page_title: Tabriz
section_title: Language
hierarchical_section_title: Tabriz / Demographics / Language
caption_attribution_description: English: A Page from the only manuscript of Safina-ye Tabrizi. It contains a Persian and a Pahlavi poem.
context_page_description: Tabriz is the most populous city in northwestern Iran, one of the historical capitals of Iran and the present capital of East Azerbaijan Province. It is the fifth-most-populous city in Iran. In the Quru River valley in Iran's historic Azerbaijan region between long ridges of volcanic cones in the Sahand and Eynali mountains, Tabriz's elevation ranges between 1,350 and 1,600 metres above sea level. The valley opens up into a plain that gently slopes down to the eastern shores of Lake Urmia, 60 kilometres to the west. With cold winters and temperate summers, Tabriz is considered a summer resort. It was named World Carpet Weaving City by the World Crafts Council in October 2015 and Exemplary Tourist City of 2018 by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
  With a population of over 1.7 million, Tabriz is the largest economic hub and metropolitan area in Northwest Iran. The population is overwhelmingly Azerbaijani, though Persian is spoken by residents as a second language. Tabriz is a major heavy industries hub for automobiles, machine tools, refineries, petrochemicals, textiles and cement production industries.
context_section_description: The predominant language spoken in Tabriz is Azerbaijani language (Azerbaijani people call it Türkü or Türki language), which is a Turkic language mutually intelligible with modern Turkish dialects. The language has a strong Iranian superstratum since it has been in close contact with the Persian language for many centuries. Similar to the other parts of Iran, the official language is Persian and the most inhabitants have native or near-native knowledge of Persian language, which is the major medium of education.
  Nevertheless, the Iranian constitution respects the right to speak and have limited educational facilities in other native languages, including Azerbaijani. For the first time, an academic program on Azerbaijani language opened at the University of Tabriz in 1999. Other than Azerbaijani, there is a notable minority of Armenian speakers and a smaller minority of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic speakers.
  It is believed that before the gradual increase and dominance of Azerbaijani language in the area, other Iranian languages similar to Persian were spoken in Azerbaijan and Tabriz. The 13th-century manuscript Safina-yi Tabriz has poems in what its Tabriz-born author has called the Tabrizi language (Zabān-e-Tabrizi) which is similar to Persian.
caption: A page from the only manuscript of Safina-yi Tabriz. It contains a Persian and a Pahlavi poem
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