- published: 30 Jun 2016
- views: 33
The culture of Iran (Persian: فرهنگ ایرانی Farhang-e Irān) is one of the oldest in the Middle East. Owing to its dominant geo-political position and culture in the world, Iran has directly influenced cultures and peoples as far away as Italy, Macedonia, and Greece to the West, Russia to the North, the Arabian Peninsula to the South, and South and East Asia to the East.
Thus an eclectic cultural elasticity has been said to be one of the key defining characteristics of the Persian spirit and a clue to its historical longevity. Furthermore, Iran's culture has manifested itself in several facets throughout the history of Iran as well as the Caucasus, Central Asia, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia.
The article uses the words Persian and Iranian interchangeably, sometimes referring to the language and its speakers, and other times referring to the name of pre-20th century Iran, a nomenclature which survives from western explorers and orientalists. They are not the same and the cultures of the peoples of Greater Persia are the focus of this article.
Iran (/aɪˈræn/ or i/ɪˈrɑːn/;Persian: Irān – ایران [ʔiːˈɾɒːn]), also known as Persia (/ˈpɜːrʒə/ or /ˈpɜːrʃə/), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (جمهوری اسلامی ایران – Jomhuri ye Eslāmi ye Irān [d͡ʒomhuːˌɾije eslɒːˌmije ʔiːˈɾɒːn]), is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered to the northwest by Armenia, the de facto Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan; with Kazakhstan and Russia across the Caspian Sea; to the northeast by Turkmenistan; to the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan; to the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; and to the west by Turkey and Iraq. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2 (636,372 sq mi), it is the second-largest country in the Middle East and the 18th-largest in the world. With 78.4 million inhabitants, Iran is the world's 17th-most-populous country. It is the only country that has both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. Iran has long been of geostrategic importance because of its central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz.