Lingua Persica and the Persianate World From the 12th through the 19th centuries, the Persian language stood as one of the great civilizational tongues of the Old World—serving as the literary, courtly, administrative, and high cultural language across vast stretches of Eurasia. Its reach extended far beyond the Iranian plateau, permeating the courts and intellectual life of the Safavid, Mughal, Seljuk, Ottoman, and Timurid empires. In this era, Persian functioned as a shared cultural currency among ethnically, politically, and religiously diverse peoples—binding together a mosaic of societies through poetry, philosophy, governance, and refined expression and manners. Before the rise of French and later English as global lingua francas, Persian held that mantle: a language not merely of communication, but of civilization itself.