Mazanderani people
Mazanderani men and women with Mazanderani clothing in Nowruz
Total population
4.6 million (2021)[1] & 3 million[2] to 4 million[3] (2006)
Regions with significant populations
Province of Mazandaran and parts of the provinces of Alborz, Golestan, Tehran and Semnan in Iran
Languages
Mazanderani, Persian
Religion
Majority:
Shia Islam
Minority:
Sunni Islam, Baháʼí Faith
Related ethnic groups
Iranian peoples, Caucasian peoples

The Mazanderani people (Mazanderani: مازرونیون), also known as the Tabari people or Tapari people (Mazanderani: تپورون or تبریون), are an Iranian people[4][5][6] who are indigenous to the Caspian sea region of Iran. They are also referred to as Mazanis for short. They inhabit the southern coast of the Caspian Sea and are part of the historical region known as Tabaristan. The Alborz mountains mark the southern boundary of the area settled by the Mazanderani people.[7][8]

Traditional clothing of the Mazandarani people depicted on two Iranian stamps (1978)

People

The Mazanderani number was 4,480,000 in 2019 [9] The Mazanderani number between three[2] and four million (2006 estimate).[3] Their dominant religion is Shi'a Islam.[10]

Mazandarani people have a background in the Tabari ethnicity, and speak the Tabari language. Their origin goes back to Tapuri people and Amardi people. Their land was called Tapuria or Tapurestan, the land of Tapuris.[11]

Most Mazanderanis live on the southeastern coast of the Caspian Sea. Their traditional professions are farming and fishing.[2] The Mazanderanis are closely related to the neighbouring Gilaki people as well as South Caucasian peoples (e.g., the Georgians, Armenians, and Azerbaijanis).[2][12][13]

Language

Mazandaranis in Iran

The Mazanderani language is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken by the Mazanderani people; however, most Mazanderanis are also fluent in Persian.[7][10] The Gilaki and Mazanderani languages (but not other Iranian languages)[12] share certain typological features with Caucasian languages.[12]

With the growth of education and the media, the distinction between Mazanderani and other Iranian languages is likely to disappear.[7][10] Mazanderani is closely related to Gilaki and the two languages have similar vocabularies.[7] They preserve more of the noun declension system characteristic of older Iranian languages than Persian does.[7]

Assistant professor Maryam Borjian of Rutgers University states that Mazanderani has different sub-dialects and there is high mutual intelligibility among Mazanderani sub-dialects.[10]

The dialects of Mazanderani are Saravi, Amoli, Baboli, Ghaemshahri, Chalusi, Nuri, Shahsavari, Ghasrani, Shahmirzadi, Damavandi, Firoozkoohi, Astarabadi and Katouli. The native people of Sari, Qaem Shahr, Babol, Amol, Nowshahr, Chalus, and Tonekabon are Mazanderani people and speak the Mazanderani language.[14][15]

Genetics

The Mazanderani and the closely related Gilaks occupy the south Caspian region of Iran and speak languages belonging to the North-Western branch of Iranian languages. It has been suggested that their ancestors came from the Caucasus region, perhaps displacing an earlier group in the South Caspian.[12] Linguistic evidence supports this scenario, in that the Gilaki and Mazanderani languages (but not other Iranian languages)[12] share certain typological features with Caucasian languages.[12]

Based on mtDNA HV1 sequences, the Gilaki and Mazanderani most closely resemble their geographic and linguistic neighbors, namely other Iranian groups. However, their Y chromosome types most closely resemble those found in groups from the South Caucasus.[12] Researchers have interpreted these differences as demonstrating that peoples from the Caucasus settled in the south Caspian area and mated with peoples from local Iranian groups, possibly because of patrilocality.[12] The Mazanderani and Gilaki groups are closely related on the male side with populations from the South Caucasus such as Georgians, Armenians, and Azerbaijanis.[12]

Haplogroups

Analysis of their NRY patrilines has revealed haplogroup J2, associated with the neolithic diffusion of agriculturalists from the Near East, to be the predominant Y-DNA lineage among the Mazanderani (subclades J2a3h-M530, J2a3b-M67 and J2a-M410, more specifically.).[16] The next most frequently occurring lineage, R1a1a, believed to have been associated with early Iranian expansion into Central/Southern Eurasia and currently ubiquitous in that area, is found in almost 25%,. This haplogroup, with the aforementioned J2, accounts for over 50% of the entire sample.[16][17] Haplogroup G2a3b, attaining significant frequency together with G2a and G1, is the most commonly carried marker in the G group among Mazanderani men. The lineages E1b1b1a1a-M34 and C5-M356 comprise the remainder, of less than 10% sampled.[16]

Notable figures

Historic

Contemporary

Assimilated populations in Mazandaran

In the Safavid, Afsharid, and Qajar eras Mazandaran was settled by large numbers of Georgians, Circassians, Armenians and other peoples of the Caucasus, whose descendants still live across Mazandaran.[18][19][20] The names of many towns, villages and neighbourhoods in Mazandaran reflect this legacy by bearing variations of the name "Gorji" (i.e., Georgian), although most of the Georgians are assimilated into the mainstream Mazanderanis. The history of Georgian settlement is described by Iskandar Beg Munshi, the author of the 17th century History of Alam Aray Abbasi. In addition, European travelers such as Chardin and Della Valle have written about their encounters with the Georgian, Circassian and Armenian Mazanderanis.[20]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Mazandarani". 5 December 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Middle East Patterns: Places, Peoples, and Politics By Colbert C. Held, John Cummings, Mildred McDonald Held,2005, page 119.
  3. 1 2 Iran Provinces
  4. ↑ Area handbook for Iran, Harvey Henry Smith, American University (Washington, D.C.), Foreign Area Studies, page 89
  5. ↑ Academic American Encyclopedia By Grolier Incorporated, page 294
  6. ↑ The World Book Encyclopedia, World Book, Inc, 2000, page 401
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Dalb, Andrew (1998). Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More Than 400 Languages. Columbia University Press. p. 226. ISBN 978-0-231-11568-1.
  8. ↑ Ethnologue report for language code:mzn
  9. ↑ "Mazandarani". 27 February 2020.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Borjian, Maryam (2005). "Bilingualism in Mazandaran: Peaceful Coexistence With Persian" (PDF). Language, Communities, and Education. Columbia University: 65–73. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 September 2006.
  11. ↑ Borjian, Habib (2004). "Māzandarān: Language and People". Iran & the Caucasus. Brill. 8 (2): 289–291. doi:10.1163/1573384043076045. JSTOR 4030997.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Nasidze, Ivan; Quinque, Dominique; Rahmani, Manijeh; Alemohamad, Seyed Ali; Stoneking, Mark (2006). "Concomitant Replacement of Language and mtDNA in South Caspian Populations of Iran". Current Biology. 16 (7): 668–673. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2006.02.021. PMID 16581511. S2CID 7883334.
  13. ↑ Iran, Encarta Encyclopedia Iran. Archived 2009-10-28 at the Wayback Machine 2009-10-31.
  14. ↑ "Spoken L1 Language: Mazanderani". Glottolog 4.6.
  15. ↑ Windfuhr, G. L. (1989). "New Iranian languages: Overview". In Rüdiger Schmitt (ed.). Compendium linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: L. Reichert. p. 490.
  16. 1 2 3 Grugni, V; Battaglia, V; Hooshiar Kashani, B; Parolo, S; Al-Zahery, N; et al. (2012). "Ancient Migratory Events in the Middle East: New Clues from the Y-Chromosome Variation of Modern Iranians". PLOS ONE. 7 (7): e41252. Bibcode:2012PLoSO...741252G. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0041252. PMC 3399854. PMID 22815981.
  17. ↑ R. Spencer Wells et al., "The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (August 28, 2001)
  18. ↑ "Georgian communities in Persia". Retrieved 17 April 2014.
  19. ↑ ^ Muliani, S. (2001) Jaygah-e Gorjiha dar Tarikh va Farhang va Tammadon-e Iran. (The Georgians’ position in the Iranian history and civilization.) Esfahan: Yekta
  20. 1 2 Brentjes, Sonja; Schüller, Volkmar (2006). "Pietro della Valle's Latin Geography of Safavid Iran (1624-1628): Introduction". Journal of Early Modern History. 10 (3): 169–219. doi:10.1163/157006506778234162. Retrieved 17 April 2014.
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