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Persian, until recent centuries, was culturally and historically
one of the most prominent languages of the Middle East and regions
beyond. The Early Modern period of the language (ninth to thirteenth
centuries), preserved in the literature of the Empire, is known
as Classical Persian, due to the eminence and distinction of
poets such as Rudaki, Firdowsi, and Khayyam. During this period,
Persian was adopted as the lingua franca of the eastern Islamic
nations.
Today Persian is spoken primarily in Iran and Afghanistan with
over 23 million Farsi speakers (about 50% of the population)
in Iran; over 5.5 million Dari Persian speakers (25% of the
popoulation) in Afghanistan; and another 1 million Dari Persian
speakers in Pakistan. Dari Persian, until recently, deferred
to the Tehran standard as its model, and although there are
clear phonological and morphological contrasts, due partly to
the influence of neighboring Turkic languages, Farsi and Dar
Persian remain quite similar. The dialectal variation between
Farsi and Dari has been described as analogous to that between
European French and Canadian French. Persian in both Iran and
Afghanistan is written in a variety of the Arabic script called
Perso-Arabic, which has some innovations to account for Persian
phonological differences. Extensive contact with Arabic led
to a large influx of Arab vocabulary. In fact, a writer of Classical
Persian, had at one's disposal the entire Arabic lexicon and
could use Arab terms freely either for literary effect or to
display erudition.
The term "Persia(n)" derives from the Greek and is
based on the Ancient Greek reference to the whole region. "Farsi"
is the Arabic equivalent for the name of the southwestern province
of Parsa the locus of various Persian dynasties. "Iran"
derives from an Old Iranian word (Windfuhr 1987).
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