Are Afghans Persian?
It turns out, the movie “300” wasn’t kidding around, the Persians were badass!
Here is a map of all 3 Persian empires (at its peak) overlaid on a modern map of the region:
As you can see, the Persian empire was HUUUGE and amazingly influential in the region up until the 16th century.
Many of the modern names of countries are influenced by the ancient Persians for example the suffix “-stan” as in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Hindustan is Persian for “Land of…” so Afghanistan for instance means “Land of the Afghans”.
Many modern city names in the region have the suffix “-abad” as in “Islamabad” or “Hyderabad” or “Jalalabad” which is Persian for “built by” and attaching the name of its founder so “Jalalabad” means “city built by Jalal”.
More than half of Afghanistan speaks Eastern Persian also known as the “Dari” dialect. Tajikistan speaks their own distinct dialect of Persian called “Tajiki”. The Persian spoken in Iran is referred to as “Western Persian”. Currently, there are around 110 million Persian speakers worldwide. Here is the corresponding linguasphere:
Pakistan speaks “Urdu” which is Persian mixed with Hindi (originally Hindustani) as modern-day Pakistan (originally India) was on the edge of the Persian empire, they retained some of their Indian influence in the region.
Other Persian influences in Afghanistan include:
- Food (cuisine)
- Persian New year (Nowruz)
- Famous Poets and poetry
- Music
- Literature
- Arts and many other things…
To summarize— Afghans are “descendants” of the Persian empire (as are other countries that were under its influence) and one could arguably say we were Persian up until 621 A.D. but in our modern times only Persian- “the language” exists. Persian — “the people” or Persia “the country” is a relic of the past.
Stay frosty =)
