A Persianate society is a society that is based on or strongly influenced by the Persian language, culture, literature, art and/or identity. The term "Persianate" is a neologism credited to Marshall Hodgson. In his 1974 book, The Venture of Islam: The expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods, he defined it thus: "The rise of Persian had more than purely literary consequences: it served to carry a new overall cultural orientation within Islamdom.... Most of the more local languages of high culture that later emerged among Muslims... depended upon Persian wholly or in part for their prime literary inspiration. We may call all these cultural traditions, carried in Persian or reflecting Persian inspiration, 'Persianate' by extension." The term designates ethnic Persians but also societies that may not have been predominantly ethnically Persian but whose linguistic, material or artistic cultural activities were influenced by or based on Persianate culture. Examples of pre-19th-century Persianate societies were the Seljuq, Timurid, Mughal, and Ottoman dynasties. List of historical Persianate (or Persian-speaking) states/dynasties Based in the Iranian Plateau Ghaznavids Ghurid Empire Samanid Empire Great Seljuq Empire Khwarazmian dynasty Ilkhanate Timurid Empire Buyid dynasty Aq Qoyunlu Kara Koyunlu Shirvanshah Safavid Empire Afsharid dynasty Zand dynasty Qajar dynasty Based in Asia Minor Sultanate of Rum Seljuk Empire Ottoman Empire Based in the Indian subcontinent Delhi Sultanate Kashmir Sultanate Bengal Sultanate Gujarat Sultanate Jaunpur Sultanate Bahamani Sultanate Malwa Sultanate Qutb Shahi dynasty Khandesh Sultanate Bijapur Sultanate Ahmadnagar Sultanate Golconda Sultanate Bidar Sultanate Berar Sultanate Carnatic Sultanate Mughal Empire Sur Empire Sikh Empire Jammu and Kashmir Oudh Rohilkhand(Rampur) Tonk Banganapalle Malerkotla Pataudi Bahawalpur Bhopal Junagadh Hyderabad Bengal (Subah) History Persianate culture flourished for nearly fourteen centuries. It was a mixture of Persian and Islamic cultures that eventually underwent Persification and became the dominant culture of the ruling and elite classes of Greater Iran, Asia Minor, and South Asia. When the peoples of Greater Iran were conquered by Islamic forces in the 7th and 8th centuries, they became part of an empire much larger than any previous one under Persian rule. While the Islamic conquest led to the Arabization of language and culture in the former Byzantine territories, this did not happen in Persia. Rather, the new Islamic culture evolving there was largely based on pre-Islamic Persian traditions of the area, as well as on the Islamic customs that were introduced to the region by the Arab conquerors. Persianate culture,