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95-563: Its rectangular doors are 4.5 m high. There is a small opening large enough for one person to pass through when the gate is closed. Of the double gate, the southern Chain Gate is known today as Bab Al-Silsilah, and its northern twin gate as Bab as-Sakinah (Tranquility Gate). It was considered the most beautiful of the Al-Aqsa mosque gates. The entrance to the Gate of the Sakinah is closed and

190-465: A metaphysical character, contains a sort of practical cosmography , chiefly based on Avicenna 's theories, but frequently intermixed both with the freer speculations of the well-known philosophical brotherhood of Basra , the Ikhwan al-Safa , and purely Shi'ite or Isma'ili ideas; the second, or ethical section of the poem, abounds in moral maxims and ingenious thoughts on man's good and bad qualities, on

285-655: A Dari dialect. In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty , the dialect that is spoken in Tehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule, numerous Russian , French , and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology. The first official attentions to

380-443: A book on mathematics which has now been lost. He states in his other work that he could: not find one single scholar throughout all of Khorasan and eastern lands like myself [who] could grapple with the solutions to these problems . But he felt it his responsibility to take the task for readers he would never see, 'those yet to come, in a time yet to come' Despite being one of the most prominent Isma'ili philosophers and theologians of

475-414: A considerable number of devoted adherents, who have handed down his doctrines to succeeding generations. Nasir-i Khusraw explained that through revelation ( tanzil ), intellectual matters were transformed into a state that could be understood by humankind. Esoteric interpretation ( ta’wil ) is necessary to revert them to their original intellectual state. He also said that one must not be satisfied with

570-418: A dictionary called Words of Scientific Association ( لغت انجمن علمی ), which was completed in the future and renamed Katouzian Dictionary ( فرهنگ کاتوزیان ). The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name Academy of Iran . It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi , and mainly by Hekmat e Shirazi and Mohammad Ali Foroughi , all prominent names in

665-505: A language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Farsi , which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. However, the name Persian is still more widely used. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that the endonym Farsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that Persian

760-521: A linguistic point of view, the work is an example of early philosophical writing in new Persian. It is the same strain which runs, although in a somewhat lower key, through his two larger masnavis , the Rawshana-i-nama ( Persian : روشنایی‌نامه ) (or Book of Enlightenment, also known as Shish Fasl ), and the Sa'datnama (Book of Felicity). The former is divided into two sections: the first, of

855-417: A literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time. This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian". There are three standard varieties of modern Persian: All these three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from

950-536: A period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed toward a fully accepted language of literature, and which was even able to lexically satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. In the Ottoman Empire, Persian was used at the royal court, for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works, and

1045-545: A prolonged journey with the ultimate goal of performing a pilgrimage to Mecca . In March 1046, along with his brother Abu Sa'id and an Indian attendant, he started his journey, which would first end after nearly seven years. From Khurasan, he travelled west, passing through northern and western Iran, Armenia , and Asia Minor . He then descended to Syria , Palestine , and then Arabia , where he performed his pilgrimage. On August 1047, he went to Cairo in Egypt , which served as

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1140-587: A rarity in the Isma'ili literature of the Fatimids, which primarily used Arabic . Nasir was a key figure in the spread of Isma'ilism in Central Asia . He is with great reverence called "Pir" or "Shah Sayyid Nasir" by the Isma'ili community of Badakhshan (split between Afghanistan and Tajikistan ) and their branches in northern Pakistan , who all consider him to be their founder. Nasir Khusraw's full name

1235-599: A speaker of Persian. Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages , which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision . The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish and Balochi are

1330-615: Is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages . Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran , Afghanistan , and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties , respectively Iranian Persian (officially known as Persian ), Dari Persian (officially known as Dari since 1964), and Tajiki Persian (officially known as Tajik since 1999). It

1425-664: Is a continuation of Middle Persian , an official language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian , which was used in the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). It originated in the region of Fars ( Persia ) in southwestern Iran. Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages. Throughout history, Persian was considered prestigious by various empires centered in West Asia , Central Asia , and South Asia . Old Persian

1520-628: Is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian. Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian. Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian." The known history of

1615-850: Is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan , as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran . It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet , a derivative of the Arabic script , and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet , a derivative of the Cyrillic script . Modern Persian

1710-675: Is attested in Old Persian cuneiform on inscriptions from between the 6th and 4th century BC. Middle Persian is attested in Aramaic -derived scripts ( Pahlavi and Manichaean ) on inscriptions and in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the third to the tenth centuries (see Middle Persian literature ). New Persian literature was first recorded in the ninth century, after the Muslim conquest of Persia , since then adopting

1805-680: Is based on an ancient fable, describes an eagle circling in the sky "full of selfish pride" before being brought to the ground by an arrow with eagle feathers sewn into its fletch. The final lines of the poem convey a lesson, which has become a well-known saying amongst speakers of the Persian language; az māst ki bar māst ("what comes from us returns to us"), meaning that people possess the very characteristic that will determine both their success and failure. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -⁠shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),

1900-539: Is contained in the Sa'datnama ; and, judging from the extreme bitterness of tone manifested in the reproaches of kings and emirs, we should be inclined to consider it a protest against the vile aspersions poured out upon Nasir's moral and religious attitude during those persecutions which drove him at last to Yumgan. Of all other works of the author, the Zaad-al-Musafirin (or Travelling Provisions of Pilgrims) and

1995-425: Is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable. New Persian texts written in the Arabic script first appear in the 9th-century. The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of

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2090-463: Is not a literal account, rather a symbolic one. When the Prophets shared the story of a six-day creation of the physical universe, it was meant for the people to understand that God was saying that six prophets would come into this world and command people to work. When the seventh day came, God would not command in this manner, but would rather reward them for their hard work. Nasir Khusraw wrote

2185-460: Is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 AD) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or 7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with

2280-467: Is not opened except for necessity. It worth to notice that the closure of the northern gate happened a long time ago, with the historian Al-Omari (746 AH/1345 CE) mentioning this fact. The Gate of the Chain, which is open, is secured by a tall two-wing door, with a small door cut into one wing, large enough for one person to enter when the larger door is closed. According to Nasir-i-Khusraw , in order to reach

2375-475: Is one of Afghanistan's two official languages, together with Pashto . The term Dari , meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital Ctesiphon , which was spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of Parthia ( Parthian ). Tajik Persian ( форси́и тоҷикӣ́ , forsi-i tojikī ),

2470-585: Is one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages. According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in Southwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called Parsuwash , who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became

2565-405: Is still readable for Persian-speaking people. Among his other works, most of the lyrical poems in his Diwan were composed in his retirement, and their chief topics are an enthusiastic praise of Ali , his descendants, and al-Mustansir in particular, along with passionate outcries against Khorasan and its rulers, who had driven him from his home. It also explores his immense satisfaction with

2660-495: Is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater , founder of the Encyclopædia Iranica and Columbia University 's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology , rejecting

2755-600: Is the closest of the Mawazin . The Chain Gate Minaret is just north of it. And north of that, one finds the al-Ashrafiyya Madrasa . South of the gate, and part of the compound wall, one sees the at-Tankiziyya Madrasa . The first bridge built at the site over the Central Valley , to which the so-called Wilson's Arch belongs, dates to c. 20 BCE - 20 CE, as proven by radiocarbon dating published in 2020, and

2850-491: The Encyclopædia Iranica notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist. The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects: More distantly related branches of the Iranian language family include Kurdish and Balochi . The Glottolog database proposes

2945-506: The Kalila wa Dimna . The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which, among others, Central Asian Turks became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regional lingua franca , a task aided due to its relatively simple morphology, and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century. In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on

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3040-523: The Wajh-i Din (or The Face of Religion) are theoretical descriptions of his religious and philosophical principles; the rest of them can be dismissed as being probably just as apocryphal as Nasir's famous autobiography (found in several Persian tadhkiras or biographies of poets), a mere forgery of the most extravagant description, which is mainly responsible for the confusion in names and dates in older accounts of our author. Nasir Khusraw, explains

3135-668: The British colonization , Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent . It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors . The Bengal Sultanate witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers, and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of

3230-519: The Hujjat-i Khorasan , though the hostility he encountered in the propagation of these new religious ideas after his return to Greater Khorasan in 1052 A.D. and Sunnite fanaticism compelled him at last to flee. After wandering from place to place, he found refuge in Yamgan (about 1060 A.D.) in the mountains of Badakhshan , where he spent as a hermit the last decades of his life, gathering

3325-632: The Marw province in the Khurasan region. The area was then controlled by the Ghaznavids , a culturally Persianised dynasty of Turkic slave origin. Nasir supposedly started his career as a scribe before moving to the city of Marw to work as a financial administrator. He was allowed entry to the court at Balkh until in 1040, when Khurasan was conquered by the Seljuks . He retained his office under

3420-585: The Muslim Quarter is outside the gate. The neighborhood ( Bāb as-Silsila / Bāb al-Silsila ) is named after the gate. Chain Gate Street leads toward a market ( Sūq Bāb as-Silsila ) and eventually the gate. Once inside the compound, one can immediately see the Dome of Moses (south) and Fountain of Qasim Pasha (north, also named Sabīl Bāb al-Maḥkama , after the gate). The southwestern colonnade

3515-674: The Sultanate of Rum , Turkmen beyliks of Anatolia , Delhi Sultanate , the Shirvanshahs , Safavids , Afsharids , Zands , Qajars , Khanate of Bukhara , Khanate of Kokand , Emirate of Bukhara , Khanate of Khiva , Ottomans , and also many Mughal successors such as the Nizam of Hyderabad . Persian was the only non-European language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China. A branch of

3610-713: The Turkic , Armenian , Georgian , & Indo-Aryan languages . It also exerted some influence on Arabic, while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages. Some of the world's most famous pieces of literature from the Middle Ages, such as the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi , the works of Rumi , the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám , the Panj Ganj of Nizami Ganjavi , The Divān of Hafez , The Conference of

3705-491: The ezāfe construction, expressed through ī (modern e/ye ), to indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system. Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian

3800-597: The " Persianized " Turko-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian during this time served as lingua franca of Greater Persia and of much of the Indian subcontinent . It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids, Buyids , Tahirids , Ziyarids , the Mughal Empire , Timurids , Ghaznavids , Karakhanids , Seljuqs , Khwarazmians ,

3895-681: The Birds by Attar of Nishapur , and the miscellanea of Gulistan and Bustan by Saadi Shirazi , are written in Persian. Some of the prominent modern Persian poets were Nima Yooshij , Ahmad Shamlou , Simin Behbahani , Sohrab Sepehri , Rahi Mo'ayyeri , Mehdi Akhavan-Sales , and Forugh Farrokhzad . There are approximately 130 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians , Lurs , Tajiks , Hazaras , Iranian Azeris , Iranian Kurds , Balochs , Tats , Afghan Pashtuns , and Aimaqs . The term Persophone might also be used to refer to

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3990-488: The Fatimid caliph. At Cairo, Nasir was taught Isma'ili teachings, law, and administration by prominent scholars. He met al-Mu'ayyad fi'l-Din al-Shirazi (died 1087), an Isma'ili scholar from Shiraz in southwestern Iran, who had also recently arrived to Cairo. He became Nasir's teacher, instructing him in enigmatic Isma'ili concepts and philosophy. Nasir was raised to the position of dā‘ī "missionary" and appointed as

4085-405: The Fatimid era and the writer of many philosophical works intended for only the inner circle of the Isma'ili community, Nasir is best known to the general public as a poet and writer who ardently supported Persian as an artistic and scientific language. All of Nasir's philosophical Isma'ili works are in Persian, a rarity in the Isma'ili literature of the Fatimids, which primarily used Arabic. Nasir

4180-565: The Middle Ages, and is because of the lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The standard Persian of Iran has been called, apart from Persian and Farsi , by names such as Iranian Persian and Western Persian , exclusively. Officially, the official language of Iran is designated simply as Persian ( فارسی , fārsi ). The standard Persian of Afghanistan has been officially named Dari ( دری , dari ) since 1958. Also referred to as Afghan Persian in English, it

4275-543: The Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I , despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam . It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi 's Hasht Bihisht , which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the Salim-Namah , a glorification of Selim I. After

4370-530: The Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods: As a written language , Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription , dating to the time of King Darius I (reigned 522–486 BC). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran , Romania ( Gherla ), Armenia , Bahrain , Iraq , Turkey, and Egypt . Old Persian

4465-425: The Persian language, a language historically called Dari, emerged in present-day Afghanistan. The first significant Persian poet was Rudaki . He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works are versified fables collected in

4560-401: The Persian model: Ottoman Turkish , Chagatai Turkic , Dobhashi Bengali , and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian. "Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry . This is the language of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language and lingua franca under

4655-886: The Perso-Arabic script. Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly of Arabic on writing in the Muslim world , with Persian poetry becoming a tradition in many eastern courts. It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the Ottomans in Anatolia , the Mughals in South Asia, and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. It influenced languages spoken in neighboring regions and beyond, including other Iranian languages,

4750-484: The Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk , commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan , known as Dari. The region, which comprised

4845-588: The Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date. "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian)

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4940-457: The Seljuks, whose co-founder Chaghri Beg ruled Khurasan. Around the age of 41, Nasir underwent a tremendous and sudden change in his spirituality, which drastically altered the direction of his life. According to Nasir, the incident had the characteristics of a dream. He subsequently resigned from his office and converted to Isma'ilism. In December 1045, Nasir made the decision to embark on

5035-407: The Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum , took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans , who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of

5130-498: The area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III . The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word * pārćwa . Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median , according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before

5225-1014: The bridge were built at the same time, that is: in the early Islamic period. This Gate is one of the three Gates that open alone for worshipers at the prayers of Isha'a and Fajr since 1967. It is the closest gate leading to the Al-Qibli Musalla hall after the closure of the Maghriba Gate by the Israel. It is also the closest to the Western Wall /Al-Buraq Wall. Gates 1. Jaffa 2. Zion 3. Dung 4. Golden 5. Lions 6. Herod 7. Damascus 8. New ( Double, Single, Tanners ' ) Al-Mawazin 31°46′38″N 35°14′04″E  /  31.77727°N 35.23431°E  / 31.77727; 35.23431 Nasir-i-Khusraw States People Centers Other Nasir Khusraw ( Persian : ناصرخسرو ; 1004 – between 1072–1088)

5320-550: The capital of the Isma'ili Fatimid Caliphate . The Fatimid Caliphate was the first and last significant Shi'i dominion until the emergence of the Safavid dynasty of Iran in 1501, who declared Twelver Shi'ism as its official religion. The majority of other governmental power bases were overwhelmingly Sunni, including the Ghaznavid and Seljuk rulers, who demonstrated their support for the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad by making determined efforts to put an end to Isma'ili activity, especially that of Isma'ili missionaries operating under

5415-457: The code fas for the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari ( prs ) and Iranian Persian ( pes ). It uses tgk for Tajik, separately. In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of Iranian history ; Old era being sometime around the Achaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era being

5510-512: The collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in the Arabic script . From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi , which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by

5605-451: The exoteric form but look for the person who can explain the original esoteric meaning to them. In saying this he alluded to the Imam of the Time . He died in Yamagan in present-day northern Afghanistan. He was buried in a small mausoleum on a small hill in the present-day village of Hadrat-i Sayyid (also called Hadrat-i Sa'id), on the eastern side of the Koksha Valley in present-day Afghanistan . According to an engraved inscription on

5700-430: The extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Hindi - Urdu (also historically known as Hindustani ), Punjabi , Kashmiri , and Sindhi . There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious execution in Qajar Iran and speak

5795-444: The formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia , and South Asia . Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia , Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to

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5890-421: The formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Xenophon , a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like

5985-402: The gate one had to pass through the market in the eastern section of the city and the gate itself had two openings that led into a large hall. Its construction was renewed in the Ayyubid period, in 600 AH/1200 CE, during the reign of King Issa . Bāb as-Sakīna is the northern half of the double gate that includes the Chain Gate. It is always closed. Its names: The southwestern part of

6080-400: The hypocrisy, frivolity and viciousness of fashionable society and princely courts in particular. Another work of Nasir Khusraw is the Persian philosophical work "Gushayish va Rahayish" which has been translated into English by F.M. Hunzai under the title: "Knowledge and Liberation". The work discusses creation, questions related to the soul, epistemology, and Ismaili Islamic doctrines. From

6175-410: The language of the Persians. Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan , the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts. The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed

6270-401: The majority of these manuscripts were censored to remove any references to Isma'ilism by antagonistic Sunni scribes. A native Persian, Nasir was from a family of government bureaucrats and landowners. He most likely adhered to the Twelver Shi'ism form of Islam before his conversion to Isma'ilism. He was born in 1004 in Qubadiyan , a neighborhood of the city of Balkh , which was part of

6365-432: The middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism . Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian. The native name of Middle Persian was Parsig or Parsik , after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars ", Old Persian Parsa , New Persian Fars . This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following

6460-411: The most widely spoken. The term Persian is an English derivation of Latin Persiānus , the adjectival form of Persia , itself deriving from Greek Persís ( Περσίς ), a Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa ( 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿 ), which means " Persia " (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-day Fars ). According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the term Persian as

6555-599: The names of "Nasir" and "Khusraw", the latter being a Persian name, which according to historian Dr C. Alice Hunsberger "would certainly have been a point of great pride to this defender of Persian culture and language." His name is also transliterated as Nasir-i Khusraw and Naser-e Khosrow. Nasir is the subject of many tales, including a fake autobiography that bears his name and has been passed around between Isma'ilis and non-Isma'ilis for many centuries. The writings of Nasir that are still in existence offer insightful information about his life and philosophy. Yet, it appears that

6650-411: The nationalist movement of the time. The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the many Arabic , Russian , French , and Greek loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created

6745-448: The necessity of protecting the Persian language against foreign words, and to the standardization of Persian orthography , were under the reign of Naser ed Din Shah of the Qajar dynasty in 1871. After Naser ed Din Shah, Mozaffar ed Din Shah ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903. This association officially declared that it used Persian and Arabic as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal

6840-509: The necessity of shunning the company of fools and double-faced friends, on the deceptive allurements of the world and the secret snares of ambitious men craving for rank and wealth. It concludes with an imaginary vision of a beautiful work of spirits who have stripped off the fetters of earthly cares and sorrows and revel in the pure light of divine wisdom and love. If we compare this with a similar allegory in Nasir's Diwan , which culminates in

6935-414: The next period most officially around the Sasanian Empire , and New era being the period afterward down to present day. According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language" for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian

7030-732: The northern part of Greece). Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken. However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and throughout the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary. The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" ( Rumili Farsisi ). As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became

7125-542: The official language of the Achaemenid kings. Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai , presumably Medians) are first mentioned in

7220-474: The praise of Mustansir, we are fairly entitled to look upon it as a covert allusion to the eminent men who revealed to the poet in Cairo the secrets of the Isma'ili faith, and showed him what he considered the heavenly ladder to superior knowledge and spiritual bliss. A similar series of excellent teachings on practical wisdom and the blessings of a virtuous life, only of a more severe and uncompromising character,

7315-638: The present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted Parthian language , which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use. New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from eastern northern and northern Iranian languages such as Sogdian and especially Parthian. The transition to New Persian

7410-432: The quiet solitude of Yumgan, and his utter despondency again in seeing himself despised by his former associates and excluded from participation in the glorious contest of life. Scattered through all these alternating outbursts of hope and despair, there are lessons of morality, and solemn warnings against the tricks and perfidy of the world, the vanity of all earthly splendour and greatness, the folly and injustice of men, and

7505-588: The region during the following centuries. Persian continued to act as a courtly language for various empires in Punjab through the early 19th century serving finally as the official state language of the Sikh Empire , preceding British conquest and the decline of Persian in South Asia. Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent. Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in

7600-602: The reign of Sultan Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poet Hafez ; a poem which can be found in the Divan of Hafez today. A Bengali dialect emerged among the common Bengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known as Dobhashi ; meaning mixed language . Dobhashi Bengali

7695-613: The site of a flourishing Persianate linguistic and literary culture. The 16th-century Ottoman Aşık Çelebi (died 1572), who hailed from Prizren in modern-day Kosovo , was galvanized by the abundant Persian-speaking and Persian-writing communities of Vardar Yenicesi, and he referred to the city as a "hotbed of Persian". Many Ottoman Persianists who established a career in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) pursued early Persian training in Saraybosna, amongst them Ahmed Sudi . The Persian language influenced

7790-450: The spiritual interpretation of the tradition of a six day creation of the physical universe. He writes about how the story of creation is a symbolic explanation of what happened when God created the universe. Interpreting it literally is something human beings do based on the limits of their intellects. In the scriptures, when it says that God began the work of creating the world on Sunday, completed it on Friday, and then rested on Saturday, it

7885-573: The standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as Tajik ( тоҷикӣ , tojikī ) since the time of the Soviet Union . It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses

7980-717: The standard Persian. The Hazaragi dialect (in Central Afghanistan and Pakistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan), Basseri (in Southern Iran), and the Tehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility . Nevertheless,

8075-438: The structure, it was renovated in 1697. Safarnama (The Book of Travels) is his most famous work. He visited dozens of cities in about seven years (March 6, 1046 – October 23, 1052) and wrote comprehensively about them, including details about colleges, caravanserais, mosques, scientists, kings, the public, the population, the area of the cities, and, of course, his interesting memories. After 1000 years, his Safarnama

8170-485: The use of Farsi in foreign languages. Etymologically, the Persian term Farsi derives from its earlier form Pārsi ( Pārsik in Middle Persian ), which in turn comes from the same root as the English term Persian . In the same process, the Middle Persian toponym Pārs ("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars. The phonemic shift from /p/ to /f/ is due to the influence of Arabic in

8265-532: The western wall of the Al-Aqsa compound have confirmed that the causeway crossed from an elevated position over the main street, which located along and adjacent to the western wall. Its purpose was of offering access to the compound without the need to descend into the valley and climb back up on the Temple Mount. For this reason, some leading archaeologists proposed in the 1990s that the Chain Gate aand

8360-568: Was Abu Mu'in Hamid al-Din Nasir ibn Khusraw ibn Harith al-Qubadiyani al-Marvazi, which he would generally refer himself by in his prose philosophical works. In his book Safarnama , he mostly calls himself "Nasir", and in his poetry he mostly uses the pen-name "Hujjat", a title meaning "proof", which he had received by the Isma'ili missionary organisation in Cairo . In his poetry he also sometimes use

8455-650: Was a key figure in the spread of Isma'ilism in Central Asia . He is with great reverence called "Pir" or "Shah Sayyid Nasir" by the Isma'ili community of Badakhshan (split between Afghanistan and Tajikistan ) and their branches in northern Pakistan , who all consider him to be their founder. Devotees that visit Nasir Khusraw's mausoleum also refer him by other names than "Nasir Khusraw", such as shāh (king), shāh-i buzurgvār (great king), mawlā (guardian), shīd-i Yumgān (sun of Yumgan), and uqāb-i Yumgān (eagle of Yumgan). The latter refers to one of Nasir Khusraw's poems, written to offer moral advice; The narrative, which

8550-597: Was already complete by the era of the three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, the Tahirid dynasty (820–872), Saffarid dynasty (860–903), and Samanid Empire (874–999). Abbas of Merv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the New Persian tongue and after him the poems of Hanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time. The first poems of

8645-526: Was an Isma'ili poet, philosopher, traveler, and missionary ( da'i ) for the Isma'ili Fatimid Caliphate . Despite being one of the most prominent Isma'ili philosophers and theologians of the Fatimids and the writer of many philosophical works intended for only the inner circle of the Isma'ili community, Nasir is best known to the general public as a poet and writer who ardently supported his native Persian tongue as an artistic and scientific language. All of Nasir's philosophical Isma'ili works are in Persian,

8740-597: Was patronised and given official status under the Sultans of Bengal , and was a popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion. Following the defeat of the Hindu Shahi dynasty, classical Persian was established as a courtly language in the region during the late 10th century under Ghaznavid rule over the northwestern frontier of the subcontinent . Employed by Punjabis in literature, Persian achieved prominence in

8835-500: Was probably built by Herod the Great . The current Street of the Chain leading to the gate is supported by a number of stone arches, now situated underground. In the 1990s, the date of the oldest surviving parts of this viaduct or causeway (sometimes called a "bridge") was still a matter of debate, with a Roman-period date being less well accepted than a later, Byzantine or rather Early Muslim-period one. Archaeological excavations along

8930-613: Was taught in state schools, and was also offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas . Persian learning was also widespread in the Ottoman-held Balkans ( Rumelia ), with a range of cities being famed for their long-standing traditions in the study of Persian and its classics, amongst them Saraybosna (modern Sarajevo , Bosnia and Herzegovina), Mostar (also in Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Vardar Yenicesi (or Yenice-i Vardar, now Giannitsa , in

9025-492: Was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such as rāh-āhan ( راه‌آهن ) for "railway", were printed in Soltani Newspaper ; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention. A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in

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