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110-641: The Persian word darvīsh ( درویش ) is of ancient origin and descends from a Proto-Iranian word that appears in Avestan as drigu- , "needy, mendicant ", via Middle Persian driyosh . It has the same meaning as the Arabic word faqīr , meaning people whose contingency and utter dependence upon God is manifest in everything they do and every breath they take. Dervishes try to approach God by virtues and individual experience, rather than by religious scholarship. Many dervishes are mendicant ascetics who have taken

220-655: 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

330-560: A dervish, and wrote extensively about them, says in his Gulistan : Of what avail is frock, or rosary, Or clouted garment? Keep thyself but free From evil deeds, it will not need for thee To wear the cap of felt: a darwesh be In heart, and wear the cap of Tartary. Rumi writes in Book 1 of his Masnavi : Water that's poured inside will sink the boat While water underneath keeps it afloat. Driving wealth from his heart to keep it pure King Solomon preferred

440-418: 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

550-747: A formal ceremony known as the Sama . It is, however, also practiced by other orders. The Sama is only one of the many Sufi ceremonies performed to try to reach religious ecstasy ( majdhb , fana ). The name Mevlevi comes from the Persian poet Rumi , who was a dervish himself. This practice, though not intended as entertainment, has become a tourist attraction in Turkey. There are various orders of dervishes, almost all of which trace their origins from various Muslim saints and teachers, especially Imam Ali . Various orders and suborders have appeared and disappeared over

660-505: 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

770-417: 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

880-526: A more distinctly local origin, such as the prediction that the Mahdi would ride the sheikh's pony and erect a dome over his grave after his death. Drawing from aspects of the Sufi tradition that were intimately familiar to both his followers and his opponents, Muhammad Ahmad claimed that he had been appointed as the Mahdi by a prophetic assembly or hadra (Arabic: Al-Hadra Al-Nabawiyya, الحضرة النبوية). A hadra, in

990-865: A new base in the Nuba Mountains . The Mahdi and a party of his followers, the Ansār (helpers, known in the West as "the Dervishes "), made a long march to Kurdufan . There he gained numerous recruits, especially from the Baqqara , and notable leaders such as Sheikh Madibbo ibn Ali of the Rizeigat and Abdallahi ibn Muhammad of the Ta'aisha tribes. They were also joined by the Hadendoa Beja , who were rallied to

1100-593: A number of central beliefs about the Mahdi, including that he was created from the sacred light at the centre of Muhammad's heart, and that all living creatures had acknowledged the Mahdi's claim since his birth. Muhammad Ahmad framed the Mahdiyya as a return to the early days of Islam, when the Muslim community, or Ummah , was unified under the guidance of Muhammad and his immediate successors. Later, in order to distinguish his followers from adherents of other Sufi sects,

1210-536: 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

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1320-548: A result, Sheikh Sharif expelled his former student from the Samaniyya Order and, despite numerous attempts at reconciliation by Muhammad Ahmad, his mentor refused to make peace. After recognizing that the split with Sheikh Sharif was irreconcilable, Muhammad Ahmad approached another respected leader of the Samaniyya Order named Sheikh al-Qurashi wad al-Zayn. Muhammad Ahmad resumed his life of piety and religious devotion at Aba Island. During this period, he also traveled to

1430-599: 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

1540-715: A vast Islamic state extending from the Red Sea to Central Africa, and founded a movement that remained influential in Sudan a century later. From his announcement of the Mahdist State in June 1881 until its end in 1898, the Mahdi's supporters, the Ansār , established many of its theological and political doctrines. After Muhammad Ahmad's unexpected death from typhus on 22 June 1885, his chief deputy, Abdallahi ibn Muhammad took over

1650-457: A vow of poverty, unlike mullahs . The main reason they beg is to learn humility, but dervishes are prohibited to beg for their own good. They have to give the collected money to other poor people. Others work in common professions; Egyptian Qadiriyya – known in Turkey as Kadiri – are fishermen, for example. Some classical writers indicate that the poverty of the dervish is not merely economic. Saadi , for instance, who himself travelled widely as

1760-615: Is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages . Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran , Afghanistan , and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties , respectively Iranian Persian (officially known as Persian ), Dari Persian (officially known as Dari since 1964), and Tajiki Persian (officially known as Tajik since 1999). It

1870-664: 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

1980-628: 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

2090-796: 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

2200-675: 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

2310-425: Is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable. New Persian texts written in the Arabic script first appear in the 9th-century. The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of

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2420-460: 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

2530-475: 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 ),

2640-585: 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

2750-495: 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

2860-491: 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

2970-506: 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

3080-648: The Battle of Shaykan . The defeat of Hicks also resulted in the fall of Darfur to the Ansār, which until then had been effectively defended by Rudolf Carl von Slatin . Jabal Qadir in the south was also taken. The western half of Sudan was now firmly in Ansārī hands. Their success emboldened the Hadendoa, who under the generalship of Osman Digna wiped out a smaller force of Egyptians under the command of Colonel Valentine Baker near

3190-727: The Bayyudah Desert from Wadi Halfa under the command of Brigadier-General Sir Herbert Stewart . This force was attacked by the Hadendoa Beja , or " Fuzzy Wuzzies ", twice, first at the Battle of Abu Klea and two days later closer to Metemma. Twice the British square held and the Mahdists were repelled with high losses. At Metemma, 100 miles (160 km) north of Khartoum, Wolseley's advance guard met four of Gordon's steamers, sent downriver to provide speedy transport for

3300-668: 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

3410-574: The Qur'an , play drums or whirl in groups, all according to their specific traditions. They practice meditation , as is the case with most of the Sufi orders in South Asia , many of whom owe allegiance to, or were influenced by, the Chishti order. Each fraternity uses its own garb and methods of acceptance and initiation, some of which may be rather severe. The form of Sufi dervishism practised during

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3520-632: The Red Sea port of Suakin . Major General Gerald Graham was sent with a force of 4,000 British soldiers and defeated Digna at El Teb on 29 February. Two weeks later he suffered high casualties at Tamai , and Graham eventually withdrew his forces. After much debate the British decided to abandon Sudan in December 1883, holding only several northern towns and Red Sea ports, such as Khartoum , Kassala , Sannar , and Sawakin . The evacuation of Egyptian troops and officials, and other foreigners from Sudan

3630-674: 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

3740-713: 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

3850-940: The Ulema , or orthodox religious authorities, rejected Muhammad Ahmad's claim as the Mahdi. Among his most prominent critics were the Sudanese Ulema loyal to the Ottoman Sultan and employed by the Turco-Egyptian government . Examples were the Mufti Shakir al-Ghazi, who sat on the Council of Appeal in Khartoum, and the Qadi Ahmad al-Azhari in Kordofan. These critics were careful not to deny the concept of

3960-523: The Umma (Nation) political Party in the period before and just after Sudan became independent in 1956. In modern-day Sudan, Muhammad Ahmad is sometimes considered to be a precursor of Sudanese nationalism. The Umma party claim to be his political descendants. Their former leader, Imam Sadiq al-Mahdi , was the great-great-grandson of Muhammad Ahmad, and also the imam of the Ansār, the religious order that pledges allegiance to Muhammad Ahmad. Sadiq al-Mahdi

4070-491: 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

4180-457: The siege of Khartoum . After the Nile had receded from flood stage, one of Gordon's pashas (officers), Faraz Pasha, had opened the river gates and let the Ansār in. The garrison was slaughtered, the male population massacred, and the women and children enslaved. Gordon was killed fighting the Mahdi's warriors on the steps of the palace, where he was hacked to pieces and beheaded. When Gordon's head

4290-597: 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 ,

4400-647: The 17th century was centered upon esotericism, patience and pacifism . Various western historical writers have sometimes used the term dervish rather loosely, linking it to, among other things, the Mahdist War in Sudan and other conflicts by Islamic military leaders. In such cases, the term "dervishes" may have been used as a generic (and often pejorative) term for the opposing Islamic entity and all members of its military, political and religious institutions, including persons who would not be considered "dervishes" in

4510-412: The 29 June 1881 declaration by Muhammad Ahmad as the Mahdi, he believed that the man would be satisfied with a government pension, and he sent Ahmad a friendly letter. The Mahdi telegraphed an uncompromising reply, saying, "He who does not believe in me will be purified by the sword." Mohammed Rauf Pasha sent a small party to arrest the Mahdi on Aba Island, but on 11 August 1881 it was overwhelmed , and

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4620-411: The Ansār that they were unable to penetrate the city. Once the waters rose, Stewart used gunboats on the Nile to conduct several small skirmishes and in August managed to recapture Berber for a short time. But Stewart was killed soon after in another foray from Berber to Dongola, a fact Gordon learned only in a letter from the Mahdi himself. Under increasing pressure from the public to support Gordon,

4730-467: The Ansār, armed only with spears and swords, overwhelmed a 4,000-man Egyptian force not far from El-Obeid , and seized their rifles and ammunition. The Mahdi followed up this victory by laying siege to El-Obeid and starving it into submission after four months. The town remained the headquarters of the Ansār for much of the decade. The Ansār, now 40,000 strong, defeated an 8,000-man Egyptian relief force led by British officer William Hicks near Kashgil, in

4840-572: 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

4950-418: The British Government under Prime Minister Gladstone eventually had ordered Lord Garnet Joseph Wolseley to relieve Gordon. He was already deployed in Egypt due to the attempted coup there earlier, and organized a large force of infantry, but advanced at an extremely slow rate. Realizing they would take some time to arrive, Gordon pressed Wolseley to send forward a " flying column " of camel-borne troops across

5060-511: The Mahdi as such, but rather to discredit Muhammad Ahmad's claim to it. They pointed out that Muhammad Ahmad's manifestation did not conform to the prophecies laid out in the Hadith literature. In particular, they argued for the political interests of the Turco-Egyptian government and its British rulers, that his manifestation did not conform with the "time of troubles" "when the land is filled with oppression, tyranny, and enmity". When Governor General Muhammad Rauf Pasha in Khartoum learned of

5170-401: The Mahdi forbade the use of the word darwish (commonly known as "dervish" in English) to describe his followers, replacing it with the title Ansār , the term which Muhammad used for the people of Medina who welcomed him and his followers after their flight from Mecca . Despite his popularity among the clerics of the Samaniyya and other sects, and among the tribes of western Sudan, some of

5280-444: The Mahdi in 1883 by Osman Digna , an Ansār captain in eastern Sudan. The Mahdist revolution was backed by the northern and western regions of Sudan. It also found great support from the Nuer , Shilluk and Anuak tribes of southern Sudan, in addition to the tribes of Bahr Alghazal . This widespread support affirmed that the Mahdist Revolution was a national rather than regional revolution. In addition to unifying different tribes,

5390-500: 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

5500-429: 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

5610-459: 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

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5720-425: 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

5830-401: 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

5940-487: 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,

6050-428: 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

6160-427: 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)

6270-407: 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

6380-543: The Sixties by Robert Erwin. Majdeddin Ali Bagher Ne'matollahi has said that Sufism is a core of being and bridge between religion and science. Dervishes and their Sufis practices are accepted by traditional Sunni Muslims but different groups such as Deobandis , Salafis disregard various practices of Dervishes as un-Islamic. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -⁠shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),

6490-536: The Sudan in order to provide a counter to the Ansār. London rejected both proposals, and so Gordon prepared for a fight. In March 1884, Gordon tried to stage an offensive to clear the road northward to Egypt, but a number of the officers in the Egyptian force went over to the enemy and their forces fled the field after firing a single salvo. This convinced him that he could carry out only defensive operations, and he returned to Khartoum to construct defensive works. By April 1884, Gordon had managed to evacuate some 2,500 of

6600-409: The Sufi tradition, is a gathering of all the prophets from the time of Adam to Muhammad , as well as many Sufi holy men who are believed to have reached the highest level of affinity with the divine during their lifetime. The hadra is chaired by Muhammad, known as Sayyid al-Wujud, and at his side are the seven Qutb , the most senior of whom is known as Ghawth az-Zaman. The hadra was also the source of

6710-571: The administration of the nascent Mahdist State. The Mahdist State, weakened by his successor's autocratic rule and inability to unify the populace to resist the British blockade and subsequent war, was dissolved following the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan in 1899. Despite that, the Mahdi remains a respected figure in the history of Sudan . In the late 20th century, one of his direct descendants, Sadiq al-Mahdi , twice served as prime minister of Sudan (1966–1967 and 1986–1989), and pursued pro- democracy policies. Mohammed Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Fahal

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6820-441: 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

6930-406: The belief of the Samaniyya prior to Muhammad Ahmad's pronouncement. The previous Samaniyya leader, Sheikh al-Qurashi Wad al-Zayn, had asserted that the long-awaited-for redeemer would come from the Samaniyya line. According to Sheikh al-Qurashi, the Mahdi would make himself known through a number of signs, some established in the early period of Islam and recorded in the Hadith literature. Others had

7040-403: The centuries. Dervishes spread into North Africa , the Horn of Africa , Turkey , Anatolia , the Balkans , the Caucasus , Central Asia , Iran , Pakistan , India , Afghanistan , and Tajikistan . Other dervish groups include the Bektashis , who are connected to the janissaries , and the Senussi , who are rather orthodox in their beliefs. Other fraternities and subgroups chant verses of

7150-457: 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

7260-512: 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

7370-489: The death of his father, his brothers Mohammed and Hamed, who continued to trade and built boats. Then the family moved to live in Khartoum for a short time, where their mother, Zainab bint Nasr, died and was buried. While his siblings joined his father's trade, Muhammad Ahmad showed a proclivity for religious study. He studied first under Sheikh al-Amin al-Suwaylih in the Gezira region south of Khartoum , and subsequently under Sheikh Muhammad al-Dikayr 'Abdallah Khujali near

7480-401: The dervishes at Toski" (see History of Sudan (1884–1898)#British response ). Various books discussing the lives of Dervishes can be found in Turkish literature. Death and the Dervish by Meša Selimović and The Dervish by Frances Kazan extensively discussed the life of a Dervish. Similar works on the subject have been found in other books such as Memoirs of a Dervish: Sufis, Mystics and

7590-448: The end of 1885, the Ansār had begun to move into the southern regions of Sudan. In all of Sudan, only Suakin , reinforced by Indian troops, and Wadi Halfa on the northern frontier remained in Anglo-Egyptian hands. Five months after the capture of Khartoum, Muhammad Ahmad died of typhus . He was buried in Omdurman near the ruins of Khartoum. The Mahdi had planned for this eventuality and had chosen three deputies to replace him. After

7700-430: 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

7810-436: The final defeat of the Khalifa by the British under General Kitchener in 1898, Muhammad Ahmad's tomb was destroyed to prevent it from becoming a rallying point for his supporters. His bones were thrown into the Nile. Kitchener was said to have retained his skull and, in the words of Winston Churchill , "carried off the Mahdi's head in a kerosene can as a trophy". Allegedly the skull was later buried at Wadi Halfa . The tomb

7920-412: The first relieving troops. They gave Wolseley a dispatch from Gordon claiming that the city was about to fall. Moments later a runner brought in another message, claiming the city could hold out for a year. Deciding to believe the latter, the force stopped while they refit the steamers to hold more troops. They finally reached Khartoum on 28 January 1885, to find the town had fallen two days earlier during

8030-476: The followers of the Mahdī, it was also used with a sense of admiration in accounts by British soldiers which describe the fearlessness and bravery of the lightly armed 'dervishes'. Thus, the word has become closely associated with the anṣār and is often used inaccurately in relation to the Mahdi's followers, even today. For example, a contemporary British drawing of the fighting in Sudan was entitled "The defeat of

8140-626: The following phylogenetic classification: Muhammad Ahmad Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah bin Fahal ( Arabic : محمد أحمد بن عبد الله بن فحل ; 12 August 1843 – 21 June 1885) was a Sudanese religious and political leader. In 1881, he claimed to be the Mahdi , and led a war against Egyptian rule in Sudan which culminated in a remarkable victory over them in the Siege of Khartoum . He created

8250-415: The foreign population who had been able to make the trek northwards. His mobile force under Colonel Stewart returned to Khartoum after repeated incidents when the 200 or so Egyptian forces under his command would turn and run at the slightest provocation. That month the Ansār besieged Khartoum, and Gordon was completely cut off. But his defensive works, consisting mainly of mines , proved so frightening to

8360-577: 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

8470-476: 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

8580-488: The insurrection in southern Sudan began to grow. Rauf Pasha downplayed the "affray" in his report to Cairo , and sent the governor of Kordofan to Aba Island with 1,000 soldiers to crush the Mahdi. When they arrived, they found the Mahdi had fled to the southwest. The soldiers marched after him, but gave up the pursuit when the September rains flooded the roads and riverbeds; they returned to El-Obeid . The Mahdi established

8690-466: 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

8800-432: 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

8910-536: 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

9020-466: 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

9130-499: 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

9240-414: 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

9350-732: 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

9460-542: 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

9570-694: 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

9680-459: The province of Kordofan , west of Khartoum, where he visited with the notables of the capital, El-Obeid . They were enmeshed in a power struggle between two rival claimants to the governorship of the province. On 25 July 1878, Sheikh al-Qurashi died and his followers recognized Muhammad Ahmad as their new leader. Around this time, Muhammad Ahmad first met Abdallahi bin Muhammad al-Ta'aishi, who

9790-647: 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

9900-602: 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

10010-418: The revolution cut across religious divides, despite its religious origins. The Mahdi was supported by non-Muslims and Muslims alike. This had important implications for the slave trade. Going against traditional Islamic injunctions, the Mahdi allowed the enslavement of free Muslims, if they did not support him, and forbade the enslavement of traditional victims, non-Muslims, if they supported him. Late in 1883,

10120-668: 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

10230-573: 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

10340-777: 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,

10450-520: The strict sense. During the Mahdist War, Muḥammad Aḥmad al-Mahdī decreed that all those who came to join him should be called anṣār , after the Prophet's earliest followers. He forbade the use of the term 'dervish' to describe his followers. Despite this, British soldiers and colonial officials continued to use the term in relation to the anṣār . While some Britons used the term to denigrate

10560-454: The title 'Poor': That sealed jar in the stormy sea out there Floats on the waves because it's full of air, When you've the air of dervishood inside You'll float above the world and there abide... The whirling dance or Sufi whirling that is proverbially associated with dervishes is best known in the West by the practices (performances) of the Mevlevi order in Turkey, and is part of

10670-528: The title of Sheikh, and began to travel around the country on religious missions. He was permitted to give tariqa and Uhūd to new followers. In 1870, his family moved again in search for timber, returning to Aba Island . There, Muhammad Ahmad built a mosque and started to teach the Quran . He soon gained a notable reputation among the local population as an excellent speaker and mystic. The broad thrust of his teaching followed that of other reformers: his Islam

10780-472: The town of Berber in northern Sudan. Determined to live a life of asceticism, mysticism and worship, in 1861 he sought out Sheikh Muhammad Sharif Nur al-Dai'm, the grandson of the founder of the Samaniyya Sufi sect in Sudan. Muhammad Ahmad stayed with Sheikh Muhammad Sharif for seven years, during which time he was recognized for his piety and asceticism. Near the end of this period, he was awarded

10890-454: The uprising of the Beja soon after his arrival changed things considerably, reducing communications to runners. Gordon considered the routes northward to be too dangerous to extricate the garrisons and so pressed for reinforcements to be sent from Cairo to help with the withdrawal. He also suggested that his old enemy Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur , a fine military commander, be given tacit control of

11000-485: 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

11110-597: 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

11220-532: Was assigned to General Charles George Gordon , who had been reappointed governor general with orders to return to Khartoum and organize a withdrawal of the Egyptian garrisons there. Gordon reached Khartoum in February 1884. At first he was greeted with jubilation, as many of the tribes in the immediate area were at odds with the Mahdists. Transportation northward was still open and the telegraph lines intact. But

11330-556: Was born on 12 August 1843 in Labab Island, Dongola in northern Sudan. He was born into a notable religious Arabized Nubian family tracing their lineage from the Prophet of Islam Muhammad through the lineage of his grandson Hassan . When Mohammed Ahmed was still a child, his family moved to the town of Karari, north of Omdurman . There his father, Ahmad bin Abdullah, managed to find enough supplies of wood for his work in boat-building, but died shortly after they arrived. After

11440-512: Was eventually rebuilt. Muhammed Ahmad's son, Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi , born after his father's death, whom the British considered important as a popular leader of the Mahdists, became a leader of the neo-Mahdist movement in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan . Some Sudanese considered Abd al-Rahman to qualify as future King of Sudan, as the country gained independence, but he declined the title for spiritual reasons. 'Abd al-Rahman sponsored

11550-554: Was one devoted to the words of Muhammad and based on a return to the virtues of strict devotion, prayer, and simplicity as laid down in the Quran. In 1872, Muhammad Ahmad invited Sheikh Sharif to move to al-Aradayb, an area on the White Nile neighboring Aba Island. Despite initially amicable relations, in 1878 the two religious leaders had a dispute motivated by Sheikh Sharif's resentment of his former student's growing popularity. As

11660-597: 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

11770-613: 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

11880-408: Was to become his chief deputy and successor in the years to come. On 29 June 1881, Muhammad Ahmad claimed to be the Mahdi so as to prepare the way for the second coming of Jesus . In part, his claim was based on his status as a prominent Sufi sheikh with a large following in the Samaniyya Order and among the tribes in the area around Aba Island . Yet the idea of the Mahdiyya had been central to

11990-492: 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

12100-509: Was unwrapped at the Mahdi's feet, he ordered the head to be fixed between the branches of a tree "where all who passed it could look in disdain, children could throw stones at it and the hawks of the desert could sweep and circle above." When Wolseley's force arrived in Khartoum, they retreated after attempting to force their way to the center of the town on ships, where they were met by a hail of gunfire. The Mahdi Army continued its sweep of victories. Kassala and Sannar fell soon after and, by

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