The Samanid Empire, also known as the Samanian Empire, Samanid dynasty, Samanid amirate, or simply as the Samanids, was a Persianate Sunni Muslim empire, of Iranian dehqan origin. The empire was centred in Khorasan and Transoxiana; at its greatest extent encompassing Persia and Central Asia, from 819 to 999.
Early 14th century copy of the Samanid-period Tarikhnama of Bal'ami (d. 992–997 CE) depicting al-Saffah (r. 750–754) as he receives pledges of allegiance in Kufa. This is the earliest known extant prose book in the Persian language.
Picture of the Samanid Mausoleum, the burial site of Ismail Samani.
Coin of Nasr II, minted in Nishapur (933/4).
“Battle Between Abu’l-Qasim and the Samanid Muntasir”, 14th century illustration.
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
