The Mazanderani number between three and four million. Their dominant religion is ShiiteIslam. Most Mazanderanis live on the southeastern coast of the Caspian Sea. Their traditional professions are farming and fishing. The Mazanderanis are closely related to the neighbouring Gilaki people as well as Caucasian peoples.
Language
The Mazanderani language is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken by the Mazanderani people; however, most Mazanderanis are also fluent in Persian. The Gilaki and Mazanderani languages share certain typological features with Caucasian languages. With the growth of education and the media, the distinction between Mazanderani and other Iranian languages is likely to disappear. Mazanderani is closely related to Gilaki and the two languages have similar vocabularies. They preserve more of the noun declension system characteristic of older Iranian languages than Persian does. Assistant professorMaryam Borjian of Rutgers University states that Mazanderani has different sub-dialects and there is high mutual intelligibility among Mazanderani sub-dialects.
Genetics
The Mazanderani and the closely related Gilaks occupy the south Caspian region of Iran and speak languages belonging to the North-Western branch of Iranian languages. It has been suggested that their ancestors came from the Caucasus region, perhaps displacing an earlier group in the South Caspian. Linguistic evidence supports this scenario, in that the Gilaki and Mazanderani languages share certain typological features with Caucasian languages. There have been patterns analyzed of mtDNA and Y chromosome variation in the Gilaki and Mazanderani. Based on mtDNA HV1 sequences, the Gilaki and Mazanderani most closely resemble their geographic and linguistic neighbors, namely other Iranian groups. However, their Y chromosome types most closely resemble those found in groups from the South Caucasus. Researchers explained these differences that males from the Caucasus settled in the south Caspian area, mated with women from local Iranian groups, possibly because of patrilocality. The Mazanderani and Gilaki groups are closely related on the male side with populations from the South Caucasus such as Georgians, Armenians, and Azerbaijani's.
Haplogroups
Analysis of their NRY patrilines has revealed haplogroup J2, associated with the neolithic diffusion of agriculturalists from the Near East, to be the predominant Y-DNA lineage among the Mazanderani. The next most frequently occurring lineage, R1a1a, believed to have been associated with early Iranian expansion into Central/Southern Eurasia and currently ubiquitous in that area, is found in almost 25%,. This haplogroup, with the aforementioned J2, accounts for over 50% of the entire sample. Haplogroup G2a3b, attaining significant frequency together with G2a and G1, is the most commonly carried marker in the G group among Mazanderani men. The lineages E1b1b1a1a-M34 and C5-M356 comprise the remainder, of less than 10% sampled.
Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarir ibn Rustom al-Tabari was a Shia thinker who is commonly confused with the former. He is the author of the book Dala'il al-Imamah
In the Safavid, Afsharid, and Qajar eras Mazandaran was settled by large amounts of Georgians, Circassians, Armenians and other peoples of the Caucasus, whose descendants still live across Mazandaran. Many towns, villages and neighbourhoods in Mazandaran bear the name "Gorji" in them, although most of the Georgians are assimilated into the mainstream Mazanderanis: they keep a Georgian conscience. The history of Georgian settlement is described by Iskandar Beg Munshi, the author of the 17th century History of Alam Aray Abbasi. In addition foreigners, e.g., Chardin and Della Valle, have written about their encounters with the Georgian, Circassian and Armenian Mazanderanis.
