101-500: The Sad-dar or Saddar , literally "Hundred Doors", is a Persian book about Zoroastrianism . The hundred chapters are guidelines that Zoroastrians should follow. This article related to a book about Zoroastrianism is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),
202-638: 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
303-652: A Pashtun population of over 1 million, whilst Jaipur and Bangalore have an estimate of around 100,000. The Pashtuns in Bangalore include the khan siblings Feroz , Sanjay and Akbar Khan , whose father settled in Bangalore from Ghazni . During the 19th century, when the British were recruiting peasants from British India as indentured servants to work in the Caribbean , South Africa and other places, Rohillas were sent to Trinidad , Surinam , Guyana , and Fiji , to work in
404-418: 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
505-613: A group of opposing Afghans, as also corroborated by Abulfazl Beyhaqi . It is recorded that Afghans were also enrolled in the Ghurid Kingdom (1148–1215). By the beginning of the Khilji dynasty in 1290, Afghans have been well known in northern India. Ibn Battuta , when visiting Afghanistan following the era of the Khilji dynasty, also wrote about the Afghans. "We travelled on to Kabul, formerly
606-578: A journalist specialized in Afghan affairs. Although this figure is disputed due to the lack of an official census in Afghanistan since 1979 . They are the second-largest ethnic group in Pakistan and one of the largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan , constituting around 18.24% of the total Pakistani population and around 47% of the total Afghan population. In India , significant and historical communities of
707-500: 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
808-417: 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
909-529: 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
1010-580: 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
1111-553: A tribe mentioned by Herodotus ( Pactyans ) in 430 BCE in the Histories : Other Indians dwell near the town of Caspatyrus[Κασπατύρῳ] and the Pactyic [Πακτυϊκῇ] country, north of the rest of India; these live like the Bactrians; they are of all Indians the most warlike, and it is they who are sent for the gold; for in these parts all is desolate because of the sand. These Pactyans lived on
SECTION 10
#17329014766451212-440: A vast town, the site of which is now occupied by Afghans. They hold mountains and defiles and possess considerable strength, and are mostly highwaymen. Their principal mountain is called Kuh Sulayman . It is told that the prophet Sulayman [Solomon] ascended this mountain and having looked out over India, which was then covered with darkness, returned without entering it." Ferishta , a 16th-century Muslim historian writing about
1313-605: 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
1414-644: 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
1515-610: 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
1616-812: 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
1717-654: 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
1818-425: 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
1919-455: 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
2020-468: 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 ),
2121-570: 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
SECTION 20
#17329014766452222-486: 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
2323-486: 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
2424-502: 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
2525-559: The Assakenoi of Arrian , which was the name used for ancient inhabitants of the Hindu Kush . Aśvakan literally means "horsemen", "horse breeders", or " cavalrymen " (from aśva or aspa , the Sanskrit and Avestan words for " horse "). This view was propounded by scholars like Christian Lassen , J. W. McCrindle , M. V. de Saint Martin, and É. Reclus , The earliest mention of
2626-566: The British Raj in colonial India . These include Bombay (now called Mumbai ), Farrukhabad , Delhi , Calcutta , Saharanpur , Rohilkhand , Jaipur , and Bangalore . The settlers are descended from both Pashtuns of present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan ( British India before 1947). In some regions in India , they are sometimes referred to as Kabuliwala . In India significant Pashtun diaspora communities exist. While speakers of Pashto in
2727-651: 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
2828-670: The Ghilji Pashtuns to the Mazandaran Province in northern Iran. The remnants of this once sizable exiled community, although assimilated, continue to claim Pashtun descent. During the early 18th century, in the course of a very few years, the number of Durrani Pashtuns in Iranian Khorasan, greatly increased. Later the region became part of the Durrani Empire itself. The second Durrani king of Afghanistan, Timur Shah Durrani
2929-687: The Oxus at that time. Others however have suggested a much older Iranic ancestor given the affinity to Old Avestan . According to one school of thought, Pashtun are descended from a variety of ethnicities, including Persians , Greeks , Turks , Arabs , Bactrians , Dards , Scythians , Tartars , Huns ( Hephthalites ), Mongols , Moghals (Mughals), and anyone else who has crossed the region where these Pashtun live. Further they are also, and probably most surprisingly, of Israelite descent. Some Pashtun tribes claim descent from Arabs , including some claiming to be Sayyids . One historical account connects
3030-867: The Pashtun diaspora exist in the northern region of Rohilkhand as well as in major Indian cities such as Delhi and Mumbai . Pashtuns are spread over a wide geographic area, south of the Amu river and west of the Indus River . They can be found all over Pakistan and Afghanistan. Big cities with a Pashtun majority include Jalalabad , Kandahar , Bannu , Dera Ismail Khan , Khost , Kohat , Lashkar Gah , Mardan , Ghazni , Mingora , Peshawar , Quetta , among others. Pashtuns also live in Abbottabad , Farah , Herat , Islamabad , Kabul , Karachi , Kunduz , Lahore , Mazar-i-Sharif , Mianwali , and Attock . The city of Karachi ,
3131-767: The Red Sea , many of the Copts became converts to the Jewish faith ; but others, stubborn and self-willed, refusing to embrace the true faith, leaving their country, came to India, and eventually settled in the Sulimany mountains, where they bore the name of Afghans. The ethnogenesis of the Pashtun ethnic group is unclear. There are many conflicting theories amongst historians and the Pashtuns themselves. Modern scholars believe that Pashtuns do not all share
Sad-dar - Misplaced Pages Continue
3232-538: The Sogdian language , as well as Khwarezmian , Shughni , Sanglechi , and Khotanese Saka . It is suggested by some that Pashto may have originated in the Badakhshan region and is connected to a Saka language akin to Khotanese. In fact major linguist Georg Morgenstierne has described Pashto as a Saka dialect and many others have observed the similarities between Pashto and other Saka languages as well, suggesting that
3333-655: 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
3434-688: The Turkic , Armenian , Georgian , & Indo-Aryan languages . It also exerted some influence on Arabic, while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages. Some of the world's most famous pieces of literature from the Middle Ages, such as the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi , the works of Rumi , the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám , the Panj Ganj of Nizami Ganjavi , The Divān of Hafez , The Conference of
3535-483: 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
3636-585: 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 ,
3737-599: The 982 Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam , where a reference is made to a village, Saul, which was probably located near Gardez , Afghanistan. "Saul, a pleasant village on a mountain. In it live Afghans ". The same book also speaks of a king in Ninhar ( Nangarhar ), who had Muslim, Afghan and Hindu wives. In the 11th century, Afghans are mentioned in Al-Biruni 's Tarikh-ul Hind ("History of the Indus"), which describes groups of rebellious Afghans in
3838-521: The Afghans, so [you should] impose a penalty on Nat Kharagan ... ...lord of Warnu with ... ... ...the Afghan... ... " The name Afghan is later recorded in the 6th century CE in the form of "Avagāṇa" [अवगाण] by the Indian astronomer Varāha Mihira in his Brihat-samhita . "It would be unfavourable to the people of Chola, the Afghans (Avagāṇa), the white Huns and the Chinese." The word Afghan also appeared in
3939-672: 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
4040-876: The British/ Commonwealth links of their respective countries, and modern communities have been established starting around the 1960s mainly in the United Kingdom , Canada , Australia but also in other commonwealth countries (and the United States ). Some Pashtuns have also settled in the Middle East, such as in the Arabian Peninsula . For example, about 300,000 Pashtuns migrated to the Persian Gulf countries between 1976 and 1981, representing 35% of Pakistani immigrants. The Pakistani and Afghan diaspora around
4141-500: 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
Sad-dar - Misplaced Pages Continue
4242-429: 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
4343-422: The Pashtuns nowadays constitute a clear ethnic group with their own language and culture, there is no evidence whatsoever that all modern Pashtuns share the same ethnic origin. In fact it is highly unlikely." Pashto is generally classified as an Eastern Iranian language. It shares features with the Munji language , which is the closest existing language to the extinct Bactrian , but also shares features with
4444-459: 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
4545-425: 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
4646-401: 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
4747-487: 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,
4848-428: 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
4949-427: 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)
5050-407: 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
5151-442: The ability to speak Pashto and instead speak Hindi and other regional languages. There are an estimated 350–400 Pashtun tribes and clans with a variety of origin theories . In 2021, Shahid Javed Burki estimated the total Pashtun population to be situated between 60 to 70 million, with 15 million in Afghanistan. Others who accepted the 15 million figure include British academic Tim Willasey-Wilsey as well Abubakar Siddique,
SECTION 50
#17329014766455252-441: 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
5353-420: The chief of the Afghans, ' the judge of Tukharistan and Gharchistan . Moreover, ' a letter [ has come hither ] from you, so I have heard how [ you have ] written ' ' to me concerning ] my health . I arrived in good health, ( and ) ( afterwards ( ? ) ' ' I heard that a message ] was sent thither to you ( saying ) thus : ... look after the farming but the order was given to you thus. You should hand over
5454-457: 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
5555-512: 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
5656-417: The connection of the Pashtuns with names such as the Parsiētai (Παρσιῆται), Parsioi (Πάρσιοι) that were cited by Ptolemy 150 CE: "The northern regions of the country are inhabited by the Bolitai, the western regions by the Aristophyloi below whom live the Parsioi (Πάρσιοι). The southern regions are inhabited by the Parsiētai (Παρσιῆται), the eastern regions by the Ambautai. The towns and villages lying in
5757-463: The country of the Paropanisadai are these: Parsiana Zarzaua/Barzaura Artoarta Baborana Kapisa niphanda" Strabo , the Greek geographer, in the Geographica (written between 43 BC to 23 AD) makes mention of the Scythian tribe Pasiani (Πασιανοί), which has also been identified with Pashtuns given that Pashto is an Eastern-Iranian language, much like the Scythian languages : "Most of the Scythians...each separate tribe has its peculiar name. All, or
5858-431: The country only number 21,677 as of 2011, estimates of the ethnic or ancestral Pashtun population in India range from 3,200,000 to 11,482,000 to as high as double their population in Afghanistan (approximately 30 million). The Rohilkhand region of Uttar Pradesh is named after the Rohilla community of Pashtun ancestry; the area came to be governed by the Royal House of Rampur , a Pashtun dynasty. They also live in
5959-413: The eastern frontier of the Achaemenid Arachosia Satrapy as early as the 1st millennium BCE, present-day Afghanistan. Herodotus also mentions a tribe of known as Aparytai (Ἀπαρύται). Thomas Holdich has linked them with the Afridi tribe: The Sattagydae, Gandarii, Dadicae, and Aparytae (Ἀπαρύται) paid together a hundred and seventy talents; this was the seventh province Joseph Marquart made
6060-505: The entertainment industry and sports. Pashtuns are also found in smaller numbers in the eastern and northern parts of Iran . Records as early as the mid-1600s report Durrani Pashtuns living in the Khorasan Province of Safavid Iran . After the short reign of the Ghilji Pashtuns in Iran , Nader Shah defeated the last independent Ghilji ruler of Kandahar , Hussain Hotak . In order to secure Durrani control in southern Afghanistan, Nader Shah deported Hussain Hotak and large numbers of
6161-430: 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
SECTION 60
#17329014766456262-462: The financial capital of Pakistan, is home to the world's largest urban community of Pashtuns, larger than Kabul and Peshawar . Likewise, Islamabad , the country's political capital also serves as the major urban center of Pashtuns with more than 20% of the city's population belonging to the Pashto speaking community. Pashtuns in India are often referred to as Pathans (the Hindustani word for Pashtun) both by themselves and other ethnic groups of
6363-505: The following phylogenetic classification: Pashtuns Pashtuns ( / ˈ p ʌ ʃ ˌ t ʊ n / , / ˈ p ɑː ʃ ˌ t ʊ n / , / ˈ p æ ʃ ˌ t uː n / ; Pashto : پښتانه , romanized: Pəx̌tānə́ ; ), also known as Pakhtuns , or Pathans , are a nomadic , pastoral , eastern Iranic ethnic group primarily residing in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan . They historically were also referred to as Afghans until 1964 after
6464-444: 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
6565-421: 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
6666-437: The grain and then request it from the citizens store: I will not order, so.....I Myself order And I in Respect of winter sends men thither to you then look after the farming, To Ormuzd Bunukan, Greetings" "because [you] (pl.), the clan of the Afghans, said thus to me:...And you should not have denied? the men of Rob [that] the Afghans took (away) the horses" "[To ...]-bid the Afghan... Moreover, they are in [War]nu(?) because of
6767-471: The greatest part of them, are nomades. The best known tribes are those who deprived the Greeks of Bactriana, the Asii, Pasiani, Tochari, and Sacarauli, who came from the country on the other side of the Iaxartes (Syr Darya)" This is considered a different rendering of Ptolemy's Parsioi (Πάρσιοι). Johnny Cheung, reflecting on Ptolemy's Parsioi (Πάρσιοι) and Strabo's Pasiani (Πασιανοί) states: "Both forms show slight phonetic substitutions, viz. of υ for ι, and
6868-488: The history of Muslim rule in the subcontinent , stated: He [Khalid bin Abdullah son of Khalid bin Walid ] retired, therefore, with his family, and a number of Arab retainers, into the Sulaiman Mountains, situated between Multan and Peshawar, where he took up his residence, and gave his daughter in marriage to one of the Afghan chiefs, who had become a proselyte to Mahomedism. From this marriage many children were born, among whom were two sons famous in history. The one Lodhi ,
6969-410: The language of the Persians. Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan , the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts. The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed
7070-452: The length and breadth of India, with the largest populations principally settled in the plains of northern and central India . Following the partition of India in 1947, many of them migrated to Pakistan . The majority of Indian Pashtuns are Urdu-speaking communities , who have assimilated into the local society over the course of generations. Pashtuns have influenced and contributed to various fields in India, particularly politics,
7171-454: The loss of r in Pasianoi is due to perseveration from the preceding Asianoi. They are therefore the most likely candidates as the (linguistic) ancestors of modern day Pashtuns." In the Middle Ages until the advent of modern Afghanistan in the 18th century, the Pashtuns were often referred to as "Afghans" . The etymological view supported by numerous noted scholars is that the name Afghan evidently derives from Sanskrit Aśvakan , or
7272-432: 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
7373-525: 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
7474-598: The name Afghan ( Abgân ) is by Shapur I of the Sassanid Empire during the 3rd century CE, In the 4th century the word "Afghans/Afghana" (αβγανανο) as a reference to a particular people is mentioned in the Bactrian documents found in Northern Afghanistan. "To Ormuzd Bunukan, from Bredag Watanan ... greetings and homage from ... ), the ( sotang ( ? ) of Parpaz ( under ) [ the glorious ) yabghu of Hephthal ,
7575-461: 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
7676-495: 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
7777-414: 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
7878-713: The northern part of Greece). Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken. However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and throughout the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary. The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" ( Rumili Farsisi ). As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became
7979-529: 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
8080-468: The oldest and most clever of the tribe, can give satisfactory information on this point." Others have suggested that a single origin of the Pashtuns is unlikely but rather they are a tribal confederation. "Looking for the origin of Pashtuns and the Afghans is something like exploring the source of the Amazon . Is there one specific beginning? And are the Pashtuns originally identical with the Afghans? Although
8181-407: The original Pashto speakers might have been a Saka group. Furthermore, Pashto and Ossetian , another Scythian-descending language, share cognates in their vocabulary which other Eastern Iranian languages lack Cheung suggests a common isogloss between Pashto and Ossetian which he explains by an undocumented Saka dialect being spoken close to reconstructed Old Pashto which was likely spoken north of
8282-553: The other Sur ; who each, subsequently, became head of the tribes which to this day bear their name. I have read in the Mutla-ul-Anwar , a work written by a respectable author, and which I procured at Burhanpur , a town of Khandesh in the Deccan , that the Afghans are Copts of the race of the Pharaohs ; and that when the prophet Moses got the better of that infidel who was overwhelmed in
8383-679: 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
8484-631: 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
8585-589: 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
8686-459: The same origin. The early ancestors of modern-day Pashtuns may have belonged to old Iranian tribes that spread throughout the eastern Iranian plateau . historians have also come across references to various ancient peoples called Pakthas ( Pactyans ) between the 2nd and the 1st millennium BC, Mohan Lal stated in 1846 that "the origin of the Afghans is so obscure, that no one, even among
8787-657: 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
8888-561: 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
8989-687: 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,
9090-541: The states of Maharashtra in central India and West Bengal in eastern India that each have a population of over a million with Pashtun ancestry; both Bombay and Calcutta were primary locations of Pashtun migrants from Afghanistan during the colonial era. There are also populations over 100,000 each in the cities of Jaipur in Rajasthan and Bangalore in Karnataka . Bombay (now called Mumbai ) and Calcutta both have
9191-653: The subcontinent. Some Indians claim descent from Pashtun soldiers who settled in India by marrying local women during the Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent . Many Pathans chose to live in the Republic of India after the partition of India and Khan Mohammad Atif, a professor at the University of Lucknow , estimates that "The population of Pathans in India is twice their population in Afghanistan". Historically, Pashtuns have settled in various cities of India before and during
9292-451: The sugarcane fields and perform manual labour. Many stayed and formed communities of their own. Some of them assimilated with the other South Asian Muslim nationalities to form a common Indian Muslim community in tandem with the larger Indian community, losing their distinctive heritage. Some Pashtuns travelled as far as Australia during the same era. Today, the Pashtuns are a collection of diversely scattered communities present across
9393-513: The term's meaning had become a demonym for members of all ethnic groups in Afghanistan . The Pashtuns speak the Pashto language , which belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Iranian language family . Additionally, Dari serves as the second language of Pashtuns in Afghanistan, while those in Pakistan speak Urdu and English. In India, the majority of those of Pashtun descent have lost
9494-529: The tribal lands west of the Indus River in what is today Pakistan. Al-Utbi, the Ghaznavid chronicler, in his Tarikh-i Yamini recorded that many Afghans and Khiljis (possibly the modern Ghilji ) enlisted in the army of Sabuktigin after Jayapala was defeated. Al-Utbi further stated that Afghans and Ghiljis made a part of Mahmud Ghaznavi 's army and were sent on his expedition to Tocharistan , while on another occasion Mahmud Ghaznavi attacked and punished
9595-478: 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
9696-959: The world includes Pashtuns. A tribe called Pakthās , one of the tribes that fought against Sudas in the Dasarajna , or "Battle of the Ten Kings" , are mentioned in the seventh mandala of the Rigveda , a text of Vedic Sanskrit hymns dated between c. 1500 and 1200 BCE: Together came the Pakthas (पक्थास), the Bhalanas, the Alinas, the Sivas, the Visanins. Yet to the Trtsus came the Ārya's Comrade, through love of spoil and heroes' war, to lead them. Heinrich Zimmer connects them with
9797-578: 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
9898-574: Was born in Mashhad . Contemporary to Durrani rule in the east, Azad Khan Afghan , an ethnic Ghilji Pashtun, formerly second in charge of Azerbaijan during Afsharid rule , gained power in the western regions of Iran and Azerbaijan for a short period. According to a sample survey in 1988, 75 percent of all Afghan refugees in the southern part of the Iranian Khorasan Province were Durrani Pashtuns. Indian and Pakistani Pashtuns have utilised
9999-586: 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
10100-600: 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
10201-484: 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
#644355