116-566: The Ganj-i-Sawai ( Persian / Hindustani : Ganj-i-Sawai , in English "Exceeding Treasure", often anglicized as Gunsway ) was an armed Ghanjah dhow (trading ship) belonging to the Mughals . During Aurangzeb 's reign, it was captured on 7 September 1695 by the English pirate Henry Avery en route from present-day Mocha , Yemen to Surat , India. It was built on the order of Empress Mariam-uz-Zamani , great grandmother of Aurengzeb, after
232-578: A Mughal convoy of 25 ships bound for India had eluded the pirate fleet during the night, the following day they encountered Ganj-i-Sawai and her escort Fateh Muhammed with both stragglers passing the straits en route to Surat . Every and his men attacked Fateh Muhammed , which had earlier repulsed an attack by Amity , killing Captain Tew. Perhaps intimidated by Fancy ' s 46 guns or weakened by their earlier battle with Tew, Fateh Muhammed ' s crew put up little resistance, and Every's pirates sacked
348-655: 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
464-558: A contemporary Indian historian who was in Surat at the time, wrote that, as Every's men boarded the ship, Ganj-i-sawai ' s captain ran below decks where he armed the slave girls and sent them up to fight the pirates. Khafi Khan's account of the battle, appearing in his multivolume work The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians , places blame squarely on Captain Ibrahim for the failure, writing: "The Christians are not bold in
580-418: 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
696-473: A different denomination) to buy supplies, and soon parted company. Fancy sailed for Bourbon , arriving in November 1695. Here the crew shared out £1,000 (roughly £93,300 to £128,000 today) per man, more money than most sailors made in their lifetime. On top of this, each man received an additional share of gemstones . As Every had promised, his men now found themselves glutted with "gold enough to dazzle
812-465: A different ship. The Ganj-i-Sawai heist and its loot feature prominently in the 2016 video game Uncharted 4: A Thief's End . Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of
928-503: A free pardon to any informer who disclosed his whereabouts. When the EIC later doubled that reward (to £1000), the first worldwide manhunt in recorded history was underway. The Crown also promised to exempt Every from all of the Acts of Grace (pardons) and amnesties it would subsequently issue to other pirates (for instance in 1698 ). As it was by now known that Every was sheltering somewhere in
1044-534: A gift once his crew unloaded the cargo. For Trott, this proved a tempting offer. The Nine Years' War had been raging for eight years, and the island, which the Royal Navy had not visited in several years, was perilously underpopulated. Trott knew that the French had recently captured Exuma , 140 miles (230 km) to the southeast, and were now headed for New Providence. With only sixty or seventy men living in
1160-563: A hundred casualties, although these figures are uncertain. According to Khafi Khan, the victorious pirates subjected their captives to an orgy of horror that lasted several days, raping and killing their terrified prisoners deck by deck. The pirates reportedly utilized torture to extract information from their prisoners, who had hidden the treasure in the ship's holds. Some of the Muslim women apparently committed suicide to avoid violation, while those women who did not kill themselves or die from
1276-434: A key piece of evidence. Burgess argues that when the proclamation for the apprehension of Every and his crew reached Trott, he was forced to either put a warrant out for Every's arrest or, failing to do so, effectively disclose his association with the pirate. Preferring the former choice for the sake of his reputation, he alerted the authorities as to the pirates' whereabouts, but was able to tip off Every and his crew before
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#17327647228401392-450: 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
1508-417: 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
1624-516: A pardon from Trott or from the governor of Jamaica , his crew split up, some remaining in the West Indies, the majority heading to North America, and the rest, including Every himself, returning to England. Of these, some sailed aboard the sloop Isaac , while Every and about twenty other men sailed in the sloop Sea Flower (captained by Faro) to Ireland towards the end of June 1696. They aroused suspicions while unloading their treasure, and two of
1740-536: 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
1856-653: A small squadron, and they were able to capture up to £600,000 in precious metals and jewels, equivalent to around £115 million in 2024. This caused considerable damage to England's fragile relations with the Mughals , and a combined bounty of £1,000—an immense sum at the time—was offered by the Privy Council and the East India Company for his capture, leading to the first worldwide manhunt in recorded history. On August 1695, Every, captaining
1972-545: 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
2088-664: 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
2204-628: 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
2320-850: 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
2436-606: Is at odds with the deposition of Philip Middleton, who testified that "all of the Charles ' s men, except Every, boarded [ Fateh Muhammed and Ganj-i-sawai ] by Turns." At any rate, the survivors were left aboard their emptied ships, which the pirates set free to continue on their voyage back to India. The loot from Ganj-i-sawai , the greatest ship in the Mughal fleet, totaled somewhere between £200,000 and £600,000, including 500,000 gold and silver pieces. All told, it may have been
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#17327647228402552-675: 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
2668-425: 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
2784-460: 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
2900-475: 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 ),
3016-585: 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
3132-425: Is taken, this would be equivalent to $ 400 million, approximately rivaling the raid committed by Taylor and Levasseur. In any case, if one accepts the EIC's estimate of £325,000, Rogoziński writes that even then "only two or three times in history did criminals take more valuable loot." Fateh Muhammed ' s cargo was valued to £50,000–60,000 according to the estimate provided by Dann at his trial; this amount
3248-495: 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
3364-450: Is worth some $ 30 million in modern currency. Every is known to have captured at least eleven vessels by September 1695, including Ganj-i-Sawai . Aside from Emperor Aurangzeb's fleet, one of the more fruitful prizes was Rampura , a Cambay trading ship that produced the "surprising haul of 1,700,000 rupees ." In 1695, Every set sail for the volcanic island of Perim to wait for an Indian fleet that would be passing soon. The fleet
3480-491: 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
3596-506: 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
Ganj-i-Sawai - Misplaced Pages Continue
3712-574: The Atlantic colonies , where he would likely find safety among corrupt colonial governors, he was out of the jurisdiction of the EIC. This made him a national problem. Accordingly, the Board of Trade was tasked with coordinating the manhunt for Every and his crew. Douglas R. Burgess argues in his 2009 book The Pirates' Pact: The Secret Alliances Between History's Most Notorious Buccaneers and Colonial America that Fancy had reached St. Thomas , where
3828-668: 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
3944-546: 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
4060-674: 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
4176-713: 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
4292-491: 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
4408-597: 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 ,
4524-463: The 3,200-ton Fateh Muhammed with ninety four cannons and 800 crew, were spotted passing the straits en route to Surat . Although the convoy had managed to elude the pirate fleet during the night, the pirates gave chase. Dolphin proved to be far too slow, lagging behind the rest of the pirate ships, so it was burned and the crew joined Every aboard Fancy . Amity and Susanna also proved to be poor ships: Amity fell behind and never again rejoined
4640-658: The 46-gun, 5th rate frigate Fancy , reached the Mandab Strait , where he teamed up with five other pirate ships, including Thomas Tew 's 8-gun, 46-man sloop-of-war Amity , Richard Want in a Brigantine Dolphin , Joseph Faro in Portsmouth Adventure , Thomas Wake in Susannah , and William Maze in Pearl . Although a Mughal convoy of 25 ships bound for India had eluded the pirate fleet during
4756-476: The Bahamas; the islands were sparsely populated, meaning that there was virtually no place to spend the money they had pirated. For the next several months the pirates spent most of their time living in relative boredom. By now Trott had stripped Fancy of everything valuable, and it was lost after being violently driven against some rocks, perhaps deliberately on the orders of Trott, who was eager to rid himself of
Ganj-i-Sawai - Misplaced Pages Continue
4872-681: 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
4988-566: The EIC's factories in India and imprisoned the officers, nearly ordering an armed attack against the English city of Bombay with the goal of forever expelling the English from India. To appease Aurangzeb, the EIC promised to pay all financial reparations, while Parliament declared the pirates hostis humani generis ("the enemy of humanity"). In mid-1696, the government issued a £500 bounty (approximately £92294.70 sterling as of November 2023, adjusted for inflation ) on Every's head and offered
5104-809: The EIC, sent a letter to the Lords of Trade , writing: It is certain the Pyrates, which these People affirm were all English, did do very barbarously by the People of the Ganj-i-sawai and Abdul Gofor's Ship, to make them confess where their Money was, and there happened to be a great Umbraws Wife (as Wee hear) related to the King, returning from her Pilgrimage to Mecha, in her old age. She they abused very much, and forced severall other Women, which Caused one person of Quality, his Wife and Nurse, to kill themselves to prevent
5220-487: The English, coming at a time of crisis for the East India Company (EIC), whose profits were still recovering from the disastrous Child's War . The EIC had seen its total annual imports drop from a peak of £800,000 in 1684, to just £30,000 in 1695, and Every's attack now threatened the very existence of English trade in India. When the damaged Ganj-i-sawai finally limped its way back to harbor in Surat, news of
5336-542: The Husbands seing them (and their being) ravished. Later accounts would tell of how Every himself had found "something more pleasing than jewels" aboard, usually reported to be Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb 's daughter or granddaughter. (According to contemporary EIC sources, Ganj-i-sawai was carrying a "relative" of the Emperor, though there is no evidence to suggest that it was his daughter and her retinue . ) However, this
5452-565: 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
5568-495: The Mughal Emperor by fully compensating his losses, and filed an insurance claim for £350,000, though Mughal authorities demanded this amount be doubled. The desire to see Every executed led to the first truly global manhunt in history, though he and the majority of his crew would never be caught. Six members of his crew were captured, tried, and executed, though they were not found guilty of seizing Ganj-i-Sawai , but rather
5684-543: 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
5800-530: 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
5916-425: 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
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#17327647228406032-401: 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
6148-832: 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,
6264-484: 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
6380-588: 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)
6496-407: 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
6612-418: The above reasons, others have criticized this position as being largely unsubstantiated. Historian Jan Rogoziński has called Cabo "the richest plunder ever captured by any pirate," estimating its reported treasure of £875,000 to be worth "more than $ 400 million." In comparison, the EIC's estimate of £325,000 for Ganj-i-Sawai ' s goods equals "at least $ 200 million." If the larger estimate of £600,000
6728-430: The actual battle. Ganj-i-sawai , captained by one Muhammad Ibrahim, was a fearsome opponent, mounting eighty guns and a musket -armed guard of four hundred, as well as six hundred other passengers. But the opening volley evened the odds, as Every's lucky broadside shot his enemy's mainmast by the board. With Ganj-i-sawai unable to escape, Fancy drew alongside. For a moment, a volley of Indian musket fire prevented
6844-441: 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
6960-415: The authorities arrived. Every's 113-person crew then fashioned their hasty escape, vanishing from the island with only twenty-four men ever captured, five of whom were executed. Every himself was never seen again. His last words to his men were a litany of conflicting stories of where he planned to go, likely intended to throw pursuers off his trail. It has been suggested that because Every was unable to buy
7076-408: The capture of her ship named Rahimi . In August 1695, Henry Every , captaining the 46-gun, 5th rate frigate Fancy , reached the Mandab Strait , where he teamed up with five other pirate ships, including Thomas Tew 's 8-gun, 46-man sloop-of-war Amity , Richard Want in Dolphin , Joseph Faro in Portsmouth Adventure , Thomas Wake in Susannah , and William Maze in Pearl . Although
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#17327647228407192-457: 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
7308-512: 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
7424-399: The crew, while Every's broadside shot his enemy's mainmast by the board. The larger Fancy drew alongside, and a number of her 113-man crew clambered aboard, overpowering the crew, passengers, and slaves of Ganj-i-Sawai . The victorious pirates then subjected their captives to several days of horror, murdering prisoners at will, and using torture to force them to reveal the location of
7540-414: The damages as possible. Others contend that the Mughal authorities' figure of £600,000 was a deliberate overestimate aimed at improving their compensation from the English. While some historians have argued that £325,000 was probably closer to the true value, partly because this agreed with the estimate provided by contemporary Scottish merchant Alexander Hamilton , then stationed in Surat, and partly for
7656-422: The entire Eastern Seaboard of North America . Every was elected admiral of the new six-ship pirate flotilla despite the fact that Tew had arguably more experience, and now found himself in command of over 440 men while they lay in wait for the Indian fleet. A convoy of twenty-five Grand Mughal ships, including the enormous 1,600-ton Ganj-i-sawai with eighty cannons and 1,100 crew, and its even larger escort,
7772-430: 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
7888-409: The eyes." However, this enormous victory had essentially made Every and his crew marked men, and there was a great deal of dispute among the crew about the best place to sail. The French and Danes decided to leave Every's crew, preferring to stay in Bourbon. The remaining men set course, after some dissension, for Nassau in the Bahamas , Every purchasing some ninety slaves shortly before sailing. Along
8004-428: The following phylogenetic classification: Capture of the Grand Mughal Fleet Pirate victory On 7 September 1695, English pirate Henry Every captured the 25-ship convoy of Grand Mughal vessels making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca , including the treasure-laden Ghanjah dhow Ganj-i-Sawai and its escort, Fateh Muhammed . Joining forces with several pirate vessels, Every found himself in command of
8120-444: 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
8236-421: 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
8352-512: The hold for him. The wealth of foreign-minted coins could not have escaped Trott. He must have known that the ship's crew were not merely unlicensed slavers, likely noting the patched-up battle damage on Fancy . When word eventually reached that the Royal Navy and the EIC were hunting for Fancy and that "Captain Bridgeman" was Every himself, Trott denied ever knowing anything about the pirates' history other than what they told him, adamant that
8468-431: The island's inhabitants. Lastly, there was also the bribe to consider, which was three times Trott's annual salary of £300. Trott called a meeting of Nassau's governing council, likely arguing that interloping was a fairly common crime and not a sufficient reason for turning away the men, whose presence now aided Nassau's security. The council agreed to allow Fancy to enter the harbor, apparently having never been told of
8584-447: The island's population "saw no reason to disbelieve them." This he argued despite the fact that the proclamation for the pirates' capture specifically warned that Every's crew could "probably be known and discovered by the great quantities of Gold and Silver of forreign Coines which they have with them." In the meantime, however, Every's men were free to frequent the town's pubs. Nevertheless, the crew soon found themselves disappointed with
8700-466: 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
8816-413: The middle of the Atlantic . The barren island was uninhabited, but the men were able to catch fifty of the sea turtles that crawled ashore to lay their eggs on the beach, providing them enough food for the rest of the voyage. However, about seventeen of Every's crew refused to go any further and were left behind on the island. The plunder of Emperor Aurangzeb's treasure ship had serious consequences for
8932-432: 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
9048-536: 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
9164-466: 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
9280-499: 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
9396-414: 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
9512-558: The night, the following day they encountered Ganj-i-Sawai and her escort Fateh Muhammed , which carried 94 guns herself and was even larger in size than the Ganj-i-Sawai but didn’t have as many crewmen, with both stragglers passing the straits en route to Surat . After the loss of the ship Rahimi , the Dowager Empress Mariam-uz-Zamani ordered the building of an even larger ship with 62 guns and
9628-732: 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
9744-542: 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
9860-454: The pirate armada, taking all Ganj-i-Sawai 's treasure with them. In response to the capture of Ganj-i-Sawai , the Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb, sent his army to five key ports for English trade in India — Bombay, Surat, Broach, Agra, and Ahmedabad — to close them. Aurangzeb effectively cut off English trade with India as he refused to reopen the ports until Henry Every was caught and executed for his crimes. The East India Company reconciled with
9976-549: The pirate flotilla (Tew having been killed in a battle with a Mughal ship), while the straggling Susanna eventually rejoined the group. The pirates caught up with Fateh Muhammed four or five days later. Perhaps intimidated by Fancy ' s forty-six guns or weakened by an earlier battle with Tew, Fateh Muhammed ' s crew put up little resistance; Every's pirates then sacked the ship, which had belonged to one Abdul Ghaffar, reportedly Surat's wealthiest merchant. While Fateh Muhammed ' s treasure of some £50,000 to £60,000
10092-601: The pirates from clambering aboard, but one of Ganj-i-sawai ' s powerful cannons exploded, instantly killing many and demoralizing the Indian crew, who ran below deck or fought to put out the spreading fires. Every's men took advantage of the confusion, quickly scaling Ganj-i-sawai ' s steep sides. The crew of Pearl , initially fearful of attacking Ganj-i-sawai , now took heart and joined Every's crew on Indian ship's deck. A ferocious hand-to-hand battle then ensued, lasting two to three hours. Muhammad Hashim Khafi Khan ,
10208-417: The pirates sold some of their treasure. In March 1696, Fancy anchored at Royal Island off Eleuthera , some 50 miles (80 km) northeast of New Providence in the Bahamas. Four of Every's men took a small boat to Nassau, the island's largest city and capital, with a letter addressed to the island's governor, Nicholas Trott . The letter explained that Fancy had just returned from the coast of Africa, and
10324-504: The pirates' attack on the pilgrims—a sacrilegious act that, like the raping of the Muslim women, was considered an unforgivable violation of the Hajj —spread quickly. The local Indian governor, Itimad Khan, immediately arrested the English subjects in Surat and kept them under close watch, partly as a punishment for their countrymen's depredations and partly for their own protection from the rioting locals. A livid Aurangzeb quickly closed four of
10440-526: The pirates' brutality were taken aboard Fancy . Although stories of brutality by the pirates have been dismissed by sympathizers as sensationalism, they are corroborated by the depositions Every's men provided following their capture. John Sparkes testified in his "Last Dying Words and Confession" that the "inhuman treatment and merciless tortures inflicted on the poor Indians and their women still affected his soul," and that, while apparently unremorseful for his acts of piracy, which were of "lesser concern," he
10556-439: The placement of over 400 musket men. It was named ' Ganj-I-Sawai ' and in its day was the most fearsome ship in the sea with the objective of trade and taking pilgrims to Mecca and on the way back converting all the goods into gold, and silver, and bringing back the pilgrims. The value of Ganj-i-Sawai ' s cargo is not known with certainty. Contemporary estimates differed by as much as £300,000, with £325,000 and £600,000 being
10672-638: 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
10788-451: The private bribe. Trott sent a letter to Every instructing him that his crew "were welcome to come and to go as they pleased." Soon after, Trott met Every personally on land in what must have been a closed-door meeting. Fancy was then handed over to the governor, who found that extra bribes—fifty tons of ivory tusks, one hundred barrels of gunpowder, several chests of firearms and ammunition, and an assortment of ship anchors—had been left in
10904-588: 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
11020-602: 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
11136-434: The richest ship ever taken by pirates. Every's pirates divided their treasure. Although it is sometimes reported that Every used his phenomenal skills of persuasion to convince the other captains to leave the Mughal loot in his care, quickly slipping away into the night with the entire haul, this comes from Charles Johnson 's A General History of the Pyrates , an unreliable account. More reliable sources indicate that there
11252-488: The ship and came away with £40,000 worth of treasure. Every then sailed in pursuit of Ganj-i-Sawai , overtaking her about eight days out of Surat. Ganj-i-Sawai was a fearsome opponent, mounting 62 guns and carrying four to five hundred guards armed with small arms, as well as six hundred other passengers. But the opening volley evened the odds, as one of the Ganj-i-Sawai ' s cannons exploded, killing some of its gunners and causing great confusion and demoralization among
11368-456: The ship's crew of 113 self-identified interlopers (unlicensed English traders east of the Cape of Good Hope) now needed some shore time. In return for letting Fancy enter the harbor and for keeping the men's violation of the EIC's trading monopoly a secret, the crew would pay Trott a combined total of £860. Their captain, a man named "Henry Bridgeman," also promised the ship to the governor as
11484-409: The ships' treasure. The loot from Ganj-i-Sawai totaled between £325,000 and £600,000, including "some 500,000 gold and silver pieces, plus numerous jeweled baubles and miscellaneous silver cups, trinkets, and so on." Several crews went home empty-handed: Tew was dead, Want and Wake's ships were too slow and never made it to the battle, Faro made it to the Ganj-i-Sawai but never engaged, and Maze
11600-613: 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
11716-573: 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
11832-717: 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,
11948-548: The town, half of whom served guard duty at any one time, there was no practical way to keep Nassau's twenty-eight cannons fully manned. However, if Fancy ' s crew stayed in Nassau it would more than double the island's male population, while the very presence of the heavily armed ship in the harbor might deter a French attack. On the other hand, turning away "Bridgeman" might spell disaster if his intentions turned violent, as his crew of 113 (plus ninety slaves) would easily defeat
12064-429: The traditionally cited numbers. The latter estimate was the value provided by the Mughal authorities, while the EIC estimated the loss at approximately £325,000, nevertheless filing a £600,000 insurance claim. It has been suggested that the EIC argued for the lowest estimate when paying reparations for Every's raid, with the company's president naturally wanting the most conservative estimate in order to pay as little for
12180-485: 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
12296-426: The use of the sword, and there were so many weapons on board the royal vessel that if the captain had made any resistance, they must have been defeated." In any case, after several hours of stubborn but leaderless resistance, the ship surrendered. In his defense, Captain Ibrahim would later report that "many of the enemy were sent to hell." Indeed, Every's outnumbered crew may have suffered anywhere from several to over
12412-500: The way, the slaves would be used for the ship's most difficult labor and, being "the most consistent item of trade," could later be traded for whatever the pirates wanted. In this way, Every's men avoided using their foreign currency, which might reveal their identities. Sailing from the Indian Ocean to the Bahamas was a journey halfway around the world, and Fancy was forced to stop along the way at Ascension Island , located in
12528-597: 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
12644-433: Was an exchange of clipped coins between the crews of Pearl and Fancy , with Every's outraged men confiscating Pearl ' s treasure. ( Portsmouth Adventure observed but did not participate in the battle with Ganj-i-sawai , so Faro's crew received none of its treasure.) Every's men then gave Mayes 2,000 pieces of eight (presumably an approximate sum as the treasure captured would have been in Indian and Arabian coins of
12760-780: Was easily the richest prize in Asia—perhaps in the entire world—and any pirates who managed to capture it would have been the perpetrators of the world's most profitable pirate raid. In August 1695, Fancy reached the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb , where Every joined forces with five other pirate captains: Tew on the sloop-of-war Amity , with a crew of about sixty men; Joseph Faro on Portsmouth Adventure , with sixty men; Richard Want on Dolphin , also with sixty men; William Mayes on Pearl , with thirty or forty men; and Thomas Wake on Susanna , with seventy men. All of these captains were carrying privateering commissions that implicated almost
12876-458: Was enough to buy Fancy fifty times over, once the treasure was shared out among the pirate fleet, Every's crew received only small shares. Every now sailed in pursuit of the second Mughal ship, Ganj-i-Sawai (meaning "Exceeding Treasure," and often Anglicized as Gunsway ), overtaking it a few days after the attack on Fateh Muhammed . With Amity and Dolphin left behind, only Fancy , Pearl , and Portsmouth Adventure were present for
12992-479: Was nevertheless repentant for the "horrid barbarities he had committed, though only on the bodies of the heathen." Philip Middleton testified that several of the Indian men were murdered, while they also "put several to the torture" and Every's men "lay with the women aboard, and there were several that, from their jewels and habits, seemed to be of better quality than the rest." Furthermore, on 12 October 1695, Sir John Gayer , then-governor of Bombay and president of
13108-597: 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
13224-418: Was present but Every took back their share of the loot after Pearl ' s crew tried to trade clipped coins to Fancy ' s men. Every had been asked by the other pirate captains to carry the treasure to an agreed upon location where it would be split among the various crews, as Fancy , with her 46 guns, carried the most fire power to guard it. Come nightfall, Every and his crew silently slipped away from
13340-613: 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
13456-492: 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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