User:HistoryofIran/Tat people (Caucasus)

History
The Tat language (also known as Caucasian Persian and Caucasian Tat) is a southwestern Iranian language descended from Middle Persian. Tati speakers are said to be descended from military settlers from southwestern Iran who moved to southern Dagestan during the era of the pre-Islamic Sasanian Empire (224–651). The language is spoken by three groups, the Muslim Tats, the Mountain Jews and Christian Armeno-Tats. Similar to the name "Tajik", the word "Tat" was originally used in early Turkic with the general sense of "alien, non-Turk," but it quickly came to be applied to Persians with a slightly disdainful flavor. The Tats have different self-designations, such as "Pars", "Lohij", "Daghli", and "Tat".

Tati was amongst the Iranian languages that survived the Turkification of the eastern part of the South Caucasus which began in the 11th–14th centuries, remaining the primary language of the Absheron peninsula and the Baku region until the mid-19th century. Russia more or less openly pursued a policy to free their newly conquered land from Iran's influence. By doing this, the Russian government helped to create and spread a new Turkic identity that, in contrast to the previous one, was founded on secular principles, particularly the shared language. As a result, many Iranian-speaking residents of the future Azerbaijan Republic at the time either started hiding their Iranian ancestry or underwent progressive assimilation. The Tats and Kurds underwent these integration processes particularly quickly.