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Persianization /ˌpɜːrʒəˌnˈzʃən/ or persification /ˌpɜːrsɪfɪˈkʃən/ is a sociological process of cultural change in which something becomes "Persianate". It is a specific form of cultural assimilation that often includes language assimilation. The term applies not only to cultures but also to individuals, as they acclimate to Persian culture and become "persianized" or "persified".

Historically, the term was commonly applied to changes in the culture of non-Iranian peoples living within the Iranian cultural sphere, especially during the early and the middle Islamic periods such as Arabs, and various Caucasian (such as Georgian, Armenian, and Dagestani) and Turkic peoples including the Seljuqs, Ottomans and Ghaznavids.[1][2] The term has also been applied to the transmission of aspects of Persian culture, including language, to the non-Persian peoples in area surrounding Persia (modern-day Iran), such as Anatolia and South Asia.



Pre-Islamic PeriodEdit

Unlike the Ancient Greeks and the Roman Empire, the ancient Persian Achaemenid Empire was not concerned with spreading its culture to the many peoples that it conquered. Arguably, the first recorded episode of persianization dates back to Alexander the Great, who, after conquering the Persian Empire in the 4th century BCE, adopted Persian dress, customs and court mannerisms; married a Persian princess, Stateira II and made subjects cast themselves on their faces when approaching him, in Persian-style, known to Greeks as the custom of proskynesis, a symbolic kissing of the hand that Persians paid to their social superiors. Persian dress and practices were also observed by Peucestas, who was later made satrap of Persis, where he conciliated the favour of the Persians to his rule in exchange for those of the Macedonians.[3]

Early Islamic Period to 15th centuryEdit

After the fall of the Sasanian dynasty in 651, the Umayyad Arabs adopted many of the Persian customs, especially the administrative and the court mannerisms. Arab provincial governors were either persianized Arameans or ethnic Persians; certainly, Persian remained the language of official business of the caliphate until the adoption of Arabic toward the end of the 7th century,[4] when, in 692, minting began at the caliphal capital, Damascus. The new Islamic coins evolved from imitations of Sasanian and Byzantine coins, and the Pahlavi script on the coinage was replaced with Arabic.

The Abbasids, after 750, established their capital in what is now Iraq, eventually at Baghdad. A shift in orientation toward the east is discernible, which was encouraged by increased receptiveness to Persian cultural influence and the roots of the Abbasid revolution in Khorasan, now in Afghanistan[5] A proverb complained about the Persianization of morals by Turks.[6]

16th to 18th centuriesEdit

Two major powers in West Asia rose, the Persian Safavids and Ottoman Turks. The Safavids reasserted Persian culture and hegemony over Caucasus, Eastern Anatolia, Mesopotamia and other regions. Many khans, begs and other rulers adopted Persian customs and clothing and patronized Persian culture. They founded the city of Derbent in the North Caucasus (now in Dagestan, Russia). Many ethnic peoples adopted many aspects of Persian culture and contributed to their persianization.

At the same time, the Ottomans and their predecessors, the various Beylerbergs and the Sultanate of Rum, patronized so heavily of Persian culture that they became fully Persianate. The Ottomans, for example, adopted Persian names; made Persian an official and prestigious language; adopted Persian titles; adopted Persian cuisine, dances, and literature and added many Persian words to their own language.

Modern timesEdit

In modern times, the term is often used in connection with non-Persian speakers like the Azeri[7] and the Kurds.[8]

It has been argued that modern Iranian nationalism was established during the Pahlavi era and was based on the aim of forming a modern nation-state.[9] What is often neglected is that Iranian nationalism has its roots before the Pahlavi, in the early 20th century.[9] On the eve of World War I, Pan-Turkist propaganda focused on the Turkic-speaking lands of Iran, the Caucasus and Central Asia.[9] The ultimate purpose of persuading these populations to secede from the larger political entities to which they belonged and to join the new pan-Turkic homeland.[9] It was the latter appeal to Iranian Azerbaijanis, which contrary to Pan-Turkist intentions, caused a small group of Azerbaijani intellectuals to become the strongest advocates of the territorial integrity of Iran.[9] After the constitutional revolution in Iran, a romantic nationalism was adopted by Azerbaijani Democrats as a reaction to the pan-Turkist irredentist policies emanating from modern Turkey and threatening Iran’s territorial integrity.[9] It was during this period that Iranism and linguistic homogenization policies were proposed as a defensive nature against all others.[9] Contrary to what one might expect, foremost among innovating this defensive nationalism were Iranian Azerbaijanis.[9] They viewed that assuring the territorial integrity of the country was the first step in building a society based on law and modern state.[9] Through this framework, their political loyalty outweighed their ethnic and regional affiliations.[9] The adoptions of this integrationist policies paved the way for the emergence of the titular ethnic group’s cultural nationalism.[9]

According to Tadeusz Swietochowski, in 1930s, the term was used to describe the official policy pursued by Reza Shah Pahlavi to assimilate the ethnic minorities in Iran (Iranians as well as Non-Iranians). In particular, within this policy the Azerbaijani language was banned for use on the premises of schools, in theatrical performances, religious ceremonies and in the publication of books. Swietochowski writes:


— [10]

Mogul EmpireEdit

The Mughal Empire was an Islamic imperial power that ruled a large portion of the Indian Subcontinent and Afghanistan in South Asia. From 1526, the Moguls invaded the Indian Subcontinent, from their initial base in Kabul, and they eventually ruled most of Hindustan (South Asia) by the late 17th and the early 18th centuries until the mid-19th century. The emperors were descendants of the Timurids who had embraced Persian culture, converted to Islam and resided in Turkestan, and they were the ones responsible for the spread of Persian and Islamic culture to Central Asia. At the height of their power around 1700, they controlled most of the Indian Subcontinent and Afghanistan and spread Persian culture throughout, just as their predecessors the Turkic Ghaznavids and the Turko-Afghan Delhi Sultanate had done. In general, from its earliest days, Persian culture and language was spread in South Asia by various Persianised Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties.[11]

Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, identified his lineage as Timurid and Chaghatay-Turkic, and his origin, milieu, training and culture were Persian culture. He was largely responsible for the fostering of the culture by his descendants and for the expansion of Persian cultural influence in the Indian Subcontinent (and Afghanistan), with brilliant literary, artistic and historiographical results. Many works of art such as the Taj Mahal, Humayun's Tomb and the Badshahi Mosque are of Persian Islamic architecture, with Persian names. Persian was the official language of the Mughal courts, until replaced with Urdu by the British.


In the early history of Afghanistan as an independent country, many Pashtuns moved into urbanized areas and adopted Dari as their language. As a result, many ethnic Pashtuns in Afghanistan identify themselves as Tajiks[citation needed] but still have Pashtun names (such as a last name with the suffix "-zai") simply because they speak Dari and are assimilated into Tajiki culture in the country, a process known as "de-tribalization". That is especially seen with the "Kabulis", the long-established families from Kabul (usually Pashtuns completely immersed in Persian culture).

In Pakistan, a similar pattern occurs with urbanization, when Pashtuns assimilate into the country's national Urdu-speaking culture.

See alsoEdit


  1. ^ Bhatia, Tej K., The handbook of bilingualism, (2004), p.788-9
  2. ^ Ravandi, M., The Seljuq court at Konya and the Persianisation of Anatolian Cities, in Mesogeios (Mediterranean Studies), vol. 25-6 (2005) , pp157-69
  3. ^ Arrian, vii. 23, 24, 26; Photius, Bibliotheca, cod. 82, cod. 92; Diodorus, xvii. 110, xviii. 3, 39; Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, xiii. 4
  4. ^ Hawting G., The First Dynasty of Islam. The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661-750, (London) 1986, pp. 63-64
  5. ^ Kennedy H., The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, London, 1986, pp. 134-37
  6. ^ Jack Weatherford (25 October 2016). Genghis Khan and the Quest for God: How the World's Greatest Conqueror Gave Us Religious Freedom. Penguin Publishing Group. pp. 367–. ISBN 978-0-7352-2115-4. 
  7. ^ Stavenhagen, Rodolfo (2002). Ethnic Conflicts and the Nation State. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-15971-4. 
  8. ^ Margaret K., The official Persianization of Kurdish, Paper presented at the Eighth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Leeds, England, (August 1975).
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Touraj Atabaki, "Recasting Oneself, Rejecting the Other: Pan-Turkism and Iranian Nationalism" in Van Schendel, Willem (Editor). Identity Politics in Central Asia and the Muslim World: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Labour in the Twentieth Century. London, GBR: I. B. Tauris & Company, Limited, 2001:

    As far as Iran is concerned, it is widely argued that Iranian nationalism was born as a state ideology in the Reza Shah era, based on philological nationalism and as a result of his innovative success in creating a modern nation-state in Iran. However, what is often neglected is that Iranian nationalism has its roots in the political upheavals of the nineteenth century and the disintegration immediately following the Constitutional revolution of 1905–9. It was during this period that Iranism gradually took shape as a defensive discourse for constructing a bounded territorial entity – the 'pure Iran' standing against all others. Consequently, over time there emerged among the country's intelligentsia a political xenophobia which contributed to the formation of Iranian defensive nationalism. It is noteworthy that, contrary to what one might expect, many of the leading agents of the construction of an Iranian bounded territorial entity came from non Persian-speaking ethnic minorities, and the foremost were the Azerbaijanis, rather than the nation's titular ethnic group, the Persians.


    In the middle of April 1918, the Ottoman army invaded Azerbaijan for the second time.


    Contrary to their expectations, however, the Ottomans did not achieve impressive success in Azerbaijan. Although the province remained under quasi-occupation by Ottoman troops for months, attempting to win endorsement for pan-Turkism ended in failure.


    The most important political development affecting the Middle East at the beginning of the twentieth century was the collapse of the Ottoman and the Russian empires. The idea of a greater homeland for all Turks was propagated by pan-Turkism, which was adopted almost at once as a main ideological pillar by the Committee of Union and Progress and somewhat later by other political caucuses in what remained of the Ottoman Empire. On the eve of World War I, pan-Turkist propaganda focused chiefly on the Turkic-speaking peoples of the southern Caucasus, in Iranian Azerbaijan and Turkistan in Central Asia, with the ultimate purpose of persuading them all to secede from the larger political entities to which they belonged and to join the new pan-Turkic homeland. It was this latter appeal to Iranian Azerbaijanis which, contrary to pan-Turkist intentions, caused a small group of Azerbaijani intellectuals to become the most vociferous advocates of Iran’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. If in Europe ‘romantic nationalism responded to the damage likely to be caused by modernism by providing a new and larger sense of belonging, an all-encompassing totality, which brought about new social ties, identity and meaning, and a new sense of history from one’s origin on to an illustrious future’,(42) in Iran after the Constitutional movement romantic nationalism was adopted by the Azerbaijani Democrats as a reaction to the irredentist policies threatening the country’s territorial integrity. In their view, assuring territorial integrity was a necessary first step on the road to establishing the rule of law in society and a competent modern state which would safeguard collective as well as individual rights. It was within this context that their political loyalty outweighed their other ethnic or regional affinities. The failure of the Democrats in the arena of Iranian politics after the Constitutional movement and the start of modern state-building paved the way for the emergence of the titular ethnic group’s cultural nationalism. Whereas the adoption of integrationist policies preserved Iran’s geographic integrity and provided the majority of Iranians with a secure and firm national identity, the blatant ignoring of other demands of the Constitutional movement, such as the call for formation of society based on law and order, left the country still searching for a political identity.

  10. ^ Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russia and Azerbaijan: A Borderland in Transition. p.122, ISBN 0-231-07068-3
  11. ^ Sigfried J. de Laet. History of Humanity: From the seventh to the sixteenth century UNESCO, 1994. ISBN 978-9231028137 p 734