{"id":54068,"date":"2023-07-22T09:29:21","date_gmt":"2023-07-22T05:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/surfiran.com\/mag\/?p=54068"},"modified":"2026-01-24T14:31:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T14:31:34","slug":"exploring-irans-diverse-ethnicities-a-guide-to-its-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surfiran.com\/mag\/exploring-irans-diverse-ethnicities-a-guide-to-its-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran’s Diverse Ethnicities: A Guide to its People"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Iran is a mosaic of ethnicities, all with their identity, language, culture and history. Reducing Iran to the Persians, the main ethnic group, would be forgetting about the Kurds, the Baloch, the Turks, and many other ethnicities that have been inhabiting Iran for centuries. So, let\u2019s meet with them in this article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Persians: Iran\u2019s First Ethic Group<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Persians are descendants of the Elamite or Aryan people<\/a>, and have originated from the last Indo-European migration by the 9th<\/sup> century BCE to establish one of the world\u2019s most powerful empires at the time, the first Persian Empire.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Indo
Scheme of Indo-European language dispersals from c. 4000 to 1000 BCE according to the widely held Kurgan hypothesis. \u2013 Center: Steppe cultures 1 (black): Anatolian languages (archaic PIE) 2 (black): Afanasievo culture (early PIE) 3 (black): Yamnaya culture expansion (Pontic-Caspian steppe, Danube Valley) (late PIE) 4A (black): Western Corded Ware 4B-C (blue & dark blue): Bell Beaker; adopted by Indo-European speakers 5A-B (red): Eastern Corded ware 5C (red): Sintashta (proto-Indo-Iranian) 6 (magenta): Andronovo 7A (purple): Indo-Aryans (Mittani) 7B (purple): Indo-Aryans (India) [NN] (dark yellow): proto-Balto-Slavic 8 (grey): Greek 9 (yellow): Iranians \u2013 [not drawn]: Armenian, expanding from western steppe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Culturally, many of the things that come to mind nowadays when thinking about Iran are related to the Persians: the language, Persian (Farsi),<\/a> the most iconic pieces of literature and poetry (the Shahnameh, Hafez<\/a>\u2019s and Saadi<\/a>\u2019s poetry), but also the music, the calligraphy, the miniatures, and the architecture<\/a>. Indeed, Persians had a significant influence on the country\u2019s culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the reasons is that Persians represent more than half of the population of Iran<\/a>, between 51 % and 65 % depending on the sources, which makes it the major ethnic group of Iran<\/strong>. Furthermore, they are concentrated in the central regions of Iran and major urban areas: Isfahan<\/a>, Shiraz<\/a>, Tehran<\/a>, Yazd<\/a>, and Mashhad<\/a>. Eventually, the majority of Persians are Shia Muslims, which is the state religion of Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Iran Ethnic Map – Wikimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Azerbaijani (Azeris) and other Turkic people<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After the Persians, the second ethnic group in Iran is the Azerbaijanis people, also called the Azeris. One out of five Iranians is Azeri. This group descends from Turkic nomads, proto-Caucasian tribes and Iranian farmers.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Azeri\"
The ashik or ashugh tradition is prevalent in Azerbaijani, Turkish, Armenian, and Georgian cultures. In Azerbaijan, modern ashiks are skilled musicians who undergo apprenticeship, master the ba\u011flama, and create their own repertoire of Turkic folk songs. The term “ashiq” is derived from “ishq” meaning “love” and is associated with the Avestan term “i\u0161-” meaning “to wish, desire, seek.” In Turkish and Azerbaijani, “ashiq” is synonymous with “ozan” and gradually replaced it between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Azerbaijanis are mostly located in the provinces of northwest Iran (East and West Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Zanjan, Qazvin, Hamedan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah and Gilan<\/a>), near the Turkey and Azerbaijan borders. Their language is quite different from Persian and other Indo-European languages, as it belongs to the Turkic group of the Altai language family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Azerbaijanis are well integrated into the Iranian society, and Iran\u2019s supreme leader Ali Khamenei<\/a> is himself an Iranian Azerbaijani. In terms of culture, even though this group has its own traditions, they also share a lot in common with Persians and their lifestyle is quite similar. They are also predominately Shia Muslims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Besides Azerbaijanis, which is the largest Turkic group in Iran, there are several others such as the Turkmens (living in the northeast, near the border with Turkmenistan), the Qashqai (a nomadic tribe found in the south and southwest) and the Kazakhs (mainly living in the

Kermanshah<\/a>, Illam, West Azerbaijan and Lorestan. In the past, they were also largely present in North Khorassan. The majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kurdish people have a singular culture, that varies greatly from Persian, and which they are very proud of. Travelling through Iranian Kurdistan, you will notice that most men and woman are wearing their traditional outfit, while they speak various Kurdish languages and dialects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baloch in Iran<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While it\u2019s a small ethnic group in terms of numbers, representing only 2 % of the population, Baloch is another distinctive ethnicity in Iran. Like the Kurds, Balochi people are spread over several countries without a nation of their own. In Iran, they are mostly inhabiting the region of Sistan and Baluchistan, near the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, the two other countries where most Baloch can be found. Overall, they are about 11 million Baloch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Balochs have an interesting ethnogenesis, as they first lived in western Iran, in the regions of Iranian Kurdistan, before settling in the southeast of Iran in the 10th<\/sup> century AD. Their language has a lot in common with Kurdish and they are also predominantly Sunni Muslims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arabs in Iran<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While many foreigners mistakenly think Iranians are Arabs, many Iranians also think they are no Arabs in their country, which isn\u2019t true either.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Arabs in Iran are individuals who identify as Arab and speak Arabic. They represent a significant ethnic group within Iran, alongside Persian, Kurdish, and Baloch communities.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Arabs are indeed an ethnic group that counts for 2 to 3 % of the population in Iran. They are mostly found in the Khuzestan<\/a> province (southwest, near the border with Iraq) but also found along the Persian Gulf coast and the Persian Gulf islands, due to migrations and exchanges over the time of sea merchants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Iran<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Other ethnic groups in Iran<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Besides all the mentioned ethnic groups, there are many other ethnicities in Iran<\/a>. One of them is the Lurs, which is the fourth ethnic group in Iran with 6 % of the population. Living mostly in the Lorestan province<\/a>, they were tribal and nomadic groups. In the north of Iran, along with Kurds, Turks, and Persians, Mazandaranis and Gilakis are two distinctive minorities that can be found near the Caspian Sea shores. Eventually, 1 % of the Iranian population consists of various minority groups, such as Assyrians, Armenians, Georgians, or Mandaeans<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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