page_title: Ethnic groups in Baltimore
section_title: Iranians
hierarchical_section_title: Ethnic groups in Baltimore / Ethnic groups / White Americans / Middle Eastern and North African people / Iranians
caption_attribution_description: English: Yaghob Ghermezian Sephardic Center (Rabbi Herman Naftoli Neuberger Memorial Building and Congregation Ohr Hamizrach), a Persian-Jewish synagogue and center in Baltimore, Maryland.
context_page_description: There have been a variety of ethnic groups in Baltimore, Maryland and its surrounding area for 12,000 years. Prior to European colonization, various Native American nations have lived in the Baltimore area for nearly 3 millennia, with the earliest known Native inhabitants dating to the 10th millenium BCE. Following Baltimore's foundation as a subdivision of the Province of Maryland by British colonial authorities in 1661, the city became home to numerous European settlers and immigrants and their African slaves. Since the first English settlers arrived, substantial immigration from all over Europe, the presence of a deeply rooted community of free black people that was the largest in the pre-Civil War United States, out-migration of African-Americans from the Deep South, out-migration of White Southerners from Appalachia, out-migration of Native Americans from the Southeast such as the Lumbee and the Cherokee, and new waves of more recent immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa have added layers of complexity to the workforce and culture of Baltimore, as well as the religious and ethnic fabric of the city.
context_section_description: Iranian-Americans hold an annual festival, the Chaharshanbe Suri (Festival of Fire), as part of their celebration of the Iranian New Year (known as Nowruz). The event is held at Oregon Ridge Park in Cockeysville, a suburb of Baltimore.
  After the Iranian Revolution in 1978, many Persian Jews fled the country and immigrated to Baltimore. More arrived during the 1980s. In 2009, Iranian Jews established a Persian-style Sephardic synagogue in Baltimore.
  In September 2014, immigrants from Iran were the thirty-first largest foreign-born population in Baltimore and the Persian language was the eighteenth most commonly spoken language, after English.
caption: Yaghob Ghermezian Sephardic Center, a Persian-Jewish synagogue and center in Baltimore, July 2015.
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