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147-459: The province of Georgia ( Persian : ولایت گرجستان , romanized :  Velāyat-e Gorjestān ) was a velayat (province) of Safavid Iran located in the area of present-day Georgia . The territory of the province was principally made up of the two subordinate eastern Georgian kingdoms of Kartli ( Persian : کارتیل , romanized :  Kartil ) and Kakheti ( Persian : کاخت , romanized :  Kakhet ) and, briefly, parts of

294-453: A 1687 report, money played close to no role in Georgia. French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort confirms this: according to his texts of 1701, people in large parts of Georgia preferred to be paid in materials such as bracelets, rings, necklaces, and so forth. The province of Georgia hosted many Safavid soldiers, as it was considered a territory of the utmost importance. At the same time, it

441-638: 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

588-418: 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

735-455: A further attack on possessions of Ivane II Jaqeli in 1399. The attack on Samtskhe was followed by an expedition into Tao that reached as far as Panaskert, where a great battle between Timur and the Georgians took place. In late 1401, Timur invaded Georgia once again. George VII had to sue for peace, and sent his brother with the contributions. Timur was preparing for a major confrontation with

882-680: A general uprising in 1659. The rebels succeeded in expelling the nomads, but still had to accept the Safavid kings's suzerainty. In 1675 a wall was built around Tiflis by king Suleiman I (1666–1694). By the 1690s ethnic Georgians formed the mainstay of the Safavid army. In 1701 one of the artillerymen ( tupchis ) in Tiflis was appointed vakil ("regent") of the tupchi-bashi of Tiflis fortress. Emamqoli Khan (David   II), born and raised in Isfahan , and known for his loyal service to his Safavid overlords,

1029-500: 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

1176-417: 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

1323-583: A new threat. Timurid hegemony was not to last, for on Timur's death in 1405, the Kara Koyunlu re-established their empire. They took advantage of the temporary weakness of Georgians and launched attacks against them, apparently in which, George VII was killed. In response Constantine I engaged Turkomans at the Battle of Chalagan , in which he was defeated and executed. Alexander I who sought to strengthen and restore his declining Kingdom, faced constant invasions by

1470-512: A number of times, notably in 1518, which reconfirmed its status as a vassal, and in 1522, which resulted in Tiflis being garrisoned by a large Safavid force, but it was only under his son and successor Tahmasp I (r.   1524–1576) that a genuine province with Safavid-appointed rulers and governors began to take shape. Tahmasp I undertook active steps to integrate Georgia into the Safavid domains. His four campaigns against Luarsab I of Kartli (1540–1541, 1546–1547, 1551, and 1553–1554) resulted in

1617-529: 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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1764-412: A punishment for disobedience shown by his formerly loyal subjects Lohrasb and Tahmuras Khan, Abbas   I launched several major punitive campaigns in his Georgian territories. These campaigns resulted in the sack of Tiflis , the ravaging of the entire area, the massacre of many tens of thousands, and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgians to Iran. These deportees further augmented

1911-470: A sister of Levan II Dadiani , ruler of Mingrelia (western Georgia), named Mariam . The marriage fit well with the political ambitions of the Safavid state and of Rostam himself. Not only would this alliance with the Dadiani, i.e. Mingrelia, give Rostam an ally against Tahmuras Khan (Teimuraz   I) and George III of Imereti , but it would also provide Rostam with a line of successors who would be as loyal to

2058-580: 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

2205-605: 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

2352-644: 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

2499-610: 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

2646-812: 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

2793-654: 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

2940-425: 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

3087-455: 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

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3234-468: 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 ),

3381-570: 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

3528-438: Is partly due to the silver coins from Tiflis being a little less fine . The coins minted at Tiflis were mostly used for the local citizens, rather than for the local Safavid garrison. The coins always had to bear the Safavid rulers' name and follow the Safavid types, legends, and weight standards. In many other regards, however, the appointed valis were granted a great deal of autonomy in terms of minting practises. For example,

3675-486: 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

3822-486: 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

3969-502: 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

4116-458: The Battle of Murjakheti near Akhalkalaki . Georgians had annexed Principality of Samtskhe. Qvarqvare died in prison, while Rostom was awarded his share of Samtskhe: Adjara and Lazeti , long sought after by the Gurieli dynasty . A few years later, Qvarqvare's survived youngest son Kaikhosro II requested Ottomans to expel Imeretian and Kartlian forces from Samtskhe. The Ottomans retaliated with

4263-457: The Black Sea coast up to the edge of the plain of Erzurum . The Jaqelis' lands became a stronghold of opposition to Mongol rule. Sargis I Jaqeli and David VII of Georgia "Ulu" rebelled against their Mongol overlords, a huge army of Mongols led by Arghun Noyan attacked the southern Georgian province of Samtskhe, defeated the king and his spasalar (general) Sargis Jaqeli, but could not capture

4410-651: 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

4557-465: The Caucasus to Mazandaran . In 1624–25 Manuchar III Jaqeli, appointed earlier by Abbas   I as nominal ruler of Samtskhe, moved to Kartli to join the rebellion of Murav-Beg (Giorgi Saakadze) against Safavid rule. Some time later, while away from Samtskhe, he decided to accept Ottoman suzerainty. However, when he returned to Samtskhe in 1625 for negotiations in the western (Ottoman) part of Samtskhe, he

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4704-567: The Georgian civil war , after which United Georgian monarchy fell. Qvarqvare's independent reign was marked by warfare with the powerful Muslim states that surrounded the principality. The Aq Qoyunlu launched major attacks in 1466, 1476–1477 and 1485 and from 1479 the Ottoman Empire started to encroach on the territories. In 1479 he ravaged the land around Erzurum , reducing the city to tributary status. Unlike his father Kaikhosro I held peace with

4851-419: The Georgian community in Iran . In the meantime, Abbas   I appointed Bagrat Khan as governor of Kartli, and Bektash Beg Torkman as governor of Kakheti. In 1619 Abbas   I appointed Bagrat's son Semayun Khan , a loyalist born and raised in Isfahan , as khan, or vali , of Kartli, and appointed another non-royal Safavid official as governor of Kakheti, in order to maintain a tight grip on this part of

4998-556: The Ottoman dynasty and apparently wished to freeze the currently prevailing situation in Georgia. Thus, he made peace with George on condition that the king of Georgia supplied him with troops and granted the Muslims special privileges. Timur nonetheless undertook some preventive measures and attacked the Georgian garrison of Tortumi , demolishing the citadel and looting the surrounding area. Once

5145-487: The Ottoman sultan Selim I and claimed himself as an admirer of Ottomans. In 1518 the new revolt started. Prince Qvarqvare with the help of Safavid troops attacked Samtskhe. Manuchar was overthrown and Qvarqvare became the new ruler of Meskheti. After this Manuchar asked his suzerain Sultan Selim for help. Sultan gave him the huge army. He had tried to restore himself as Atabeg, but was defeated by Qvarqvare's forces at

5292-570: The Principality of Samtskhe . The city of Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi) was its administrative center, the base of Safavid power in the province, and the seat of the rulers of Kartli. It also housed an important Safavid mint . Safavid rule was mainly exercised through the approval or appointment of Georgian royals of the Bagrationi dynasty , at times converts to Shia Islam , as valis or khans . The eastern Georgian kingdoms had been subjected in

5439-655: 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

5586-599: The Trapezuntine Emperor Alexios II , who granted him Lazia . Another daughter of Beka, - Natela, became the consort of Demetrius II of Georgia and bore him a son and the successor to the throne. After the execution of Demetrius, future king George V was raised by his grandfather at his court. In 1334 George V of Georgia reasserted royal authority over the virtually independent principality of Samtskhe, ruled by his cousin Qvarqvare I Jaqeli . George granted

5733-688: 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

5880-483: 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

6027-559: The vali of Kartli was the third of the top-ranking officials not residing at court, and held a higher status than the second category of great amirs, those attached to the palace. From the 16th century there was an increase of Iranian influence in Georgian culture. The genres in which it was most apparent were literature , painting, and architecture . During the Safavid period, many Georgian rulers, princes, and nobles had spent time in Iran. Therefore, Iranian traditions also spread throughout Georgia. The placement of Davud Khan (David XI) on

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6174-430: The vali reportedly was allowed to benefit from the profit accrued by the mints in the province. In the 1660s and 1670s, the office of mint master ( zarrab-bashi ) of Tiflis was held by a series of local Armenians . During the reign of Suleiman I, the economic situation worsened. The amount of precious metal coming into the country decreased, and as a result the quality of the coins diminished. This deficiency in weight

6321-585: 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 ,

6468-462: The "third force". Already by 1595 an ethnic Georgian from Kartli, Allahverdi Khan , originally surnamed Undiladze , had become one of the most powerful figures in the Safavid state. By the end of the 16th   century, Georgians, forming an increasingly influential military faction, became a major threat to the Qizilbash , the traditional backbone of the Safavid army. At the same time, the Georgians at

6615-429: The 1570s also document the roles of malek and darugha , officials in the town administration of Georgia, which are associated with the political influence of Iran during that period. The vali of Georgia had a corps of qurchis at his disposal, including a qurchi-bashi , and a legion of specialized qurchis for his " accoutrements " (i.e. qurchi-e zereh , qurchi-e kafsh , qurchi-e tarkesh , etc.). They also had

6762-672: 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

6909-466: The Georgian king Bagrat V had fortified. The city fell on November 21, 1386, and King Bagrat V was captured and converted to Islam at sword point. Bagrat was given some 12,000 troops to reestablish himself in Georgia whose government was run by Bagrat's son and co-ruler George VII during his father's absence at Timur's court. The old king, however, entered in secret negotiations with George who ambushed Bagrat's Islamic escort, and freed his father. In

7056-549: The Georgian version of Vis o Ramin . According to a letter sent to the Pope by a Catholic missionary who flourished in the 17th century, Padre Bernardi, it was to his "great regret" that literate Georgians preferred to read works such as the Rostomiani ( Shahnameh ), Bezhaniani , and Baramguriani and were less interested in religious texts. Teimuraz I of Kakheti (Tahmuras Khan) is perhaps mostly remembered for creating issues for

7203-532: The Iranian overlordship as well and moved to the Safavid court, where he lived until his death in 1614. By the Treaty of Constantinople in 1590, the Safavids lost control over Georgia as they were forced to recognize the whole province as an Ottoman possession. At the beginning of the rule of Abbas I , the importance of Georgia and the influence of ethnic Georgians in the Safavid state increased and they came to be known as

7350-495: The Jaqelis their title of atabeg , not only appropriate for their role in raising him but also a title of great prestige. Between 1386 and 1403 Timur launched a series of campaigns against Georgia. The official history of Timur's reign, Zafarnama , represents this campaign as a jihad . Samtskhe was in the frontline of these attacks. Timur set out from Kars and assailed Akhaltsikhe . From there, he marched against Tbilisi which

7497-555: The Kaka Bridge near Baghdati . In 1639, by the Treaty of Zuhab which ended the 1623–1639 war, the Caucasus was decisively partitioned between the Safavids and Ottomans roughly along the lines of the earlier Amasya treaty of 1555. Kartli and Kakheti were reconfirmed as Iranian domains, while everything to the west of it remained in Ottoman hands. Samtskhe–Meskheti, including its eastern part,

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7644-563: The Kartli vali received compensation from the revenues of Gilan , Khuyin , and Lahijan . Following Iranian customs, the vali was granted villages in exchange for his service to the Iranian Shah. It is worth noting that these villages were not confined to Kartli but also extended to northern Iran, mirroring the similar rewards bestowed upon Georgian nobles. According to the Tadhkirat al-Moluk ,

7791-558: 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

7938-482: 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

8085-518: The Ottomans were defeated , Timur, back to Erzurum in 1402, decided to punish the king of Georgia for not having come to present his congratulations on his victory. Ivane Jaqeli, however, arrived with gifts, which offered Timur a good cause for keeping on reasonable terms with the rulers of Samtskhe. After the devastating invasions by Timur and subsequent enfeeblement of the Kingdom of Georgia, it soon faced

8232-521: 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

8379-425: 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

8526-401: 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

8673-848: 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,

8820-520: The Safavid court vied for influence among each other as well as against their Circassian counterparts. By and large, Abbas   I's policy towards the province can be seen as a continuing the previous efforts to fully integrate the area in the Safavid Empire. In the early years of the 17th century, Abbas re-established Safavid influence in eastern Georgia. There was a resistance in Kakheti in 1605, when

8967-417: The Safavid court with some three hundred liters of wine, as part of the total amount of taxes it paid. The governors were responsible for the supervision of the viticulture of their province. As outlined in the Dastur al-Moluk , the Kartli vali' s annual salary was linked to the profits generated from the Poshkuh, Tarom , and Qazvin regions. This data, as reported by Georgian sources, also indicates that

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9114-474: The Safavid crown as he was. Also important was the fact that it would enhance Safavid plans to conquer Imereti . It would create a perfect circumstance if a campaign was needed against the Ottomans, with whom they were at war at the time over Imereti. King Safi paid for the wedding gifts, and sent some 50,000 marchil , roughly half a ton of silver, to the ruler of Mingrelia, and provided him with an annual salary of 1,000 tomans (3-gram gold coins); an alliance

9261-443: The Safavid period, large numbers of ethnic Georgian men entered Safavid government service, whereas many Georgian women entered the harems of the ruling elite and the royal court. Drinking alcohol, a prominent Georgian habits, influenced Iranian society, and more importantly, court culture, during this period. It is especially evident in the taxes the province had to pay – they included many liters of wine. The royal harem,

9408-416: The Safavids gained the eastern part of the principality of Samtskhe . In 1555, during Tahmasp   I's reign, the Peace of Amasya was signed with the neighboring Ottoman Empire . According to the terms of the treaty, eastern Georgia (including eastern Samtskhe) remained in Iranian hands while western Georgia (including western Samtskhe) ended up in Turkish hands. To speed up the process of integration into

9555-406: The Safavids were restored by Nader Qoli Beg (later known as Nader Shah), the de facto ruler of Iran, he restored Iranian dominance in the Caucasus and made Teimuraz II vali of Kakheti, while appointing an Iranian as the governor of Kartli. In 1736 Nader deposed the Safavids and became king himself, establishing the Afsharid dynasty . One of the most important Safavid mints was located in

9702-410: The Safavids. Beginning with the rule of Tahmasp   I, Georgians would contribute greatly to the character of Safavid society and play a major role in its army and civil administration. This newly introduced ethnic element in the Safavid state would later be known in historiography as the "third force" alongside the two "founding elements" of the Safavid state, the Persians and the Turkomans. In 1551

9849-428: 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

9996-427: 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)

10143-407: 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

10290-404: The Turkmens. Qvarqvare subsequently sent his grandson Sargis to seize Oltisi . Although an Arabic chronicler Baybars al-Mansuri states that the Georgians took advantage of the Mongol invasion of Anatolia (1243) to seize the castles of Babrawan , Washlawan, and Bayburt . By the mid-13th century, the Jaqelis realm thus incorporated most of the mountainous areas of north eastern Anatolia south of

10437-441: 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

10584-572: The basis that it would make Sargis too powerful. As a result of a dispute with the royal court, the province of Samtskhe seceded and submitted directly to the Ilkhan rule in 1266. Thus, Georgia further disintegrated to form three separate political entities. Samtskhe managed to remain a culturally developed part of Georgia as well as maintaining territorial integrity, sometimes even expanding along its borders. Despite being independent, Samtskhe still maintained some kind of relations with Georgia and Beka himself

10731-736: The battle near Erzurum . During Qvarqvare III 's reign Persian influence on Samtskhe was growing day by day. Because of that Ottomans greatly damaged the country and especially its southwestern region. Meskhetian lords had recognized that under Qvarqvare's rule Samtskhe would finally turn to the Enemy's hands. They made an alliance with the Georgian kings, Bagrat III of Imereti and Luarsab I of Kartli ( c. 1510–1565) to end up Jaqelian rule and protect Samtskhe from dominant Muslim empires ( Ottomans and Safavids ). In 1535 King Bagrat III with help of prince Rostom Gurieli and Odishian allies invaded Samtskhe . He defeated and captured Qvarqvare III at

10878-578: The campaign would do the Safavid realm more harm than good. In their view, it would enable Vakhtang, the Safavid vali , to form an alliance with Russia with an eye to conquering Iran. Shortly after, the Lezgins overran Shirvan , whereafter they sacked and looted the provincial capital of Shamakhi and massacred much of its population. In 1722 Emamqoli Khan died and was buried in Qom . Sultan Husayn then appointed his brother Mahmad Qoli Khan (Constantine   II) as

11025-448: The central government located in the royal capital, instead of the local governor. Challenging the Safavid possession of eastern Caucasus, the Ottomans invaded the Georgian polities in a victorious campaign in 1578. As a result, the Safavids released the Georgian rebel ruler Shahnavaz Khan (Simon   I of Kartli) from captivity to enable him to join the fight against the Ottomans. Though Simon achieved considerable success in Kartli, he

11172-409: The central government, but he was fluent in Persian and fond of Persian poetry, which he "highly valued". In his words: The sweetness of Persian speech urged me to compose the music of verse. Teimuraz wrote several poems influenced by the contemporary Persian tradition, packed with "Persian imagery and allusions, loanwords, and phraseology". A later Georgian vali, Vakhtang   VI (Hosayn-Qoli Khan),

11319-457: 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

11466-512: 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

11613-472: The early 16th century, their rulers did not commonly convert. Tiflis was garrisoned by an Iranian force as early as Ismail   I's reign, but relations between the Georgians and Safavids at the time mostly bore features of traditional vassalage . David XI (Davud Khan) was the first Safavid-appointed ruler, whose placement on the throne of Kartli in 1562 marked the start of nearly two and a half centuries of Iranian political control of eastern Georgia. During

11760-402: The empire, Tahmasp   I imposed numerous Iranian political and social institutions such as bilingual Georgian–Persian farmâns , with the aim of establishing Persian as the official administrative language of Safavid Georgia. It was also during his reign that the first Georgian royal, a convert to Islam named Davud Khan (1569–1578) was put on the puppet throne in Tiflis. These events marked

11907-535: The entire story to be translated once more, while his tutor, Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani , also made a revised version of Vakhtang's own translation. Though Vakhtang, individually, was heavily involved in further developing Georgian-Iranian literary ties (in other words, by his own writings), he also founded an entire school dedicated to translators from Persian into Georgian. During this period, a number of folk stories (i.e. dastans ) that were extremely popular in Iran, were translated into Georgian on his orders. One of these

12054-632: 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

12201-560: The following phylogenetic classification: Samtskhe%E2%80%93Saatabago By the early 13th century, members of the house of Jaqeli were one among many powerful marcher lords , and certainly not the most significant. The title atabeg , by which the Jaqelis would later be known, was as yet reserved for the Mkhargrdzelis , the Armenian family that controlled Ani . The rise of the Jaqeli line

12348-562: 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

12495-471: 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

12642-412: The future. According to Nicolaas Jacobus Overschie, a Dutch representative in the Safavid Empire, of the 2,800 bales of silk that had been produced in 1636, the provinces of Georgia and Karabakh–Ganja had yielded a total of 300 bales. According to Jean Chardin, the wines produced in Georgia and Shiraz were of excellent quality. Every six months the province of Georgia supplied the royal wine cellars of

12789-405: The governor ( beglarbeg ) of Shirvan , Hosayn-Qoli made significant progress in putting a halt to the Lezgins. However, in the winter of 1721, at a crucial moment in the campaign, he was recalled. The order, which came after the fall of grand vizier Fath-Ali Khan Daghestani , was made at the instigation of the eunuch faction within the royal court, who had persuaded the shah that a successful end to

12936-624: The hands of atabeg Avag Mkhargrdzeli and Egarslan Bakurtsikheli, who made peace with the Mongols and agreed to pay them tribute. The only Georgian great noble to have resisted was Ivane I Jaqeli , prince of Samtskhe . His extensive possessions were fearfully devastated, and Ivane had to finally, with the consent of Queen Rusudan, submit to the invaders in 1238. Taking advantage of Georgia's weakness, Turkmen incursions started to south-western Georgia. The population of Tao , Klarjeti and Kola called on Qvarqvare , lord of Samtskhe, to assist them against

13083-409: The institution of vakil ("regent"), who could take care of all matters in case it was needed. Although the province contributed to the overall silk production, its silk was said, together with that of Karabakh–Ganja , to be of lesser quality than that of Gilan and Mazandaran . Following Abbas I 's (1588–1629) decisive subduing of Georgia, he ordered that the province should produce more silk in

13230-461: 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

13377-583: The major power in eastern Anatolia. The political split of the Kingdom of Georgia was speeded up by the Qvarqvare II Jaqeli , like his father he fought against Royal house of Georgia for the independence of Samstkhe. In 1462 Qvarqvare II Jaqeli called against the king of Georgia Uzun Hasan , the leader of the Aq Qoyunlu . In 1465 he defeated Georgian King George VIII at the battle near Paravani lake and separated from Georgia. He also participated in

13524-467: The mid-17th century, during the reign of Abbas II (1642–1666), some 50,000 Safavid troops were stationed in the province according to Chardin's figures. The French missionary and traveller Père Sanson, who was in Safavid Iran during the latter part of King Suleiman I 's reign (1666–1694), wrote that a "large number" of troops were stationed in Georgia. Towards the end of Sultan Husayn's reign (1694–1722),

13671-432: 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

13818-525: 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

13965-461: 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

14112-495: 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

14259-423: The new governor of Kakheti. When the capital of Isfahan was put under siege in 1722 , Hosayn-Qoli Khan defied the royal orders and refused to send the requested relief force. In the meantime, Russia took full advantage of the situation. With the Safavids on the brink of collapse, they launched a campaign in 1722–1723 that resulted in the annexation of the coastal territories . The Ottomans, also taking advantage of

14406-414: 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

14553-662: The northern part of Greece). Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken. However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and throughout the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary. The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" ( Rumili Farsisi ). As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became

14700-529: 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

14847-480: The other Georgian kingdoms ( Kartli , Kakheti and Imereti ). Kaikhosro with King Alexander I of Kakheti and Constantine of Kartli agreed to assist first Safavid shah Ismail to destroy Aq Koyunlu rule in Persia . When Qvarqvare II's son Kaikhosro I died two years after he ascended the throne, and was succeeded by his equally pious brother Mzetchabuk , like his father and grandfather , Mzetchabuk demanded

14994-679: 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

15141-562: The private area of the royal court, was where Safavid rulers grew up; after Abbas   I's reign, all Safavid rulers grew up there surrounded by mostly Georgian women. There were also many gholams who drank. Matthee therefore suggests that it is quite likely that the "fondness" for wine exhibited by Safavid rulers originated in this environment. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -⁠shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),

15288-426: The process had been influenced by those nobles who had converted to Islam (in order to obtain positions as state officials), as well as those who encouraged their female relatives to become ladies at court. In the Safavid period, "a great number of books" were translated from Persian into Georgian. The Rostomiani , the Georgian version of the Shahnameh , was further developed and improved, as well as Visramiani ,

15435-510: The province of Georgia, in Tiflis. Close to the border with the Ottoman Empire, the Tiflis mint was important to the Safavids, for bullion (i.e. silver bars, Spanish reals , Dutch rijksdaalders ) for the minting of coins was largely imported from and through the Ottoman Empire (and Russia). Upon arrival in Iran, the bullion was usually brought to the provincial mints in the border area with the Ottoman Empire such as Tiflis, Erivan (Yerevan), or Tabriz in order to be melted into Iranian coins. Tiflis

15582-415: The province. He also moved many Qizilbash tribal folk to the Georgia province in order to strengthen central control. From the mid-1610s onwards, Kakheti was often under the direct governorship of Qizilbash lords. Around 1620 Abbas relocated some 8,000 Jews from the province, along with 40,000 Armenians, to the newly built city of Farahabad . In these years, he moved a total of about 15,000 families from

15729-458: The puppet throne of Kartli in 1562 did not just initiate a lengthy period of Iranian political dominance; in the same two and a half centuries that followed, until the coming of the Russians in the 19th century, Iranian cultural influence dominated eastern Georgia (Kartli–Kakheti). According to Jean Chardin, who was in Georgia in 1672, the Georgians followed Iranian traditions. Chardin assumed that

15876-482: The re-occupation of Kartli, and a Safavid force was permanently stationed in Tiflis in 1551. A key outcome of these campaigns, apart from cementing Safavid hold in central-eastern Georgia, was that they brought to Iran proper (hereafter, simply "Iran") large numbers of Georgian prisoners of war. Beyond this, the sons of notable Georgians were frequently brought up at the shah's court as part of their tributary relationship with

16023-714: The rebels overthrew pro-Iranian patricide Constantine Khan and Abbas   I acceded to their demands to approve Tahmuras Khan (Teimuraz   I) as the new king of Kakheti. At the same time, he also confirmed Lohrasb (Luarsab   II) as vali of Kartli. However, when Lohrasb started to work against Safavid interests and refused to convert to Islam, Abbas   I had him incarcerated in Astarabad and later executed in Shiraz . In 1607 Abbas appointed Manuchar III Jaqeli as ruler of (eastern) Samtskhe. By 1613–1614 Abbas had restored Safavid control over eastern Samtskhe. In 1614–1617, as

16170-495: The rebels’ main strongholds and left the country in June 1261. Nevertheless, the forces were unequal and David Ulu had to take refuge at his cousin, David VI Narin ’s court at Kutaisi . In 1262, he had to make peace with the Mongols and returned to Tbilisi , effectively splitting the country into two parts with both rulers titled as kings of Georgia. By the Ilkhan request, David Ulu's army

16317-578: 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

16464-589: 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

16611-430: The royal guard), among others. Despite these alterations in office names, the fundamental structure of the state machinery in Georgia remained largely intact. Furthermore, during Rostom's rule, positions characteristic of the Safavid state, such as vazir (adviser, minister), mostowfi (chief financial clerk), and monshi (scribe), were introduced, serving as supervisory roles for the royal court. Historical records from

16758-505: The ruling class. By the late Safavid period, Georgians formed the mainstay of the Safavid army as well. The establishment of a large Georgian community in Iran proper dates back to the era of Safavid suzerainty in Georgia. As the province was a border entity, the valis of Georgia exercised more autonomy than other provinces of Safavid Iran; it could therefore be compared to the Arabestan Province (present-day Khuzestan Province ), in

16905-406: The same period, Iranian cultural influence dominated eastern Georgia. From Tahmasp I 's reign onwards ( r.  1524–1576 ), the province was of great strategic importance. Many ethnic Georgians , generally from Kartli and Kakheti, rose to prominence in the Safavid state. These men held many of the highest positions in the civil and military administration, and many women entered the harem of

17052-650: The separation of the Meskhetian church from the Georgian Orthodox church . Atabeg Mzetchabuk Strived to strengthen Samtskhe. He nominally obeyed Ottoman sultan Selim I and with his help Adjara came fully under Meskhetian rule. In 1515 old Mzetchabuk abdicated and became a monk, received a monastic name Jacob. After Mzetchabuk Atabeg's title would be given to his nephew Qvarqvare , the son of Kaikhosro I , but Mzetchabuk's younger brother Manuchar rebelled against him. During his brief reign Manuchar sent many gifts to

17199-607: 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

17346-558: The situation, overran the province of Georgia and other territories to the west of the area that the Russians had captured. By the Treaty of Constantinople , the two powers further divided the annexed territories between them, with the Ottomans again retaining Georgia. The rebellious Hosayn-Qoli Khan, who had sided with the Russians during their invasion in 1722–1723, in what turned out to be an ill-fated alliance, died in exile in Russia in 1737. When

17493-464: The southwestern part of the empire. The province of Georgia was one of only four Safavid administrative territories where governors were consistently given the title of vali . The first Safavid king ( shah ) Ismail I ( r.   1501–1524) made the two kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti his vassals as early as the 1510s. However, distracted by the task of establishing power in Iran , he did not tighten his hold on Georgia . He did raid Georgia

17640-518: The spring of 1387, Timur returned in Georgia to take revenge, however, Khan Tokhtamysh ’s reappearance in Iran forced Timur to temporarily withdraw. As soon as the Golden Horde was defeated, Timur returned to attack Georgia again. In 1394, he dispatched four generals to the province of Samtskhe, with orders to apply the Islamic law of ghaza (i.e. the systematic raiding of non-Muslim lands). Timur launched

17787-561: 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

17934-687: 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,

18081-453: The start of almost 250 years of Iranian political dominance, with a few brief intermissions, over eastern Georgia. In 1559, the first provincial vizier was assigned to the Azerbaijan province, with authority over the Georgia province as well as Shirvan including Shakki . These provincial viziers, also known as royal viziers, held the title of vazir-e koll , and received instructions from

18228-416: The then-incumbent king, Safi ( r.  1629–1642 ), had given him the title of Rostam Khan, and had made him governor of Kartli, a post which he held for more than twenty years. Kakheti however, came under direct Safavid rule. Rostam Khan was a childless widower , however, and thus needed a wife and offspring. Being the loyal servant he was, after consulting the Safavid king, Rostam was allowed to marry

18375-474: The tribal Turkomans. They sacked Akhaltsikhe several times, the first under Qara Yusuf in 1414, the second under Jahan Shah in 1444, whose forces met those of Alexander's successor, King Vakhtang IV at Akhaltsikhe, but the fighting was inconclusive and Jahan Shah returned to Tabriz . With the decline of the Kara Koyunlu after Jahan Shah's defeat at the hands of Uzun Hasan in 1467, the Aq Qoyunlu became

18522-608: The troops at the behest of the then-governor of Kartli, Hosayn-Qoli Khan (Vakhtang   VI), numbered some 10,000 Georgians and 3,000–4,000 Iranians . According to the Georgian geographer and historian Vakhushti Bagrationi , vali/king Rostom orchestrated changes in the nomenclature of various public offices, substituting Georgian titles with Persian equivalents. Examples include the transformation of msakhurt’ukhuts’esi (master of servants) to qurchi-bashi , ezosmodzghvari (housekeeper) to nazer (steward), and monat’ukhuts’esi (master of slaves) to qollar-aghasi (commander of

18669-478: 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

18816-504: The west, in Kartli, the administration was given to two successive governors who both served as vali in absentia due to being stationed in other parts of the empire: Shah-Navaz Khan II, Gorgin Khan (George XI); and Kaykhosrow Khan . Due to this, in the years 1703–1714, the administration there was led by two successive regents ( janeshins ) namely Shah-Qoli Khan (Levan) and Hosayn-Qoli Khan (Vakhtang   VI). In 1712–1719 Hosayn-Qoli Khan

18963-413: Was a province that bordered the Ottoman Empire. A Safavid force was permanently stationed in Tiflis from 1551 onwards. According to Venetian reports, some 4,000 Safavid cavalry were stationed in Georgia and Ganja in the 1570s. According to traveller Jean Chardin , towards the end of Abbas   I's reign many troops were stationed in Georgia, of which some 5,000 were "battle-experienced and trained". In

19110-578: 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

19257-419: Was also apparent in coins from the Tiflis mint; in 1688, the abbasis and mahmudis struck at the mint were 22.5% below the standard weight they were supposed to have. The royal treasury was aware of the issue, and subsequently stopped accepting mahmudis that had been minted in Tiflis. In the years 1682–1685 the only Safavid mints that were recorded as active were the ones at Tiflis and Tabriz . According to

19404-525: Was also important in this regard. When he was forced to stay in Iran, he learned to excel in Persian. He later used this skill to translate works into Georgian. He created a Georgian version of the Persian Qabusnameh known as Amirnasariani ("The story of Amirnasar", Amirnasar being the mythical Iranian king Kaykavus ). During his detention in Iran, Vakhtang also translated into Georgian Kashefi's Kalīleh o Demneh . Later, back in Georgia, he ordered

19551-632: Was dispatched to defend the fortifications of Siba against the Golden Horde in 1263. In 1265, the Georgian forces serving as a vanguard of the Ilkhanid army, defeated Berke , Khan of the Golden Horde, and expelled his troops from Shirvan . Sargis Jaqeli distinguished himself in battle against the Horde, even saving Hulagu's life, for which Hulagu offered him rich rewards, including the city of Erzurum . David Ulu subsequently persuaded Hulegu to revoke that award on

19698-511: Was eventually captured by the Ottoman troops and died in captivity in Constantinople. In the period 1580–1581 the Safavid government sent a force accompanied by the tupchi-bashi Morad Khan to Georgia together with a number of cannon founders and the materials needed for casting cannon. By 1582 the Ottomans were in control of the eastern, Safavid portion of Samtskhe. Unable to resist the Ottoman invasion, Manuchar II Jaqeli of Samtskhe accepted

19845-483: Was forced to stay in Iran, and the Safavid king therefore gave the governorships of Kartli to others, amongst them Ali-Qoli Khan (Jesse) and janeshins such as Shah-Navaz, Bakar Mirza . In 1719 the Iranian government decided to send Hosayn-Qoli Khan, who had occupied several other high positions since 1716, back to Georgia with the task of handling the Lezgin rebellion. Assisted by the ruler of neighboring Kakheti, as well as

19992-551: Was given a title of Mandaturukhutsesi ( Mandator ) by Georgian king. At the time of Beka's rule, the Turks became more active the Southwest borders, from the Sultanate of Rum . After a series of invasions, he managed to fend off the attacks . Beka was a supporter of maintaining Georgian political influence over the Empire of Trebizond . For this cause, he married off his daughter Jiajak to

20139-458: Was intimately bound up with the Mongol invasion of Georgia . In this initial phase of conquest, most of the Georgian and Armenian nobles, who held military posts along the frontier regions submitted without any serious opposition or confined their resistance to their castles while others preferred to flee to safer areas. Queen Rusudan had to evacuate Tbilisi for Kutaisi , leaving eastern Georgia in

20286-444: Was irrevocably lost. In 1654, during the reign of King Abbas II ( r.  1642–1666 ), Kartli was turned into crown land ( khasseh ), and therefore subjected to direct Safavid taxation. The amount of land directly taxed by the state reached its greatest extent in this year. Also during Abbas   II's reign, an earlier plan was revived to populate the eastern part of the province, Kakheti, with Turkic nomads. This measure incited

20433-424: Was killed by his own uncle. Subsequently, the Ottomans incorporated the western part of Samtskhe as a pashalik . The Safavids retained control of the eastern part. The remaining century of Safavid rule in Georgia, after Abbas   I's death in 1629, was marked by unprecedented Iranian influence. Under the vali Khosrow Mirza , Safavid Georgia saw a period of relative peace and prosperity. In return for his loyalty,

20580-460: Was made governor of Kakheti in 1703–1709 by Sultan Husayn ( r.  1694–1722 ) due to his father, Nazar-Ali Khan (Heraclius   I), being stationed at Isfahan during the entire period. In 1709, following his father's death, he was formally appointed as the new governor of Kakheti. However, until 1715, he served as vali in absentia due to his being obliged to stay at the court in Isfahan. To

20727-586: 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

20874-477: Was so renowned for being able to "hold" his liquor, that Safavid King Safi ( r.  1629–1642 ) invited him to the court in order to hold a drinking competition. After beating everyone at court, the king himself challenged Chiladze, and reportedly died doing so. Though historian Rudi Matthee reports that the story may be "apocryphal", as alcoholism did kill Safi, but not in relation to a drinking contest, it does show that Georgian habits had spread to Iran. In

21021-600: 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

21168-595: Was the Bakhtiarnameh , a collection of several novellas, as well as the Baramgulandamiani ("Bahram o Golandam"), originally written by Katebi Nishapuri. The many other Persian-Georgian literary efforts of this era include translations of the Qur'an and books on Shia jurisprudence . In another, perhaps unorthodox, way Georgia also influenced the culture of Iran. According to a story, an ethnic Georgian named Shedan Chiladze

21315-468: Was thus a major stopping point for merchants who returned with silver. In the 17th century the Tiflis mint was one of the most active Safavid mints. The Tiflis mint also lay on a route widely used by silk traders. According to French traveller Jean Baptiste Tavernier , traders who went to Gilan to negotiate over silk, went to the mint at Tiflis, for the mint master ( zarrab-bashi ) gave a 2%   discount on silver for silk traders. Tavernier notes that this

21462-532: Was thus founded with the Mingrelians. The marriage preparations alarmed the Imeretians. The groom's party was a 30,000-strong army marching to meet Levan's heavily armed entourage. George   III of Imereti blocked the border with Kartli, compelling Rostom's wedding party to take a circuitous route via Akhaltsikhe , and intercepted Dadiani on his way to the marriage, but he was defeated and taken prisoner by Levan at

21609-484: 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

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