153-456: Shiraz ( Persian : شیراز ; / ʃ ɪəˈr ɑː z / ; [ʃiːˈɾɒːz] ) is the fifth-most-populous city of Iran and the capital of Fars Province , which has been historically known as Pars ( پارس , Pārs ) and Persis . As of the 2016 national census, the population of the city was 1,565,572 people, and its built-up area with Sadra was home to almost 1,800,000 inhabitants. A census in 2021 showed an increase in
306-522: A major oil refinery and is a major centre for Iran's electronic industries: 53 percent of Iran's electronic investment has been centred in Shiraz. The city is home to Iran's first solar powerplant . Recently, Shiraz's first wind turbine has been installed above Mount Babakuhi near the city. The earliest reference to the city is on Elamite clay tablets dated to 2000 BCE, found in June 1970, while digging to make
459-638: 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
612-443: A Persian tradition. Some of the biographies of Ferdowsi are now considered apocryphal, nevertheless, this shows the important impact he had in the Persian world. Among the famous biographies are: Famous poets of Persia and the Persian tradition have praised and eulogized Ferdowsi. Many of them were heavily influenced by his writing and used his genre and stories to develop their own Persian epics, stories and poems: The candle of
765-418: 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
918-408: A kiln for a brick factory in the south western corner of the city. The tablets written in ancient Elamite name a city called Tiraziš. Phonetically , this is interpreted as /tiračis/ or /ćiračis/. This name became Old Persian /širājiš/; through regular sound change comes the modern Persian name Shirāz . The name Shiraz also appears on clay sealings found at a 2nd-century CE Sassanid ruin, east of
1071-500: 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
1224-417: 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
1377-602: A major oil refinery and is also a major center for Iran's electronic industries. 53% of Iran's electronic investment has been centered in Shiraz. The Shiraz Special Economic Zone or the SEEZ was established in 2000 with the purpose of boosting manufacturing in electronics and communications. Shiraz is a major shopping destination in Iran and the Middle East , with more than 25 malls and 10 bazaars . The Persian Gulf Complex , located at
1530-399: A moat built around the city, constructed an irrigation and drainage system, and rebuilt the city walls. However, Karim Khan's heirs failed to secure his gains. When Agha Mohammad Khan , the founder of the Qajar dynasty , eventually came to power, he wreaked his revenge on Shiraz by destroying the city's fortifications and moving the national capital to Tehran . Although lowered to the rank of
1683-415: A number of famous poets. Saadi , a 12th- and 13th-century poet was born in Shiraz. He left his native town at a young age for Baghdad to study Arabic literature and Islamic sciences at Al-Nizamiyya of Baghdad . When he reappeared in his native Shiraz, he was an elderly man. Shiraz, under Atabak Abubakr Sa'd ibn Zangy (1231–1260) was enjoying an era of relative tranquility. Saadi was not only welcomed to
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#17330847144981836-529: 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
1989-510: A provincial capital, Shiraz maintained a level of prosperity as a result of the continuing importance of the trade route to the Persian Gulf. Its governorship was a royal prerogative throughout the Qajar dynasty . Many of the famous gardens, buildings and residences built during this time contribute to the city's present skyline. Shiraz is the birthplace of the co-founder of the Baháʼí Faith ,
2142-470: A puppet state of the Shiraz-based dynasty. Shiraz developed into the largest and most prosperous city of Fars and an important economic and cultural center of the caliphate . Adud al-Dawla had a large library, a hospital and several mosques, bazaars , caravanserais , palaces and gardens built in the city, while south of it he erected a fortified camp for his troops, known as Kard Fana Khusraw, in 974. One of
2295-514: A reference to the Muslim invaders who despoiled Zoroastrianism. After the Shahnameh , a number of other works similar in nature surfaced over the centuries within the cultural sphere of the Persian language. Without exception, all such works were based in style and method on the Shahnameh , but none of them could quite achieve the same degree of fame and popularity. Some experts believe the main reason
2448-449: A single month (as in January 1965 and December 2004), whilst in the year from July 1965 to June 1966 as little as 82.9 millimetres (3.3 in) fell. The wettest year has been 1955/1956 with as much as 857.2 millimetres (33.75 in), though since 1959 the highest has been around 590 millimetres (23.2 in) in each of 1995/1996 and 2004/2005. Due to Shiraz' high elevation and low latitude,
2601-580: 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
2754-644: 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
2907-610: 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
3060-473: Is a monument of poetry and historiography , being mainly the poetical recast of what Ferdowsi, his contemporaries, and his predecessors regarded as the account of Iran 's ancient history. Many such accounts already existed in prose, an example being the Shahnameh of Abu-Mansur . A small portion of Ferdowsi's work, in passages scattered throughout the Shahnameh , is entirely of his own conception. The Shahnameh
3213-479: Is a round figure; most of the relatively reliable manuscripts have preserved a little over fifty thousand distichs. Nizami Aruzi reports that the final edition of the Shahnameh sent to the court of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni was prepared in seven volumes. The Shirvanshah dynasty adopted many of their names from the Shahnameh . The relationship between Shirvanshah and his son, Manuchihr, is mentioned in chapter eight of Nizami's Layla and Majnun . Nizami advises
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#17330847144983366-812: 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
3519-610: Is an epic poem of over 50,000 couplets written in Early New Persian . It is based mainly on a prose work of the same name compiled in Ferdowsi's earlier life in his native Tus . This prose Shahnameh was in turn and for the most part the translation of a Pahlavi ( Middle Persian ) work, known as the Khwadāy-Nāmag "Book of Kings", a late Sasanian compilation of the history of the kings and heroes of Persia from mythical times down to
3672-654: 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
3825-425: 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
3978-455: 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
4131-468: 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 ),
4284-570: 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
4437-401: Is overall classed as a semi-arid climate ( Köppen climate classification BSh , bordering BSk ). Summers are hot, with a July average high of 38.7 °C (101.7 °F). Winters are cool, with average low temperatures below freezing in January. Around 320 mm (13 in) of rain falls each year, almost entirely in the winter months, though in some cases as much as this has fallen in
4590-520: Is partly attributed to the reticence of the largely Zoroastrian population of Fars to inhabit the Islamic Arab city. As the population gradually shifted to Islam from Zoroastrianism and Istakhr concurrently declined, Shiraz grew into the practical center of Fars. According to Muslim traditional sources, Shiraz was used as a hideout by three of the brothers of the Shia Muslim imam Ali al-Ridha following
4743-512: Is the national epic of Greater Iran . Consisting of some 50,000 distichs or couplets (two-line verses), the Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems, and the longest epic poem created by a single author. It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. Iran , Azerbaijan , Afghanistan , Tajikistan and
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4896-486: 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
5049-473: Is the largest university in the province, and one of Iran's best academic centers. Other major universities in or nearby Shiraz are the Islamic Azad University of Shiraz , Shiraz University of Technology , and Shiraz University of Applied Science and Technology . The Shiraz Regional Library of Science and Technology is a provincial library serving the public. Virtual University of Shiraz is one of
5202-486: 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
5355-502: 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
5508-651: 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
5661-500: The Báb (Siyyid 'Ali-Muhammad, 1819–1850). In this city, on the evening of 22 May 1844, he first declared his mission as the bearer of a new divine revelation. For this reason Shiraz is a holy city for Baháʼís, and the city, particularly the house of the Báb, was identified as a place of pilgrimage . Due to the hostile climate towards Baháʼís in Iran, the house has been the target of repeated attacks;
5814-566: The Eram garden and the Afif abad garden. According to some people, Shiraz "disputes with Xeres [or Jerez] in Spain the honour of being the birthplace of sherry ." Shirazi wine originates from the city; however, under the current Islamic regime, liquor cannot be consumed except by religious minorities. Shiraz is proud of being mother land of Hafiz Shirazi . Shiraz is a center for Iranian culture and has produced
5967-492: The Modern Persian language today is more or less the same language as that of Ferdowsi's time over 1000 years ago is due to the very existence of works like the Shahnameh , which have had lasting and profound cultural and linguistic influence. In other words, the Shahnameh itself has become one of the main pillars of the modern Persian language. Studying Ferdowsi's masterpiece also became a requirement for achieving mastery of
6120-474: The Persian literary tradition , particularly by the Shahnameh , which probably explains the fact that he named all of his sons after Shahnameh characters. Dickson and Welch suggest that Ismail's Shāhnāma-i Shāhī was intended as a present to the young Tahmasp . After defeating Muhammad Shaybani's Uzbeks , Ismail asked Hatefi , a famous poet from Jam (Khorasan) , to write a Shahnameh -like epic about his victories and his newly established dynasty. Although
6273-695: The Qarakhanid dynasty in Central Asia calling itself the 'family of Afrasiyab' and so it is known in the Islamic history." Turks, as an ethno-linguistic group, have been influenced by the Shahnameh since the advent of Seljuks . The Seljuk sultan Toghrul III is said to have recited the Shahnameh while swinging his mace in battle. According to Ibn Bibi , 1221 the Seljuk sultan of Rum Ala' al-Din Kay-kubad decorated
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6426-465: The Shahnameh are dedicated to Alexander, running over 2,500 verses in total, and Alexander's life is the work's turning point between mythic and historical rulers of Persia. It also represents a turning point of Persian-language representations of Alexander, from negative in pre-Islamic Zoroastrian writings to positive. After the Shahnameh introduced the Alexander Romance tradition into Persian,
6579-491: The Shahnameh is relatively short, amounting to some 2100 verses or four percent of the entire book, and it narrates events with the simplicity, predictability, and swiftness of a historical work. After an opening in praise of God and Wisdom, the Shahnameh gives an account of the creation of the world and of man as believed by the Sasanians . This introduction is followed by the story of the first man, Keyumars , who also became
6732-456: The Shahnameh teaches a wide variety of moral virtues, like worship of one God; religious uprightness; patriotism; love of wife, family and children; and helping the poor. There are themes in the Shahnameh that were viewed with suspicion by the succession of Iranian regimes. During the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah , the epic was largely ignored in favor of the more abstruse, esoteric and dryly intellectual Persian literature. Historians note that
6885-655: 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
7038-638: 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
7191-451: The UV index is extremely high during summer which is further exacerbated by the high frequency of sunshine. Despite being in a relatively dry climate, extreme weather is not a rare occasion. On 25 March 2019, flash floods from heavy rains has resulted in 19 deaths and over 200 injuries. The highest record temperature was 43.4 °C (110.1 °F) on 3 July 2022 and the lowest record temperature
7344-483: 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
7497-598: The railway station . The first line was started in October 2014 between Shahid Dastgheib (airport) Metro Station and Ehsan stations. The Shiraz and suburbs bus organization was established in 1966. In that year, the company purchased 10 buses from the Iran National Company using both cash and installments. The company had a staff of 10 drivers, 40 assistant drivers, 50 ticket sellers, and 10 repairmen and inspectors. The daily salary of each full-time driver (6 am to 10 pm)
7650-454: The Šāh-nāma are quite popular, and the stories of Rostam and Sohrāb , or Bījan and Maniža became part of Georgian folklore. Farmanfarmaian in the Journal of Persianate Studies : Distinguished scholars of Persian such as Gvakharia and Todua are well aware that the inspiration derived from the Persian classics of the ninth to the twelfth centuries produced a 'cultural synthesis' which saw, in
7803-477: The Šāh-nāma that is no longer extant. ... The Šāh-nāma was translated, not only to satisfy the literary and aesthetic needs of readers and listeners, but also to inspire the young with the spirit of heroism and Georgian patriotism. Georgian ideology, customs, and worldview often informed these translations because they were oriented toward Georgian poetic culture. Conversely, Georgians consider these translations works of their native literature. Georgian versions of
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#17330847144987956-585: 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 ,
8109-564: The 16th century it had a population of 200,000 people, which by the mid-18th century had decreased to only 55,000. In 1504, Shiraz was captured by the forces of Ismail I , the founder of the Safavid Eynasty . Throughout the Safavid empire (1501–1722) Shiraz remained a provincial capital and Emam Qoli Khan , the governor of Fars under Abbas the Great , constructed many palaces and ornate buildings in
8262-405: The 20th century. Along with Tehran and Isfahan , Shiraz is one of the handful of Iranian cities with a sizable Jewish population and more than one active synagogue. Shiraz also has a significant Baháʼí Faith population, the largest in the country after Tehran. There are currently two functioning churches in Shiraz, one Armenian and the other Anglican . At the time of the 2006 National Census,
8415-413: The 6th century BCE. A number of Achaemenid and Sasanian -era remains have been discovered around the city, including reliefs at Barm-e Delak to the east and Guyim to the northwest, and ruins of Sasanian fortresses at Qasr-e Abu Nasr to the east and Fahandezh. The latter is identified with the fortress of Shahmobad mentioned as being in Shiraz by the 10th-century geographical work, Hudud al-'alam .
8568-672: 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
8721-567: The Heavens , he also discussed the possibility of heliocentrism . The city holds significant importance as a tourism destination in Iran, with its cultural heritage being globally recognized. Shiraz is home to a vibrant academic community. The Shiraz University of Medical Sciences was the first university in Shiraz and was founded in 1946. Much older is the august Madrasa-e-Khan, or Khan Theological School , with about 600 students; its tile-covered buildings date from 1627. Today Shiraz University
8874-558: 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
9027-532: 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
9180-495: The Persian Gulf. Iranian long-distance merchants from Fars developed marketing networks for these commodities, establishing trading houses in Bombay, Calcutta, Port Said, Istanbul and even Hong Kong. Shiraz's economic base is in its provincial products, which include grapes, citrus fruits, cotton and rice. Industries such as cement production, sugar, fertilizers, textile products, wood products, metalwork and rugs dominate. Shirāz also has
9333-478: The Persian language by subsequent Persian poets, as evidenced by numerous references to the Shahnameh in their works. Although 19th-century British Iranologist E. G. Browne has claimed that Ferdowsi purposefully avoided Arabic vocabulary, this claim has been challenged by modern scholarship, specifically Mohammed Moinfar, who has noted that there are numerous examples of Arabic words in the Shahnameh which are effectively synonyms for Persian words previously used in
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#17330847144989486-521: 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
9639-425: 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
9792-401: 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
9945-848: 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,
10098-428: 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
10251-424: The Sasanian Empire and the Zoroastrian religion, the Arabs sought to establish in nearby Shiraz a rival cultural and administrative center. Thus, during its initial founding in 693, the city was planned to be much larger than Isfahan . However, the initial ambitions were not realized and Shiraz remained a "provincial backwater" in the shadow of Istakhr until at least the late 9th century, according to Limbert. This
10404-471: The Sasanian and early Islamic-era clay seals found at Qasr-e-Abu Nasr mention the name "Shiraz" alongside the name of the Sasanian administrative district of the area, Ardashir-Khwarrah . According to the diplomat and academic John Limbert , this indicates that the name "Shiraz" is traced back to the Elamite "Shirrazish" and that both refer to a settlement that existed at the site of Qasr-e-Abu Nasr . Interpretations of what type of settlement ancient Shiraz
10557-427: 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)
10710-407: 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
10863-404: The Shahname inscribed on the walls of Konya and Sivas . When we take into consideration domestic life in the Konya courts and the sincerity of the favor and attachment of the rulers to Persian poets and Persian literature, then this fact [i.e., the importance of Persian influence] is undeniable. Shah Ismail I (d.1524), the founder of the Safavid dynasty of Iran, was also deeply influenced by
11016-547: The Shiraz plain until the modern city of Shiraz was founded. Shiraz was founded or restored in 693 by Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Thaqafi , the brother of the Umayyad viceroy of the eastern half of the caliphate , al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf , or the latter's kinsman Muhammad ibn Qasim . The Arab Muslim army had conquered the wider region of Fars , where the site of Shiraz is located, in several expeditions launched from their garrison town of Basra between 640 and 653, and specifically captured
11169-610: The age of heroes, extending from Manuchehr's reign until the conquest of Alexander the Great . This age is also identified as the kingdom of the Kayanians , which established a long history of heroic age in which myth and legend are combined. The main feature of this period is the major role played by the Saka or Sistani heroes who appear as the backbone of the Empire. Garshasp is briefly mentioned with his son Nariman , whose own son Sam acted as
11322-493: 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
11475-514: The areas of Central Asia beyond the Oxus up to the 7th century (where the story of the Shahnameh ends), was generally an Iranian-speaking land. According to Richard Frye , "The extent of influence of the Iranian epic is shown by the Turks who accepted it as their own ancient history as well as that of Iran ... The Turks were so much influenced by this cycle of stories that in the eleventh century AD we find
11628-430: The argument goes, is largely his effort to preserve the memory of Persia's golden days and transmit it to a new generation, so that, by learning from it, they could acquire the knowledge needed to build a better world. Although most scholars have contended that Ferdowsi's main concern was the preservation of the pre-Islamic legacy of myth and history, a number of authors have formally challenged this view. This portion of
11781-577: The booming agricultural trade of Fars. The city largely consumed the agricultural products of the province, including grapes , linen , wool , cotton, collyrium , rose, violet and palm-blossom water. It was also a market for rug weavers and painters to sell their pricey products, a testament to the residents' wealth. At the time, wine, grains, gold and silver were exported from the Farsi port cities of Siraf and Najairam. Adud al-Dawla patronized scientific, medical and Islamic religious research in Shiraz. The city
11934-533: The center of attention again. Many important landmarks like Tombs of Poets' such as Sa'di and Hafiz , were constructed and presented to the public. Lacking any great industrial, religious or strategic importance, Shiraz became an administrative center, although its population has nevertheless grown considerably since the Iranian Revolution . The city's municipality and other related institutions have initiated restoration and reconstruction projects. Some of
12087-447: The city but he was highly respected by the ruler and enumerated among the greats of the province. He seems to have spent the rest of his life in Shiraz. Hafiz, another famous poet and mystic was also born in Shiraz. A number of scientists also originate from Shiraz. Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi , a 13th-century astronomer, mathematician, physician, physicist and scientist was from Shiraz. In his The Limit of Accomplishment concerning Knowledge of
12240-787: The city of Shiraz. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ), 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
12393-490: The city was named by classical geographers Dar al-'Elm , the House of Knowledge . Among the Iranian poets, mystics and philosophers born in Shiraz were the poets Sa'di and Hafiz , the mystic Ruzbehan , and the philosopher Mulla Sadra . Thus Shiraz has been nicknamed "The Athens of Iran". As early as the 11th century, several hundred thousand people inhabited Shiraz. In the 14th century Shiraz had sixty thousand inhabitants. During
12546-616: The city's first congregational mosque , today known as the Atigh Jame' Mosque . The Iranian Buyid dynasty under Imad al-Dawla Ali ibn Buya ousted the Saffarids in 933 and his nephew and successor, 'Adud al-Dawla Fana Khusraw , took over and ruled Fars between 949 and 983, and added Iraq, the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate, to his Shiraz-based domains in 977; the Abbasids thenceforth became
12699-417: The city's population to 1,995,500 people. Shiraz is located in southwestern Iran on the rudkhaneye khoshk ( lit. ' dry river ' ) seasonal river. Founded in the early Islamic period, the city has a moderate climate and has been a regional trade center for over a thousand years. The earliest reference to the city, as Tiraziš , is on Elamite clay tablets dated to 2000 BCE. The modern city
12852-417: The city's population was 1,204,882 in 265,637 households. The following census in 2011 counted 1,460,665 people in 416,141 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the city as 1,565,572 people in 477,916 households. The city of Shiraz, the capital of Fars province , is located at 52 degrees 32 minutes east longitude and 29 degrees 36 minutes north latitude, and is 919 kilometers from Tehran . In
13005-408: The city. By some of the native writers, the name Shiraz has derived from a son of Tahmuras , the third Shāh (King) of the world according to Ferdowsi's Shāhnāma . Though, there is no definitive record of its existence prior to the late 7th century CE, few archaeological finds dating from 1933 and beyond indicate that the site or vicinity of Shiraz was likely settled in the pre-Islamic era as early as
13158-457: 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
13311-512: 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
13464-509: The congregational mosques built by Adud al-Dawla has survived until the present day. Two Zoroastrian fire temples also existed in Shiraz, catering to the Persians who had not converted to Islam. One of Adud al-Dawla's palaces stretched out for nearly three miles and consisted of 360 rooms. Under the Buyids, Shiraz was divided into twelve quarters and had eight gates. It owed its economic prosperity to
13617-569: The earliest stages of written secular literature in Georgia, the resumption of literary contacts with Iran, "much stronger than before" (Gvakharia, 2001, p. 481). Ferdowsi's Shahnama was a never-ending source of inspiration, not only for high literature, but for folklore as well. "Almost every page of Georgian literary works and chronicles [...] contains names of Iranian heroes borrowed from the Shahnama " (ibid). Ferdowsi, together with Nezāmi , may have left
13770-461: The end of this great history And all the land will talk of me: I shall not die, these seeds I've sown will save My name and reputation from the grave, And men of sense and wisdom will proclaim When I have gone, my praises and my fame. Another translation of by Reza Jamshidi Safa: Much I have suffered in these thirty years, I have revived the Ajam with my verse. I will not die then alive in
13923-406: The epic was left unfinished, it was an example of mathnawis in the heroic style of the Shahnameh written later on for the Safavid kings. The Shahnameh 's influence has extended beyond the Persian sphere. Professor Victoria Arakelova of Yerevan University states: During the ten centuries passed after Firdausi composed his monumental work, heroic legends and stories of Shahnameh have remained
14076-632: 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
14229-454: The first king after a period of mountain-dwelling. His grandson Hushang , son of Siamak , accidentally discovered fire and established the Sadeh Feast in its honor. Stories of Tahmuras , Jamshid , Zahhak , Kawa or Kaveh , Fereydun and his three sons Salm , Tur , and Iraj , and his grandson Manuchehr are related in this section. Almost two-thirds of the Shahnameh are devoted to
14382-491: The first official census of Iran in 1335, the city of Shiraz with a population of 170,659 people was the sixth most populous city in Iran. Shiraz is located in the south of Iran and the northwest of Fars province . It is built in a green plain at the foot of the Zagros Mountains 1,500 metres (4,900 feet) above sea level . Shiraz is 800 kilometres (500 mi) south of Tehran . A seasonal river, Dry River, flows through
14535-406: The following phylogenetic classification: Sh%C4%81hn%C4%81ma The Shahnameh ( Persian : شاهنامه , romanized : Šāhnāme , lit. 'The Book of Kings', modern Iranian Persian pronunciation [ʃɒːh.nɒː.ˈme] ), also transliterated Shahnama , is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and
14688-562: 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
14841-471: 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
14994-401: The four main bodies of world literature. Goethe was inspired by Persian literature, which moved him to write his West-Eastern Divan . Goethe wrote: When we turn our attention to a peaceful, civilized people, the Persians, we must—since it was actually their poetry that inspired this work—go back to the earliest period to be able to understand more recent times. It will always seem strange to
15147-559: The genre would become popular and numerous Alexander legends would be composed in the language, with the most significant works owing much to the Shahnameh . These include the anonymous Iskandarnameh , the Iskandarnameh of Nizami , the Ayina-i Iskandari of Amir Khusrau , and others. Illustrated copies of the work are among the most sumptuous examples of Persian miniature painting . Several copies remain intact, although two of
15300-455: The greater region influenced by Persian culture such as Armenia , Dagestan , Georgia , Turkey , Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan celebrate this national epic. The work is of central importance in Persian culture and Persian language . It is regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of the ethno-national cultural identity of Iran. Ferdowsi started writing the Shahnameh in 977 and completed it on 8 March 1010. The Shahnameh
15453-504: The historians that no matter how many times a country has been conquered, subjugated and even destroyed by enemies, there is always a certain national core preserved in its character, and before you know it, there re-emerges a long-familiar native phenomenon. In this sense, it would be pleasant to learn about the most ancient Persians and quickly follow them up to the present day at an all the more free and steady pace. Sargozasht-Nameh or biography of important poets and writers has long been
15606-427: The historical buildings of the city were damaged or ruined, and its population fell to 50,000, one-quarter of that during the 16th century. Shiraz soon returned to prosperity under the rule of Karim Khan Zand , who made it his capital in 1762. Employing more than 12,000 workers, he constructed a royal district with a fortress, many administrative buildings, a mosque, and one of the finest covered bazaars in Iran. He had
15759-556: The house was destroyed in 1979, to be paved over two years later and made into a public square. In 1910, a pogrom of the Jewish quarter started after false rumours that the Jews had ritually murdered a Muslim girl. In the course of the riots, 12 Jews were murdered and about 50 were injured, and the 6,000 Jews of Shiraz were robbed of all their possessions. During the Pahlavi dynasty , Shiraz became
15912-481: The imagery of Shahnameh heroes in their poetry. The Shahnameh 's impact on Persian historiography was immediate, and some historians decorated their books with the verses of Shahnameh. Below is sample of ten important historians who have praised the Shahnameh and Ferdowsi: The Shahnameh contains the first Persian legend of Alexander the Great in the tradition of the Alexander Romance . Three sections of
16065-549: The immediate area around Shiraz early on, in 641. This area did not possess any cities, though there were a number of forts which were forced to pay tribute to the Arabs. The Sasanians held firm in Istakhr , their capital in Fars, until the Arabs captured it in a heavy battle in 653, during which the plain of Shiraz had been utilized as an Arab campground. Because of Istakhr 's deep association with
16218-773: The king's son to read the Shahnameh and to remember the meaningful sayings of the wise. According to the Turkish historian Mehmet Fuat Köprülü : Indeed, despite all claims to the contrary, there is no question that Persian influence was paramount among the Seljuks of Anatolia . This is clearly revealed by the fact that the sultans who ascended the throne after Ghiyath al-Din Kai-Khusraw I assumed titles taken from ancient Persian mythology , like Kai Khosrow , Kay Kāvus , and Kai Kobad ; and that Ala' al-Din Kai-Qubad I had some passages from
16371-410: The language of the Persians. Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan , the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts. The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed
16524-633: The latter's death in 817/18 and later by one of the brothers' sons, Ali ibn Hamza ibn Musa, until he was found and executed by the Abbasid authorities in c. 835 . As Abbasid authority waned during this period, regional dynasties emerged with considerable autonomy. In the late 9th century, the Iranian Muslim Saffarid dynasty under Ya'qub ibn al-Layth made Shiraz the capital of their autonomous state, which encompassed most of modern-day Iran. In 894, Ya'qub's brother and successor, Amr , founded
16677-511: The leading paladin of Manuchehr while reigning in Sistan in his own right. His successors were his son Zal and Zal's son Rostam , the bravest of the brave, and then Faramarz. Among the stories described in this section are the romance of Zal and Rudaba , the Seven Stages (or Labors) of Rostam , Rostam and Sohrab , Siyavash and Sudaba , Rostam and Akvan Div, the romance of Bijan and Manijeh ,
16830-462: The main source of the storytelling for the peoples of this region: Persians, Kurds, Gurans, Talishis, Armenians, Georgians, North Caucasian peoples, etc. Jamshid Giunashvili remarks on the connection of Georgian culture with that of Shahnameh : The names of many Šāh-nāma heroes, such as Rostom-i , Thehmine, Sam-i , or Zaal-i , are found in 11th- and 12th-century Georgian literature. They are indirect evidence for an Old Georgian translation of
16983-466: The mausoleum of the famous Shiraz-born poets Hafiz and Saadi. Several different construction projects are currently underway that will modernize the city's infrastructure. The majority of the population are Persian . Most of the population of Shiraz are Muslim . Shiraz also was home to a 20,000-strong Jewish community , although most emigrated to the United States and Israel in the latter half of
17136-432: 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
17289-522: The most enduring imprint on Georgian literature (...) Despite a belief held by some, the Turanian of Shahnameh (whose sources are based on Avesta and Pahlavi texts) have no relationship with Turks . The Turanians of the Shahnameh are an Iranian people representing Iranian nomads of the Eurasian Steppes and have no relationship to the culture of the Turks. Turan, which is the Persian name for
17442-605: The most recent projects have been the complete restoration of the Arg of Karim Khan and of the Vakil Bath, as well as a comprehensive plan for the preservation of the old city quarters. Other noteworthy initiatives include the total renovation of the Qur'an Gate and the mausoleum of the poet Khwaju Kermani , both located in the Allah-u-Akbar Gorge, as well as the restoration and expansion of
17595-525: 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
17748-461: 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
17901-495: 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
18054-414: 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
18207-542: The north end of the city, is the largest mall in the world in terms of the number of shops. The city is served by Refah Chain Stores Co. , Iran Hyper Star , Isfahan City Center , Shahrvand Chain Stores Inc. , and Ofoq Kourosh chain store . Shiraz is known as the city of poets, gardens, wine, nightingales and flowers. The garden is an important part of Iranian culture. There are many old gardens in Shiraz such as
18360-442: The north side of the current city boundaries. Shiraz is one of the top tourist cities in Iran and is known as the city of poets , literature , and flowers. It is also considered by many Iranians to be the city of gardens due to the presence of many gardens and fruit trees that can be seen throughout the city, such as Eram Garden . Shiraz is also a famous tourist destination in the world. Every year many tourists come from around
18513-713: 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
18666-504: The northern part of the city and on into Maharloo Lake . As of 1920, the area had a large forest of oak trees. Shiraz contains a considerable number of gardens. Due to population growth in the city, many of these gardens may be lost to give way to new developments. Although some measures have been taken by the Municipality to preserve these gardens, many illegal developments still endanger them. Shiraz's climate has distinct seasons, and
18819-459: The now-lost Chihrdad , as sources as well. Many other Pahlavi sources were used in composing the epic, prominent being the Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan , which was originally written during the late Sassanid era and gave accounts of how Ardashir I came to power which, because of its historical proximity, is thought to be highly accurate. The text is written in the late Middle Persian, which
18972-421: The number of workers present – in groups as large as 490. Most textual references to Shiraz involve rations for workers; it is never mentioned as a travel destination. Arfaee says that Sasanian Shiraz was relatively insignificant before its re-foundation in the early Islamic period. According to John Limbert, however, Shiraz prospered between the 6th and 8th-centuries CE and was possibly the administrative center for
19125-529: 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
19278-679: 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
19431-578: 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
19584-402: The reign of Khosrow II (590–628). The Khwadāy-Nāmag contained historical information on the later Sasanian period, but it does not appear to have drawn on any historical sources for the earlier Sasanian period (3rd to 4th centuries). Ferdowsi added material continuing the story to the overthrow of the Sasanians by the Muslim armies in the middle of the seventh century. The first to undertake
19737-589: 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
19890-568: The same style as those built during the same period in Isfahan , the capital of the Empire. After the fall of the Safavids, Shiraz suffered a period of decline, worsened by the raids of the Afghans and the rebellion of its governor against Nader Shah ; the latter sent troops to suppress the revolt. The city was besieged for many months and eventually sacked. At the time of Nader Shah 's murder in 1747, most of
20043-607: 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
20196-506: 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
20349-687: 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,
20502-657: The sub colleges of Shiraz University . Shiraz International Airport , also known as Shiraz Shahid Dastgheib International Airport , serves as the largest airport in southern Iran . Construction of a metro system was started in 2001 by the Shiraz Urban Railway Organization. The plan is to create six lines. The length of the first Line is 22.4 km (13.9 mi), the length of the second line will be approximately 14 km (8.7 mi). The first three lines, when completed, will have 32 stations below ground, six above, and one special station connected to
20655-497: The text. This calls into question the idea of Ferdowsi's deliberate eschewing of Arabic words. The Shahnameh has 62 stories, 990 chapters, and some 50,000 rhyming couplets, making it more than three times the length of Homer's Iliad and more than twelve times the length of the German Nibelungenlied . According to Ferdowsi himself, the final edition of the Shahnameh contained some sixty thousand distichs. But this
20808-462: The theme of regicide and the incompetence of kings embedded in the epic did not sit well with the Iranian monarchy. Later, there were Muslim figures such as Ali Shariati , the hero of Islamic reformist youth of the 1970s, who were also antagonistic towards the contents of the Shahnameh since it included verses critical of Islam. These include the line: tofu bar to, ey charkh-i gardun, tofu! (spit on your face, oh heavens spit!), which Ferdowsi used as
20961-478: 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
21114-543: The versification of the Pahlavi chronicle was Daqiqi , a contemporary of Ferdowsi, poet at the court of the Samanid Empire , who came to a violent end after completing only 1,000 verses. These verses, which deal with the rise of the prophet Zoroaster , were afterward incorporated by Ferdowsi, with acknowledgment, in his own poem. The style of the Shahnameh shows characteristics of both written and oral literature. Some claim that Ferdowsi also used Zoroastrian nasks , such as
21267-451: The walls of Konya and Sivas with verses from the Shahnameh . The Turks themselves connected their origin not with Turkish tribal history but with the Turanians of Shahnameh . Specifically in India, through the Shahnameh , they felt themselves to be the last outpost tied to the civilized world by the thread of Iranianism . Ferdowsi concludes the Shahnameh by writing: I've reached
21420-593: The wars with Afrasiab , Daqiqi 's account of the story of Goshtasp and Arjasp, and Rostam and Esfandyar . A brief mention of the Arsacid dynasty follows the history of Alexander and precedes that of Ardashir I , founder of the Sasanian Empire. After this, Sasanian history is related with a good deal of accuracy. The fall of the Sassanids and the Arab conquest of Persia are narrated romantically. According to Jalal Khaleghi Mutlaq,
21573-491: The wise in this darkness of sorrow, The pure words of Ferdowsi of the Tusi are such, His pure sense is an angelic birth, Angelic born is anyone who's like Ferdowsi. How sweetly has conveyed the pure-natured Ferdowsi, May blessing be upon his pure resting place, Do not harass the ant that's dragging a seed, because it has life and sweet life is dear. Many other poets, e.g., Hafez , Rumi and other mystical poets, have used
21726-466: The world to visit the city. Shiraz has historically had major Jewish and Christian communities. The crafts of Shiraz consist of inlaid mosaic work of triangular design; silverware; pile carpet -weaving and weaving of kilim , called gilim and jajim in the villages and among the tribes . Dominant industries in the city include the production of cement , sugar, fertilizers, textile products, wood products, metalwork, and rugs . Shiraz also has
21879-500: The world, For I have spread the seed of the word. Whoever has sense, path and faith, After my death will send me praise. Many Persian literary figures, historians and biographers have praised Ferdowsi and the Shahnameh . The Shahnameh is considered by many to be the most important piece of work in Persian literature . Western writers have also praised the Shahnameh and Persian literature in general. Persian literature has been considered by such thinkers as Goethe as one of
22032-578: 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
22185-592: Was founded by the Sasanian dynasty and restored by the Umayyad Caliphate in 693 CE and grew prominent under the successive Iranian Saffarid and Buyid dynasties in the 9th and 10th–11th centuries, respectively. In the 13th century, Shiraz became a leading center of the arts and letters, due to the encouragement of its ruler and the presence of many Persian scholars and artists. Two famous poets of Iran, Hafez and Saadi , are from Shiraz, whose tombs are located on
22338-586: 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
22491-435: Was set at 160 rials, while assistant drivers and ticket sellers were set at 83 rials. With the purchased buses, the company launched lines one, two, and three, which were welcomed by the people. Now Shiraz has 71 bus lines. Shiraz is connected with the rest of Iran's railway network . The trains arrive and leave from Shiraz railway station , Iran's largest railway station according to surface area. There are 700,000 cars in
22644-426: Was spared destruction by the invading Mongols , when its local ruler offered tributes and submission to Genghis Khan . Shiraz was again spared by Tamerlane , when in 1382 the local monarch, Shah Shoja agreed to submit to the invader. In the 13th century, Shiraz became a leading center of the arts and letters, thanks to the encouragement of its ruler and the presence of many Persian scholars and artists. For this reason
22797-600: 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
22950-445: Was the immediate ancestor of Modern Persian . A great portion of the historical chronicles given in Shahnameh is based on this epic and there are in fact various phrases and words which can be matched between Ferdowsi's poem and this source, according to Zabihollah Safa . Traditional historiography in Iran holds that Ferdowsi was grieved by the fall of the Sasanian Empire and its subsequent rule by Arabs and Turks. The Shahnameh ,
23103-425: 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
23256-450: Was vary. According to Berney and Ring, the lack of references to Shiraz in early Persian sources suggests the city could not have been more than a way-station in the plain in which it lies. On the other hand, according to Abdolmajed Arfaee , Achaemenid-era Shiraz must have been one of the most important settlements in the area. He bases this on its frequent appearance in the Persepolis Administrative Archives (84 different tablets) as well as
23409-593: Was −14.0 °C (6.8 °F) on 5 January 1973. List of neighborhoods in Shiraz: Shiraz is the economic center of southern Iran. The second half of the 19th century witnessed certain economic developments that greatly changed the economy of Shiraz. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 allowed the extensive import into southern Iran of inexpensive European factory-made goods, either directly from Europe or via India. Farmers in unprecedented numbers began planting cash crops such as opium poppy, tobacco, and cotton. Many of these export crops passed through Shiraz on their way to
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