Qashqai (also spelled Qashqa'i, Qashqay, and Kashkai ) is a is a Turkic language. It is spoken by the Qashqai, an ethnic group living mainly in the Fars region of Iran. Estimates of the number of Qashqai speakers varies, but Ethnologue gives a figure of one and a half million. The Qashqai language is closely related to Azerbaijani, and some linguists actually consider it to be a dialect of that language. Unlike Azerbaijani, Qashqai still uses the Arabic alphabet (or, more specifically, the Persian modification of it). Many speakers of Qashqai also speak Persian,