Persian art in the context of "Timurid art"

Persians, or the Persian people, are an Iranian ethnic group from West Asia. They are indigenous to the Iranian plateau and comprise the majority of the population of Iran. They have a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language. In the Western world, "Persian" was largely understood as a demonym for all Iranians rather than as an ethnonym for the Persian people, but this understanding shifted in the 20th century.

The Persians were originally an ancient Iranian people who had migrated to Persis (also called "Persia proper" and corresponding with Iran's Fars Province) by the 9th century BCE. Together with their compatriots, they established and ruled some of the world's most powerful empires, which are well-recognized for their massive cultural, political, and social influence in the ancient Near East and beyond. The Persian people have contributed greatly to art and science, and Persian literature is one of the world's most prominent literary traditions both inside and outside of Iran. The regional prestige of their civilization was the basis for the development of many noteworthy Persianate societies, especially among the Turkic peoples, throughout Central Asia and South Asia.

Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, and the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a population of over 90 million, Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population and is the sixth-largest country in Asia. Iran is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city, and financial center.

Home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilizations, most of Iran was first united as a nation by the Medes under Cyaxares in the 7th century BC and reached its territorial height in the 6th century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in the 4th century BC. An Iranian rebellion in the 3rd century BC established the Parthian Empire, which later liberated the country. In the 3rd century CE, the Parthians were succeeded by the Sasanian Empire, who oversaw a golden age in the history of Iranian civilization. During this period, ancient Iran saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanization, religion, and administration. Once a center for Zoroastrianism, the 7th century CE Muslim conquest brought about the Islamization of Iran. Innovations in literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and art were renewed during the Islamic Golden Age and Iranian Intermezzo, a period during which Iranian Muslim dynasties ended Arab rule and revived the Persian language. This era was followed by Seljuk and Khwarazmian rule, Mongol conquests and the Timurid Renaissance from the 11th to 14th centuries.

The culture of Iran (Persian: فرهنگ ایران) or culture of Persia is one of the oldest and among the most influential in the world. Iran (Persia) is widely regarded as one of the cradles of civilization. Because of its dominant geopolitical position in the world, it has heavily influenced peoples and cultures situated in Southern and Eastern Europe to the west; Central Asia to the north; and South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia to the east. Iranian history has significantly influenced the world through art, architecture, poetry, science and technology, medicine, philosophy, and engineering.

An "eclectic cultural elasticity" has been said to be one of the key defining characteristics of the Iranian identity and a clue to its historical longevity.

A Persianate society is a society that is based on or strongly influenced by the Persian language, culture, literature, art or identity.

The term "Persianate" is a neologism credited to Marshall Hodgson. In his 1974 book, The Venture of Islam: The expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods, he defined it thus: "The rise of Persian had more than purely literary consequences: it served to carry a new overall cultural orientation within Islamdom.... Most of the more local languages of high culture that later emerged among Muslims... depended upon Persian wholly or in part for their prime literary inspiration. We may call all these cultural traditions, carried in Persian or reflecting Persian inspiration, 'Persianate' by extension."

The Islamization of Iran began with the Muslim conquest of Iran, when the Rashidun Caliphate annexed the Sasanian Empire. It was a long process by which Islam, though initially rejected, eventually spread among the Persians and the other Iranian peoples. Although Arabization was a common element of the early Muslim conquests, it did not have as significant of an impact in Iran as it did elsewhere, as the Iranian populace persisted in maintaining many of their pre-Islamic traditions, such as their language and culture, albeit with adaptations to conform to the nascent religion. A distinctly Iranian Muslim identity emerged in this context and later sidelined the Arabs in what is known as the Iranian Intermezzo.

Iranian society was deeply transformed by the spread of Islam, which greatly influenced the nation's cultural, scientific, and political structure; the blossoming of Persian literature, philosophy, medicine, and art became major elements of Islam in Iran. Integrating a heritage of thousands of years of civilization and being at the "crossroads of the major cultural highways" in the Near East contributed to the Iranians emerging at the forefront of the Islamic Golden Age under the Abbasid Caliphate.

Art Deco, short for the French Arts décoratifs (lit. 'Decorative Arts'), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished internationally during the 1920s to early 1930s, through styling and design of the exterior and interior of anything from large structures to small objects, including clothing, fashion, and jewelry. Art Deco has influenced buildings from skyscrapers to cinemas, bridges, ocean liners, trains, cars, trucks, buses, furniture, and everyday objects, including radios and vacuum cleaners.

The name Art Deco came into use after the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) held in Paris. It has its origin in the bold geometric forms of the Vienna Secession and Cubism. From the outset, Art Deco was influenced by the bright colors of Fauvism and the Ballets Russes, and the exoticized styles of art from China, Japan, India, Persia, ancient Egypt, and the Maya. In its time, Art Deco was tagged with other names such as style moderne, Moderne, modernistic, or style contemporain, and it was not recognized as a distinct and homogeneous style.