Misplaced Pages

#755244

82-423: In lay use, the term is also used as an honorific to denote any Zoroastrian priest of any rank. Hormizd I appointed Kartir mowbadān-mowbad "high priest of priests ". The term mobad is a contraction of Old Persian magupati , the first half of the expression derived from Avestan : 𐬨𐬀𐬔𐬀 , romanized:  maga-, magu- and [𐬞𐬀𐬌𐬙𐬌] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |3= ( help ) . The word

164-677: A " magi an ". Through the Greek adjective [μαγικός] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |3= ( help ) and Old French : magique , mobed is distantly related to the English language word " magic ". Priests in the community in India , the Parsis , are required to be male from a priestly family (the "Athornan" class or caste). According to Parsi tradition, Athornan mobeds have held the responsibility of preserving and promoting religion since pre-Zoroastrian times of

246-487: A Christian Psalter fragment, which still retains all the letter distinctions that Inscriptional Pahlavi had except the one between t and ṭ ; and the Pahlavi found in papyri from the early 7th century CE, which displays even more letter coincidences than Book Pahlavi. The Manichaean script was an abjad introduced for the writing of Middle Persian by the prophet Mani (216–274 CE), who based it on his native variety of

328-536: A currently more popular one reflecting the Sassanid-era pronunciation, as used by C. Saleman, W. B. Henning and, in a somewhat revised form, by D. N. MacKenzie (1986). The less obvious features of the usual transcription are: A common feature of Pahlavi as well as Manichaean spelling was that the Aramaic letters ṣ and ḥ were adapted to express the sounds /t͡ʃ/ and /h/ , respectively. In addition, both could use

410-468: A different shape from a historical point of view, by under- or overlining them: e.g. the heterogram for andar 'in' is transliterated B YN , since it corresponds to Aramaic byn , but the sign that 'should' have been b actually looks like a g . Within Arameograms, scholars have traditionally used the standard Semitological designations of the Aramaic (and generally Semitic) letters, and these include

492-921: A large number of diacritics and special signs expressing the different Semitic phonemes, which were not distinguished in Middle Persian. In order to reduce the need for these, a different system was introduced by D. N. MacKenzie , which dispenses with diacritics as much as possible, often replacing them with vowel letters: A for ʾ , O for ʿ , E for H , H for Ḥ , C for Ṣ , for example ORHYA for ʿRḤYʾ ( bay 'god, majesty, lord'). For ''ṭ'', which still occurs in heterograms in Inscriptional Pahlavi, Θ may be used. Within Iranian words, however, both systems use c for original Aramaic ṣ and h for original Aramaic ḥ , in accordance with their Iranian pronunciation (see below). The letter l , when modified with

574-558: A less common view is that /x/ and /ɣ/ were uvular instead. Finally, it may be pointed out that most scholars consider the phoneme /w/ as being still a labial approximant, but a few regard it as a voiced labial fricative /v/ . The initial clusters of /s/ and a stop ( /sp-/ , /st-/ , /sk-/ ) had acquired a prosthetic vowel /i/ by the time of the Manichaean Middle Persian texts: istāyišn ( ՙst՚yšn ) 'praise' vs Pahlavi stāyišn ( ՙst՚dšn' ) 'praise'. Stress

656-602: A major city today in Iran. He promoted the Zoroastrian priest Kartir to the rank of chief priest ( mowbed ) and gave the Manichaean prophet Mani permission to continue his preaching. It was under Hormizd I that the title of "King of Kings of Iran and non-Iran" became regularized in Sasanian coinage ; previously, the royal titulary had generally been "King of Kings of Iran". Hormizd I

738-461: A script derived from Aramaic . This occurred primarily because written Aramaic had previously been the written language of government of the former Achaemenids , and the government scribes had carried that practice all over the empire. This practice had led to others adopting Imperial Aramaic as the language of communications, both between Iranians and non-Iranians. The transition from Imperial Aramaic to Middle Iranian took place very slowly, with

820-561: A slow increase of more and more Iranian words so that Aramaic with Iranian elements gradually changed into Iranian with Aramaic elements. Under Arsacid hegemony , this Aramaic-derived writing system for Iranian languages came to be associated with the Parthians in particular (it may have originated in the Parthian chancellories ), and thus the writing system came to be called pahlavi "Parthian" too. Aside from Parthian, Aramaic-derived writing

902-467: A special horizontal stroke that shows that the pronunciation is /l/ and not /r/, is rendered in the MacKenzie system as ɫ . The traditional system continues to be used by many, especially European scholars. The MacKenzie system is the one used in this article. As for Pahlavi, c is used for the transliteration of original Aramaic ṣ and h for the transliteration of original ḥ . Original Aramaic h , on

SECTION 10

#1732848023756

984-542: A thousand of these in the Book Pahlavi variety. In addition, their spelling remained very conservative, expressing the pronunciation of the Arsacid period. The two most important subvarieties are: Other known Pahlavi varieties are the early Pahlavi found in inscriptions on coins issued in the province of Pars from the 2nd century BC to the 3rd century CE; the relatively conservative Psalter Pahlavi (6th–8th centuries CE), used in

1066-406: Is a major difficulty for scholars. It has also been pointed out that the Pahlavi spelling does not express the 3rd century lenitions, so the letters p , t , k and c express /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ and /z/ after vowels, e.g. šp' for šab 'night' and hc for az 'from'. The rare phoneme /ɣ/ was also expressed by the same letter shape as k (however, this sound value is usually expressed in

1148-487: Is also attributed as its founder. Modern historians (citing Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr ) usually consider Hormizd to be its actual founder. He also founded the city of Ram-Hormizd-Ardashir (meaning "Ardashir's peace of Hormizd"), abbreviated as Ram-Hormizd . He refounded the city of Artemita as Dastagird , whose royal residence would later serve as an important place for the shahanshahs Khosrow I ( r.  531–579 ) and Khosrow II ( r.  590–628 ). Hormizd

1230-432: Is expressed in a synchronic alternation: at least at some stage in late Middle Persian (later than the 3rd century), the consonants /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ appear to have had, after vowels, the fricative allophones [ β ] , [ ð ] , [ɣ] . This is slightly more controversial for /ɡ/ , since there appears to have been a separate phoneme /ɣ/ as well. A parallel development seems to have affected /d͡ʒ/ in

1312-426: Is from the gods". The phrase "and non-Iran(ians)" had already been in use in the inscriptions of Shapur I, and in rare cases his coin mints, but was first regularized under Hormizd. The extended title demonstrates the incorporation of new territory into the empire, however what was precisely seen as "non-Iran(ian)" ( aneran ) is not certain. The reverse of Hormizd's coin portrayed two attendants, an addition that

1394-522: Is in this particular late form of exclusively written Zoroastrian Middle Persian, in popular imagination the term 'Pahlavi' became synonymous with Middle Persian itself. The ISO 639 language code for Middle Persian is pal , which reflects the post-Sasanian era use of the term Pahlavi to refer to the language and not only the script. In the classification of the Iranian languages, the Middle Period includes those languages which were common in Iran from

1476-399: Is nevertheless often the old pronunciation or a transitional one that is reflected in the Pahlavi spelling. 2. Voiceless stops and affricates, when occurring after vowels as well as other voiced sounds, became voiced: This process is thought not to have been taken place before Sassanid Pahlavi, and it generally is not reflected in Pahlavi spelling. A further stage in this lenition process

1558-719: Is spelt mtr' . In contrast, the Manichaean spellings are gʾh , ngʾh , šhr , myhr . Some other words with earlier /θ/ are spelt phonetically in Pahlavi, too: e.g. gēhān , spelt gyhʾn 'material world', and čihr , spelt cyhl 'face'. There are also some other cases where /h/ is spelt /t/ after p : ptkʾl for pahikār 'strife', and /t/ may also stand for /j/ in that position: ptwnd for paywand 'connection'. There are some other phoneme pairs besides /j/ and /d͡ʒ/ that are not distinguished: h (the original Aramaic ḥ ) may stand either for /h/ or for /x/ ( hm for ham 'also' as well as hl for xar 'donkey'), whereas

1640-427: Is that Arsacid word-initial /j/ produced Sassanid /d͡ʒ/ (another change that is not reflected in the Pahlavi spelling). The sound probably passed through the phase /ʒ/ , which may have continued until very late Middle Persian, since Manichaean texts did not identify Indic /d͡ʒ/ with it and introduced a separate sign for the former instead of using the letter for their native sound. Nonetheless, word-initial /j/

1722-484: Is unclear why Hormizd supported Kartir and Mani, both of whom represented a different religion. The Iranologist Touraj Daryaee has suggested that it was possibly part of his attempt to control both religions, which were both seeking to become the main religion in the empire. According to the Iranologist Prods Oktor Skjaervo , Hormizd was like his two predecessors, a "lukewarm Zoroastrian". Hormizd

SECTION 20

#1732848023756

1804-549: Is usually given the epithet of nēw or yaxī/yaxē (both meaning "brave") in Manichean Middle Iranian sources, possibly indicating his accomplishments in warfare. It was seemingly under Hormizd that the two New Year festivals ( Nowruz ) in the month of Farwardin were linked together to design a festival that lasted six days. In primary sources, Hormizd is credited as the founder of the city of Hormizd-Ardashir (present-day Ahvaz ), however, in some instances Ardashir I

1886-647: The Pahlavi Psalter (7th century); these were used until the beginning of the second millennium in many places in Central Asia , including Turpan and even localities in South India . All three differ minimally from one another and indeed the less ambiguous and archaizing scripts of the latter two have helped to elucidate some aspects of the Sasanian-era pronunciation of the former. The vowels of Middle Persian were

1968-638: The imperial variety of the Aramaic alphabet used in the chancelleries of the Achaemenid Empire . As is typical of abjads, they express primarily the consonants in a word form. What sets them apart from other abjads, however, is the use of Heterograms , and more specifically Aramaeograms , i.e. words written in Aramaic (sometimes, in later periods, with distortions) but pronounced in Middle Persian: e.g. LY (Aramaic 'to me') for man 'me, I'. There were about

2050-481: The w and n have the same graphic appearance. Furthermore, letters used as part of Aramaic heterograms and not intended to be interpreted phonetically are written in capitals: thus the heterogram for the word ān is rendered ZK , whereas its phonetic spelling is transliterated as ʾn' (the final vertical line reflects the so-called 'otiose' stroke, see below ). Finally, there is a convention of representing 'distorted/corrupt' letters, which 'should' have appeared in

2132-442: The "old" language (i.e. Middle Persian) and Aramaic-derived writing system. In time, the name of the writing system, pahlavi "Parthian", began to be applied to the "old" Middle Persian language as well, thus distinguishing it from the "new" language, farsi . Consequently, 'pahlavi' came to denote the particularly Zoroastrian, exclusively written, late form of Middle Persian. Since almost all surviving Middle Persian literature

2214-412: The 10th–11th centuries, Middle Persian texts were still intelligible to speakers of Early New Persian. However, there are definite differences that had taken place already by the 10th century: Texts in Middle Persian are found in remnants of Sasanian inscriptions and Egyptian papyri , coins and seals, fragments of Manichaean writings , and Zoroastrian literature , most of which was written down after

2296-774: The 7th-century, the Sassanids were overthrown by the Arabs. Under Arab influence, Iranian languages began to be written in Arabic script (adapted to Iranian phonology ), while Middle Persian began to rapidly evolve into New Persian and the name parsik became Arabicized farsi . Not all Iranians were comfortable with these Arabic-influenced developments, in particular, members of the literate elite, which in Sassanid times consisted primarily of Zoroastrian priests. Those former elites vigorously rejected what they perceived as ' Un-Iranian ', and continued to use

2378-420: The Aramaic distinctions between ḥ and h and between k and q were not always maintained, with the first often replacing the second, and the one between t and ṭ was lost in all but Inscriptional Pahlavi: thus YKTLWN (pronounced о̄zadan ) for Aramaic yqṭlwn 'kill', and YHWWN (pronounced būdan ) for Aramaic yhwwn 'be', even though Aramaic h is elsewhere rendered E . In the rest of this article,

2460-477: The Aramaic script of Palmyrene origin. Mani used this script to write the known book Šābuhrāgān and it continued to be used by Manichaeans until the 9th century to write in Middle Persian, and in various other Iranian languages for even longer. Specifically the Middle Persian Manichaean texts are numerous and thought to reflect mostly the period from the 3rd to the 7th centuries CE. In contrast to

2542-447: The Arsacid sound values, but is known from the more phonetic Manichaean spelling of texts from Sassanid times. As a result of these changes, the voiceless stops and affricates /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , /t͡ʃ/ rarely occurred after vowels – mostly when geminated, which has protected them from the lenition (e.g. waččag , sp. wck' 'child'), and due to some other sound changes. Another difference between Arsacid and Sassanid-era pronunciation

Mobad - Misplaced Pages Continue

2624-494: The Avesta also retain some old features, most other Zoroastrian Book Pahlavi texts (which form the overwhelming majority of the Middle Persian corpus as a whole) are linguistically more innovative. In view of the many ambiguities of the Pahlavi script, even its transliteration does not usually limit itself to rendering merely the letters as written; rather, letters are usually transliterated in accordance with their origin regardless of

2706-476: The Iranian deities Mithra or Anahita . Middle Persian language Middle Persian , also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg ( Inscriptional Pahlavi script : 𐭯𐭠𐭫𐭮𐭩𐭪 , Manichaean script : 𐫛𐫀𐫡𐫘𐫏𐫐 ‎ , Avestan script : 𐬞𐬀𐬭𐬯𐬍𐬐 ) in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire . For some time after

2788-461: The Iranian languages begins around 450 BCE and ends around 650 CE. One of those Middle Iranian languages is Middle Persian, i.e. the middle stage of the language of the Persians, an Iranian people of Persia proper , which lies in the south-western highlands on the border with Babylonia . The Persians called their language Parsig , meaning "Persian". Another Middle Iranian language was Parthian , i.e.

2870-477: The Manichaean script and a maximally disambiguated transliterated form of Pahlavi do not provide exhaustive information about the phonemic structure of Middle Persian words, a system of transcription is also necessary. There are two traditions of transcription of Pahlavi Middle Persian texts: one closer to the spelling and reflecting the Arsacid-era pronunciation, as used by Ch. Bartholomae and H. S. Nyberg (1964) and

2952-560: The Pahlavi scripts, it is a regular and unambiguous phonetic script that expresses clearly the pronunciation of 3rd century Middle Persian and distinguishes clearly between different letters and sounds, so it provides valuable evidence to modern linguists. Not only did it not display any of the Pahlavi coalescences mentioned above, it also had special letters that enabled it to distinguish [p] and [f] (although it didn't always do so), as well as [j] and [d͡ʒ] , unique designations for [β] , [ð] , and [ɣ] , and consistent distinctions between

3034-523: The Pahlavi spellings will be indicated due to their unpredictability, and the Aramaeograms will be given priority over the 'phonetic' alternatives for the same reason. If a word expressed by an Arameogram has a grammatical ending or, in many cases, a word-formation suffix, these are generally expressed by phonetic elements: LYLYA ʾn for šab ʾn 'nights'. However, verbs in Inscriptional Pahlavi are sometimes written as 'bare ideograms', whose interpretation

3116-513: The Sasanian collapse, Middle Persian continued to function as a prestige language . It descended from Old Persian , the language of the Achaemenid Empire and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian , the official language of Iran (also known as Persia) , Afghanistan ( Dari ) and Tajikistan ( Tajik ). "Middle Iranian" is the name given to the middle stage of development of the numerous Iranian languages and dialects . The middle stage of

3198-478: The Sasanian era. The language of Zoroastrian literature (and of the Sasanian inscriptions) is sometimes referred to as Pahlavi – a name that originally referred to the Pahlavi scripts , which were also the preferred writing system for several other Middle Iranian languages. Pahlavi Middle Persian is the language of quite a large body of literature which details the traditions and prescriptions of Zoroastrianism , which

3280-577: The basis of our culture. In antiquity, there were many female priests, politicians, warriors and this even up to the Sasanian time,” he said. Potential corroboration may be found in the oral tradition of the Parsis, which acknowledges a female priest named Testar as among those who fled religious persecution and forced conversions in Arab-conquered Persia to establish a new homeland in Sanjan, Gujarat around

3362-429: The cluster *θr in particular), but it had been replaced by /h/ by the Sassanid period: The phoneme /ɣ/ (as opposed to the late allophone of /ɡ/ ) is rare and occurs almost only in learned borrowings from Avestan and Parthian , e.g. moγ (Pahlavi mgw or mwg 'Magian'), maγ (Pahlavi mγ ) 'hole, pit'. The sound /ʒ/ may also have functioned as a marginal phoneme in borrowings as well. The phoneme /l/

Mobad - Misplaced Pages Continue

3444-411: The coinciding forms: thus, even though Book Pahlavi has the same letter shapes for original n , w and r , for original ʾ and ḥ and for original d , g and y , besides having some ligatures that coincide in shape with certain individual letters, these are all transliterated differently. For instance, the spelling of gōspand 'domestic animal' is transliterated gwspnd in spite of the fact that

3526-733: The criteria for the eligibility and training of mobedyars to include women. As of 2010, the North American Mobeds Council had successfully trained six mobedyars to perform outer liturgical ceremonies and bereavement services in the absence of an ordained priest. In 2009-2010, the chairman of the Council of Zoroastrian Priests in Tehran , Mobed Soroushpur, suggested opening the priesthood to women after research on ancient Zoroastrian documents that revealed evidence of female clergy in ancient Persian times. "The concepts of equality have always been at

3608-521: The early Middle Persian of the Arsacid period (until the 3rd century CE) and the Middle Persian of the Sassanid period (3rd – 7th century CE) is due to a process of consonant lenition after voiced sounds that took place during the transition between the two. Its effects were as follows: 1. Voiced stops, when occurring after vowels, became semivowels : This process may have taken place very early, but it

3690-610: The fall of the Achaemenid Empire in the fourth century BCE up to the fall of the Sasanian Empire in the seventh century CE. The most important and distinct development in the structure of Iranian languages of this period is the transformation from the synthetic form of the Old Period ( Old Persian and Avestan ) to an analytic form: The modern-day descendants of Middle Persian are New Persian and Luri . The changes between late Middle and Early New Persian were very gradual, and in

3772-479: The following: It has been doubted whether the Middle Persian short mid vowels /e/ and /o/ were phonemic , since they do not appear to have a unique continuation in later forms of Persian and no minimal pairs have been found. The evidence for them is variation between spelling with and without the matres lectionis y and w , as well as etymological considerations. They are thought to have arisen from earlier /a/ in certain conditions, including, for /e/ ,

3854-483: The language of the northwestern Iranian peoples of Parthia proper , which lies along the southern/south-eastern edge of the Caspian sea and is adjacent to the boundary between western and eastern Iranian languages. The Parthians called their language Parthawig , meaning "Parthian". Via regular sound changes Parthawig became Pahlawig , from which the word 'Pahlavi' eventually evolved. The -ig in parsig and parthawig

3936-467: The later forms are an (Manichaean ՚n ), and meh (Pahlavi ms and Manichaean myh ); indeed, some scholars have reconstructed them as monosyllabic any , mahy even for Middle Persian. Middle Persian has been written in a number of different scripts. The corpora in different scripts also exhibit other linguistic differences that are partly due to their different ages, dialects and scribal traditions. The Pahlavi scripts are abjads derived from

4018-496: The letter p to express /f/ , and ṣ to express z after a vowel. The widespread use of Aramaeograms in Pahlavi, often existing in parallel with 'phonetic' spellings, has already been mentioned: thus, the same word hašt 'eight' can be spelt hšt or TWMNYA . A curious feature of the system is that simple word stems sometimes have spellings derived from Aramaic inflected forms: the spellings of verb stems include Aramaic inflectional affixes such as -WN , -TWN or -N and Y- ;

4100-475: The mobed base for the benefit of North American Zoroastrians. Due to the shortage of priests, the community in India considered a project to train any Parsi man to serve as a mobed assistant or paramobed in the 1970s. The plan was launched in the early 2000s using a new term for these priestly assistants: behdin pasban s. In 1995, the North American Mobeds Council (NAMC) created a program to teach and ordain assistants called mobedyar s or paramobed s to address

4182-542: The mythical King Jamshid . [I]n the early to mid 1900s, for various reasons, the young of the then mobeds were encouraged by their elders to be initiated as mobeds but to pursue other careers and professions. Though this resulted in a shortage of mobeds [in India], it generated an unexpected benefit to Zoroastrianism. Highly educated and enterprising young mobeds settled in North America following their secular studies and founded

SECTION 50

#1732848023756

4264-460: The ninth century. In 2011, eight women were certified to serve the community as mobedyars. However, female mobedyars in Iran may be restricted in their ability to serve their community in the same manner as mobeds, such as tending to fires in fire temples . Zoroastrian women have since been ordained in Iran and North America to serve the community as mobedyars. Since the mobedyar program was initiated in North America, there has been some pushback on

4346-579: The only area that Hormizd fought in: according to the Scriptores Historiae Augustae , the Roman rebel Cyriades assisted Shapur I and a certain Odomastes in the conquest of Antioch . The name Odomastes is an incorrect transliteration of Hormizd, and may thus suggest that after plundering Cappadocia, Hormizd took part in the siege of Antioch in 253 . Hormizd is mentioned in an inscription on

4428-437: The other hand, is sometimes rendered as ẖ . For original ṭ , the sign ṯ is used. The special Manichaean letters for /x/ , /f/ , [β] , /ɣ/ and [ð] are transcribed in accordance with their pronunciation as x , f , β , γ and δ . Unlike Pahlavi, the Manichaean script uses the letter Ayin also in Iranian words (see below) and it is transliterated in the usual Semitological way as ՙ . Since, like most abjads, even

4510-582: The pairs [x] – [h] and [r] – [l] . Since knowledge of Pahlavi decreased after the Muslim conquest of Iran , the Zoroastrians occasionally transcribed their religious texts into other, more accessible or unambiguous scripts. One approach was to use the Avestan alphabet , a practice known as Pazand ; another was to resort to the same Perso-Arabic script that was already being used for New Persian , and that

4592-473: The presence of a following /n/ , sibilant or front vowel in the next syllable, and for /o/ , the presence of a following labial consonant or the vowel /u/ in the next syllable. Long /eː/ and /oː/ had appeared first in Middle Persian, since they had developed from the Old Persian diphthongs /ai/ and /aw/ . The consonant phonemes were the following: A major distinction between the pronunciation of

4674-667: The restrictions placed on ordained mobedyars by the NAMC regarding the types of ceremonies mobedyars may perform. The community is grappling with the question of whether to permit any Zoroastrian to train to become a full-fledged mobed irrespective of caste, lineage, or gender. The concept of a universal priesthood would promote and encourage persons to train to become mobeds and mobedyars "regardless of their gender, ancestry or background". Hormizd I Hormizd-Ardashir , better known by his dynastic name of Hormizd I (also spelled Hormozd I or Ohrmazd I ; Middle Persian : 𐭠𐭥𐭧𐭥𐭬𐭦𐭣 ),

4756-442: The same position, possibly earlier; not only was it weakened to a fricative [ʒ] , but it was also depalatalised to [z] . In fact, old Persian [d͡ʒ] and [ʒ] in any position also produced [z] . Unlike the case with the spirantisation of stops, this change is uncontroversially recognised for Sassanid times. The lenition of voiceless stops and affricates remained largely unexpressed in Pahlavi spelling, which continues to reflect

4838-541: The shortage of available mobeds across North America. The program was initially open to any male Zoroastrian, irrespective of Athornan (priestly) or Behdhin (non-priestly) caste or lineage. The first mobedyar was ordained in Virginia in late 1997. Another NAMC-trained mobedyar was ordained in California in 2004 after several years of serving the community. In 2008, the NAMC amended the original resolution passed in 1999 to broaden

4920-411: The spellings of pronouns are often derived from Aramaic prepositional phrases ( tо̄ 'you' is LK , originally Aramaic lk 'to you', о̄y 'he' is OLE , originally Aramaic ʿlh 'onto him'); and inalienable nouns are often noun phrases with pronominal modifiers ( pidar 'father' is ABYtl , originally Aramaic ʾby 'my father', pāy 'foot' is LGLE , originally Aramaic rglh 'his foot'). Furthermore,

5002-514: The state of affairs in living Middle Persian only indirectly. The surviving manuscripts are usually 14th-century copies. Other, less abundantly attested varieties are Manichaean Middle Persian , used for a sizable amount of Manichaean religious writings, including many theological texts, homilies and hymns (3rd–9th, possibly 13th century), and the Middle Persian of the Church of the East , evidenced in

SECTION 60

#1732848023756

5084-451: The transition of /θ/ to /h/ in some words (in front of /r/ this reflex is due to Parthian influence, since the Middle Persian reflex should have been /s/ ). In such words, the spelling may have s or, in front of r – t . For example, gāh 'place, time' is spelt gʾs (cf. Old Persian gāθu ) and nigāh '(a) look' is spelt nkʾs ; šahr 'country, town' is spelt štr' (cf. Avestan xsaθra ) and mihr 'Mithra, contract, friendship'

5166-628: The transliteration). Similarly, the letter d may stand for /j/ after a vowel, e.g. pʾd for pāy 'foot' – this is no longer apparent in Book Pahlavi due to the coincidence of the shapes of the original letters y , d and g , but is already clearly seen in Inscriptional and Psalter Pahlavi. Indeed, it even appears to have been the general rule word-finally, regardless of the word's origins, although modern transliterations of words like xwadāy ( xwtʾd ) and mēnōy ( mynwd ) do not always reflect this analogical / pseudo-historical spelling. Final īy

5248-475: The use of original Aramaic h is restricted to heterograms (transliterated E in MacKenzie's system, e.g. LGLE for pāy 'foot'). Not only /p/ , but also the frequent sound /f/ is expressed by the letter p , e.g. plhw' for farrox 'fortunate'. While the original letter r is retained in some words as an expression of the sound /r/ , especially in older frequent words and Aramaeograms (e.g. štr' for šahr 'country, town', BRTE for duxt 'daughter'), it

5330-522: The wall of the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht at Naqsh-e Rostam near Persepolis in southern Iran, which Shapur I had created in order to praise his sons by citing their names and titles. In the inscription, Hormizd is given the title of Wuzurg Šāh Arminān ("Great King of the Armenians"). The 4th-century Armenian historian Agathangelos states that this title was only given to the heir of the shahanshah . When Shapur I

5412-607: The wars of Shapur I against the Roman Empire . He was made the king of Armenia after its conquest by Shapur I in 252. Hormizd is believed to be many modern historians to have taken part in Shapur I's second Roman expedition, which took place in the Roman provinces of Syria , Cilicia , and Cappadocia , and which lasted from 253 to 256. This is supported by the reports of the Cappadocian conquests. Cappadocia does not appear to have been

5494-520: Was "Hormizd-Ardashir", a combination of "Hormizd" and "Ardashir", the latter being the Middle Persian form of the Old Persian Ṛtaxšira (also spelled Artaxšaçā ), meaning "whose reign is through truth ( asha )". Hormizd was the third-born son of Shapur I ( r.  240–270 ). According to folklore, Hormizd's mother was a daughter of the Parthian dynast Mihrak . His two elder brothers were Bahram (the eldest) and Shapur Meshanshah , whilst Narseh

5576-732: Was a regular Middle Iranian appurtenant suffix for "pertaining to". The New Persian equivalent of -ig is -i . When the Arsacids (who were Parthians) came to power in the 3rd-century BCE, they inherited the use of written Greek (from the successors of Alexander the Great ) as the language of government. Under the cultural influence of the Greeks ( Hellenization ), some Middle Iranian languages, such as Bactrian , also had begun to be written in Greek script . But yet other Middle Iranian languages began to be written in

5658-516: Was adopted for at least four other Middle Iranian languages, one of which was Middle Persian. In the 3rd-century CE, the Parthian Arsacids were overthrown by the Sassanids , who were natives of the south-west and thus spoke Middle Persian as their native language. Under Sassanid hegemony, the Middle Persian language became a prestige dialect and thus also came to be used by non-Persian Iranians. In

5740-466: Was borrowed as Georgian : მოგუ-ი mogu-i and Classical Syriac : ܡܘܗܦܛܐ‎ , romanized:  mawhəp̄āṭā and from Parthian as Old Armenian : մոգպետ , romanized:  mogpet . Through Old Persian : 𐎶𐎦𐏁 , romanized:  maguš and Ancient Greek : μάγος , romanized :  magos , proto-Iranian *magu- is also identified as the origin of the Latin word magus ,

5822-405: Was first made by Shapur I, on whose coinage both attendants are depicted wearing mural crowns , whilst looking away from the fire temple between them. They most likely represented the shah. In the coinage of Hormizd, the attendants face the temple and are wearing different crowns. The figure on the left side represents Hormizd, whilst the figure on the right—depending on its portrayal—represents

5904-527: Was his younger brother. Hormizd had two sisters named Adur-Anahid and Shapurdukhtak . His grandfather was Ardashir I , the founder of the Sasanian Empire. The Sasanians had supplanted the Arsacid Empire as the sovereigns of Iran in 224, when Ardashir I defeated and killed the last Arsacid King of Kings Artabanus IV ( r.  213–224 ) at the Battle of Hormozdgan . Hormizd is first mentioned during

5986-653: Was not succeeded by his son Hormozdak, but by his brother Bahram (who became known as Bahram I ), who ascended the throne with the aid of Kartir. According to local folklore, Hormizd was buried in Ram-Hormizd. While Ardashir I and Shapur I generally used the title of "King of Kings of (Iran)ians" on their coinage, Hormizd had the title slightly modified, adding the phrase "and non-Iran(ians)". His full title thus read "the Mazda-worshiping, divine Hormizd, King of Kings of Iran(ians) and non-Iran(ians), whose image/brilliance

6068-527: Was on his deathbed, he crowned Hormizd as the new shahanshah of Iran, in May 270. Little is known of Hormizd's reign. He reportedly gave the Zoroastrian priest Kartir clothes that were worn by the upper class, the cap and belt ( kulāf ud kamarband ) and appointed him as the chief priest ( mowbed ). Like his father, Hormizd also granted the Manichaean prophet Mani permission to continue his preaching. It

6150-419: Was on the last syllable. That was due to the fact that any Old Persian post-stress syllables had been apocopated : It has been suggested that words such as anīy 'other' (Pahlavi spelling AHRN , AHRNy d , Manichaean ՚ny ) and mahīy 'bigger' (Manichaean mhy ) may have been exceptionally stressed on the first syllable, since the last one was apocopated already in the course of the Middle Persian period:

6232-452: Was referred to as Pārsī. Since these methods were used at a relatively late linguistic stage, these transcriptions often reflect a very late pronunciation close to New Persian. In general, Inscriptional Pahlavi texts have the most archaic linguistic features, Manichaean texts and the Psalter exhibit slightly later, but still relatively early language stages, and while the Pahlavi translations of

6314-425: Was regularly written y d . In the same way, (w)b may also correspond to a w in the pronunciation after a vowel. The fortition of initial /j/ to /d͡ʒ/ (or /ʒ/ ) is not reflected either, so y can express initial /d͡ʒ/ , e.g. yʾm for ǰām 'glass' (while it still expresses /j/ in the learned word y z dt' for yazd 'god'). Some even earlier sound changes are not consistently reflected either, such as

6396-555: Was retained/reintroduced in learned borrowings from Avestan . Furthermore, some forms of Middle Persian appear to have preserved ǰ (from Proto-Iranian /d͡ʒ/ or /t͡ʃ/ ) after n due to Parthian influence, instead of the usual weakening to z . This pronunciation is reflected in Book Pahlavi, but not in Manichaean texts: Judging from the spelling, the consonant /θ/ may have been pronounced before /r/ in certain borrowings from Parthian in Arsacid times (unlike native words, which had /h/ for earlier *θ in general and /s/ for

6478-446: Was still relatively rare as well, especially so in Manichaean texts, mostly resulting from Proto-Iranian *rd, *rz and, more rarely, *r. It also occurred in the combination /hl/ , which was a reflex of Old Persian /rθ/ and /rs/ (cf. the words 'Pahlavi' and 'Parthian'). The sound /xw/ may be viewed as a phoneme or merely as a combination of /x/ and /w/ . Usually /x/ , /xw/ and /ɣ/ are considered to have been velar ;

6560-637: Was succeeded by his eldest brother Bahram I . The name of Hormizd (also spelled Ōhrmazd , Hormozd ) is the Middle Persian version of the name of the supreme deity in Zoroastrianism , known in Avestan as Ahura Mazda . The Old Persian equivalent is Auramazdā , whilst the Greek transliteration is Hormisdas . The name is attested in Armenian as Ormizd and in Georgian as Urmizd . His personal name

6642-491: Was the state religion of Sasanian Iran (224 to c. 650) before the Muslim conquest of Persia . The earliest texts in Zoroastrian Middle Persian were probably written down in late Sasanian times (6th–7th centuries), although they represent the codification of earlier oral tradition. However, most texts date from the ninth to the 11th century, when Middle Persian had long ceased to be a spoken language, so they reflect

6724-422: Was the third Sasanian King of Kings ( shahanshah ) of Iran , who ruled from May 270 to June 271. He was the third-born son of Shapur I ( r.  240–270 ), under whom he was governor-king of Armenia , and also took part in his father's wars against the Roman Empire . Hormizd I's brief time as ruler of Iran was largely uneventful. He built the city of Hormizd-Ardashir (present-day Ahvaz ), which remains

#755244