103-592: Padshahnama or Badshah Nama ( Persian : پادشاهنامه or پادشاهنامه ; lit. ' The Book of the Emperor ' ) is a group of works written as the official history of the reign of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan I . Unillustrated texts are known as Shahjahannama , with Padshahnama used for the illustrated manuscript versions. These works are among the major sources of information about Shah Jahan's reign. Lavishly illustrated copies were produced in
206-638: 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
309-412: A contemporary of Prithviraj. However, some scholars still believe that Chand Bardai was a historical court poet of Prithviraj, and he composed a text that forms the basis of the present version of Prithviraj Raso . The earliest extant manuscript of Prithviraj Raso , discovered at Dharanojwali village of Gujarat, is dated 1610. This manuscript contains the shortest recension of the text, and its language
412-418: 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
515-500: 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
618-417: 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
721-529: 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
824-580: 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
927-605: 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
1030-644: 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
1133-610: 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
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#17330845398461236-812: 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
1339-654: 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
1442-605: Is called Sahabdin in the text. This is a summary of the shortest (Rajmal Bora) recension of Prithviraj Raso : The long recension contains several additions. For example, it mentions that Anangpal demanded his kingdom back a few years later. After failing to regain it by force, he went on to sought support from Shihab al-Din. Prithviraj defeated both of them, and convinced Anangpal to retire. The largest recension also gives accounts of bravery of several noble chiefs like Jaitra Rai, Devrai Baggari, Balibhadra Rai, Kuranbh Ram Rai, Prasang Rai Khichi and Jam Rai Yadav, whom it describes as
1545-425: 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
1648-590: Is from the 16th century. It exists in form a manuscript copied in 1610, for a grandson of Kalyanmal, the Rathore ruler of Bikaner . Scholars, such as Cynthia Talbot, Narottamdas Swami and Namwar Singh date the text to the 16th century, during the reign of Akbar . However Rima Hooja and other scholars of Rajasthan claims the core to have been written in Lata Apabhramsha (also called Latiya Apabhramsha ) language and style typical of 12th and 13th centuries. Since
1751-548: Is known as the Windsor Padshahnama . It was produced between 1630 and 1657 and contains 44 miniatures, some full page narrative scenes of battles, court ceremonies and other events (11 are across two pages), and some smaller individual portraits, surrounded by geometric decoration. These illustrate the genealogy of the Mughal dynasty which begins the work. The page size is 58.6 x 36.8 cm, and 13 different lead artists worked on
1854-684: Is mentioned under the name Kadambavasa in the Prithviraja Vijaya , which was composed during Prithivraj's reign. He is also mentioned in another text - the Sanskrit-language Kharatara-gaccha Pattavali (1336 CE). However, unlike these texts, the Prithviraja Prabandha mentions the king's attack on this minister - an episode also mentioned in the Prithviraj Raso . In the Prithviraja Prabandha , Kaimbasa
1957-479: Is more archaic than the one found in the other 17th century manuscripts. This suggests that the shortest recension most probably composed sometime before 1600, towards the end of the 16th century. Scholars such as Narottamdas swami, Namvar Singh, and Cynthia Talbot date the text to the 16th century, during the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605). This theory is based on the fact that two narratives written during c. 1587-1597 are essentially summaries of
2060-554: Is more prevalent in Dingal than in Brajbhasha. The text features archaic vocabulary: this is especially true of the longest recension. The various manuscripts use different proper names. For example, Prithviraj is variously called Prathiraj, Prathurav, Prithiraj etc.; and the Tomara dynasty is variously called Tanvar, Tauvar, Tunvar, and Tuar. The Ghurid king Shihab al-Din alias Mu'izz al-Din
2163-455: 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
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#17330845398462266-412: Is not on good terms with Prithviraj's spear-bearer Pratapasimha. One day, he complains to the king against Pratapasimha, but the spear-bearer convinces the king that Kaimbasa had been supporting the king's Ghurid enemies. On a subsequent night, the king attempts to kill Kaimbasa with a bow and arrow in the dark, but Kaimbasa escapes. The king feigns innocence about the attack, but Chand Baliddika knows about
2369-468: 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 ),
2472-570: 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
2575-595: Is preserved in Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library , Patna , India. Other individual miniatures are held in a number collections. The Khalili Collection of Islamic Art has one miniature in which Shah Jahan and his court watch two elephants fighting. There were some later illustrated manuscript copies made; for example the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has miniatures from 17th-century versions, and
2678-486: 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
2781-484: Is the basis of Prithviraj Raso . Another possibility is that both the narratives may have been adapted from another, now-lost account. The language of the texts available today largely appears to be post-15th century and to be based upon the 17th-century compilation commissioned by Amar Singh II , the Sisodia ruler of Mewar . Amar Singh's predecessors had commissioned re-working of Prithviraj Raso , probably beginning in
2884-618: Is the best known, and was also produced in an illustrated copy in the 1590s by Akbar 's workshop. The tradition was continued by the Mughals with the Baburnama (autobiography, not illustrated before Akbar), Akbarnama (biography), and Tuzk-e-Jahangiri or Jahangir-nameh (memoirs of Jahangir ). Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),
2987-575: Is very different from the earlier versions of the text. This version appears to have been written as the part of a campaign to revive the Mewar dynasty's prestige, which had declined as a result of their setbacks against and later alliance with the Mughals . The Mewar recension enlarges and embellishes the role of the Mewar family in history, through their association with Prithviraj Chauhan. For example, it mentions Amar Singh's ancestor Samar Singh (Samarasimha) as
3090-593: The Alha Khand and Prithviraja Vijaya ). From 1900 onwards, several Hindi -language narratives based on Prithviraj Raso were published. In 1886, Kaviraj Shyamaldas raised doubts about the text's historicity, finding faults with its chronology. These concerns were dismissed by those who saw Prithviraj Raso as an authentic indigenous text (as opposed to the Persian-language histories by Muslim writers). The Mewar State official Mohanlal Vishnu Pandya tried to prove
3193-486: The Encyclopædia Iranica notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist. The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects: More distantly related branches of the Iranian language family include Kurdish and Balochi . The Glottolog database proposes
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3296-502: 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
3399-603: 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
3502-627: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art from one of around 1800. The Padshahnama fits into a tradition of imperial autobiographies or official court biographies, seen in various parts of the world. In South Asia these go back to the Ashokavadana and Harshacharita from ancient India , and the medieval Prithviraj Raso . The Mughals' ancestor Timur had been celebrated in a number of works, mostly called Zafarnama ("Book of Victories"), such as those by Shami and Yazdi . The latter
3605-503: The Prithviraj Raso is a source of information on the social and clan structure of the Kshattriya communities of northern India . Some examples of historical inaccuracies in Prithviraj Raso include: The different recensions of the text also vary with each other. For example, the most popular recension of the text mentions the Agnikula legend, according to which Chahavana or Chahamana,
3708-521: The Prithviraj Raso plot: these narratives are contained in the Persian language text Ain-i-Akbari and the Sanskrit language text Surjana-charita . Some episodes contained in Prithviraj Raso (such as the existence of a minister called Kaymas or Prithviraj's defeat by the Ghurid king) are mentioned in the earlier texts, but these earlier texts do not follow the storyline of the Prithviraj Raso . For example,
3811-563: The Prithviraja Prabandha does not glorify Prithviraj. Here, his arrow misses Kaimbasa, indicating that he is not a phenomenal archer. Also, he dismisses his bard from his service, and his subsequent attempt to kill Shihab al-Din fails. Prithviraja Prabandha and Prabandha Chintamani , both written by Jain authors, present Prithviraj as an inept and unworthy king. However, the Prithviraj Raso glorifies him as an admirable king. The similarities between Prithviraj Raso and Prithviraja Prabandha suggest that one of these texts borrowed from
3914-655: 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
4017-688: 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
4120-483: 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
4223-585: 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 ,
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4326-435: The 13th century. By the 19th century, several interpolations and additions had been made to the original text under the patronage from Rajput rulers. The text now exists in four recensions. It contains a mixture of historical facts and imaginary legends, and is not considered historically reliable. According to tradition, the Prithviraj Raso was composed by Chand Bardai, Prithviraj's court poet ( raj kavi ), who accompanied
4429-541: The 15th century text Hammira Mahakavya , which appears to have been written for a Chauhan patron, does not mention the heroic episodes contained in the Prithviraj Raso . If such episodes were known during the 15th century, the author of Hammira Mahakavya would not have failed to mention them. This suggests that the Prithiviraj Raso narratives did not exist in the 15th century in oral form, as speculated by some writers. The oldest extant recension of Prithviraj Raso
4532-417: The 1630s or 1640s, during the reign of Jagat Singh I . The version commissioned by Amar Singh was compiled by the poet Karuna-udadhi. Its manuscript, generally dated to 1703 CE, states that "stupid poets" had separated Chand Bardai's text into different parts: Karuna-udadhi wrote the current version by "picking through the strands" on the orders of Amar Singh. The resulting text is actually a revised text, which
4635-653: The 16th century, the Rajput rulers patronized Prithviraj Raso for its elements of heroic exploits, romance and revenge. Because of this, it became the most popular biography of Prithviraj among the Rajputs. James Tod , who introduced the text to the Western scholarship, characterised it as an authentic historical source but is today considered himself not to be reliable. As a result of James Tod's writings, Prithviraj Raso overshadowed other legendary texts about Prithviraj Chauhan (such as
4738-554: The 16th century, the size of the text has expanded greatly because of several interpolations and additions, resulting in multiple recensions. Only a small portion of the existing recensions is likely to have been part of the original version. A small 1300-stanza manuscript in Bikaner is closest to the original text. The longest available version is the Udaipur (Mewar) manuscript, which is an epic with 16,306 stanzas. Modern scholars categorize
4841-672: 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
4944-455: The Ghurid Sultan's place: Prithviraj ends up shooting an arrow at the statue, and is later stoned to death on Shihab al-Din's orders. The text implies that Prithviraj had been blinded before his imprisonment, as he realises his failure to kill Shihab al-Din when he hears the sound of the statue breaking. In the Prithviraj Raso , Kaymas falls in love with a slave from Karnataka , and visits
5047-439: The Mewar's family's glory. Because of the claim that Prithviraj Raso was written by Prithviraj's contemporary Chand Bardai, the text was historically regarded as an authoritative source. However, it contains a mixture of imaginary stories and historical facts, which it exaggerates for dramatic effect. The largest version of the text is especially known to contain several inaccuracies, and is of little historical value. Since
5150-558: 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
5253-532: 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
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#17330845398465356-521: 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
5459-425: 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
5562-401: 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
5665-799: 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,
5768-479: 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
5871-427: 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)
5974-407: 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
6077-441: 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
6180-479: The closest associate of Prithviraj Chauhan. On the other hand, the shortest recension of Prithviraj Raso does not even mention Samar Singh. The Mewar recension claims that Samar Singh married Prithviraj's sister Pritha, and fought alongside Prithviraj against Jaichand of Kannauj. Such claims are first made in two earlier Brajbhasha texts composed during the reign of Amar Singh's grandfather Raj Singh I : Rajvilas of Man and Rajaprashasti of Ranchhod Bhatt. Unlike
6283-457: 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
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#17330845398466386-512: 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
6489-447: The dark; in the second episode, he repeats this feat when he is blind. There is also an insinuation that Prithviraj's unjustified murder of Kaymas led to his misfortune of being defeated and blinded by the Ghurids. The king's blindness can be seen as a metaphor: when he starts ignoring the state affairs after being infatuated with Samyogita, he "becomes blind, figuratively-speaking, to the dangers to his kingdom". Unlike Prithviraj Raso ,
6592-450: The emperor. The project was later given to Abdul Hamid Lahori , who wrote his Badshahnama in two volumes. The first volume of this work is based upon Qazvini’s work but has more details. The second volume covers the next ten (lunar) years of Shah Jahan’s reign. He completed his work in 1648. Lahori died in 1654. Muhammad Waris, a pupil of Lahori was given the responsibility to complete the task and his Badshahnama (completed in 1656) covers
6695-430: The extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Hindi - Urdu (also historically known as Hindustani ), Punjabi , Kashmiri , and Sindhi . There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious execution in Qajar Iran and speak
6798-434: The following phylogenetic classification: Prithviraj Raso The Prithviraj Raso ( IAST : Pṛthvīrāja Rāso) is a Braj language epic poem about the life of Prithviraj Chauhan (reign. c. 1177–1192 CE). It is attributed to Chand Bardai , who according to the text, was a court poet of the king. The earliest extant copy of the text dates back to the 16th century, although some scholars date its oldest version to
6901-444: 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
7004-421: 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
7107-422: The imperial workshops, with many Mughal miniatures . Although military campaigns are given the most prominence, the illustrations and paintings in the manuscripts of these works illuminate life in the imperial court, depicting weddings and other activities. The most significant work of this genre was written by Abdul Hamid Lahori , the pupil of Akbar's biographer Abdul Fazal , in two volumes. He could not write
7210-400: The incident, and condemns the king in private. The next day, Prithviraj dismisses both Kaimbasa and Chand Baliddika from his service. Kaimbasa later helps the invading Ghurid king Shihab al-Din defeat and capture Prithviraj. While imprisoned, Prithviraj asks Kaimbasa for a bow-and-arrow to kill Shihab al-Din, but the minister betrays him by divulging his plan to Shihab al-Din. A statue is kept in
7313-412: The killing of Kaymas is one of the three key episodes integral to the plot of the original version of the Prithviraj Raso , the other two being the king's eloping with Samyogita , and his killing of Shihab al-Din. Pritchett notes that Prithviraj's shooting of Kaymas foreshadows his shooting of Shihab al-Din: in the first episode, Prithviraj demonstrates his ability to shoot at night with poor visibility in
7416-484: The king in all his battles. The last canto, which narrates the death of Chand Bardai and Prithviraj, is said to have been composed by Chand Bardai's son Jalha (or Jalhan). Most modern scholars do not consider Prithviraj Raso to have been composed during Prithviraj's time. The text's language points to a date much later than the 12th century, and its current recension mentions the 13th century King Samarsi (Samarsimha or Samar Singh), whom it anachronistically describes as
7519-494: The king's dishonourable act in a dream. Later, Prithviraj marries Samyogita , becomes obsessed with her, and starts ignoring the state affairs. He is subsequently defeated and blinded by the Ghurid king Shihab al-Din, but later kills the Ghurid king with an arrow during an archery performance, assisted by the bard Chand Bardai. Frances Pritchett, a professor of South Asian Literature at the Columbia University , notes that
7622-461: 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
7725-432: 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
7828-474: The military allies or associates of Prithviraj. Among the various medieval texts that mention Prithviraj Chauhan, Prithviraj Raso shares some similarities with the Sanskrit-language narrative Prithviraja Prabandha . Unlike other texts, the two texts feature three common characters beside Prithviraj and his Ghurid rival Shihab al-Din: Kaymas or Kaimbasa appears to have been a historical person, as he
7931-525: 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
8034-461: 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
8137-495: 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
8240-414: 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
8343-713: 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
8446-529: 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
8549-465: The other, but it is not clear which of these was authored first, making it difficult to trace the origin of the legend. It is possible that Prithviraj Raso is based on the earlier Jain narratives, and changed the story to present Prithviraj as a hero who took revenge on his enemy and died an honourable death. Alternatively, it is possible that the Jain texts borrowed the story from an older oral tradition which
8652-628: 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
8755-471: The queen's palace to meet her at night, while the king is away on a hunting expedition. Prithviraj's Paramara queen sends him a letter complaining that Kaymas has been violating the privacy of the women's quarters. Prithviraj returns to the palace at night, and without any warning, attacks Kaimbasa with arrows. The first arrow misses Kaimbasa, but the second kills him. Prithviraj then secretly buries Kaymas along with his slave-lover, but Chand Bardai learns about
8858-578: 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
8961-589: 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
9064-630: The rest of the period of Shah Jahan’s reign. His work was published by the Asiatic Society as the third volume of the Badshahnama of Lahori. In 1799, Saadat Ali Khan II , the Nawab of Awadh in northern India , sent the Badshahnama , to King George III of Great Britain. Today, the imperial illustrated manuscript of the Badshahnama of Lahori is preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle , and
9167-409: The royal families of Bikaner , Amber (Jaipur), Kota , Jodhpur , and Udaipur ; and a chief of Mewar . Few manuscripts provide information about their production; those that do indicate that such manuscripts were usually written by Bhat bards, Brahmins or Jains for Rajput patrons. The classification of the text's language has been debated by scholars, as its language varies noticeably between
9270-533: The shortest recension which mentions Samyogita as Prithviraj's only wife, the Mewar version claims that Prithviraj married 12 other princesses, many of them presented to him by his nobles. On the other hand, the Mewar family's Samar Singh is the only one who marries a woman from Prithviraj's family, thus highlighting Samar Singh's high status. The recension devotes an entire chapter to the marriage of Samar Singh and Pritha, describing how Prithviraj's father Someshvar decided to marry his daughter to Samar Singh, because of
9373-607: 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
9476-561: 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
9579-687: 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,
9682-403: The text as authentic using forged documents. Pandya's arguments were rejected by prominent scholars such as G. H. Ojha and Ram Narayan Dugar. As the research on medieval Indian history advanced, other problems with the text's historicity became apparent, and by the late 19th century, the consensus on the historical authenticity of Prithviraj Raso had broken down. While not strictly history,
9785-536: The third volume of this genre because of the infirmities of old age. Shah Jahan in his eighth regnal year asked Muhammad Amin Qazvini to write an official history of his reign and he completed his Badshahnama in 1636, which covers the first ten (lunar) years of Shah Jahan’s reign. Jalaluddin Tabatabai wrote another Badshahnama , but the extant portion of the text covers only four years, from fifth to eighth regnal year of
9888-478: 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
9991-451: The various recensions of Prithviraj Raso into four broad categories, represented by the following editions: Several manuscripts deviate from these editions. For example, some manuscripts of the medium recension omit the episode of Prithviraj killing the Ghurid Sultan. American academic Cynthia Talbot compiled a list of nearly 170 manuscripts of the text. The patrons of only 17 of these can be identified: they include kings and princes from
10094-457: The various recensions, and sometimes, even between the different portions of the same manuscript. The present version of Prithviraj Raso is composed primarily in Brajbhasha dialect, with some regional Rajasthani peculiarities. This language is sometimes called "Pingal" to distinguish it from Dingal , the language of Rajasthani poems. Prithviraj Raso frequently uses the six-line "chappay" metre , which has "harsh, warlike connotations", and
10197-689: The volume. In 1994, while the volume was being rebound for conservation reasons, the opportunity was taken to tour all the miniatures in an exhibition that was shown in New Delhi , the Queen's Gallery in London, and six American cities. Manuscripts of the Badshahnama s of Qazvini and Waris are preserved in the British Library . The original manuscript of the Badshah Nama that depicts the complete reign of Shah Jahan
10300-578: 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
10403-586: 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
10506-600: 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
10609-484: 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
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