At present, there are more than 150,000 Lari speakers living in the three provinces of Fars, Bushehr and Hormozgan in Iran. This figure includes speakers who are in the Persian Gulf countries like the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait. It is worth noting that there are a number of ethnic groups, including Turks, Lors and Arabs, who currently live in Lari-speaking areas (Ahmadlou, 2011).
The majority of Lari speakers who reside in the big cities of the Fars province, such as Lar and Gerash, are Muslim Shiites, while Muslim Sunnites mostly reside in the large cities of Hormozgan such as Bastak. A large proportion of Sunnites is scattered into small cities and villages in the area. Nevertheless, some places, including Ahel, are mixed with both denominations.
Although at present nearly all Lari speakers are Muslim, their cultural practices exhibit a plethora of traditions culturally inherited from Zoroastrianism. For instance, ‘swearing by ash or star, respecting fire, pouring rosewater on graves, throwing out leftover food, and providing passers-by with cool water on roads can be traced back to the pre-Islam period when Zoroastrianism was practiced among Lari people (Vosoughi et al., 2006).
Cite this page: Ourang, M. (2020). A Reference Grammar of Aheli: A dialect of the Lari language, Iran [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. The University of New South Wales.