Afro Iranians

Afro-Iranians () refers to Iranian people with significant black ancestry. Most Afro-Iranians are concentrated in the southern provinces of Iran, including Hormozgan, Sistan and Balochistan, Bushehr, Khuzestan, and Fars. They are split between Afro-Iranians who identify as Persians, Iranian Arabs, or Balochs. ==History== thumb|right|A Safavid art|Safavid oil painting of an African soldier in [[Safavid Iran. Created in Isfahan in the last quarter of the 17th century, the figure was most likely a slave soldier in Safavid Iran's musketeer corps]]

The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, enslaved black people who were captured by Arab slave traders were sold in cumulatively large numbers over centuries to; the Persian Gulf, Egypt, Arabia, India, the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands and Ethiopia. Others came as immigrants throughout many millennia or from Portuguese slave traders who occupied most of the contested Ormus's Bandar Abbas, Hormoz and Qeshm island ports in southern Iran by early 16th century.