The Yaglakar clan was the first imperial clan of the Uyghur Khaganate . Descendants of the Yaglakar clan would later establish the Ganzhou Uyghur Kingdom .
116-534: The Kara-Khanid Khanate ( Persian : قراخانیان , romanized : Qarākhāniyān ; Chinese : 喀喇汗國 ; pinyin : Kālā Hánguó ), also known as the Karakhanids , Qarakhanids , Ilek Khanids or the Afrasiabids ( Persian : آل افراسیاب , romanized : Āl-i Afrāsiyāb , lit. 'House of Afrasiab '), was a Karluk Turkic khanate that ruled Central Asia from
232-695: A Naiman who usurped the throne of the Qara Khitai dynasty, instituted anti-Islamic policies on the local populations under his rule. The decline of the Seljuks following their defeat by the Qara Khitais at the Battle of Qatwan (1141) allowed the Khwarazmian dynasty , then a vassal of the Qara Khitai, to expand into former Seljuk territory, where they became independent rulers circa 1190. In 1207,
348-655: A Dari dialect. In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty , the dialect that is spoken in Tehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule, numerous Russian , French , and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology. The first official attentions to
464-661: A Seljuk campaign into Talas and Zhetysu, but the Eastern Khanate was a Seljuk vassal for only a short time. At the beginning of the 12th century the Eastern Khanate invaded Transoxiana and briefly occupied the Seljuk town of Termez. The Qara Khitai (Western Liao dynasty) host which invaded Central Asia was composed of remnants from the defunct Liao dynasty which was annihilated by the Jin dynasty in 1125. The Liao noble Yelü Dashi recruited warriors from various tribes and formed
580-418: A dictionary called Words of Scientific Association ( لغت انجمن علمی ), which was completed in the future and renamed Katouzian Dictionary ( فرهنگ کاتوزیان ). The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name Academy of Iran . It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi , and mainly by Hekmat e Shirazi and Mohammad Ali Foroughi , all prominent names in
696-791: A horde that moved westward to rebuild the Liao dynasty. Yelü occupied Balasagun on the Chu River , then defeated the Western Karakhanids in Khujand in 1137. In 1141 Qara Khitai became the dominant force in the region after they dealt a devastating blow to the Seljuk Sultan Ahmad Sanjar and the Kara-Khanids at the Battle of Qatwan near Samarkand . Several military commanders of Karakhanid lineages such as
812-505: 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
928-417: 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
1044-536: 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
1160-599: 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
1276-615: 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
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#17327659831911392-664: 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
1508-628: 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
1624-850: 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
1740-675: 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
1856-425: 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
1972-605: Is evident in both of these pieces of work, but they also showed the influences of Persian and Islamic culture. However, the court culture of the Karakhanids remained almost entirely Persian. The two last western khaqans also wrote poetry in Persian. The Cambridge World History describes the Kara-Khanid state as the first of the Islamic Turco-Iranian states. Islam and its civilization flourished under
2088-460: 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
2204-475: 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 ),
2320-585: 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
2436-495: 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
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#17327659831912552-491: 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
2668-506: 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
2784-488: The Battle of Dandanaqan and entered Iran. Conflict with the Karakhanids broke out, but the Karakhanids were able to withstand attacks by the Seljuks initially, even briefly taking control of Seljuk towns in Greater Khorasan . The Karakhanids, however, developed serious conflicts with the religious classes (the ulama ), and the ulama of Transoxiana then requested the intervention of the Seljuks. In 1089, during
2900-668: 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
3016-541: The Chagatay and the Kypchak . The Kara-Khanid cultural model that combined nomadic Turkic culture with Islamic, sedentary institutions spread east into former Kara-Khoja and Tangut territories and west and south into the subcontinent, Khorasan (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Northern Iran), Golden Horde territories ( Tataristan ), and Turkey . The Chagatay , Timurid, and Uzbek states and societies inherited most of
3132-929: The Pechenegs , the Oghuz Turks , and the Karluks. The domain of the Karluks reached as far north as the Irtysh and the Kimek confederation, with encampments extending to the Chi and Ili rivers, where the Chigil and Tukshi tribes lived, and east to the Ferghana valley and beyond. The area to the south and east of the Karluks was inhabited by the Yagma. The Karluk center in the 9th and 10th centuries appears to have been at Balasagun on
3248-674: 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
3364-744: The Toġuzġuz kings", that Ashina tribe was not listed among the Toquz Oghuz (Ch. 九姓 Jĭu Xìng "Nine Surnames") in Chinese-language sources and that early Uyghur khagans belonged to the Yaglakar clan of Toquz Oghuz and later Uyghur khagans belonged to the Ädiz clan . Alternatively, Bilge Kul Qadir might belong to the Eðgiş or Chigils . The Karluks were a nomadic people from the western Altai Mountains who moved to Zhetysu (Semirechye). In 742,
3480-713: 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
3596-771: The Uyghur Khaganate by the Old Kirghiz . Control of sacred lands, together with their affiliation with the Ashina clan, allowed the Khaganate to be passed on to the Karluks along with domination of the steppes after the previous Khagan was killed in a revolt. During the 9th century southern Central Asia was under the rule of the Samanids , while the Central Asian steppe was dominated by Turkic nomads such as
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3712-491: 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
3828-597: 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 ,
3944-576: The "heaven-mandated" right to rule resided. The Karluks and Uyghurs later allied themselves against the Basmyl, and within two years they toppled the Basmyl khagan. The Uyghur yabghu became khagan and the Karluk leader yabghu. This arrangement lasted less than a year. Hostilities between the Uyghur and Karluk forced the Karluk to migrate westward into the western Turgesh lands. By 766 the Karluks had forced
4060-597: The 9th to the early 13th century. The dynastic names of Karakhanids and Ilek Khanids refer to royal titles with Kara Khagan being the most important Turkic title up until the end of the dynasty. The Khanate conquered Transoxiana in Central Asia and ruled it independently between 999 and 1089. Their arrival in Transoxiana signaled a definitive shift from Iranic to Turkic predominance in Central Asia, yet
4176-489: The Arab titles sultan and sultān al-salātīn ("Sultan of Sultans"). According to the Ottoman historian known as Munajjim-bashi, a Karakhanid prince named Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan was the first of the khans to convert. After conversion, he obtained a fatwa which permitted him in effect to kill his presumably-still-pagan father, after which he conquered Kashgar (of the old Shule Kingdom ). Later, in 960, according to Muslim historians Ibn Miskawaih and Ibn al-Athir , there
4292-408: The Ashina. Even so, the tribal origin of Bilge Kul Qadir Khan, the first Kara-Khan, is still unknown: if Bilge Kul Qadir descended from the Karluk Yabghus , then he indeed belonged to the Ashina dynasty as they did; if Bilge Kul Qadir descended from the Yagma (as suggested by Vasily Bartold ), then he did not, considering that the Hudud al-'Alam stated that "Their [Yagmas'] king is from the family of
4408-572: 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
4524-432: The Chigil and Yaghma tribes – the Eastern Khagan bore the title Arslan Qara Khaqan (Arslan "lion" was the totem of the Chigil) and the Western Khagan the title Bughra Qara Khaqan (Bughra "male camel" was the totem of the Yaghma). The names of animals were a regular element in the Turkic titles of the Karakhanids: thus Aslan (lion), Bughra (camel), Toghan (falcon), Böri (wolf), and Toghrul or Toghrïl (a bird of prey). Under
4640-499: The Chu River. In the late 9th century the Samanids marched into the steppes and captured Taraz , one of the headquarters of the Karluk khagan, and a large church was transformed into a mosque. During the 9th century, the Karluk confederation (including three chief tribes: the Bulaq ( Mouluo 謀落 / Moula 謀剌), Taşlïk ( Tashili 踏實力), and Sebek (Suofu 娑匐), along with Chigils , Charuks , Barskhans , Khalajes , Azkishi and Tuhsis (the last three being possibly remnants of Türgesh ) and
4756-405: The East and China"; 東方與秦之主 ) as their title, and minted coins bearing these titles. Another title they used was Sulṭān al-Sharq wa al-Ṣīn (Sultan of the East and China). Early period "proto-Qarakhanid" coinage featured Chinese-style square-holed coins, combined with Arabic writing. Much of the realm of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, including Transoxiana and the western Tarim Basin , had been under
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4872-400: The Eastern Khanate. The Eastern Khanate had its capital at Balasaghun and later Kashgar. The Fergana-Zhetysu areas became the border between the two states and were frequently contested. When the two states were formed, Fergana fell into realm of the Eastern Khanate, but was later captured by Ibrahim and became part of the Western Khanate. In 1040, the Seljuk Empire defeated the Ghaznavids at
4988-496: The Kara-Khanids' local status. The Kara-Khanid rulers also formed marriage relations with the Liao dynasty and addressed the Song emperors as "maternal uncle", in possible imitation of Uyghur and Tibetan rulers who had marital relations with the previous Tang dynasty. In an account, the Kara-Khanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari referred to his homeland, around Kashgar , then part of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, as "Lower China". A genetic study published in Nature in May 2018 examined
5104-407: The Kara-Khitai throne. In 1218, Kuchlug was killed by the Mongol army . Some of the Kara-Khitai's eastern vassals including Eastern Kara-Khanids then joined the Mongol forces to conquer the Khwarezmian Empire. The takeover by the Karakhanids did not change the essentially Iranian character of Central Asia, though it set into motion a demographic and ethnolinguistic shift. During the Karakhanid era,
5220-427: The Kara-khanids gradually assimilated the Perso-Arab Muslim culture , while retaining some of their native Turkic culture. The Khanate split into the Eastern and Western Khanates in the 1040s. In the late 11th century, they came under the suzerainty of the Seljuk Empire followed by the Qara Khitai (Western Liao dynasty) who defeated the Seljuks in the Battle of Qatwan in 1141. The Eastern Khanate ended in 1211, and
5336-427: The Karakhanid court. He wrote this first comprehensive dictionary of Turkic languages in Arabic for the Caliphs of Baghdad in 1072–76. Another famous Karakhanid writer was Yusuf Balasaghuni , who wrote Kutadgu Bilig (The Wisdom of Felicity), the only known literary work written in Turkic from the Karakhanid period. Kutadgu Bilig is a form of advice literature known as mirrors for princes . The Turkic identity
5452-543: The Karakhanid state. Nasr, the conqueror of Transoxiana, held the large central area of Transoxiana (Samarkand and Bukhara), Fergana (Uzgen) and other areas, although after his death his appanage was further divided. Ahmad held Zhetysu and Chach and became the head of the dynasty after the death of Ali. The brothers Ahmad and Nasr conducted different policies towards the Ghaznavids in the south – while Ahmad tried to form an alliance with Mahmud of Ghazna , Nasr attempted to expand unsuccessfully into Ghaznavid territory. Ahmad
5568-549: The Karakhanids repelled an attack by a large mass of nomadic Turkic tribes in what was described in Muslim sources as a great victory. Around the same time, the Kara-Khanid ruler Ilig Khan reached an agreement with Mahmud of Ghazni , in which they agreed to partition former Samanid territory along the Oxus river . The Islamic conquest of the Buddhist cities east of Kashgar began when the Karakhanid Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan converted to Islam in 934 and then captured Kashgar. He and his son directed endeavors to proselytize Islam among
5684-441: The Karakhanids still survive today, including the Kalyan minaret built by Mohammad Arslan Khan beside the main mosque in Bukhara, and three mausolea in Uzgend. The early Karakhanid rulers, as nomads, lived not in the city but in an army encampment outside the capital, and while by the time of Ibrahim the Karakhanids still maintained a nomadic tradition, their extensive religious and civil constructions showed that they had assimilated
5800-402: The Karakhanids. The earliest example of madrasas in Central Asia was founded in Samarkand by Ibrahim Tamghach Khan . Ibrahim also founded a hospital to care for the sick as well as providing shelter for the poor. His son Shams al-Mulk Nasr built ribats for the caravanserais on the route between Bukhara and Samarkand, as well as a palace near Bukhara. Some of the buildings constructed by
5916-463: The Karluk horde: Sanah, a possible rendition of Ashina (compare Śaya (also by al-Masudi), Aś(i)nas (al-Tabari), Ānsa (Hudud al-'Alam), and Śaba (Ibn Khordadbeh)), and Afrasiab, whom 11th-century Karakhanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari identified with Turkic king Alp Er Tunga , the legendary progenitor of the Karakhanid ruling dynasty. Furthermore, Kara-khanid heads of state claimed the title khagan , which indicates that they may have been descended from
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#17327659831916032-410: The Karluks were part of an alliance led by the Basmyl and Uyghurs that rebelled against the Göktürks and led to the demise of the Second Turkic Khaganate (682–744). In the realignment of power that followed, the Karluks were elevated from a tribe led by an Elteber to one led by a yabghu , which was one of the highest Turkic dignitaries and also implies membership in the Ashina clan in whom
6148-421: The Khagans were four rulers with the titles Arslan Ilig, Bughra Ilig, Arslan Tegin and Bughra Tegin. The titles of the members of the dynasty changed with their position, normally upwards, in the dynastic hierarchy. In the mid-10th century the Kara-Khanids converted to Islam and adopted Muslim names and honorifics, but retained Turkic regnal titles such as Khan, Khagan , Ilek (Ilig) and Tegin . Later they adopted
6264-500: 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
6380-429: 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
6496-459: 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
6612-425: 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
6728-401: 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
6844-487: 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,
6960-414: The Qara Khitai were Buddhists ruling over a largely Muslim population, they were considered fair-minded rulers whose reign was marked by religious tolerance. Islamic religious life continued uninterrupted and Islamic authority persevered under the Qara Khitai. Kashgar became a Nestorian metropolitan see and Christian gravestones in the Chu River Valley appeared beginning in this period. However, Kuchlug ,
7076-405: The Samanids returned to Bukhara. Hasan's cousin Ali b. Musa (title: Kara Khan or Arslan Khan) resumed the campaign against the Samanids, and by 999 Ali's son Nasr had taken Chach, Samarkand, and Bukhara. The Samanid domains were divided between the Ghaznavids , who gained Khorasan and Afghanistan , and the Karakhanids, who received Transoxiana. The Oxus River thus became the boundary between
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#17327659831917192-428: 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
7308-427: 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)
7424-407: 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
7540-444: The Turks and engage in military conquests. In the mid-10th century, Satuq's son Musa began to put pressure on Khotan, and a long period of war between Kashgar and the Kingdom of Khotan ensued. Satok Bughra Khan's nephew or grandson Ali Arslan was said to have been killed by Buddhists during the war; during the reign of Ahmad b. Ali, the Karakhanids also engaged in wars against non-Muslims to the east and northeast. Muslim accounts tell
7656-457: The Western Khanate was extinguished by the Khwarazmian Empire in 1212. The capitals of the Kara-Khanid Khanate included Kashgar , Balasagun , Uzgen and Samarkand . The history of the Kara-Khanid Khanate is reconstructed from fragmentary and often contradictory written sources, as well as studies on their coinage . The term Karakhanid was derived from Qara Khan or Qara Khaqan ( Persian : قراخان , romanized : Qarākhān ),
7772-408: The Yaghma, possible descendants of the Toquz Oghuz , joined forces and formed the first Karluk-Karakhanid khaganate. The Chigils appear to have formed the nucleus of the Karakhanid army. The date of its foundation and the name of its first khan is uncertain, but according to one reconstruction, the first Karakhanid ruler was Bilge Kul Qadir Khan . The rulers of the Karakhanids were likely to be from
7888-401: The administration of the western branch of the family that eventually led to a formal separation of the Khara-Khanid Khanate. Ibrahim Tamghach Khan was considered by Muslim historians as a great ruler, and he brought some stability to the Western Karakhanids by limiting the appanage system that caused much of the internal strife in the Kara-Khanid Khanate. The Hasan family remained in control of
8004-441: 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
8120-415: The citizens of Bukhara revolted against the sadrs (leaders of the religious classes), which the Khwarazmshah 'Ala' ad-Din Muhammad used as a pretext to conquer Bukhara. Muhammad then formed an alliance with the Western Karakhanid ruler Uthman ibn Ibrahim (who later married Muhammad's daughter) against the Qara Khitai. In 1210, the Khwarezm-Shah took Samarkand after the Qara Khitai retreated to deal with
8236-457: 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
8352-512: 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
8468-547: The culture and traditions of the settled population of Transoxiana. During the excavations of the citadel of Samarkand, the ruins of the palace of the Karakhanid ruler Ibrahim ibn Hussein (1178–1202) were found. The palace was decorated with wall paintings. Numerous works of art and decorative objects are also known from the realm of the Kara-Khanids during the time of their rule (840–1212). Samarkand, with its old citadel of Afrasiab where many works of art have been excavated,
8584-626: The cultures of the Kara-Khanids and the Khwarezmians without much interruption. The Kara-Khanids translated the Quran into Middle Turkic . There are four surviving copies of the Quran translations found in various collections and a Middle Turkic excerpt of Al-Fatiha , which supposedly belong to the Kara-Khanid period. Kara-Khanid monarchs adopted Tamghaj Khan (Turkic for "Khan of China"; 桃花石汗 ) or Malik al-Mashriq wa-l’Sin (Arabic for "King of
8700-585: The death of Yaoluoge Achuo in 795, the main line of the Yaglakar clan ceased to exist. However, successive khagans adopted the Yaglakar surname for prestige. The rest of the clan members were exiled to the Tang capital Chang'an . An epitaph was recently found in 2010 in Xi'an which belonged to one of the Yaglakar princes, Prince Gechuai (葛啜王子), younger brother of Yaoluoge Dunmohe who died of cold fever on 11 June 795 and
8816-652: 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
8932-530: The father of Osman of Khwarazm fled from Karakhanid lands in the wake of the Qara Khitai invasion. Despite losing to the Qara Khitai, the Karakhanid dynasty remained in power as their vassals. The Qara Khitai themselves stayed at Zhetysu near Balasagun, and allowed some of the Karakhanids to continue to rule as their tax collectors in Samarkand and Kashgar. Under the Qara Khitai the Karakhanids functioned as administrators for sedentary Muslim populations. While
9048-599: The following phylogenetic classification: Yaglakar clan The clan was named after a mythical founder Yaglakar Khan or Buk Khan (卜可汗). Initially a part of Tiele Confederation , they carried the hereditary title elteber later as subjects of the Tang dynasty . The first known member of the clan was Tegin Irkin (特健俟斤 * dək̚-ɡɨɐn ʒɨ -kɨn > Tèjiàn Sìjīn ). Defeated Yukuk Shad . Changshou Tianqin Qaghan (長壽天親可汗) By
9164-717: The foremost title of the rulers of the dynasty. The word "Kara" means "black" and also "courageous" from Old Turkic (𐰴𐰺𐰀) and khan means ruler. The term was devised by European Orientalists in the 19th century to describe both the dynasty and the Turks ruled by it. The Kara-Khanid Khanate originated from a confederation formed some time in the 9th century by Karluks , Yagmas , Chigils , Tuhsi , and other peoples living in Zhetysu , Western Tian Shan (modern Kyrgyzstan ), and Western Xinjiang around Kashgar . 10th-century Arab historian Al-Masudi listed two "Khagan of Khagans" of
9280-577: 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
9396-476: 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
9512-440: The formation of two independent Karakhanid states. A son of Hasan Bughra Khan, Ali Tegin , seized control of Bukhara and other towns. He expanded his territory further after the death of Mansur. The son of Nasr, Böritigin , later waged war against the sons of Ali Tegin, and won control of a large part of Transoxiana, making Samarkand the capital. In 1041, another son of Nasr b. Ali, Muhammad 'Ayn ad-Dawlah (reigned 1041–52) took over
9628-466: 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
9744-549: The local population began using Turkic in speech – initially the shift was linguistic with the local people adopting the Turkic language. While Central Asia became Turkicized over the centuries, culturally the Turks came close to being Persianized or, in certain respects, Arabicized. Nevertheless, the official or court language used in Kashgar and other Karakhanid centers, referred to as "Khaqani" (royal), remained Turkic. The language
9860-432: 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
9976-536: 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
10092-466: 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
10208-499: 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
10324-414: 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
10440-732: 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
10556-542: 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
10672-694: 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
10788-633: The rebellion from the Naiman Kuchlug, who had seized the Qara Khitans' treasury at Uzgen. The Khwarezm-Shah then defeated the Qara Khitai near Talas. Muhammad and Kuchlug had, apparently, agreed to divide up the Qara Khitan's empire. In 1212, the population of Samarkand staged a revolt against the Khwarezmians, a revolt which Uthman supported, and massacred them. The Khwarezm-Shah returned, recaptured Samarkand and executed Uthman. He demanded
10904-647: 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
11020-727: The reign of Ibrahim's grandson Ahmad b. Khidr, the Seljuks entered and took control of Samarkand, together with the domains belonging to the Western Khanate. For half a century, the Western Karakhanid Khanate was a vassal of the Seljuks, who largely controlled the appointment of the Khanate's rulers in that time. Ahmad b. Khidr was returned to power by the Seljuks, but in 1095, the ulama accused Ahmad of heresy and managed to secure his execution. The Karakhanids of Kashgar also declared their submission following
11136-602: 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
11252-511: The remains of three Khara-Khanid individuals. They were found to be carrying the maternal haplogroups G2a2 , A and J1c . The Kara-Khanid were found to have more East Asian ancestry than the preceding Goktürks . ( Tokhara Yabghus , Turk Shahis ) Western Karakhanids Eastern Karakhanids Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),
11368-511: The rule of the Tang dynasty prior to the Battle of Talas in 751, and the Kara-Khanid rulers continued to identify their dynasty with China several centuries later. Yusuf Qadir Khan sent the first Kara-Khanid envoy to the Song dynasty, Boyla Saghun, to request the Song to send an official envoy who would help 'pacify' Khotan, apparently seeking to use the prestige of the Chinese court to strengthen
11484-668: 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
11600-512: The standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as Tajik ( тоҷикӣ , tojikī ) since the time of the Soviet Union . It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses
11716-777: 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,
11832-638: The submission of all leading Karakhanids, and finally extinguished the Western Karakhanid state. In 1204, a rebellion of the Eastern Kara-Khanid in Kashgar was suppressed by the Kara-Khitai who took the prince Yusuf hostage to Balasagun. The prince was later released but he was killed in Kashgar by rebels in 1211, effectively ending the Eastern Kara-Khanid. In 1214, the rebels in Kashgar surrendered to Kuchlug , who had usurped
11948-510: The submission of the Turgesh and they established their capital at Suyab on the Chu River . The Karluk confederation by now included the Chigil and Tukshi tribes who may have been Türgesh tribes incorporated into the Karluk union. The Karluks converted to Nestorian Christianity at the end of the 8th century CE, about 15 years after they established themselves in the Semerich'e region. This
12064-576: The tale of the four imams from Mada'in city (possibly now in Iraq) who travelled to help Yusuf Qadir Khan, the Qarakhanid leader, in his conquest of Khotan, Yarkend, and Kashgar. The "infidels" were said to have been driven towards Khotan, but the four Imams were killed. In 1006, Yusuf Qadir Khan of Kashgar conquered the Kingdom of Khotan, ending Khotan's existence as an independent state. The conquest of
12180-765: The two rival empires. The Karakhanid state was divided into appanages ( Ülüş system ), as was common of Turkic and Mongol nomads. The Karakhanid appanages were associated with four principal urban centers, Balasagun (then the capital of the Karakhanid state) in Zhetysu, Kashgar in Xinjiang, Uzgen in Fergana , and Samarkand in Transoxiana. The dynasty's original domains of Zhetysu and Kasgar and their khans retained an implicit seniority over those who ruled in Transoxiana and Fergana. The four sons of Ali (Ahmad, Nasr, Mansur, Muhammad) each held their own independent appanage within
12296-485: 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
12412-640: The western Tarim Basin which includes Khotan and Kashgar is significant in the eventual Turkification and Islamification of the Tarim Basin , and modern Uyghurs identify with the Karakhanids even though the name Uyghur was taken from the Manichaean Uyghur Khaganate and the Buddhist state of Qocho . Early in the 11th century the unity of the Karakhanid dynasty was fractured by frequent internal warfare that eventually resulted in
12528-508: Was a mass conversion of the Turks (reportedly "200,000 tents of the Turks"), and circumstantial evidence suggests these were the Karakhanids. The grandson of Satuk Bughra Khan, Hasan b. Sulayman (or Harun) (title: Bughra Khan) attacked the Samanids in the late 10th century. Between 990 and 992, Hasan took Isfijab , Ferghana , Ilaq , Samarkand , and the Samanid capital Bukhara . However, Hasan Bughra Khan died in 992 due to an illness, and
12644-597: 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
12760-408: Was conquered by the Kara-Khanids between 990 and 992, and held until 1212 (11th–12th centuries): Kara-Khanid is arguably the most enduring cultural heritage among coexisting cultures in Central Asia from the 9th to the 13th centuries. The Karluk-Uyghur dialect spoken by the nomadic tribes and Turkified sedentary populations under Kara-Khanid rule formed two major branches of the Turkic language family,
12876-527: Was partly based on dialects spoken by the Turkic tribes that made up the Karakhanids and possessed qualities of linear descent from Kök and Karluk Turkic. The Turkic script was also used for all documents and correspondence of the khaqans, according to Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk . The Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk (Dictionary of Languages of the Turks) was written by a prominent Karakhanid historian, Mahmud al-Kashgari , who may have lived for some time in Kashgar at
12992-597: 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
13108-542: Was succeeded by Mansur, and after the death of Mansur, the Hasan Bughra Khan branch of the Karakhanids became dominant. Hasan's sons Muhammad Toghan Khan II, and Yusuf Kadir Khan who held Kashgar , became in turn the head of the Karakhanid dynasty. The two families, i.e. , the descendants of Ali Arslan Khan and Hasan Bughra Khan, would eventually split the Karakhanid Khanate in two. In 1017–1018,
13224-613: 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
13340-574: Was the first time the Church of the East received such major sponsorship by an eastern power. Remains of a Nestorian church have been found in the Karluk capital of Suyab , as well as hundreds of tomstones with Nestorian Syriac inscriptions in the Semerich'e region. By the mid-9th century, the Karluk confederation had gained control of the sacred lands of the Western Türks after the destruction of
13456-492: Was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such as rāh-āhan ( راهآهن ) for "railway", were printed in Soltani Newspaper ; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention. A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in
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