Persian literature is one of the world's oldest
literatures. It spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-
Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within Greater
Iran including present-day
Iran,
Iraq, the
Caucasus, and
Turkey, as well as regions of
Central Asia where the
Persian language has historically been the national language. For instance,
Rumi, one of Iran's best-loved poets, born in
Balkh or
Vakhsh (in what is now
Afghanistan), wrote in Persian, and lived in
Konya, then the capital of the
Seljuks. The
Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and
South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from Iran,
Mesopotamia,
Azerbaijan, the wider Caucasus, Turkey, western parts of
Pakistan, Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia. Not all this literature is written in
Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic
Persians in other languages, such as
Greek and
Arabic, to be included. At the same time, not all literature written in Persian is written by ethnic Persians or Iranians. Particularly, Turkic, Caucasian, and Indic poets and writers have also used the Persian language in the environment of
Persianate cultures.