Ahriyan is an exonym for a group of people from Tonya and

Beşikdüzü Beşikdüzü is a town and district of Trabzon Province in the Black Sea region of Turkey. The mayor is Ramis Uzun ( CHP). Name The name ''Beşikdüzü'' is composed of two Turkish words, namely ''beşik'', "a cradle" and ''düzü'', "a plain". Th ...

Trabzon Province Trabzon Province ( tr, ) is a province of Turkey on the Black Sea coast. Located in a strategically important region, Trabzon is one of the oldest trade port cities in Anatolia. Neighbouring provinces are Giresun to the west, Gümüşhane to t ...

given by Çepni Turks to mean (

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The r ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

origin) or "non-Turkoman". It can also mean “oppressive, heartless” when used as an adjective. The Achrian Mosque (

: Αχριάν Τζαμί) in the city of

İskeçe Xanthi ( el, Ξάνθη, ''Xánthi'', ) is a city in the region of Western Thrace, northeastern Greece. It is the capital of the Xanthi regional unit of the region of East Macedonia and Thrace. Amphitheatrically built on the foot of Rhodope mo ...

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wit ...

carries the same name.

Etymology

The word ''ahriyan'' is derived from

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Ahura Mazda Ahura Mazda (; ae, , translit=Ahura Mazdā; ), also known as Oromasdes, Ohrmazd, Ahuramazda, Hoormazd, Hormazd, Hormaz and Hurmuz, is the creator deity in Zoroastrianism. He is the first and most frequently invoked spirit in the '' Yasna ...

, the creator deity in the Persian pantheon and the counterpart to

Angra Mainyu Angra Mainyu (; Avestan: 𐬀𐬢𐬭𐬀⸱𐬨𐬀𐬌𐬥𐬌𐬌𐬎 ''Aŋra Mainiiu'') is the Avestan-language name of Zoroastrianism's hypostasis of the "destructive/evil spirit" and the main adversary in Zoroastrianism either of the ...

. During the

Sasanian The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the History of Iran, last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th cen ...

Period, the lingua franca of Anatolia was

Middle Persian Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Per ...

, in which Angra Mainyu was rendered as "Ahriman" (Ehrimen) and "angra" meant "enemy, sin, bad" with ‘mainyu’ meaning "soul, invisibility, spirit". Although the term was mostly used for the indisputably non-Muslim population in Anatolia, there appear to be uncommon recorded forms of the practice in

Şalpazarı Şalpazarı is a town and district of Trabzon Province in the Black Sea region of Turkey. The population is around 12,000 including the surrounding villages. The mayor is Refik Kurukız ( MHP). Şalpazarı is a home to sizeable Chepni Turkmen popu ...

that controversially included the

Alevi Alevism or Anatolian Alevism (; tr, Alevilik, ''Anadolu Aleviliği'' or ''Kızılbaşlık''; ; az, Ələvilik) is a local Islamic tradition, whose adherents follow the mystical Alevi Islamic ( ''bāṭenī'') teachings of Haji Bektash Veli, ...

population in its designation.

References

Özhan Öztürk Özhan Öztürk (born 1968) is a Turkish writer and researcher. He wrote a Turkish Folklore Encyclopaedia and an encyclopaedic dictionary of the culture and folklore of the peoples of the Black Sea region of Turkey. Works * ''Karadeniz Ans ...

(

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, ...

: Encyclopedic Dictionary). Vol. 2. Heyamola Publishing. Istanbul. 2005. {{ISBN, 975-6121-00-9. Turkish folklore