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Persians are descendents of the Aryan (Indo-Iranian)
tribes that began migrating from Central Asia into
what is now Iran in the second millennium BC. The
Persian language and other Iranian tongues emerged
as these Aryan tribes split up into two major groups,
the Persians and the Medes, and intermarried with
peoples indigenous to the Iranian plateau such as
the Elamites.
Achaemenid Empire at greatest extent.The ancient
Persians from the province of Pars became the
rulers of a large empire under the Achaemenid
dynasty (Hakhamanesheeyan) in the sixth century
BC, reuniting with the tribes and other provinces
of the ancient Iranian plateau and forming the
Persian Empire. Over the centuries Persia was
ruled by various dynasties; some of them were
ethnic Iranians including the Achaemenids, Parthians
(Ashkanian), Sassanids (Sassanian), Buwayhids
and Samanids, and some of them were not, such
as the Seleucids, Ummayyads, Abbasids, and Seljuk
Turks.
The
founding dynasty of the empire, the Achaemenids,
and later the Sassanids, were from the southern
region of Iran, Pars. The latter Parthian dynasty
arose from the north. However, according to archaeological
evidence found in modern day Iran in the form
of cuneiforms that go back to the Achaemenid era,
it is evident that the native name of Parsa (Persia)
had been applied to Iran from its birth
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