 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
Persianization (/ˌpɜːrʒəˌnaɪˈzeɪʃən/) orPersification (/ˌpɜːrsɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/;Persian:پارسیسازی، پارسِش), is asociological process of cultural change in which a non-Persian society becomes "Persianate", meaning it either directly adopts or becomes strongly influenced by thePersian language,culture,literature,art,music, and identity as well as other socio-cultural factors. It is a specific form ofcultural assimilation that often includes alanguage shift. 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 refer to changes in the cultures of non-Iranian peoples living within thePersian cultural sphere, particularly during theearly and middle Islamic periods, such asArabs and variousCaucasian (such asGeorgian,Armenian andDagestani) andTurkic peoples, including theSeljuks, theOttomans, and theGhaznavids.[1][2] The term has also been applied to the transmission of aspects of Persian culture, including language, to the non-Persian peoples in the regions surrounding theIranian plateau (also known asPersia), such asAnatolia and theIndian subcontinent.
Unlike theAncient Greeks and theRoman Empire, the ancient PersianAchaemenid Empire was not concerned with spreading its culture to the many peoples that it conquered. Arguably, the first recorded episode of persianization dates back toAlexander 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 ofproskynesis, a symbolic kissing of the hand that Persians paid to their social superiors. Persian dress and practices were also observed byPeucestas, who was later madesatrap ofPersis, where he conciliated the favour of the Persians to his rule in exchange for those of the Macedonians.[3]
After the fall of theSasanian dynasty in 651, theUmayyad Arabs adopted many of the Persian customs, especially the administrative and the court mannerisms. Arab provincial governors were either persianizedArameans or ethnic Persians; certainly,Persian remained the language of official business of the caliphate until the adoption ofArabic 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 andByzantine coins, and thePahlavi script on the coinage was replaced with Arabic.
TheAbbasids, after 750, established their capital in what is nowIraq, eventually atBaghdad. 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 inKhorasan, now inAfghanistan[5] A proverb complained about the Persianization of morals by Turks.[6]
Two major powers inWest Asia rose, the PersianSafavids andOttoman Turks. The Safavids reasserted Persian culture and hegemony overSouth 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 ofDerbent in theNorth Caucasus (now inDagestan,Russia). Many ethnic peoples adopted many aspects of Persian culture and contributed to their persianization.
In modern times, the term is often used in connection with non-Persian speakers like theAzeris,[7]Lors[8] and theKurds.[9]
It has been argued that modernIranian nationalism was established during thePahlavi era and was based on the aim of forming a modernnation-state.[10] What is often neglected is that Iranian nationalism has its roots before the Pahlavi, in the early 20th century.[10] On the eve ofWorld War I,Pan-Turkist propaganda focused on theTurkic-speaking lands of Iran, the Caucasus andCentral Asia.[10] 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.[10] It was the latter appeal to Iranian Azerbaijanis, which contrary toPan-Turkist intentions, caused a small group of Azerbaijani intellectuals to become the strongest advocates of the territorial integrity of Iran.[10] 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 modernTurkey and threatening Iran's territorial integrity.[10] It was during this period that Iranism and linguistic homogenization policies were proposed as a defensive nature against all others.[10] Contrary to what one might expect, foremost among innovating this defensive nationalism were Iranian Azerbaijanis.[10] They viewed that assuring the territorial integrity of the country was the first step in building a society based on law and modern state.[10] Through this framework, their political loyalty outweighed their ethnic and regional affiliations.[10] The adoptions of this integrationist policies paved the way for the emergence of the titular ethnic group's cultural nationalism.[10]
Lors are among other Iranian ethnic groups that are subject to ethnic and linguistic assimilation[11]
According toTadeusz Świętochowski, in 1930s, the term was used to describe the official policy pursued byReza Shah Pahlavi to assimilate the ethnic minorities in Iran (Iranians as well as Non-Iranians). In particular, within this policy theAzerbaijani language was banned for use on the premises of schools, in theatrical performances, religious ceremonies and in the publication of books.[12] Swietochowski writes:
The steps that the Teheran regime took in the 1930s with the aim of Persianization of the Azeris and other minorities appeared to take a leaf from the writings of the reformist-minded intellectuals in the previous decade. In the quest of imposing national homogeneity on the country where half of the population consisted of ethnic minorities, the Pahlavi regime issued in quick succession bans on the use of Azeri on the premises of schools, in theatrical performances, religious ceremonies, and, finally, in the publication of books. Azeri was reduced to the status of a language that only could be spoken and hardly ever written. As the Persianization campaign gained momentum, it drew inspiration from the revivalist spirit of Zoroastrian national glories. There followed even more invasive official practices, such as changing Turkic-sounding geographic names and interference with giving children names other than Persian ones. While cultivating cordial relations with Kemalist Turkey, Reza Shah carried on a forceful de-Turkification campaign in Iran.[12]
TheMughal Empire was an Islamic imperial power that ruled a large portion of theIndian subcontinent andAfghanistan. From 1526, the Mughals invadedHindustan, from their initial base in Kabul, and they eventually ruled most ofSouth Asia by the late 17th and the early 18th centuries until the mid-19th century. The emperors were descendants of theTimurids who had embracedPersian culture, converted toIslam and resided inTurkestan, and they were the ones responsible for the spread of Persian and Islamic culture toCentral 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 TurkicGhaznavids and the Turko-AfghanDelhi Sultanate had done. In general, from its earliest days, Persian culture and language was spread in South Asia by various Persianised Central AsianTurkic andAfghan dynasties.[13]
Babur, the founder of theMughal Empire, identified his lineage asTimurid andChagatai 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 theTaj Mahal,Humayun's Tomb and theBadshahi Mosque are of Persian Islamic architecture, with Persian names.Persian was the official language of the Mughal courts.
By 1964, the Afghanistan Constitution citedDari as one of its two official languages alongsidePashto.[14] Although the latter is the designated national language, Dari remains thelingua franca.[14]There are modern initiatives that attempt to "Pashto-ize" all governmental communication.[14] Since Dari is the language of the bureaucracy, Persian-speaking Afghans dominated it.[15] Persianization is especially seen in the case of the "Kabulis", the long-established families fromKabul (usuallyPashtuns completely immersed in Persian culture).Persianization is also reinforced by the incidence of urbanization in the country, which influenced the characteristics of theethnic groups of Afghanistan. The two most significant ethnic groups in Afghanistan are the Pashtuns, who are speakers of the Pashto language, and theTajiks, who are Persian speakers. While Pashtuns dominated the country since they constitute the majority of the population of Afghanistan, Persian culture still permeated. In the earlyhistory 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 within a process known as "de-tribalization".[citation needed] The Hazara ethnic group speak a dialect of Persian called Hazaragi. Possibly Hazaras used to speak their previous native language that contained more of their native Turkic and Mongolic words within the vocabulary (before Hazaragi). However over the course of centuries, as the native language got extinct (just like some of the other Turkic andMongolic languages that got extinct), the Hazaras adopted Hazaragi, a dialect of the Persian language, hence the result of Persianization. There are many Turkic and Mongolic words still preserved and used in the Hazaragi vocabulary.[16]
Medieval India during theDelhi Sultanate andMughal Empire was heavily influenced by the Persian language and culture.[17] The resultingIndo-Persian culture produced poets, such asAmir Khusrau.[18] The influence of Persian onOld Hindi led to the development of theHindustani language, which further developed into the present-daystandardizedvarieties ofHindi andUrdu. Hindi is one of the22 official languages ofIndia and thelingua franca ofNorth India. Urdu is anEighth Schedule language, the status and cultural heritage of which are recognised by theConstitution of India, also having official status in certain Indian states and territories, such asUttar Pradesh,Bihar,Jharkhand,Delhi,Telangana andWest Bengal.[18][19]
Geographically,Pakistan lies at the intersection of theIranian plateau andIndian subcontinent.Urdu, the national medium ofPakistan, is anIndo-Iranian language that has been historically influenced byPersian. Variouslanguages spoken in Pakistan from theIndo-Aryan language family as well as theIranian language family have also been influenced by Persian, itself aWestern Iranian language. The Pakistani national anthem,Qaumi Taranah, is written almost entirely in Persian. The name "Pakistan", with bothPak (پاک, 'pure') and the place-name suffix of-stan, are drawn directly from the Persian language. These modern linguistic developments are rooted primarily in the rule of variousIndo-Islamic dynasties on theIndian subcontinent, most notably theMughals, who established Persian and later Urdu as official and court languages across the region during theBritish India era as well as after thepartition of India.
The presence ofIranian peoples such as thePashtuns and theBaloch people in western Pakistan has solidifiedPersianate culture in the country; this presence was further boosted following the influx ofAfghan refugees into Pakistan as a consequence of theAfghanistan conflict.
In March 2007, theTajik President,Emomali Rahmon changed his surname fromRakhmonov toRahmon, getting rid of theRussian "-ov" ending.[20] and removed his patronymic ofSharipovich out of respect forTajik culture.[21][22] Following the move, a large number governments officials and civil servants Tajikified their own names. In April 2016, this practice became officially mandated by law.[23]
As far as Iran is concerned, it is widely argued that Iranian nationalism was born as a state ideology in theReza 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'sintelligentsia a politicalxenophobia 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.
{{cite web}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)