The people of the interior are mostly of the old Iranian stock, and there are also a few nomads of the Turkish Baharlu tribe which came to Persia in the lath century when the province was subdued by a Turkish chief.
His doctrine was rooted in the old Iranian - or Aryan - folk-religion, of which we can only form an approximate representation by comparison with the religion of the Veda.
Their religion has points of connexion with old Iranian and Assyrian beliefs and traces of Manichaeism and Nestorianism.
But there also developed a rather extensive Pahlavi literature, not limited to religious subjects, but containing works in belles letires, modernizations of the old Iranian sagas and native traditions, e.g.
When these old Iranian sources were almost exhausted, the difficulty was met in various ingenious ways.
