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82-600: The inscription is written in Middle Persian , Parthian , and Greek , containing 35, 30, and 70 lines, respectively. The Middle Persian variant is partially damaged, while the Greek and Parthian versions are better preserved, although they are not exactly the same as the Middle Persian text. In this inscription, Shapur introduces himself, mentions his genealogy, enumerates the provinces of his empire, describes his campaigns against

164-487: 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

246-536: 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

328-468: 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

410-864: 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

492-558: 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

574-464: A natural death sometime between 207–210 and was succeeded by Shapur. After his death, both Ardashir and Shapur started minted coins with the title of "king" and the portrait of Pabag. The obverse of Shapur's coins had the inscription "His Majesty, King Shapur" and the reverse had "son of (His) Majesty, King Pabag". Shapur's reign, however, proved short; he died under obscure conditions in 211 or 212. Ardashir thus succeeded Shapur, and went on to conquer

656-461: 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

738-561: 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

820-554: A son of Ardashir I and grandson of Pabag. Although various figures named "Sasan" are mentioned in the inscription, none of them are associated with the House of Sasan. The Paikuli inscription of Shapur I's son Narseh ( r.  293–303 ), however, makes direct references to the House of Sasan, such as the phrase "since the gods gave glory and rulership to the family of Sasan", which indicates that Narseh saw Sasan as his ancestor. The modern historian Marek Jan Olbrycht suggests that Sasan

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

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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

1148-432: 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

1230-423: Is far more common for the letter l to have that function, as in the example plhw' for farrox . In the relatively rare cases where l does express /l/ , it can be marked as ɫ . Papak Pabag ( Middle Persian : 𐭯𐭠𐭯𐭪𐭩 , Pāpak/Pābag ; New Persian : بابک Bābak ) was an Iranian prince who ruled Istakhr , the capital of Pars , from 205 or 206 until his death sometime between 207 and 210. He

1312-569: 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

1394-399: 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

1476-719: 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

1558-427: 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/

1640-565: Is the name given to the middle stage of development of the numerous Iranian languages and dialects . The middle stage of 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

1722-675: The Caucasus mountains [ Kafkōf ] and the Gates of Albania/ of the Alans , and all of the mountain chain of Pareshwar /Padishkwar[gar], Mad (i.e. Media ), Gurgan (i.e. Hyrcania ), Merv (i.e. Margiana ), Harey (i.e. " Aria ") and all of Abarshahr , Kirman , Sakastan (Sistan), Turgistan /Turan, Makuran , Pardan/ Paradene , Hind [India i.e. Kushano-Sasanian Kingdom ], the Kushanshahr up to Peshawar /Pashkibur, and up to Kashgar[ia], Sogdiana /Sogdia and to

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1804-647: 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

1886-638: 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

1968-481: 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

2050-442: 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

2132-412: 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

2214-774: 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

2296-620: The Achaemenid-era. Later, under the frataraka Wadfradad II (fl. 138 BC), Pars was made a vassal of the Iranian Parthian (Arsacid) Empire . The frataraka were shortly afterwards replaced by the Kings of Persis , most likely at the accession of the Arsacid monarch Phraates II ( r.  132–127 BC ). Unlike the fratarakas , the Kings of Persis used the title of shah ("king") and laid

2378-618: The Arab; Shapur mentions that negotiations in 244 resulted in Philip being forced to pay 500,000 denarii to the Sasanians. In addition, the Romans promised that they would surrender Armenia to Shapur. However, Shapur relates that the Philip the Arab did not keep his promise and tried to reinvade Armenia. As a result, another battle was fought in 252-256 at Barbalissos , against a 60,000-strong Roman army. Shapur

2460-420: 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,

2542-477: 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

Shapur I's inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht - Misplaced Pages Continue

2624-447: 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

2706-494: 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

2788-607: The Deeds of Ardashir, son of Pabag"), says the following regarding the ancestry of Ardashir: "Ardashir, the Kayanian, son of Pabag from the parentage of Sasan and from the lineage of King Dara". Another Middle Persian text, the Bundahishn , however, gives the genealogy of Ardashir as follows: "Ardashir son of Pabag whose mother was the daughter of Sasan son of Weh-afrid". This demonstrates the inconsistencies between Middle Persian texts regarding

2870-526: The Iranian goddess. The Arsacid Empire, then ruled by Vologases V ( r.  191–208 ), was at this time in decline, due to wars with the Romans, civil wars, and regional revolts. The Roman emperor Septimius Severus ( r.  193–211 ) invaded the Arsacid domains in 196, and two years later he did the same, this time sacking the Arsacid capital of Ctesiphon. At the same time, revolts occurred in Media and Pars. The Iranologist Touraj Daryaee argues that

2952-541: The Kayanian family was designed in order to justify that Ardashir was descended from the ancient Kayanian kings, who reflected memories of the Achaemenids. Dara II, the last Kayanian king to rule before Alexander, is partly based on the last Achaemenid King of Kings, Darius III ( r.  336–330 BC ), whose empire was indeed conquered by Alexander's forces. A son of Dara II named Sasan (called "the elder") fled to India and lived there in exile until his death. He

3034-477: 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

3116-560: 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

3198-523: 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

3280-833: The Roman Empire and talks about the fire temples he built. The inscription is considered the most important inscription from the Sasanian era. The relevant passage enumerating the territories part of Shapur I's empire : ...[I] am ruler of Ērānshahr , and I possess the lands of [provinces; Greek ethne]: Pars [Persis], Pahlav (Parthia), Huzestan ( Khuzestan ), Meshan (i.e. Maishan, Mesene), Asorestan (Mesopotamia), Nod-Ardakhshiragan (i.e. Adiabene), Arbayistan , Adurbadagan [i.e. Atropatene, ’twrp'tkn ], Armenia [Armin, ’lmny ], Iberia [Wiruzān/Wručān, wlwc'n , i.e., K'art'li ], Segan [or Machelonia , i.e. Mingrelia ], Arran [ 'ld'nm , i.e., Caucasian Albania ], Balasagan , up to

3362-442: The Sasanian administration as well as the courtiers and nobles during the lifetimes of Papak , Ardashir I in addition to Shapur I himself. Middle Persian 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

Shapur I's inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht - Misplaced Pages Continue

3444-478: 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

3526-569: The center of the empire until its conquest by the Macedonian king Alexander the Great ( r.  336–323 BC ). Since the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 2nd century BCE, Pars has been ruled by local dynasties subject to the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire . These dynasts held the ancient Persian title of frataraka ("leader, governor, forerunner"), which is also attested in

3608-429: 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/

3690-411: 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

3772-521: 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

3854-610: 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

3936-538: The father of Ardashir. However, they do not make any mention of Pabag. A Greek variant of Agathangelos' work calls Ardashir "son of Sasanus, which is the origin of the Sasanian name of the Persian kings descended from him". Ardashir, in his coin engravings and inscription on Naqsh-e Rostam , claims to be the son of "divine Pabag, the king". His son and successor, Shapur I ( r.  240–270 ), on his inscriptions at Naqsh-e Rajab and Ka'ba-ye Zartosht , calls himself

4018-479: 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/ ,

4100-602: The foundations for a new dynasty, which may be labelled the Darayanids. There are various different sources regarding the relationship between Pabag, Sasan , and the first Sasanian monarch, Ardashir I ( r.  224–242 ). According to the Shahnameh ("The Book of Kings") by the medieval Persian poet Ferdowsi (d. 1020), Sasan was a descendant of the mythological Kayanian rulers Dara II , Dara I , Kay Bahman , Esfandiyar , and Vishtaspa . The claim of Sasan belonging to

4182-474: The inscription, where Shapur mentions the capture of Valerian and his deeds in general, is reminiscent of the "Persian epic tradition". In the following part of the inscription, Shapur mentions the Zoroastrian sacred fires he established under his rule to honor each member of the royal family. He also mentions detail of "sacrifices and ceremonies". The final part of the inscription contains valuable content about

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4264-467: 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

4346-496: 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- ;

4428-462: The literary language of the Sasanian Empire . For some time after 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"

4510-554: The medieval Iranian historian Al-Tabari (d. 923), Pabag was the son of Sasan and a princess named Rambihisht, who was from the Bazrangid family, a dynasty of rulers in Pars. He presents Pabag as the father of Ardashir. Like Ferdowsi in his Shahnameh , Al-Tabari also describes Sasan as a foreigner in Pars; however, unlike him, he does not mention Sasan's place of origins. The Middle Persian text Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan ("Book of

4592-512: The mountains of Tashkent (Chach), and on the other side of the sea, Oman (i.e. Mazonshahr). In the inscription, Shapur I mentions his victories over Gordian III , Philip the Arab and Valerian . He relates that Gordian departed from Antioch and was killed in a decisive battle at Misiche in 242/4 on the border of Sasanian-ruled Mesopotamia. Shapur mentions that Misiche was subsequently renamed Misiche-Peroz-Shapur, which translates as "Misiche-(where)-Shapur-is-victorious". In relation to Philip

4674-498: The origins of the Sasanian dynasty. Both sources regard Pabag as the father of Ardashir, while Sasan is presented as the latter's grandfather or ancestor. In Roman and Armenian sources, a different account appears. According to the Roman historians Agathias and George Syncellus , Sasan was the biological father of Ardashir, while Pabag was his stepfather. The Armenian writers Movses Khorenatsi and Agathangelos likewise call Sasan

4756-437: 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

4838-582: 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

4920-473: 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

5002-440: The reign of Vologases V was "the turning point in Arsacid history, in that the dynasty lost much of its prestige." The kings of Persis were now unable to depend on their weakened Arsacid overlords. Indeed, in 205 or 206, Pabag rebelled and overthrew Gochihr, taking Istakhr for himself. According to al-Tabari, it was at the urging of Ardashir that Pabag rebelled. However, Daryaee considers this statement unlikely, and states that it

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5084-442: 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

5166-411: 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,

5248-514: 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

5330-451: 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'

5412-628: 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

5494-475: 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

5576-504: Was Parthian , i.e. 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

5658-684: 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

5740-576: Was a vassal of Gochihr , the Bazrangid king of the Persian capital of Istakhr , who was in turn a vassal of the Arsacid King of Kings. With the permission of Gochihr, Pabag sent Ardashir to the fortress of Darabgerd to serve under its commander, Tiri. Pabag reportedly served as a priest of the fire-temple of Anahita in Istakhr, which served as a rallying point for the local Persian soldiers, who worshipped

5822-516: 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

5904-405: Was an Indo-Parthian prince who married a Persian princess and gave birth to Ardashir. In order to not be seen as a foreign dynasty, however, Ardashir and Shapur I minimized the role of Sasan. Pabag was seemingly the father-in-law and possibly adoptive father of Ardashir. This story doesnt have much merit though. Pabag ruled a small principality in the area of Khir , south of Bakhtegan Lake . He

5986-477: Was in reality the eldest son Shapur who helped Pabag capture Istakhr, as demonstrated by the latter's coinage, which has portraits of both of them. Pabag subsequently appointed Shapur as his heir. This was much to the dislike of Ardashir, who had become the commander of Darabgerd after the death of Tiri. In an act of defiance, Ardashir left for Ardashir-Khwarrah , where he fortified himself, preparing to attack his brother Shapur after Pabag's death. Pabag died

6068-419: 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:

6150-452: 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

6232-425: 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

6314-555: 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

6396-446: 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 ;

6478-605: Was survived by a son who was likewise named Sasan (called "the younger"), "which continued in the family for four generations". A descendant of the family, likewise named Sasan, worked for Pabag, who was a local ruler in Pars. Pabag's daughter married Sasan and bore him a son named Ardashir. Following this, Sasan is no longer mentioned. The Shahnameh thus indicates that the ancestors of Sasan resided in India following Alexander's conquests. This report has been used by scholars to point out Sasan's Indo-Parthian connection. According to

6560-574: Was the father, stepfather, grandfather, or father-in-law of Ardashir I , the founder of the Sasanian Empire . He was succeeded by his eldest son, Shapur . Pars (also known as Persis ), a region in the southwestern Iranian plateau , was the homeland of a southwestern branch of the Iranian people , the Persians . It was also the birthplace of the first Iranian Empire, the Achaemenids . The region served as

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

6724-605: Was victorious, and he mentions that he captured 36 Roman cities. Shapur also mentions his major victory at the Battle of Edessa , which resulted in Valerian being captured by the Sasanian ruler, "along with the Praefectus Praetorio, senators, and chiefs of the army". He furthermore relates that Roman captives were settled in the province of Pars (i.e. Persis). The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity notes that this particular part of

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