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 BCE), Middle era being 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" 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 the Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods:
Old Persian inscription written in
Old Persian cuneiform in
Persepolis, Iran 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 BCE). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now
Iran, Romania (
Gherla),
Armenia,
Bahrain,
Iraq, Turkey, and
Egypt. Old Persian 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 the official language of the Achaemenid kings. The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian itself coming directly from the older word . Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was
Avestan, the language of the
Zoroastrian liturgical texts.
Middle Persian text written in
Inscriptional Pahlavi on the
Paikuli inscription from between 293 and 297.
Slemani Museum,
Iraqi Kurdistan. 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 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 BCE. However, Middle Persian is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 CE) 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 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 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 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: ) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date.
New Persian 's
Shahnameh "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian) is conventionally divided into three stages: • Early New Persian (8th/9th centuries) • Classical Persian (10th–18th centuries) • Contemporary Persian (19th century to present) 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.
Early New Persian 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 the Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as
pārsīg, 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 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 the
Parthian language (
pahlavānīg), 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. ic booklets, written by a native of
Tus called Ahmad Khayqani in 292 AH (905 CE) , Copied by
Asadi Tusi in 447 AH (1055 CE). The transition to New Persian 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 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 the
Kalila wa Dimna. In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on the Persian model:
Ottoman Turkish,
Chagatai Turkic,
Dobhashi Bengali, and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian. 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, 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.
Use in Asia Minor A branch of 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 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 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 was taught in state schools, and was also offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some
madrasas.
Use in the Balkans 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 northern 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 of the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary.
Use in Indian subcontinent , India, 18th century , India The Persian language influenced 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. A
Bengali dialect emerged among the common
Bengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known as
Dobhashi; meaning
mixed language. Dobhashi Bengali 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 the region during the following centuries. 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 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 persecution in
Qajar Iran and speak a Dari dialect.
Contemporary Persian Qajar dynasty 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 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.
Pahlavi dynasty 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 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 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". ==Varieties==