Iranians are well aware of the length and depth of their history. They’re also very proud of their literary and especially their poetic tradition. The high cult

Iranians are well aware of the length and depth of their history. They’re also very proud of their literary and especially their poetic tradition. The high culture of the Mslim world was Persian speaking for an extremely long time. Urdu, the Muslim register of Hindustani takes its scientific, governmental and administrative vocabulary from Persian. Ottoman “Turkish” is unintelligible to speakers of modern Turkish because of the massive amount of Persian and Arabic vocabulary that was removed under the Young Turks’ language reforms. The language of high culture from Delhi to Baghdad to Konstantiniyye (Constantinople) was Persian. Persian was at least as much the language of the Islamic Golden Age as Arabic.