88-399: Bandar Siraf ( Persian : بندر سیراف ) is a city in, and the capital of, Siraf District of Kangan County , Bushehr province, Iran . As the village of Taheri, it was the capital of Taheri Rural District until its capital was transferred to the village of Parak . According to legend, Siraf was an ancient Sassanid port , destroyed around 970 CE, which was located on the north shore of
176-638: 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
264-752: A commercial port was far from over. It remained a regional trade center on a smaller scale until the 15th or 16th century. It served as the port for the Khunj u Fal region, as a point of departure for Qatif and the Arabian Peninsula. Ibn Battuta knew of "Shilaw" and may have visited in 1347 when he crossed the Persian Gulf from "Khunju Pal" over to the Arabian Peninsula. Shilaw was also mentioned by 16th-century European travelers, such as António Tenreiro, who visited "Chilaão" in 1528, and Gasparo Balbi, who visited "Silaú" in 1590. After that, however, sources only describe
352-418: 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
440-500: 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
528-417: 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
616-489: A nest of corruption and wrote that adultery , usury , and general extravagance were rampant here. When an earthquake in 977 caused serious damage to Siraf, al-Maqdisi viewed it as "a fitting punishment from God". Siraf served an international clientele of merchants including those from South India ruled by the Western Chalukyas dynasty who were feasted by wealthy local merchants during business visits. An indicator of
704-529: 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
792-405: A raised podium", with a single entrance on the east side (opposite from the qibla ). The mosque was built in two phases. The first was in the first half of the 9th century and the second was around 850. There were also several smaller mosques, all with mihrabs projecting onto the outside of the building. There are ruins of the luxurious houses of extremely rich traders who made their wealth through
880-580: 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
968-459: A very small and basic harbor at the modern village of Taheri. In 1812, James Morier wrote about the existence of ruins at Taheri. Someone named Brucks then visited the site but thought it was Portuguese. The British naval officer G.N. Kempthorne later visited the site in 1835 and was the first to identify the ruins with Siraf. In 1933, Aurel Stein visited Siraf and left a description of a massive "sea wall", which extended for some 400 m along
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#17330849931021056-605: 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
1144-644: 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
1232-610: 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
1320-812: 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
1408-654: 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
1496-425: 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
1584-450: Is located by a shallow bay that extends for 4 km east–west. Just 500 m inland is a sandstone ridge running parallel to the coast. Siraf itself is located in the narrow habitable strip between the beach and the ridge. In this part of Fars, many long ridges like this one run parallel to the coast, rising as high as 1500 m within 20 km from the sea. Passes through the ridges are only found occasionally, making communication with
1672-507: Is mostly known for his travel to Guangzhou , Tang China, and marveled at the excellent quality of porcelain there in 851. Little is known about Sulaiman other than the fact that he was a merchant, confirmed by his second name ( nickname ) al-Tajir ("the merchant"). He visited India during the time of the Pala Empire , and referred to a kingdom named 'Ruhma' and attested to their military power. He has also described Mihira Bhoja , one of
1760-455: 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
1848-468: 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 ),
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#17330849931021936-570: 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
2024-690: Is the Shilaw valley, which retains the old variant of the name attested since the 13th century. The northern slopes of the Shilaw valley are covered in spectacular rock-cut graves, which are now empty. A second small spur is between the Shilaw valley and the Kunarak wadi. [REDACTED] Media related to Bandar Siraf at Wikimedia Commons [REDACTED] Iran portal Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),
2112-486: 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
2200-486: 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
2288-502: 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
2376-651: 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
2464-497: The Parthian era. According to David Whitehouse , one of the first archaeologists to excavate the ancient ruins of Siraf, marine trade between the Persian Gulf and Far East lands began to flourish at this port because of the vast expansion of trade in consumer goods and luxury items in ancient times. According to legend, the first contact between Siraf and China occurred in 185 AH . However, when sea trade routes tried shifting to
2552-619: The Persian Gulf in what is now the Iranian province of Bushehr . Its ruins are approximately 220 km east of Bushire , 30 km east from Kangan city, and 380 km west of Bandar Abbas . Siraf controlled three ports: Bandar-e-Taheri, Bandar-e-Kangan and Bandar-e-Dayer . The Persian Gulf was used as a shipping route between the Arabian Peninsula and India over the Arabian Sea . Small boats, such as dhows , could also make
2640-556: The Red Sea , Siraf lost some business. Excavations at Siraf have uncovered evidence of a Sasanian port, which probably served the inland city of Gor (now Firuzabad). There was also a huge castle, possibly built c. 360 by Shapur II . There is historical evidence of Sasanian maritime trade with the Gulf of Cambay in the modern day province of Gujarat , as fragments of Indian red polished ware, of predominantly Gujarati provenance dating to
2728-655: 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
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2816-688: 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
2904-483: 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
2992-585: 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 ,
3080-426: The 13th century, though, Yaqut al-Hamawi left a less than sanguine description of Siraf - he called it a small place ( bulayd ) inhabited by "wretched people", with its buildings in ruins. By this point, the name Siraf had become distorted to Shīlāw . This name is still used to refer to a small valley south of the site's main ridge (see above). Yaqut may have painted a rather bleak picture of Siraf, but its role as
3168-414: The 5th and 6th centuries were found at coastal sites on the northern shores of the Persian Gulf, and especially at Siraf. In the 9th century, Siraf was revamped and expanded exponentially as the sea trade with Asia flourished. The city's congregational mosque , one of the earliest in Iran, was among the items studied by Whitehouse. The mosque was "a huge rectangular structure with a central courtyard set on
3256-672: 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
3344-676: The Indian merchants' importance in Siraf comes from records describing dining plates reserved for them. However, Siraf lacked drinking water (apart from one small qanat , according to al-Maqdisi) and good farmland, so food and water had to be imported from the Jam plain. According to al-Maqdisi, Siraf's decline began with the Buyid dynasty gaining power in Fars; many Sirafis relocated to Oman at this point according to him. On
3432-456: The Kunarak valley, there is a second gap in the main ridge known as the Tang-i-Lir. This is a narrow gorge located about 1.5 km east of the Kunarak pass. Besides the main spur that divides the coastal plain, there are two smaller spurs between the two gaps. The first and larger one runs almost parallel with the main ridge for about 1 km west of the Tang-i-Lir. Between it and the main ridge
3520-558: 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
3608-532: 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
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3696-521: 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
3784-425: 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
3872-401: 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
3960-848: 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,
4048-600: The Red Sea and Zanzibar in East Africa. Abu Zayd also wrote that trade between the Persian Gulf and China had decreased after the Guangzhou massacre in 878 killed many foreign merchants, although Chinese coins were still circulating in Siraf at the time he was writing. Later, when al-Mas'udi visited Madagascar between 916 and 926, he noted that Sirafi ships were present there, along with ships from Oman . During its heyday, Siraf
4136-479: The Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk , commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan , known as Dari. The region, which comprised
4224-575: The Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date. "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian)
4312-457: The Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum , took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans , who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of
4400-493: 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
4488-508: The beach and was reinforced with buttresses but has since disappeared. Many of the finds (over 16,000 in all) excavated at Siraf by Whitehouse and his archaeological team in the 1960s and 1970s are kept in the British Museum in London. Siraf has not yet been registered on the list of national heritage sites of Iran. This is needed so that it will be preserved and maintained in the future. At
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#17330849931024576-457: 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
4664-512: 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
4752-583: 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
4840-556: The following phylogenetic classification: Sulayman the Merchant Sulaymān al-Tājir ( Arabic : سليمان التاجر , lit. 'Solomon the Merchant';) was a 9th-century Muslim merchant , traveler and writer initially from Siraf in modern-day Iran . He traveled to India and China and wrote an account of his voyages around AD 850, often associated with a related travelogue by Abu Zayd al-Sirafi . He
4928-444: The formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia , and South Asia . Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia , Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to
5016-421: The formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Xenophon , a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like
5104-403: The greatest Gurjara-Pratihara emperors . Mihira Bhoja was a bitter enemy of "the Muslims" and according to Sulaiman, maintained a large army and had a fine cavalry. During his stay in the city of Guangzhou he noted that the Chinese used fingerprint records to maintain the identities of newly arrived foreigners, charged extortionate rates for imported goods and that the route to China by sea
5192-411: The interior difficult. The narrow coastal plain is divided in two by a spur jutting out from the ridge. The core of the modern settlement of Taheri is on the east side of this spur, while the ruins of historical Siraf are to the west, extending for 2 km along the seashore. On the spur itself was the fortified residence of the local shaikh. To the west is the dry wadi bed called Kunarak, which marks
5280-410: 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
5368-440: The long journey by staying close to the coast and keeping land in sight. The port was known as Taheri or Tahiri until in 2008 the government of Iran changed the official name of the city back to Bandar Siraf. The port was known as Siraf in ancient times. At the time of the Silk Road , most of the commerce towards Asia was performed through Siraf. Several episodes of massive earthquakes and tsunamis damaged and drowned much of
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#17330849931025456-432: 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
5544-411: 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
5632-411: 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
5720-448: 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
5808-414: 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
5896-549: 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
5984-418: 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
6072-401: The other hand, Ibn al-Balkhi says nothing about such a migration and instead attributes the town's decline to the period after the fall of the Buyids in 1055. Pirates from the nearby Qays Island then took advantage of the resulting power vacuum to attack Sirafi ships with impunity. Commercial traffic on the Persian Gulf started to bypass Siraf altogether and instead go straight to Basra. Siraf
6160-433: The port city, where its ancient quays, moorages, administrative structures, and even boat remains are found today on the sea floor of the Persian Gulf via marine archaeology . The historical importance of Siraf to ancient trade is only now being realized. Discovered there in past archaeological excavations are ivory objects from east Africa , pieces of stone from India , and lapis from Afghanistan . Siraf dates back to
6248-463: The port's success. The earliest Muslim writer to mention Siraf is Ibn al-Faqih , who wrote around 850 that Sirafi ships traded with India. Around the same time, Sulayman the Merchant wrote that Middle Eastern goods bound for China were first shipped from Basra to Siraf, then on to Muscat in Oman and Kollam in India. Around 900, Abu Zayd Hasan - himself a merchant from Siraf - wrote that Sirafi ships were engaged in commerce with both Jeddah on
6336-628: The present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted Parthian language , which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use. New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from eastern northern and northern Iranian languages such as Sogdian and especially Parthian. The transition to New Persian
6424-578: 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
6512-589: 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
6600-452: The second-largest city in the district of Ardashir-Khwarrah (southwestern Fars), behind only Shiraz - which it rivaled in size. He listed some of the goods that were traded here: ebony , ivory , sandalwood and other aromatics, bamboo , spices, paper, aloe , camphor , ambergris , and precious stones. Among the goods manufactured in Siraf itself were linen napkins and veils. Siraf was also an important market for pearls - nearby Ganaveh
6688-607: 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
6776-561: 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
6864-687: 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,
6952-460: The time of the 2006 National Census, the city's population was 3,500 in 722 households, when it was in the Central District . The following census in 2011 counted 7,137 people in 1,309 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the city as 6,992 people in 1,949 households. After the census, the city separated from the district in the establishment of Siraf District. The site of Siraf
7040-478: 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
7128-461: The western boundary of old Siraf. Today, the Kunarak valley is where the main road passes through to connect Taheri with the Jam plain further inland, and the same was probably true in historical times when Siraf was at its peak. To the west of the Kunarak valley is the Bagh-i-Shaikh plain. The coastal plain gradually widens toward the west, and the Bagh-i-Shaikh plain is 1 km across. Besides
7216-578: 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
7304-411: Was not the only Gulf port to decline around this time. Ganaveh, Tawwaz , Siniz , and Mahruban all declined at about the same time. However, this decline "can only have been relative" - in the early 12th century, the wealthy ship-owner and merchant tycoon Abu'l-Qasim Ramisht (died 1140) is known to have operated a prosperous commercial enterprise based out of Siraf that did business as far as China. By
7392-586: 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
7480-432: Was renowned for its pearl fishing industry. Merchants and ship captains from Siraf amassed huge fortunes off all this maritime trade, and they lived in "richly decorated, multi-story houses" built from teak wood, imported from East Africa, and fired brick. According to contemporary accounts, a merchant might spend 30,000 dinars on one of these houses. The "rather puritanical" 10th-century author al-Maqdisi regarded Siraf as
7568-600: 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
7656-501: Was the largest and wealthiest port city on the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf. It was a center of commerce with Africa, India, and China. The anonymous author of the 10th-century Hudud al-'Alam called Siraf "the merchants' haunt and the emporium of Fars". The later author Ibn al-Balkhi wrote of the period from 908 to 932, the annual value of goods traded in Siraf was 2.53 million dinars . The most detailed account of Siraf comes from al-Istakhri , shortly before 950. He described it as
7744-484: 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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