Arab-Persians (, ) are people who are of both mixed Arab and Persian ethnic or cultural background, which is common in Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, and to a lesser extent, Lebanon and Syria. History In pre-Islamic times, there were many Arabs who lived in the cultural sphere of Persia and used Persian as their written language. These are referred to as Persian Arabs (; Al-‘Arab Al-Furs). One of Prophet Muhammed's early followers and disciples, Salman Al-Farsi, was Persian. After the rise of Islam and the Arab conquest of Persia, Persians, in turn, began to use Arabic as their written language alongside Persian. Many famous Muslim scientists and philosophers during the time of the Abbasid caliphate were ethnic Persians who wrote their scholarly works in Arabic while continuing to write literary works and poetry in Persian - famous examples are Avicenna and Khayyam. Self-identification The term “Arab-Persian” is rarely used as a self-appellation. Most tend to identify more strongly as either Persian or Arab and consider themselves to be members primarily of one ethnic group, but at the same time being aware of their mixed background. For many the most important factor determining their identity is the sovereign state in which they live or from which their recent ancestors came from. For example, most Shia Kuwaitis are of Persian ancestry. In Iran Ethnic Arabs and Arabic speakers live alongside Persians primarily in the Khuzestan, Bushehr, Hormozgan, and Khorasan regions of Iran. Intermarriages exist between Iranian Arabs and Iranian Persians. Over 1 million Iranian Sayyids are of Arab descent but most are Persianized, mixed and consider themselves Persian and Iranian today. The majority of Sayyids migrated to Iran from Arab lands predominantly in the 15th to 17th centuries during the Safavid era. The Safavids transformed the religious landscape of Iran by imposing Twelver Shiism on the populace. Since most of the population embraced Sunni Islam, and an educated version of Shiism was scarce in Iran at the time, Ismail imported a new group of Shia Ulama who predominantly were Sayyids from traditional Shiite centers of the Arabic-speaking lands, such as Jabal Amel (of southern Lebanon), Syria, Bahrain, and southern Iraq in order to create a state clergy. The Safavids offered them land and money in return for loyalty. In Kuwait Most Ajam (both Sunni and Shia) resided in the Sharq historical district in the old Kuwait City, thereby forming a linguistic enclave