110-428: Saeed Hajjarian ( Persian : سعید حجاریان , born 1954) is an Iranian reformist political strategist , journalist, pro-democracy activist and former intelligence officer . He was a member of Tehran 's city council , and advisor to the president Mohammad Khatami . On 12 March 2000, he was shot in the face by an assailant and severely disabled, an act many Iranians believe was in retaliation for his help in uncovering
220-566: A "mini-city" in the south of Tehran, and both had apparently been strangled. On the day Pooyandeh's body was found, 12 December 1998, fifty writers called on President Khatami to find the persons behind the crimes. In the meantime, other suspicious and unsolved murders of dissidents over the previous decade were put forward by reformers as connected: Ahmad Miralaee , Ebrahim Zalzadeh , Ghafar Hosseini , Manouchehr Saneie and his wife Firoozeh Kalantari , and Ahmad Tafazzoli . The body of Majid Sharif (a translator and journalist who contributed to
330-441: A "state secret". Most Iranians are convinced their "confessions" are part of a deal to allow them freedom after the trials, irrespective of the verdict. and There are conflicting reports on the manner of [Emami's] suicide. His body or its photograph have never been publicly seen and even in the 'Behesht Zahra' graveyard, where he is said to have been buried, no grave has been registered in his name. According to Iranterror.com, "it
440-638: 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
550-418: 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
660-500: 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
770-417: 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
880-468: A motorcycle with an accomplice. The bullet entered his left cheek, lodged in his neck, and put Hajjarian into a coma. During this time, groups of young Iranians kept vigil outside Sina Hospital, where he was being treated. Hajjarian was badly paralyzed for life. His assailant, Saeed Asgar, a young man reportedly a member of the Basij militia, was later arrested and sentenced to spend 15 years in jail. However, he
990-471: A nearby Caspian town by authorities, interrogated, and warned "to discuss the event with no one." The person thought to be the first victim was Kazem Sami Kermani, an "Islamic nationalist and physician" who had opposed the Shah and served as Minister of Health in the brief post- revolutionary provisional government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan . He was later a member of the first Majles where he criticized
1100-423: A notorious gang of hard-core religious extremists who believed that the enemies of Islam should be killed." Saeed Emami's arrest was not revealed, however, until 3 June 1999, six months after his reported suicide. Several facts added to skepticism over whether the true culprits of the murders had been found and justice done, namely: Emami was believed to have had "round-the-clock" surveillance while in prison, being
1210-529: 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
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#17328583785951320-418: A place, he invited some of the officials of MINS to join the reform movement. All of them tried to develop the reform movement. People like Akbar Ganji, Mohsen Armin, Abbas Abdi, Hamid Reza Jalaeipour, Muhammad Mousavi Khouiniha, Ebrahim Asghar Zadeh, and Mohsen Sazgaran are among those persons. In March 2000, a gunman shot him in the face on the doorstep of Tehran 's city council. The would-be assassin fled on
1430-653: A small number of irresponsible, misguided, headstrong and obstinate staff within the Ministry of Information who are no doubt under the influence of undercover rogue agents and act towards the objectives of foreign and estranged sources committed these criminal activities". Arrested for the dissident murders was Saeed Emami or Islami, the deputy security official of the Ministry of Information , and his colleagues and subordinate staff: Mehrdad Alikhani , Mostafa Kazemi and Khosro Basati. According to Indymedia UK, "the agent named as
1540-580: 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
1650-601: A stop to the Iranian reform movement and its effort to create "cultural and political openness." Shirin Ebadi speculates that the murders were done by a variety of means and surreptitiously to avoid any connection between them and to avoid the attention of the international community. Previous mass killings by the regime "had blackened the reputation" of the Islamic Republic and hindered Iran's efforts to provide jobs and resources for its growing population and "rebuild itself" after
1760-418: A variety of means such as car crashes, stabbings, shootings in staged robberies, and injections with potassium to simulate a heart attack. The pattern of murders did not come to light until late 1998 when Dariush Forouhar , his wife Parvaneh Eskandari Forouhar , and three dissident writers were murdered over a span of two months. After the murders were publicized, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei denied
1870-472: Is apathy , followed by adopting defeatism —waiting for a possible foreign military action against Iran and regime change— or to let the developing lumpenproletariat in the society grow until they ignite a revolution in Iran. Hajjarian prefers what he calls the best alternative, which is to assume " reforms is dead, long live the reforms " and continue the reforms path patiently. On 16 June 2009, four days after
1980-605: 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
2090-644: 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
2200-610: 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
2310-541: Is a supposed split between the Supreme Leader and popularly elected officials, e.g. the President . The idea was publicly denounced by Ali Khamenei in 2004, being called "damaging and a deadly poison" repeated by "irrational people". He believes that a frontal assault on the fortresses of power is impractical. Hajjarian argued that the domination of politics by clerics was wrong but could be gradually eroded by "mobilizing
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#17328583785952420-652: Is a way of combating the predominance of Valiyat al-faqih (rule of the Islamic jurist) by underlining the de facto secularization of religion by the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Khomeini. He allegedly showed the supremacy of politics as such over any religious norm when he said that the interests of the Islamic Republic are paramount in Islam and that zakat , salat , hajj , and everything else in Islam, are subordinate. This kind of decision, he states, means that politics are more important than religion and that this acknowledges
2530-765: 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
2640-654: 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
2750-425: 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
2860-455: 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
2970-468: 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 ),
3080-570: 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
3190-486: 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
3300-486: 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
3410-502: 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
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3520-599: The 1979 Iranian revolution in which there was "a competition", and that it "institutionalized" competition in the presidential elections, and introduced a new debate on the issues of religion, economics, and other foreign and domestic policies. But he believed those elections were an "exception" and doubtful of their repetition, "though he did not explain why", according to al-Monitor. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),
3630-651: 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
3740-676: The Islamic Revolution Committees before becoming an Intelligence officer in the Navy. Hajjarian continued his education and obtained a Ph.D. in political science from Tehran University . His thesis advisor was Hossein Bashiriyeh . He was one of the students who took over the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. After the revolution, Hajjarian was involved in the formation of the intelligence apparatus of
3850-655: 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
3960-688: 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
4070-581: The chain murders of Iran and his significant help to the Iranian reform movement in general, according to the BBC. Hajjarian was born in Javadiyeh neighborhood of Tehran, Iran in 1954 to parents from Kashan . He studied mechanical engineering at Tehran University . In 1977 Hajjarian was enrolled for military service in Gendarmerie . A young Iranian revolutionary during the 1979 Iranian Revolution , he entered
4180-483: 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
4290-471: The " Chain murders " of dissident intellectuals by members of Iran's intelligence ministry. Hajjarian was one of the vital personal factors of President Khatami. He was a member of the reformist elite and had a leadership support role in the reform movement. He joined the Ministry of Intelligence and national security (MINS) in 1984 and left in 1989. He also worked at the Center of strategic studies. Working in such
4400-585: 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 ,
4510-431: The "key role" he is believed to have played "in bringing about ... damaging disclosures," both as the editor of the exposing newspaper and one of the few reformists likely to be a source of information about activity in the intelligence ministry. Consequently, "some believe that remnants" of the chain murder "intelligence killer group may have been" behind his attempted assassination. Hajjarian slowly recovered somewhat from
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4620-672: 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
4730-452: The Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry, insulting the former Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, and disseminating propaganda against the Islamic system." His time in prison included hunger strikes and courtroom displays of torture marks. Baghi was sentenced to three years in prison in 2000 and served two years. The killings have been blamed on forces trying to put
4840-471: The Forouhars, a husband and wife found dead at home from multiple stab wounds. They too said they had received orders from Kazemi and Alikhani. Another man said he had assisted in the murder. Kazemi was reported telling the court on Saturday he had been the mastermind behind the killings, while Alikhani said the decision was taken "collectively." The Iranian press reported that Emami was not only responsible for
4950-558: 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
5060-532: 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
5170-521: 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
5280-425: 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
5390-401: 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
5500-848: 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,
5610-479: The Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk , commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan , known as Dari. The region, which comprised
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#17328583785955720-575: The Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date. "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian)
5830-457: The Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum , took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans , who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of
5940-512: The Supreme Leader and the President, made the discovery and uprooting of this sinister and threatening event the priority action for the Ministry. With the cooperation of the specially appointed Investigatory committee of the President, the Ministry has succeeded to identify the group responsible for the killings, has arrested them and processed their cases through the judicial system. Unfortunately
6050-493: 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
6160-403: The assassinations." A number of government officials, including Mostafa Tajzadeh , the political deputy of the Ministry of State, emphatically rejected this view. On 12 March 2000, Saeed Hajjarian was shot in the head by an assailant but narrowly escaped death, ending up paralyzed for life. He is "believed to have played a key role in bringing about… damaging disclosures" against the sponsors of
6270-472: The authorities may not have uncovered all perpetrators of the chain murders was the attempted assassination of Saeed Hajjarian , a newspaper editor who is thought to have played a "key role" in uncovering the killings. On March 12, 2000, Hajjarian was shot in the head and left paralyzed for life. The term "chain murders" was first used to describe the murder of six people in late 1998. The first two killed were 70-year-old Dariush Forouhar (secretary general of
6380-500: The banned publication Iran-e-Farda ) was found on the side of a Tehran road on 18 November 1998, three days before the discovery of the bodies of Dariush Forouhar and Parvaneh Eskandari. His official cause of death was "heart failure." In the summer of 1996, there had been an unsuccessful attempt to kill a busload of 21 writers en route to a poetry conference in Armenia . At two in the morning, while most of his passengers were sleeping,
6490-486: The battle of public opinion , the reform movement can gain enough strength to not only resist the hardliners but also push for deep changes within the system via bargains with top officials unwilling to reform. Hajjarian formulated the proposed gradual move to a favorable democratic system as " fortress to fortress triumph ", meaning that reformers should concentrate on weakening and capturing key institutions, i.e. fortresses of power, one by one. Hajjarian argued that there
6600-730: The chain killings, not only as editor of Sobh Emrouz daily, but as a former deputy minister of intelligence turned reformist. Consequently, "some believe that remnants" of the chain murder "intelligence killer group may have been" behind his attempted assassination. At about the same time, Akbar Ganji attended the Iran After the Elections conference in Berlin. Upon return he was arrested and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, to be followed by five years in exile (later reduced to six years imprisonment and no exile) for "retaining classified documents from
6710-457: 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
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#17328583785956820-512: 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
6930-513: The country," for the killings. On 4 January 1999, the public relations office of the Ministry of Information "unexpectedly" issued a short press release claiming "staff within" its own Ministry "committed these criminal activities … under the influence of undercover rogue agents": "The despicable and abhorring recent murders in Tehran are a sign of chronic conspiracy and a threat to the national security. The Information Ministry based on their legal obligations and following clear directives issued by
7040-473: The deaths of Forouhar, Mokhtari, Pooyandeh and Sharif, but also earlier killings in the 1980s and 1990s of Saidi Sirjani , the Mykonos restaurant assassinations , the unsuccessful 1995 attempt to stage a bus accident in the mountains and kill 21 writers, and the unexpected death of Ahmad Khomeini , ( Ayatollah Khomeini 's son). Human rights activist Shirin Ebadi claims Emami's "friends reported that he belonged to
7150-586: The disputed presidential election , it was reported that Hajjarian had been arrested. It was reported that he died in Evin prison under torture on 7 July. However, it was later added that he was still alive but had had a nervous breakdown on 8 July and was in critical condition in a military hospital in Tehran. Later, there were reports that he was still in Evin Prison, possibly in a clinic there, and that according to his wife, physician Vajiheh Marsoussi, his medical condition
7260-452: The driver of the bus attempted to steer the bus off a cliff near the Heyran Pass. "When the driver tried to jump out to save himself, a passenger grabbed the wheel and steered the bus back onto the road." The driver tried it a second time, "diving out of the vehicle just as it careened toward the edge of the 1,000-foot free fall." The bus hit a boulder and stopped, saving the lives of 21 writers. The driver ran away. The passengers were taken to
7370-407: The equivalent of $ 50,000 as opposed to $ 12,500 for some of the accused murderers. At least one of the victims' relatives, Sima Sahebi, the wife of Pouyandeh, was also arrested "for publishing a letter criticizing them for not allowing us to hold a memorial of the second anniversary of their death." Investigative journalists Emadeddin Baghi and Akbar Ganji both wrote investigative news articles on
7480-430: 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
7590-614: The following phylogenetic classification: Chain murders of Iran The chain murders of Iran ( Persian : قتلهای زنجیرهای ایران ) were a series of 1988–98 murders and disappearances of certain Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system. The murders and disappearances were carried out by Iranian government internal operatives, and they were referred to as "chain murders" because they appeared to be linked to each other. The victims included more than 80 writers, translators, poets, political activists, and ordinary citizens, and were killed by
7700-444: 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
7810-421: 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
7920-637: The government for its continuation of the Iran–Iraq War after the Liberation of Khorramshahr . He was murdered on 23 November 1988 in his clinic in Tehran by an ax-wielding assailant. On 20 December 1998, a statement was issued in Tehran by a group calling itself "pure Mohammadan Islam devotees of Mostafa Navvab" taking credit for at least some of the killings. The statement attacked reformists and said in part: "Now that domestic politicians, through negligence and leniency, and under slogan of rule of law, support
8030-405: The government was responsible, and blamed "Iran's enemies". In mid-1999, after great public outcry and journalistic investigation in Iran and publicity abroad, Iranian prosecutors announced they had found the perpetrator. One Saeed Emami had led "rogue elements" in Iran's MOIS Intelligence Ministry in the killings, but that Emami was now dead, having committed suicide in prison. In a trial that
8140-522: The highest ranking political and religious authority in Iran, speculated as to the perpetrators. Khamenei blamed foreign powers, stating "the enemy was creating insecurity to try to block the progress of Iran's Islamic system." Foreign correspondents believed the main suspects were likely to be conservatives opposed to Iran's more moderate President Mohammad Khatami reform agenda. In Iran, conservative daily newspapers also blamed "foreign sources intend on creating an environment of insecurity and instability in
8250-451: The killings were actually "scapegoats acting on orders from higher up," with the ultimate perpetrators including "a few well known clerics." In turn, Iran's hardliners—the group most closely associated with vigilante attacks on dissidents in general, and with the accused killers in particular—claimed foreign powers (including Israel ) had committed the crimes. The murders are said to be "still shrouded in secrecy", and an indication that
8360-461: 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
8470-519: The masked poisonous vipers of the aliens, and brand the decisive approaches of the Islamic system, judiciary and responsible press and advocates of the revolution as monopolistic and extremist spread of violence and threats to the freedom, the brave and zealous children of the Iranian Muslim nation took action and by revolutionary execution of dirty and sold-out elements who were behind nationalistic movements and other poisonous moves in universities, took
8580-440: The masses and using them as bargaining chips with Iran's rulers." His strategy for the reform movement was described as extending the reformists "reach by triangulating between the mass movement they represented and the autocratic state with which they shared power. He coined the phrase defining the reformists' strategy: " Pressure from below, negotiation at the top ." The strategy remarks that by developing civil society and winning
8690-411: The mastermind behind the assassinations, Saeed Emami, was reported to have killed himself in prison by drinking a bottle of hair remover." Defendant Ali Rowshani admitted murdering Mokhtari and Pouyandeh. But he said he had done so under orders from Mostafa Kazemi, a former head of internal security at the intelligence ministry and another man, Merhdad Alikhani. Another pair of defendants admitted killing
8800-432: 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
8910-525: 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
9020-441: The murder. On 2 December 1998, Mohammad Mokhtari , an Iranian writer, left his residence and did not return home. A week later his body was identified at the coroner's office. The next to disappear was Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh , an author and "one of the most active translators of the country," whose body was discovered four days after leaving his office on 8 December. Pooyandeh and Mokhtari's bodies were both found around Shahriar,
9130-580: The murders. In a series of articles in Saeed Hajjarian 's Sobh Emrouz daily, Akbar Ganji referred to perpetrators with code names such as "Excellency Red Garmented" and their "Excellencies Gray" and the "Master Key". In December 2000, Akbar Ganji announced the "Master Key" to the chain murders was former Intelligence Minister Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian . He "also denounced by name some senior clerics, including Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi for having encouraged or issued fatwas, or religious orders for
9240-461: 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
9350-495: 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
9460-451: The newly founded Islamic Republic . Through the 1980s, he worked in the ministry of intelligence , where his positions included vice minister for political affairs. In the late 1980s, he left the church and established Center for Strategic Research under the presidency . That was where he played an essential role in creating a new discourse based on democracy and the rule of law for his generation of revolutionaries. When Mohammad Khatami
9570-414: 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
9680-713: 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
9790-529: 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
9900-488: The opposition party, the Nation of Iran Party ), and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari , whose mutilated bodies were found in their south Tehran home on 22 November 1998. Forouhar received 11 knife wounds and Eskandari 24. Their home, which was later ransacked, was thought to be under 24-hour surveillance by the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of Iran , thus casting suspicion on that ministry for at least complicity in
10010-628: The present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted Parthian language , which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use. New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from eastern northern and northern Iranian languages such as Sogdian and especially Parthian. The transition to New Persian
10120-470: The prime suspect of a serial political murder case that aroused the whole country; hair-removal cream available in Iran is unlikely to be lethal when ingested; that Emami's confession was not considered evidence and made public by the presiding judge who deemed it "unrelated to the case;" that no photos of the agents of the Ministry of Intelligence tried in Dec 2000 – Jan 2001 were published, their identity remained
10230-578: 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
10340-589: 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
10450-536: The second practical step in defending the great achievements of the Islamic Revolution … The revolutionary execution of Dariush Forouhar, Parvaneh Eskandari, Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh is a warning to all mercenary writers and their counter-value supporters who are cherishing the idea of spreading corruption and promiscuity in the country and bringing back foreign domination over Iran..." Iran's conservative Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ,
10560-408: The secularization of religion. In this context, he argues, it is possible to reassess velayat faqih and to reject its supremacy within the political field in Iran. After reformists lost their "fortresses", Hajjarian said in 2004 that the reforms program have been failed and now there are multiple choices for the Iranian people. One option is giving up and accepting the current situation. Another choice
10670-473: The shooting. By 2005, Hajjarian was still unable to speak with a clear voice and still using a wheelchair, although they could walk with help. As of 2009 he still spoke with difficulty. He was "dependent on the constant care of doctors and family." Hajjarian has used the term " dual sovereignty " as an analytic tool to describe the balance of power in the Islamic Republic's government system , in which there
10780-607: 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
10890-561: 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
11000-687: 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,
11110-478: 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
11220-412: Was "deteriorating severely" while in prison. In May 2015, Hajjarian was allowed to give a short speech at University of Tehran . According to the reformist Shargh Daily, enthusiasm for the speech was so great that seats were filled up hours before the event. In a note he gave to a student to read, Hajjarian stated that the 1997 presidential election were the reformists prevailed were the first since
11330-448: Was "dismissed as a sham by the victims' families and international human rights organisations," three Intelligence Ministry agents were sentenced in 2001 to death and 12 others to prison terms for murdering two of the victims. Many Iranians and foreigners believe the killings were partly an attempt to resist "cultural and political openness" by reformist Iranian president Mohammad Khatami and his supporters, and that those convicted of
11440-578: 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
11550-506: Was elected president in 1997, he appointed Hajjarian his political advisor. In 1999, he was elected to Tehran's city council in the first city elections after the 1979 revolution. Hajjarian was also the editor of Sobh-e Emrooz newspaper, which strongly advocated Khatami's reforms. He was believed to be the source of information for many articles written by investigative journalists, Akbar Ganji and Emadeddin Baghi . These included stories about
11660-586: 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
11770-442: Was released after spending only a short term in prison. Mohsen Morteza Majidi accompanied Asgar on a motorbike. Others, who were involved, include Mohammad Ali Moghaddami, Mehdi Rowghani, Mousa Jan Nesari, Ali Pourchaluei (possibly the one who shot Hajjarian), Saeed Golounani, and Safar Maghsoudi. His attempted assassination is thought to be associated with the exposure of the " Chain murders " in his Sobh Emrouz daily newspaper and
11880-600: 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
11990-484: 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
12100-403: Was widely assumed that he was murdered in order to prevent the leak of sensitive information about MOIS operations, which would have compromised the entire leadership of the Islamic Republic." There was an antagonism between the authorities and the victims' relatives. The lawyer for the victims relatives, Nasser Zarafshan , was arrested for "publicizing the case", for which her bail was set at
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