Ossetian
Ирон
Spoken in	Russia (North Ossetia)  Georgia  Turkey  South Ossetia (partially recognized)
Ethnicity	Ossetians
Native speakers	ca. 640,000  (no date)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Eastern Northeastern Scythian Western Ossetian
Dialects	Digor Iron Jassic
Writing system	Cyrllic (Ossetian alphabet) Georgian (c. 1820–1954) Latin (1923–1937)
Official status
Official language in	South Ossetia, North Ossetia
Language codes
ISO 639-1	os
ISO 639-2	oss
ISO 639-3	oss
Linguasphere	58-ABB-a
Ossetian text from a book published in 1935. Part of an alphabetic list of proverbs. Latin script.
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

The Ethnolinguistic patchwork of the modern Caucasus - CIA map

Ossetic or Ossetian (Ossetic: Ирон, tr. Iron), also sometimes called Ossete,^[1] is an East Iranian language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains.

The area in Russia is known as North Ossetia–Alania, while the area south of the border is referred to as South Ossetia, recognized by Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Nauru as an independent state but by the rest of the international community as part of Georgia. Ossetian speakers number about 525,000, sixty percent of whom live in North Ossetia, and ten percent in South Ossetia.^{[citation needed]}

History and classification[link]

Ossetian is the spoken and literary language of the Ossetes, a people living in the central part of the Caucasus and constituting the basic population of the republic of North Ossetia–Alania, which belongs to the Russian Federation, and of the South Ossetia, which is de facto independent (belongs to the Georgian Republic according to most other states). Ossetian belongs to the Northern subgroup of the Eastern-Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages. Thus, it is genetically related to the other Eastern-Iranian languages, e.g. Pashto and Yaghnobi.

From deep Antiquity (since the 7th-8th centuries BC), the languages of the Iranian group were distributed in a vast territory including present-day Iran (Persia), Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Ossetian is the sole survivor of the northeastern branch of Iranian languages known as Scythian. The Scythian group included numerous tribes, known in ancient sources as the Scythians, Massagetae, Saka, Sarmatians, Alans and Roxolans. The more easterly Khorezmians and the Sogdians were also closely affiliated, in linguistic terms.

Ossetian, together with Kurdish, Tati and Talyshi, is one of the main Iranian languages with a sizable community of speakers in the Caucasus. It is descended from Alanic, the language of the Alans, medieval tribes emerging from the earlier Sarmatians. It is believed to be the only surviving descendant of a Sarmatian language. The closest genetically related language is the Yaghnobi language of Tajikistan, the only other living member of the Northeastern Iranian branch.^[2][3] Ossetian has a plural formed by the suffix -ta, a feature it shares with Yaghnobi, Sarmatian and the now-extinct Sogdian; this is taken as evidence of a formerly wide-ranging Iranian-language dialect continuum on the Central Asian steppe. The names of ancient Iranian tribes (as transmitted through Ancient Greek) in fact reflect this pluralization, e.g. Saromatae (Σαρομάται) and Masagetae (Μασαγέται).^[4]

Evidence for Medieval Ossetian[link]

The earliest known written sample of Ossetian is an inscription which dates from the 10th to 12th centuries and was found near the River Bolshoi Zelenchuk at Arkhyz. The text is written in the Greek alphabet, with special digraphs.

—ΣΑΧΗΡΗ ΦΟΥΡΤ ΧΟΒΣ
ΗΣΤΟΡΗ ΦΟΥΡΤ ΠΑΚΑΘΑΡ
ΠΑΚΑΘΑΡΗ ΦΟΥΡΤ ΑΝΠΑΛΑΝ
ΑΝΠΑΛΑΝΗ ΦΟΥΡΤ ΛΑΚ
ΑΝΗ ΤΖΗΡΘΕ

This transliterates as:

—Saxiri Furt Xovs
Istori Furt Bæqætar
Bæqætari Furt Æmbalan
Æmbalani Furt Lak
Ani čirtī

This translates to English as "K., son of S., son of I., son of B., son of A.; [this is] their monument." ^[5]

The only other extant record of Proto-Ossetic are the two lines of "Alanic" phrases appearing in the Theogony of John Tzetzes, a 12th-century Byzantine poet and grammarian:

—Τοῖς ἀλανοῖς προσφθέγγομαι κατά τήν τούτων γλῶσσαν
Καλή ημέρα σου αὐθεντα μου αρχόντισσα πόθεν εἶσαι

Ταπαγχὰς μέσφιλι χσινὰ κορθὶ κάντα καὶ τ’άλλα
ἂν ὃ ἒχη ἀλάνισσα παπὰν φίλον ἀκούσαις ταῦτα
οὐκ αἰσχύνεσσι αὐθέντρια μου νὰ μου γαμὴ τὸ μουνί σου παπᾶς

τὸ φάρνετζ κίντζι μέσφιλι καίτζ φουὰ σαοῦγγε^[6]

The italicized portions above are Ossetian. Going beyond a direct transliteration of the Greek text, scholars have attempted a phonological reconstruction using the Greek as clues, thus, while τ (tau) would usually be given the value "t," it instead is "d," which is thought to be the way the early Ossetes would have pronounced it. The scholarly transliteration of the Alanic phrases is: "dæ ban xʷærz,mæ sfili, (æ)xsinjæ kurθi kændæ" and "du farnitz, kintzæ mæ sfili, kajci fæ wa sawgin?"; equivalents in modern Ossetian would be "Dæ bon xwarz, me’fšini ‘xšinæ, kurdigæj dæ?" and "(De’) f(s)arm neč(ij), kinźi æfšini xæcc(æ) (ku) fæwwa sawgin".^[7] The passage translates as:

—The Alans I greet in their language:
"Good day to you my lord's lady, where are you from?"
"Good day to you my lord's lady, where are you from?" and other things:
When an Alan woman takes a priest as a lover, you might hear this:
"Aren't you ashamed, my lordly lady, that your cunt is being fucked by a priest?"
"Aren't you ashamed, my lady, to have a love affair with the priest?"^[6][7]

There are also recently found marginalia to Greek religious books with some parts (like headlines) of the book translated into Old Ossetic.

It is theorized that during the Proto-Ossetic phase, Ossetian underwent a process of phonological change conditioned by a Rhythmusgesetz or "Rhythm-law" whereby nouns were divided into two classes, those heavily or lightly stressed. "Heavy-stem" nouns possessed a "heavy" long vowel or diphthong, and were stressed on the first-occurring syllable of this type; "light-stem" nouns were stressed on their final syllable. This is precisely the situation observed in the earliest (though admittedly scanty) records of Ossetian presented above.^[8] This situation also obtains in Modern Ossetian, although the emphasis in Digor is also affected by the "openness" of the vowel.^[9] The trend is also found in a Jassic glossary dating from 1422.^[10]

Dialects[link]

There are two important dialects: Iron and Digor—the former being the more widely spoken. Written Ossetian may be immediately recognized by its use of the Cyrillic letter Ae (Ӕ ӕ), a letter to be found in no other language using Cyrillic script. A third dialect of Ossetian, Jassic, was formerly spoken in Hungary. The overwhelming majority of Ossetes speak the Iron dialect, and the literary language is based on it. The creator of the Ossetian literary language is the national poet Kosta Xetagurov (1859–1906).^[2]

Phonology[link]

Ossetic has 7 vowels:

Ossetian researcher V.I. Abaev distinguishes 26 consonants, to which five labialized consonants and two semivowels may be added. Unusually for an Indo-European language, there is a series of glottalized (ejective) stops and affricates. This can be considered an areal feature of languages of the Caucasus.

The phonetic realization of /s/ and /z/ varies between [s], [z] and [ʃ], [ʒ]. Voiceless consonants become voiced word-medially (this is reflected in the orthography as well). /tʃ/, /dʒ/, and /tʃʼ/ were originally allophones of /k/, /ɡ/, and /kʼ/ when followed by /e/, /i/ and /ɨ/; this alternation is still retained to a large extent.

Stress normally falls on the first syllable, unless it has a "weak" vowel (/ə/ or /ɨ/), in which case it falls on the second syllable. In the Iron dialect, definiteness is expressed in post-initially stressed words by shifting the stress to the initial syllable. This reflects the fact that historically they received a syllabic definite article (as they still do in the Digor dialect), and the addition of the syllable caused the stress to shift.^[2]

Grammar[link]

According to V.I. Abaev,

In the course of centuries-long propinquity to and intercourse with Caucasian languages, Ossetian became similar to them in some features, particularly in phonetics and lexicon. However, it retained its grammatical structure and basic lexical stock; its relationship with the Iranian family, despite considerable individual traits, does not arouse any doubt.

—^[2]

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica 2006^[12] Ossetian preserves many archaic features of Old Iranian, such as eight cases and verbal prefixes. It is debated what part of these cases are actually inherited from Indo-Iranian case morphemes and what part have re-developed, after the loss of the original case forms, through cliticiziation of adverbs or re-interpretations of derivational suffixes: the number of "inherited" cases according to different scholars ranges from as few as three (nominative, genitive and inessive) to as many as six (nominative, dative, ablative, directive, inessive). Some (the comitative, equative, and adessive) are secondary beyond any doubt.^[13]

Nouns and adjectives share the same morphology and distinguish two numbers (singular and plural) and nine cases: nominative, genitive, dative, directive, ablative, inessive, adessive, equative, and comitative. Unusually for an Indo-European language, the nominal morphology is agglutinative: the case suffixes and the number suffix are separate, the case suffixes are the same for both numbers and the number suffix is the same for all cases. Definiteness is also expressed. There is no grammatical gender.^[2]

Verbs distinguish six persons (1st, 2nd and 3d, singular and plural), three tenses (present, past and future, all expressed synthetically), and three moods (indicative, subjunctive, imperative). The person, tense and mood morphemes are mostly fused. Passive voice is expressed periphrastically with the past passive participle and an auxiliary verb meaning "to go"; causative and reflexive meaning are also expressed by periphrastic constructions. Verbs may belong to one of two lexical aspects (perfective vs imperfective); these are expressed by prefixes, which often have prepositional origin. There is an infinitive (morphologically coinciding with the 1st person singular, but syntactically forming a nominal phrase), four participles (present and past active, past passive, and future), and a gerund. Vowel and consonant alternations occur between the present and past stems of the verb and between intransitive and transitive forms. Intransitive and transitive verbs also differ in the endings they take in the past tense (in intransitive verbs, the construction is, in origin, a periphrastic combination of the past passive participle and the verb "to be").^[2]

Ossetic uses mostly postpositions (derived from nouns), although two prepositions exist in the language. Noun modifiers precede nouns. The word order is not rigid, but tends towards SOV. The morphosyntactic alignment is nominative–accusative, although there is no accusative case: rather, the direct object is in the nominative (typically if inanimate or indefinite) or in the genitive (typically if animate or definite).^[2]

For numerals above twenty, two systems are in use - a decimal one used officially, and a vigesimal one used colloquially.^[2]

Writing system[link]

Ossetic text written with Georgian script, from a book on Ossetian folklore published in 1940 in South Ossetia

Prior to the Russian conquest, Ossetian was reportedly an unwritten language. After the Russian conquest Ossetians used the Cyrillic script: the first Ossetian book being published in Cyrillic letters in 1798. At the same time the Georgian script was used in some regions to the south of the Caucasian mountains: in 1820 I.Yalguzidze published an alphabetic primer, modifying the Georgian alphabet with 3 special characters. That Georgian-based script was in use in the territory of South Ossetia (Georgian autonomy) in 1937–1954

A Cyrillic script was created by a Russian scientist of Finnish-Swedish origin Andreas Sjögren in 1844: there were separate letters for each sound in that alphabet (much like in the modern Abkhaz alphabet). After a brief experiment with a Latin alphabet, Soviet authorities in 1937 returned to a Cyrillic alphabet, with digraphs introduced to replace most diacritics (while the Georgian-based script was then introduced in South Ossetia and used there until 1954^[14]). The "one nation - two alphabets" issue caused an uprising in South Ossetia in the year 1951 demanding reunification of the script.

The modern Cyrillic alphabet, used since 1937, with values for the Iron dialect in the IPA. Letters in parentheses are not officially in the alphabet but are listed here to represent distinctive sounds:

In addition, the letters ⟨ё⟩, ⟨ж⟩, ⟨ш⟩, ⟨щ⟩, ⟨ъ⟩, ⟨ь⟩, ⟨э⟩, ⟨ю⟩, and ⟨я⟩ are used to transcribe Russian loans.

In addition, the letters ⟨š⟩ and ⟨ž⟩ were used to transcribe Russian words. The "weak" vowels ⟨æ⟩ [ə] and ⟨ы⟩ [ɨ] are extremely common in the language.

Language usage[link]

The first page of the first issue of the Ossetian newspaper "Ræstdzinad". Sjögren's Cyrillic alphabet. 1923

The first printed book in Ossetian appeared in 1798. The first newspaper, Iron Gazet, appeared on July 23, 1906 in Vladikavkaz. The first complete translation of the Bible appeared in 2010 in Vladikavkaz, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures in modern-day Ossetian.^[15]

While Ossetian is the official language in both South and North Ossetia (along with Russian), its official use is limited to publishing new laws in Ossetian newspapers. There are two daily newspapers in Ossetian: Ræstdzinad (Рæстдзинад, "Truth") in the North and Xurzærin (Хурзæрин, "The Sun") in the South. Some smaller newspapers, such as district newspapers, use Ossetian for some articles. There is a monthly magazine Max dug (Мах дуг, "Our era"), mostly devoted to contemporary Ossetian fiction and poetry. The Watchtower magazine, published by Jehovah's Witnesses, is available in a quarterly edition and a monthly study edition; as well as a web site in Ossetian from the same publishers.^[16]

Ossetian is taught in secondary schools for all pupils. Native Ossetian speakers also take courses in Ossetian literature.

Cognates[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

The following table illustrates some common Ossetic words and gives cognates in other Indo-Iranian and other Indo-European languages.

See also[link]

• Alans
• North Ossetia–Alania

Notes[link]

Constructs such as ibid., loc. cit. and idem are discouraged by Wikipedia's style guide for footnotes, as they are easily broken. Please improve this article by replacing them with named references (quick guide), or an abbreviated title. (June 2010)

Bibliography[link]

• Abaev, V.I. A grammatical sketch of Ossetic (Russian version)
• Abaev, V.I. Ossetian Language and Folklore, USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow-Leningrad, 1949
• Arys-Djanaieva, Lora. Parlons Ossète. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2004, ISBN 2-7475-6235-2.
• Nasidze et al., Genetic Evidence Concerning the Origins of South and North Ossetians. Annals of Human Genetics 68 (6), 588-599(2004)

External links[link]

Ossetic language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Genetic Evidence Concerning the Origins of South and North Ossetians
• Ossetic language page at the Minority languages of Russia on the Net project (Russian)
• History of the Ossetian writing system and a comprehensive table of characters (Russian)
• Ossetic language materials in English and partly French
• Laboratory of Field Linguistics: Ossetic (studies on Ossetic grammar, modern spoken texts in Ossetic) (English)
• Ossetic section of the Rosetta Project
• Omniglot - Ossetian (Ирон æвзаг / Дигорон æвзаг)
• Ossetian Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• Russian-Ossetic On-Line Dictionary

The Iranian peoples (Iranic peoples)^[3] are an Indo-European ethnic-linguistic group that comprise the speakers of Iranian languages,^[4] a major branch of the Indo-European language family, as such forming a branch of the Indo-European-speaking peoples. Their historical areas of settlement were on the Iranian plateau, and comprised most of Iran and certain areas of Central Asia such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and most of Afghanistan, some parts of western Pakistan, northern Iraq and eastern Turkey, and scattered parts of the Caucasus Mountains.^[5][6] Their current distribution spreads across the Iranian plateau, and stretches from Pakistan's Indus River in the east to eastern Turkey in the west, and from Central Asia and the Caucasus in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south – a region that is sometimes called the Iranian cultural continent, or Greater Persia by scholars, and represents the extent of the Iranian languages and influence of the Persian People, through the geopolitical reach of the Persian empire.^[7]

The Iranian group emerges from an earlier Iranian unity during the Late Bronze Age, and it enters the historical record during the Early Iron Age.

The Iranians comprise the Persians, Medes, Scythians, Bactrians, Parthians, Sarmatians, Alans, Ossetians and their sub-groups. The Iranians had domesticated horses, had travelled far and wide, and from the 2nd millennium B.C migrated to, and settled on, the Iranian Plateau. They moved into the Zagros Mountains in the Elamite Kingdom, the first urban settlement area. The Medes formed an Iranian Kingdom. At 646 B.C., Susa and many other cities of Elam were plundered and wrecked by Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria. About 25 years later, the Assyrians were confronted and eventually overthrown by the armies of Media. This began the Iranian domination in the Iranian Plateau. Persians formed the Achaemenid Empire by the 6th century BC, while the Scythians dominated the Eurasian steppe.^[8][9] With numerous artistic, scientific, architectural and philosophical achievements and numerous kingdoms and empires that bridged much of the civilized world in antiquity,^{[citation needed]} the Iranian peoples were often in close contact with the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Indians, and Chinese. The various religions of the Iranian peoples, including Zoroastrianism, Mithraism and Manichaeism, are believed by some scholars to have been significant early philosophical influences on Christianity and Judaism.^[10] Early Iranian tribes are the ancestors of modern Iranian peoples.

Name[link]

Geographic distribution of Iranian languages

The term Iranian is derived from the Old Iranian ethnical adjective Aryana which is itself a cognate of the Sanskrit word Arya.^[11][12] The name Iran is from Aryānām; lit: "[Land] of the Aryans".^[13][14] The old Proto-Indo-Iranian term Arya, per Thieme meaning "hospitable", is believed to have been one of the self-referential terms used by the Aryans, at least in the areas populated by Aryans who migrated south from Central Asia. Another meaning for Aryan is noble. In the late part of the Avesta (Vendidad 1), one of their homelands was referred to as Airyanem Vaejah. The homeland varied in its geographic range, the area around Herat (Pliny's view) and even the entire expanse of the Iranian plateau (Strabo's designation).^[14]

The academic usage of the term Iranian is distinct from the state of Iran and its various citizens (who are all Iranian by nationality and thus popularly referred to as Iranians) in the same way that Germanic people is distinct from Germans. Many citizens of Iran are not necessarily "Iranian people" by virtue of not being speakers of Iranian languages. Unlike the various terms connected with the Aryan arya- in Old Indian, the Old Iranian term has solely an ethnic meaning^[15] and there can be no doubt about the ethnic value of Old Iran. arya (Benveniste, 1969, I, pp. 369 f.; Szemerényi; Kellens).^[16]

The name Arya lives in the ethnic names like Alan, New Persian: Iran, Ossertian: Ir and Iron.^{[16][17][18][19][19][20][21][22]} The name Iran has been in usage since Sassanid times.^[20][21]

The Avesta clearly uses airya as an ethnic name (Vd. 1; Yt. 13.143-44, etc.), where it appears in expressions such as airyāfi; daiŋˊhāvō “Iranian lands, peoples,” airyō.šayanəm “land inhabited by Iranians,” and airyanəm vaējō vaŋhuyāfi; dāityayāfi; “Iranian stretch of the good Dāityā,” the river Oxus, the modern Āmū Daryā.^[16]

The term "Ariya" appears in the royal Old Persian inscriptions in three different contexts: 1) As the name of the language of the Old Persian version of the inscription of Darius the Great in Behistun; 2) as the ethnic background of Darius in inscriptions at Naqsh-e-Rostam and Susa (Dna, Dse) and Xerxes in the inscription from Persepolis (Xph) and 3) as the definition of the God of Iranian people, Ahuramazda, in the Elamite version of the Behistun inscription.^[16][17][19] For example in the Dna and Dse Darius and Xerxes describe themselves as “An Achaemenian, A Persian son of a Persian and an Aryan, of Aryan stock”.^[23] Although Darius the Great called his language the Iranian language,^[23] modern scholars refer to it as Old Persian^[23] because it is the ancestor of modern Persian language.^[24]

The Old Persian and Avestan evidence is confirmed by the Greek sources”.^[16] Herodotus in his Histories remarks about the Iranian Medes that: “These Medes were called anciently by all people Arians; “ (7.62).^[16][17][19] In Armenian sources, the Parthians, Medes and Persians are collectively referred to as Iranians.^[25] Eudemus of Rhodes apud Damascius (Dubitationes et solutiones in Platonis Parmenidem 125 bis) refers to “the Magi and all those of Iranian (áreion) lineage”; Diodorus Siculus (1.94.2) considers Zoroaster (Zathraustēs) as one of the Arianoi.^[16]

Strabo, in his "Geography", mentions the unity of Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Sogdians:^[18]

The name of Ariana is further extended to a part of Persia and of Media, as also to the Bactrians and Sogdians on the north; for these speak approximately the same language, with but slight variations.

— Geography, 15.8

The trilingual inscription erected by Shapur's command gives a more clear description. The languages used are Parthian, Middle Persian and Greek. In Greek, the inscription says: “ego ... tou Arianon ethnous despotes eimi”(“I am lord of the kingdom (Gk. nation) of the Aryans”) which translates to “I am the king of the Iranian people”. In the Middle Persian, Shapour states: “ērānšahr xwadāy hēm” and in Parthian he states: “aryānšahr xwadāy ahēm”.^[20][26]

The Bactrian language (a Middle Iranian language) inscription of Kanishka the founder of the Kushan empire at Rabatak, which was discovered in 1993 in an unexcavated site in the Afghanistan province of Baghlan, clearly refers to this Eastern Iranian language as Arya.^[27][28] In the post-Islamic era, one can still see a clear usage of the term Iran in the work of the 10th-century historian Hamzeh Isfahani. In his book the history of Prophets and Kings writes: “Aryan which is also called Pars (Persia) is in the middle of these countries and these six countries surround it because the South East is in the hands China, the North of the Turks, the middle South is India, the middle North is Rome, and the South West and the North West is the Sudan and Berber lands”.^[29] All this evidence shows that the name arya “Iranian” was a collective definition, denoting peoples (Geiger, pp. 167 f.; Schmitt, 1978, p. 31) who were aware of belonging to the one ethnic stock, speaking a common language, and having a religious tradition that centered on the cult of Ahura Mazdā.^[30]

History and settlement[link]

Roots[link]

The extent of the BMAC (according to the EIEC).

The language referred to as Proto-Indo-European (PIE): is ancestral to the Celtic, Italic (including Romance), Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Albanian, Armernian, Greek, and Tocharian languages.

'There is an agreement that the PIE community split into two major groups from wherever its homeland was situated (its location is unknown), and whenever the timing of its dispersal (also unknown). One headed west for Europe and became speakers of Indo-European (all the languages of modern Europe save for Basque, Hungarian, and Finnish) while others headed east for Eurasia to become Indo-Iranians. The Indo-Iranians were a community that spoke a common language prior to their branching off into the Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages. Iranian refers to the languages of Iran (Iranian), Pakistan (Baluch), Afghanistan (Pashto), and Tadjikistan (Tadjik) and Indo-Aryan, Sanskrit, Hindi and its many related languages.' - (Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky: Case of the Bronze Age)

By the early 1st millennium, Ancient Iranian peoples such as Medes, Persians, Bactrians, Parthians and Scythians populated the Iranian plateau, and other Scythian tribes, along with Cimmerians, Sarmatians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea. The Saka, Scythian, tribes spread as far west as the Balkans and as far east as Xinjiang. Scythians as well formed the Indo-Scythian Empire, and Bactrians formed a Greco-Bactrian Kingdom founded by Diodotus I, the satrap of Bactria. The Kushan Empire, with Bactrian roots/connections, once controlled much of Pakistan, some of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The Kushan elite (who the Chinese called the Yuezhi) were either a Tocharian-speaking (another Indo-European branch) people or an Eastern Iranian language-speaking people.

The division into an "Eastern" and a "Western" group by the early 1st millennium is visible in Avestan vs. Old Persian, the two oldest known Iranian languages. The Old Avestan texts known as the Gathas are believed to have been composed by Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism, with the Yaz culture (ca. 1500–1100 BCE) as a candidate for the development of Eastern Iranian culture.

Old Persian appears to have been established in written form by 519 BCE, following the creation of the Old Persian script, inspired by the cuneiform script of the Assyrians.^[31]

Western Iranic peoples[link]

Geographical extent of Iranian influence in the 1st century BCE. The Parthian Empire (mostly Western Iranian) is shown in red, other areas, dominated by Scythia (Eastern Iranian), in orange.

Achaemenid empire at its greatest extent

Bronze Statue of a Parthian nobleman, National Museum of Iran.

During the 1st centuries of the first millennium BCE, the ancient Persians established themselves in the western portion of the Iranian plateau and appear to have interacted considerably with the Elamites and Babylonians, while the Medes also entered in contact with the Assyrians.^[32] Remnants of the Median language and Old Persian show their common Proto-Iranian roots, emphasized in Strabo and Herodotus' description of their languages as very similar to the languages spoken by the Bactrians and Soghdians in the east.^[14][33] Following the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire, the Persian language (referred to as "Farsi" in Persian) spread from Pars or Fars Province to various regions of the Empire, with the modern dialects of Iran, Afghanistan (also known as Dari) and Central-Asia (known as Tajiki) descending from Old Persian.

Old Persian is attested in the Behistun Inscription (ca. 519 BCE), recording a proclamation by Darius the Great. In southwestern Iran, the Achaemenid kings usually wrote their inscriptions in trilingual form (Elamite, Babylonian and Old Persian)^[34] while elsewhere other languages were used. The administrative languages were Elamite in the early period, and later Imperial Aramaic.^[35]

The early inhabitants of the Achaemenid Empire appear to have adopted the religion of Zoroastrianism.^[36] The Baloch who speak a west Iranian language relate an oral tradition regarding their migration from Aleppo, Syria around the year 1000 AD, whereas linguistic evidence links Balochi to Kurmanji, Soranî, Gorani and Zazaki.^[37]

Eastern Iranic peoples[link]

While the Iranian tribes of the south are better known through their texts and modern counterparts, the tribes which remained largely in the vast Eurasian expanse are known through the references made to them by the ancient Greeks, Persians, Indo-Aryans as well as by archaeological finds. Many ancient Sanskrit texts make references to tribes like Sakas, Paradas, Kambojas, Bahlikas, Uttaramadras, Madras, Lohas, Parama Kambojas, Rishikas, Tukharas or Tusharas etc. and locate them in the (Uttarapatha) (north-west) division, in Central Asia, around Hindukush range in northern Pakistan. The Greek chronicler, Herodotus (5th century BCE) makes references to a nomadic people, the Scythians; he describes as having dwelt in what is today southern Russia.

It is believed that these Scythians were conquered by their eastern cousins, the Sarmatians, who are mentioned by Strabo as the dominant tribe which controlled the southern Russian steppe in the 1st millennium AD. These Sarmatians were also known to the Romans, who conquered the western tribes in the Balkans and sent Sarmatian conscripts, as part of Roman legions, as far west as Roman Britain.

The Sarmatians of the east became the Alans, who also ventured far and wide, with a branch ending up in Western Europe and North Africa, as they accompanied the Germanic Vandals during their migrations. The modern Ossetians are believed to be the sole direct descendants of the Alans, as other remnants of the Alans disappeared following Germanic, Hunnic and ultimately Slavic migrations and invasions.^[38] Another group of Alans allied with Goths to defeat the Romans and ultimately settled in what is now called Catalonia (Goth-Alania).^[39]

Silver coin of the Indo-Scythian king Azes II (r.c. 35–12 BCE). Buddhist triratna symbol in the left field on the reverse.

Scythian Horseman, Pazyryk felt artifact, c. 300 BCE

Some of the Saka-Scythian tribes in Central Asia would later move further southeast and invade the Iranian plateau, large sections of present day Pakistan/Afghanistan and finally deep into the northwestern portion of the Indian subcontinent; i.e. present day Punjab (Persian for land of five rivers) (see Indo-Scythians). Another Iranian tribe related to the Saka-Scythians were the Parni in Central Asia, and who later become indistinguishable from the Parthians, speakers of a northwest-Iranian language. Many Iranian tribes, including the Khwarazmians, Massagetae and Sogdians, were assimilated and/or displaced in Central Asia by the migrations of Turkic tribes emanating out of Xinjiang and Siberia.^[40]

The most dominant surviving Eastern Iranian peoples are represented by the Pashtuns, whose origins are generally believed to be from the Suleiman mountains in the Balochistan province of Pakistan, from which they began to spread until they reached as far west as Herat, north to areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan; and as eastward towards the Indus as well as adjacent areas of the Panjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan. The Pashto language shows affinities to the Avestan and Bactrian.

The modern Sarikoli in southern Xinjiang and the Ossetians of the Caucasus are remnants of the various Saka tribes. The modern Ossetians claim^{[citation needed]} to be the descendants of the Alano-Sarmatians and their claims are supported by their Northeast Iranian language, while culturally the Ossetians resemble their Caucasian neighbors, the Kabardians and Circassians.^[38] Various extinct Iranian people existed in the eastern Caucasus, including the Azaris, while some Iranian people remain in the region, including the Talysh^[41] and the Tats^[42] (including the Judeo-Tats,^[43] who have relocated to Israel), found in Azerbaijan and as far north as the Russian republic of Dagestan. A remnant of the Sogdians is found in the Yaghnobi speaking population in parts of the Zeravshan valley in Tajikistan.

Later developments[link]

Statue of Saladin "king of Egypt" near the Citadel of Damascus

Starting with the reign of Omar in 634 CE, Muslim Arabs began a conquest of the Iranian plateau. The Arabs conquered the Sassanid Empire of the Persians and seized much of the Byzantine Empire populated by the Kurds and others. Ultimately, the various Iranian people, including the Persians, Azaries, Kurds, Baluchis and Pashtuns, converted to Islam. The Iranian people would later split along sectarian lines as the Persians (and later the Hazara) adopted the Shi'a sect. As ancient tribes and identities changed, so did the Iranian people, many of whom assimilated foreign cultures and people.^[44]

Later, during the 2nd millennium CE, the Iranian people would play a prominent role during the age of Islamic expansion and empire. Saladin, a noted adversary of the Crusaders, was an ethnic Kurd, while various empires centered in Iran (including the Safavids) re-established a modern dialect of Persian as the official language spoken throughout much of what is today Iran and adjacent parts of Central Asia. Iranian influence spread to the Ottoman Empire, where Persian was often spoken at court, as well as in the Mughal Empire, a Mongol-Turkic (Uzbek) peoples, which began in Afghanistan and shifted to South Asia encompassing various regions which now make up parts of Pakistan. All of the major Iranian people reasserted their use of Iranian languages following the decline of Arab rule, but would not begin to form modern national identities until the 19th and early 20th centuries (just as Germans and Italians were beginning to formulate national identities of their own).

The following either partially descend from Iranian people or are sometimes regarded as possible descendants of ancient Iranian people:

• Turkic-speakers:
  • Azeris: Although Azeris speak a Turkic language (modern Azerbaijani language), they are believed to be primarily descendants of ancient Iranians.^[45][46][47] and Turks. Thus, due to their historical ties with various ancient Iranians, as well as their cultural ties to Persians,^[48] the Azeris are often associated with the Iranian people (see Origin of Azerbaijani people and the Iranian theory regarding the origin of the Azerbaijanis for more details).^[49]
  • Uzbeks: The modern Uzbek people are believed to have both Iranian and Turkic ancestry. "Uzbek" and "Tajik" are modern designations given to the culturally homogeneous, sedentary population of Central Asia. The local ancestors of both groups – the Turkic-speaking Uzbeks and the Iranian-speaking Tajiks – were known as "Sarts" ("sedentary merchants") prior to the Russian conquest of Central Asia, while "Uzbek" or "Turk" were the names given to the nomadic and semi-nomadic populations of the area. Still today, modern Uzbeks and Tajiks are known as "Sarts" to their Turkic neighbours, the Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz. The ancient Soghdians and Bactrians are among their ancestors. Culturally, the Uzbeks are closer to their sedentary Iranian-speaking neighbours rather than to their nomadic and semi-nomadic Turkic neighbours. Some Uzbek scholars, i.e. Ahmadov and Askarov, favour the Iranian origin theory.^[50]
  • The native name of Yakuts is Sakha, very similar to the Sakkas, proposing Yakuts to be related of descendants of Scythians, specifically Sakkahs.
• Slavic-speakers:
  • A few linguists suggest that the names of the South Slavic people, the Serbs and Croats are of Iranian origin. Those who entertain such a connection propose that the Sarmatian Serboi and Horouthos tribes might have migrated from the Eurasian steppe lands to eastern Europe, and assimilated with the numerically superior Slavs, passing on their name. Iranian-speaking people did inhabit parts of the Balkans in late classical times, and would have been encountered by the Slavs. However, direct linguistic, historical or archaeological proof for such a theory is lacking. (See also: Theories on the origin of Serbs and Theories on the origin of Croats)
  • Some modern Bulgarian historians claim that the Bulgars were of Iranian origin and that they migrated to Europe from the region of today's northern Afghanistan – Hindukush mountains, from the Kingdom of Balhara.^{[51][52][53][54]} Their claims are based on medieval Armenian sources, the writings of ancient historians ("Ashharatsuyts" by Anania Shirakatsi; Agathias of Myrina, Theophylact Simocatta, Michael the Syrian) archaeological findings in modern Bulgaria, the similarities with Iranic languages (place names, people names, and Iranic words in modern Bulgarian),^[55] similarities with culture (e.g.: some buildings in Pliska were built in a Zoroastrian fashion; similarities in traditional music, dancing and carpet making) and the very close similarity of the DNA of Pamirian/Iranic people with that of modern Bulgarians^[54][56] After their arrival on Balkans, the Bulgars subjugated and then formed an allience with the local Slavs and formed the Bulgarian nation.
    • Example:

• Finno-Ugric speakers
  • Many Volga Finns may be of part Iranian admixture due to Bulgar invasion of the Volga basin, if they (Bulgars) were Iranian people.
  • Hungarians have long prided themselves as Scythians in the past, Scythians being an Iranian people, prior to the Finno-Ugric theory. It's possible they've undergone a language shift. In a Magyar folkore suggests Iranian admixture among Hungarian, when Hunor and Magor marry princesses who were Alans, another Iranian people. Jassic people of Hungary are of Ossetian origin. Szekely is pronounced "Sae-Kai" and are possibly of Iranian origin, as their name is similar to Sakka.
• Swahili-speakers:
  • Shirazis:The Shirazi are a sub-group of the Swahili people^[57] living on the Swahili Coast of East Africa, especially on the islands of Zanzibar, Pemba and Comoros.^[58] Local traditions about their origin claim they are descended from merchant princes from Shiraz in Persia who settled along the Swahili Coast.

Demographics[link]

There are an estimated 150 to 200 million native speakers of Iranian languages, the five major groups of Persians, Lurs, Kurds, Baloch, and Pashtuns accounting for about 90% of this number.^[59] Currently, most of these Iranian peoples live in Iran, the Caucasus (mainly Ossetia, other parts of Georgia, and Azerbaijan), Kurdish majority populated areas of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Due to recent migrations, there are also large communities of speakers of Iranian languages in Europe, the Americas, and Israel.

The following is a list of Iranian people with the respective groups's core areas of settlements and their estimated sizes (in millions):

Laks[60]
Iran

Diversity[link]

It is largely through linguistic similarities that the Iranian people have been linked, as many non-Iranian people have adopted Iranian languages and cultures. However, other common traits have been identified as well, for example, a stream of common historical events have often linked the southern Iranian people, including Hellenistic conquests, the various empires based in Persia, Arab Caliphates and Turkic invasions.

Culture[link]

Like other Indo-Europeans, the early Iranians practiced ritual sacrifice, had a social hierarchy consisting of warriors, clerics and farmers and poetic hymns and sagas to recount their deeds.^[62]

Following the Iranian split from the Indo-Iranians, the Iranians developed an increasingly distinct culture. Various common traits can be discerned among the Iranian people. For example, the social event Norouz is an Iranian festival that is practiced by nearly all of the Iranian people as well as others in the region. Its origins are traced to Zoroastrianism and pre-historic times.

Some Iranian cultures exhibit traits that are unique unto themselves. The Pashtuns adhere to a code of honor and culture known as Pashtunwali, which has a similar counterpart among the Baloch, called Mayar, that is more hierarchical.^[63]

Religion[link]

The early Iranian people worshipped various deities found throughout other cultures where Indo-European immigrants established themselves.^[64] The earliest major religion of the Iranian people was Zoroastrianism, which spread to nearly all of the Iranian people living in the Iranian plateau. Other religions that had their origins in the Iranian world were Mithraism, Manichaeism, and Mazdakism, among others.

Mazari Sharif's Blue Mosque in Afghanistan is a structure of cobalt blue and turquoise minarets, attracting visitors and pilgrims from all over the world. Many such Muslim architectural monuments can be attributed to the efforts of the Iranian people who are predominantly followers of Islam today.

Modern speakers of Iranian languages mainly follow Islam. Some follow Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and the Bahá'í Faith, with an unknown number showing no religious affiliation. Overall the numbers of Sunni and Shia among the Iranian people are equally distributed. Most Kurds, Tajiks, Pashtuns, and Baluch are Sunni Muslims, while the remainder are mainly Twelver Shi'a, comprising mostly Persians in Iran, and Hazaras in Afghanistan. Zazas in Turkey are largely Alevi, while the Pamiri peoples in Tajikistan and China are nearly all Ismaili. The Christian community is mainly represented by the Armenian Apostolic Church, followed by the Russian Orthodox and Georgian Orthodox Ossetians followed by Nestorians. Judaism is followed mainly by Persian Jews, Kurdish Jews, Bukharian Jews (of Central Asia) and the Mountain Jews (of the Caucasus), most of whom are now found in Israel. The historical religion of the Persian Empire was Zoroastrianism and it still has a few thousand followers, mostly in Yazd and Kerman. They are known as the Parsis in the Indian subcontinent, where many of them fled in historic times following the Arab conquest of Persia, or Zoroastrians in Iran. Another ancient religion is the Yazidi faith, followed by some Kurds in northern Iraq, as well as the majority of the Kurds in Armenia.

Elements of pre-Islamic Zoroastrian and shamanistic beliefs persist among some Islamized groups today, such as the Tajiks, Pashtuns and Pamiri peoples.

Cultural assimilation[link]

In matters relating to culture, the various Turkic-speaking minorities of Iran (notably the Azerbaijani people) and Afghanistan (Uzbeks and Turkmen) are often conversant in Iranian languages, in addition to their own Turkic languages and also have Iranian culture to the extent that the term Turko-Iranian can be applied.^[65] The usage applies to various circumstances that involve historic interaction, intermarriage, cultural assimilation, bilingualism and cultural overlap or commonalities.

Notable among this synthesis of Turko-Iranian culture are the Azeris, whose culture, religion and significant periods of history are linked to the Persians.^[66] Certain theories and genetic tests^[67] suggest that the Azeris are genetically more Iranic than Turkic.

Genetics[link]

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Two Y-DNA Haplogroups are supposed to be connected with Iranic people Haplogroup J2 and R1a1

R1 have more closely linked to Iranians, while R1b to Europeans.

J2a:

Haplogroup J2 especially the clade J2a is frequently found among almost all groups of Iranic people. In comparison with the Haplogroup R1a1, J2 is not only restricted to geographically eastern and western Iranic populations, but also found among north-western and south-western Iranic populations such as the Bakhtiaris and Mazanderani,^[68][69] as well as geographically north-western Iranic Ossetians.^[70] Despite its supposed origin in the fertile crescent, J2a is also found among Iranic populations in the east such as the Yagnobi which are of Soghdian origin^[71] as well as the Parsis of India.^[72] Beside the relatively high percentage among the Yagnobis in Central Asia, other Iranic populations tend to have a higher frequency of J2a when compared to neighboring Turkic populations. The relatively strong presence of J2a among Ossetians as well as Yagnobis proves distant from the supposed Mesopotamian origin region of J2, are carriers of this Haplogroup.

In the Indo-Iranian context, the occurrence of J2a in South Asia is limited to caste populations, with the highest frequencies found among northern areas of South Asia.^[73][74] Compared with R1a1, J2a shows a more conservative distribution, stronger limited to Indo-Iranian origin groups.^[73]

R:

Many Haplotypes of Y-chromosomal Haplogroup R have been found throughout the Iranian Plateau, and it has been suggested that this Haplogroup may have had it's origins in Iran. Cambridge University geneticist Toomas Kivisild has suggested  : "Given the geographic spread and STR diversities of sister clades R1 and R2, the latter of which is restricted to India, Pakistan, Iran, and southern central Asia, it is possible that southern and western Asia were the source for R1 and R1a differentiation."(Kivisild et al. 2003). A similar conclusion was given by population geneticist Miguel Regueiro in the Journal of Human Heredity (Regueiro et al. Human Heredity vol. 61 (2006), pp. 132–143)

Genetic studies conducted by Cavalli-Sforza have revealed that Iranians have weak correlation with Near Eastern groups, and are closer to surrounding Indo-Europeans speaking populations.^[75] This study is partially supported by another one, based on Y-Chromosome haplogroups.^[76]

The findings of this study reveal many common genetic markers found among the Iranian people from the Tigris river of Iraq to the Indus of Pakistan. This correlates with the Iranian languages spoken from the Caucasus to Kurdish areas in the Zagros region and eastwards to western Pakistan and Tajikistan and parts of Uzbekistan in Central Asia. The extensive gene flow is perhaps an indication of the spread of Iranian-speaking people, whose languages are now spoken mainly on the Iranian plateau and adjacent regions.

Another recent study of the genetic landscape of Iran was done by a team of Cambridge geneticists led by Dr. Maziar Ashrafian Bonab (an Iranian Azarbaijani).^[77] Bonab remarked that his group had done extensive DNA testing on different language groups, including Indo-European and non Indo-European speakers, in Iran.^[67] The study found that the Azerbaijanis of Iran do not have a similar FSt and other genetic markers found in Anatolian and European Turks. However, the genetic Fst and other genetic traits like MRca and mtDNA of Iranian Azeris were identical to Persians in Iran. Azaris of Iran also show very close genetic ties to Kurds.^[78]

See also[link]

Literature and further reading[link]

• Banuazizi, Ali and Weiner, Myron (eds.). The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics: Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East), Syracuse University Press (August, 1988). ISBN 0-8156-2448-4.
• Canfield, Robert (ed.). Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2002). ISBN 0-521-52291-9
• Curzon, R. The Iranian People of the Caucasus. ISBN 0-7007-0649-6.
• Derakhshani, Jahanshah. Die Arier in den nahöstlichen Quellen des 3. und 2. Jahrtausends v. Chr., 2nd edition (1999). ISBN 964-90368-6-5.
• Frye, Richard, Greater Iran, Mazda Publishers (2005). ISBN 1-56859-177-2.
• Frye, Richard. Persia, Schocken Books, Zurich (1963). ASIN B0006BYXHY.
• Kennedy, Hugh. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, Longman, New York, NY (2004). ISBN 0-582-40525-4
• Khoury, Philip S. & Kostiner, Joseph. Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, University of California Press (1991). ISBN 0-520-07080-1.
• Littleton, C. & Malcor, L. From Scythia to Camelot, Garland Publishing, New York, NY, (2000). ISBN 0-8153-3566-0.
• Mallory, J.P. In Search of the Indo-Europeans, Thames and Hudson, London (1991). ISBN 0-500-27616-1.
• McDowall, David. A Modern History of the Kurds, I.B. Tauris, 3rd Rev edition (2004). ISBN 1-85043-416-6.
• Nassim, J. Afghanistan: A Nation of Minorities, Minority Rights Group, London (1992). ISBN 0-946690-76-6.
• Riasanovsky, Nicholas. A History of Russia, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2004). ISBN 0-19-515394-4.
• Sims-Williams, Nicholas. Indo-Iranian Languages and People, British Academy (2003). ISBN 0-19-726285-6.
• Iran Nama, (Iran Travelogue in Urdu) by Hakim Syed Zillur Rahman, Tibbi Academy, Aligarh, India (1998).
• Saga of the Aryans, Historical novel on ancient Iranian migrations by Porus Homi Havewala, Published Mumbai, India (2005, 2010).

References[link]

External links[link]

• Iranian
• Encyclopædia Britannica: Iranian languages
• People of Iran
• The Changing Face of Iran a photo essay by Newsweek Magazine
• Maps and demographic information on all the people groups of Iran found at www.EveryTongue.com/iran