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Encyclopedia > Ancient Azari language
Azari
آذری Adari
Spoken in: Iran (Persia), Azerbaijan 
Region: Middle East, Central Asia
Language extinction: after 11th century
Language family: Indo-European
 Indo-Iranian
  Iranian
   Western Iranian
    Northwestern Iranian
     Azari
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2:
ISO 639-3:

Azari, also spelled Adari, Adhari or (Ancient) Azeri, is the name used for the Iranian language which was spoken in Azerbaijan before it was replaced by the modern Azeri or Azerbaijani language, which is of Turkic language.[1] The Persian Empire was a series of historical empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the old Persian homeland, and beyond in Western Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ... Map of Central Asia showing three sets of possible boundaries for the region Central Asia located as a region of the world Central Asia is a vast landlocked region of Asia. ... An extinct language (also called a dead language) is a language which no longer has any native speakers. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. ... The Northwestern Iranian languages include some 53 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about many people in Asia; this language family is a part of the Western Iranian language family. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of the sounds of human speech. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family. ... The Azerbaijani language, also called Azeri, Azari, Azeri Turkish, or Azerbaijani Turkish, is the official language of the Republic of Azerbaijan. ... The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China with an estimated 140 million native speakers and tens of millions of second-language speakers. ...

Contents

Linguistic affiliation

Azari is believed to have been a part of the dialect continuum of Northwest Iranian languages. As such, its ancestor would be close to the earliest attested Northwest Iranian languages, Median. As the Northwestern and Southwestern Iranian languages had not yet developed very far apart by the first millennium AD, Azari would also still have been very similar to classical Middle Persian (also called Pahlavi). The Northwestern Iranian languages include some 53 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about many people in Asia; this language family is a part of the Western Iranian language family. ... The Median language was a Western Iranian language, classified as North-Western with Parthian, Baluchi, Kurdish and others. ... Pahlavi is a term that refers: (1) to a script used in Iran derived from the Aramaic script, and (2) more broadly, to Middle Persian, the Middle Iranian language written in this script. ...


Azari was spoken in Azerbaijan at least up to the 17th century, with the number of speakers decreasing since the 11th century due to the Turkification of the area. According to some accounts, it may have survived for several centuries after that up to the 16th or 17th century.. Today, Iranian dialects are still spoken in several linguistic enclaves within Azerbaijan. While some scholars believe that these dialects form a direct continuation of the ancient Azari languages,[2] others have argued that they are likely to be a later import through migration from other parts of Iran, and that the original Azari dialects became extinct.[3] Turkification is a term used to describe a cultural change in which something or someone non-Turkish is made to become Turkish. ...


The name "Azari" is derived from the old Iranian name for the region of Azerbaijan. The same name for the region, in a Turkified form, was later adopted also to designate the modern Turkic language "Azeri".


Historical attestations

Ibn al-Nadim, in his famous book Kitab al-Fihrist (Arabic: الفهرست), mentions that all the Median and Persian lands of antiquity (including what is today known as Azerbaijan) spoke one language. In the book, which is the most accredited account of spoken languages of Iran during the early Islamic era, he reports Dari to be the official language of the royal courts and the language of Khorasan and Balkh and eastern Iran while Parsi is the language of the Mobeds (Zoroastrian priests) of Fars; Khuzi is the unofficial language of the royalty and comes from Khuzestan; and Seryani originates in Mesopotamia. Ibn al-Nadim (Abu al-Faraj Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Muhammad ibn Ishaq), (died September 17, 995 or 998) was an muslim scholar (of either Arab or Persian origin) and bibliographer and the author of the Kitab al-Fihrist. ... Arabic ( or just ) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. ... Khorasan (Persian: خراسان) (also transcribed as Khurasan and Khorassan; Horasan in Turkish) is a region located in eastern Iran. ... Today Balkh (Persian: بلخ) is a small town in the Province of Balkh, Afghanistan, about 20 kilometers northwest of the provincial capital, Mazari Sharif, and some 74 km (46 miles) south of the Amu Darya, the Oxus River of antiquity, of which a tributary formerly flowed past Balkh. ... Zoroastrianism is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings ascribed to the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra, Zartosht). ... Fars (Persian: فارس) is one of the 30 provinces of Iran. ... Map showing Khuzestan in Iran Domes like this are quite common in Khuzestan province. ... Mesopotamia refers to the region now occupied by modern Iraq, eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and Southwest Iran. ...


This has also been verified and reported by such respected medieval historians as Tabari, Ibn Hawqal, Istakhri, Moqaddasi, Yaghubi, Masudi, and Mostowfi Qazvini. Al-Khwarizmi mentions it in chapter 6, vol. 6 of his book Mafātīh al-ˤUlūm (مفاتيح العلوم). Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari (Arabic الطبري, AD 838-AD 923), was an author from Persia. ... 10th century map of the World by Ibn Hawqal. ... A map by Istakhri from the text Al-aqalim. ... Muhammad ibn Ahmad Shamsuddin Al-Muqaddasi (or Al-Maqdisi) was a notable medieval Arab geographer, author of Ahsan at-Taqasim fi Ma`rifat il-Aqalim (The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions). ... Yaqubi (Ahmad Ibn Abu Yaqub Ibn Jafar Ibn Wahb Ibn Wadih Al-yaqubi, died 897) was an Arab historian and geographer, was a great-grandson of Wadih, the freedman of the caliph Mansur. ... Abd al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn Masudi (d. ... Tomb of Hamdollah Mostowfi, Qazvin, Iran. ... Soviet postage stamp commemorating the 1200th anniversary of Muhammad al‑Khwarizmi in 1983. ...


Following the Islamic Conquest of Iran, Middle Persian, also known as Pahlavi, continued to be used until the 10th century when it was gradually replaced by a new breed of Persian language, most notably Dari. The Saffarid dynasty in particular was the first in a line of many dynasties to officially adopt the new language in 875 CE. Thus Dari, which contains many loanwords from its predecessors, is considered the continuation of Middle Persian which was prevalent in the early Islamic era of western Iran. The name Dari comes from the word (دربار) which refers to the royal court, where many of the poets, protagonists, and patrons of the literature flourished. (See Persian literature) The Islamic conquest of Iran (637-651 CE) destroyed the Sassanid Empire and led to the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion in Iran. ... Pahlavi is a term that refers: (1) to a script used in Iran derived from the Aramaic script, and (2) more broadly, to Middle Persian, the Middle Iranian language written in this script. ... The Pahlavi script was used broadly in the Sasanid Persian Empire to write down Middle Persian for secular, as well as religious purposes. ... Dari is a term used to denote one of several closely related Persian dialects spoken in what used to be Greater Khorasan: The official name for the Persian language in Afghanistan; see Dari (Afghanistan) One name used by Zoroastrians (the others being Gabri and Yazdi) to refer to the Northwestern... The Saffarid dynasty of Persia ruled a short-lived empire centred on Seistan, a border district between modern-day Afghanistan and Iran, between 861-1003. ... Events December 29 - Charles the Bald, king of west Danes capture Lindisfarne and arrive in Cambridge. ... Pahlavi is a term that refers: (1) to a script used in Iran derived from the Aramaic script, and (2) more broadly, to Middle Persian, the Middle Iranian language written in this script. ... Persian literature (in Persian: ‎ ) spans two and a half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. ...


The main event of notable significance from this era was the adoption of Arabic script with the addition of a few letters in Persian. This development probably occurred some time during the second half of the 8th century, when the old Middle Persian script began dwindling in usage. The aforementioned script remains in use in contemporary modern Persian. A new Tajiki script using Cyrillic letters was introduced in the 1920s and 30s by the USSR's government in Central Asia. The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languages; (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... Map of Central Asia showing three sets of possible boundaries for the region Central Asia located as a region of the world Central Asia is a vast landlocked region of Asia. ...


Pre-Turkic Azari

Etymological studies verify that the extinct dialects spoken from Baku to Semnan before 11th century, all originated from a common source. In other words, the people of Azerbaijan spoke the same language spoken by the Medes. (See UCLA's distinguished professor Ehsan Yarshater's report in: Majaleh-ye Dâneshkadeh-ye Adabiyât, “مجله دانشكده ادبيات”, year 5, No. 1-2, p 35–37.) Municipality: Baku Area: 260 km² Altitude: -28 m Population: 2,074,300 census 2003 Population density: 1280 persons/km² Postal Code: AZ10 Area code: +99412 Municipality code: BA Latitude: 40° 23 N Longitude: 49° 52 E Mayor: Hajibala Abutalybov The Baku region. ... Semnan may refer to: Semnan province Semnan (city) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Binomial name Ucla xenogrammus Holleman, 1993 The largemouth triplefin, Ucla xenogrammus, is a fish of the family Tripterygiidae and only member of the genus Ucla, found in the Pacific Ocean from Viet Nam, the Philippines, Palau and the Caroline Islands to Papua New Guinea, Australia (including Christmas Island), and the... Ehsan Yarshater, of Columbia University, is one of the worlds leading Iranologists. ...


According to Dehkhoda Dictionary, "the language of Azarbaijan is a branch of the Iranian languages known as Azari". (entry for "Azari", 2006 edition) Azari researcher Ahmad Kasravi Tabrizi in his book "The ancient tongue of Azarbaygan" (زبان باستان آذربایگان) supports this and reports that the medieval historian Yaqut al-Hamawi used the phrase Al-Ajam ol-Azariyah ("The Azari Iranian") in his books Mo'ajjem al-Udabā and Mo'jem al-Baladān. In other sources such as Surat al-Ardh (صورة الأرض) by Ibn Hawqal, Ahsan al-Taqāsim by Moqaddasi, and Al-Masālik wa al-Mamālik by Istakhri, people in Azerbaijan are recorded to be speaking Iranian languages. Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa identifies the Iranian languages as such: Dehkhoda Dictionary is the largest ever lexical compilation of the Persian language. ... The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family. ... Ahmad Kasravi Tabrizi (b. ... Yaqut (Yaqut ibn-Abdullah al-Hamawi) (1179 - 1229) was an Arab biographer and geographer. ... 10th century map of the World by Ibn Hawqal. ... Muhammad ibn Ahmad Shamsuddin Al-Muqaddasi (or Al-Maqdisi) was a notable medieval Arab geographer, author of Ahsan at-Taqasim fi Ma`rifat il-Aqalim (The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions). ... A map by Istakhri from the text Al-aqalim. ... Abdullah Ibn Dhadawayh, also known as Ibn al-Muqaffa (d. ...

The Iranian languages are Fahlavi (Pahlavi), Dari, Khuzi, Persian, and Seryani. But Fahlavi comes from the word Fahleh. And Fahleh is a name that refers to 5 regions: Isfahan, Ray, Hamedan, Mah-Nahavand, and Azerbaijan.

Obviously, this was all before the Turkic arrival. The Pahlavi script was used broadly in the Sasanid Persian Empire to write down Middle Persian for secular, as well as religious purposes. ... Esfahān province (Persian: استان اصفهان (Ostan-e Esfahan); also transliterated as Isfahan, Esfahan, Espahan, Sepahan or Isphahan) is one of the 30 provinces of Iran. ... Look up ray in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Avicennas tomb in Hamedan Hamadan or Hamedan ( Persian: همدان , Kurdish: Ekbatan) is the capital city of Hamadan Province of Iran. ... Nahavand (also spelled Nahawand in some texts) is a town in Hamadan Province in Iran. ...


Encyclopedia Iranica quotes Ibn al-Nadim's book Al-fihrist in verifying that all the Median and Persian lands of antiquity (including what is today known as Azerbaijan) spoke one language. And Tabari in 849 also mentions that poets in Maragheh recited Pahlavi poetry. Some Azerbaijani poets however, such as Qatran Tabrizi, used the word "Persian" and "Pahlavi" interchangeably to describe their native language. Encyclopædia Iranica is a project of Columbia Universitys Center for Iranian Studies to create a comprehensive and authoritiative English language encyclopedia about the history and culture of Iran and Persia. ... Ibn al-Nadim (Abu al-Faraj Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Muhammad ibn Ishaq), (died September 17, 995 or 998) was an muslim scholar (of either Arab or Persian origin) and bibliographer and the author of the Kitab al-Fihrist. ... Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari (Arabic الطبري, AD 838-AD 923), was an author from Persia. ... Maragheh or Maraghah is a town in the East Azarbaijan Province of Iran, on the Safi River. ... Abu Mansur Qatran Adudi ( 1009 - 1072) was a royal Persian poet. ...


The historian Hamdollah Mostowfi even goes as far as describing variants of "Pahlavi" spoken in different areas of Azerbaijan (then part of Greater Persia). In his book Tarikh Gozideh, he describes eight poets from Azerbaijan, calling them Ahl-ol She'r Men-al-Ajam (Iranian poets), all Persian by tongue. By now, of course, Dari and Pahlavi had merged into one, as successive dynasties moved from east to west. Tomb of Hamdollah Mostowfi, Qazvin, Iran. ...


Suffice it to say that the number of records and documents from Azerbaijan in the Pahlavi language are so numerous that it has left no doubt that this was indeed the native tongue of Azerbaijan before the arrival of the Turks. Many words in the current Azeri vocabulary in fact are of Pahlavi origin. (See studies in Nashriyeh Adabiyāt of Tabriz University, by Dr. Mahyār Navābi, year 5 and 6. Also see Farhang-i Kamāleddin Teflisi, Ajāyeb al-Makhluqāt by Najibeddin Hamadāni, and also the books: Majmal-ol-Tavārikh, Al-qasas, Iskandar-Nameh e Qadeem, and others for lists of words.) External links Official website of University of Tabriz List of chancellors of University of tabriz Categories: University stubs | Iranian universities ...


The current Turkic Azeri language spoken in Azerbaijan begins its steadly replacement of the old Pahlavi only with the beginning of the Safavid dynasty's rule in Persia. Earlier, many Turkic speaking nomads had chosen the green pastures of Azerbaijan, Aran and Shrivan for their settlement as early as the advent of the Seljuqs. However, they only filled in the pasturelands while the farmlands, villages and the cities remained Iranic in language. The linguistic conversion of Azerbaijan went hand in hand with the coversion of the Azeris into Shiism. The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China with an estimated 140 million native speakers and tens of millions of second-language speakers. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... The Safavids were a long-lasting Turkic-speaking Iranian dynasty that ruled from 1501 to 1736 and first established Shiite Islam as Persias official religion. ... The Seljuqs (also Seldjuk, Seldjuq, Seljuk, sometimes also Seljuq Turks; in Turkish Selçuklular; in Persian: á¹¢aljÅ«qÄ«yān; in Arabic سلجوق SaljÅ«q, or السلاجقة al-Salājiqa) were a Sunni Muslim dynasty that ruled parts of Central Asia and the Middle East from the 11th to 14th centuries. ... Shiʻa Islam (Arabic شيعى follower; English has traditionally used Shiite) makes up the second largest sect of believers in Islam, constituting about 30%–35% of all Muslim. ...


From 1501 and the advent of the Safavid dyansty to 1639 and the Treaty of Zohab between the Ottoman Empire and Persia, perhaps over two million people were forcefully removed from the common battlefields between the two warring states. These included eastern Anatolia (to include all of Armenia, northern Kurdistan), all of Azerbaijan, Shirvan and Aran (the last two being known presently as the Repubic of Azerbaijan). The Shias were moved east and the Sunnis to the west. The Christians were moved every which way, from Isfahan to Mazandaran, from Marash to Adana. Anatolia and Europe Anatolia (Turkish: from Greek: Ανατολία - Anatolia) is a peninsula of Western Asia which forms the greater part of the Asian portion of Turkey, as opposed to the European portion (Thrace, or traditionally Rumelia). ...


Hundreds of thousands of Turkic speaking Shia nomads from central and eastern Anatolia were resettled in Azerbaijan and Shirvan. Even a larger numbers of Iranic speaking Sunni Azeris/Azaris fled west into the Ottoman Empire from the oppression of the Shia extremism of the early Safavids. Many settled as far afield as Iznik near Istanbul. The famous Iznik glazed pottery and fiance work still has a strong Tabrizi flavor-- even today, four hundred years later! Some of these old timer, Iranic speaking, Sunni Azeris moved as far as the new Mughal Empire in India.


In short, as Azerbaijan, Shrivan and Aran became steadily more Shia, they also became steadily more Turkic speaking. The process is nearly complete today.


Historians report Pahlavi being spoken in Tabriz as late as the 17th century. (See Rowdhat ul-Jinan by Hafez Hosein Tabrizi [d997 A.H.], and Risaleh ye Anārjāni written in 1577). Even the Ottoman Turkish explorer Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682) mentions this in his Seyahatname. He also reports that the elite and learned people of Nakhichevan and Maragheh spoke Pahlavi, during his tours of the region This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The Ottoman Turks were the ethnic subdivision of the Turkish people who dominated the ruling class of the Ottoman Empire. ... Evliya Celebi (also known as Dervis Mehmed Zilli) was one of the most famous Ottoman travelers, who traveled throughout the territories of the Ottoman Empire and the neighbouring lands over a period of 40 years. ... The Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic (Azerbaijani: Naxçıvan Muxtar Respublikası, Armenian: Õ†Õ¡Õ­Õ«Õ»Ö‡Õ¡Õ¶Õ« Ô»Õ¶Ö„Õ¶Õ¡Õ¾Õ¡Ö€ Õ€Õ¡Õ¶Ö€Õ¡ÕºÕ¥Õ¿Õ¸Ö‚Õ©ÕµÕ¸Ö‚Õ¶, Russian: Нахичеванская Автономная Республика, Persian:جمهوری خودمختار نخجوان, Turkish: Nahçıvan Özerk Cumhuriyeti), known simply as Nakhichevan, is a landlocked exclave of Azerbaijan. ... Maragheh or Maraghah is a town in the East Azarbaijan Province of Iran, on the Safi River. ...


As late as 1820s, many neighborhood in Tabriz were still Iranic speaking, although fully Shia by this time. By the late 1800s, the Turkification of Azerbaijan was near completion with the old Iranic speakers found solely in tiny isolated recesses of the mountains or other remote areas (such as Harzand, Galin Guya and Anarjan). Even the heavily populated Kurdish tribes of Azerbaijan, most importantly the great Shaqaqi tribe switched from Kurdish to Turkic Azeri in the course of the 19th century as they accept Shiism for their religion. The old timer Shaqaqis still can muster some Kurdish, while the newer generations are fully assimilated.


The old Iranic, Pahlavi based language of Azerbaijan, is now extinct, unless one considers Harzandi and other isoglases to be remnant of it. The Pahlavi script was used broadly in the Sasanid Persian Empire to write down Middle Persian for secular, as well as religious purposes. ... Harzani (correct form: harzandi) is a modern Northwestern Iranian language spoken in the north of the Iranian province of East Azarbaijan, around the village of Harzand. ...


See also

The Azerbaijani language, also called Azeri, Azari, Azeri Turkish, or Azerbaijani Turkish, is the official language of the Republic of Azerbaijan. ... Many different languages have dominated in the territory currently called Azerbaijan. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family. ... The Tat language is an Indo-Iranian language spoken by the Tat ethnic group. ...

References used

  1. ^ Encyclopedia Iranica: p238-245
  2. ^ Encyclopedia Iranica: p238-245
  3. ^ The Ancient Language of Azarbaijan, by B.W. Henning

Encyclopædia Iranica is a project of Columbia Universitys Center for Iranian Studies to create a comprehensive and authoritiative English language encyclopedia about the history and culture of Iran and Persia. ... Encyclopædia Iranica is a project of Columbia Universitys Center for Iranian Studies to create a comprehensive and authoritiative English language encyclopedia about the history and culture of Iran and Persia. ...

External links

  • more references
  • Azapadegan Research Institute for Iranian cultures and civilization (includes research articles on Adhari)


 
 

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