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112-460: Hamdallah Mustawfi Qazvini ( Persian : حمدالله مستوفى قزوینی , romanized :  Ḥamdallāh Mustawfī Qazvīnī ; 1281 – after 1339/40) was a Persian official, historian, geographer and poet. He lived during the last era of the Mongol Ilkhanate , and the interregnum that followed. A native of Qazvin , Mustawfi belonged to family of mustawfis (financial accountants), thus his name. He

224-740: A rafezi , and also the Shi'ite amir , Hajji al-Dilqandi, whom he condemned for omitting the first three caliphs in the khutba . The Iranologist Charles P. Melville suggests that Hamdallah may have in reality been a Sunni Shafi'ite , which was the predominant madhhab (school of thought) at the time in Qazvin, and also the school of thought of Rashid al-Din Hamadani. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -⁠shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),

336-638: 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

448-418: 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

560-500: 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

672-417: 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

784-625: A number of companies under the command of a junior officer or Bey . The Janissaries quickly became the dominant force in Ottoman Libya. As a self-governing military guild answerable only to their own laws and protected by a Divan (in this context, a council of senior officers who advised the Pasha), the Janissaries soon reduced the Pasha to a largely ceremonial role. The Divan-ı Hümayun or Sublime Porte

896-529: 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

1008-635: A revolt, followed by peace. However, Mustawfi may have completed his work prematurely, possibly due to the chaotic events that followed during the disintegration of the Ilkhanate. This is supported by the fact he later composed a prose continuation of the Zafarnamah , which mentions Abu Sai'd Bahar Khan's death and the turmoil that followed in Iran. Mustawfi's most prominent work is the Nuzhat al-Qulub ("Hearts' Bliss"), which

1120-580: 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

1232-605: 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

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1344-644: 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

1456-610: 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

1568-528: Is almost unknown, except that their treasury was located in their capital of Nishapur . Ya'qub al-Saffar (r. 867–879), the founder of the Saffarid dynasty who supplanted the Tahirids, is known to have had a bureau of the army ( dīwān al-ʿarḍ ) for keeping the lists and supervising the payment of the troops, at his capital Zarang . Under his successor Amr ibn al-Layth (r. 879–901) there were two further treasuries,

1680-765: Is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan , as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran . It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet , a derivative of the Arabic script , and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet , a derivative of the Cyrillic script . Modern Persian

1792-654: 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

1904-425: 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

2016-524: Is evident in Mustawfi's work, where mention of the Juvaynis are omitted in some cases. Mustawfi followed in the footsteps of his family, being in 1311 appointed as the financial accountant of his native Qazvin, as well as other neighbouring districts, including Abhar , Zanjan and Tarumayn. He had been appointed to this post by Rashid al-Din, who made him gain an interest in history, inspiring him to start writing

2128-455: 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

2240-468: 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 ),

2352-570: 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

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2464-486: 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

2576-540: Is virtually the only source to describe the geography and affairs of the Ilkhanate era. The source gives vital information about the government, commerce, economic life, sectarian conflicts, tax-collection and other similar topics. Just like his Tarikh-i guzida and Zafarnamah , Mustawfi rejects to have expertise in the field, and states that he was encouraged by his friends to write the work. He also thought that an available source in Persian would be helpful, due to most geographical sources about Iran being in Arabic (such as

2688-486: 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

2800-502: 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

2912-648: The Zafarnamah ("Book of Victory") in 1320, as a continuation of Ferdowsi 's Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"). He completed the work in 1334, consisting of 75,000 verses, reporting the history of the Islamic era up until the Ilkhanate era. Before that, he had also written a similar chronicle; the Tarikh-i guzida ("Excerpt History") in 1330, which was his first work. The chronicle, made for Rashid al-Din's son Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad ,

3024-651: 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

3136-661: The Ilkhanate , while his brother Zayn al-Din was an assistant of the prominent vizier and historian Rashid al-Din Hamadani . Mustawfi's family was thus amongst those many families from Persian Iraq who rose to prominence during the Mongol era. Rivalry soon arose between the Persian Iraqis and the already established Khurasanis , particularly between the Mustawfis and the Juvayni family , which

3248-655: 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

3360-688: 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

3472-475: The dīwān al-barīd in charge of the postal service ; the bureau of expenditure ( dīwān al-nafaqāt ), which most likely indicates the survival of a Byzantine institution; the dīwān al-ṣadaqa was a new foundation with the task of estimating the zakāt and ʿushr levies; the dīwān al-mustaghallāt administered state property in cities; the dīwān al-ṭirāz controlled the government workshops that made official banners, costumes and some furniture. Aside from

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3584-567: The dīwān al-jund , the first Umayyad caliph, Mu'awiya (r. 661–680), added the bureau of the land tax ( dīwān al-kharāj ) in Damascus , which became the main dīwān , as well as the bureau of correspondence ( dīwān al-rasāʾil ), which drafted the caliph's letters and official documents, and the bureau of the seal ( dīwān al-khātam ), which checked and kept copies of all correspondence before sealing and dispatching it. A number of more specialist departments were also established, probably by Mu'awiya:

3696-503: The dīwān al-kharāj now included all land taxes ( kharāj , zakāt , and jizya , both in money and in kind), while another department, the dīwān al-ṣadaqa , dealt with assessing the zakāt of cattle. The correspondence of the dīwān al-kharāj was checked by another department, the dīwān al-khātam . As in Umayyad times, miniature copies of the dīwān al-kharāj , the dīwān al-jund and the dīwān al-rasāʾil existed in every province, but by

3808-603: The dīwān al-sawād , which oversaw the rich lands of lower Iraq, was moved from Baghdad to Shiraz . In addition, a dīwān al-khilāfa was established to oversee the affairs of the Abbasid caliphs, who continued to reside in Baghdad as puppets of the Buyid emirs. The Great Seljuks tended to cherish their nomadic origins, with their sultans leading a peripatetic court to their various capitals. Coupled with their frequent absence on campaign,

3920-483: 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

4032-432: The mustawfī al-mamālik , a fiscal oversight office ( dīwān al-ishrāf or dīwān al-muʿāmalāt ) under the mushrif al-mamālik , and the army department ( dīwān al-ʿarḍ or dīwān al-jaysh ) under the ʿariḍ (further divided into the recruitment and supply bureau, dīwān al-rawātib , and the salary and land grants bureau, dīwān al-iqṭāʾ ). A number of lesser departments is also attested, although they may not have existed at

4144-467: The māl-e khāṣṣa , and an unnamed bureau under the chief secretary corresponding to a chancery ( dīwān al-rasāʾil or dīwān al-inshāʾ ). The Buyids , who took over Baghdad and the remains of the Abbasid Caliphate in 946, drew partly on the established Abbasid practice, but was adapted to suit the nature of the rather decentralized Buyid "confederation" of autonomous emirates. The Buyid bureaucracy

4256-585: 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 ,

4368-479: The 13th-century. He is buried in a dome-shaped mausoleum in his native Qazvin, Iran. Mustawfi was born in 1281 in the town of Qazvin , located in Persian Iraq ( Irāq-i Ajam ), a region corresponding to the western part of Iran . His family was descended from Arabs that had occupied the governorship of the town in the 9th and 10th-centuries, later to serve as mustawfis (high-ranking financial accountants) at

4480-672: 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

4592-523: The Caliph ( dīwān al-riḳāʿ ). Caliph al-Mahdi (r. 775–785) created a parallel dīwān al-zimām (control bureau) for every one of the existing dīwāns , as well as a central control bureau ( zimām al-azimma ). These acted as comptrollers as well as coordinators between the various bureaus, or between individual dīwāns and the vizier. In addition, a dīwān al-maẓālim was created, staffed by judges, to hear complaints against government officials. The remit of

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4704-511: The Ilkhanate monarch Öljaitü ( r.  1304–1316 ) and that of his successor, Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan ( r.  1316–1335 ). The importance of the work was acknowledged by the Timurid -era historian Hafiz-i Abru , who incorporated much of it in his Dhayl-e Jame al-tawarikh . Like the Tarikh-i guzida , the Zafarnamah has a positive conclusion, with Abu Sai'd Bahadur Khan successfully quelling

4816-609: The Iranians, and was occasionally mentioned in the works of other people. With the advent of the Ilkhanate, the idea experienced a resurgence. According to the modern historian Peter Jackson (2017), the reason behind this resurgence was the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate in 1258 and the "relative disenfranchisement of political Islam." Mustawfi describes the borders of Iran extending from the Indus River to Khwarazm and Transoxiana in

4928-522: The Islamic era up until the Ilkhanate era. Albeit the early part depends heavily on the work of Rashid al-Din (which Mustawfi also mentions), it is less noticeable compared to his Tarikh-i guzida . The work also has aspects which resemble that of the contemporary verse narrative, the Shahnameh-ye Chengizi , by Shams al-Din Kashani. Regardless, the Zafarnamah is a unique primary source for the reign of

5040-558: 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

5152-532: 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

5264-521: 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

5376-425: 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

5488-401: 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

5600-848: 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,

5712-428: The Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk , commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan , known as Dari. The region, which comprised

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5824-427: 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)

5936-407: 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

6048-505: The advent of the Ghaznavids . Mustawfi's great-grandfather Amin al-Din Nasr had served as the mustawfi of Iraq , which had since then been the moniker of the family. Amin al-Din Nasr, during his retirement, was killed in 1220 by raiding Mongols after the sack of Qazvin, during the Mongol invasion of Iran . Regardless, Mustawfi's family still greatly served the Mongols and even rose to further prominence during this period; his older cousin Fakhr al-Din Mustawfi briefly served as vizier of

6160-441: 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

6272-415: The capital into a new department, the dīwān al-dār (bureau of the palace) or dīwān al-dār al-kabīr (great bureau of the palace), where " al-dār " probably meant the vizier's palace. At the same time, the various zimām bureaux were combined into a single dīwān al-zimām which re-checked all assessments, payments and receipts against its own records and, according to the 11th-century scholar al-Mawardi ,

6384-403: The central government, there was a local branch of the dīwān al-kharāj , the dīwān al-jund and the dīwān al-rasāʾil in every province. Under Caliph Abd al-Malik ( r.  685–705 ), the practices of the various departments began to be standardized and Arabized: instead of the local languages ( Greek in Syria , Coptic and Greek in Egypt , Persian in the former Sasanian lands) and

6496-457: 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

6608-512: 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

6720-409: The confiscated properties of the Umayyads after his victory in the Abbasid Revolution . This was probably the antecedent of the later dīwān al-ḍiyāʿ , administering the caliph's personal domains. Similarly, under al-Mansur (r. 754–775) there was a bureau of confiscations ( dīwān al-muṣādara ), as well as a dīwān al-aḥshām , probably in charge of palace service personnel, and a bureau of petitions to

6832-600: The court of the Injuid ruler Amir Mas'ud Shah ( r.  1338–1342 ). Nevertheless, he remained there for ten months more, until he chose to leave due to the chaos that ensued during the Injuid dynastic struggle for the throne. He returned up north, where he was well received in Awa , Sawa, Kashan and Isfahan , finally returning to Qazvin at the end of 1340. He mentions the turmoil he went through during this period in several of his poems, and also went through illness (or possibly boredom), until he recouped after gaining sympathy from an unknown patron, possibly Hasan Buzurg. It

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6944-466: The east to Byzantium and Syria in the west, corresponding to the territory of the Sasanian Empire. He defines the provinces of Iran in 20 chapters; Iraq ("Arab Iraq") or the "heart of Iranshahr", Persian Iraq , Arran , Mughan , Shirvan , Georgia , Byzantium, Armenia , Rabi'a , Kurdistan , Khuzestan , Fars , Shabankara, Kirman , Mukran , Hormuz , Nimruz , Khorasan , Mazandaran , Qumis , Tabaristan and Gilan . This way of conceptualizing

7056-428: The existence of a dīwān al-ḥaram , which supervised the women's quarters of the palace. As the Abbasid Caliphate began to fragment in the mid 9th century, its administrative machinery was copied by the emergent successor dynasties, with the already extant local dīwān branches likely providing the base on which the new administrations were formed. The administrative machinery of the Tahirid governors of Khurasan

7168-430: 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

7280-405: The following phylogenetic classification: Divan The word, recorded in English since 1586, meaning "Oriental council of a state", comes from Turkish divan , from Persian دیوان ( dêvân ). It is first attested in Middle Persian spelled as dpywʾn and dywʾn , itself hearkening back, via Old Persian , Elamite and Akkadian , ultimately to Sumerian dub , clay tablet. The word

7392-444: 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

7504-421: 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

7616-436: The history and geography of Iran has been emulated by other historians since the 13th-century. Hamdallah was reportedly a "convinced Shia ", and there is much evidence that supports this claim, such as his detailed report of the history of the Twelve Imams in the Tarikh-i guzida , and that of the Shia neighborhoods in Iran in the Nuzhat al-Qulub . However, he disliked Shi'ites such as Sa'd al-Din Savaji, whom he refers to as

7728-437: The holy war against the Byzantine Empire . Under Caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–861), a bureau of servants and pages ( dīwān al-mawālī wa ’l-ghilmān ), possibly an evolution of the dīwān al-aḥshām , existed for the huge number of slaves and other attendants of the palace. In addition, the dīwān al-khātam , now also known as the dīwān al-sirr (bureau of confidential affairs) grew in importance. Miskawayh also mentions

7840-410: 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

7952-412: The lives of distinguished scholars and poets, whilst the last describes Qazvin and gives a reportage of its history. Mustawfi's second work was the Zafarnamah ("Book of Victory"), a continuation of Ferdowsi 's Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"). Its name is a loan translation of the Middle Persian book Piruzinamak . He completed the work in 1334, consisting of 75,000 verses, reporting the history of

8064-469: The management of the divan , but soon found himself unemployed after Hasan Buzurg's retreat to Baghdad due to a defeat by the Chobanid prince Hasan Kuchak . Mustawfi was ambivalent whether to return to his native Qazvin or flee to the much more secure southern Iran. He eventually choose to leave for the southern Iranian city of Shiraz to seek better fortunes, but was let down by the reception he received at

8176-481: The mid-9th century each province also maintained a branch of its dīwān al-kharāj in the capital. The treasury department ( bayt al-māl or dīwān al-sāmī ) kept the records of revenue and expenditure, both in money and in kind, with specialized dīwāns for each category of the latter (e.g. cereals, cloth, etc.). Its secretary had to mark all orders of payment to make them valid, and it drew up monthly and yearly balance sheets. The dīwān al-jahbad̲ha , responsible for

8288-432: 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

8400-525: 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

8512-461: 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

8624-495: 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

8736-414: 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

8848-713: 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

8960-529: 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

9072-400: The orders of Yusuf ibn Umar al-Thaqafi , governor of Iraq, in 741/42. Under the Abbasid Caliphate the administration, partly under the increasing influence of Iranian culture, became more elaborate and complex. As part of this process, the dīwāns increased in number and sophistication, reaching their apogee in the 9th–10th centuries. At the same time, the office of vizier ( wazīr )

9184-520: The period. Indeed, at the turn of the 11th century, there were two ʿariḍs , one for the Turks and one for the Daylamites, hence the department was often called "department of the two armies" ( dīwān al-jayshayn ). A number of junior departments, like the dīwān al-zimām , the dīwān al-ḍiyāʿ , or the dīwān al-barīd were directly inherited from the Abbasid government. Under Adud al-Dawla (r. 978–983), however,

9296-679: 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

9408-578: 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

9520-589: 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

9632-421: The same time: the office charged with the redress of grievances ( dīwān al-maẓālim ), the state treasury ( bayt al-māl ) and the sultan's private treasury ( bayt al-māl al-khaṣṣ ), confiscations ( dīwān al-muṣādara ), the land tax office ( dīwān al-kharāj ) and the department of religious endowments or waqfs ( dīwān al-awqāf ). A postal department ( dīwān al-barīd ) also existed but fell into disuse. The system

9744-607: 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

9856-561: 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

9968-687: 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,

10080-629: The term was first used for the army registers, then generalized to any register, and by metonymy applied to specific government departments. The sense of the word evolved to "custom house" and "council chamber", then to "long, cushioned seat", such as are found along the walls in Middle-Eastern council chambers. The latter is the sense that entered European languages as divan (furniture) . The modern French, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian words douane , aduana , and dogana , respectively (meaning " customs house "), also come from diwan . The first dīwān

10192-401: The then-incomplete Zafarnamah , the work was based on earlier sources, which are in a thorough manner credited by Mustawfi. Tarikh-i guzida contains important information after the death of the Ilkhanate monarch Ghazan in 1304. The political tale concludes in a positive tone, with Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad being appointed to vizierate of the Ilkhanate. The penultimate chapter contains describes

10304-738: The traditional practices of book-keeping, seals and time-keeping, only Arabic and the Islamic calendar were to be used henceforth. The process of Arabization was gradual: in Iraq, the transition was carried out by Salih ibn Abd al-Rahman under the auspices of the governor al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf in 697, in Syria by Sulayman ibn Sa'd al-Khushani in 700, in Egypt under Caliph al-Walid I 's governor Abdallah ibn Abd al-Malik in 706, and in Khurasan by Ishaq ibn Tulayq al-Nahshali on

10416-420: The treasury's balance sheets, was eventually branched off from it, while the treasury domains were placed under the dīwān al-ḍiyāʿ , of which there appear at times to have been several. In addition, a department of confiscated property ( dīwān al-musādarīn ) and confiscated estates ( dīwān al-ḍiyāʿ al-maqbūḍa ) existed. Caliph al-Mu'tadid (r. 892–902) grouped the branches of the provincial dīwāns present in

10528-478: 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

10640-405: The vizier assumed an even greater prominence, concentrating the direction of civil, military and religious affairs in his own bureau, the "supreme dīwān" ( dīwān al-aʿlā ). The dīwān al-aʿlā was further subdivided into a chancery ( dīwān al-inshāʾ wa’l-ṭughrā , also called dīwān al-rasāʾil ) under the ṭughrāʾī or munshī al-mamālik , an accounting department ( dīwān al-zimām wa’l-istīfāʾ ) under

10752-469: The western provinces ( dīwān al-maghrib ), and of the Iraq ( dīwān al-sawād ), although under al-Muqtadir (r. 908–932) the dīwān al-dār still existed, with the three territorial departments considered sections of the latter. In 913/4, the vizier Ali ibn Isa established a new department for charitable endowments ( dīwān al-birr ), whose revenue went to the upkeep of holy places, the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina , and on volunteers fighting in

10864-481: The works of Abu Zayd al-Balkhi and Ibn Khordadbeh ). The work is also considered a substantial contribution to the ethno-national history of Iran. Mustawfi notably uses the term "Iran" in his work. Since the fall of the Iranian Sasanian Empire in 651, the idea of Iran or Iranzamin ("the land of Iran") as a political entity had disappeared. However, it did remain as an element of the national sentiment of

10976-583: Was a world history , narrating the events of the prophets, the pre-Islamic kings of Iran, and the Islamic world. Nothing is known of Mustawfi's life during the end of the Ilkhanate, except that he travelled between Tabriz and Baghdad . In the summer of 1339, Mustawfi was at Sawa , working for Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad's son-in-law Hajji Shams al-Din Zakariya, who was the vizier of the Jalayirid ruler Hasan Buzurg ( r.  1336–1356 ). There he tried to help with

11088-449: Was a close associate of the prominent vizier and historian Rashid al-Din Hamadani , who inspired him to write historical and geographical works. Mustawfi is the author of three works; Tarikh-i guzida ("Excerpt History"), Zafarnamah ("Book of Victory") and Nuzhat al-Qulub ("Hearts' Bliss"). A highly influential figure, Mustawfi's way of conceptualizing the history and geography of Iran has been emulated by other historians since

11200-578: 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

11312-401: Was also created to coordinate government. The administrative history of the Abbasid dīwāns is complex, since many were short-lived, temporary establishments for specific needs, while at times the sections of larger dīwān might also be termed dīwāns , and often a single individual was placed in charge of more than one department. Caliph al-Saffah (r. 749–754) established a department for

11424-565: Was apparently partly copied in provincial centres as well. Following the Ottoman conquest of North Africa, the Maghreb was divided into three provinces, Algiers , Tunis , and Tripoli . After 1565, administrative authority in Tripoli was vested in a Pasha directly appointed by the Sultan in Constantinople. The sultan provided the pasha with a corps of Janissaries , which was in turn divided into

11536-407: Was around this time that Mustawfi completed his cosmographical and geographical work Nuzhat al-Qulub ("Hearts' Bliss"). He died sometime after 1339/40 in Qazvin, where he was buried in a dome-shaped mausoleum. Mustawfi's first work was the Tarikh-i guzida ("Excerpt History"), a world history, narrating the events of the prophets, the pre-Islamic kings of Iran, and the Islamic world. Based on

11648-479: Was borrowed into Armenian as well as divan ; on linguistic grounds this is placed after the 3rd century, which helps establish the original Middle Persian (and eventually New Persian ) form was dīvān , not dēvān , despite later legends that traced the origin of the word to the latter form. The variant pronunciation dēvān however did exist, and is the form surviving to this day in Tajiki Persian . In Arabic,

11760-436: Was created under Caliph Umar ( r.  634–644 CE) in 15 A.H. (636/7 CE) or, more likely, 20 A.H. (641 CE). It comprised the names of the warriors of Medina who participated in the Muslim conquests and their families, and was intended to facilitate the payment of salary ( ʿaṭāʾ , in coin or in rations) to them, according to their service and their relationship to Muhammad . This first army register ( dīwān al-jund )

11872-635: Was for many years the council of ministers of the Ottoman Empire . It consisted of the Grand Vizier , who presided, and the other viziers , the kadi'askers , the nisanci , and the defterdars . The Assemblies of the Danubian Principalities under Ottoman rule were also called "divan" ("Divanuri" in Romanian) (see Akkerman Convention , ad hoc Divan ). In Javanese and related languages,

11984-413: Was headed by three great departments: the dīwān al-wazīr , charged with finances, the dīwān al-rasāʾil as the state chancery, and the dīwān al-jaysh for the army. The Buyid regime was a military regime, its ruling caste composed of Turkish and Daylamite troops. As a result, the army department was of particular importance, and its head, the ʿariḍ al-jaysh , is frequently mentioned in the sources of

12096-586: 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

12208-582: Was soon emulated in other provincial capitals like Basra , Kufa and Fustat . Al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba , a statesman from the Thaqif tribe who was versed in Persian , is credited with establishing Basra's dīwān during his governorship (636–638), and the dīwān of the Caliphate's other garrison centers followed its organization. With the advent of the Umayyad Caliphate , the number of dīwāns increased. To

12320-600: 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

12432-443: Was the "guardian of the rights of bayt al-māl [the treasury] and the people". The dīwān al-nafaḳāt played a similar role with regards to expenses by the individual dīwāns , but by the end of the 9th century its role was mostly restricted to the finances of the caliphal palace. Under al-Muktafi (r. 902–908) the dīwān al-dār was broken up into three departments, the bureaux of the eastern provinces ( dīwān al-mashriq ), of

12544-484: 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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