The Kushan Empire (Sanskrit: कुषाण राजवंश (Kuṣāṇ Rājavaṃśa), BHS: Guṣāṇa-vaṃśa, Parthian: Kušanxšaθr) originally formed in the early 1st century AD under Kujula Kadphises in the territories of ancient Bactria on either side of the middle course of the Oxus (or Amu Darya), and later based in eastern and central Afghanistan and the northwest of Indian Subcontinent.

During the 1st and early 2nd centuries AD the Kushans expanded rapidly across the northern part of the Indian Subcontinent at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares) where inscriptions have been found dated to the first few years of era of the most famous Kushan ruler, Kanishka which apparently began about 127 AD.

The Kushan were a branch of the Yuezhi confederation. Previously a nomadic people residing in eastern Central Asia, the Yuezhi moved southwest and settled in ancient Bactria. They had diplomatic contacts with the Roman Empire, Sassanid Persia and Han China. While much philosophy, art, and science was created within its borders, the only textual record we have of the empire's history today comes from inscriptions and accounts in other languages, particularly Chinese. The empire declined from the 3rd century and fell to the Sassanid and Gupta Empires.

The Iranian peoples (Iranic peoples) are an Indo-European ethnic-linguistic group that comprise the speakers of Iranian languages, 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. 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.