Misplaced Pages

#546453

115-571: Azali Babis continued to push for the end of the Iranian monarchy, and several individuals were among the national reformers of the constitutional revolution of 1905–1911. Azalis stagnated and disappeared as an organized community after the revolution, numbering at most a few thousand by the end of the 20th century, mainly in Iran. Azalis are considerably outnumbered by adherents of the Baháʼí Faith, who number in

230-508: A "brief but violent confrontation" in which Sattar Khan was wounded, Yeprem Khan, the recently appointed police chief of Tehran "succeeded in disarming them". The revolution ended in December 1911 when deputies of the Second Majlis, suffering from "internal dissension, apathy of the masses, antagonisms from the upper class, and open enmity from Britain and Russia", were "roughly" expelled from

345-468: A 50-year monopoly over the distribution and exportation of tobacco in exchange for £25,000 to the Shah personally and £15,000 a year to the state. Iranians cultivated a variety of tobacco "much prized in foreign markets" that was not grown elsewhere, and the arrangement threatened the job security of a significant portion of the Iranian population – hundreds of thousands of workers in agriculture and

460-638: 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

575-443: A Muslim not trained in the religious sciences to obey a mujtahid , i.e. a marja' , when seeking to determine Islamically correct behavior.) After this debacle, the new Shah, Mohammad Ali Qajar , understood that he could not use royal prestige and tradition to fight constitutional government. Instead, he would find religious allies. There were clergy on both sides of the dispute. On the side of constitutional government were three of

690-420: A century of successive defeats, an Asian power had defeated a European power, an event that bolstered pride throughout Asia. This feeling was particularly strong in those countries, like Iran, that had experienced Russian penetration and oppression. Many considered it significant that the only Asian power with a constitution had defeated the only Western power without one, and constitutions came to be looked upon as

805-436: A curb on royal authority and the establishment of the rule of law as their concern about foreign (especially Russian) influence grew. The Qajars had taken large loans from Russia and Britain to pay for the Shah's extravagant lifestyle and the cost of the government; the shah financed a royal tour of Europe in 1900 by borrowing ₽22 million from Russia, using Iranian customs receipts as collateral. In 1905, protests erupted about

920-418: 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

1035-497: A fight in early 1906, government forces killed a sayyid (a descendant of Muhammad ). In a skirmish shortly afterwards, Cossacks killed 22 protesters and injured 100. The bazaar again closed and the ulama went on strike, a large number taking sanctuary in the holy city of Qom . Many merchants went to the British embassy in Tehran , which agreed to shelter the basti on the grounds of

1150-654: A financial crisis, with annual governmental expenditures far in excess of revenues as a result of the policies of his father. The monarch, Mozaffar ad-Din Shah signed the 1906 constitution shortly before his death. Weakness and extravagance continued during the brief reign of Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar (1896–1907), who often relied on his chancellor to manage his decentralized state. His dire financial straits caused him to sign many concessions to foreign powers on trade items ranging from weapons to tobacco. The aristocracy, religious authorities, and educated elite began demanding

1265-500: 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

SECTION 10

#1732852445547

1380-417: 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

1495-573: A matrix within which radical social and political ideas could be propounded. After the split with the Baháʼís, some Azalis were very active in secular reform movements and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905–1907), including Sheikh Ahmad Rouhi and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani . However, the community was still suppressed as a heresy , and the accusation of being an Azali was often enough for most to believe it to be true. Coupled with

1610-465: A parliament, giving it final approval of all loans and the budget. The majles was endorsed by the leading clerics of Najaf – Akhund Khurasani , Mirza Husayn Tehrani and Shaykh Abdullah Mazandarani . In the late 19th century, like most of the Muslim world, Iran suffered from foreign intrusion and exploitation, military weakness, lack of cohesion, and corruption. In the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan and

1725-529: 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

1840-451: A phase of stagnation from which it has never recovered. There is now no acknowledged leader nor, to the knowledge of the present writer, any central organization. Members tend to be secretive about their affiliation, converts are rare, and association appears to run along family lines. It is difficult to estimate current numbers, but these are unlikely to exceed one or two thousand, almost all of whom reside in Iran. Despite their small numbers,

1955-580: 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

2070-414: A virtue and classified into various levels of concealment. Prominent Azali leaders openly recanted their faith and even abused [the] Bab and Azal in the process. There was some dispute on the question over who was Subh-i-Azal's appointed successor. MacEoin states that Subh-i-Azal appointed Yahya Dawlatabadi as his successor in turn after the death of his (Yahya's) father, Mirza Hadi Dawlatabadi. However, this

2185-644: 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

2300-610: 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

2415-765: 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

SECTION 20

#1732852445547

2530-654: 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

2645-425: 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

2760-455: 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

2875-468: 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 ),

2990-570: 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

3105-486: 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

3220-436: 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

3335-502: 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

3450-464: The ulama , and a small group of radical reformers – argued that Iran's oil industry was being sold to the British, while tax breaks on imports, exports and manufactured textiles were destroying Iran's economy (which had been supported by the bazaar merchants), and that the shah was selling assets to pay interest on the fortune in foreign debt he had accumulated. It ended in December 1911 when deputies of

3565-602: 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

Azali - Misplaced Pages Continue

3680-621: The Constitutional Revolution of Iran , took place between 1905 and 1911 during the Qajar dynasty . The revolution led to the establishment of a parliament in Persia (Iran) , and has been called an "epoch-making episode in the modern history of Persia". The revolution was "the first of its kind in the Islamic world, earlier than the revolution of the Young Turks in 1908 ". It opened

3795-533: The Islamic Revolution a new constitution was approved on 2 and 3 December 1979 establishing an Islamic Republic. The Constitutional Revolution began in 1905 with protest against a foreign director of customs (a Belgian) enforcing "with bureaucratic rigidity" the tariff collections to pay for a loan to another foreign source (Russians) that financed the shah's ( Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar ) extravagant tour of Europe. The revolutionaries – mainly bazaar merchants,

3910-655: 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

4025-688: 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

4140-483: 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

4255-485: The majlis ) to the shah's policies. Parliament appointed American lawyer William Morgan Shuster as Persia's treasurer-general. In response, Russia issued an ultimatum to expel Shuster and suspend the parliament, occupying Tabriz . After shelling the Majles (parliament) of Iran in the capital Tehran, 40,000 of Mohammad Ali Shah's soldiers were ordered to attack Tabriz, where Constitutional rebels were holding out. Sattar Khan

4370-585: 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 ,

4485-493: The "secret of strength" of Western governments. The political base of the constitutionalist movement to control the power of the shah was an alliance of the ulama , liberal and radical intellectuals, and the bazaar . But the alliance was based on common enemies rather than common goals. The ulama sought "to extend their own power and to have Shi'i Islam more strictly enforced"; the liberals and radicals desired "greater political and social democracy and economic development"; and

4600-450: The 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay , Iran lost "Georgia, Armenia, and their Caspian navy" to Russia, "gave up its claims to Afghanistan, and paid an indemnity of three million pounds to the tsar". In the Treaty of Paris (1857) , it agreed to withdraw from Herat (formerly part of Iran) and signed a commercial treaty with Britain. The lack of a standing Iranian army was part of the problem because

4715-550: The Azali practice of taqiyya (dissimulation), determining whether or not a particular figure in Persian politics was an Azali is difficult. Taqiya ("dissimulation") was practiced by some Bábís. It was justified by some as a response to the often violent oppression the community faced. However, prominent Bábí leaders never encouraged individuals to practice it; and some who had practiced taqiyya later abandoned it, declared themselves openly, and were put to death. Among Azalis, however,

Azali - Misplaced Pages Continue

4830-597: The Azalis have included several prominent Iranian political and literary figures, notably Shaykh Ahmad Ruhi and Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani . Persian Constitutional Revolution Revolution: June 1905 – August 1906 Semi-organized groups: [REDACTED] Qajar dynasty Civil war: August 1906 – July 1909 [REDACTED] Parliament Qajar dynasty The Persian Constitutional Revolution ( Persian : مشروطیت , romanized :  Mashrūtiyyat , or انقلاب مشروطه Enghelāb-e Mashrūteh ), also known as

4945-672: 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

5060-594: The Elections to the Majlis. (No women, foreigners, men under 25, "persons notorious for mischievous opinions," those with a criminal record, active military personnel, etc. were allowed to vote. Members of the parliament were required to be fully literate in Persian, "Iranian subjects of Iranian extraction," "locally known," "not be in government employment," between the ages of 30 and 70, and "have some insight into affairs of State." The fundamental laws of December 30, 1906 defined

5175-502: The Majlis and threatened with death if they returned by "the shah's cabinet, backed by 12,000 Russian troops". The 1891 fatwa by Mirza Hasan Shirazi that effectively shut down tobacco use in Iran and reversed the monopoly agreement on tobacco, showed the enormous influence of the Usuli Twelver Shi'i clergy among the Iranian people that went beyond issues directly involved with religion. (Usuli Shi'i consider it obligatory for

5290-558: 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

5405-532: 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

5520-521: 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

5635-425: 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

5750-401: 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

5865-848: 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

#1732852445547

5980-479: 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

6095-575: 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)

6210-449: The Second Majlis from the parliament "with the support of 12,000 Russian troops". After the 1921 Persian coup d'état ( Persian : کودتای ۳ اسفند ۱۲۹۹ ), Iran's parliament amended the constitution on December 12, 1925, replacing the 1797–1925 Qajar dynasty with the Pahlavi dynasty as the legitimate sovereigns of Iran. The 1906–1907 constitution, though not adhered to, remained until after

6325-501: The Second Majlis, suffering from "internal dissension, apathy of the masses, antagonisms from the upper class, and open enmity from Britain and Russia", were "roughly" expelled from the Majlis and threatened with death if they returned by "the shah's cabinet, backed by 12,000 Russian troops". In between there were two different majles (parliaments), a deposed shah and a 1907 division of the country by Britain and Russia capitalizing on Iran's weak government. A new fundamental law created

6440-457: 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

6555-493: 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

6670-438: The bazaaris "to restrict favored foreign economic status and competition". The intellectuals were a "small but growing" group, many of whom learned of Western ways while travelling abroad and "were generally struck by Western economic development, comparative justice, and lack of arbitrary rule". In their writings these intellectuals criticized Iran's "autocratic rulers, petty officials, venal clerics, and arbitrary courts, and of

6785-569: The bazaars. This led to unprecedented nationwide protest erupting first among the bazaari , and then the ulama . In December 1891, the most important religious authority in Iran, marja' -e taqlid Mirza Hasan Shirazi , issued a fatwa declaring the use of tobacco to be tantamount to war against the Hidden Imam , using the strongest possible language to oppose the Régie (tobacco monopoly). Bazaars shut down, and Iranians stopped smoking tobacco, Despite

6900-675: The beginning of the constitutional movement, Sheikh Fazlullah Nouri made speeches and distributed tracts in support of the sources of emulation (Shi'i marja' religious leadership) in Najaf and their position on constitutionalism. They all agreed that the people must counter autocracy and injustice with a constitution that limited the powers of the state and a legislature that represented the country. However, when monarch Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar made clear his desire to roll back democracy and reestablish his authority by military and foreign support (in 1908), Shaikh Fazlullah reversed his position and sided with

7015-457: 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

SECTION 60

#1732852445547

7130-512: 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

7245-405: The constitution and bombarded the parliament in 1908 with Russian and British support. This led to a second effort with constitutionalist forces marching to Tehran, forced Mohammad Ali Shah's abdication in favor of his young son Ahmad Shah Qajar , and re-established the constitution in 1909. The revolution ended in December 1911 when the Shah's ministers oversaw the expulsion of the deputies of

7360-514: The country was neutral. In 1908, the shah moved to "exploit the divisions within the ranks of the reformers" and eliminate the majlis , staging a coup d'état and creating a period in Iranian history called the Minor Tyranny . It was at this point that Fazlollah Nori defected from the constitutionalists, helping the shah kill some revolutionaries and bomb the parliament. Persia tried to remain free of Russian influence through resistance (via

7475-500: The direction that Azali Bábism took immediately after the split, MacEoin said: Azali Babism represents the conservative core of the original Babi movement, opposed to innovation and preaching a religion for a non-clerical gnostic elite rather than the masses. It also retains the original Babi antagonism to the Qajar state and a commitment to political activism, in distinction to the quietist stance of Baháism [sic]. Paradoxically, Azali conservatism in religious matters seems to have provided

7590-469: The embassy. During the summer of 1906, about 12,000 men camped in the gardens of the British embassy in what has been called a "vast open-air school of political science". Demand for a parliament ( majlis ) began, with the goal of limiting the power of the shah. Mozaffar ad-Din Shah agreed on a parliament in August 1906, and the first elections were held that fall. One hundred fifty-six members were elected,

7705-632: 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

7820-640: The forces that were raised to fight the Russians (for example) were "faction-ridden tribal contingents" and lacked modern artillery. To compensate for his lack of an army, the Qajar Shah would use "loyal tribes", putting down a rebellion by declaring a rebellious city or region "open booty" for the tribe, who would then appear to rape and pillage – a far more destructive means of discipline than arresting and punishing rebels. Major roads between cities that might have appeared to be investments in improving transportation, provided opportunities not for greater trade and prosperity, but for tax collectors to fleece towns along

7935-444: The formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia , and South Asia . Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia , Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to

8050-421: The formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Xenophon , a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like

8165-419: The highest level clerics ( marja' ) at the time – Akhund Khurasani , Mirza Husayn Tehrani and Shaykh Abdullah Mazandarani – who telegraphed fatwa in favor of the constitution from their schools in Najaf , Iraq; of the three, Muhammad Kazim Khurasani , (aka Akhund Khurasani) was the most involved in the issue, he and his student Muhammad Hossein Naini argued that while complete justice was impossible until

8280-526: The imposition of Persian tariffs to repay the Russian loan for Mozaffar ad-Din Shah's royal tour. In December of that year, two merchants in Tehran were bastinadoed for price-gouging. The city's merchants rebelled, closing its bazaar. The clergy followed suit as a result of the alliance formed during the Tobacco Protest . The two protesting groups sought sanctuary in a Tehran mosque, but the government entered

8395-461: 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

8510-528: The laws of Islam. Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar , the sixth Qajar shah, came to power in January 1907. He opposed the constitution. The British switched their support to the shah, abandoning the constitutionalists. In August of that year, taking advantage of Iran's weakness, the Anglo-Russian Convention was signed, dividing Iran into a Russian zone in the north and a British zone in the south; the center of

8625-411: The low status of women." The "mercantile class" or bazaari became convinced that "law and order, security of property, and immunity from arbitrary power could all be achieved by importing parliamentary democracy" from Europe. The ulama (i.e. Islamic scholars) had less to gain and a less direct incentive to support a constitution, but were convinced (at least for a time) that their "hierocracy vis-a-vis

8740-432: 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

8855-447: The millions. Azalis do not accept any of those who have advanced claims to be the Báb's promised one (known as " He whom God shall make manifest "). The most bitterly contested claim is that of Baháʼu'lláh in 1863. Azalis rejected his claim of divinity as premature, arguing that the world must first accept the laws of the Báb before "He Whom God Shall Make Manifest" can appear. With respect to

8970-442: The monarchy" would not be weakened. The tobacco protest of 1891–1892 was "the first mass nationwide popular movement in Iran", and described as a "dress rehearsal for the...Constitutional Revolution", formed from an anti-imperialist and antimonarchist coalition of "clerics, mercantile interests, and dissident intellectuals". In March 1890, Naser al-Din Shah granted a concession to an Englishman, Baron Paul Julius Reuter , for

9085-425: The mosque and dispersed them. The dispersal triggered a larger movement that sought refuge at a shrine outside Tehran. The shah yielded to the demonstrators on January 12, 1906, agreeing to dismiss his prime minister and transfer power to a "house of justice" (forerunner of the Iranian parliament). The basti protesters returned from the shrine in triumph, riding royal carriages and hailed by a jubilant crowd. During

9200-525: 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

9315-461: 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

9430-448: 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

9545-414: 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

9660-713: 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

9775-529: 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

9890-556: The overwhelming majority from Tehran and the merchant class. The National Consultative Assembly first met in October 1906. The shah was old and frail, and attending the inauguration of parliament was one of his last official acts. Mozaffar ad-Din Shah's son, Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar , was unsympathetic to constitutionalism; the shah signed the constitution (modeled on the Belgian constitution ) by December 31, 1906, making his power contingent on

10005-473: The popularity of tobacco – which Iranians were said to be less likely to forego than bread  – the religious ban was so successful that it was said that women in the shah's harem quit smoking. The protest demonstrated to the Iranians "for the first time that it was possible to win out against the Shah and foreign interests… there is a direct line from the coalition which participated in

10120-481: The powerful Bakhtiyari tribal leaders threw their support to the Tabriz rebels. Constitutionalist forces marched to Tehran, forced Mohammad Ali Shah's abdication in favor of his young son Ahmad Shah Qajar , and re-established the constitution in 1909. A further split in the revolutionary movement occurred in 1910 when "a group of guerrilla fighters headed by Sattar Khan, refused to obey a government order to disarm." After

10235-462: The practice became ingrained and widespread. One historian has noted: The Azali Babis and in particular Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani and Shaykh Ahmad Ruhi showed little hesitation in alteration and falsification of Babi teachings and history in their works. Azali Babis regarded taqiyyah as an imperative requirement. In contrast the Azali Babis glorified taqiyyah in their literature. Taqiyyah was considered

10350-628: 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

10465-424: The price they were paid for wheat harvest dropped to 1/6 what it had been in 1871; irrigation systems had fallen into ruin, "turning fields and villages into desert". In 1872, Nasir al-Din Shah negotiated a concession granting a British citizen control over Persian roads, telegraphs, mills, factories, extraction of resources, and other public works in exchange for a fixed sum and 60% of net revenue. This concession

10580-578: 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

10695-589: 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

10810-572: The return of the Hidden Imam, "human experience and careful reflection" shows "that democracy reduces the tyranny of state" making it a "lesser evil" in governance and something Shi'i must support until the return of the Imam; also supporting constitutionalism was Mirza Ali Aqa Tabrizi , who argued that only the sources of emulation (highest level clerics) should be heeded when it comes to matters of faith. The leader of those opposing constitutional government

10925-491: The road, and thus "encouraged the local peasants to settle in more distant regions". A survey for the British Foreign Office reported: 'There are large tracts of fertile land which remain waste owing to their proximity to the main roads, as no village having cultivators on such spots can possibly prosper or enjoy the least immunity from the pestering visits of Government officials, and thefts and robberies committed by

11040-522: The role of the Majlis as a bicameral legislature: the National Consultative Assembly was to be based "on justice." and there was to be "another Assembly, entitled the Senate." The Constitutional Amendment of 1907 declared Twelver Shi'ism to be the state religion, and called for a council of five high ranking Twelver Shia clerics to ensure that the laws passed by the parliament were not against

11155-840: The shah and his court. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -⁠shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of 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

11270-440: The shah's court. Under the Qajar dynasty (1789–1925), foreign (Western) mass-manufactured products, "especially textiles, undermined the traditional handicrafts, and consequently presented for many bazaars a mutual enemy – the foreigner." In Isfahan at least, 10% of "the guilds in this city were weavers; not even 1/5 of those survived" competition with imported textiles. Widows and orphans were hurt, and farmers suffered: by 1894

11385-607: 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

11500-561: 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

11615-687: 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,

11730-608: The tobacco movement… culminating in the Constitutional Revolution" and arguably the Iranian Revolution as well, according to Historian Nikki Keddie . The fourth Qajar monarch, Naser al-Din Shah was assassinated on 1 May 1896 by Mirza Reza Kermani , a follower of Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī , when he was visiting and praying in the Shah Abdul-Azim Shrine . At Mozaffar al-Din Shah 's accession Persia faced

11845-435: The tribes.' Perhaps worst of all the indignities Iran suffered from the superior militaries of European powers were "a series of commercial capitulations." While the sales by the shah of titles, patents, privileges, concessions, monopolies, lands, ... high offices" paid for some improvements, such as a telegraph network and in Tehran a regular police force, a municipal civil service, etc., they were also spent on consumption by

11960-478: 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

12075-458: The way for the modern era in Persia, and debate in a burgeoning press. Many groups fought to shape the course of the revolution. The old order, which Shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar had struggled for so long to sustain, was finally replaced by new institutions. Shah Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar signed the 1906 constitution shortly before his death. He was succeeded by Mohammad Ali Shah , who abolished

12190-464: The will of the people, and died three days later. The constitution itself was created by the royal proclamation on August 5, 1906 by Mozzafar al-Din Shah on "for the peace and tranquility of all the people of Persia." The Quran was the foundation of this constitution while the Belgian constitution served as a partial model for the document. The electoral law of September 9, 1906 defined the regulations for

12305-555: Was Fazlullah Nouri . Other opponents included Mullah Qurban Ali Zanjani. Nouri maintained that sharia was a complete code of life, not just for religious ritual, and any other codes were both unnecessary and against Islam. Although he ranked below Marja' religious leaders, he told Shi'i Muslims to ignore the Marja' they followed if that marja' supported democracy. After the parliament was formed, its members stayed in touch with Akhund Khurasani. Whenever legislative bills were discussed, he

12420-578: 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

12535-458: Was appointed the commander in chief of High Council, i.e. commander of the constitutionalist forces. By April 1909, the Tabriz rebels had lost large numbers of fighters, but succeeded in driving out royalist forces from the city, and Sattar Khan and his lieutenant Bagher Khan had distinguished themselves as heroes. Inspired by this victory, constitutionalists across Iran set up special committees in Tehran, Rasht, Qazvin, Isfahan and other cities, and

12650-490: Was disputed by Subh-i-Azal's grandson, Jalal Azal, indicating that this question was not entirely resolved. MacEoin notes that, in any event, neither he (Yahya Dawlatabadi) nor anyone else arose to organize the affairs of the community, or produce significant writing to develop the religion. He goes on to say (writing in 1999): With the deaths of those Azalis who were active in the Constitutional period, Azali Babism entered

12765-586: 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

12880-511: Was rolled back after bitter local opposition. Other concessions to the British included giving the new Imperial Bank of Persia exclusive rights to issue banknotes, and opening up the Karun River to navigation. Nikki R. Keddie points out that The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 and the Russian revolution of 1905 gave impetus to an Iranian opposition movement that had been growing since 1901. After

12995-600: 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

13110-629: Was telegraphed with the details for a juristic opinion. In a letter dated June 3, 1907, the parliament told Akhund about a group of anti-constitutionalists who were trying to undermine legitimacy of democracy in the name of religious law. Akhund Khurasani and the other two members of the trio ( Mirza Husayn Tehrani and Shaykh Abdullah Mazandarani ) replied: اساس این مجلس محترم مقدس بر امور مذکور مبتنی است. بر هر مسلمی سعی و اهتمام در استحکام و تشیید این اساس قویم لازم، و اقدام در موجبات اختلال آن محاده و معانده با صاحب شریعت مطهره علی الصادع بها و آله الطاهرین افضل الصلاه و السلام، و خیانت به دولت قوی شوکت است. At

13225-484: 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

#546453