Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: What are the official languages of Iran?
Persian is Iran's official language and the language of the country's ethnic majority (i.e., the Persians), and Persian literature has been the country's most influential literary tradition. Apart from Iran, Persian literature was used and developed further through several medieval Persianate societies in Asia Minor, Central Asia, and South Asia, and the language is still used widely in Central Asia (Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and Afghanistan.
India is home to two major language families: Indo-Aryan (spoken by about 74% of the population) and Dravidian (spoken by 24% of the population). Other languages spoken in India come from the Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan language families. India has no national language. Hindi, with the largest number of speakers, is the official language of the government. English is used extensively in business and administration and has the status of a "subsidiary official language"; it is important in education, especially as a medium of higher education. Each state and union territory has one or more official languages, and the constitution recognises in particular 22 "scheduled languages".
The President of Iran (Persian: رییس‌جمهور ایران "Rayis Jomhur-e Irān") is the head of government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The President is the highest popularly elected official in Iran (however, the President is still required to gain the Supreme Leader's official approval before being sworn in before the Parliament and the Leader also has the power to dismiss the elected President anytime). The President carries out the decrees, and answers to the Supreme Leader of Iran, who functions as the country's head of state. Unlike the executive in other countries, the President of Iran does not have full control over anything, as these are ultimately under the control of the Supreme Leader. Chapter IX of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran sets forth the qualifications for presidential candidates. The procedures for presidential election and all other elections in Iran are outlined by the Supreme Leader. The President functions as the executive of the decrees and wishes of the Supreme Leader. These include signing treaties and other agreements with foreign countries and international organizations, with Supreme Leader's approval; administering national planning, budget, and state employment affairs, as decreed by the Supreme Leader. The President also appoints the ministers, subject to the approval of Parliament, and the Supreme Leader who can dismiss or reinstate any of the ministers at any time, regardless of the president or parliament's decision. The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei directly chooses the ministries of Defense, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, as well as certain other ministries, such as the Science Ministry. Iran’s regional policy is directly controlled by the office of the Supreme Leader with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ task limited to protocol and ceremonial occasions. All of Iran’s ambassadors to Arab countries, for example, are chosen by the Quds Corps, which directly reports to the Supreme Leader.
The official language of the Republic is Arabic. The spoken languages are: Egyptian Arabic (68%), Sa'idi Arabic (29%), Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic (1.6%), Sudanese Arabic (0.6%), Domari (0.3%), Nobiin (0.3%), Beja (0.1%), Siwi and others. Additionally, Greek, Armenian and Italian, and more recently, African languages like Amharic and Tigrigna are the main languages of immigrants.
Pars Province (; , "Ostān-e Pārs", ) also known as Fars (, "Fārs") or Persia in the Greek sources in historical context, is one of the thirty-one provinces of Iran and known as the cultural capital of the country. It is in the south of the country, in Iran's Region 2, and its administrative center is Shiraz. It has an area of 122,400 km². In 2011, this province had a population of 4.6 million people, of which 67.6% were registered as urban dwellers (urban/suburbs), 32.1% villagers (small town/rural), and 0.3% nomad tribes. The etymology of the word "Persian" (From Latin "Persia", from Ancient Greek , "Persís"), found in many ancient names associated with Iran, is derived from the historical importance of this region. Fars Province is the original homeland of the Persian people.
Because the Achaemenid Empire or "First Persian Empire" was the successor state to the empires of Assyria and Babylonia based in Iraq, and because Elam is part of Iran, the ancient people of Iran were ruled by ancient Mesopotamians, which explains the close proximity between the people of south western Iran and the Iraqis even in modern days, in fact, the people of that part of Iran speak Mesopotamian Arabic and were put under the rule of modern Iran by the British. The ancient Persians adopted the Babylonian cuneiform script and modified it to write their language, along with adopting many other facets of ancient Iraqi culture, including the Aramaic language which became the official language of the Persian Empire.
Persian became the second lingua franca of the Islamic world, in particular of the eastern regions. Besides serving as the state and administrative language in many Islamic dynasties, some of which included Samanids, Ghurids, Ghaznavids, Ilkhanids, Seljuqids, Mughals and early Ottomans, Persian cultural and political forms, and often the Persian language, were used by the cultural elites from the Balkans to India. For example, Persian was the only oriental language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China. Arnold Joseph Toynbee's assessment of the role of the Persian language is worth quoting in more detail:
In the Iranic world, before it began to succumb to the process of Westernization, the New Persian language, which had been fashioned into literary form in mighty works of art ... gained a currency as a lingua franca; and at its widest, about the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries of the Christian Era, its range in this role extended, without a break, across the face of South-Eastern Europe and South-Western Asia.
Persian remains the lingua franca in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
In India, Punjabi is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. It is the first official language of the Indian State of Punjab. Punjabi also has second language official status in Delhi along with Urdu, and in Haryana. 
In Pakistan, no regional ethnic language has been granted official status at the national level, and as such Punjabi is not an official language at the national level, even though it is the most spoken language in Pakistan after Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. It is, however, the official provincial language of Punjab, Pakistan, the second largest and the most populous province of Pakistan as well as in Islamabad Capital Territory. The only two official national languages in Pakistan are Urdu and English, which are considered the lingua francas of Pakistan.The Majhi (ماجھی ਮਾਝੀ) dialect spoken around Amritsar and Lahore is Punjabi's prestige dialect. Majhi is spoken in the heart of Punjab in the region of Majha, which spans Lahore, Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Kasur, Tarn Taran, Faisalabad, Nankana Sahib, Pathankot, Okara, Pakpattan, Sahiwal, Narowal, Sheikhupura, Sialkot, Chiniot, Gujranwala and Gujrat and in Mandi Bahauddin(97’/.) districts.
Iran's Jewish population was reduced from 100,000–150,000 in 1948 to about 80,000 immediately before the Iranian Revolution, due mostly to immigration to Israel. While immigration to Israel had slowed in the 1970s and the Jewish population of Iran had stabilized, the majority of Iran's remaining Jews left the country in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Shah. In the 2000s, the Jewish population of Iran was estimated by most sources to be 25,000, (sources date from 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2006, respectively) though estimates varied, with some as low as 17,000 by 2010 and as high as 40,000 in 1998. However, the official census in August 2012 indicated that there were only 8,756 Jews still living in Iran. Notable population centers include Tehran, Isfahan (1,200), and Shiraz. Historically, Jews maintained a presence in many more Iranian cities. Jews are protected in the Iranian constitution and allowed one seat in the Majlis. After Israel, it is home to the second-largest Jewish population in the Middle East.
Iran's Jewish community is officially recognized as a religious minority group by the government, and, like the Zoroastrians and Christians, they are allocated one seat in the Iranian Parliament. Siamak Moreh Sedgh is the current Jewish member of the parliament, replacing Maurice Motamed in the 2008 election. In 2000, former Jewish MP Manuchehr Eliasi estimated that at that time there were still 60,000–85,000 Jews in Iran; most other sources put the figure at 25,000. As of 2018, only 8,500 Jews still live in Iran and they constitute 0,01% of Iranian population, a number confirmed by Sergio DellaPergola, a leading Jewish demographer.
The Constitution of India designates the official language of the Government of India as Hindi written in the Devanagari script, as well as English. There is no national language as declared by the Constitution of India. Hindi is used for official purposes such as parliamentary proceedings, judiciary, communications between the Central Government and a State Government. States within India have the liberty and powers to specify their own official language(s) through legislation and therefore there are 22 officially recognized languages in India of which Hindi is the most used. The number of native Hindi speakers is about 25% of the total Indian population; however, including dialects of Hindi termed as Hindi languages, the total is around 44% of Indians, mostly accounted from the states falling under the Hindi belt. Other Indian languages are each spoken by around 10% or less of the population.
One of the most divisive issues confronting Pakistan in its infancy was the question of what the official language of the new state was to be. Mohammad Ali Jinnah yielded to the demands of refugees from the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, who insisted that Urdu be Pakistan's official language. Speakers of the languages of West Pakistan (Punjabi, Sindhi, Pushtu, and Baluchi) were upset that their languages were given second-class status. In East Pakistan, the dissatisfaction quickly turned to violence. The Bengalis of East Pakistan constituted a majority (an estimated 54%) of Pakistan's entire population. Their language, Bengali, like Urdu, belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family, but the two languages have different scripts and literary traditions.
From the 11th century, there was a growing body of Islamic literature in the Turkic languages. However, for centuries to come the official language in Turkish-speaking areas would remain Persian. In Anatolia, with the advent of the Seljuks, the practise and usage of Persian in the region would be strongly revived. A branch of the Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum, took Russian language, art and letters to Anatolia. They adopted Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans, which can "roughly" be seen as their eventual successors, took this tradition over. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire, though the lingua franca amongst common people from the 15th/16th century would become Turkish as well as having laid an active "foundation" for the Turkic language as early as the 4th century (see Turkification). After a period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Arabo-Persianised itself) had developed towards a fully accepted language of literature, which was even able to satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. However, Turkish was proclaimed the official language of the Karamanids in the 17th century, though it didn't manage to become the official language in a wider area or larger empire until the advent of the Ottomans. With the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Turkish (a highly Arabo-Persianised version of Oghuz Turkic) grew in importance in both poetry and prose becoming, by the beginning of the 18th century, the official language of the Empire. Unlike India, where Persian remained the official and principal literary language of both Muslim and Hindu states until the 19th century.
Urdu and English are the two official languages of Pakistan. Pashto has no official status at the federal level. On a provincial level, Pashto is the regional language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern Balochistan. The primary medium of education in government schools in Pakistan is Urdu, but from 2014 onwards, the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has placed more emphasis on English as the medium of instruction. English-medium private schools in Pashto-speaking areas, however, generally do not use Pashto. The imposition of Urdu as the primary medium of education in public schools has caused a systematic degradation and decline of many of Pakistan's native languages including Pashto. This has caused growing resentment amongst Pashtuns, who also complain that Pashto is often neglected officially.
The most prevalent native languages appear in bold below, with the percentage of the population speaking them as their first language rounded to the nearest percentage point:
English is the official language, being widely used within the government, by the civil service and the officer ranks of the military. Pakistan's Constitution and laws are written in English. Nearly all schools, colleges and universities use English as the medium of instruction. Amongst the more educated social circles of Pakistan, English is seen as the language of upward mobility and its use is becoming more prevalent in upper social circles, often spoken alongside native Pakistani languages. Among countries that use English as an official language, Pakistan is the third-most populous in the world.
Islam is the official state religion in the Republic of Iraq, but the constitution guarantees freedom of religion. Iraq is a multi ethnic and multi religious country with Islam, Christianity, Yazdanism, Zoroastrianism, Shabakism, Judaism, Mandaeism, Bahā'i, Ahl-e Haqq-Yarsanis, Ishikism and numerous other religions all having a presence in the country. Shia Islam is the main religion in Iraq followed by 60–65% of the population, while Sunni Islam is followed by 32–37% of the people. Many cities throughout Iraq have been areas of historical prominence for both Shia and Sunni Muslims, including Najaf, Karbala, Baghdad and Samarra.
English is a co-official language of Pakistan and is widely used in the executive, legislative and judicial branches as well as to some extent in the officer ranks of Pakistan's armed forces. Pakistan's Constitution and laws were written in English and are now being re-written in the local languages. It is also widely used in schools, colleges and universities as a medium of instruction. English is seen as the language of upward mobility, and its use is becoming more prevalent in upper social circles, where it is often spoken alongside native Pakistani languages. In 2015, it was announced that there were plans to promote Urdu in official business, but Pakistan's Minister of Planning Ahsan Iqbal stated,"Urdu will be a second medium of language and all official business will be bilingual." He also went on to say that English would be taught alongside Urdu in schools.
Shiraz (; , "Šīrāz", ) is the fifth-most-populous city of Iran and the capital of Fars Province (Old Persian as Pars). At the 2016 census, the population of the city was 1,869,001 and its built-up area with "Shahr-e Jadid-e Sadra" (Sadra New Town) was home to 1,565,572 inhabitants. Shiraz is located in the southwest of Iran on the "Rudkhaneye Khoshk" (The Dry River) seasonal river. It has a moderate climate and has been a regional trade center for over a thousand years. Shiraz is one of the oldest cities of ancient Persia.
The Ottomans had three influential languages: Turkish, spoken by the majority of the people in Anatolia and by the majority of Muslims of the Balkans except in Albania, Bosnia, and various Aegean Sea islands; Persian, initially used by the educated in northern portions of the Ottoman Empire before being displaced by Ottoman Turkish; and Arabic, used in southern portions of the Ottoman Empire; Arabic was spoken mainly in Arabia, North Africa, Mesopotamia and the Levant. Throughout the vast Ottoman bureaucracy Ottoman Turkish language was the official language, a version of Turkish, albeit with a vast mixture of both Arabic and Persian grammar and vocabulary.
The provincial languages of Pakistan are a set of languages that are spoken and used in the fourProvinces of Pakistan (Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan). However, provincial languages have no official status in Pakistan, except Sindhi in Sindh, given the fact that Urdu and English are the official languages of the country. Shown below are the main languages of each the provinces:Urdu is spoken and understood by nearly all Pakistanis, as it is the national language and is officially used in formal governmental, educational purposes, etc. It is the symbol of muslim identity and unity.
The following table lists the names of India in its official languages. The sole official language of India is Hindi in Devanagari script as per Article 343 of the Indian constitution and there is no national language for the country. English has the status of a "subsidiary official language". The Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists 22 languages, which have been referred to as "scheduled" languages and given recognition, status, and official encouragement.
In February 2011, Ali Khamenei supported the Egyptian uprising against their government, describing it as Islamic awakening instead of Arab Spring. Trying to communicate with Arab people, he addressed Egypt's protesters in Arabic. (Iranians are not Arabs, and Iran's official language is Persian) He introduced himself as "your brother in religion", while praising the "explosion of sacred anger". Later, in "Islamic Awakening conferences" which were held in Tehran, Khamenei praised the Muslim youths of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain for what he described as Islamic awakening. He also paralleled these events with Islamic revolution in Iran during his Nowruz oration in 2011. However, major protests against the Iranian regime also broke out throughout Iran in 2011, and they became known as the 2011–12 Iranian protests.
Under the Qajar dynasty the Persian character of Iran was not very explicit. Although the country was referred to as Persia by westerners, and the dominant language in court and administration was Persian the dichotomy between pure Persian and Turkic elements had remained obvious until 1925. The Pahlavi rule was instrumental in Iran's nationalisation in line with Persian culture and language which, amongst other ways, was achieved through the official ban on the use minority languages such as Azerbaijani and successful suppression of separatist movements. Reza Pahlavi is credited for reunification of Iran under a powerful central government. The use of minority languages in schools and newspapers was not tolerated. The succeeding regime – the Islamic Republic of Iran – has adopted a more inclusive approach in relation to the use of ethnic minorities and their language, however the issues as to Azeris, the Iran's largest ethnic minority, remain and pose considerable challenges for the unity and territorial integrity of Iran.
Iran – sovereign country located in Southwest Asia and the Middle East. Iran is bound by the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south and the Caspian Sea to its north. Shi'a Islam is the official religion, and Persian is the official language. The 18th largest country in the world in terms of area at , Iran has a population of over seventy million. Iran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilizations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BC. Throughout history, Iran has been of geostrategic importance because of its central location in Eurasia and is a regional power. The political system of Iran, based on the 1979 Constitution, comprises several intricately connected governing bodies. The highest state authority is the Supreme Leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.Geography of Iran
Later, during the 2nd millennium CE, the Iranian peoples would play a prominent role during the age of Islamic expansion and empire. Saladin, a noted adversary of the Crusaders, was an ethnic Kurd, while various empires centered in Iran (including the Safavids) re-established a modern dialect of Persian as the official language spoken throughout much of what is today Iran and the Caucasus. Iranian influence spread to the neighbouring Ottoman Empire, where Persian was often spoken at court (though a heavy Turko-Persian basis there was set already by the predecessors of the Ottomans in Anatolia, namely the Seljuks and the Sultanate of Rum amongst others) as well to the court of the Mughal Empire. All of the major Iranian peoples reasserted their use of Iranian languages following the decline of Arab rule, but would not begin to form modern national identities until the 19th and early 20th centuries (just as Germans and Italians were beginning to formulate national identities of their own).