Iran (word)
[1][2] In the geographic sense, Ērān was also distinguished from Ērānšahr, which was the preferred endonym of the Sasanian Empire, notwithstanding the fact that it included lands that were not primarily inhabited by the various Iranic peoples.
This includes Arioi (Herodotus), Arianē (Eratosthenes apud Strabo), áreion (Eudemus of Rhodes apud Damascius), Arianoi (Diodorus Siculus) in Greek and Ari in Armenian; those, in turn, come from the Iranian forms: ariya in Old Persian, airya in Avestan, ariao in Bactrian, ary in Parthian and ēr in Middle Persian.
'"[1][4] This Old Iranian *arya- is attested as an ethnic designator in Achaemenid inscriptions as Old Persian ariya-, and in Zoroastrianism's Avesta tradition as Avestan airiia-/airya, etc.
The same short form reappears in the names of the towns founded by Sasanian dynasts, for instance in Ērān-xwarrah-šābuhr "Glory of Ērān (of) Shapur".
[1][10] Because an equivalent of ērānšahr does not appear in Old Iranian (where it would have been *aryānām xšaθra- or in Old Persian *- xšaça-, "rule, reign, sovereignty"), the term is presumed[1] to have been a Sasanian-era development.
In the Greek portion of Shapur's trilingual inscription the word šahr "kingdom" appears as ethnous (genitive of "ethnos") "nation".
[6] Damascius (Dubitationes et solutiones in Platonis Parmenidem, 125ff) quotes the mid-4th-century BCE Eudemus of Rhodes for "the Magi and all those of Iranian (áreion) lineage".
Each of these dynasties identified themselves as "Iranian",[12] manifested in their invented genealogies, which described them as descendants of pre-Islamic kings, and legends as well as the use of the title of shahanshah by the Buyid rulers.
[12] "Many of the myths surrounding these events, as they appear [in the Shahnameh], were of Sasanid origin, during whose reign political and religious authority become fused and the comprehensive idea of Iran was constructed.
The early Sasanian sense is also occasionally found in medieval works by Zoroastrians, who continued to use Middle Persian even for new compositions.
[1] A single instance in the Book of Arda Wiraz (1.4), also preserves the gentilic in ērān dahibed distinct from the geographic Ērānšahr.
"[1] That "Ērān was also generally understood geographically is shown by the formation of the adjective ērānag "Iranian," which is first attested in the Bundahišn and contemporary works.
Afshin, the hereditary ruler of Oshrusana, on the southern bank of the middle stretch of the Syr Darya, had been charged with propagating Iranian ethno-national sentiment.
"This episode clearly reveals not only the presence of a distinct awareness of Iranian cultural identity and the people who actively propagated it, but also of the existence of a concept (al-aʿjamiya or Irāniyat) to convey it.
[14][15] An example is Mofid Bafqi (d. 1679), who makes numerous references to Iran, describing its border and the nostalgia of Iranians who had migrated to India in that era.
Jean Chardin, who travelled in the region between 1673 and 1677, observed that "the Persians, in naming their country, make use of one word, which they indifferently pronounce Iroun, and Iran.
