Indo-Iranian
Geographic distribution:	Eastern Europe, Southwest Asia, Central Asia, South Asia
Linguistic classification:	Indo-European Indo-Iranian
Proto-language:	Proto-Indo-Iranian
Subdivisions:	Indo-Aryan Iranian Nuristani
ISO 639-5:	iir
The approximate present-day distribution of the Indo-European branches within their homelands of Europe and Asia:   Indo-Iranian

The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani. The Indo-Iranian languages occasionally go by the term "Aryan languages."^[1] The speakers of the Proto-Indo-Iranian language, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians, are usually associated with the late 3rd millennium BC Andronovo and Sintashta-Petrovka cultures of Central Asia. Their expansion is believed to have been connected with the invention of the chariot.

The contemporary Indo-Iranian languages form the largest sub-branch of Indo-European, with more than one billion speakers in total, stretching from Europe (Romani) and the Caucasus (Ossetian) eastward to Xinjiang (Sarikoli) and Assam (Assamese) and south to Sri Lanka (Sinhalese). SIL in a 2005 estimate counts a total of 308 varieties, the largest in terms of native speakers being Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu, ca. 190-330 million), Bengali (ca. 190 million), Punjabi (ca. 88 million), Marathi (ca. 70 million), Persian (ca. 70 million), Pashto (ca. 50 million), Gujarati (ca. 46 million), Kurdish (ca. 16-30 million), Bhojpuri (ca. 35 million), Awadhi (ca. 35 million), Maithili (ca. 35 million), Oriya (ca. 32 million), Marwari (ca. 31 million), Sindhi (ca. 21 million), Rajasthani (ca. 20 million), Chhattisgarhi (ca. 17 million), Assamese (ca. 17 million), Sinhalese (ca. 16 million), and Rangpuri (ca. 15 million).

Indo-Iranian languages were once spoken across a still wider area. The Scythians were described by Roman writer Strabo as inhabiting the lands to the north of the Black Sea in present-day Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. The river-names Don, Dnieper, Danube etc. are possibly of Indo-Iranian origin. The so-called Migration Period saw Indo-Iranian languages disappear from Eastern Europe with the arrival of the Turkic-speaking Pechenegs and others by the eighth century AD.

The oldest attested Indo-Iranian languages are Vedic Sanskrit (ancient Indian), Older and Younger Avestan and Old Persian (ancient Iranian languages). But there are written instances of a fourth language in Northern Mesopotamia (see Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni) most closely related to Indo-Aryan. It is attested in documents from the ancient Mitanni kingdom and the Hittites of Anatolia.

Subdivisions[link]

Indo-Aryan Group:

• Vedic Sanskrit
• Sanskrit
• Pāli
• Central Zone
  • Hindustani
    • Hindi
    • Urdu
  • Romani/Romany
• Eastern Zone (Magadhan Prakrit languages)
  • Angika
  • Assamese
  • Bengali
  • Bhojpuri
  • Magahi
  • Maithili
  • Oriya
• Northern Zone (Pahari languages)
  • Nepali
• Northwestern Zone
  • Dardic languages (sometimes still classified separately as a part of Iranian or Nuristani Group):
    • Dameli
    • Domaaki
    • Gawar-Bati
    • Kalasha-mun
    • Kashmiri
    • Khowar
    • Kohistani
    • Ningalami
    • Pashayi
    • Palula
    • Shina
    • Shumashti
  • Pahari-Potohari
  • Punjabi
  • Saraiki
  • Sindhi
  • Khojki
• Western Zone
  • Gujarati
  • Kutchi
  • Rajasthani
• Southern Zone
  • Konkani
  • Marathi
  • Dakhni
  • Nawayathi

Insular Indo-Aryan

• • Dhivehi
  • Sinhala

Iranian Group:

• Gathic (Old Avestan)(Script was extinct in 2nd millennium BC - the old script remaining record is the Gathas of Zarathushtra)
• Eastern Iranian
  • Northeastern
    • Avestan (extinct)
    • Scythian (extinct)
      • Sakan (extinct)
      • Ossetian
    • Sogdian (extinct)
      • Yaghnobi
    • Bactrian (extinct)
  • Southeastern
    • Avestan
    • Pamiri
      • Sarikoli
    • Ormurri-Parachi
• Western Iranian
  • Northwestern
    • Dari language of Zoroastrians
    • Balochi
    • Mazanadarani
    • Gilaki
    • Deilami
    • Talysh
    • Kurdish
    • Laki
    • Parthian (extinct)
    • Tati (Iran)
    • Zazaki

• • Southwestern ("Persid")
    • Old Persian (extinct)
      • Middle Persian (extinct)
        • New Persian (Farsi; eastern & western dialects)
          • Tajik Persian
      • Luri / Bakhtiari
      • Tati (Caucasus)

Nuristani languages:

• Ashkunu (Ashkun)
• Kamkata-viri (Bashgali)
• Vasi-vari (Prasuni)
• Tregami
• Kalasha-ala (Waigali)

See also[link]

• Language family

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Chakrabarti,Byomkes (1994). A comparative study of Santali and Bengali. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co. ISBN 81-7074-128-9
• Premiumorange.com, abstract of the study of Minoan language and its link with Indo-Iranian (Hubert La Marle)
• Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples, edited by Nicholas Sims-Williams. Published 2002 for the British Academy by Oxford University Press

External links[link]

Look up Indo-Iranian Swadesh lists in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Swadesh lists of Indo-Iranian basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)

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Aryan languages may refer to the following:

• The Indo-Iranian languages as a whole
  • Indo-Aryan languages, one of the two main branches of Indo-Iranian languages
  • Iranian languages, the other main branch of the Indo-Iranian languages
• Aryan languages is also used by 19th century linguists to refer to the Indo-European languages as a whole, but the scholarly use of use of this term in this sense ended between about 1905 and 1910 and is obsolete in modern linguistic literature; however it continued to be used in this sense in the early decades of the 20th century by authors writing for the popular mass market such H.G. Wells

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

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: