The Khanate of Kokand was a Central Asian polity in the Fergana Valley centred on the city of Kokand between 1709 and 1876. Its territory is today divided between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan.
Muslim couple from Kokand (霍罕回人). Huang Qing Zhigong Tu, 1769
Seyid Muhammad Khudayar Khan, the 1860s
Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi or Parsi, is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, respectively Iranian Persian, Dari Persian, and Tajiki Persian. It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivative of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a derivative of the Cyrillic script.
An Old Persian inscription written in Old Persian cuneiform in Persepolis, Iran
Middle Persian text written in Inscriptional Pahlavi on the Paikuli inscription from between 293 and 297. Slemani Museum, Iraqi Kurdistan.
Ferdowsi's Shahnameh
Kalilah va Dimna, an influential work in Persian literature