Iranian

The term Iranian may refer to:

• the inhabitants of the modern nation of Iran, which includes Persian, Azerbaijani, Baluch, Gilaki, Kurd, Lur, Mazandarani, Qashqai, Arab and Turkmen ethnic groups.

• the Iranian peoples are a group of peoples speaking Iranian languages, decending from ancient Aryan tribes, and inhabiting a part of Central Asia on and near the Iranian plateau. The Iranian peoples of prehistory are generally believed to be ancestors of most of the contemporary Iranians, Afghans/Pashtuns, the Tajikis, the Uzbeks (who are a hybrid population of mixed Iranian and Turkic-Mongol ancestry and today largely speak a Turkic tongue), Azerbaijanis (a population that shows strong genetic ties to all of their neighbors in the Caucasus and Iranians, but speak a Turkic tongue today), Ossetians, Kurds and Baluchis and some northern Indians (often termed Indo-Aryans in order to differentiate the language divergence and the fact that many northern Indians are generally mixed with native Dravidian peoples as well) including Parsis, a group of Iranian Zoroastrians who fled to India following the Islamic invasion of Iran.

• The term Iranian (Persian: ایرانیان) is cognate to the term Aryan (Persian: آریایی).

See also: Persian Empire, Aryan, Iran, List of topics related to Iran.