The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group who comprise over half of the population of Iran. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language as well as of the languages that are closely related to Persian.
One of the most common is the conflation of Middle Eastern ethnic groups. Many people continue to believe that “Persian” and “Arab” are interchangeable terms, when, in reality, they are labels for two distinct ethnicities. That is to say, Persians are not Arabs.
Persians are Iran's largest ethnic group, but nearly a dozen other ethnicities represent well over a third of the 79 million population. The largest ethnic groups, which are major factors in Iranian politics, are Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, and Lors. Others include Turkomen, Qashqai, Mazandarani, Talysh and Gilaki.
The ancient Persians were an Indo-Iranian people who migrated to the Iranian plateau during the end of the second millennium B.C., possibly from the Caucasus or Central Asia. Originally a pastoral people who roamed the steppes with their livestock, they were ethnically related to the Bactrians, Medes and Parthians.
The Persian people are one of the oldest civilizations that still inhabit their homeland. They are often defined by physical characteristics such as olive and pale skin, large dark or deep blue eyes, and almond shaped eyes.
Persian eyes can be blue, amber or odd-eyed. Blue-eyed Persians are prone to deafness. Genetically bred snub nose that makes this breed at risk for Brachycephalic issues. Heavy-boned legs support medium to large cobby-style bodies.
Dark brown was the most prevalent iris color in rural areas of Iran.
Despite some resistance from elements of the Zoroastrian clergy and other ancient religions, the vast majority of Iranians became and have remained Muslims. Today 98% of ethnic Iranians, including the population of Persia, are at least nominal Muslims.
Generally, “Persia” today refers to Iran because the country formed over the center of the ancient Persian empire and the majority of its original citizens inhabited that land. Modern Iran is comprised of a large number of different ethnic and tribal groups.
Intermarriages exist between Iranian Arabs and Iranian Persians. Over 1 million Iranian Sayyids are of Arab descent but most are Persianized, mixed and consider themselves Persian and Iranian today.
Analysis of Rh antigen typing results showed e (3359; 96.66%) to be most prevalent in the Iranian population, followed by D (3152; 90.71%), C (2677; 77.04%), c (2557; 73.58%), and E (1059; 30.47%).
People of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) descent are categorized as non-White in many Western countries but counted as White on the US Census.
The Arabian Peninsula was the initial site of the out-of-Africa migrations that occurred between 125,000 and 60,000 yr ago, leading to the hypothesis that the first Eurasian populations were established on the Peninsula and that contemporary indigenous Arabs are direct descendants of these ancient peoples.
Iran and Turkey are not Arab countries and their primary languages are Farsi and Turkish respectively. Arab countries have a rich diversity of ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities. These include Kurds, Armenians, Berbers and others.
The Egyptians are not Arabs, and both they and the Arabs are aware of this fact. They are Arabic-speaking, and they are Muslim—indeed religion plays a greater part in their lives than it does in those either of the Syrians or the Iraqi.
ancient Iran, also known as Persia, historic region of southwestern Asia that is only roughly coterminous with modern Iran.
Following the imposition of the jizyah, many Zoroastrians chose to convert to Islam. The rate of conversions accelerated after the Abbasid caliphs moved their capital to Baghdad, leaving the administration of Persia to governors who destroyed ateshkadehs (fire temples) or converted them into mosques.
Languages of Iran
Although Persian (Farsi) is the predominant and official language of Iran, a number of languages and dialects from three language families—Indo-European, Altaic, and Afro-Asiatic—are spoken.
The results of this study revealed a close genetic relationship among Iranian subpopulations which were well separated from other Asian and European populations, however, a genetic similarity was observed among Iranians, Macedonians, Greeks, and Italians.
Subsequently, the common adjective for citizens of Iran changed from Persian to Iranian. In 1959, the government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Reza Shah's son, announced that both "Persia" and "Iran" can be used interchangeably, in formal correspondence.
Because “Persian” relates to ethnicity while “Iranian” encompasses a nationality. You can be Iranian and not necessarily be Persian. You can be Iranian and be Mazandarani, Gilaki, Kurdish, Lur, Baloch, Azeri, Turkmen, Arab or another ethnicity. You can be Iranian and not speak Persian.
While blue eyes are significantly less common than brown eyes worldwide, they are frequently found from nationalities located near the Baltic Sea in northern Europe. The colour of our eyes depends on how much melanin is present in the iris.
The highest concentration of people with green eyes is found in Ireland, Scotland, and northern Europe. In fact, in Ireland and Scotland, more than three-fourths of the population has blue or green eyes – 86 percent! Many factors go into having green eyes.
Green is considered by some to be the actual rarest eye color in the world, though others would say it's been dethroned by red, violet, and grey eyes. Green eyes don't possess a lot of melanin, which creates a Rayleigh scattering effect: Light gets reflected and scattered by the eyes instead of absorbed by pigment.