107-654: The Ghaznavid dynasty ( Persian : غزنویان Ġaznaviyān ) was a Persianate Muslim dynasty of Turkic mamluk origin. It ruled the Ghaznavid Empire or the Empire of Ghazni from 977 to 1186, which at its at its greatest extent, extended from the Oxus to the Indus Valley . The dynasty was founded by Sabuktigin upon his succession to the rule of Ghazna after the death of his father-in-law, Alp Tigin , who
214-655: 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
321-418: 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
428-609: A division of power, to which Ismail refused. Mahmud marched on Ghazna and subsequently Ismail was defeated and captured in 998 at the Battle of Ghazni . In 998, Mahmud , son of Sebuktigin, succeeded to the governorship, and Ghazni and the Ghaznavid dynasty became perpetually associated with him. He emphasized his loyalty in a letter to the caliph, saying that the Samanids had only been replaced because of their treason. Mahmud received
535-505: 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
642-417: 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
749-536: 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
856-808: A restriction of its holdings to modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India. In 1151, Sultan Bahram Shah lost Ghazni to the Ghurid sultan Ala al-Din Husayn . The Ghaznavids retook Ghazni, but lost the city to the Ghuzz Turks who in turn lost it to Muhammad of Ghor . In response, the Ghaznavids fled to Lahore, their regional capital. In 1186, Lahore was conquered by the Ghurid sultan, Muhammad of Ghor, with its Ghaznavid ruler, Khusrau Malik , imprisoned and later executed. Two military families arose from
963-601: A result, Ghazni developed into a great centre of Arabic learning. With Sultan Mahmud's invasions of North India , Persian culture was established at Lahore, which later produced the famous poet, Masud Sa'd Salman . Lahore, under Ghaznavid rule in the 11th century, attracted Persian scholars from Khorasan, India and Central Asia and became a major Persian cultural centre. It was also during Mahmud's reign that Ghaznavid coinage began to have bilingual legends consisting of Arabic and Devanagari script. The entire range of Persianate institutions and customs that would come to characterize
1070-562: A span of nine years, four more kings claimed the throne of Ghazni. In 1058, Mas'ud's son Ibrahim , a great calligrapher who wrote the Koran with his own pen, became king. Ibrahim re-established a truncated empire on a firmer basis by arriving at a peace agreement with the Seljuks and a restoration of cultural and political linkages. Under Ibrahim and his successors the empire enjoyed a period of sustained tranquility. Shorn of its western land, it
1177-599: 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
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#17327659673801284-664: 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
1391-628: 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
1498-850: 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
1605-675: 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
1712-425: 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
1819-460: 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
1926-475: 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 ),
2033-585: 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
2140-495: 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
2247-491: 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
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#17327659673802354-506: 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
2461-550: The Abbasid Caliphate , the Ghaznavid administrative traditions and military practice came from the Abbasids. The Arabian horses , at least in the earliest campaign, were still substantial in Ghaznavid military incursions, especially in dashing raids deep into hostile territory. There is a record of '6000 Arab horse' being sent against king Anandapala in 1008, and evidence of this Arabian cavalry persists until 1118 under
2568-668: 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
2675-663: The Ghurids until the Turko-Afghans successfully established themselves in the Delhi Sultanate . نصر الدين Defender of the Faith ( Tokhara Yabghus , Turk Shahis ) 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
2782-649: The Hindu Shahi in the Battle of Peshawar . In 1004-5, he invaded the Principality of Bhatiya and in 1006 the neighbouring Emirate of Multan . In 1008-9, he again vanquished the Hindu Shahis at the Battle of Chach , and established Governors in the conquered areas. In India, the Ghaznavids were called Turushkas ("Turks") or Hammiras (from the Arabic Amir "Commander"). In 1018, he laid waste
2889-570: 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
2996-635: The Mediterranean . The Ghaznavid rulers are generally credited with spreading Islam into the Indian subcontinent . They were, however, unable to hold power for long and by 1040 the Seljuk Empire had taken over their Persian domains and a century later the Ghurids took over their remaining sub-continental lands. The Ghaznavid conquests facilitated the beginning of the Turko-Afghan period into India, which would be further conducted by
3103-680: The Samanid Empire . The historian Abu'l-Fadl Bayhaqi 's Tarikh-e Beyhaqi , written in the latter half of the 11th century, is an example. Although the Ghaznavids were Turkic and their military leaders were generally of the same stock, as a result of the original involvement of Sebuktigin and Mahmud of Ghazni in Samanid affairs and in the Samanid cultural environment, the dynasty became thoroughly Persianized, so that in practice one cannot consider their rule over Iran one of foreign domination. They also copied their administrative system from
3210-674: 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
3317-713: 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
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3424-491: 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
3531-541: 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 ,
3638-681: 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
3745-680: The Ghaznavid Empire. Mahmud carried out seventeen expeditions through northern India to establish his control and set up tributary states, and his raids also resulted in the looting of a great deal of plunder. He established his authority from the borders of Ray to Samarkand , from the Caspian Sea to the Yamuna . During Mahmud's reign (997–1030), the Ghaznavids settled 4,000 Turkmen families near Farana in Khorasan. By 1027, due to
3852-581: The Ghaznavid governor in Lahore . Due to their access to the Indus-Ganges plains , the Ghaznavids, during the 11th and 12th centuries, developed the first Muslim army to use war elephants in battle. The elephants were protected by armour plating on their fronts. The use of these elephants was a foreign weapon in other regions that the Ghaznavids fought in, particularly in Central Asia. Although
3959-565: 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
4066-543: 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
4173-530: 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
4280-425: 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
4387-401: 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
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4494-886: 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,
4601-439: The Samanid decline. Samanid weakness attracted into Transoxiana the Karluks , a Turkic people who had recently converted to Islam. They occupied Bukhara in 992, establishing in Transoxania the Kara-Khanid Khanate . Alp Tigin's died in 963, and after two ghulam governors and three years, his slave Sabuktigin became the governor of Ghazna. Sabuktigin lived as a mamluk , Turkic slave-soldier, during his youth and later married
4708-417: The Samanids. In terms of cultural championship and the support of Persian poets, they were more Persian than their ethnically-Iranian rivals, the Buyid dynasty , whose support of Arabic letters in preference to Persian is well known. The 16th century Persian historian, Firishta , records Sabuktigin's genealogy as descended from the Sasanian kings : "Subooktu-geen, the son of Jookan, the son of Kuzil-Hukum,
4815-428: 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
4922-427: 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)
5029-407: 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
5136-487: The Seljuks, who came to the aid of Bahram. Ghaznavid struggles with the Ghurids continued in subsequent years as they nibbled away at Ghaznavid territory, and Ghazni and Zabulistan were lost to a group of Oghuz Turks before being captured by the Ghurids. Ghazni fell to the Ghurids around 1170. After the fall of Ghazni in 1163, the Ghaznavids established themselves in Lahore , their regional capital for Indian territories since its conquest by Mahmud of Ghazni, which became
5243-406: The Turkic slave-guards of the Samanid Empire , the Simjurids and Ghaznavids, who ultimately proved disastrous to the Samanids. The Simjurids received an appanage in the Kohistan region of eastern Khorasan. The Samanid generals Alp Tigin and Abu al-Hasan Simjuri competed for the governorship of Khorasan and control of the Samanid Empire by placing on the throne emirs they could dominate after
5350-450: The Turkic soldiery unwilling to take up arms. Sabuktigin reformed the system making them all a mustaghall -type fief. In 976, he ended the conflict between two Turkic ghulams at Bust and restored the original ruler. Later that same year, Sabuktigin campaigned against Qusdar, catching the ruler(possibly Mu'tazz b. Ahmad) off guard and obtaining an annual tribute from him. After the death of Sabuktigin, his son by Alptigin's daughter, Ismail ,
5457-426: The Turkmen raiding neighbouring settlements, the governor of Tus, Abu l'Alarith Arslan Jadhib, led military strikes against them. The Turkmen were defeated and scattered to neighbouring lands. Still, as late as 1033, Ghaznavid governor Tash Farrash executed fifty Turkmen chiefs for raids into Khorasan. Mahmud of Ghazni led incursions deep into India , as far as Mathura , Kannauj and Somnath . In 1001, he defeated
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#17327659673805564-415: The administrative apparatus which gave it shape came very speedily to be within the Perso-Islamic tradition of statecraft and monarchical rule, with the ruler as a distant figure, buttressed by divine favor, ruling over a mass of traders, artisans, peasants, etc., whose prime duty was obedience in all respects but above all in the payment of taxes. The fact that the personnel of the bureaucracy which directed
5671-441: 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
5778-435: The area south of the Hindu Kush in what is now Afghanistan. During the rule of Sultan Mahmud, a new, larger military training center was established in Bost (now Lashkar Gah ). This area was known for blacksmiths where war weapons were made. After capturing and conquering the Punjab region , the Ghaznavids began to employ Hindus in their army. The Indian soldiers, whom Romila Thapar presumed to be Hindus , were one of
5885-416: The capital the next year. Ala al-Din Husayn , a Ghorid King, conquered the city in 1151, in revenge for his brother Kutubbuddin's death, who was son-in-law of the king but was publicly punished and killed for a minor offence. Ala al-Din Husayn then razed the city, burning it for 7 days, after which he became known as "Jahānsuz" ( World Burner ). Ghazni was restored to the Ghaznavids by the intervention of
5992-454: The city as a Samanid authority. The Simjurids enjoyed control of Khorasan south of the Amu Darya but were hard-pressed by a third great Iranian dynasty, the Buyid dynasty , and were unable to survive the collapse of the Samanids and the subsequent rise of the Ghaznavids. The struggles of the Turkic slave generals for mastery of the throne with the help of shifting allegiance from the court's ministerial leaders both demonstrated and accelerated
6099-405: The city of Mathura , which was "ruthlessly sacked, ravaged, desecrated and destroyed". According to Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah , writing an "History of Hindustan" in the 16th-17th century, the city of Mathura was the richest in India. When it was attacked by Mahmud of Ghazni, "all the idols" were burnt and destroyed during a period of twenty days, gold and silver was smelted for booty, and the city
6206-457: 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
6313-512: 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
6420-400: The components of the army with their commander called sipahsalar -i-Hinduwan and lived in their own quarter of Ghazna practicing their own religion. Indian soldiers under their commander Suvendhray remained loyal to Mahmud. They were also used against a Turkic rebel, with the command given to a Hindu named Tilak according to Baihaki . Like the other dynasties that rose out of the remains of
6527-445: The daughter of his master Alptigin , who fled to Ghazna following a failed coup attempt, and conquered the city from the local Lawik rulers in 962. After Alptigin death, his son Abu Ishaq Ibrahim governed Ghazna for three years. His death was followed by the reign of a former ghulam of Alptigin, Bilgetigin. Bilgetigin's rule was so harsh the populace invited Abu Bakr Lawik back. It was through Sabuktigin's military ability that Lawik
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#17327659673806634-428: The day-to-day running of the state, and which raised the revenue to support the sultans' life-style and to finance the professional army, were Persians who carried on the administrative traditions of the Samanids, only strengthened this conception of secular power. Persianisation of the state apparatus was accompanied by the Persianisation of high culture at the Ghaznavid court... The level of literary creativity
6741-408: The death of Abd al-Malik I in 961. His death created a succession crisis between his brothers. A court party instigated by men of the scribal class – civilian ministers rather than Turkic generals – rejected the candidacy of Alp Tigin for the Samanid throne. Mansur I was installed instead, and Alp Tigin prudently retired to south of the Hindu Kush , where he captured Ghazna and became the ruler of
6848-431: The dynasty was of Central Asian Turkic origin, it was thoroughly Persianised in terms of language, culture, literature and habits and has been regarded as a "Persian dynasty". According to Clifford Edmund Bosworth : The Ghaznavid sultans were ethnically Turkish , but the sources, all in Arabic or Persian , do not allow us to estimate the persistence of Turkish practices and ways of thought amongst them. Yet given
6955-430: 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
7062-422: The fact that the essential basis of the Ghaznavids' military support always remained their Turkish soldiery, there must always have been a need to stay attuned to their troops' needs and aspirations; also, there are indications of the persistence of some Turkish literary culture under the early Ghaznavids (Köprülüzade, pp. 56–57). The sources do make it clear, however, that the sultans' exercise of political power and
7169-421: The following phylogenetic classification: Ismail of Ghazni Ismail of Ghazni ( Persian : اسماعیل غزنوی ) was the emir of Ghazna , reigning for 7 months, from August 997 until March 998. He succeeded his father emir Sabuktigin , who died of an illness acquired in Balkh during a campaign in the Samanid civil war. Ismail was designated his successor by Sabuktigin on his death-bed, while Mahmud ,
7276-444: 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
7383-421: 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
7490-427: The governorship of Khurasan and titles of Yamin al-Dawla and Amin al-Milla. As a representative of caliphal authory, he championed Sunni Islam by campaigning against the Ismaili and Shi'ite Buyids. He completed the conquest of the Samanid and Shahi territories, including the Ismaili Kingdom of Multan , Sindh , as well as some Buwayhid territory. By all accounts, the rule of Mahmud was the golden age and height of
7597-410: 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
7704-522: The magnificence of the capital and of the conqueror's munificent support of literature. Mahmud died in April 1030 and had chosen his son, Mohammed, as his successor. Mahmud left the empire to his son Mohammed, who was mild, affectionate and soft. His brother, Mas'ud , asked for three provinces that he had won by his sword, but his brother did not consent. Mas'ud had to fight his brother, and he became king, blinding and imprisoning Mohammed as punishment. Mas'ud
7811-432: 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
7918-536: 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
8025-466: 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
8132-499: 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
8239-601: The new capital of the Late Ghaznavids. Ghaznavid power in northwestern India continued until the Ghurid conquest of Lahore by Muhammad of Ghor in 1186, deposing the last Ghaznavid ruler Khusrau Malik . Both Khusrau Malik and his son were imprisoned and summarily executed in Firozkoh in 1191, extinguishing the Ghaznavid lineage. The core of the Ghaznavid army was primarily made up of Turks, as well as thousands of native Afghans who were trained and assembled from
8346-414: 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
8453-732: 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
8560-542: 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
8667-512: The older brother who was involved in the Samanid civil war, was stationed in Nishapur . Upon receiving this news Mahmud of Ghazni contested Ismail's right to the throne and divested his charge of Nishapur to his uncle Borghuz and younger brother Nur-ud-Din Yusuf and marched upon Ghazna in what is now Afghanistan . Mahmud won the Battle of Ghazni and took the crown from Ismail. Ismail spent
8774-539: The poet Farrukhi traveled from his home province to work for them. The poet Unsuri's short collection of poetry was dedicated to Sultan Mahmud and his brothers Nasr and Yaqub. Another poet of the Ghaznavid court, Manuchehri , wrote numerous poems about the merits of drinking wine. Sultan Mahmud, modelling the Samanid Bukhara as a cultural center, made Ghazni into a center of learning, inviting Ferdowsi and al-Biruni. He even attempted to persuade Avicenna , but
8881-621: The political economy of most of India would be implemented by the later Ghaznavids. The Persian culture established by the Ghaznavids in Ghazna and Eastern Afghanistan survived the Ghurid invasion in the 12th century and endured until the invasion of the Mongols. At its height, the Ghaznavid empire grew from the Oxus to the Indus Valley and was ruled from 977 to 1186. The history of the empire
8988-694: 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
9095-588: 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
9202-602: 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
9309-613: 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
9416-489: The son of Kuzil-Arslan, the son of Ferooz, the son of Yezdijird , king of Persia." However, modern historians believe this was an attempt to connect himself with the history of old Persia. Historian Bosworth explains: "In fact with the adoption of Persian administrative and cultural ways the Ghaznavids threw off their original Turkish steppe background and became largely integrated with the Perso-Islamic tradition." As
9523-512: 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
9630-717: 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,
9737-558: The state became apparent when he died in 1115, with internal strife between his sons ending with the ascension of Sultan Bahram Shah as a Seljuk vassal. Bahram Shah defeated his brother Arslan for the throne at the Battle of Ghazni in 1117. Sultan Bahram Shah was the last Ghaznavid King, ruling Ghazni , the first and main Ghaznavid capital, for thirty-five years. In 1148 he was defeated in Ghazni by Sayf al-Din Suri , but he recaptured
9844-455: The sultan for a while as his chief secretary. The Ghaznavids thus present the phenomenon of a dynasty of Turkish slave origin which became culturally Persianised to a perceptibly higher degree than other contemporary dynasties of Turkish origin such as Saljuqs and Qarakhanids . Persian literary culture enjoyed a renaissance under the Ghaznavids during the 11th century. The Ghaznavid court was so renowned for its support of Persian literature that
9951-485: 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
10058-597: 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
10165-595: Was an ex-general of the Samanid Empire from Balkh . Sabuktigin's son, Mahmud of Ghazni , expanded the Ghaznavid Empire to the Amu Darya , the Indus River and the Indian Ocean in the east and to Rey and Hamadan in the west. Under the reign of Mas'ud I , the Ghaznavid dynasty began losing control over its western territories to the Seljuk Empire after the Battle of Dandanaqan in 1040, resulting in
10272-619: Was burnt down. In 1018 Mahmud also captured Kanauj , the capital of the Pratiharas , and then confronted the Chandelas , from whom he obtained the payment of tribute. In 1026, he raided and plundered the Somnath temple , taking away a booty of 20 million dinars. The wealth brought back from Mahmud's Indian expeditions to Ghazni was enormous, and contemporary historians ( e.g. , Abolfazl Beyhaghi , Ferdowsi ) give glowing descriptions of
10379-420: Was elevated from prison to the throne, while Mas'ud was consigned to a dungeon after a reign of ten years and was assassinated in 1040. Mas'ud's son, Madood, was governor of Balkh, and in 1040, after hearing of his father's death, he came to Ghazni to claim his kingdom. He fought with the sons of the blind Mohammed and was victorious. However, the empire soon disintegrated and most kings did not submit to Madood. In
10486-576: Was given Ghazna. Another son, Abu'l-Muzaffar Nasr, was given the governorship of Bust, while in Khorasan, the eldest son Mahmud, was given command of the army. Sabuktigin's intent was to ensure governorships for his family, despite the decaying influence of the Samanid Empire, and did not consider his dynasty as independent. Ismail, upon gaining his inheritance, quickly traveled to Bust and did homage to Emir Abu'l-Harith Mansur b. Nuh. Mahmud, who had been left out of any significant inheritance, proposed
10593-630: Was increasingly sustained by riches accrued from raids across Northern India, where it faced stiff resistance from Indian rulers such as the Paramara of Malwa and the Gahadvala of Kannauj . He ruled until 1098. Mas'ud III became king for sixteen years, with no major event in his lifetime. Mas'ud built the Palace of Sultan Mas'ud III and one of the Ghazni Minarets . Signs of weakness in
10700-552: Was just as high under Ebrāhīm and his successors up to Bahrāmšāh, with such poets as Abu’l-Faraj Rūnī, Sanāʾī, ʿOṯmān Moḵtārī, Masʿūd-e Saʿd-e Salmān, and Sayyed Ḥasan Ḡaznavī. We know from the biographical dictionaries of poets (taḏkera-ye šoʿarā) that the court in Lahore of Ḵosrow Malek had an array of fine poets, none of whose dīvāns has unfortunately survived, and the translator into elegant Persian prose of Ebn Moqaffaʿ’s Kalīla wa Demna, namely Abu’l-Maʿālī Naṣr-Allāh b. Moḥammad, served
10807-538: 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
10914-612: Was refused. Mahmud preferred that his fame and glory be publicized in Persian and hundreds of poets assembled at his court. He brought whole libraries from Rayy and Isfahan to Ghazni and even demanded that the Khwarizmshah court send its men of learning to Ghazni. Due to his invasion of Rayy and Isfahan, Persian literary production was inaugurated in Azerbaijan and Iraq . The Ghaznavids continued to develop historical writing in Persian that had been initiated by their predecessors,
11021-554: Was removed, Bilgetigin was exiled, and Sabuktigin gained the governorship. Once established as governor of Ghazna, Sabuktigin was asked to intervene in Khurasan, at the insistence of the Samanid emir, and after a victorious campaign received the governorships of Balkh, Tukharistan, Bamiyan, Ghur and Gharchistan. Sabuktigin inherited a governorship in turmoil. In Zabulistan, the typical military fief system( mustaghall ) were being changed into permanent ownership( tamlik ) which resulted in
11128-613: 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
11235-492: 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
11342-537: Was unable to preserve the empire and following a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Dandanaqan in 1040, he lost all the Ghaznavid lands in Persia and Central Asia to the Seljuks, plunging the realm into a "time of troubles". His last act was to collect all his treasures from his forts in hope of assembling an army and ruling from India, but his own forces plundered the wealth and he proclaimed his blind brother as king again. The two brothers now exchanged positions: Mohammed
11449-471: Was written by Abu Nasr al-Utbi, who documented the Ghaznavid's achievements, including regaining lost territory from their rivals, the Kara-Khanids , in present-day Iran and Afghanistan. In addition to the wealth accumulated through raiding Indian cities, and exacting tribute from Indian rajas , the Ghaznavids also benefited from their position as an intermediary along the trade routes between China and
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