Iranians in France

Ethnic group

French Iranians
ایرانیان فرانسهTotal population

65,000 (Persians only)[1]
Languages
French, Persian
(also Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Armenian, and others)
Religion
Shia Islam, Sunni Islam, Irreligious,

Minority:

Christianity, Zoroastrianism
Related ethnic groups
Iranian peoples, Iranian Azerbaijanis, Iranian Armenians, Armenians in France

Iranians in France include immigrants from Iran to France as well as their descendants of Iranian heritage or background. Iranians in France are referred to by hyphenated terms such as French-Iranians or French-Persians.

## Terminology

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French-Iranian is used interchangeably with French-Persian,[2][3][4][5] partly due to the fact[6] that, in the Western world, Iran was known as "Persia". On the Nowruz of 1935, Reza Shah Pahlavi asked foreign delegates to use the term Iran, the endonym of the country used since the Sasanian Empire, in formal correspondence. Since then, usage of the term "Iran" has become more common in Western countries. Therefore, the term used to refer to citizens of Iran changed from "Persian" to "Iranian". In 1959, the government of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Reza Shah Pahlavi's son, announced that both "Persia" and "Iran" could officially be used interchangeably.[7] However the issue is still debated today.[8][9]

There is a tendency among French-Iranians to categorize themselves as "Persian" rather than "Iranian", mainly to dissociate themselves from the Islamic regime of Iran which has been in charge since the 1979 Revolution and the negativity associated with it, and also to distinguish themselves as being of Persian ethnicity, which comprise about 65% of Iran's population.[2][10] While the majority of British-Iranians come from Persian backgrounds, there is a significant number of non-Persian Iranians such as Azerbaijanis[11][12][13] and Kurds within the British-Iranian community,[10][14] leading some scholars to believe that the label "Iranian" is more inclusive, since the label "Persian" excludes non-Persian minorities.[10] The Collins English Dictionary uses a variety of similar and overlapping definitions for the terms "Persian" and "Iranian".[15][16]

## History

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### Early history

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Iranians from within the modern-day or previous borders of disestablished Iranian states have a relatively long history in France. Jean Althen (Hovhannès Althounian), a Persian-Armenian agronomist from Nakhchivan, is known to have introduced madder to southern France in the 1750s.[17][18][19][20] A statue of him was erected in Avignon expressing the city's gratitude for him.[21] The emergence of a genuine Iranian community in France can perhaps be traced back to 1855-6, when Farrokh Khan Ḡaffārī, Amīn-ol-Molk, later Amīn-ol-Dawleh was sent to Paris as the shah's envoy. During his embassy, a group of forty-two Persian students, who became known as les enfants de Perse (Thieury, p. 39) and who were chosen mostly from the graduates of the recently founded Dar ol-fonūn, were sent to France.[22] Meanwhile, in the course of the latter part of the 19th century, the Persian upper classes gradually began to send their sons to Europe and especially to France to pursue higher studies.[23]

### Early 20th century

[edit]

France was a popular destination for Persian (Iranian) international students in the early 20th century. The first government-sponsored Persian students, a group of 20, all went to France in 1926.[24] In 1932, the Pahlavi government drew up a competitive examination to determine the distribution of government scholarships to aspiring international students; 110 out of the 125 students who passed the examination went to France, making them the overwhelming majority of all Persian students abroad. Another 66 chose France as their destination the following year. Aside from government-sponsored students, there were also 537 privately financed Persian students living in France in 1934, nearly half of the total 1,165 privately financed international students. However, in 1938, a governmental decree prohibited students from going abroad on private funds to pursue degrees.[25] The Iranian students in France lived in dormitories on their school campuses, unlike Iranian students in Germany who rented private accommodations by themselves; this meant that they were often subject to surveillance by officials from the Iranian embassy, and prevented the growth of anti-Pahlavi activism among them. Germany, rather than France, would thus become the major European centre of Iranian dissent in the 1930s.[26]

Notable Iranians who studied in France include Mehdi Bazargan, the first Iranian to pass the entrance examination to any of the grandes écoles; he went on to become prime minister of Iran after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.[27]

## After the Iranian Revolution

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Today, Iranians in France consist primarily of "political emigrants", who left Iran immediately after the revolution, because their association with communists, monarchists, or other opposition groups put them in danger, and "socio-cultural emigrants"--especially women and youths--who had little political affiliation but left Iran more slowly in the years following the revolution due to despair over the future of Iranian society.[28] France expelled some of the political migrants, including Massoud Rajavi and his People's Mojahedin of Iran, in an effort to improve relations with Iran and secure the release of French hostages held by pro-Iranian forces in Lebanon.[29]

Iranians in France:[30][31] Year  | 1975 | 1980 | 1990 | 2003 | 2004 | 2006 | 2009

|
|
|
|
|
|
|

Persons  | 3,300 | 13,193 | 15,209 | 11,609 | 10,974 | ~15,000 |

## Notable people

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* Kyan Khojandi, comedian and actor
* Alireza Firouzja, chess grandmaster and the youngest chess player to have surpassed a 2800 FIDE rating.
* Anicée Alvina, singer and actress
* Babak Amir-Tahmasseb, world champion kayaker
* Barbara Pravi, singer, songwriter and actress (nationality is French, but her maternal grandfather, Hossein Zenderoudi, is Iranian)
* Golshifteh Farahani, actress and musician
* Soheil Ayari, race car driver
* Sarah Kazemy, actress
* Mansour Bahrami, professional tennis player and entertainer
* Heydar Ghiai, architect
* Mahmoud Khayami, founder of Iran Khodro
* Darius Khondji, cinematographer
* Mehran Karimi Nasseri, famous refugee
* Tristane Banon, journalist and writer.
* Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari, former Queen of Iran, actress
* Shapour Bakhtiar, political scientist, writer and the last Prime Minister of Iran under king Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
* Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay
* Bahram Aryana, former military commander under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
* Patrick Ali Pahlavi, member of the Pahlavi dynasty
* Aravane Rezaï, professional tennis player
* Philippe Khorsand, actor
* Mahyar Monshipour, boxer
* Djahanguir Riahi, French furniture collector
* Marjane Satrapi, graphic novelist
* Abbas Gharabaghi, the last chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces as well as deputy commander-In-chief of the Iranian Imperial Army during the rule of the Pahlavi dynasty.
* Abolhassan Banisadr, politician, economist and human rights activist

## See also

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* France portal
* Iran portal

* France–Iran relations
* Iranian diaspora
* Immigration to France
* Asian diasporas in France

## References

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### Notes

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1. ^ Project, Joshua. "Persian in France". joshuaproject.net. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
2. ^ a b Daha, Maryam (September 2011). "Contextual Factors Contributing to Ethnic Identity Development of Second-Generation Iranian American Adolescents". Journal of Adolescent Research. 26 (5): 543–569\. doi:10.1177/0743558411402335. S2CID 146592244. "... the majority of the participants self-identified themselves as Persian instead of Iranian, due to the stereotypes and negative portrayals of Iranians in the media and politics. Adolescents from Jewish and Baháʼí faiths asserted their religious identity more than their ethnic identity. The fact Iranians use Persian interchangeably is nothing to do with current Iranian government because the name Iran was used before this period as well. Linguistically modern Persian is a branch of Old Persian in the family of Indo-European languages and that includes all the minorities as well more inclusively."
3. ^ Nakamura, Raymond M. (2003). Health in America: A Multicultural Perspective. Kendall/Hunt Pub. p. 31\. ISBN 978-0-7575-0637-6. "Iranian/Persian Americans – The flow of Iranian citizens into the United States began in 1979, during and after the Islamic Revolution."
4. ^ Zanger, Mark (2001). The American Ethnic Cookbook for Students. ABC-CLIO. p. 213\. ISBN 978-1-57356-345-1. Retrieved December 21, 2016.
5. ^ Racial and Ethnic Relations in America, Carl Leon Bankston,"Therefore, Turkish and Iranian (Persian) Americans, who are Muslims but not ethnically Arabs, are often mistakenly..", Salem Press, 2000
6. ^ Darya, Fereshteh Haeri (2007). 3–4\. ISBN 978-0-542-97374-1. Retrieved 21 December 2016. "According to previous studies, the presence of heterogeneity is evident among Iranian immigrants (also known as Persians – Iran was known as Persia until 1935) who came from myriads of religious (Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Armenian, Assyrian, Baháʼí and Zoroastrian), ethnic (Turk, Kurds, Baluchs, Lurs, Turkamans, Arabs, as well as tribes such as Ghasghaie, and Bakhtiari), linguistic/dialogic background (Persian, Azari, Gialki, Mazandarani, Kurdish, Arabic, and others). Cultural, religious and political, and various other differences among Iranians reflect their diverse social and interpersonal interactions. Some studies suggest that, despite the existence of subgroup within Iranian immigrants (e.g. various ethno-religious groups), their nationality as Iranians has been an important point of reference and identifiable source of their identification as a group across time and setting."
7. ^ Yarshater, Ehsan Persia or Iran, Persian or Farsi Archived 2010-10-24 at the Wayback Machine, Iranian Studies, vol. XXII no. 1 (1989)
8. ^ Majd, Hooman, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, by Hooman Majd, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, September 23, 2008, ISBN 0385528426, 9780385528429. p. 161
9. ^ Frye, Richard Nelson (2005). Greater Iran: A 20th-century Odyssey. Mazda. ISBN 9781568591773. Retrieved December 21, 2016.
10. ^ a b c Bozorgmehr, Mehdi (2009). "Iran". In Mary C. Waters; Reed Ueda; Helen B. Marrow (eds.). The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration since 1965. Harvard University Press. p. 469\. ISBN 978-0-674-04493-7.
11. ^ Svante E. Cornell (20 May 2015). Azerbaijan Since Independence. Routledge. p. 7\. ISBN 978-1-317-47621-4.
12. ^ Barbara A. West (1 January 2009). Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania. Infobase Publishing. p. 68\. ISBN 978-1-4381-1913-7.
13. ^ James Minahan (1 January 2002). Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations: S-Z. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 1766\. ISBN 978-0-313-32384-3.
14. ^ Elizabeth Chacko, Contemporary ethnic geographies in America // Ines M. Miyares, Christopher A. Airriess (eds.), Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, pp. 325–326
15. ^ "Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 11th Edition". Collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved September 4, 2012.
16. ^ "Definition of "Persian"". Collins English Dictionary. Retrieved January 12, 2016.
17. ^ Dédéyan 2007, p. 919.
18. ^ Henri, Michel (2000). "Հայազգի ժան Ալթենը՝ Ֆրանսիայում բամբակի և տորոնի մշակության առաջնեկ [Armenian J. Althen - a Pioneer of Adoption of the Cultivation of Cotton and Rubia tinctorum in France]". Patma-Banasirakan Handes (in Armenian) (2): 188–195\. ISSN 0135-0536.
19. ^ United States Department of Agriculture (1848). Annual Reports of the Department of Agriculture ... : Report of the Secretary of Agriculture. Reports of Chiefs. United States Government Printing Office. p. 192.
20. ^ Bradshaw, George (1807). Bradshaw's Illustrated Hand Book to France. London. p. 110.
21. ^ Sayyāḥ, Muḥammad ʻAlī (1999). An Iranian in Nineteenth Century Europe: The Travel Diaries of Haj Sayyah, 1859–1877. Bethesda, Maryland: Ibex Publishers. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-936347-93-6.
22. ^ FRANCE xvii. Persian Community in France \- retrieved 19 October 2015
23. ^ (Maḥbūbi, Moʾassasāt I, pp. 320-39)
24. ^ Cronin 2003, p. 138
25. ^ Cronin 2003, p. 139
26. ^ Chehabi 1990, p. 194
27. ^ Chehabi 1990, p. 104
28. ^ Nassehi-Behnam 1991
29. ^ Ibrahim 1987
30. ^ (in French) Quid Géographie humaine (France) - Étrangers en France Archived 2008-05-05 at the Wayback Machine
31. ^ (in French) Les Iraniens de l’Ouest, CAUCAZ.COM, 2006/04/23

### Sources

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* Chehabi, Houchang E. (1990), Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran Under the Shah and Khomeini, I. B. Tauris, ISBN 978-1-85043-198-5
* Cronin, Stephanie (2003), The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society Under Riza Shah 1921-1941, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-30284-5
* Dédéyan, Gérard (2007) [1982], Histoire du peuple arménien (in French), Toulouse: Privately printed
* Ibrahim, Youssef M. (1987-12-08), "France Expelling Iranian Opponents of Khomeini", The New York Times, retrieved 2008-11-10
* Nassehi-Behnam, Vida (1991), "Iranian Immigrants in France", in Fathi, Asghar (ed.), Iranian Refugees and Exiles since Khomeini, United States: Mazda, pp. 102–118, ISBN 978-0-939214-68-6
* International migration database, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2004, archived from the original on 2005-05-11, retrieved 2008-11-10

## Further reading

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* Nassehi-Behnam, Vida (2000), "Diaspora iranienne en France: Changement et continuité (Iranian diaspora in France: change and continuity)", Cahiers d'études sur la Méditerranée orientale et le monde turco-iranien (30): 135–149, retrieved 2008-11-10
* FRANCE xvii. Persian Community in France \- Retrieved 19 October 2015

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See also|

* Iranian peoples
* Foreign relations of Iran
* Iran's brain drain
* Iranian nationality law
* Baloch diaspora (Emirates, Oman, America, India, Khorasan, Turkmenistan)

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