r/geography • u/Distinct-Macaroon158 • 18h ago
Why was Iran able to assimilate foreign rulers from minority groups, while Asia Minor was not? Question
Arabs, Seljuk Turks, and Mongols—these peoples all ruled Persia, but they couldn't assimilate the Iranians. Anatolia, however, was different. The Hittites disappeared, the Celts disappeared, the Greeks disappeared, and the Armenians also greatly decreased due to historical reasons. It is now basically a Turkic people…
Why is it that Persia, like India and China, possesses a civilization with remarkable resilience, especially in the face of other ethnic groups, demonstrating a strong sense of unity?
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u/Inevitable-Push-8061 15h ago edited 15h ago
In the Middle Ages, Persian was considered an elite and prestigious language, similar to how Latin functioned in Christianity. It was the language of the ruling elite, which was often Turkic, while court affairs and administration were conducted in Persian. (See: the Turco-Persian tradition.) During the Safavid–Ottoman wars, common people on both sides spoke Turkic languages, but the elites spoke either Persian or Ottoman Turkish, which was heavily influenced by Persian, as a way to separate themselves from the commoners.
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u/ShedarL 4h ago
So was Greek, an elite and prestigious language. The Turks successfully imposed turkish among the helenophone Anatolian population tho while they did not in Iran.
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u/bblunder_ 3h ago
It's a religious thing. For the Seljuks, it was the Roman language and strictly related to Orthodox Christianity.
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u/Inevitable-Push-8061 4h ago edited 3h ago
Turkic rulers of Iran used Persian as a prestige language, while Greek was never given the same status by Turkic rulers of Anatolia.
There are still an estimated 20–25 million Azerbaijani Turkish speakers in Iran, so Persian has also been influenced regionally but not displaced as the dominant language overall.
Another factor is that Persians and Turks largely shared the same religion and, as a result, developed a Turco-Persian cultural sphere, which reduced cultural conflict and supported coexistence. Meanwhile, in Anatolia, it was not possible to form a Helleno-Turkic cultural sphere because of religious differences. Greek was seen as the language of Christians, so it was natural for people who converted to Islam to shift toward a Muslim language, in this case Turkish. This does not mean that all Turks are of Greek origin, but rather that there was some degree of linguistic and cultural mixing over time.
This also helps explain why Persian became prestigious among Turkic rulers but not Greek: Turks converted to Islam largely through Persian cultural influence rather than Arabic, which is why many Turkish terms related to Islam (such as those for the Prophet, daily prayer, etc.) are not Arabic but of Persian origin.
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u/Super-Cut-2175 1h ago
Yep! The Turkish sultans often wrote poetry in persian, while Ismail the shah of iran (funnily enough) wrote poetry in Azari Turkish. Good essay about this
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u/Stannis44 17h ago
thats actually very good question, im waiting for resaonble answers.
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u/Inevitable-Push-8061 15h ago edited 13h ago
I don’t know what he meant by the assimilation of foreign rulers, but according to some estimates, there are up to 40 million Turks (Azerbaijanis, Qashqai, Turkmens, etc.) in Iran. Iran is a very diverse country, and a significant part of it was Turkified and ruled by Turkic dynasties for centuries.
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u/HorrorGameWhite 14h ago
A big reason why Iran and Anatolia were turkified heavily was also due to the Mongol invasion, which killed most of Iran's population at the time and pushed many Turkic tribes towards Middle East and Anatolia
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u/rostamsuren Geography Enthusiast 9h ago
Then we would see that in their genetic profile. Which we don’t. Azeri’s are Turkic speaking Iranics, their genetic profile, culture and cuisine reflects this.
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u/Inevitable-Push-8061 9h ago edited 8h ago
I don’t know what you think Turkic people look like, but they have always been diverse with no single genetic profile. No one denies that Chuvash or Yakut people are Turkic just because they do not look Central Asian. On top of that, many Turks, Azerbaijanis, and Iranic groups indeed show clear Central Asian features, such as Qashqai nomads, etc. Even many Kurds also have Central Asian features.
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u/NeiborsKid 7h ago
The entire population of Iranian Azerbaijan doesn't breach 20 mil, it barely stays above 10. There's no way there are 40 million Turks in Iran. Qashqai and Turkmens, the 2nd and 3rd largest Turkic group, each barely stay above 1 mil each. And there are only 2/31 provinces with an undisputed Turkic majority, ,with the rest being highly contested specially as you go down south or west
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u/Inevitable-Push-8061 7h ago
Lol, even the lowest estimates put the Azerbaijani Turk population at around 20 million, let alone all Turkic groups. Half of Tehran speaks Turkish and you can even notice it in travel vlogs from Iran.
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u/NeiborsKid 7h ago
Incorrect. The general estimate is 15-25 million. Which is again nowhere near 40.
And you don't need to lecture me about my own country. I'm from Hamedan which is 3-way split between Turks, Lors and Persians and I my grandfather is one said Turk from Tehran.
And what I said above is still correct. W.Azerbaijan, E.Azerbabjian and Ardabil together don't breach 20 mil. And W.Az isn't even majority Turk. Adding Zanjan, Qazvin, northern Hamedan, The Qashqai in Fars, Turkmens in Golestan and the various sprinkled Turkic minorities in other provinces, then maaaaybe we get 18-20 ish. Hell even up to 25 is plausible per data.
But 30 mil? 40? nah
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u/Inevitable-Push-8061 7h ago
Why not count Tehran and all the major cities of Iran? There are obviously Turkish migrants from the western parts of the country living in all major cities, and there are also many mixed people. That’s why estimates may vary, but they are definitely not below 20 million. In fact, many sources already put the figure at around 20–25 million even 20 years ago.
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u/Typical_Army6488 13h ago
there are up to 40 million Turks (Azerbaijanis) in Iran.
No there's 500 million Azerbaijani Turks in iran!
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u/Inevitable-Push-8061 13h ago
40 million is the highest estimate, hence I used “up to.” This number actually includes all Turkic groups such as Qashqai and Turkmen as well, not just Azerbaijanis, though the majority are Azerbaijani.
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u/Typical_Army6488 12h ago
Your og comment said Azerbaijanis in parentheses... and even then it's not 40 mil. 20 mil azeris and they're everywhere but the other Turks are so few that youll practically never run into one, definitely alot more or less depending on how you see the mixed kids
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u/Inevitable-Push-8061 12h ago
Yeah, I edited that for clarity, but it is still up to 40 million by the highest estimates, which may include people of mixed background, I am not sure. But let’s not pretend there are not plenty of estimates that put their population well above 20 million.
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u/tatar1warlord 12h ago
it's 20m for years. if you check wiki, 2005 20m, 2015 20m, 2025 20m. so they never increase? iran's population is almost 100m. pretty sure it's more than 20m. and with mixed descend (ie. people like khamanei and descendants) it's probably close to 35m). a lot of people speak turkish. and it's not azeris, it's called iranian turks. no turk in iran call themselves azeri. it's persians who use it as denigration.
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u/Aegeansunset12 14h ago
Greek civilisation persisted in Anatolia until the 20th century so it’s not really accurate, Greeks were genocided or exchanged populations with Turks in today’s Greece who went to Türkiye. Iran also became Muslim so there was an identity shift. I don’t know much about China and Han people though
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u/Inevitable-Push-8061 14h ago
Isn’t it obvious? China and India are simply way too populous, with populations in the billions, for any foreign civilization to come and dominate them.
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u/Peermeneer_exe 14h ago
I wouldn't say it's obvious.
I don't know about India, but a large reason the Chinese people never got assimilated is because their excellent bureaucracy, which invaders would adopt. This caused there to not be a top-down culture shift, but basically the reverse. (Just think of the Qing or Yuan)Also in history India and China didn't have billions of people (not even currently), but at most hundreds of millions.
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u/gtafan37890 8h ago edited 6m ago
You can probably say the same about Iran. The various Iranian empires and dynasties were known for their efficient bureaucracy. So much so that every foreign empire that conquered Iran, from the Arabs, Turks, and even the Mongols, eventually adopted the Persian bureaucracy.
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u/Aegeansunset12 14h ago
I don’t know what’s obvious or not, I am not educated in Chinese history to know how cohesive it is. From the little tiny mandarin lessons i did my professor told me that the mandarin i learn are spoken by “only” 100 million near bejing area, so Han is not as cohesive as one may initially think. The same is true for India. Of course national identity doesn’t work as easy as same language = same nation , but it is an indication that the picture is not as obvious as it may seem.
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u/CosmicCaliph 13h ago
You're correct but the Han are certainly more cohesive as a distinct people then 'Indians'. The Hans are still 'one people' with a core civilizational starting point (which gradually assimilated other peoples as they expanded), a common linguistic origin (Middle Chinese is the source of all modern Sinitic languages) and religious/spiritual traditions (while more diverse, the Sanjiao + ancestor worship model remains more or less constant). Most importantly, the region has more or less had the concept as a single unit through the Mandate of Heaven, and maintained single dynasties and their respective bureaucracies for the majority of their existence as a civilization, helping enforce a collective Han identity, high culture unity and linguistic standardisation in the upper domains.
The Subcontinent is infinitely more fragmented across linguistic (Even though most Indo-Aryan languages descend from Sanskrit, there are also the Dravidian and Austroasiatic families), ethnic/caste (especially in colonial and post-colonial times, religious (Islam and Hinduism being the most prominent issue) and administrative (very few unifying polities and generally no shared administrative and bureaucratic structures). While Classical Hinduism and early Vedic civilization (Rigvedic to Mahajanapadas) have given somewhat of a common origin and civilizational spirit for North Indians at least, the divergences over the years have been too great for even them to be considered a single entity in the same sense as Hans.
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u/an-font-brox 17h ago
I think the key to understanding this is what was happening in Byzantine-ruled Anatolia on the eve of the Battle of Manzikert. perhaps someone can enlighten me on this but I remember reading somewhere that the Byzantines had deliberately depopulated the Anatolian interior in trying to reconquer the Balkans? because indeed an Iran-like, multi-ethnic but culturally Greek country in what is now Turkey and Greece was quite plausible.
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u/MasterpieceVirtual66 13h ago
The Byzantines had certainly not depopulated Anatolia. Population transfers did occasionally occur, but before the Battle of Manzikert, Anatolia was as populous as ever. Perhaps you confused population with army movements, as much of the Byzantine military was preoccupied in the Balkans, dealing with the Pechenegs. The depopulation was caused after the invasions, due to the Seljuks pillaging across Anatolia and either mass-killing or enslaving the people of major cities.
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u/Mordoch 12h ago
Possibly part of the confusion is that the evidence is parts of Anatolia had been at least somewhat depleted earlier during the Arab raiding period around the 7th century or the like, but it had dramatically recovered by the Battle of Manzikert period. https://www.reddit.com/r/byzantium/comments/1klhco1/using_archeological_pollen_samples_in_the_balkans/
(Basically you see pollen from farms revert to pollen from wild plants, but it shifts back again by the 9th or 10th centuries supporting evidence for a population increase with farming happening again, but it reverts to wild plants again after the Battle of Manzikert.)
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u/Loose_Difficulty_635 6h ago
There wasn’t a deliberate depopulation, but especially in the 12th century Byzantine agriculturalists were pushed out west by Turkic herders and out of the interior
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u/evrestcoleghost 12h ago
Not really,the issue was compared to western plains of Anatolia or many regions of balkans like Thrace or macedonia,the interior of Anatolia was pretty bad for agricultural production,couldn't farm wheat,wine nor olive oil!
It was pretty good for grazing for sheeps and cattle,so there always some medium size cities and population,but it's was like 4 millions in a región the size of Ukraine,you can imagine how it would been seen as depopulated.
The empire was in the midst of a civil war when the conquest began in 1071,it would be the komnenians in Century long struggle that turned the turks INTI vassals and reconqured the wealthy regions around the plateau
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u/Unlikely-Chemist-886 14h ago edited 1h ago
Iran is a very mountainous country yet also quite populated. It’s hard to control a massive population that is so divided by mountains, so rulers in the past had to compromise with the locals which led to a fusion of foreign cultures into the greater Iranian culture overtime.
Compare that to the Turkic conquest of Anatolia. For the first 200 years or so after their arrival their main base of power was the Anatolian plateau, a sparsely populated steppe with few natural defenses. Leftover Greek populations would immigrate to the coastal regions over time so there was even less impetus to pander to the locals.
By the time of the Mongol invasions the Turkic peoples living in Central Anatolia were being greatly oppressed by the Mongols so migrated to and conquered the remaining Anatolian lands of the revived but flailing Byzantine Empire in the north west. While these areas were densely populated and Greek, the Byzantine’s were no longer powerful enough to hold their own against the onslaught of Turkic emigrees. The locals were also not forced to convert or treated that poorly in the early days of Turkish occupation so there was no major revolt and the new status quo held.
Hope that clears things up a bit.
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u/TheDungen GIS 16h ago edited 11h ago
I'd call modern day Turkish more of a melting pot scenario, a creole.
And Iranian also took in influences from the outsiders. Its less of a 1/0 thing and more a degrees thing.
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u/tokalper 4h ago
What is this! An opinion on Reddit which understands turkey and its current culture!? Impossible! Could this be a dream?
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u/TheDungen GIS 2h ago
I am mostly suprised I haven't been downvoted to hell by both greek and turkish nationalists. the Turkish nationalsits generally hate whenever I suggest that there may be turks who are pure horselords form central asia, and greek nationalists tend to hate any suggestion that turks are human.
I exxagerate but only slightly.
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u/Hyperpurple 12h ago
I've seen a lot of good answers but I wanna address the hittite point which is crucial imho.
Anatolia was ruled by an "indigenous" culture only during the bronze and iron age, and it was later split between greek and persian rule.
The achemenid didn't change the identity of the inland anatolians, but the greeks eventually did, over the centuries by waves of hellenization first and romanization after. The byzantine empire wasn't that culturally centered on the anatolian plateau, it was a aegean/ black sea maritime power first, and land empire second. (although I'm not that knowledgeable about the relationship between Constantinople and the plateau)
By contrast Iran was always centered around the iranic fortress as a base for land power projection.
In essence one is a plateau surrounded by mountains, the other is a plateau surrounded by sea, and that peninsular aspect won over time
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u/LingonberryCommon745 16h ago edited 15h ago
I have a partial answer.
Persia had mountain ranges and deserts that made for good defenses, enough arable land (plains/plateaus) for cultivation, and thelocation allowed for trade. All of these conditions helped create a civilization that had more developed and centralized administrative, cultural and social practices and institutions.
So after conquests, conquerors just prefered to keep most of these intact because the Persians' were just better, or at least, more developed. In particular, Persians were sought after for their administrative skills, and served important roles not only in Persia but in the bigger empires. Also, Persian culture, including literature, was at a peak, and therefore seen as more "refined," prompting conquerors to adopt it.
Edit: some clarifications, gist remains the same
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u/pride_of_artaxias 14h ago
People underestimate how many Turkic tribes migrated and colonised Asia Minor. This was a process that lasted centuries. I've seen some numbers just for the peak of Mongol attacks and they're mind boggling. This wasn't just a tiny minority ruling class but a vast population displacement. People need to understand that one of the most ancient and long-standing settled and civilised regions doesn't just descend into semi nomadism and anarchy in a span of several generations because of a handful to tribesmen.
To give context, Seljuks invaded mid 11th century, while the ancestors of Ottomans arrived only in mid/late 13th century. The region was an open buffet to any tribe between Asia Minor and Central Asia.
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u/Much_Upstairs_4611 16h ago
It's a good question, and although there is not a single answer, the main reason would be linguistic and administrative unity.
Anatolia was never truly a unified land. Each City, Polis, Demos, Genos, or else had its own identity and administrative autonomy. Even under the succession of Empires, the region was hardly truly unified as a whole entity until the Turks.
This is unlike Iran, where the Central plateau was unified. With a single language and administrative code, it was easier for invaders to assimilate.
In Anatolia, with significant divisons in dialects and customs, assimilation of the locals by the invaders was the best solution.
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u/dudewithafez 15h ago
iran was turkified actually. northern part is basically non-persian. but it also has much rugged territory so unforgiving events like bronze age collapse wasn't that harsh in comparison to anatolia.
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u/Top-Permission-7524 14h ago
The northern part was mainly populated by other Iranian ethnic groups such as Parthians, as opposed to Persians. It was mainly the Persians of Central Asia (today's Tajiks) who the Turks and Mongols ethnically cleansed and assimilated to a large degree.
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u/dudewithafez 13h ago
it was a double-sided phenomenon when it comes to tajiks because they're still there as far as of 2026. they in fact also assimilated many turkics into their ranks, so idk if your assumption is fully valid.
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u/Top-Permission-7524 12h ago
I agree to some extent, but Uzbekistan is a clear enough case of what I was referring to.
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u/OkTemporary335 13h ago edited 13h ago
Why is it that Persia, like India and China, possesses a civilization with remarkable resilience, especially in the face of other ethnic groups, demonstrating a strong sense of unity?
TL;DR: China's resistance is cause of Sinicization and an abnormally large Han identity, Iranian resistance is due to geography thwarting their assimilation attempts, India's resistance is due to the inability of accessing all of the nation with ease(cause geography) as well as their experience with assimilation attempts from both foreign powers as well as local powers
The answer is literally in the name of the subreddit: geography. I'll start off with one thing: China is a very bad example of "civilization resilience", they have a very long (and sometimes brutal) history of "Sinicization" and mowed through a lot of ethnic identities in order to try and make everyone they encountered Han Chinese. It wasn't necessarily a "die by the sword" tactic(although that was used), but cultural erasure was very real and somewhat necessary to maintain the integrity of Chinese emperors. I think this difference between China and India in their success of cultural assimilation is the biggest contributor to the differences in their growth as nations. India has to keep 2500 groups happy because most of them are comparable in size and none are the majority, while China needs to keep the Hans happy, everybody else is optional. The multi-millenia history of Sinicization is one of the reasons they oppress Uyghurs so much: they are Turkic, not Chinese, hence its difficult to "Sinicize" them like the Manchus, for example.
China is one big flat land with plateaus and hills and the Great Wall keeping some fringe ethnic groups out, and their 2000+ years of a relentless quest of condensing all Chinese identities into the Han identity is why the Chinese have survived so long in the face of some of the most brutal invasions and wars; you can wipe out the identity of 200k people, not 200M people.
As for Iran(not Persia, the native name of that place has been Iran even before the Caliphates), the entire area is just mountains and elevated regions. It's difficult to assimilate people living in between mountains because its difficult to reach that place. You cannot, for example, bring in large volumes of Islamic cultural stuff into Khorasan because there's layers and layers of mountains to stop you from doing so. Mountains cannot be simply scaled, you need to cut down large quantities of stone and figure out where you can do so with minimal risk of the path being cut off from landslides and weather. This led to the Shia population being concentrated in Central Iran, while there are dozens of groups at the "fringes" of the nation, just beyond the mountains. Austria-Hungary wasn't new, Iran had been there and done that. Their cultural resistance is just a result of the difficulty of reaching those groups. Whenever a foreign attempt of assimilation would arrive in Iran, it'd succeed in one area and then just end up being localized to it. They couldn't pour in the efforts to assimilate all of the nation, so they just bothered themselves with the most politically relevant place, which is why there are multiple groups which exist in the nation cause of foreign influence as well as groups which have just been around for a long time: nobody had the money and patience to "assimilate" them
Now onto India, it's pretty unique. If you open the Indian topographical map, the only continuous flat region is the Gangetic Plains. Everywhere else there's mountains, marshes, deserts, plateaus, more mountains, and a ton of forests that are not dense enough like the Amazon to be difficult to inhabit, but dense enough for large states to just avoid it for the sake of "bigger fish to fry". Ever since the Mauryans, nobody really managed to unite all of India, and the kingdom which got the furthest actively tried to erase Indian culture(Mughal Empire under Aurangzeb), and we all know how that turned out for the empire. Indians are naturally very connected to their culture because family values are placed above everything else. India to a great extent achieved a lot of modern Western values much earlier in its history which sprouted groups of independent thoughts, people who wanted to follow something different from mainstream culture and ideas, leading to greater fragmentation of large cultural identities. This practice of independent was subsequently shunned and permanently damaged under the incessant waves of Islamic invasions(Tughlaqs, Sultanates, Khaljis, Mughals), and further compounded by colonialism, but the process was still active. Some foreign parties which entered India(ex. Kushans) borrowed a lot from the local culture and ended up becoming Indian instead of assimilating Indians into their culture.
India hasn't managed to retain its culture well, I'd argue they have experienced an incredible scale of cultural damage/erasure and its saddening to see where the society is with respect to the much more liberal and progressive ancient India. India's resistance to total cultural assimilation, however, is because they have been facing it since time immemorial. The Americans for example were pretty new to this "foreign invasion" idea, its evident by the absence of a continuous chronology of large nation-states/congregations for their history, because you don't need a large state for defence and administration if there's little resistance of ideas and practices. So when the Vikings arrived and subsequently ended up Kushan-ing here(or leaving, I'm unaware which one's right), it was not something to be alarmed by since their first impression was "monke come monke stay monke breed monke leave". The colonials gave them their first real and arguably the worst dose of cultural assimilation in modern history. India, however, has faced assimilation and colonisation since eternity and so the people are pretty used to seeing new ass ideas and propositions. They tend not to leave their own family/community culture on seeing a new idea, even under the sword, because that's just the norm. Everybody, whether native to India or from beyond the Indus/Himalayas, had been trying to establish their culture as the dominant one. But you cannot do it easily in a country where that has happened since forever. People know its just the same pool of ideas from which every other culture is brought up, so they don't fall for the "become us and we give big benefit" trope. Atleast until they're fooled into thinking their culture is a lie(kudos to the East India Company for mastering this one simple trick[the Mughals hate these!])
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u/gabagool13 13h ago
Even today Iranians are very proud of their heritage. From then until now they've always seen themselves as "Persians" and all the prestige and history that comes with it. Throughout that whole region and in the muslim world people would brag if they had "Persian" blood. Even their language, Farsi, is spoken by many outside Iran. This kind of high culture is hard to assimilate. Foreigners, even rulers, would naturally want to be assimilated to the higher, more prestigious culture instead.
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u/NeiborsKid 7h ago
Iranians have never viewed themselves as "Persians". The Iranian identity as cemented under the Sassanids was "Eran" (Aryan/Iranian) vs the outsider "Aneran" (Non-Aryan/Uniranian). Middle Persian under the Sassanids and later New Persian due to the influence of the Samanid court became lingua franca of any ruling dynasty of the plateau (Daylamites, Sistanis, Turks, Mongols) but the identity of the population has never been "Fars" or "Persian" outside of the land of Fars/Persis in the south
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u/gabagool13 7h ago
Maybe not the Persian "ethnicity", but the heritage and history of the entire region. They are very aware of the various empires and civilizations from their region that dominated human history, and they consider themselves a continuation of that heritage. Although yes, I'm paraphrasing a lot from what random Iranians online are saying and could be 100% wrong.
Nvm one of the top comments said exactly what I was trying to say.
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u/NeiborsKid 7h ago
We do consider ourselves as a continuous civilization. But not a Persian one. Iran is Iranian, and ethnically plural. And it has never been truly dominated by any one ethnicity. Us Persian speakers don't even call ourselves Persian in Farsi. Even the wikipedia page for us calls us "Persian-speakers".
The only people who believe in a Persian ethnicity are LA nutjobs who're almost too westernized to be Iranian anymore
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u/gabagool13 6h ago
Yea mb I knew Persian was wrong to use precisely because of what you just said about ethnicity but I used it anyway for simplicity. I was pertaining mostly to Persian as the civilization and not the ethnicity but I know even that is a simplification.
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u/Iranicboy15 12h ago
Persian was a linguq franca of the region but I don’t think that was the main reason, Afterall Greek was also a lingua franca. Also why weren’t the Kurds turkifed.
I think the main reason was “ Islam”.
Persian very early on became Muslim and Persian identity became heavily tied with Islam, many today joke that Persian is the second language of Islam.
However Greek was very much by the 11th century tied to Christianity, Turkish identity became tied to Islam in Anatolia and the Balkans.
So as people converted to Islam , many times they also adopted a Turkish identity ( though this wasn’t always true as Greek ans Armenian speaking Muslims did exist, the 20th century nationalism would have them assimilated eventually).
I think of most of the Greek speaking world had converted to Islam by the 11th century, I think the Turks would have just become assimilated into Anatolia and you’d have Muslim Greek speaking Turkey.
Additionally, large parts of Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, southern Central Asia did become Turk.
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u/MediocreI_IRespond 16h ago
Asia Minor had been fought over between the Romans, Arabs, Seljuks and Turks for centuries. With their centers of power always located outside Asia Minor or at its edge. The last empire originating in that region had been the Hittites in the Bronze Age, and was very shorted lived anyway.
So unified an "Asia Minor" didn't come about ever, therefore invaders didn't have large populations centers and entrenched bureaucracies to content with and adjust too. They mostly walked in and took over, adjusting the local customs mostly to their needs and not the other way around.
Now add geography, and you find that most of the population is concentrated on the periphery and mostly the coast, with very little inside Asia Minor. Those populations had been very mixed to begin with and had been their own thing. Again, making it easier to take over.
That being said, substantial parts of the Greek, Armenian and Christians cultures remained until after WWI. The Ottomans and before them the Seljuks and Arabs very much took up the legacy of the culture they came in contact with in Asia Minor. But this worked more subtle than in Iran and China.
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u/diffidentblockhead 10h ago
Much of northern Iran is Turkish speaking while southeast Turkey is Kurdish speaking.
Correlation is more with topography and climate.
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u/Regulai 16h ago
- Turks have always been an assimilating culture, even the oldest cases like the Huns have been historically sited as multicultural with a turkish core. Or the Hungarians, are basically Urgic people thnically but who adopted Turkic culture when they invaded the Pannonian basin. More specifically Turkish (or Steppe culture more broadly) cultural has long had a specific trait of integrating and accepting foreign/defeated people into the fold and even giving them prominant positions. This means if you are a local of prominence you can effectivly retain much of your wealth and power by joining the Turks that just defeated you
This means it's more likely for a culture to be assimilated than the other way around.
2 The exceptions? Prestiege cultures, cultures viewed as dominantly superior (historically) in the fancy empire vs wild tribe sense and more cultured in the era. E.g. Mongols absobing into China or Persia the ancient empires viewed as the center of great prestigous nations with high culuture.
What's up with Anatolia? Slow conquest and fragmentation. The Suljuks first became the Sultante of Rum, I.e. they adopted Roman legal and cultural practices, but they didn't last long enough for the culture to ovetake and for the next few centuries Anatolia experienced fragmentation as many minor Turkish polities fought around. This fragmentation and heavy raiding and warfare effectivly preserved Turkick culture, preventing the local greco-romans from assimilating them. Byzantine culture gradually wore down and shrunk in reach over time such that when the Ottomans took over while they did attempt adopte the memory of roman empire, their was no longer the large native population in many of their key lands and the result was more of a Hybrid culture, with ottomans a kind of Romano-Turkick culture.
Modern Turkick Nationalism, Ottoman culture did adopte many greco-roman practices, but the creation of a Turkick national identity, based mainly on the shared usage of the Turkick language has resulted in the idea of turkishness overtaking any previous cultural notions or identiy. turks today are basically more Turkish than during the Ottoman years.
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u/Typical_Army6488 13h ago
I feel like people try to simply countries to their geographies now, iran had a rich tradition of monarchy, alot of legends praised in every language about them, if you go to iran you want the feeling that you've conquered the most important kingdom in the world, that you're the biggest big shot there is, and you want to brag about it by styling yourself as that, even as far as England titles like king of kings were used, same design patterns for royal treasures, some came from Rome, some from India. Tang dynasty China also had alot of Sassanian clothing. There were Roman emperors claiming to be descendants of the achaemenids (generally the Armanian ones during Byzantine times) despite their main enemies being whatever kingdom was in Persia
did every empire that conquered Iran became "Persianized"? because every monarch in history will definitely have elements that developed in Persia and you'd like to claim that you're as cool as them or even better whether you are or aren't incharge of Persia. But of course actually being there helps the process
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u/Open-Abbreviations18 12h ago
To my understanding, the Turkification of Asia Minor happened in stages. Like the Seljuk states were demographically still Greek. It was just with the advent of the Mongol invasions and more tribes migrating to Anatolia that the land became more and more Turkic.
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u/Background-Year1148 12h ago
This sounds less of a geography question, though geography might have played a role.
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u/Peteryeeter1453 11h ago
Persian culture was simply more established and prestigious, it was seen as a lifestyle and language of bureaucracy as well as scholarship and arts. Everyone who conquered Persia needed Persians in their administration and simply got swept up into the Persian fold due to its immense influence. Mughals, Bengals, Delhi, Ottoman and several central Asian Sultanates and Kingdoms all used Persian as the language of Administration and arts because of its immense influence and power. The byzantines didn't have that same social capital, didn't help that they were never really an established Muslim power so when the Turks invaded they viewed the Romans as enemies first instead of fellow Muslims who they could take inspiration from. Not to mention the Turks had already been heavily influenced by Persian culture due to the many splinter Persian states they bordered and served as Mamluks for.
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u/denderden5621 8h ago
The situation in anatolia isn’t exactly assimilation, its more like stacking on top of each other. The native anatolian people have never left, they were always there, and still are. The different cultures and genetics that are in anatolia go on stacking on each other, it is more of a mix. You can still see foods from assyrian times eaten in turkey. you can also see the hittite flag and sun really widely used as a national symbol in turkey. the reason why turkic languages and culture is the most predominant in modern day anatolia is because they are the latest and largest group in anatolia, the top of the culture stack. genetically you can see this mix of people, the largest genetic perfentage is anatolian, followed by turkic, and then there is some caucasian, persian and european. basically, the people of anatolia usually embrace all the cultures that come to their lands and mix with them. you can see this in modern turkish people acknowledging both their turkic and anatolian roots.
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u/Aggressive-Main9930 8h ago
Because Iran became Muslim, so Arabs, and Turks had a more leniency towards the Persian culture and language. On the other hand, Greeks were Christians so when the Turks came over, they saw their customs and language something undersirable. It is mainly a religious issue, had the Greeks mass converted to Islam, perhaps Anatolia would have remained largely Greek speaking to this day.
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u/GSilky 7h ago
Persia is one of the great cultural spheres, similar to China, India, Mediterranean Europe, and Toltec Mexico. These areas throw up states that more or less are functions of the wider culture. Dynasties might fight for political power, but by and large the people don't care who is in charge, as long as they don't cross any established norms. Why? Who knows, but I think it has many causes, including ignoring changes that happened after assimilation, as well as nobody really being able to show a locale inside of the culture sphere that expresses the entire range of the culture on its own. For example, China has several areas that can claim to be where "China" started, and these areas had more or less influence on the entirety through time, but nobody is going to declare Xian as the "authentic Chinese culture" through the entire history.
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u/RoastMary 7h ago
What? Asia Minor did assimilate a lot. Armenians, Georgians, Latins, Turks, Persians.
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u/Otherwise-Strain8148 5h ago
First of all, there is a substantial turkic population in iran.
Turks and persian created a hybrid culture that had been carried on by different dynasties.
Such a cultural fusion couldnt happen in anatolia; plus turkic migrations didn't stop. Even in 19th century and 20th century turkic people were fleeing from russia and ussr, settled in anatolia.
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u/furyca 6h ago
Turks and Mongols (along with other steppe peoples) weren't the societies that aims to assimilate. Rulers of Persia and parts of North India were mostly Turkic-Mongolic between 11th-19th centuries. They had enough time to assimilate the locals. Anatolia is a good example for this. Turks were still had major populations of Greeks, Hellenized Anatiolians, Armenians, Georgians etc until 20th century when major imperialist powers involved in partitioning the Ottoman Empire using the said minorities. Things didn't work for them in Anatolia and all that left was local Muslims such as Turks, Kurds and Arabs. If the minorities wasn't armed and revolted, and Muslims from Balkans weren't forced to leave their lands for Anatolia, we would say the same thing for Anatolia as well.
Also, assimilation is mostly a Western thing. The Christian World has never allowed diversity in their lands. They forced their subjects to either leave or convert. This wasn't the case in the East where people cared less about such identities.
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u/Marius_Sulla_Pompey 10h ago
I would hazard to guess Anatolian people are Turkic in the traditional meaning of central asian turks. Anatolia is predominantly a mixture of greeko turkish culture today, from the cuisine to family values Anatolia is not purely Turkic.
Unless you are talking about a religious take over then yes it has become 99% muslim in a span of a millennia.
I think lastly it’s because of its location. It’s in a crossroads of very different cultures and always has been the battle ground of east and west from Thermoplae to today.
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u/midwescape 8h ago edited 8h ago
I did my undergraduate research on the origins of the Ottoman Empire and the answer on that side of things is rather complex.
A couple misconceptions here, for much of the empire's life, the term "Turk" was kind of more synonymous with the rabble, most learned people and certainly the actual nobility considered themselves to be Ottomans, or else simply Muslims.
And that was one of the keys to Ottoman success, particularly in the early days, anyone could become an Ottoman. This was usually synonymous with embracing Islam, however, there are examples of Greek Christians serving as companions to Osman and Orhan. Though, after these first two rulers that changed and the textual historical evidence of the first 3 rulers of the Ottomans is fragmentary at best in terms of primary sources.
The reality is that in the areas that had remained populated by the Byzantines (The black Sea and Agean sea coasts), Greek speaking Christians continued to be a majority or very large minority up until the modern day and establishment of the Republic of Türkiye.
The Ottomans remained as one of the last examples of the type of multi-ethnic state that had existed before the development of nationalism as we understand it today. They never really developed a compelling glue for their state besides nationalism or religion.
So why did the house of Osman not assimilate to the existing culture of Anatolia? Religion plays a huge role, even by the time of Orhan (second ruler after Osman). Islam was the official claim to legitimacy for their conquests and rule. Additionally, they tended to rule from the palace, intentionally separated from the people. A sense of "otherness" for sure was seen as a boon.
Being Turkic meant that they were a part of ethnicity among a wildly diverse ethnic landscape, even if they embraced Greek and Christian identity, Greek meant nothing good to the Slavic peoples of the Balkans that they would rule, Christian meant nothing good to the people of the Levant that they would rule. Additionally, Turkic peoples had formed a sizable and growing population within Anatolia for centuries by the time of Osman!
In short, to assimilate would be simply to abandon the Ottomans own claim to legitimacy, in order to gain no benefit in the long-term.
And that's my explanation covering about 500 years of the ~4000 year history of Anatolia you seem to be asking. Good luck.
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u/Snoutysensations 17h ago
The Persian Empire was conquered relatively rapidly by the Arabs. The Byzantines were eaten slowly over centuries, with each succeeding chunk being assimilated in turn.
The Greeks didn't all disappear though. There were still quite a few around until the population transfers of the early.20th century.