Khorasani

The Khorasanis are the Persian-speaking people of western Khorasan, the historic eastern province of Iran, centered on Nishapur, Tus and later Mashhad. Khorasan, meaning the Eastern Land, became a Sasanian province in the sixth century and the cradle of New Persian: after the Arab conquest, literary Persian re-emerged in Khorasan and Transoxiana.

The Mongol conquest of 1221 devastated its cities, but recovery followed under the Ilkhanate. In 1337 the fall of the Ilkhanate had left western Khorasan to the Sarbadars and Kartids, until Timur conquered it at the end of the fourteenth century; recovery continued under the Timurids.

From the sixteenth century the Safavids and the Uzbek khanates fought over Khorasan for two hundred years. Nader Shah made Mashhad his capital in 1736, and after his death the Qajars secured the western half in 1796 while Herat passed to the Afghan Durranis.