Greater Iran in the context of "Persian language"

Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan to the northeast, and China to the northeast and east. Occupying 652,864 square kilometers (252,072 sq mi) of land, the country is predominantly mountainous with plains in the north and the southwest, which are separated by the Hindu Kush mountain range. Kabul is the country's capital and largest city. Afghanistan's population is estimated to be between 40 and 50 million.

Human habitation in Afghanistan dates to the Middle Paleolithic era. Popularly referred to as the graveyard of empires, the land has witnessed numerous military campaigns, including those by the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Maurya Empire, Arab Muslims, the Mongols, the British, the Soviet Union, and a US-led coalition. Afghanistan also served as the source from which the Greco-Bactrians and the Mughals, among others, rose to form major empires. Because of the various conquests and periods in both the Iranian and Indian cultural spheres, the area was a center for Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and later Islam. The modern state of Afghanistan began with the Durrani Afghan Empire in the 18th century, although Dost Mohammad Khan is sometimes considered to be the founder of the first modern Afghan state. Afghanistan became a buffer state in the Great Game between the British Empire and the Russian Empire. From India, the British attempted to subjugate Afghanistan but were repelled in the First Anglo-Afghan War; the Second Anglo-Afghan War saw a British victory. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, Afghanistan became free of foreign political hegemony, and emerged as the independent Kingdom of Afghanistan in 1926. This monarchy lasted almost half a century, until Zahir Shah was overthrown in 1973, following which the Republic of Afghanistan was established.

The History of Iran (also known as Persia) is intertwined with Greater Iran, which is a region encompassing all of the areas that have witnessed significant settlement or influence by the Iranian peoples and the Iranian languages – chiefly the Persians and the Persian language. Central to this region is the Iranian plateau, now largely covered by modern Iran. The most pronounced impact of Iranian history can be seen stretching from Anatolia in the west to the Indus Valley in the east, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, and parts of Central Asia. It also overlaps or mingles with the histories of many other major civilizations, such as India, China, Greece, Rome, and Egypt.

Iran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilizations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to the 5th millennium BC. The Iranian plateau's western regions integrated into the rest of the ancient Near East with the Elamites (in Ilam and Khuzestan), the Kassites (in Kuhdesht), the Gutians (in Luristan), and later with other peoples like the Urartians (in Oshnavieh and Sardasht) near Lake Urmia and the Mannaeans (in Piranshahr, Saqqez and Bukan) in Kurdistan. German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called the Persians the "first Historical People" in his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. The sustained Iranian empire is understood to have begun with the rise of the Medes during the Iron Age, when Iran was unified as a nation under the Median kingdom in the 7th century BC. By 550 BC, the Medes were sidelined by the conquests of Cyrus the Great, who brought the Persians to power with the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire. Cyrus' ensuing campaigns enabled the Persian realm's expansion across most of West Asia and much of Central Asia, and his successors would eventually conquer parts of Southeast Europe and North Africa to preside over the largest empire the world had yet seen. In the 4th century BC, the Achaemenid Empire was conquered by the Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, whose death led to the establishment of the Seleucid Empire over the bulk of former Achaemenid territory. In the following century, Greek rule of the Iranian plateau came to an end with the rise of the Parthian Empire, which also conquered large parts of the Seleucids' Anatolian, Mesopotamian, and Central Asian holdings. While the Parthians were succeeded by the Sasanian Empire in the 2nd century, Iran remained a leading power for the next millennium, although the majority of this period was marked by the Roman–Persian Wars.

The Iranian plateau or Persian plateau is a geological feature spanning parts of the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. It makes up part of the Eurasian plate, and is wedged between the Arabian plate and the Indian plate. The plateau is situated between the Zagros Mountains to the west, the Caspian Sea and the Köpet Dag to the north, the Armenian Highlands and the Caucasus Mountains to the northwest, the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf to the south, and the Indian subcontinent to the southeast.

As a historical region, it includes Parthia, Media, Persis, and some of the previous territories of Greater Iran. The Zagros form the plateau's western boundary, and its eastern slopes may also be included in the term. The Encyclopædia Britannica excludes "lowland Khuzestan" explicitly and characterizes Elam as spanning "the region from the Mesopotamian plain to the Iranian Plateau".

Persian art or Iranian art (Persian: هنر ایرانی, romanized: Honar-è Irâni) has one of the richest art heritages in world history and has been strong in many media including architecture, painting, weaving, pottery, calligraphy, metalworking and sculpture. At different times, influences from the art of neighbouring civilizations have been very important, and latterly Persian art gave and received major influences as part of the wider styles of Islamic art. This article covers the art of Persia up to 1925, and the end of the Qajar dynasty; for later art see Iranian modern and contemporary art, and for traditional crafts see arts of Iran. Rock art in Iran is its most ancient surviving art. Iranian architecture is covered at that article.

From the Achaemenid Empire of 550 BC–330 BC for most of the time a large Iranian-speaking state has ruled over areas similar to the modern boundaries of Iran, and often much wider areas, sometimes called Greater Iran, where a process of cultural Persianization left enduring results even when rulership separated. The courts of successive dynasties have generally led the style of Persian art, and court-sponsored art has left many of the most impressive survivals.

Persian literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Persian language and is one of the world's oldest literatures. It spans over two-and-a-half millennia. Its sources have been within Greater Iran including present-day Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Kurdistan Region, the Caucasus, and Turkey, regions of Central Asia (such as Tajikistan), South Asia and the Balkans where the Persian language has historically been either the native or official language.

For example, Rumi, one of the best-loved Persian poets, born in Balkh (in modern-day Afghanistan) or Wakhsh (in modern-day Tajikistan), wrote in Persian and lived in Konya (in modern-day Turkey), at that time the capital of the Seljuks in Anatolia. The Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from Iran, Mesopotamia, Azerbaijan, the wider Caucasus, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia, as well as the Balkans. Not all Persian literature is written in Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic Persians or Iranians in other languages, such as Greek and Arabic, to be included.

The Treaty of Gulistan (also spelled Golestan: Russian: Гюлистанский договор, romanized: Gyulistanskiy dogovor; Persian: عهدنامه گلستان, romanized: Ahdnāme-ye Golestān) was a peace treaty concluded between the Russian Empire and Qajar Iran on 24 October 1813 in the village of Gulistan (now in the Goranboy District of Azerbaijan) as a result of the first full-scale Russo-Persian War (1804 to 1813). The peace negotiations were precipitated by the successful storming of Lankaran by General Pyotr Kotlyarevsky on 1 January 1813. It was the first of a series of treaties (the last being the Akhal Treaty) signed between Qajar Iran and Imperial Russia that forced Persia to cede the territories that formerly were part of Iran.

The treaty confirmed the ceding and inclusion of what is now Dagestan, eastern Georgia, most of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and parts of northern Armenia from Iran into the Russian Empire.

The Treaty of Turkmenchay was an agreement between Qajar Iran and the Russian Empire, which concluded the Russo-Persian War (1826–1828). It was second of the series of treaties (the first was the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan and the last, the 1881 Treaty of Akhal) signed between Qajar Iran and Imperial Russia that forced Iran to cede or recognize Russian influence over the territories that formerly were part of Iran.

The treaty was signed on 22 February 1828 (5 Sha'ban 1243) in Torkamanchay (a village between Tabriz and Tehran). It made Iran cede the control of several areas in the South Caucasus to Russia: the Erivan Khanate, the Nakhchivan Khanate and the remainder of the Talysh Khanate. The boundary between Russia and Iran was set at the Aras River. These territories are now Armenia, the south of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Nakhchivan and Iğdır Province (now part of Turkey).