modern day borders, as these people are part of the historical "Greater Iran," whose ancestors have made significant contributions to the identity of the Persian race. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 570ad (talk • contribs) 13:39, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you Tiptoethrutheminefield for your help, I and others appreciate it greatly and hope that the page can be restored with the correct information. 570ad (talk) 18:20, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree with 570ad and I'm pretty shocked to see the article vandalized like this, and that too by the will of just two users. It should at least be clarified in the article somewhere that the definition of 'Persian' has been changed over time. It does not make any sense to call Tajiks non-Persian yet go on to 'claim' Rumi and Avicenna as Persian. If, according to this article, Persians are only from modern day Iran, it gives the impression that these past historical figures were also from modern day Iran, which is obviously not true. People like Rumi are called Persian because it was a cultural-linguistic marker, not ethnic - if you're now changing it to be an ethnic identity then you can also remove from your article any references to historical figures who weren't from modern day Iran. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.98.4.100 (talk) 21:57, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Multiple Issues
Update: Until we can sort out this mess above, a {multiple issues} template should be placed to alert readers of the significant issues with the article they're reading. —570ad (talk) 02:10, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

"Persian people" in Persian
The Persian language equivalent of "Persian people" is قوم فارس Qowm-e Fārs. The word پارسیان Pārsiyān is (1) much less common to refer to this ethnic group, and (2) is less accurate, as the term also applies to the Indian Parsis. --Z 16:54, 15 December 2016 (UTC)


 * And your sources for these statements are?... —Rye-96 (talk) 17:08, 15 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Actually, is right. Why are you asking for a source for something so common sense, commonplace? "Qome Fārs," "Nasle Fārs," "Mellate Fārs," these are quite literally what you hear when Persians refer to the Persian people. Where's your source that "Pārsiyān" is the term employed in everyday usage? It's pretty obvious now that you and  like to think of yourselves as the "gatekeepers" of this article and anything not to your specific personal liking or explicitly written by you two gets removed, no matter how valid. I mean for Christ's sake, the article is a complete shell of what it used to be--you even removed the women's issues section (not to mention all the other sections) just because you felt like it. If what you two have been doing to this article over the course of the entire year is not considered POV-pushing, then I don't know what is. And I don't expect Wikipedia higher ups to address this behavior either, even though this is textbook POV-pushing. —570ad (talk) 19:28, 25 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Pārsiān is not my personal point of view, since it already existed within the article for long. And the phrases that you have provided here are firsthand experiences. You can't validate them by simply stating that they are sensible. Since there doesn't seem to exist a reliable source for this issue, and that the term Pārsiān itself is questionable, what I suggest is that we remove the Persian title. "Gatekeepers"?.. That's a false accusation, and is considered a personal attack. What I removed from this article included unsourced, unrelated, and overstated material. And you were absolutely free to object and start a discussion. Sections regarding political references of "Pan-Iranism" (Iranocentricism and Pan-Iranism), religious waves addressing the entire population of Iran (Religion), and the status of a few ancient Achaemenid and Sassanid royal figures—and modern figures such as Googoosh and Shirin Ebadi who are absolutely not representatives of ethnic Persian women—(Women) were hardly related to this article. —Rye-96 (talk) 09:14, 26 December 2016 (UTC)


 * "Qome Fārs"," "Nasle Fārs" and "Mellate Fārs" are not common in Iran, specially the last two of them. According to Minorities in Iran: Nationalism and Ethnicity after Khomeini by Rasmus Christian Elling p. 24:
 * "In Iran itself, however, “Persian” is rarely used as an autonym. Apart from in descriptions of an ancient people (qowm-e pārs), the very term “Persians” (fārs-hā) appears somewhat awkward; it sounds peculiar, and when used by Iranian scholars, it often appears only within quotation marks."

And the term is not common in reliable sources either:
 * "Indeed, many scholars never use the ethnonym “Persian” (fārs) when writing in Persian (fārsi) about Iran."

Actually, the term "Persian" has no equivalent in Persian language. It is usually translated as "Irāni". There's no consensus among scholars on whether Persians are an "ethnic group" or not. Many consider them a linguistic group, not an ethnic group. I think there shouldn't be any Persian equivalent in the lead, since that term doesn't have an equivalent in Persian language. -- Kouhi (talk) 14:34, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

I suggest:
 * Remove "(Persian: پارسیان‎‎ – Pārsiān)" and any other unsourced/dubious terms.
 * Rewrite some parts of this article. Because this article limited "Persian" to Persia/Iran. It's really confusing in some cases. An obvious example is ancient/medieval Persian people (e.g. Avicenna and Khwarizmi). For example, a reader decides to click on Persian wikilink on Avicenna article, but it just confuses him/her. Because Avicenna was born in Bukhara, but this article just talks about modern Iran. but current lead says "The Persians (Persian: پارسیان‎‎ – Pārsiān) are an Iranian ethnic group native to Iran..." Then what about those Central Asian Persians?! Current revision is biased and has obvious povs in my opinion. It does not match with many other articles which are about this group. --Wario-Man (talk) 08:26, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, this is exactly one of the many points I tried to address in the thread above entitled "Major Article Overhaul." Isolating just the opening paragraph alone, in that "overhaul edit," I even tried to provide a much more accurate opening statement for the article than the current restrictive one, but they just undid the entire revision wholesale instead of actually going through and reading it objectively and possibly improving on the edits or making some kind of contribution instead of simply reverting the entire article to the previous form. This is the version I had provided in that edit:
 * "The Persian people are an Iranian ethnic group native to the landmass of the ancient Persian Empire that chiefly makes up today’s Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, as well as the southern parts of Turkic Central Asia and who share a common Persian ancestry and cultural system. They are native speakers of the modern Persian language, as well as closely related dialects and languages." —570ad (talk) 18:54, 27 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Last time you joined a discussion on this talk page, you called me and another user idiots, which is an obvious violation of WP:PERSONAL. What you have brought here is the same unsourced self-formulated information that you had provided back then. You can't drop that in front of the existing sources. None of the sources includes a mention of "Persians" living in those regions. All reliable sources make a clear distinction between the modern-day Persians (the supposed ethnic group) and Persian-speakers (i.e. Tajiks, Tats, Hazaras, etc). The Khwarizmi and other similar communities are all from areas that were non-Persian in origin. Khwarezm, Bactria, and Sogdia were originally Eastern Iranian regions that were gradually Persianized. They originally spoke eastern Iranian languages in the area. This issue can be covered here within the article, for instance mentioning the Persianization and probably that the Persian people lived in way more areas back then. —Rye-96 (talk) 08:07, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

There were areas within the boundaries of modern day Iran that were of non-Persian origin (e.g. Parthia) but underwent Persianization, just like Bactria, Sogdia etc did.

We know that there are different meanings of Persian employed: (1) Persian as a nationality - synonym to Iranian. (2) Persian as a cultural-linguistic identity - to include Tajiks of Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and the ancestors to that region (Rumi, Ibn Sina, Rabia Balkhi etc). (3) Persian as an ethnic group - used in modern day Iran to refer to Persian speakers who aren't of the other ethnic groups (Azeri, Kurd etc).

This needs to be made clear in the article. You've simplified the article a great deal. While it might make for easier reading, it doesn't reflect the complexity of the situation. 77.98.4.100 (talk) 11:45, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

We can't write articles based on our personal analyses. For example, see this: As you see, Frye talked about a mixed origin, not just some Persianized natives. The ethnogenesis of Persians and Persian-speaking ethnic groups is complicated. How do you want to label all Persian-speaking people from Afghanistan or Tajikistan as Persianized X?! How do you know all Iranian Persians are native and not Persianized people? Or are the medieval Persians from Afghanistan and Central Asia are Persianized X?! How do you define Persian-ness of all of those medieval people from Khorasan? For example, Ferdowsi is 100% Persian because he was from Tus (Iran) and Nasir Khusraw is Persianized because he was not from Iran (born in Qabodiyon, Tajikistan)?! Or what about Rumi and many others? As I said in my above comment, current revision of this article is not neutral and it does not match with many related articles. It ONLY confuses the readers because it lacks information about Persians of other regions (e.g. Central Asia, Afghanistan and etc). In my opinion, current revision and its biased tone is one of the reason why many edit wars happened here. --Wario-Man (talk) 09:00, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * According to Richard Nelson Frye, a leading historian of Iranian and Central Asian history, the Persian migration to Central Asia may be considered the beginning of the modern Tajik nation, and ethnic Persians, along with some elements of East-Iranian Bactrians and Sogdians, as the main ancestors of modern Tajiks.[
 * I fully agree with Wario-Man. I want to add that Central Asian Persians are not the only "Tajiks". This Turkic word was used to refer to all Persians. For example, Persians of Iran were called "Tajik" in the Safavid era (see Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 6, p. 229):
 * "According to the traditional interpretation, there existed a sharp distinction in the Safavid empire before Shah 'Abbas I (995-1038/1587—1629) between military posts which were reserved for the Turkish tribal leaders, and civil and religious posts which were filled by members of the native aristocracy, that is by Persians, often called Tajik."
 * -- Kouhi (talk) 09:48, 29 December 2016 (UTC)


 * "We can't write articles based on our personal analyses." - Exactly. And that's what I've been against all along. "Ethnic Persians, along with some elements of East-Iranian Bactrians and Sogdians" being "the main ancestors of modern Tajiks" does not validate the idea of how synonymous the words Persian and Tajik are. Currently, Iran being the motherland of the Persian people has not been backed up by any sources within the article, so the removal of that portion would be fine. But adding those other regions just because of some Medieval Persian figures would result in a pure self-formulated data. I do agree that the complexity of these issues need to be better represented within the article, but, as I mentioned before, what you guys are trying to promote within this article violates the no original research policy. —Rye-96 (talk) 13:50, 29 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Once again; you will need reliable sources that explicitly state that the Tajiks of present-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan etc, the ethnic group as we know them, are ethnic Persian people/part of the Persian ethnic group. To say that "oh, many scientists/scholars/etc that were once born in those regions are known as "Persians" and therefore (?!) Tajiks must be also Persians/part of the ethnic Persian group, is nothing but self-formulated WP:OR. You can either back up your story with reliable sources, or you can't. Simple as that. That's how it works here. Personal opinions and emotional feelings (which is why all these IPs and SPA accounts are attracted to a certain extremely small niche of articles on Wikipedia) are completely irrelevant. Furthermore, this is a huge topic. If this claim would even be true, there would be tons of reliable sources backing it up, but they do not exist. - LouisAragon (talk) 19:20, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * What IS verifiable however, and what should be added to the article, as its currently lacking, is that Persians once lived in a way wider area, including C. Asia and the Caucasus, regions which produced many of the most noted ethnic Persians of the Medieval era (some of which have already been mentioned by name here). - LouisAragon (talk) 19:25, 29 December 2016 (UTC)


 * It's funny that you and Rye-96 cite WP:OR so much but then turn around and exactly suggest a self-formulated narrative. What you're proposing is that the Persians lived in a much wider geographic area before, and then had some kind of colony collapse event occur in Khorassan and beyond and that's why they're all concentrated in modern-day Iran? Give me a break. Do I even have to ask for a source on this proposal or is it not that obvious that it's a funny story you made up? The more logical thing that happened (and the more obviously likely) is that those Persians that were living there, stayed there and make up the majority of the Persian identity of the region today--and the Persianized element is a minor factor (albeit significant, yes). There was no scifi mass exodus or whatever else you're suggesting.

—570ad (talk) 21:20, 29 December 2016 (UTC)


 * If you haven't already, read my previous comments. I did not and do not insist on anything that's unsourced or self-formulated. You can definitely bring up about the portions you consider self-formulated, and I'll give my comment just like the issues discussed above. —Rye-96 (talk) 09:22, 1 January 2017 (UTC)


 * OK, I checked some reliable sources and I think LouisAragon and Rye-96 are right. In most of reliable sources, Tajiks are distinguished from Persians. For example, in the Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Africa and the Middle East, Tajiks are clearly distinguished from Persians and were discussed separately. And also the article of Iranica distinguishes between Tajiks and Persians ("...Tajiks of Afghanistan and Persians of Iran"). -- Kouhi (talk) 00:50, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

@Kouhi: Tajik and Persian have been used as synonyms throughout history. That's why the heritage of Central Asia, the heritage of Rumi, Ibn Sina, Al Biruni (who could still speak his native Khwarezmian language) is also considered the heritage of Iranian Persians. From the same article on Tajiks:

"By the eleventh century (Yusof Ḵāṣṣ-ḥājeb, Qutadḡu bilig, lines 280, 282, 3265) the Qarakhanid Turks applied this term more specifically to the Persian Muslims in the Oxus basin and Khorasan, who were variously the Turks’ rivals, models, overlords (under the Samanid Dynasty), and subjects (from Ghaznavid times on). Persian writers of the Ghaznavid, Seljuq and Atābak periods (ca. 1000–1260) adopted the term and extended its use to cover Persians in the rest of Iran, now under Turkish rule, as early as the poet ʿOnṣori, ca. 1025 (Dabirsiāqi, pp. 3377, 3408). Iranians soon accepted it as an ethnonym, as is shown by a Persian court official’s referring to mā tāzikān “we Tajiks” (Bayhaqi, ed. Fayyāz, p. 594). The distinction between Turk and Tajik became stereotyped to express the symbiosis and rivalry of the (ideally) nomadic military executive and the urban civil bureaucracy (Niẓām al-Molk: tāzik, pp. 146, 178-79; Fragner, “Tādjīk. 2” in EI2 10, p. 63).

In Il-khanid and Timurid Persian literature, and into the Safavid period, the term was routinely used in the context of a Turkish or Turco-Mongol ruling elite to distinguish Persians in general (as state functionaries, merchants, urban artisans, and rural peasants) from Turks and Mongols. Examples may be seen in Rašid-al-Din (1310; Tāriḵ-e ḡāzāni, ed. Jahn): bitikčiān-e tāzik ‘Persian secretaries,’ p. 282; raʿiyat-e tāzik ‘the Persian peasantry,’ p. 296; Sayf-e Haravi (ca. 1320): tāžik, of an individual, pp. 101-102; ʿAwfi (1333; Lobāb, ed. Nafisi): tāzik, p. 562, the plural tāžikān, p. 101; Mirḵʷānd (d. 1498); nesbat ba-mardom-e tāzik ‘toward the Tajik people,’ Tehran, Vol. 5, p. 137 (see also Fragner in EI2; and for hundreds of citations of all forms of the word in Persian literature, see Dabirsiāqi, pp. 3374-3403)."

Now how do you want to address this?

One way to resolve this could be the following: when readers are reading articles on medieval Persian heritage the word "Persian" should link to a disambiguation page with a brief description and the link to this current article (renamed to Iranian Persians) and the article on Tajiks-- at the very least this should be done for articles on the Persian heritage of Central Asia which is directly linked to modern day Tajiks.

570ad raised a good point that no one addressed. I'm putting the disputed tags up because this hasn't been resolved. There are a lot of people who have raised issues with the way this article has been redone and it will continue to be a problem until its properly addressed.77.98.4.100 (talk) 13:44, 14 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Consensus is when all parties involved come to an agreement—I would hardly call three people agreeing with each other "coming to a consensus." One of the core issues here is the erroneous claims of the (for argument's sake) "Persian-speaking communities of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan" today being simply "Persianized" communities vs. actually being the continuation of the historical Persian communities of the region. Afghanistan and Tajikistan are modern states, no one here denies this, however, the land and people were an integral part of Greater Khorasan/Greater Iran, and when the historical figures of this region (e.g., Rumi, Rudaki, ibn Sina, etc.) are considered fully Persian, yet their descendants are merely "Persianized," therein lies the fundamental problem that has implications far beyond just this article alone. At present, this article fails to address these issues in any way (hence the {Multiple Issues} templates--in fact, a lot has been removed from the article over the past several months, further adding to the problem). Until these issues are resolved here and an actual consensus reached, the tags ought to remain. —570ad (talk) 23:17, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Your suggestion has its own issues, it sounds WP:OR, pov and personal analysis. Linking some Persians to a disambiguation page confuses readers again. Linking person X to a dis... page and person Y to this article?! Per what? Asking our readers to decide about them?! I assure if someone does it, other editors will revert his/her edits and they may report him/her too. It's similar to those nationalistic pov-pushers who tried/try to remove Persian from some medieval people articles or link it to irrelevant non-ethnic articles (e.g. Persia). Wikipedia readers wants clear info and we're not here to write our very own researchers. And which historian used "X Persian" to describe Persians from different regions? They just use Persian and it's clear enough. We can't change their works based on our personal opinions. We can't invent new terms. We can't categorize some people as Persian and some people as Persian-speaking/Persianized based on their region. For example, when you read Rumi, there is nothing unclear about his background. We can't manipulate sourced texts and insert our povs. Another example that I found this on Tajiks -> Tajiks: "According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, however, the oldest known usage of the word Tajik as a reference to Persians in Persian literature can be found in the writings of the Persian poet Jalal ad-Din Rumi. The 15th century Turkic-speaking poet Mīr Alī Šer Navā'ī also used Tajik as a reference to Persians. An example for the usage of the word Tajik in Persian literature is, for example, the writing of Sa'adi..." Saadi (a Persian from Iran/Persia) identified himself as Tajik. Now what? Was he Persian/Persian-speaking/Persianized? Or because he used the term Tajik is his poets, was his background from Central Asia? As you see, only sources matter not our povs. As I said in my above comments, these current issues are related to this article not other articles. We should fix them here and add necessary info. If we don't reach a consensus within 1 week (until 2017-01-22), please ask for WP:THIRDOPINION or WP:DRN. --Wario-Man (talk) 07:48, 15 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Rather than reinvent the wheel from scratch, what I suggest is that we go through some of the previous versions of the article and see what they contained that we could build on. I will try to look through these earlier versions and compile a list of edit proposals. Thanks. —570ad (talk) 19:03, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

@Wario-Man: I know Tajik and Persian are synonymous, that was my point. I only made the distinction because people like Rye-96 are claiming Persians are only found in Iran. Persians in Iran and Central Asia were considered the same people historically, as your references show. By all means suggest a better idea if you have one. 77.98.4.100 (talk) 22:49, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * You two (570AD + IP) still haven't shown a single reference that shows that the two present day ethnic groups, as we know them, are interchangeable in definition. On the other hand, ALL academia (e.g. Iranica) specialized on these matters make a clear distinction, as demonstrated, between Persians and Tajiks, in terms of the present-day ethnic groups. With regard to this, you are both implying extreme WP:OR and self-made interpretation, just because you apparently "feel" something is correct, and "want" it to be correct. In my opinion (we all agreed that there are certain other issues with the article that have to be addressed), we've reached a clear WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT and WP:COMPETENCE point regarding this matter, and I'm afraid it's not gonna change either. You haven't presented any sources that explicitly state that the present-day ethnic groups are the same, hence, you can't make the proposed changes you both are apparently ardent supporters of. It's dead simple really. - LouisAragon (talk) 05:30, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I'd also like to stipulate (even though I'm sure he's at pains to make it seem as if he never said it), user "570AD" called us "idiots" right here on this talk page. This attests even moreso of a clear editorial problem. He should be glad he wasn't reported already instantly back then, and even more importantly, that we're still replying to him here. - LouisAragon (talk) 05:30, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

The issue of Persian ethnicity is not as clear cut as you are trying to portray by upholding the article’s current version and preventing any improvements to it. This is the core of the issue—one that myself, along with and 77.98.4.100 have been trying to address here. I’m not sure why you keep claiming that editors here are hoping to push how we “feel”?? The core of the issue is that there is literally no mention of the Persian presence in Afghanistan and Tajikistan/Central Asia anywhere in the article. As has been mentioned several times earlier, when readers are on a page of a Persian figure such as Rudaki, there is a reference to Persian poet, however, when they venture to this page, there is absolutely no mention of anything relating to the poet’s birthplace. I’m getting a bit tired of repeating this, but Greater Khorasan is the birthplace of countless historical figures that have made immeasurable contributions to the overall Persian identity. All you have offered as an explanation was a silly statement that “Persians once lived in a way wider area, including C. Asia and the Caucasus”—and then what? They disappeared? They colonized the area, Persianized it, then left en masse? This is, unequivocally, a textbook self-formulated theory violating WP:POV; your statement takes the cake for this.

You have a personal agenda with any mention of modern-day Afghanistan and Tajikistan/Central Asia as is made abundantly clear by the fact that you removed Tajiks as a related people from the infobox. Tajiks, who even by your standards, are a separate Iranian people that speak Persian as their mother tongue and have Persian cultural practices just like in Iran, you remove, yet you leave in that same infobox Azerbaijanis, who are not even an Iranian people—they are of Turkic origin. I don’t know if you yourself see the agenda you’ve been pushing.

Anyway, in previous versions, this article clearly explained that Persian identity and ethnicity are not as straightforward as they are in other cases, and are more complex than the concept of ethnicity exists in Western contexts. This is an exact excerpt from the wording that is nowhere to be seen in the current version: While a categorization of a "Persian" ethnic group persists in the West, Persians have generally been a pan-national group often comprising regional people who often refer to themselves as 'Persians' and have also often used the term "Iranian" (in the ethnic-cultural sense). As a pan-national group, defining Persians as an ethnic group, at least in terms used in the West, is not inclusive since the ethnonym "Persian" includes several Iranian people including the speakers of Modern Persian. Some scholars, classify the speakers of Persian language as a single ethnic unit (the ‘Persians’) and exclude those Iranians who speak dialects of Persian, or other Iranian dialects closely related to Persian; however this approach to ethnicity in Iran is erroneous, since the designation Iranian (Irani) as an ethnic term has been used by all these ethnic group in Iran, including the "Persians" irrespective of their origin, language and religion.

See the complexity? Where is this addressed anywhere in the current state of the article?

A while ago, I offered a more accurate lede to the article, stating that, “Persians are an Iranian ethnic group native to the landmass of the ancient Persian Empire that chiefly makes up today’s Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, as well as the southern parts of Turkic Central Asia and who share a common Persian ancestry and cultural system.” But mentioning anything outside of modern Iran is taboo, so it was removed. Do we want to improve the article content or not? A lot of the source material used here deals almost exclusively with Iran, and anything else presented is shot down, as well as any effort to highlight the complexity of the ethnicity issue of Persians as a pan-national group of people. I’m not sure you realize that the ties that bind Persian people are not just ethnic, but also linguistic, cultural, historical, identical, geographical and political (which I tried to highlight, but gain, it was removed; see " IRANIAN FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS TAJIKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN DURING THE AHMADINEJAD PRESIDENCY: THE RISING SALIENCE OF PERSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY". Journal of Central Asian & Caucasian Studies. 7 (13): 73. 2012. "). Persian peoples have their own customs, their own language, architecture, art, literature, music, dance, media, cuisine, dress, society, mythology, etc. etc. etc.

It has nothing to do with “wants” or “feelings;” it's about dispelling confusion that will result from the previously mentioned issues.


 * But as always, you have nothing to contribute except repeating and repeating and repeating the same few sentences or instead bringing up irrelevant issues that contribute nothing to the article. When the issues with the article were first brought up, all you seemed to fixate on is my edit count! Are we counting dollars and measuring sizes or are we trying to improve this thing?? If something valid is brought up, is the edit count really relevant?? Feel free to report me for that time I was frustrated because all the guy replies with was 2 sentences to the discussion, you are entirely free to do so.

So let’s go ahead and bring in neutral third opinions to the article to help clear this up, since you’re clearly unwilling to work in a positive direction. —570ad (talk) 15:11, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

@LouisAragon: The article is not just about present day Persians, it is also about Persian people historically-- further compounded by the fact that when people click on the ethnicity link from a medieval Persian figure like Rudaki, it links to this page.

So the fact that Tajiks were (and still are) synonymous with Persians throughout history is important in and of itself, because it would mean that Tajiks were historically referred to as Persians (and vice versa), and therefore should be strongly featured in this article- an article on Persians throughout time, not just the present day. 77.98.4.100 (talk) 21:23, 17 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Exactly. I think at the very least, we should touch on the complexities of the term. For example, in its strictest sense, Persian is a Persian speaker from modern day Iran, as what the article is largely focused on currently. But in other pages, it has a much broader usage than this. For example, it's basically used as any citizen from modern day Iran, regardless of their actual ethnic background (e.g., Kurd, Jew, etc.).


 * But realistically, Persian is an ethnolinguistic-cultural/historical term, so this is one of the reasons this article needs to be improved, which can be achieved by expanding on the term's different usages as it refers to the different people in the region. —570ad (talk) 02:44, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Request for comment on complexity of the Persian identity
The current article content is far too restrictive in its dealing with the Persian people accurately. We are seeking commentary from neutral third parties to help improve the article so as to avoid any confusion readers may have about the Persian people, past and present. Thank you in advance. —570ad (talk) 15:17, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

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Why is there no mention of Fars province in the history section?
There should be an available link for someone in the history section of Persian people for Pars province. Shadzad (talk) 00:56, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Update discussion
Hi all, I've made a few changes to the article hoping to address the many issues we've been discussing for the past several months now. Let's please continue the discussion here of any improvements or issues that anyone has with the article from the past and from the recent changes I just made, as well as anything else that still hasn't been addressed and needs to be taken care of.

Thanks in advance! —570ad (talk) 00:55, 10 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Brief note: I think the lede could definitely benefit from a revision. As pointed out, things like long listing of specific fields of arts don't need to be listed out individually as they were before their removal; it could also be expanded to include other areas, since Persians contributed to many more fields in addition to the arts. —570ad (talk) 05:23, 11 March 2017 (UTC)


 * You're missing the point, 570ad. First and foremost, you need to come up with some valid references which can back up your statements. You cannot drop those unsourced and self-formulated material in front of the existing citations and get away with it. As the "native to X" part was criticized about, and since it lacked any source, it must've been removed. The idea of considering Tajiks equal to the modern-day Persian ethnic group is still lacking any accurate source; an yet there is a clear distinction between the two groups, as defined through modern-day sources and statistics. The historical usage of the words Tajik and Persian, however, are definitely relevant to this article, and need to be included. —Rye-96 (talk) 13:10, 12 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Ethnicities and religions in Iran.png

Thanks for the comment Rye-96. If we look at this map of the ethnic distribution of Iran, where do any sources state that the Persian ethnic group abruptly discontinues at the border to the east of the country? Historically, there was no such border for many centuries in this area, this is the logic behind the trans-national character of the Persian people, and why stating in the article that they are uniquely in modern-day Iran is completely flawed and inaccurate. The burden of citing ethnic studies showing that indeed there is a sudden halt to the Persian people right at this modern eastern Iranian border also falls on your shoulders for promoting this notion, which I argue is lacking any credible sources, thus, shouldn't be pushed forward as a hard-fact in the article.

Are the people in each of the three Persian countries distinct from one another? Of course–there is no argument there. But, so are the people within each country. The eastern Iranian Persians in Mashhad are not the exact same as the western Iranians of Tehran, for instance, and it is a known fact that Mashhadis share closer historical ties with the people of Herat to the east than they do with their western counterparts. It is modern-day borders that separated a once united people, which is what the article needs to address. The current state is far too restrictive in its dealing with Persian identity. Although it has improved, I admit, but much still needs to be done. —570ad (talk) 14:33, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

@Rye-96. An alternative lede can be the following. If you refer to the German and Austrian article, they have a similar problem and have adopted this approach. With the following, we establish that 1) Persians in Iran and Afghanistan/Tajikistan are now classified differently but 2) historically they were the same people.

''The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group native to Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language, as well as closely related languages.''

The ancient Persians were originally a nomadic branch of the ancient Iranian population who entered modern-day Iran by the early 10th century BC. Together with their compatriot allies, they established and ruled some of the world's most powerful empires, well-recognized for their massive cultural, political and social influence covering much of the territory and population of the ancient world.

''Throughout history, the Persians have contributed greatly to various forms of art. They own one of the world's prominent literary traditions, and have also left influences in architectural and scientific concepts.''

Today, people of Persian heritage living outside of Iran in Afghanistan and Tajikistan are referred to as "Tajiks" and may or may not also self-identify as ethnically Persian—however, it is to be noted that the terms Tajik and Persian were historically synonyms and used interchangeably. 77.98.4.100 (talk) 15:56, 12 March 2017 (UTC)


 * The remark regarding the "eastern Iranian Persians in Mashhad" is correct. If not reverted already, there is currently a brief mention to the fact that the variety of Persian spoken in Khorasan is close to the one spoken by the Aimaq. And it could be expanded if needed. What we need is accurate and relevant information extracted from some reliable sources, rather than some unsourced or first-hand material which definitely leads to numerous edit wars.
 * @77.98.4.100: There's nothing to discuss and decide about as long as the primary issue with these statements is that they lack sources. —Rye-96 (talk) 16:54, 12 March 2017 (UTC)


 * this article is not just about Persians in the modern day, but Persians historically. Tajiks were historically known as Persians. Sources have been provided. This fact is pretty important. It should be mentioned in the lede, not a footnote hidden away in the article. I suggest putting in the lede: "Today, people of Persian heritage living outside of Iran in Afghanistan and Tajikistan are referred to as Tajiks; however, it is to be noted that the terms Tajik and Persian were historically synonyms and used interchangeably." 77.98.4.100 (talk) 18:04, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

I've made a few updates based on this discussion, please check them when you get a chance. I think it is moving in the right general direction. As for the note on Mashhadis, I did not see it in there. When I have more time, I will try to go though past edits and see if it can be found in there and resurrected. I've also put back the line from Ibn Battuta, which was removed recently. This is a relevant piece of information that goes along with the usage history narrative in that section. —570ad (talk) 13:15, 13 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Is there a source that says that the Persian-speakers (incl. Hazaras) of the nations called Afghanistan and Tajikistan are "Persians?" - LouisAragon (talk) 15:12, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The stuff about the historic usage of Persian and Tajik looks fine. I've got some more material to add to that. Also, don't forget that Khorasan included major parts of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as well. - LouisAragon (talk) 15:13, 13 March 2017 (UTC)


 * This is a tricky one, since the Persians of Khorasan are much alike some Persians of Tajikistan and Afghanistan. The Persian-speakers of Herat, for example, are more to close to Khorasani Persians than the Persian-speakers of Afghanistan. Historically 'Tajik' used to be a synonym with 'Persian', and many prominent Persians called themselves Tajks, especially during the medieval period and apparently even under the Safavids. However it is a different thing in this day. --HistoryofIran (talk) 15:30, 13 March 2017 (UTC)


 * As mentioned earlier, this article is not exclusively about modern-day Persians living in today's Iran. Once again, please refer to the point I brought up above about the ethnic map of Iran (reposting here). Replying with a question is not an answer, as you did. Does it make any logical sense to you that Persians abruptly stop existing at this eastern border? Why is it so hard to accept that Persians do indeed make up the bulk of the Persian element of Central Asia given that they have been in the region for centuries? The history of Persians itself tells us about their movements and where they settled, their conquests, etc. It was these Khorasani Persians (yes, in today's Afghanistan/Central Asia) that spread Persian culture to South Asia into India, giving rise to the Moghul dynasties and their achievements (Taj Mahal, etc.) and these Khorasani Persians of Central Asia are responsible for the huge presence of Persian vocabulary in Hindi and Urdu that have retained their eastern (Dari) pronunciation because of being brought there from Khorasan. What sources say anything contrary to the history? I think you are confusing the Indian subcontinent's Persian history with that of Central Asia's; true, the Persians in India integrated wholly into the general stratum of Indian population throughout centuries, whereas the Persians of Central Asia (particularly in Afghanistan and Tajikistan) have retained their Persian identity. You seem to think this people merely adopted the Persian culture, but the truth is, they have been active contributors to Persian identity, as proven by the countless historical Persians that were born there.


 * I have not brought up Hazaras once the entire several months of this discussion–yet you keep mentioning them as if the entire argument is about them, when it's not. And your edit note, "797 times," lol, please chill. —570ad (talk) 23:10, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Just to add to what 570ad and HistoryofIran said: The inhabitants of Herat, stretching to ancient Bactria (Balkh) on the east, were an extension of the population of the present-day Iranian provinces of Khurasan, and from the time of the Achaemenid empire these 'upper provinces' had a unity, probably ethnic as well as cultural (pg. 35, The History of Ancient Iran, Richard N. Frye). 77.98.4.100 (talk) 21:16, 13 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Well there was no such thing as a Persian population in Khorasan under the Achaemenids, if that's what you mean. The region was still populated by Eastern Iranians back then. I honestly doubt that the Persians even were a majority in Pars/Fars at that time, not by a large margin at least. It was after the Arab conquests the Persianization of the Iranian population started, and it seems to have been pretty much completed under Samanids, per, which I wrote in the Samanid Empire article;


 * Under the Samanid Empire, the Zarafshan valley, Kashka Darya and Usrushana were populated by Sogdians; Tukharistan by the Bactrians; Khwarezm by the Khwarazmians; the Ferghana valley by the Ferghanans; southern Khorasan by Khorasanians; and the Pamir mountains and its surroundings by the Saka and other early Iranian peoples. All these groups were of Iranian ethnicity and spoke dialects of Middle Iranian and New Persian. In the words of Negmatov, "they were the basis for the emergence and gradual consolidation of what became an Eastern Persian-Tajik ethnic identity."


 * You could say the modern-day Tajiks are Persians, but as a subgroup. They're not the same as the Persians in Iran. You don't see Tajiks and Dari-speakers going around and calling themselves Persian either. Honestly I think many Dari-speakers in Afghanistan would be pissed if you called them for Persian. Historically however Tajik was a synonym with Persian, but that's another story. --HistoryofIran (talk) 23:36, 13 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Thank you for that comment, it was very, very informative and definitely helped shed some light on the issue. One question that seems to always linger in this discussion is what about the descendants of the historical Persian figures that came from the east, far beyond modern Iran's even easternmost borders of Mashhad? I am speaking of people like Rudaki, Rumi, ibn Sina, and so on. And what about the fact that the modern Persian language and literature, such as Persian poetry essentially bloomed outside of Iran in Khorasan? What is the explanation for the idea (that is currently being pushed by LouisA and Rye) that the aforementioned people were Persians, but their descendants who make up the bulk of the Persian-speaking communities of these regions are not Persian? I get what you're saying, but it would also imply that people like Rumi, Rudaki, etc. were probably Persian-speakers vs. being ethnically Persian as defined by LouisA and Rye, who have no way to resolve this discrepancy; they simply dismiss the argument and say, "Well, those people from back then were Persians, but the people living there in the same lands today are not Persians." This is probably the biggest issue with the article and we need to fully resolve it together. Your input definitely helped, but the question still lingers: Who made up the bulk of the people of "Khorasan Bozorg" and if it was Persians, where did they go? —570ad (talk) 00:29, 14 March 2017 (UTC)


 * , thanks for reverting yourself. That's indeed a proper gesture to show that you want to keep it productive! ; ) The thing is, that the reliable sources don't call them Persian. Because no such source exists. I know I've asked and said this numerous times, but its because every time, you give us the feeling that you're evading it by giving (historically correct, I will add) anekdotes. We are only allowed to edit according to the reliable sources. Its really a fundamental principle of Wikipedia, and we are ought to stick to it. Hence, Wikipedia considers that it's not our job to fill in the answer to "where they did go" (referring to the last sentence of your previous response). Our opinion accounts for basically nothing here. Yes, historically, the terminations were used interchangeably, and historically (from the late Medieval era) they were used to denote the same thing. We all agree about that, we proved it, and there are many sources that back this up. But to say that the "Persian-speakers of Afghanistan and Tajikistan" or the "Tajiks of Afghanistan and Tajikistan" are Persians is unsourced WP:OR, as it stands. Simply and only because no source backs this up. mentioned the same thing correctly. We really need to explicitly stick to the sources, please keep this in mind. We're starting to do well though, I will add! - LouisAragon (talk) 03:10, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Ok guys, I think this edit is pretty good (made by IP 77.xx). I think its even justified to call it simply spot on. @HistoryofIran, I believe it basically covers that what we both mean, what do you think? It sticks well to the source too, as well as the other sources that are to be found about this. What should we do about Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan though? I noticed btw, that the article is missing a lot of important information about the historic Persian communities of Shirvan/Arran (present-day Azerbaijan), southern Dagestan, Mesopotamia (Iraq), as well as of Asia Minor. Outside of Fars/Pars, many of these communities far pre-date any noteworthy communities elsewhere. Enc. Iranica has numerous proper articles about this matter, for a start. - LouisAragon (talk) 03:10, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Another useful source that adds to the already (verifiably correct) statements; H. F. Schurmann, The Mongols of Afghanistan: an Ethnography of the Moghols and Related Peoples of Afghanistan. The Hague: Mouton, 1962: ; p. 75: "... the Tajiks of Western Afghanistan [are] roughly the same as the Khûrâsânî Persians on the other side of the line ..." - LouisAragon (talk) 03:14, 14 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Well we have to take note that most of the Tajik-Persian population of Khorasan and Transoxiana was massacred by Genghis Khans genocidal army, and was settled by many Turks/Mongols who become Persianized, whilst Iranians from Iran also settled there. But yeah then again the Khorasani Persians resemble more the Persians of Afghanistan/Tajikistan than the Western Persians. As I said, it's a very tricky one. But ya even the Persian language we today speak in Iran has been heavy influenced by Eastern Iranian languages, hence why even the most pure words in Persian are quite different from other Iranian languages that have much more in common with each other. The most 'pure' active Persian language today is Lori, which is funnily almost mutually intelligible to the Kurdish spoken in Iran. Btw this is a interesting read . --HistoryofIran (talk) 14:24, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

It's a step towards the right direction, but I was waiting for some kind of consensus here before making further edits which are still necessary. @HistoryofIran. Central Asia was heavily Turkified, but I want to point out that the Tajik-Persian population still exist there. Turko-Mongols who were Persianized are now called Hazaras. They are distinguishable from Tajiks from their phenotype and dialect and they do not consider themselves Persian or Iranian. 77.98.4.100 (talk) 20:09, 14 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Look at the Uzbeks and Tajiks for example, many of them have the same Asiatic features, which is rare among Western Persians (more common among Khorasani Persians though). Saying Hazaras are the only Persian-speaking people who are descendants of Turko-Mongols is incorrect. Many Transoxian/Khorasan cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand were depopulated and destroyed. Of course, the Tajik-Persian population which was descended from the Eastern Iranians still exist, but not by a very large margin, although not by a small margin either I think. --HistoryofIran (talk) 20:17, 14 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Not to digress too much from the actual discussion, but this is a common misconception we have in Iran that "Afghanis" (as a collective term grouping them all together, regardless of actual ethnic background) is that they are "Asian/Mongol," and this is simply not true. I'm not sure of the exact numbers of the ethnic makeup of Afghan refugees in Iran, it's possible that Hazaras outnumber the others, but inside Afghanistan, they're a minority. There are genetic studies done on them and several other groups in the region that compared their DNA with that of the "average" Mongol DNA and it showed a very high fidelity (the most similarity in fact outside of Mongolia!). But other groups that were studied did not have as high genetic similarity. So the notion that Tajiks are "Mongoloid" is simply incorrect. There is a history of intermixing, yes, but overall, the groups of people have kind of stayed within their own ethnicity for the most part, which explains why Hazaras as a group are so "genetically pure."


 * In Iran, there are also people who look like Hazaras or "Asian" looking, such as Khodadad Azizi as a famous example, but they're only a small part of the overall racial makeup of the country. Most Persian speakers of Afghanistan can range from blond/red-hair, blue/green eyes to very dark features (some even look like Indians), but this is the exact same thing in Iran. I have met Iranians who look darker than Ghandi, but also have met others that look "European," and both are the "same" people, though their features are very different physically. The average look between Persian speakers in Iran and Afghanistan is the same in my experience. They're not really distinguishable from one another if don't have other clues that help identify their background (e.g., clothing, accent, behavior, etc.). —570ad (talk) 00:42, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

@LouisAragon: All historical Persian figures - including and especially those from regions traditionally inhabited by Tajiks (i.e. Tajikistan as well as Merv, Samarkand, Bukhara, Balkh, Herat etc) - link to this page. This page has (wrongly) been restyled as an article on Persians in modern day Iran, despite Persians in Afghanistan and Central Asia contributing a massive amount to the Persian language, culture and identity.

Writing "the east" is too vague. The east where? India? China? Why skirt around naming the countries, if they are an important part of the article? You vetoed 570ad's edit, which comprised of including the countries in the first line, so I suggested this new edit instead. It's an important part of the article as it clarifies the distinction between Persians in Iran vs Afghanistan and Central Asia. If you negate every attempt to address issues on the Talk page, they'll remain unresolved which will just lead to endless edit warring by future users.

If you're asking why Afghanistan is mentioned separate from "southern Central Asia", it's because it's not a Central Asian country ergo it has to be mentioned separately.

The body itself doesn't mention Afghanistan/Central Asia because the distinction regarding Persians/Tajiks are clarified in the lede, so there's no need to elaborate a great deal in the body. Although, I don't mind elaborating in the body if you want.

In any case, it's a minor edit that doesn't need reverting over such an unsubstantial reason. 77.98.4.100 (talk) 23:21, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Just wanted to add another note that there has been no known mass migration of Western Iranians to Eastern Iranian lands after the Mongol's genocide that was indicated here by a previous editor. If you have either any western academic or Persian sources that indicated a mass migration -- let me know. Most Tajik-Persians are still direct descendants of Eastern Iranians, and while yes, like many Persians of Iran, some have some Turkic admixture due to being historically heavily urbanized and mingled with urban Turks (Sarts). With that said, most genetics have shown that Tajiks/Eastern Persians are genetically more distant from both Turkic and Western Iranians in comparison to their relation to other modern Eastern Iranians (ie Pashtuns), especially within either the present-day Afghan or rural populations. Phenotypically, it is hard for either ethnic Iranians from either present-day Iran or outside of Iran to distinguish from each outside of accent, clothing, etc -- and this is pretty much seen within the diaspora population. I have been confused for Kurd, Iranian Persian, Tajikistani Persian, Afghan Persian, Mazandarani, Pashtun, (even) Arab etc etc by other ethnic Iranians depending on the context. (All) Afghans === Hazara/Mongoloid is a false stereotype, and Uzbekstani/Tajikistani Tajiks-Persians === Turkic is also a false stereotype. There is a large ethnic Iranian population with clear Caucasoid features in all three countries.

--Jamaas9 (talk) 23:26, 7 June 2018 (UTC)