Literature in Iran
Persian is Iran's official language and the language of the country's ethnic majority (i.e., the Persians), and Persian literature has been the country's most influential literary tradition. Apart from Iran, Persian literature was used and developed further through several medieval Persianate societies in Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia, and the language is still used widely in Central Asia (Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and Afghanistan.
Literature in Iran
The Turkic Azerbaijani language, which developed as a branch of the Oghuz Turkic languages through the 5th to the 11th and the 6th to the 12th century in and around Azerbaijan and is today the native language of Iran's second-largest ethnic group (i.e., the Azerbaijanis), has a literary tradition originating from the time of the 13th-century Mongol conquest of Iran, incorporating both Turkic and Iranian influences. Azerbaijani literature was developed highly after Iran's reunification under the Safavid Empire, whose rulers themselves wrote poetry, as well as under the reign of the Qajar dynasty. Chagatai, the prestigious and influential Turkic language that was itself influenced remarkably by Iranian languages (Sogdian and Persian), was also used, apart from its predominant location in Central Asia's Transoxiana, by writers in Shiraz, Isfahan, and Qazvin. Many poets from Azerbaijan wrote both in Azerbaijani and in Persian, although printing in Azerbaijani and other native languages of Iran except Persian was banned for a period under the reign of the Pahlavi ruler Reza Shah. Of Old Azeri, the Iranic language that was used in Azerbaijan prior to the development of Turkic, a few literary works also remain.