East Iranians

The Iranian peoples or Iranic peoples are a diverse grouping of Indo-European peoples who are identified by their usage of the Iranian languages and other cultural similarities.

The Proto-Iranians are believed to have emerged as a separate branch of the Indo-Iranians in Central Asia around the mid-2nd millennium BC. At their peak of expansion in the mid-1st millennium BC, the territory of the Iranian peoples stretched across the entire Eurasian Steppe, from the Great Hungarian Plain in the west to the Ordos Plateau in the east and the Iranian Plateau in the south.: "From the first millennium b.c., we have abundant historical, archaeological and linguistic sources for the location of the territory inhabited by the Iranian peoples. In this period the territory of the northern Iranians, they being equestrian nomads, extended over the whole zone of the steppes and the wooded steppes and even the semi-deserts from the Great Hungarian Plain to the Ordos in northern China."

The ancient Iranian peoples who emerged after the 1st millennium BC include the Alans, the Bactrians, the Dahae, the Khwarazmians, the Massagetae, the Medes, the Parthians, the Persians, the Sagartians, the Sakas, the Sarmatians, the Scythians, the Sogdians, and likely the Cimmerians, among other Iranian-speaking peoples of Western Asia, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Eastern Steppe.

In the 1st millennium AD, their area of settlement, which was mainly concentrated in the steppes and deserts of Eurasia, was significantly reduced as a result of Slavic, Germanic, Turkic, and Mongolic expansions; many were subjected to Slavicization and Turkification. 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. Their current distribution spreads across the Iranian Plateau, stretching from the Caucasus in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south and from eastern Anatolia in the west to western Xinjiang in the east—a region that is sometimes called the ''Iranian Cultural Continent'', representing the extent of the Iranian-speakers and the significant influence of the Iranian peoples through the geopolitical and cultural reach of Greater Iran.

Name

The term '' Iran'' derives directly from Middle Persian ''Ērān'' / ''AEran'' () and Parthian ''Aryān''. The Middle Iranian terms ''ērān'' and ''aryān'' are oblique plural forms of gentilic ''ēr-'' (in Middle Persian) and ''ary-'' (in Parthian), both deriving from Old Persian ''ariya-'' (), Avestan ''airiia-'' () and Proto-Iranian ''*arya-''.

There have been many attempts to qualify the verbal root of ''ar-'' in Old Iranian ''arya-''. The following are according to 1957 and later linguists:
* Emmanuel Laroche (1957): ''ara-'' "to fit" ("fitting", "proper").
Old Iranian ''arya-'' being descended from Proto-Indo-European ', meaning "(skillfully) assembler".
* Georges Dumézil (1958): ''ar-'' "to share" (as a union).
* Harold Walter Bailey (1959): ''ar-'' "to beget" ("born", "nurturing").
* Émil Benveniste (1969): ''ar-'' "to fit" ("companionable").

Unlike the Sanskrit (''Aryan''), the Old Iranian term has solely an ethnic meaning. Today, the Old Iranian ''arya-'' remains in ethno-linguistic names such as ''Iran'', ''Alan'', '' Ir'', and '' Iron''.H. W. Bailey, "Arya" in Encyclopedia Iranica. Excerpt: "ARYA an ethnic epithet in the Achaemenid inscriptions and in the Zoroastrian Avestan tradition. Also accessed online in May 2010.Dalby, Andrew (2004), Dictionary of Languages, Bloomsbury,

In the Iranian languages, the gentilic is attested as a self-identifier included in ancient inscriptions and the literature of Avesta. The earliest epigraphically attested reference to the word ''arya-'' occurs in the Bistun Inscription of the 6th century BC. The inscription of Bistun (or ''Behistun''; peo, Bagastana, italic=yes) describes itself to have been composed in ''Arya'' anguage or script As is also the case for all other Old Iranian language usage, the ''arya'' of the inscription does not signify anything but ''Iranian''.^''cf.'' , p. 2.

In royal Old Persian inscriptions, the term ''arya-'' appears in three different contexts:
* As the name of the language of the Old Persian version of the inscription of Darius I in the Bistun Inscription.
* As the ethnic background of Darius the Great in inscriptions at Rustam Relief and Susa (Dna, Dse) and the ethnic background of Xerxes I in the inscription from Persepolis (Xph).
* As the definition of the God of Iranians, Ohrmazd, in the Elamite version of the Bistun Inscription.
In the Dna and Dse, Darius and Xerxes describe themselves as "an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, and an Aryan, of Aryan stock".R. G. Kent. Old Persian. Grammar, texts, lexicon. 2nd ed., New Haven, Conn. Although Darius the Great called his language ''arya-'' ("Iranian"), modern scholars refer to it as ''Old Persian'' because it is the ancestor of the modern Persian language.

The trilingual inscription erected by the command of Shapur I gives a more clear description. The languages used are Parthian, Middle Persian, and Greek. In Greek inscription says ''"ego ... tou Arianon ethnous despotes eimi"'', which translates to "I am the king of the kingdom (''nation'') of the Iranians". In Middle Persian, Shapur says ''"ērānšahr xwadāy hēm"'' and in Parthian he says ''"aryānšahr xwadāy ahēm"''.

The Avesta clearly uses ''airiia-'' as an ethnic name ( Videvdat 1; Yasht 13.143–44, etc.), where it appears in expressions such as ''airyāfi daiŋˊhāvō'' ("Iranian lands"), ''airyō šayanəm'' ("land inhabited by Iranians"), and ''airyanəm vaējō vaŋhuyāfi dāityayāfi'' ("Iranian stretch of the good Dāityā"). In the late part of the Avesta (Videvdat 1), one of the mentioned homelands was referred to as '' Airyan'əm Vaējah'' which approximately means "expanse of the Iranians". The homeland varied in its geographic range, the area around Herat ( Pliny's view) and even the entire expanse of the Iranian Plateau (Strabo's designation).

The Old Persian and Avestan evidence is confirmed by the Greek sources. Herodotus, in his ''Histories'', remarks about the Iranian Medes that "Medes were called anciently by all people ''Arians''" (7.62). In Armenian sources, the Parthians, Medes and Persians are collectively referred to as ''Iranians''. Eudemus of Rhodes (Dubitationes et Solutiones de Primis Principiis, in Platonis Parmenidem) refers to "the ''Magi'' and all those of ''Iranian'' (''áreion'') lineage". Diodorus Siculus (1.94.2) considers Zoroaster (''Zathraustēs'') as one of the ''Arianoi''.

Strabo, in his ''Geographica'' (1st century AD), mentions of the Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Sogdians of the Iranian Plateau and Transoxiana of antiquity:

The Bactrian (a Middle Iranian language) inscription of Kanishka (the founder of the Kushan Empire) at Rabatak, which was discovered in 1993 in an unexcavated site in the Afghan province of Baghlan, clearly refers to this Eastern Iranian language as ''Arya''.

All this evidence shows that the name ''Arya'' was a collective definition, denoting peoples who were aware of belonging to the one ethnic stock, speaking a common language, and having a religious tradition that centered on the cult of Ohrmazd.

The academic usage of the term ''Iranian'' is distinct from the state of Iran and its various citizens (who are all Iranian by nationality), in the same way that the term ''Germanic peoples'' is distinct from '' Germans''. Some inhabitants of Iran are not necessarily ethnic Iranians by virtue of not being speakers of Iranian languages.

Iranian vs. Iranic

Some scholars such as John Perry prefer the term ''Iranic'' as the anthropological name for the linguistic family and ethnic groups of this category (many of which exist outside Iran), while ''Iranian'' for anything about the country Iran. He uses the same analogue as in differentiating German from Germanic or differentiating Turkish and Turkic. German scholar Martin Kummel also argues the same distinction of ''Iranian'' from ''Iranic''.

History and settlement

Indo-European roots

Proto-Indo-Iranians

The Proto-Indo-Iranians are commonly identified with the Sintashta culture and the subsequent Andronovo culture within the broader Andronovo horizon, and their homeland with an area of the Eurasian steppe that borders the Ural River on the west and the Tian Shan on the east.

The Indo-Iranian migrations took place in two waves. The first wave consisted of the Indo-Aryan migration through the Bactria-Margiana Culture, also called "Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex," into the Levant, founding the Mittani kingdom; and a migration south-eastward of the Vedic people, over the Hindu Kush into northern India. The Indo-Aryans split off around 1800–1600 BC from the Iranians, whereafter they were defeated and split into two groups by the Iranians, who dominated the Central Eurasian steppe zone and "chased he Indo-Aryansto the extremities of Central Eurasia." One group were the Indo-Aryans who founded the Mitanni kingdom in northern Syria; (c. 1500–1300 BC) the other group were the Vedic people. Christopher I. Beckwith suggests that the Wusun

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