More specifically, a Persophile is someone who has a strongly positive predisposition or sympathy towards Persia and the Persian people, with an admiration for their language and literature, culture (art, music, cuisine, etc.
The earliest use of the word may have been by the Royal Numismatic Society of the United Kingdom in 1838;[1] it referred to a king of Marion, located in modern Cyprus.
[2] Foreign admiration of Persian society was especially prevalent during and after the reign of Cyrus the Great, who founded the Achaemenid Empire around 550 BC.
He is held in high regard in Judaism for the role he played in ending the Babylonian captivity and enabling the return to Zion, as the eponymous Edict of Cyrus granted permission to the Jewish people to return to the Land of Israel and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem following the fall of Babylon, thus marking the beginning of the Second Temple period; Cyrus is the only non-Jew to be revered as a Messiah (מָשִׁיחַ) in the Hebrew Bible, as noted in Isaiah 45:1, which states that he was anointed by Yahweh.
[7] Harun al-Rashid and Al-Ma'mun, two Arabs who ruled the Abbasid Caliphate in the 8th and 9th centuries, are described by British scholar Percy Sykes as Persophiles, owing to their pro-Persian policies.