105-396: Abu'l-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi (also Firdawsi , Persian : ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی ; 940 – 1019/1025) was a Persian poet and the author of Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"), which is one of the world's longest epic poems created by a single poet, and the greatest epic of Persian-speaking countries . Ferdowsi is celebrated as one of the most influential figures of Persian literature and one of
210-474: A dehqan and governor of Tus, had ordered his minister Abu Mansur Mamari to invite several local scholars to compile a prose Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"), which was completed in 1010. Although it no longer survives, Ferdowsi used it as one of the sources of his epic. Samanid rulers were patrons of such important Persian poets as Rudaki and Daqiqi , and Ferdowsi followed in the footsteps of these writers. Details about Ferdowsi's education are lacking. While it
315-655: 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
420-803: A city under the control of one of these dynasties, the Samanids, who claimed descent from the Sassanid general Bahram Chobin (whose story Ferdowsi recounts in one of the later sections of the Shahnameh ). The Samanid bureaucracy used the New Persian language, which had been used to bring Islam to the Eastern regions of the Iranian world and supplanted local languages, and commissioned translations of Pahlavi texts into New Persian. Abu Mansur Muhammad ,
525-559: A continuation of the work of his fellow poet Daqiqi, who had been assassinated by his slave. Like Daqiqi, Ferdowsi employed the prose Shahnameh of Abd-al-Razzaq as a source. He received generous patronage from the Samanid prince Mansur and completed the first version of the Shahnameh in 994. When the Turkic Ghaznavids overthrew the Samanids in the late 990s, Ferdowsi continued to work on the poem, rewriting sections to praise
630-467: A crucial component in the persistence of the Persian language, as those works allowed much of the tongue to remain codified and intact. In this respect, Ferdowsi surpasses Nizami , Khayyam , Asadi Tusi and other seminal Persian literary figures in his impact on Persian culture and language. Many modern Iranians see him as the father of the modern Persian language. Ferdowsi in fact was a motivation behind many future Persian figures. One such notable figure
735-418: 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
840-548: A highly popular figure for around two centuries, until the Mongol period , where he became unpopular amongst the highly skilled poets of that time. However, he had not been forgotten, as demonstrated by the attribution of his name to the Pseudo- Diwan-i Rudaki , called "one of the notorious literary frauds" by de Blois. Scholars such as Hasan ibn Luft Allah al-Razi in the 17th century and Reza-Qoli Khan Hedayat in
945-505: 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
1050-417: 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
1155-536: 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
SECTION 10
#17327662469571260-548: A revered site. The tomb , which had fallen into decay, was rebuilt between 1928 and 1934 by the Society for the National Heritage of Iran on the orders of Reza Shah , and has now become the equivalent of a national shrine. According to legend, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni offered Ferdowsi a gold piece for every couplet of the Shahnameh he wrote. The poet agreed to receive the money as a lump sum when he had completed
1365-599: 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
1470-428: A well-wisher who had paid Ferdowsi a thousand dirhams for the poem. Introductions to some manuscripts of the Shahnameh include verses purporting to be the satire . Some scholars have viewed them as fabricated; others are more inclined to believe in their authenticity. Ferdowsi is one of the undisputed giants of Persian literature . After Ferdowsi's Shahnameh , a number of other works similar in nature surfaced over
1575-615: 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
1680-664: 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
1785-628: 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
1890-575: Is a university established in 1949 that also takes its name from Ferdowsi. Ferdowsi's influence in the Persian culture is explained by John Andrew Boyle : The library at Wadham College , Oxford University was named the Ferdowsi Library, and contains a specialised Persian section for scholars. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),
1995-464: Is acknowledged as the "founder of New Persian poetry" and in Tajikistan as the "father of Tajik literature ". His full name was Abu Abd Allah Ja'far ibn Muhammad ibn Hakim ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Adam al-Rudhaki al-Sha'ir al-Samarqandi ( Persian : ابوعبدالله جعفر بن محمد بن حکیم بن عبدالرحمن بن آدم الرودکی الشاعر سمرقندی ). The proper transliteration of his name is Rōdhakī , while al-Rūdhakī
2100-850: 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
2205-494: Is an arabicised form. Other transliterations include Rudagi , Rawdhagi and Rudhagi . Little information is available about Rudaki's life, much which has been reconstructed from his poems. He lived during the era of the Samanid Empire (819–999), under which New Persian literature began to develop and flourish. Of Persian stock, Rudaki was born in c. 858 , in the village of Banoj (Panjrud), located in
SECTION 20
#17327662469572310-675: 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
2415-425: 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
2520-518: Is generally easy for literate native Persian readers to understand despite variations in terminology, word forms, and phrase and sentence patterns. Although Rudaki displayed pro-Isma'ili sympathies in his writings, his poetry is fully secular in nature. Islam was firmly established by the 10th century; however, Persians still remembered their deep-rooted Zoroastrian history. Rudaki was more prone to evoke ancient Iranian and Zoroastrian notions instead of Muslim ones. Some of Rudaki's poems were written in
2625-515: Is his versification of the Kalila wa-Dimna , a collection of Indian fables. Nasr II had ordered Bal'ami to translate the book from Arabic to Persian, and then appointed "interpreters" to read it out loud, so that Rudaki, who was blind, could versify it. Only a few of the verses made by Rudaki have survived. Some of them have been identified in the Lughat-i Furs . Rudaki's surviving poetry
2730-429: Is likely that he learned Arabic in school, there is no evidence in the Shahnameh that he knew either Arabic or Pahlavi. Ferdowsi was a Shiite Muslim, although varying views exist on what Shiite sect he belonged to. Khaleghi-Motlagh, following Theodor Nöldeke , notes that Ferdowsi displays a contradictory attitude towards religion in the Shahnameh : on the one hand, he shows a "lenient" attitude towards religion, but on
2835-404: 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
2940-474: 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 Khurasan . During this period, New Persian was known as darī or parsī-i darī . By
3045-475: 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 ),
3150-585: 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
3255-495: 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
Ferdowsi - Misplaced Pages Continue
3360-538: Is the only surviving work by Ferdowsi regarded as indisputably genuine. He may have written poems earlier in his life but they no longer exist. A narrative poem, Yūsof o Zolaykā (Joseph and Zuleika), was once attributed to him, but scholarly consensus now rejects the idea it is his. There has also been speculation about the satire Ferdowsi allegedly wrote about Mahmud of Ghazni after the sultan failed to reward him sufficiently. Nezami Aruzi , Ferdowsi's early biographer, claimed that all but six lines had been destroyed by
3465-436: 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
3570-455: 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
3675-451: The Kalila wa-Dimna , a collection of Indian fables. Born in the village of Banoj (located in the present-day Rudak area), the most important part of Rudaki's career was spent at the court of the Samanids. While biographical information connects him to the Samanid amir (ruler) Nasr II ( r. 914–943 ), he may have already joined the court under the latter's predecessor, Ahmad Samani ( r. 907–914 ). Rudaki's success
3780-445: The divan (collection of short poems) of Rudaki consisted of more than 180,000 verses, but most of it has been lost. What little remains of Rudaki's writings, mostly single verses, can be found in Persian dictionaries, particularly the Lughat-i Furs of Asadi Tusi. A few complete poems have also survived, most notably a qasida (eulogy or ode ) consisting of almost 100 verses quoted in the anonymous Tarikh-i Sistan . The qasida
3885-668: 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
3990-450: The Rudak area between Samarqand and Bukhara . Rudaki's blindness is implied by the writings of early poets such as Daqiqi (died 977), Ferdowsi (died 1020/25), Abu Zura'ah al-Mu'ammari ( fl. 10th-century ) and Nasir Khusraw (died after 1070). The historian Awfi (died 1242), even says that Rudaki was born blind, but this has been questioned by some modern scholars, due to
4095-550: The Sasanian dynasty (the last pre-Islamic dynasty to rule Iran) and whose power, though diminished, had survived into the Islamic era which followed the Islamic conquests of the 7th century. The dehqans were attached to the pre-Islamic literary heritage, as their status was associated with it (so much so that dehqan is sometimes used as a synonym for "Iranian" in the Shahnameh ). Thus they saw it as their task to preserve
4200-674: 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
4305-713: 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
Ferdowsi - Misplaced Pages Continue
4410-491: 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
4515-541: 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 ,
4620-681: 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
4725-551: The Ghaznavid Sultan Mahmud . Mahmud's attitude to Ferdowsi and how well he rewarded the poet are matters which have long been subject to dispute and have formed the basis of legends about the poet and his patron (see below). The Turkic Mahmud may have been less interested in tales from Iranian history than the Samanids. The later sections of the Shahnameh have passages which reveal Ferdowsi's fluctuating moods: in some he complains about old age, poverty, illness and
4830-565: 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
4935-543: 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
5040-530: 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
5145-425: 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
5250-401: 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
5355-886: 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,
SECTION 50
#17327662469575460-408: The Samanid court under Nasr II's father and predecessor Ahmad Samani ( r. 907–914 ). Tabatabai states that this is proven in a poem by Rudaki, where he tries to comfort Ahmad Samani after the death of his father Ismail Samani in 907. Rudaki's career at the Samanid court is regarded as the most important part of his life. The role of a court poet was more than just entertaining others, and
5565-428: 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
5670-588: The Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date. "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian)
5775-462: 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
5880-619: The age of eight, Rudaki had reportedly memorized the Qur'an and was skilled in poetry. He was instructed on how to play the chang by a prominent musician named Abu'l-Abak Bakhtiar. In his early years, Rudaki became a popular figure due to his fine voice, skill with poetry and playing the chang. Surviving biographical information connects Rudaki with the Samanid amir (ruler) Nasr II ( r. 914–943 ) or with his vizier Abu'l-Fadl al-Bal'ami (died 940). However, according to literary scholar Sassan Tabatabai, Rudaki had apparently already joined
5985-498: The area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III . The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word * pārćwa . Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median , according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before
6090-440: The centuries within the cultural sphere of the Persian language . Without exception, all such works were based in style and method on Ferdowsi's Shahnameh , but none of them could quite achieve the same degree of fame and popularity as Ferdowsi's masterpiece. Ferdowsi has a unique place in Persian history because of the strides he made in reviving and regenerating the Persian language and cultural traditions. His works are cited as
6195-457: 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
6300-512: 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
6405-415: The death of his son; in others, he appears happier. Ferdowsi finally completed his epic on 8 March 1010. Virtually nothing is known with any certainty about the last decade of his life. Ferdowsi was buried in his own garden, burial in the cemetery of Tus having been forbidden by a local cleric who considered him a heretic. A Ghaznavid governor of Khorasan constructed a mausoleum over the grave and it became
SECTION 60
#17327662469576510-479: The downfall of Bal'ami in 937. He soon fell out of favour with the amir and was dismissed from the court. Rudaki thereafter lived his last years in poverty, dying blind and alone in his hometown in 940 or 941. The French Iranologist Gilbert Lazard considered Rudaki's first successor to have been Abu-Shakur Balkhi , who composed many mathnavis , notably the Afarin-nama . According to Asadi Tusi ,
6615-421: The epic. He planned to use it to rebuild the dykes in his native Tus. After thirty years of work, Ferdowsi finished his masterpiece. The sultan prepared to give him 60,000 gold pieces, one for every couplet, as agreed. However, the courtier whom Mahmud had entrusted with the money despised Ferdowsi, regarding him as a heretic, and he replaced the gold coins with silver. Ferdowsi was in the bath house when he received
6720-490: The expressive picture of nature given by Rudaki in his writings. Besides being a poet, Rudaki was also a singer and musician. Since the era of Sasanian Iran (224–651), poems were commonly carried out as songs used in music. Under the Sasanians, the official, religious and literary language was Middle Persian . Following the Muslim conquest of Iran , the language entered a new phase, known as New Persian . However, it
6825-652: 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
6930-486: The following phylogenetic classification: Rudaki Rudaki (also spelled Rodaki ; Persian : رودکی ; c. 858 – 940/41) was a poet , singer, and musician who is regarded as the first major poet to write in New Persian . A court poet under the Samanids , he reportedly composed more than 180,000 verses, yet only a small portion of his work has survived, most notably a small part of his versification of
7035-577: 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
7140-476: 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
7245-430: The greatest in the history of literature . Except for his kunya ( ابوالقاسم – Abu'l-Qâsem , meaning 'father of Qasem') and his pen name ( فِردَوسی – Ferdowsī , meaning ' paradisic '), nothing is known with any certainty about his full name. According to Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh, the information given by the 13th-century author Bundari about Ferdowsi's name should be taken as the most reliable. Bundari calls
7350-466: 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
7455-562: The latter wrote a play focused on Rudaki, entitled Rudaki , which was the first Tajik biographical drama. The 1100th anniversary of Rudaki's birth was commemorated by Iran and the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in 1958, who together held a conference which was joined by several eminent Iranian and Tajik academics. It was during this period that Rudaki's burial place in Panjrud was discovered. The Soviet archaeologist and anthropologist Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov (died 1970) dug out and analyzed Rudaki's remains, which he used to recreate
7560-589: The latter's face on a sculpture. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Rudaki started to become a stronger representation of Tajik identity and also reinforced their ties to the rest of the Persian-speaking world. According to Nile Green , Rudaki "heralded a new era for Persian letters." The Iranologist Francois de Blois states that Rudaki "was the most celebrated Persian poet prior to Ferdowsi." Following his death, Rudaki continued to remain
7665-432: 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
7770-536: 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
7875-466: 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
7980-499: 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
8085-414: 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
8190-732: 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
8295-542: 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
8400-400: The other hand, he believed that his sect was the "only true Islamic one." Khaleghi-Motlagh concurs with Nöldeke that Ferdowsi was "above all a deist and monotheist who at the same time kept faith with his forbears." Ferdowsi criticized philosophers and those who tried to prove the existence of God. He saw God's creation as the only evidence of His existence and believed everything in life to be
8505-592: The poet al-Amir al-Hakim Abu'l-Qasem Mansur ibn al-Hasan al-Ferdowsi al-Tusi. From an early period on, he has been referred to by different additional names and titles, the most common one being حکیم / Ḥakīm ("philosopher"). Based on this, his full name is given in Persian sources as حکیم ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی / Ḥakīm Abo'l-Qâsem Ferdowsī Țusī . Due to the non-standardised transliteration from Persian into English, different spellings of his name are used in English works, including Firdawsi , Firdusi , Firdosi , Firdausi , etc. The Encyclopaedia of Islam uses
8610-603: The pre-Islamic andarz style, i.e., ethical teachings, friendly criticism and advice for correct behavior in both private and public. An example of Rudaki's Zoroastrian roots can be seen in an excerpt where he is talking about his patron: It's a puzzle, describing his grace and will: He is the Avesta in wisdom, the Zand in essence... Rudaki is considered to have been the first major poet to write in New Persian. Although he
8715-563: The pre-Islamic cultural traditions, including tales of legendary kings. He had a son, who died at the age of 37, and was mourned by the poet in an elegy which he inserted into the Shahnameh . The Islamic conquests of the 7th century brought gradual linguistic and cultural changes to the Iranian Plateau. By the late 9th century, as the power of the caliphate had weakened, several local dynasties emerged in Greater Iran. Ferdowsi grew up in Tus,
8820-581: 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
8925-514: The product of God's will. Khaleghi-Motlagh and others have suggested that a certain fatalism in Ferdowsi's work contradicts his "absolute faith in the unicity and might of God," and that this may have been the legacy of the Zurvanism of the Sasanian period. It is possible that Ferdowsi wrote some early poems which have not survived. He began work on the Shahnameh around 977, intending it as
9030-588: 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
9135-602: 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
9240-411: The reward. Finding it was silver and not gold, he gave the money away to the bath-keeper, a refreshment seller, and the slave who had carried the coins. When the courtier told the sultan about Ferdowsi's behaviour, he was furious and threatened to execute him. Ferdowsi fled to Khorasan , having first written a satire on Mahmud, and spent most of the remainder of his life in exile. Mahmud eventually learned
9345-613: 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
9450-563: The spelling Firdawsī , based on the standardised transliteration method of the German Oriental Society . The Encyclopædia Iranica , which uses a modified version of the same method (with a stronger emphasis on modern Persian intonations), gives the spelling Ferdowsī . The modern Tajik transliteration of his name in Tajik Cyrillic is Ҳаким Абулқосим Фирдавсӣ Тӯсӣ ( Hakim Abdulqosim Firdavsí Tŭsí ). Ferdowsi
9555-573: 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
9660-717: 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,
9765-436: The support of his primary patron, Bal'ami. The latter played an important role in the blooming of Persian literature in the 10th century. Bal'ami regarded Rudaki as the best amongst Persian and Arab poets. Rudaki was a close friend to his student Shahid Balkhi , a leading poet and scholar of the Samanid realm. Following Shahid Balkhi's death in 936, Rudaki wrote an elegy for him. Rudaki's career started to decline following
9870-499: The truth about the courtier's deception and had him either banished or executed. By this time, the aged Ferdowsi had returned to Tus . The sultan sent him a new gift of 60,000 gold pieces, but just as the caravan bearing the money entered the gates of Tus, a funeral procession exited the gates on the opposite side: the poet had died from a heart attack. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh is the most popular and influential national epic in Iran and other Persian-speaking countries. The Shahnameh
9975-485: 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
10080-548: Was Reza Shah Pahlavi, who established an Academy of Persian Language and Literature , in order to attempt to remove Arabic and French words from the Persian language, replacing them with suitable Persian alternatives. In 1934, Reza Shah set up a ceremony in Mashhad , Khorasan , celebrating a thousand years of Persian literature since the time of Ferdowsi, titled " Ferdowsi Millennial Celebration ", inviting notable European as well as Iranian scholars. Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
10185-537: 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
10290-414: Was an essential aspect of the Persian court. According to the first Sasanian king Ardashir I ( r. 224–242 ), a poet was "part of government and the means of strengthening rulership." Besides applauding the suzerain and his domain, a poet was also expected to give advice and moral guidance, which meant that Rudaki was most likely experienced in that field as well. Rudaki's success was largely due to
10395-512: Was born into a family of Iranian landowners ( dehqans ) in 940 in the village of Paj, near the city of Tus , in the Khorasan region of the Samanid Empire , which is located in the present-day Razavi Khorasan province of northeastern Iran . Little is known about Ferdowsi's early life. The poet had a wife, who was probably literate and came from the same dehqan class. The dehqans were landowning Iranian aristocrats who had flourished under
10500-402: Was dedicated to Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn Muhammad , who ruled the region of Sistan as a Samanid governor from 923 to 963. In it, Rudaki calls Abu Ja'far an aristocrat of Sasanian ancestry and "pride of Iran", thus indicating a sense of continuity in Iranian identity from the Sasanian to the Samanid period. For this poem, Abu Ja'far rewarded Rudaki with 10,000 dinars . Rudaki's best known work
10605-417: Was largely due to the support of his primary patron, the vizier Abu'l-Fadl al-Bal'ami (died 940), who played an important role in the blooming of New Persian literature in the 10th-century. Following the downfall of Bal'ami in 937, Rudaki's career deteriorated, eventually being dismissed from the court. He thereafter lived his last years in poverty, dying blind and alone in his hometown. In Iran , Rudaki
10710-597: 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
10815-547: Was predated by other poets who wrote in New Persian, such as Abu Hafs Sughdi (died 902), most of their work has not survived. In Iran, Rudaki is acknowledged as the "founder of New Persian poetry" and in Tajikistan as the "father of Tajik literature", both claims which according to the Iranologist Richard Foltz are not contradictory. Rudaki's life is depicted in the 1957 film of A Poet's Fate , written by Satim Ulugzade (died 1997). The following year,
10920-613: 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
11025-492: 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
#956043