Persian

The Ajam are Bahraini citizens of Iranian descent, most of them Twelver Shia whose ancestors crossed from Bushehr, Fars, Larestan, Lorestan and Khorramshahr as merchants, craftsmen and labourers between the early 19th and mid-20th centuries. Bilingual in Arabic and a Bushehri-style Persian kept for the home, they built their own ma'tams, the mourning halls where Ashura is commemorated, and the blue-and-gold tiled Ma'tam al-Ajam al-Kabir remains a landmark of old Manama. Their loyalty has been questioned whenever Bahrain and Iran clash: the Persian-language school was closed in 1996, Iranian nationals were expelled in 2011, and in April 2026, during the war with Iran, families of Iranian origin were among the 69 people stripped of citizenship. Many other Bahrainis of Persian descent have taken Arab surnames, speak only Arabic and now live as Shia Arabs. Beside these citizens, only a small number of Iranian nationals still live in Bahrain, since most were expelled in 2011.

Persians are Iran's largest people, roughly 45 to 54 million native speakers of Persian living mainly on the central plateau, in Fars and Kerman, in Khorasan and in the great cities of Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad. They are heirs of the Achaemenid and Sasanian empires and of one of the world's great literary traditions, and most think of themselves simply as Iranian rather than as an ethnic group. Twelver Shia Islam is their inherited faith, with pilgrimage to the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad and Muharram mourning at the centre of religious life, yet a large and growing share of urban Persians are secular, and a Muslim-background house-church movement has grown among them in spite of arrests. Every household keeps Nowruz, the spring-equinox new year, around the haft-sin table, and many still open a book of Hafez's poetry to seek guidance.

Iranians in Kuwait are a long-settled community of merchants and workers from across the Gulf, many of whose families have lived in the country for decades and whose children were born there. They sell fabric, carpets and sweets in the old Mubarakiya market, bake bread, work the vegetable market and crew fishing boats, continuing trade links across the Gulf that are centuries old. They are separate from Kuwait's 'Ajam, citizens of Iranian descent who have become Arabic-speaking Kuwaitis; these Iranians keep Iranian passports and Persian as their home language. Since Iran's missile and drone strikes on Kuwait began in February 2026 they have lived under suspicion: flights home stopped, restaurants dropped 'Iranian' from their signs, and in August 2026 Kuwait closed the only Iranian school, which taught about 1,500 children in Persian.

Persians have lived in Muscat for centuries as merchants, shopkeepers, fishmongers, quilt makers and coppersmiths, and the old al-Ajam quarter of Muscat still carries their name. Today the Persian-speaking community is mainly some 25,000 Iranian nationals, businesspeople, traders, professionals and their families, whose numbers have grown fast as Iranian firms register in Oman: companies with Iranian shareholders nearly doubled to over 6,500 in 2024. Their children attend an Iranian state school in Muscat, and Iranian boatmen cross the Strait of Hormuz daily to barter pistachios, carpets and livestock in the port of Khasab. Most are Twelver Shia Muslims, with Sunni families from the Iranian Gulf coast and a small Baha'i presence. The older Omani families of Persian descent, the Ajam, have largely married into other communities, taken Arab names and turned to Arabic.

Persian-speaking Iranians in Qatar are traders, doctors, engineers, university teachers and artists from across Iran who live on Iranian passports, a smaller group than the Achomi and Baloch who make up most of Qatar's Iranian community. They are Twelver Shia Muslims, marking Muharram and Ashura quietly in the Shia halls of Doha, and celebrate Nowruz and Yalda night with Persian food, poetry and music; their children attend the Iranian schools of Abu Hamour. Iranians have traded and built boats in Qatar since before the oil era, but those older families have become Arabic-speaking Qatari citizens. Since Iran's missile strikes on Qatar in 2026 the community has lived under suspicion, though it has not been expelled.

Persian-speaking Iranians have lived in Istanbul since Ottoman times, when merchants from Tabriz and Tehran traded from the Valide Han caravanserai beside the Grand Bazaar, where a small Shia mosque still gathers Iranians for Muharram mourning. Today's community is mostly recent: students, doctors and other professionals, families who bought apartments to gain residence or citizenship, and asylum seekers escaping the Islamic Republic, including converts to Christianity, Bahá'ís and political dissidents. Most are secular-minded or only nominally Shia in a Sunni country, and many see Türkiye as a stepping stone to Europe or North America. Their associations celebrate Nowruz, Chaharshanbe Suri and Yalda night, and an Iranian school in Sultanahmet has taught in Persian since 1882.