On the day of the Persian New Year, March 21 1935, Reza Shah Pahlavi, requested foreign delegates to use the term Iran, instead of Persia, in a conscious reference to the ancient ancestry of the Iranians.
The modern Persian name of Iran (ایران) means "the land of Aryans". It derives immediately from the 3rd-century Sasanian Middle Persian ērān (Pahlavi spelling: 𐭠𐭩𐭫𐭠𐭭, ʼyrʼn), where it initially meant "of the Iranians", but soon also acquired a geographical connotation in the sense of "(lands inhabited by) Iranians".
When Reza Shah became the new king, the name was changed to Iran in an effort to signify a new beginning. Iran made its allegiance clear to the world by changing Persia's name to Iran or Arya, which means Land of the Aryans. Persia or Iran had been greatly impacted by the Soviet Union and Great Britain before 1935.
Ancient Iran, historically known as Persia, was the dominant nation of western Asia for over twelve centuries, with three successive native dynasties—the Achaemenid, the Parthian, and the Sasanian—controlling an empire of unprecedented size and complexity.
The Medes are credited with founding Iran as a nation and empire, and established the first Iranian empire, the largest of its day until Cyrus the Great established a unified empire of the Medes and Persians, leading to the Achaemenid Empire (c.550–330 BC).
Before the conquest, the Persians had been mainly Zoroastrian. The historian Al-Masudi, a Baghdad-born Arab, who wrote a comprehensive treatise on history and geography in about 956, records that after the conquest: Zoroastrianism, for the time being, continued to exist in many parts of Iran.
In the following centuries, Persia was ruled by Greeks, Parthians, and Sasanian Empire until the Arab invasion in the middle 7th century when the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism gave way to Islam.
In 1935 the Iranian government requested those countries which it had diplomatic relations with, to call Persia "Iran," which is the name of the country in Persian. The suggestion for the change is said to have come from the Iranian ambassador to Germany, who came under the influence of the Nazis.
Persia (roughly modern-day Iran) is among the oldest inhabited regions in the world. Archaeological sites in the country have established human habitation dating back 100,000 years to the Paleolithic Age with semi-permanent settlements (most likely for hunting parties) established before 10,000 BCE.
One of the earliest civilizations in Iranian plateau was the Jiroft culture in southeastern Iran in the province of Kerman. It is one of the most artifact-rich archaeological sites in the Middle East.
By 650 BCE, the Zoroastrian faith, a monotheistic religion founded on the ideas of the philosopher Zoroaster, had become the official religion of ancient Persia. Later Judaism and then Christianity came to Persia via Mesopotamia, with both developing vibrant faith communities in Persian lands.
At its height, it encompassed the areas of modern-day Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Persian Empire emerged under the leadership of Cyrus II, who conquered the neighboring Median Empire ruled by his grandfather. From then on Cyrus was called the “shah,” or king, of Persia.
Although the newcomers called themselves Irani (Aryans) and their new homeland Irania (now Iran), the land came to be called Persia, because Greek geographers mistakenly named it after the province Pars, or Persis, where their early kings had their capital.
On the day of the Persian New Year, March 21 1935, Reza Shah Pahlavi, requested foreign delegates to use the term Iran, instead of Persia, in a conscious reference to the ancient ancestry of the Iranians.
Islam was brought to Iran via Arab-Islamic conquest in 650 AD and has played a shifting, anomalous role in this nation-state ever since.
Iran is one of the oldest nations in the world, with a history dating back tens of thousands of years. The country's first great city, Susa, was built on the central plateau around 3200 B.C. In 559 B.C., the Persian Empire arose in southwestern Iran and conquered the Mesopotamians and Egyptians.
and the reason why iran was never conquered in its entirety. was that it played both britain and russia off against each other this meant that much of the country would be under the effective economic control of one of these two powers. but it did spur iran the same fate as places like india or syria.
The earliest known empire was the Akkadian Empire. For around 1,000 years, Mesopotamia was dominated by city-states—small political units, where a city controlled its surrounding area. In 2330 BCE, Sargon of Akkad took control of southern Mesopotamia.
Modern Iran is comprised of a large number of different ethnic and tribal groups. People who identify as Persian account for the majority, but there are also large numbers of Azeri, Gilaki and Kurdish people, too. While all are citizens of Iran are Iranians, only some can identify their lineage in Persia.
Persian, predominant ethnic group of Iran (formerly known as Persia). Although of diverse ancestry, the Persian people are united by their language, Persian (Farsi), which belongs to the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European language family.
The exonym Persia was the official name of Iran in the Western world before March 1935, but the Iranian peoples inside their country since the time of Zoroaster (probably circa 1000 BC), or even before, have called their country Arya, Iran, Iranshahr, Iranzamin (Land of Iran), Aryānām (the equivalent of Iran in the ...
As per the review, India's earliest known government was founded in 2000 BCE. But, the question arises in mind about who is the oldest? In the list by WPR, Iran has been considered as the oldest country in the world. Iran's government was founded in 3200 BCE, the WPR report mentioned.
Iran and the Islamic culture and civilization
Inheriting a heritage of thousands of years of civilization, and being at the "crossroads of the major cultural highways", contributed to Persia emerging as what culminated into the "Islamic Golden Age".
The Iranian peoples stem from early Proto-Iranians, themselves a branch of the Indo-Iranians, who are believed to have originated in either Central Asia or Afghanistan circa 1800 BCE. The Proto-Iranians are traced to the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia.