In the Western world, Persia (or one of its cognates) was historically the common name used for Iran. On the Nowruz of 1935, Reza Shah officially asked foreign delegates to use the Persian term Iran (meaning the land of Aryans in Persian), the endonym of the country, in formal correspondence.
For most of history, the tract of land now called Iran was known as Persia. It wasn't until 1935 that it adopted its present name.
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.
With the exception of various minority ethnic groups in Iran (one of which is Arab), Iranians are Persian.
Persia is today the country of Iran. By the 5th century B.C.E., it was the largest empire the world had ever seen, surpassing the size of their Assyrian predecessors.
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.
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.
The vast majority of Iranians are Muslims of the Ithnā ʿAsharī, or Twelver, Shiʿi branch, which is the official state religion. The Kurds and Turkmen are predominantly Sunni Muslims, but Iran's Arabs are both Sunni and Shiʿi. Small communities of Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians are also found throughout the country.
The Sources of Jurisprudence. Iran, Azerbaijan, and Iraq today are predominantly followers of the Shi`ite branch of Islamic faith. In Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Central Asia, where the Sunni branch of Islam dominates the religious Persian-language works reflect the Sunni school of Islamic thought.
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.
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.
In the 1930s, steps began to be taken by Reza Shah to formalise the change in name from Persia to Iran, and the request came into force in March 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.
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.
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.
Slightly more than half the population speak a dialect of Persian, an Iranian language of the Indo-Iranian group. Literary Persian, the language's more refined variant, is understood to some degree by most Iranians. Persian is also the predominant language of literature, journalism, and the sciences.
Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world. The word Hindu is an exonym although many practitioners refer to their religion as Sanātana Dharma (Sanskrit: सनातन धर्म, lit.
Zoroastrianism was the state religion of three Persian dynasties, until the Muslim conquest of Persia in the seventh century A.D. Zoroastrian refugees, called Parsis, escaped Muslim persecution in Iran by emigrating to India.
Adherents hold that Hinduism—one of the principal faiths in the modern world, with about one billion followers—is the world's oldest religion, with complete scriptural texts dating back 3,000 years.
The term Aryan has long been used to denote the Indo-Iranians, because Arya is indeed the self-designation of the ancient speakers of the Indo-Iranian languages, specifically the Iranian and the Indo-Aryan peoples, collectively known as the Indo-Iranians.
It was not until around 650, however, that resistance in Iran was quelled. Conversion to Islam, which offered certain advantages, The majority of Iranians did not become Muslim until the ninth century. Landowners who peacefully submitted to Islam were granted more land.
Shias comprise a majority in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain, and a plurality in Lebanon, while Sunnis make up the majority of more than forty countries from Morocco to Indonesia.
As the region of Iran was once called Persia, 'Iranian' is often assumed to be synonymous with 'Persian'. The two can usually be used interchangeably. However, “Persian” specifically refers to the particular Persian ethnicity or Farsi language within Iran.
Modern Iranian peoples include the Baloch, the Gilaks, the Kurds, the Lurs, the Mazanderanis, the Ossetians, the Pamiris, the Pashtuns, the Persians, the Tats, the Tajiks, the Talysh, the Wakhis, the Yaghnobis, and the Zazas.
Iranian Persians, who make up 51% of Iran's population, dominate the central government of Iran. Persians live in major provinces in Iran such as Tehran, Isfahan, Kerman, Yazd and Fars.