20(a) Provide the name and full description of the community that the applicant is committing to serve

Prototypical answer:

The .PARS gTLD community is global; peoples of various nations united through their historical, ethnic and linguistic connections which date back more than two millenniums. The term ‘Pars’ (Pârs: پارس) refers to the original homeland of the Persian people. The native name of the Persian language is Fârsi or Pârsi. Persia and Persian both derive from the Hellenized form Πέρσις Persis of the root word Pârs. The Old Persian word was Pârsa.

The Persian Community:

The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian⁄Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of the greater Indo-European linguistic family.
The term Persian translates to ʺfrom or of Persisʺ which is a region north of the Persian Gulf located in Pars, Iran.
It was from this region that Cyrus the Great the founder of the Achaemenid empire, united all other Iranian empires (such as the Medes and the Elamites), and expanded the Persian cultural and social influences by incorporating the Babylonian empire, and the Lydian empire. Although not the first Iranian empire, the Achaemenid Empire is the first Persian Empire well recognized by Greek and Persian historians for its massive cultural, military and social influences going as far as Athens, Egypt, and Libya and ruling on an estimated population of 40 million, about 500 B.C.

Ancient history and origin:

The Persians are believed to be descendents of the Indo-Iranian (Indo-Europeans) tribes that began migrating from Central Asia into what is now Iran in the second millennium BCE.
The ancient Persians from the province of Pars became the rulers of a large empire under the Achaemenid dynasty (Hakhamaneshiyan) in the 6th century BCE, reuniting with the tribes and other provinces of the ancient Iranian plateau and forming the Persian Empire. The founding dynasty of the empire, the Achaemenids, and later the Sassanids, were from the southern region of Iran, Pars. The latter Parthian dynasty arose from the north. However, according to archaeological evidence found in modern day Iran in the form of cuneiforms that go back to the Achaemenid era, it is evident that the native name of Parsa (Persia) had been applied to Iran from its birth.

The origin of the ethnic Iranian peoples⁄Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of the greater Indo-European linguistic family. The Ancient Iranian peoples arrived in parts of Iranian plateau around 2000-1500 BCE Important Iranian tribes such as Old Persians, Medes, Parthians, Bactrians, Scythians, and the Avesta people used the name Arya (Iranian), which was a collective definition, denoting peoples who were aware of belonging to the one ethnic stock, speaking a common language, and mainly sharing a religious tradition that centered on the worship of Ahura Mazda.

The Old Persians, who were one of these ethnic Iranian groups, were originally nomadic, pastoral people in the western Iranian plateau and by 850 BCE were calling themselves the Parsa and their constantly shifting territory Parsua for the most part localized around Persis (Pars), bounded on the west by Tigris River and on the south by Persian Gulf. The first known written record of the term Persian is from Assyrian inscriptions of the 9th century BCE, which mention both Parsuash and Parsua . These cognate words were taken from Old Iranian Parsava and presumably meant border, borderland and were geographical designations for Iranian populations. Nonetheless, Parsua and Parsuash, were two different geographical locations, the latter referring to southwestern Iran, known in Old Persian as Pârsa (Modern Fars, the Arabized version of Pars, since Arabs use “F” instead of “P”). The Greeks (who tended earlier to use names related to ʺMedianʺ) began in the 5th century to use adjectives such as Perses, Persica or Persis for Cyrus the Greatʹs empire, which is where the word Persian in English comes from. In the later parts of the Bible, where this kingdom is frequently mentioned (Books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemya), it is called ʺParasʺ (Hebrew פרס ), or sometimes ʺParas ve Madaiʺ (פרס ומדי ) i.e. ʺPersia and Mediaʺ. As the Old Persians gained power, they developed the infrastructure to support their growing influence including creation of a capital named Pasargadae, and an opulent city named Persepolis. Starting around 550 BCE, from the region of Persis in southern Iran, encompassing the present Fars province, the ancient Persians spread their language and culture to other parts of the Iranian plateau and assimilated and intermingled with local Iranic and indigenous non-Iranic groups including the Elamites over time. Persians also interacted with other ancient civilizations in Europe and Africa. The first Persian Empire extended as far as the limits of the Greek city states, where Persians and Athenians influenced each other in what is essentially a reciprocal cultural exchange.

Ethnicity:

While a categorization of a ʺPersianʺ ethnic group persists in the West, Persians have generally been a pan-national group often comprising regional people who often refer to themselves as ʹPersiansʹ and have also often used the term ʺIranianʺ (in the ethnic-cultural sense). As a pan-national group, defining Persians as an ethnic group, at least in terms used in the West, is not inclusive since the ethnonym ʺPersianʺ includes several Iranian people including the speakers of Modern Persian. Some scholars, classify the speakers of Persian language as a single ethnic unit (the ‘Persians’) and exclude those Iranians who speak dialects of Persian, or other Iranian dialects closely related to Persian; however this approach to ethnicity in Iran is erroneous, since the designation Iranian (Irani) as an ethnic term has been used by all these ethnic group in Iran, including the ʺPersiansʺ irrespective of their origin, language and religion.

Although the Persian community is connected through ethnicity, origin and language, but they are now separated by borders. The major community of Persians can now be found in Iran, Georgia, Turkey, Armenia, the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Northern Pakistan. Like the Persians of Iran (Western Persians), the Tajiks (Eastern Persians) are descendants of various Iranian peoples, including Persians from Iran, as well as numerous invaders. Tajiks and Farsiwan have a particular affinity with Persians in neighboring Khorasan due to historical interaction some stemming from the Islamic period. Scholars also include Iranian language speakers such as Talysh, Gilak, Lurs, Mazandaranis and speakers of Central Iranian languages in Iran under the term Persian. Specifically, the Lurs speak an Archaic Persian language.

The introduction of .PARS gTLD will re-connect the Persian Community, living in countries where the old Persian Empire existed: PARS

The total population of Persian community living in in Iran, Georgia, Turkey, Armenia, the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Northern Pakistan, talking Persian as their mother tongue is more than 120 million, who know themselves as one group with the same origin, culture and heritage.

It is impossible to estimate how many of these people will actively participate in the online .PARS community, because internet penetration various hugely in the various Persian and Persian-hosting nations. However, it is anticipated that millions of people will participate as the network effect (as described in section c below) begins to have an impact.

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