Today, Iranian languages ​​are spoken from central Turkey, Syria, and Iraq in the west to Pakistan and the western border of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the east. To the north, its outposts are Ossetians in the Central Caucasus and Yaghnobi and Persian Tajiks in Tajikistan, Central Asia, while to the south they are bordered by the Persian Gulf, with the exception of the Kumzari enclave on the Masandam Peninsula in Oman. The new Iranian phase overlaps with the Islamization of the Iranian-speaking lands in the 7th century AD The Middle Iranian phase began in the 3rd century BC The oldest phases date back to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC The oldest physical record of Iran is the Old Persian inscription of Darius I from 522 BC on the rock face of Mount Behistun near Kermanshah along the highway that descends from the Iranian plateau into Mesopotamia. (Windfuhr, 2009) Research in recent decades suggests that the Proto-Indo-Iranians originated in the steppes of Eastern Europe (Pit Grave Culture, ca. 3500-2500 BC). From there they apparently moved and...