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Bastak is a town in the Hormozgan Province of southern Iran. It has a road connecting it to the Bandar Lengeh area and its inhabitants speak Bastaki, a dialect of Persian.
The history of Bastak can be traced back to the Safavids era. When the Safavids under Ismail I decided to convert everyone residing in current day Iran from Sunni to Shiite Islam in 1501, they started arranged attacks and massacres against the Sunni Persians who refused to convert. As a result, many Sunni Persians left their hometowns for the Zagros Mountains. After the Battle of Chaldiran where the Safavids lost to the Ottoman the Sunni Persians descended from the mountains to begin a new life in the land they named "Bastak", meaning barrier or backstop signifying barrier from Shiite Safavids' attacks and influences.
Eventually they pledged loyalty to the Abbasids, an Arab dynasty that left Baghdad after the Moghol invasion towards the southern mountains of Persia. The rulers of Shiraz at the time, the Atabak, gave them protection to pass through their lands as they fled from the Moghols. Later on the Abbasids they took permission from Atabak to establish a state of their own and rule Bastak and the surrounding villages and islands.
Bastaki people speak a local Persian dialect that is made up of Middle Persian. Many Bastakis today work as merchants and own their own businesses and are highly educated. They tend to work in finance, real estate, education and engineering sectors. Not to mention the many medical practices which they run. They are also known to be a very proud of their heritage which they preserved even though they live for many years in G.C.C. And are known to be independent yet very loyal to their rulers, to Al-Maktoums in Dubai especially and Al-Qassimi in Al-Sharjah, Al-Khalifa in Bahrain, and to other ruling families of the GCC countries where they reside.(It is worth mentioning that the Ottomans came after the Abbasids, not before)
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