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109-476: Divan-i Kabir ( Persian : دیوان کبیر ), also known as Divan-i Shams ( دیوان شمس ) and Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi ( دیوان شمس تبریزی ), is a collection of poems written by the Persian poet and Sufi mystic Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī , also known as Rumi. A compilation of lyric poems written in the Persian language , it contains more than 40,000 verses and over 3,000 ghazals . While following

218-638: 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

327-538: A critical collection of the Divan’s poems based upon manuscripts written within a hundred years of Rumi’s death. Although the Divan is, in contrast to Rumi's Masnavi , not a didactic work, it is still a deeply philosophical work, expressing Rumi’s mystical Sufi theology. Among the more prominent themes in the Divan are those of love and longing. Some Rumi scholars such as Rokus de Groot argue that Rumi rejects longing in favour of

436-418: 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

545-502: A divine unity, or tawhid , a concept which de Groot considers to originate in the Shahada 's declaration that there is no other god save God. According to de Groot, Rumi holds that longing, being a lust to grasp something beyond oneself, necessarily creates a duality between subjects and objects. Thus, those drunk with love, as Rumi writes, are double, whereas those drunk with god are united as one. De Groot maintains that Rumi’s philosophy of

654-500: 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

763-417: 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

872-624: A number of noteworthy female students, and how in the early days of the order there were instances of female shaikhs and semazens , such as Destina Khatun (who was appointed shaykha of the Kara Hisar Mevlevi lodge). "In the early days of the Mevlevi order, women and men were known to pray, share sohbet (spiritual conversation), and whirl within each other's company, though more often as the centuries unfolded, women held their own semas and men also whirled in zhikr separate from women. However, in

981-529: 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

1090-612: A recitation from the Quran , which normally includes the following verse: God is in the East and West. And wherever you turn, there is the face of God. (Quran 2:115) The order was established after Rumi's death in 1273 by his son Sultan Veled and Husameddin Chelebi (who inspired Rumi to write the Mathnavi ). Like his father, Sultan Veled is celebrated for his poetry. Lyrics he wrote are often sung during

1199-401: A separate Mazhab-e ‘Ishq , or “Religion of Love,” which was universalist rather than uniquely Islamic in outlook. Vaziri posits that Rumi’s notion of love was a designation for the incorporeal reality of existence that lies outside of physical conception. Thus, according to Vaziri, Rumi’s references to Shams in the Divan refer not to the person of Shams but to the all-encompassing universality of

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1308-535: A solo singer offers a eulogy to the Prophet Muhammad. It is concluded with a taksim (improvisation) on the reed flute ( ney ), which symbolises the Divine breath that gives life to everything. Devr-i Veled – The Sultan Veled walk involves the semazens walking slowly and rhythmically to the peshrev music. After slapping the ground forcefully (representing the Divine act of creation when God said 'Be!' according to

1417-580: 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

1526-457: A tall, brown hat known as a sikke , which symbolizes the tombstone and the death of the ego (a version of the sikke is also worn by the Bektashi ). Once their cloaks are removed, their long white robes ( tennûre ) and white jackets ( destegül – meaning 'bouquet of roses') become visible. Both are symbols of resurrection. Naat-i Sharif – The naat marks the beginning of the ceremony in which

1635-734: A wandering Persian Sufi dervish named Shams-i Tabrizi in Konya . Rumi, who previously had no background in poetics, quickly became attached to Shams, who acted as a spiritual teacher to Rumi and introduced him to music, sung poetry, and dance through Sufi samas . Shams abruptly left Konya in 1246 C.E, returned a year later, then vanished again in 1248 C.E, possibly having been murdered. During Shams’ initial separation from Rumi, Rumi wrote poetic letters to Shams pleading for his return. Following Shams’ second disappearance, Rumi returned to writing poetry lauding Shams and lamenting his disappearance. These poems would be collected after Rumi’s death by his students as

1744-605: 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

1853-644: 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

1962-610: 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

2071-763: 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

2180-528: Is also venerated as a mystic within Islam. Rumi's friend and mentor, Shams of Tabriz, is also revered within the order and within Sufism. The Mevlevis insist that love is central to Islam. Mevlevi shaikh Şefik Can writes, "Rumi tells us to take the love of God to the forefront, to abstain from being attached to the letter of the law rather than the spirit of it, to find the essence of the faith, and to raise our faith from

2289-654: 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

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2398-425: 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

2507-455: 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

2616-505: Is observed for one week, with the final night occurring on the anniversary of his death. Pilgrims from all over the world travel to Konya for the official celebration. The event is so popular that a ticketing system is in place for those who wish to attend. Rumi mentions whirling in a number of his poems. In one ghazal in the Divani Shamsi Tabriz he says: Those who turn in the direction of prayer, whirl in both this world and

2725-468: 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 ),

2834-570: 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

2943-406: Is regarded as the master of Turkish classical music Ismail Dede (1778-1846) is also considered one of Turkey's greatest classical composers and wrote the music for the ceremonial songs ( ayins ) played during the sema ceremony. Celebrated female musicians and composers include Dilhayat Khalifa (early 1700s) and Layla Saz (late 1800s – also buried at Galata Mevlevihanesi). During World War I ,

3052-486: 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

3161-453: Is the most elaborate and artistically composed music on this planet. The use of the Makams (musical modes) and the subtle modulations in some of the best Ayins, produces a highly uplifting atmosphere. Highly suited to the ethos of the ceremony; which aims at union of the human soul with its Creator. The music of the sema has been studied and performed by an English family; beginning in the 1970s (to

3270-485: Is the transformation of rapture into love, the sacrifice of mind to love. It is annihilation of the self within the Loved One. It is complete submission. It is unity.... The fourth selam is the semazen's coming to terms with his destiny. With the semazen's whole self, with all his mind and heart, he is a servant of God, of God's books and His prophets – of all Creation." Quranic recitation – The ceremony concludes with

3379-401: Is traditionally practised in a semahane (ritual hall) according to a precisely prescribed symbolic ritual with the semazens whirling in a circle around their shaikh. Semazens whirl using their right foot to propel themselves in a counter-clockwise circle, whilst their left foot remains rooted to the floor acting as an axis about which the semazen turns. Both arms are extended and raised to

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3488-486: 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

3597-502: 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

3706-651: 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

3815-514: The Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi . The creation dates of some of the poems in the Divan are unknown. However, a major portion of the Divan’s poems were written in the initial aftermath of Sham’s second disappearance. Therefore, most of the poems probably date from around 1247 C.E. and the years that followed until Rumi had overcome his grief over the loss of Shams. Another seventy poems in the Divan were written after Rumi had confirmed that Shams

3924-655: 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

4033-688: 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

4142-483: 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

4251-477: The sema ceremony itself, and both he and Husameddin Chelebi are honoured within the order as accomplished Sufi mystics in their own right. It was they who had Rumi's mausoleum built in Konya, which to this day is a place of pilgrimage for many Muslims (and non-Muslims). A number of Rumi's successors, including both Sultan Veled and Husameddin Chelebi themselves, are also buried there. Their personal efforts to establish

4360-585: 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 ,

4469-572: The 1970s, and appointed several Westerners as Mevlevi teachers for the first time, including Reshad Feild , David (Daud) Bellak and Kabir Helminski , and sent his son Jelaleddin Loras to live and teach in America . David Bellak took Suleyman Dede's teaching to Edinburgh in Scotland where he settled in 1982 and established this strand of Mevlevi practice. There are ongoing disagreements whether Süleyman Dede had

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4578-455: The 1980s, the Helminskis (Kabir and Camille) have presented their own ideas of Mevlevi principles and practice to Western audiences through books, seminars, retreats, and their organisation Threshold Society . Practising Mevlevis under the tutelage of a recognised shaikh can now be found across the globe. Camille Helminski explains in her book, Women of Sufism, A Hidden Treasure , how Rumi had

4687-672: 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

4796-463: The Divan in his own reinterpretations of Rumi, albeit with controversy as to the accuracy and authenticity of Barks’ interpretation. Publication of a twenty-volume English translation from the original Persian by Jeffrey R. Osborne was completed in 2020. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -⁠shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),

4905-468: The Divan still explores deep philosophical themes, particularly those of love and longing. The Divan contains poems in several different Eastern-Islamic poetic styles (e.g. ghazals, elegies , quatrains , etc.). It contains 44,292 lines (according to Foruzanfar's edition, which is based on the oldest manuscripts available); 3,229 ghazals in fifty-five different metres (34,662); 44 tarji-bands (1,698 lines); and 1,983 quatrains (7,932 lines). Although most of

5014-509: The Mevlevi Order, a number of groups and individuals who have no connection to the order claim to present ‘Mevlevi whirling' – often for the entertainment of tourists. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the Mevlevi Order began to make its presence felt in the West. This was due to the great popularity of English translations and versions of Rumi's poetry (especially by Coleman Barks ), but

5123-635: The Mevlevi Regiment served in Syria and Palestine under the command of 4th Army. A battalion of some 800 dervishes was formed December 1914 in Konya (the Mucahidin-i Mevleviyye) and was sent to Damascus. Another battalion of regular recruits was added at the end of August 1916, and together they formed the Mevlevi Regiment. This unit did not fight until the end of the Palestine campaign and was disbanded at

5232-558: 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

5341-532: 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

5450-436: The Ottoman Empire when Devlet Hatun, a descendant of Sultan Veled, married Bayezid I . Their son Mehmed I Çelebi became the next sultan, endowing the order, as did his successors, with many advantages. Many of the members of the order served in various official positions within the empire. To this day, responsibility for overseeing the Mevlevi Order is passed down through the generations of Rumi's male descendants. The head of

5559-521: 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

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5668-425: 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

5777-401: 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

5886-848: 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,

5995-487: The Quran), they make a circuit in single file around the hall three times, bowing first to the semazen in front of them, and then to the semazen behind them as they begin each circuit. The bow is said to represent the acknowledgement of the Divine breath which has been breathed into all of us and is a salutation from soul to soul. The dervishes then remove their black cloaks. The Four Salams – The Four Salams ( Selams ) form

6104-479: 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

6213-575: 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)

6322-407: 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

6431-437: The West. In 1971, they performed in London with Kâni Karaca (known as the 'Voice of Turkey') as lead singer. In 1972, they toured North America for the first time with Kâni Karaca, Ulvi Erguner, and Akagündüz Kutbay among the musicians. Since the 1990s there have been several tours of the United States, including those led by the first Westerner to be officially initiated as a shaikh in the Mevlevi Order, Kabir Helminski. Since

6540-441: 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

6649-528: The authority to teach Mevlevi practices and philosophy, are appointed by the Çelebi . Rumi's Mathnavi and Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi are considered masterpieces of Persian literature , and throughout the centuries the Mevlevi Order has continued its long-standing association with the arts in Turkey. Apart from the works of Rumi and Sultan Veled, other famous literary works by Mevlevis include influential commentaries on Rumi's Mathnavi by Ismāʿil Rusūhī Ankarawi (d. 1631) and Ismāʿil Ḥaqqı Burṣalı (d. 1724),

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6758-457: 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

6867-512: 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

6976-438: The content of that doctorate, was called, by Middlesex University, "The World Authority" on the subject of Mevlevi music. See https://academia.edu/95815541/ for details. A significant number of the most celebrated Turkish musicians have been Mevlevis, and during the Ottoman era the Mevlevi Order produced a great deal of vocal and instrumental music. Mustafa Itri (1640–1712), an Ottoman-Turkish musician, composer, singer and poet,

7085-405: The end of September 1918. Mustafa Kemal met with members of the Mevlevi Order in 1923 before its institutional expression became illegal. Sufism was outlawed in Turkey in September 1925 by the new Turkish Republic under Atatürk . As a result, the Dervish lodge in Konya eventually became the Mevlana Museum . According to the International Mevlana Foundation, preceding the ban 'Atatürk uttered

7194-405: The end of their poems, in what are called takhallos . Rumi signed off most of his own ghazals as either Khâmush (Silence) or Shams-i Tabrizi . Although he had belonged to a long tradition of Sufi poetry, Rumi developed his own unique style. Notably, due to the extemporaneous manner in which Rumi composed his poems, much of Rumi’s poetry has an ecstatic, almost trance-like style that differs from

7303-430: 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

7412-410: The following phylogenetic classification: Mevlevi Order In 2005, UNESCO confirmed "The Mevlevi Sema Ceremony" as amongst the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity . Approximately 750 years old, the Mevlevi Order was once a living tradition based on the teachings of Rumi, also known as Mevlevi or Mevlana, who is perhaps one of the most celebrated poets of Turkey. He

7521-434: The following words about the Mevlevi Order to Abdulhalim Chalabi, "Makam Chalabi" of Konya, and furthermore the Vice President of the First House of Representatives: "You, the Mevlevis have made a great difference by combating ignorance and religious fundamentalism for centuries, as well as making contributions to science and the arts. However we are obliged not to make any exceptions and must include Mevlevi tekkes. Nonetheless,

7630-444: 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

7739-421: 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

7848-533: The ideas and teaching of Mevlana will not only exist forever, but they will emerge even more powerfully in the future."' Though the Sufi lodges were forced to close down, Mevlevi practice continues within Turkey but in a more restricted and private mode. Sufism is still officially illegal in Turkey, and sema ceremonies are therefore officially presented as cultural events of historical interest rather than as worship. Outside

7957-461: 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

8066-468: The latter also being 'a fine mystical poet' in his own right. The most celebrated Mevlevi poet, after Rumi and Sultan Veled , is Shaykh Ghalib Dede (d. 1799), the author of Hüsn ü Aşk and ‘perhaps the last true master of Turkish classical poetry ' according to scholar Annemarie Schimmel. Both Ghālib Dede and Ankarawī are buried at the Galata Mevlevihanesi. The Mevlevi Ayin (ceremony music)

8175-399: The level of imitation to the level of realization." In addition to obligatory Islamic worship, some of the main spiritual practices within the Mevlevi Order are as follows (in order of importance): The Sema with the greatest significance to the Mevlevi order is the annual celebration of Mevlana's "marriage to god" (death), also called Seb-i Arus, meaning Nuptial Night or Night of Union. It

8284-415: The level of the head, with the right palm pointing upward (believed to be receiving Divine grace) and the left palm pointing downward (believed to channel that grace to the world). With each 360° turn, the semazen is inwardly chanting "Allah" – a form of dhikr . The semazens enter wearing a black cloak ( hırka ) symbolizing death and the grave, which they remove before whirling. On their heads they wear

8393-403: The long tradition of Sufi poetry as well as the traditional metrical conventions of ghazals, the poems in the Divan showcase Rumi’s unique, trance-like poetic style. Written in the aftermath of the disappearance of Rumi’s beloved spiritual teacher, Shams-i Tabrizi , the Divan is dedicated to Shams and contains many verses praising him and lamenting his disappearance. Although not a didactic work,

8502-507: The love-reality. The Divan has influenced several poets and writers. American Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman were acquainted with the Divan, and were inspired by its philosophical mysticism. Many late Victorian and Georgian poets in England were also acquainted with Rumi from Nicholson’s translation of the Divan. Prominent Rumi interpreter Coleman Barks has used selections from Nevit Ergin’s translation of

8611-453: The main part of the ceremony and are distinct musical movements. According to Celalettin Celebi and Shaikh Kabir Helminski, "The first selam represents the human being's birth to Truth through knowledge, and through his awareness and submission to God. The second selam represents the rapture of the human being while witnessing the splendour of creation and the omnipotence of God. The third selam

8720-432: 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

8829-525: 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

8938-461: 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

9047-495: 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

9156-414: 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

9265-533: The next. Pay heed when a circle of friends whirl, circling round and round, the Kaaba is the center. If you wish a mine of sugar, it is there; and if you wish a fingertip of sugar, it is gratis. According to a popular story, Rumi was first inspired to whirl when he heard the hammering of the goldsmiths in Konya's bazaar, however, Mevlevi historian Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı believed that Rumi must have learnt whirling from Shams of Tabriz. Şefik Can claimed that whirling

9374-713: 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

9483-529: 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

9592-415: The oneness of love explains why Rumi signed about a third of the Divan under Shams-i Tabrizi’s name; By writing as if he and Shams were the same person, Rumi repudiated the longing that plagued him after Shams’ disappearance in favour of the unity of all beings found in divine love. In contrast, Mostafa Vaziri argues for a non-Islamic interpretation of Rumi. In Vaziri’s view, Rumi’s references to love compose

9701-486: The order is referred to as Çelebi ( Chelebi ) which means ‘man of God' or ‘noble, courteous' according to Mevlevi historian Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı. The current Çelebi is Faruk Hemdem Çelebi. He is also president of the International Mevlana Foundation ( Uluslararası Mevlâna Vakfı ), a Turkish cultural and educational foundation managed by his sister and vice-president Esin Çelebi Bayru. Shaikhs, who have

9810-561: The order were continued by Sultan Veled's son Ulu Arif Chelebi . During the Ottoman period, the Mevlevi order spread into the Balkans, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Palestine, especially in Jerusalem. The Bosnian writer Meša Selimović wrote the book The Dervish and Death about a Mevlevi dergah in Sarajevo. Eventually, there were as many as 114 Sufi lodges, the order becoming well established within

9919-492: The poems are written in Persian, there are also some in Arabic , as well as some bilingual poems written in Turkish , Arabic , and Greek . Most of the poems in the Divan follow the form of a ghazal , a type of lyric poem often used to express themes of love and friendship as well as more mystical Sufi theological subjects. By convention, poets writing ghazals often adopted poetic personas which they then invoked as pen names at

10028-583: The practice of the Mevlevi Order and group the poems by metre. The first printed copy of the Divan was made in Europe in 1838 by Vincenz von Rosenzweig-Schwannau , who printed seventy-five poems of dubious authenticity. Reynold A. Nicholson produced a more selective text of fifty ghazals from the Divan, although Badi al-Zaman Foruzanfar’s critical edition has since determined several of Nicholson’s selections to have been inauthentic. In 1957, Foruzanfar published

10137-628: 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

10246-465: The present) when they went to Istanbul to study with the remaining true Mevlevis. And also to study with some of Turkey's greatest exponents of the Mevlevi music; Such as Nezih Üzel and Necdet Yaşar. The information about the music, practised over many years, eventually resulted in the "Doctorate in the Philosphy of Music", undertaken by Dr. Alan Wenham-Prosser. The book "The Music of Rumi" which contains all

10355-578: 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

10464-589: 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

10573-607: 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

10682-561: 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

10791-687: 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,

10900-405: The traditional authority to appoint others as Mevlevi shaikhs, or only as his own deputies. At this point in time, there was no functioning Mevlevi Order or hierarchy, and prior to 1925 there had been a variety of means for succession of leadership in the Mevlevi centres spread around the Ottoman Empire. Around the 1970s, Mevlevi dervishes also began to present the whirling ceremony to audiences in

11009-478: 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

11118-466: The works of other professional Islamic poets. Rumi evidently found the traditional metrical constraints of ghazals to be constraining, lamenting in one ghazal that fitting his poems into the traditional “dum-ta-ta-dum” ghazal metre was a process so dreadful that it nearly killed him. In 1244 C.E, Rumi, then a jurist and spiritual counselor working at the behest of the Seljuk Sultan of Rûm , met

11227-578: 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

11336-503: Was also due to the influence of Shaikh Suleyman Hayati Lorasulam of Konya - known as Süleyman Dede . He began training in the Konya Mevlevi dergah in the early 1920s, and was appointed as a Mevlevi Sheikh in the 1960s by Dr Celaleddin Çelebi, whose grandfather had been the last Mevlevi leader in Konya before the 1925 closures. Suleyman Dede made a number of trips to the USA, Canada and Europe in

11445-536: Was dead. Rumi dedicated these poems to his friend Salah al-Din Zarkub, who died in December 1258. By the sixteenth century, most editors organized the poems in the Divan by alphabetical order according to the last letter of each line, disregarding the varying meters and topics of the poems. This method for arranging lyrical poems in the Divan is still used in modern Iranian editions of the Divan. Turkish editions, however, follow

11554-586: 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

11663-427: Was practiced among Sufis at least as early as Abu Sa’id Abu’l-Khayr (d. 1049). Though they have cultivated it to the highest degree, Mevlevis are not the only Sufis who practice whirling, and Kabir Helminski suggests primordial origins: "The practice of whirling may have its origins in the timeless shadows of Central Asian spirituality where shamans used it to induce altered states of consciousness." Sema (or sama )

11772-600: 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

11881-484: 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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