111-593: Qazvin ( Persian : قزوین ; / k æ z ˈ v iː n / ; IPA: [ɢæzˈviːn] ) is a city in the Central District of Qazvin County , Qazvin province, Iran , serving as capital of the province, the county, and the district. It is the largest city in the province. Qazvin was a capital of the Safavid Empire for over forty years (1555–1598) and nowadays is known as the calligraphy capital of Iran. It
222-463: A decade later, Adam Olearius offered a lower estimate of 100,000 people. In 1674, Jean Chardin visited Qazvin, and he wrote that its walls were in ruins by that time and it had lost its grandeur. He estimated that it had 12,000 houses and 100,000 people. He wrote that there were "a great many merchants in Qazvin, but not many rich ones" and commented on its shoe-makers, who he said made "the best shoes in
333-439: A meteorite . The majority of the people of the city of Qazvin are Persians . The majority language is Persian . Azerbaijanis and Tats are the other ethnic groups of the city of Qazvin. They speak Azerbaijani and Tati . Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),
444-546: A "sumptuous" palace quarter. A member of Anthony Shirley 's entourage, which arrived in Qazvin in December 1598, was less enthusiastic and wrote that it was an unremarkable city except for a few mosques and the palace gate; he estimated its population as a somewhat smaller than London 's. In 1607, the Catholic priest Paul Simon wrote that Qazvin, though no longer the capital, was still a large city rivalling Isfahan in size. He said it
555-638: 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
666-418: 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
777-452: A family of muqanni s (qanat builders) and had associated with the Nuqqawis for a while before returning to Qazvin. The ulama , concerned with his growing popularity, charged him with heresy and banned him from the mosque where he had been living at. After Tahmasp's death, he returned to preaching, but he was eventually charged with heresy again and executed in 1593/4 (1002 AH). Qazvin was also
888-610: A high price that buying them here would be unprofitable. After Tahmasp's death, Turkoman rebels seized Qazvin and installed his son Tahmasp Mirza as a puppet ruler in the city for a while. In the spring of 1596, Hamza Mirza marched on Qazvin and overthrew the Turkomans. Qazvin appears to have emerged relatively unscathed from this drama – Don Juan of Persia , who visited the city soon after, described it as large and prosperous. He wrote that it had over 100,000 heads of households, or upwards of 450,000 people in total, with over 500 mosques and
999-587: A hospital and the St. Nicolas Church. In 1920 Qazvin was used as a base for the British Norperforce . The 1921 Persian coup d'état that led to the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty was launched from Qazvin. During the reign of Reza Shah , Qazvin declined in importance as a commercial center as communications improved. Many merchants and other residents moved to Tehran. On 1 September 1962, an earthquake measuring 6.9 on
1110-500: 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
1221-417: 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
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#17328590319311332-648: A mercantile center during this period. There was an increase in European merchants coming through southern Russia, and in 1561 Anthony Jenkinson noted the presence of merchants from India as well. The English merchant Arthur Edwards made several trips to Qazvin for the Muscovy Company ; he wrote in 1567 that it was a producer of velvet and other goods but not as high in quality as elsewhere, and in 1569 he wrote that there were many spices sold in its markets but again they were not as good as elsewhere, and they went for such
1443-529: 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
1554-432: A provincial capital. Instead, it was governed by a wazir , darugha , kalantar , and mustawfi appointed directly by the central government. Qazvin only became a provincial capital during the latter part of Shah Soltan Hosayn 's rule in the early 1700s. Based on the small contingent assigned to its governor - 300 soldiers - it does not seem to have been considered an important province. The tumultuous final years of
1665-580: 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
1776-634: A very early use of glazed ornamentation. A unique architectural style emerged in Seljuk-era Qazvin that influenced architecture in surrounding regions, such as the mosques at Sojas and Ghorveh . Not long after the Isma'ilis established themselves at Alamut, Abu'l-Mahasin Ruyani persuaded the Qazvinis to have anyone coming from the direction of Alamut to be out to death, to prevent people from developing sympathies for
1887-410: A waqf to support the mosque. The mosque no longer exists today. Harun's wall was not completed until 868, over half a century after his death. It had 206 towers and 12 gates and was built out of mud brick except for the battlements and gates. When it was finished, more people began to settle in Qazvin. Its population was heavily Arab during this time. Qazvin remained an important frontier town during
1998-605: 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
2109-644: 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
2220-610: 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
2331-517: Is a provincial capital today that has been an important cultural center throughout its history. Qazvin is located at a crossroad connecting Tehran , Tabriz , and the Caspian Sea region, which has historically been a major factor in its commercial importance. However, it never rivalled other major Iranian cities like Ray , Nishapur , or Isfahan during the Middle Ages. One reason is that its growth
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#17328590319312442-812: Is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan , as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran . It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet , a derivative of the Arabic script , and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet , a derivative of the Cyrillic script . Modern Persian
2553-654: 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
2664-587: Is cold but dry. Qazvin has sometimes been of central importance at major moments of Iranian history . It was captured by invading Arabs (644 AD) and destroyed by Hulagu Khan (13th century). In 1555, after the Ottoman capture of Tabriz , Shah Tahmasp (1524–1576) made Qazvin the capital of the Safavid Empire, a status that Qazvin retained for half a century until Abbas the Great moved the capital to Isfahan in 1598. It
2775-413: Is constrained by a lack of water. Until fairly recently, the entire Qazvin plain was irrigated by just a single qanat and four small streams. The earliest remains of prehistoric humans have been discovered in a cave called Qaleh Kurd where archaeologists discovered a Neanderthal tooth. Archaeological findings in the Qazvin plain reveal urban agricultural settlements for at least nine millennia. Qazvin
2886-425: 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
2997-463: Is famous for its traditional confectioneries (like Baghlava ), carpet patterns, poets, political newspaper and Pahlavi influence on its accent. Located in 150 km (93 mi) northwest of Tehran , in the Qazvin Province, it is at an altitude of about 1,800 m (5,900 ft) above sea level. Due to its position at the south of the rugged Alborz range called KTS Atabakiyam, its climate
3108-455: 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
3219-468: 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 ),
3330-570: 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
3441-486: 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
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3552-422: Is typically attributed to Tahmasp I, although this is not confirmed because there is no inscription. Shah Ismail II was enthroned here in 1576, with a grand reception held in its main hall on 22 August of that year. Mohammad Khodabandeh was probably also enthroned here, and Abbas I was also enthroned here in 1587/8 (996 AH). After Shah Abbas moved the capital to Isfahan in 1596/7 (1005 AH), Qazvin did not become
3663-486: 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
3774-502: 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
3885-461: The Kalila wa-Dimna into Mongolian. He and his brother Imam al-Din Yahya remained in office until 1278/9 (677 AH). Qazvin suffered during the tumultuous period preceding Ghazan Khan 's rise to power in 1295. Many people left the town, to the point that Hamdallah Mustawfi wrote that Friday prayers could not be performed. He also mentioned Mongol reappropriation of waqf land in nearby Pishkildarra . At
3996-651: 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
4107-565: The Richter Scale struck Qazvin, killing more than 12,000 people. The earthquake occurred shortly before Israeli Minister of Agriculture, Moshe Dayan , was scheduled to visit Iran in mid-September for meetings with the Shah and with his Iranian counterpart, in order to discuss Israel's possible role in the White Revolution , a plan for land reform and the modernization of rural Iran. Shortly after
4218-448: The Seljuk sultan Tughril besieged Qazvin. In 1046 Qazvin was visited by Nasir-i Khusraw , who left the following account: It had many gardens, without walls or thorn-hedges or any obstacle to prevent entry into them. I saw it to be a good city. It had a strong wall and embattlements. It had good bazaars, except that it only had a little water from one kariz ... The ra'is of the town
4329-655: 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
4440-634: 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
4551-566: The Umayyads , he built a new town called Hājjāj at Qazvin. Two more new cities were founded at Qazvin during the late 8th century. The Abbasid caliph Musa al-Hadi founded a new city called Mādina Mūsā next to Hājjāj. He bought nearby Rustamābād and designated it as a waqf for the benefit of the new town. His freedman Mubarak, a Turk, also founded a new town at Qazvin in 792/3 (176 AH), called Mubarakābād after himself. Harun al-Rashid visited Qazvin while on his way to Khorasan and saw firsthand
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4662-483: 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
4773-585: 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 ,
4884-672: 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
4995-558: 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
5106-532: 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
5217-477: The Ottomans on the condition that the Ottomans would not send troops to the city - which the Ottomans promptly disregarded and sent 12,000 troops along with their appointed governor Ali Pasha. The troops were soon driven out of Qazvin. Writing in 1744, the English travller Jonas Hanway wrote that a Persian merchant had told him that there had formerly been 12,000 houses in Qazvin, but by then there were only 1,100. By
5328-521: 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
5439-425: 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
5550-401: 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
5661-848: 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,
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#17328590319315772-558: The Safavid dynasty had a negative impact on Qazvin. Its population decreased, which was at least partly because of a decline in commerce. In 1722, Qazvin surrendered to an Afghan force of 6,000 soldiers under Aman Allah Khan, but in January 1723 there was a popular uprising (or lūṭibāzār ) against them in all quarters of the city, led by the kalantars. The Afghans lost 2,000 men and were forced to retreat to Isfahan. Then in 1726, Qazvin surrendered to
5883-783: The Safavid state had key frontiers in Azerbaijan , with the Ottoman Empire , and in Khorasan with the Uzbek tribes led by the Shaybanids . Because of Qazvin's central location on the road between these two regions, its strategic importance increased under the Safavids. In 1555, after temporarily losing his original capital of Tabriz to the Ottomans, Tahmasp I moved his capital to the more secure location of Qazvin. Qazvin remained capital until Abbas I moved
5994-428: 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
6105-427: 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)
6216-510: The Seljuk vizier Sadr al-Din al-Maraghi . Qazvin later came under the Khwarazmshahs . Isma'ili raids continued during this period. When Jalal al-Din Hasan III succeeded as Isma'ili imam in 1210 (607 AH) he claimed to have converted to Sunni Islam and took the name "Naw-Musalmān" meaning "New Muslim". The people of Qazvin were skeptical and demanded proof, and he obliged by inviting some of Qazvin's leading men to Alamut Castle where he publicly burned Isma'ili texts for them to see. Also in 1210,
6327-408: The Seljuks do not seem to have considered it an important governorship to be given to an important amir. After the death of the last Ja'fari ruler of Qazvin, Malikshah appointed Imad ud-Dawla Turan ibn Alfaqash as governor of Qazvin and instructed him to transfer his household and possessions there so that he would be more invested in its governance. Later, in 1118/9 (512 AH), Sanjar assigned Qazvin to
6438-407: 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
6549-441: 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
6660-425: The beginning of the 19th century, Qazvin was again starting to flourish as a center of trade. Commercial traffic on the Caspian Sea was growing, and Qazvin was one of the main centers of activity – in the words of one traveller in 1801, it was "the mart of all the commerce of the Caspian". Qazvin's importance as a commercial entrepôt was helped by the fact that it lay at a three-way crossroads: it connected Tehran ,
6771-405: The capital to Isfahan about half a century later. While it was the capital, Qazvin bore the title dār al-salṭana . Like many other cities in Iran, Qazvin became divided into Haydari and Ne'mati factions during the Safavid period. The Italian traveller Vicento d'Alessandri visited Qazvin during the reign of Tahmasp I and reported that 4 of Qazvin's districts belonged to one group and 5 belonged to
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#17328590319316882-410: The city was damaged by the forces of Kingdom of Georgia sent by Tamar the Great , as per the retribution for destroying Georgian-controlled Ani by the Muslim forces that left 12,000 Christians dead. Meanwhile, a new threat was looming – the Mongols . Qazvin changed hands several times during their wars with the Khwarazmshahs, and in 1220 (617 AH) the Mongols massacred the city's inhabitants. It
6993-644: The city. After Asfar's death, the Buyid ruler Rukn al-Dawla took control of Qazvin, and it remained part of Buyid territory for over a hundred years. There was rioting in the city in 968/9 (358 AH) and the Buyid vizier Abu'-Fath Ali ibn Muhammad was sent to restore order. When that was done, he imposed a fine of 1,200,000 dirhams on the city. Qazvin came under Ghaznavid control in 1030 (421 AH). Around 1033/4 (424 AH), Abu Ali Muhammad Ja'fari became governor of Qazvin. He and his sons continued to hold power in Qazvin for almost 60 years. The last of these sons, Fakhr ul-Ma'ali Sharafshah, died in 1091 or 1092 (484 AH) and
7104-457: 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
7215-512: 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
7326-399: The earthquake, two planning experts were sent from Israel to assist with Iranian relief activities. After touring the region and meeting with the Iranian minister in charge of relief efforts, they were assigned to rebuild the village of Khuznin , located in the center of the Qazvin region. Other teams, both Iranian and foreign, had also arrived in the region to offer assistance and expertise in
7437-420: The end of Uljaytu 's reign Qazvin became administered by Husam al-Din Amir Umar Shirazi and the mustawfi Hajji Fakhr al-Din Ahmad. When Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan took over in 1316, he assigned the income from Qazvin to cover the expenses of his mother's household. After the fall of the Ilkhanate , Qazvin had an uneventful history until the beginning of the Safavid Empire . From its beginnings under Ismail I ,
7548-425: The enemy after spending time with them. In 1129 (423 AH) the Isma'ilis killed about 400 people in Qazvin in retaliation for their envoy being killed in Isfahan. Under the grandmaster Muhammad ibn Buzurg-Ummid (1138–62) the Isma'ilis conducted raids against Qazvin. In 1165 (560 AH) the Isma'ilis of Rudbar built a fortress very close to Qazvin, which threatened the city. In 1176 (572 AH), the city's walls were rebuilt by
7659-430: 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
7770-444: 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
7881-421: 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
7992-411: The future Tughril II along with other territories. In terms of religion, Seljuk-era Qazvin was mostly Sunni , although it did have a Shi'i quarter. The oldest known structure in Qazvin that still exists is the dome chamber of the city's Jameh mosque , which according to its inscription was built from 1106 to 1114 (500-508 AH). Its patron was the amir Abu Mansur Khumartash ibn Abd Allah al-'Imadi. It
8103-420: The governorship passed to Fakhr al-Dawla Abu Ali, an ancestor of Hamdallah Mustawfi , and he served as governor for the next 27 years. In 913/4 (301 AH) Qazvin was put under Ali ibn al-Muqtadir along with Ray , Dinavar , Zanjan , Abhar , and Tarom . In 916/7 (304 AH), Yusuf ibn Abi'l-Saj unsuccessfully attempted to seize control of Qazvin. He was defeated by Asfar ibn Shiruya , who made himself ruler of
8214-461: 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
8325-538: The locals' struggles as a result of the Daylamite raids. At the same time, he was impressed by their efforts to fend off the Daylamites. Harun suspended Qazvin from having to pay the kharaj tax and instead ordered an annual payment of 10,000 silver dirhams . He had a wall constructed around the new cities of Mādina Mūsā and Mubarakābād and also built a congregational mosque in the city, and he endowed several buildings as
8436-712: The middle of the century, the Babi movement had one of its centers here and the first massacre of Babis occurred in Qazvin in 1847. In the second half of the 19th century Qazvin was one of the centers of Russian presence in northern Iran. A detachment of the Persian Cossack Brigade under Russian officers was stationed here. From 1893 this was the headquarters of the Russian Company for Road construction in Persia which connected Qazvin by roads to Tehran and Hamadan. The company built
8547-432: 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
8658-455: The monumental Ali Qapu portal which now serves as the city's police headquarters. The palace complex was probably originally at the northern end of the city - earlier monuments are all to the south and west - but over time the city expanded to the north and the palace precinct ended up in the center of the later Safavid city. This probably happened after the royal court moved to Isfahan under Abbas I in 1596/7 (1005 AH). The Chehel Sotun pavilion
8769-528: The mosque in 1153 (548 AH); the present-day north iwan is Seljuk in style and may be one of them. The present-day mosque mostly dates from the Safavid and Qajar periods; it is one of the largest mosques in Iran. Another early monument is the Heydariyeh Mosque , which was probably built a few years after the Jameh mosque. Its original function is unclear; it could have been either a mosque or a madrasa. It features
8880-525: 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
8991-461: 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
9102-495: 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
9213-786: The new Qajar capital; Tabriz, "the second city of the empire", and the important Caspian port of Anzali . Qazvin was manufacturing velvets, brocades, and cotton cloth. In an 1841 report, the British diplomat Keith Edward Abbott wrote that Qazvin was commercially as important as Tehran. Mirza Husayn Farahani , who visited Qazvin in 1884, wrote that it was divided into 17 districts and had 600 shops, 8 caravanserais , 40 mosques, 9 madrasas, and 12 yakhchals . Its walls were in ruins but 12 gates were still standing. This increase in commercial importance does not seem to have been accompanied by an increase in population, although it's hard to tell for sure because contemporary estimates were not necessarily based on
9324-414: 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
9435-662: 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
9546-529: 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
9657-422: The other, and the two had been hostile to one another for at least 30 years by that point with frequent conflicts between the two. Widespread public conversion to Twelver Shi'ism probably took place during the early Safavid period, but many people probably secretly remained Sunnis for some time. The Nuqqawi heresy spread to Qazvin during the reign of Tahmasp I. The local leader was Darvīsh Khusrāw, who came from
9768-679: 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
9879-633: The reconstruction activities. Each team was assigned one or more villages for planning and rebuilding. Over the course of three months, the Israeli team built hundreds of houses in the village that they had been allocated. In 1963, the Qazvin Development Authority was established to develop the agriculture and water resources of Qazvin and its surroundings. Qazvin became a state in 1996. On 15 July 2009 Caspian Airlines Flight 7908 crashed near Qazvin. In Autumn 2015 portions of Qazvin were struck by
9990-578: 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
10101-589: 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
10212-441: The same criteria. James Justinian Morier and William Ouseley in the early 1800s both gave an estimate of 25,000 people. The census taken from 1880 to 1882 gave a population of 64,362 for Qazvin. Farahani in 1884 wrote that Qazvin had 30,000 people in about 7,000 households. George Curzon wrote that Qazvin's population was said to be 40,000 in 1889, but he wrote that its actual population was probably no more than 2/3 of that. In
10323-607: 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
10434-561: 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
10545-687: 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,
10656-478: 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
10767-693: The wars between the Abbasid caliphate and the Alid rulers of the Caspian. The caliph al-Mu'tasim appointed Fakhr al-Dawla Abu Mansur Kufi as governor of Qazvin around 838; he remained governor for the next 40 years. For a couple of years around 865/6, the Alids under Hasan ibn al-Bakir took control of Qazvin, and Fakhr al-Dawla continued to serve as governor under them. Qazvin briefly came under Samanid rule in 905/6 (293 AH) when Ilyas ibn Ahmad became governor. The next year, though,
10878-472: The whole country" out of shagreen and coming in green, white, and other colors. There were also artisans who made gilded horse saddles and bows. There was an outbreak of plague in Qazvin in 1635/6 (1045 AH). The original Safavid palace complex is located at what is now the city's maidan or central square. Two parts of this now survive: the Chehel Sotun pavilion, which now hosts the Qazvin museum, and
10989-416: The whole region between Tabaristan and Gorgan and Qom and Hamadan . In 927/8 (315 AH) Qazvin was the site of a battle between Asfar and an army sent by the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir against him. The people of Qazvin assisted the Abbasid army, but Asfar won the battle. As punishment for siding against him, Asfar destroyed parts of the city, killed many of its inhabitants, and imposed monetary demands on
11100-578: 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
11211-550: Was an 'Alid. Of all the crafts in the town, the shoe-makers ( kafshgar ) were the most numerous. Under the Seljuks , Qazvin appears to have formed part of the central territory around the capital in Isfahan that was more or less directly ruled by the sultans, who were able to levy taxes and appoint governors here. However, despite Qazvin's position close to the Isma'ili strongholds like Alamut ,
11322-481: Was an important commercial destination for silks, carpets, and brocades . Pietro della Valle , who visited Qazvin in 1618, was not very impressed with the city and wrote that it had "nothing to satisfy the expectations of a royal residence". Thomas Herbert , writing in 1627, said Qazvin was "equal for grandeur to any other city in the Persian Empire", except for Isfahan, and estimated its population at 200,000. About
11433-705: Was appointed shihna or military governor of Qazvin. Another was the Qarāvulān, who acquired large landed estates but had already lost their prominence by the time of Hamdallah Mustawfi. However, most of the main families at his time still traced their roots back to an Arab founder. The religion was mostly Sunni of the Shafi'i madhhab , although there were Shi'i and Hanafi Sunni minorities. Mangu Qa'an appointed Iftikhar al-Din Muhammad al-Bukhari as governor of Qazvin in 1253/4 (651 AH). Iftikhar al-Din learned Mongolian and translated
11544-412: Was built adjoining an earlier madrasa that was itself built in the 10th century by the sahib Isma'il ibn Abbad. The 13th-century writer Zakariya Qazvini wrote that the dome was "unparalleled anywhere" in size; he wrote that "the masons despaired of vaulting such a huge space until a passing boy suggested that they fill the interior with straw". According to Hamdallah Mustawfi, two iwans were added to
11655-414: Was founded by Shapur I ( r. 240–270 ), the second ruler of the Sasanian Empire . It was refounded by Shapur II ( r. 309–379 ), who established a coin mint there. Under the Sasanians, Qazvin functioned as a frontier town against the neighbouring Daylamites , who made incursions into the place. Qazvin came under the expanding Rashidun Caliphate in 644, during the reign of Umar . It
11766-586: 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
11877-530: Was survived by one daughter. He was extremely wealthy and he and his followers owned most of the land in the area. The annual income from his landed estates was said to be 366,000 gold dinars . In 1038/9 (430 AH), along with an alliance of the Ghuzz , the Daylamite ruler Fanna Khusraw came to Qazvin after already sacking Ray the year before. The locals bought them off for a sum of 7,000 dinars. Later in 1042/3 (434 AH),
11988-430: Was taken by Al-Bara' ibn 'Azib , who besieged the city and received a request for a sulh (agreement) from its inhabitants. They were offered the same terms as Abhar had earlier, but the people of Qazvin did not want to pay jizya and supposedly accepted Islam instead. Al-Bara' then used Qazvin as a base for further campaigns into Daylam and Gilan. Later, when Sa'id ibn al-'As was appointed governor of Persia under
12099-600: 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
12210-484: 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
12321-505: Was under the Mongols that there was large-scale Turkic migration into the Qazvin area. Although at least some must have settled there during Seljuk times, it was during the Mongols that they started coming in larger numbers. Several prominent Turkic families established themselves in Qazvin. One of them was the Būlātmūriyān, who first came during the rule of Ögedei when their member Amir Takash
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