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103-573: The term originates from the Persian word Lascar , pronounced Lashkar ( Persian : لشکر ), meaning military camp or army — related to the Arabic 'Askar (Arabic: عسكر) derived from the former, meaning 'guard' or 'soldier' (whence Askari ). The Portuguese adapted this term to lasquarim or lascarim , meaning an Asian militiaman or seaman. The latter meaning is preserved in English as Lascar . In Sri Lanka it

206-468: A "weapon system" for use couched under the arm during a charge , being equipped with special features such as grappers to engage with lance rests attached to breastplates , and vamplates , small circular plates designed to prevent the hand sliding up the shaft upon impact. These specific features were in use by the beginning of the late 14th century . Though best known as a military and sporting weapon carried by European knights and men-at-arms ,

309-638: 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

412-528: A crimped swallowtail pennant , red above and white below. The New South Wales Mounted Police , based at Redfern Barracks, Sydney , Australia, carry a lance with a navy blue and white pennant on ceremonial occasions. "Lance" is also the name given by some anthropologists to the light flexible javelins (technically darts ) thrown by atlatls (spear-throwing sticks), but these are usually called "atlatl javelins". Some were not much larger than arrows, and were typically feather- fletched like an arrow and unlike

515-418: 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

618-523: A double line, and the German method, with lancers drawn up in a deeper formation which was often wedge-shaped. It is commonly believed that this became the dominant European cavalry tactic in the 11th century after the development of the cantled saddle and stirrups (the Great Stirrup Controversy ), and of rowel spurs (which enabled better control of the mount). Cavalry thus outfitted and deployed had

721-652: A lance-like shaft as a flagstaff . When the Canadian North-West Mounted Police was established, it was modeled after certain British cavalry units that used lances. It made limited use of this weapon in small detachments during the 1870s, intended to impress indigenous peoples. The modern Royal Canadian Mounted Police , the North-West Mounted Police's descendant, employs ceremonial, though functional, lances made of male bamboo . They feature

824-500: 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

927-417: 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

1030-529: 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

1133-536: A replacement, with the Spanish retaining the lance the longest. Only the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth with its far greater emphasis on cavalry warfare, large population of Szlachta nobility and general lower military technology level among its foes retained the lance to a considerable degree, with the famously winged Polish hussars having their glory period during the 17th and 18th centuries against

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1236-580: 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

1339-490: A tremendous collective force in their charge, and could shatter most contemporary infantry lines. Because of the extreme stopping power of a thrusting spear, it quickly became a popular weapon of infantry in the Late Middle Ages . These eventually led to the rise of the longest type of spears, the pike . This adaptation of the cavalry lance to infantry use was largely tasked with stopping lance-armed cavalry charges. During

1442-521: A wide variety of enemy forces. After the Western introduction of the horse to Native Americans , the Plains Indians used the bow and lance, probably independently, as American cavalry of the time were armed with the pistol and sabre , firing forward at full gallop. The mounted lancer experienced a renaissance in the 19th century. This followed on the demise of the pike and of body armor during

1545-644: 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

1648-610: 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

1751-715: 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

1854-654: 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

1957-425: 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

2060-455: 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

2163-468: 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 ),

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2266-570: 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

2369-486: 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

2472-486: 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

2575-502: 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

2678-625: The Battle of Randeniwela , the Portuguese expedition of 1630, almost the entire contingent of Lascarcins defected. In both the formidable campaign of 1603 led by Jerónimo de Azevedo as well as in the Battle of Gannoruwa , the last major battle in the Sinhalese–Portuguese War , the lascarins defected en masse. For this reason, the Portuguese started to rely more on Indian, African ( Kaffirs ) and Malay mercenaries in their offensive campaigns during

2781-651: 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

2884-448: 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

2987-642: The Polish cavalry , which retained the lance for combat use until either 1934 or 1937, but contrary to popular legend did not make use of it in World War II . The German cavalry retained the lance ( Stahlrohrlanze ) as a service weapon until 1927, as did the British cavalry until 1928. The Argentine cavalry were documented as carrying lances until the 1940s, but this appears to have been used as part of recruit riding school training, rather than serious preparation for use in active service. The United States Cavalry used

3090-655: 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

3193-688: 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

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3296-483: 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

3399-585: 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 ,

3502-422: The 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, these weapons, both mounted and unmounted, were so effective that lancers and pikemen not only became a staple of every Western army, but also became highly sought-after mercenaries. (However, the pike had already been used by Philip II of Macedon in antiquity to great effect, in the form of the sarissa .) In Europe, a jousting lance was a variation of the knight's lance which

3605-522: The 2.7-meter (8.9 ft) bamboo or ash lance with a steel head was reauthorized for general use on active service. The Russian cavalry (except for the Cossacks ) discarded the lance in the late 19th century, but in 1907, it was reissued for use by the front line of each squadron when charging in open formation. In its final form, the Russian lance was a long metal tube with a steel head and leather arm strap. It

3708-672: 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

3811-526: The Cangaans ( sergeants ) or Kanganies. Soldiers occupying the rank of Private were simply 'Lascoreens'. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -⁠shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of

3914-622: The Governor's staff and continued as part of the Governor General's staff till 1956. The full complement of the Ceylon Government Lascoreen Guard–of-Honour consisted of thirty-six guards clad in scarlet tunics with gold embroidery, white cloth/trouser and plumed headgear. They carried lances and 'sesath' (white parasol ) and marched to the beat of the tom-tom band and flutes piping military music. A Lascoreen Guard

4017-558: 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

4120-702: The Mudaliyar of a Korale. During the British era they lost their military role becoming more of a ceremonial guard. Governor retained a detachment of Lascarins including Kanganies on pay and pensionable appointment. They would provide the honour guard for visits by members of the Royal Family and the Maldivian delegation bring the Maldivian annual tribute , to the Governor of Ceylon. Lascarins were maintained as small private units of powerful Mudaliyars who maintained them with

4223-532: The Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I , despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam . It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi 's Hasht Bihisht , which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the Salim-Namah , a glorification of Selim I. After

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4326-521: 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

4429-425: 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

4532-401: 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

4635-848: 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,

4738-551: The Portuguese fought in Sri Lanka , the majority of their army was composed of Lascarins. The Lascarin's loyalty was however quite an issue. On many occasions other than in the Portuguese conquest of the Jaffna kingdom , the lascarins changed sides and supported the local kingdoms. In the 1594 Campaign of Danture the forces of Vimaladharmasuriya doubled as a result of these defections and in

4841-457: The Portuguese imposed direct control on local kingdoms (mainly the Kingdom of Kotte ), many of the forces loyal to the king of Kotte became Lascarins and continued to hold ranks such as Mudali , Muhandiram , Arachchi or Kankani. Lascarins were crucial for the occupying Portuguese forces, during their battles against local kingdoms because they knew the local geography. In almost every early battle

4944-479: 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

5047-575: 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)

5150-457: The Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum , took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans , who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of

5253-423: The advent of trench warfare, lances and the cavalry that carried them ceased to play a significant role. A Russian cavalry officer whose regiment carried lances throughout the war recorded only one instance where an opponent was killed by this weapon. The Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), saw an unexpected revival of lances amongst the cavalry of the Turkish National Army. During the successful Turkish offensives of

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5356-461: The approval of the British authorities on the grounds of personal protection. The official practice of maintaining Lascarins by Mudaliyars stopped after the closure of the Native Department and with it the official role of the Mudaliyars in 1937, although the title of Mudaliyar was awarded by the Government of Ceylon till 1956 until S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike suspended state honours in 1956. The Governor's contingent of Lascarins were maintained as part of

5459-441: 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

5562-437: The arm (held horizontally). The length of the standard kontarion is estimated at 2.5 meters (8.2 ft), which is shorter than that of the medieval knight of Western Europe . Formations of knights were known to use underarm-couched military lances in full-gallop closed-ranks charges against lines of opposing infantry or cavalry. Two variants on the couched lance charge developed, the French method, en haie , with lancers in

5665-423: The beginning of the war. The combined effect was devastating, so much of the British cavalry was deployed as mounted infantry, dismounting to fight on foot. For some years after the Boer War, the six British lancer regiments officially carried the lance only for parades and other ceremonial duties. At the regimental level, training in the use of the lance continued, ostensibly to improve recruit riding skills. In 1909,

5768-457: 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

5871-512: 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

5974-559: The early 18th century, with the reintroduction of lances coming from Hungary and Poland , having retained large formations of lance-armed cavalry when they had become more or less obsolescent elsewhere in Europe. Lancers became especially prevalent during and after the Napoleonic Wars : a period when almost all the major European powers reintroduced the lance into their respective cavalry arsenals. Formations of uhlans and other types of cavalry used lances between 2 and 3 meters (6.6 and 9.8 ft) in length as their primary weapons. The lance

6077-444: The eleven Uhlan regiments continued in existence until 1918, armed with the standard cavalry sabre. During the Second Boer War , British troops successfully used the lance on one occasion - against retreating Boers at the Battle of Elandslaagte (21 October 1899). However, the Boers made effective use of trench warfare , rapid-fire field artillery , continuous-fire machine guns , and accurate long-range repeating rifles from

6180-430: 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

6283-460: The final stages of the war across the open plains of Asia Minor , Turkish mounted troops were armed with bamboo shafted-lances taken from military storage and inflicted heavy losses on the retreating Greek Army. The cavalry branches of most armies which still retained lances as a service weapon at the end of World War I generally discarded them for all but ceremonial occasions during the 1920s and 1930s. There were exceptions during this era, such as

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6386-422: The following phylogenetic classification: Lance The English term lance is derived, via Middle English launce and Old French lance , from the Latin lancea , a generic term meaning a spear or javelin employed by both infantry and cavalry, with English initially keeping these generic meanings. It developed later into a term for spear-like weapons specially designed and modified to be part of

6489-444: 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

6592-421: 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

6695-426: The increasing common usage of ash , bamboo , beech , or pine wood for lance shafts of varying lengths, each with steel points and butts, adopted by the uhlan regiments of the Saxon, Württemberg, Bavarian, and Prussian armies. In the American Civil War , the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment was equipped with lances modeled after Napoleon Bonaparte 's forces in France. American troops had never previously used

6798-418: The internal affairs and conflicts between local kingdoms. Due to the limited manpower from Portugal , the Portuguese hired local soldiers to defend Portuguese and the Kotte kingdom's interests and to assist in offensive purposes. Almost all of these Lascarins were Catholic converted Karava , Karaiyar and Nairs . This was a time when many members of local royalty adopted Catholicism as their faith. After

6901-427: The knight himself, one to three men-at-arms , and possibly an archer . Lances were often combined under the banner of a higher-ranking nobleman to form companies of knights that would act as an ad hoc unit. The advent of wheellock technology spelled the end of the lance in Western Europe, with newer types of heavy cavalry such as reiters and cuirassiers spurning the old one-use weapon and increasingly supplanting

7004-451: The lance argued that the weapon was clumsy, conspicuous, easily deflected, and inefficient in a melee. Arguments favoring the retention of the lance focused on the impact on morale of having charging cavalry preceded by " a hedge of steel " and on the effectiveness of the weapon against fleeing opponents. Lances were still in use by the British , Turkish , Italian , Spanish , French , Belgian , Indian , German , and Russian armies at

7107-417: The lance in combat. The lances proved ineffective in battle and were replaced with carbine rifles in 1863. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 saw the extensive deployment of cavalry armed with lances on both sides. While the opportunities for decisive use of this weapon proved infrequent during the actual conflict, the entire cavalry corps (93 regiments of hussars , dragoons , cuirassiers , and uhlans ) of

7210-425: The lance survived the initial impact without breaking, it could also prove inappropriate for more static, closer engagements where its length became a hindrance. The name is derived from the word lancea , the Roman auxiliaries' javelin or throwing spear; although according to the OED , the word may be of Iberian origin. Also compare λόγχη ( lónkhē ), a Greek term for "spear" or "lance". A lance in

7313-434: The lance, often tapering for a considerable portion of the weapon's length. These are the versions that can most often be seen at medieval reenactment festivals. In war, lances were much more like stout spears, long and balanced for one-handed use, and with sharpened tips. As a small unit that surrounded a knight when he went into battle during the 14th and 15th centuries, a lance might have consisted of one or two squires ,

7416-461: 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

7519-486: The late 3rd century the weapons of the cavalry attached to each Roman legion evolved from javelins and swords to sometimes include long reaching lances ( contus ). These required the use of both hands to thrust. The Byzantine cavalry used lances ( kontos or kontarion ) almost exclusively, often in mixed formations of mounted archers and lancers ( cursores et defensores ). The Byzantines used lances in both overarm and underarm grips, as well as being couched under

7622-548: The latter stages of their rule. Lascarins also took part on both sides during the Dutch–Portuguese War which ended the Portuguese occupation of coastal Sri Lanka . Lascarins served on with the Dutch during the period 1640–1796. Lascarins were divided into 'ranchuwas' (randje) meaning company , each consisting of two or three native headmen , Mohandiram, Arachchies, or Kankanis and 24 rank and file. Several 'ranchus' were under

7725-432: The middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism . Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian. The native name of Middle Persian was Parsig or Parsik , after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars ", Old Persian Parsa , New Persian Fars . This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following

7828-525: 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

7931-461: 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

8034-495: 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

8137-414: 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

8240-713: 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

8343-529: 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

8446-420: The older gendarme type Medieval cavalry. While many Renaissance captains such as Sir Roger Williams continued to espouse the virtues of the lance, many such as François de la Noue openly encouraged its abandonment in the face of the pistol's greater armor piercing power, handiness and greater general utility. At the same time the adoption of pike and shot tactic by most infantry forces would neuter much of

8549-515: The original sense is a light throwing spear or javelin. The English verb to launch "fling, hurl, throw" is derived from the term (via Old French lancier ), as well as the rarer or poetic to lance . The term from the 17th century came to refer specifically to spears not thrown, used for thrusting by heavy cavalry , and especially in jousting . The longer types of thrusting spear used by infantry are usually referred to simply as spears or later as pikes , though many other terms existed. During

8652-536: The outbreak of World War I . In initial cavalry skirmishes in France this antique weapon proved ineffective, German uhlans being "hampered by their long lances and a good many threw them away". A major action involving repeated charges by four regiments of German cavalry, all armed with lances, at Halen on 12 August 1914 was unsuccessful. Amongst the Belgian defenders was one regiment of lancers who fought dismounted. With

8755-461: The post-war Imperial German Army subsequently adopted the lance as a primary weapon. After 1893 the standard German cavalry lance was made of drawn tubular steel, covered with clear lacquer and with a hemp hand-grip. At 3.58 meters (11.7 ft) it was the longest version then in use. The Austrian cavalry had included regiments armed with lances since 1784. In 1884, the lance ceased to be carried either as an active service or parade weapon. However

8858-556: The power of the lancer's breakneck charge, making them a non-cost effective type of military unit due to their expensive horses in comparison to cuirassiers and reiters, who usually charging only at a trot could make do with lower quality mounts. After the success of pistol-armed Huguenot heavy horse against their Royalist counterparts during the French Wars of Religion , most Western European powers started rearming their lancers with pistols, initially as an adjunct weapon and eventually as

8961-628: 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

9064-578: 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

9167-589: 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

9270-607: 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

9373-561: 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

9476-687: 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,

9579-478: 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

9682-548: The use of lances was widespread throughout East Asia , the Middle East , and North Africa wherever suitable mounts were available. Lances were the main weapon of Lancers of the medieval period and beyond, and so these troops also carried secondary weapons such as swords , battle axes , war hammers , maces , and daggers for use in hand-to-hand combat , since the lance was often a one-use-per-engagement weapon, becoming embedded in their targets or being broken on impact. Assuming

9785-578: 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

9888-417: Was intended as a shock weapon in the charge, to be dropped after impact and replaced by the sword for close combat in a melee . While demoralizing to an opponent, the lance was recognized as being an awkward encumbrance in forested regions. The relative value of the lance and the sword as a principal weapon for mounted troops was an issue of dispute in the years immediately preceding World War I. Opponents of

9991-474: Was modified from its original war design. In jousting, the lance tips would usually be blunt, often spread out like a cup or furniture foot, to provide a wider impact surface designed to unseat the opposing rider without spearing him through. The centre of the shaft of such lances could be designed to be hollow, in order for it to break on impact, as a further safeguard against impalement. They were on average 3 meters (9.8 ft) long, and had hand guards built into

10094-586: 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

10197-600: 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

10300-484: 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

10403-537: Was under the command of a 'Basnayake Muhandiram.' 'Basnayake'- derived from Dutch (baas + naik) meaning chieftain and 'Muhandiram' an honorary title conferred on the native officials of the administrative hierarchy. The Lascoreens of each Korale ( county ) were commanded by the Mudaliyar, a rank corresponding to Captain in European regiments . Below him was the Muhandiram or Lieutenant . The non-commissioned officers were

10506-541: Was used in the military sense, which was also preserved in India as Gun Lascar . The Dutch adapted it to lascorijn and the English to lascariin , lascarine , lascoreen , etc. The Portuguese first landed in Sri Lanka in 1505 and by 1517 they were able to erect a fort in Colombo and controlled most of the inbound and outbound trade affairs. After the historical event known as ' Wijayaba Kollaya ' in 1521 they became involved in

10609-899: Was usually employed in initial charges in close formation, with sabers being used in the melee that followed. The Crimean War saw the use of the lance in the Charge of the Light Brigade . One of the four British regiments involved in the charge, plus the Russian Cossacks who counter-attacked, were armed with this weapon. During the War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870), the Paraguayan cavalry made effective use of locally manufactured lances, both of conventional design and of an antique pattern used by gauchos for cattle herding. The 1860s and 1870s saw

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