From Old To New Persian: Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, Sat Jun 16 2018, NEWGEN
chapter 2
F ROM OLD TO NEW PE RSIA N

Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti *
2.1 Over 2,500 years of Persian
Persian had its cradle in and owes its name to the south-western region of Iran called Pārsa
in Old Persian (Middle Persian Pārs, New Persian Pārs, Fārs) and Persis in Greek. Among
the Iranian languages, that are conventionally divided into the three stages of Old, Middle,
and New Iranian, Persian occupies a special position in that it is the only one to be substan-
tially documented in all three periods as Old, Middle, and New Persian. This depends on its
close connection with the main political centres for most of the time over the centuries. Old
Persian was the language of the ruling dynasty of the Achaemenid empire from the sixth
to the fourth century BC and, after the long interval of Greek and Parthian suzerainty over
Iran, Middle Persian was the language of the ruling dynasty of the Sasanian empire from
the third to the seventh century AD. Subsequently, New Persian was associated with Islamic
powers: the Iranian Persian speaking, Islamized armies that conquered eastern Iran and
Transoxiana; the Tahirid, Saffarid, and Samanid courts under the Abbasid caliphate at the
very origins of the New Persian literary language between the ninth and the tenth centuries
(Lazard 1975a: 595–6, 601–2; Perry 2009a: 52–3); the non-Iranian Persianate dynasties from
the end of the tenth century with the Ghaznavids to the early twentieth century with the
Qajars; and finally the Persian Pahlavi ruling house in the twentieth century. Though the
wide area where Persian was spoken underwent a significant reduction after the second
half of the eleventh century due to the spread of Turkic peoples (section 2.21), Persian was
an important literary and prestige language far beyond the Persian speaking area all over
the Islamic period. The Turkic dynasties that succeeded one another almost uninterrupt-
edly for nine centuries in the Persian speaking territories had a major role in spreading the
Persian culture and literature in large areas of Asia. Thus, an important chapter in the his-
tory of Persian literature is comprised of works produced in India from the late Ghaznavid
dominion over north-western India in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; Persian kept its
function as the learned and official language in India until 1834; and it was the language
of official correspondence and diplomacy, as well as a literary language from Ottoman
Turkey to Indonesia. In the present time, the three major varieties of Persian are official
* Sections 2.1–2.3 and 2.5–2.11 (Old and Middle Persian) by Mauro Maggi; sections 2.4 and 2.12–2.22
(New Persian) by Paola Orsatti
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8 Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti
languages in the modern states of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Contemporary New Persian
of Iran), Afghanistan (Afghan Persian, officially called dari, Pashto being another official
language), and Tajikistan (Tajik Persian or tojikī) (see also Chapters 3, 11, 13, and 19). In
addition, Persian is nowadays spoken by naturalized communities in neighbouring coun-
tries, including Pakistan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and
other Central Asian countries, as well as in Europe and North America. It is accordingly
possible to follow the historical development of the Persian language over the centuries for
more than 2,500 years.1
2.2 Research on Old Persian
A critical bibliography of linguistic studies on Old Persian in the last three decades is offered
by Rossi (2008: 95–111), and a quick general survey by Schmitt (2013: 233–5).
Schmitt (1989, 2004) and de Vaan and Lubotsky (2009) offer general presentations of the
language. Schmitt (2009) has an up-to-date edition and translation of the entire Old Persian
corpus, while Lecoq (1997) presents a complete translation of the inscriptions accompanied
by a thorough treatment of Achaemenid culture. Schmitt (2016) classifies the stylistic phe-
nomena of the inscriptions.
For grammar, traditionally approached in a historical perspective, Kent (1953) and
Brandenstein and Mayrhofer (1964) still prove useful. Skjærvø (2009b) gives a comprehen-
sive updated overview of Old Persian grammar in the framework of Old Iranian (see also
Testen 1997 on phonology and Skjærvø 2007 on morphology).
Schmitt (2014) updates and summarizes information on Old Persian vocabulary. Hinz
(1975) and Tavernier (2007) study the substantial Old Iranian element, including Persian,
in other languages (Old Persian is further discussed in Chapters 3 and 11).
2.3 Research on Middle Persian
Rossi (1975) offers a well-organized bibliography on Middle Persian but is limited to the
years 1966–73. Nawabi (1987: 262–384) has an exhaustive bibliography on Middle Persian
along with Parthian. More recently, Durkin-Meisterernst (2013) surveys the studies on
Middle Persian in the framework of Middle Iranian.
Sundermann (1989b) and Hale (2004) offer sketches of the language (see also Weber
1997 and 2007 on phonology and morphology). Klingenschmitt (2000) is important from
1 Because of space constraints, for the modern and contemporary periods this chapter is basically
restricted to New Persian of Iran and does not cover the other national varieties. For dari and the Persian
dialects of Afghanistan see Kieffer (1985: 505–10); Farhadi (1955); Farhadi and Perry (2011); Kieffer
(2004). For tojikī see Lazard (1956); Rastorgueva (1964); Perry (2005); Perry (2009b). References in
this chapter generally privilege recent publications or the most recent ones on a given subject, where
references to earlier literature can be found.

From Old to New Persian 9
the standpoint of historical linguistics. Durkin-Meisterernst (2014) provides now a thor-

ough and up-to-date treatment of all aspects of the grammar of Middle Persian (see also
Rastorgueva and Molčanova 1981) and Parthian (see also Skjærvø 2009a), including supple-
ments to Brunner (1977) on syntax.
Standard Middle Persian dictionaries are MacKenzie (1971) for Zoroastrian texts (see also
Nyberg 1974), Durkin-Meisterernst (2004) for Manichaean texts, and Gignoux (1972: 3–39)
for the inscriptions. Proper names are dealt with by Gignoux (1986, 2003) and Zimmer (1991).
The compilation of a comprehensive Middle Persian dictionary is underway (Shaked and
Cereti 2005).
The sections on Middle Persian in the ground-breaking survey of Middle Iranian by
Henning (1958: esp. 21–7, 30–7, 43–52, 58–79, 89–92, 97–104) contribute a wealth of infor-
mation to the history of the language from its very first, sparse documentation in the third
century BC onwards.
See sections 2.9.1–2.9.4 for references and information on the corpus of Middle Persian
writings (see Chapters 3 and 11 for more discussion on Middle Persian).
2.4 Research on the history of New Persian
A comprehensive history of the New Persian language is still a desideratum. However,

there are studies on different stages or aspects of Persian, as well as good grammatical de-
scriptions. A critical discussion of New Persian grammatical studies is given by Windfuhr
(1979); a bibliography of linguistic studies is offered by Ahadi (2002), and a critical
survey by Ludwig Paul (2013a). As to historical grammar, scholars have at their disposal
only the one by Darmesteter (1883). Horn’s description of New Persian (1898–1901) and
Hübschmann’s work (1895) on Persian etymology and historical phonology are still useful.
On New Persian etymology, a reference work has been recently provided by Ḥasandust
(2014).
Among the three main periods considered below (section 2.12), only the first one (Early
New Persian) and the last one (Contemporary New Persian) have been studied to some
extent from a purely linguistic perspective, while for the second period (Classical New
Persian) one has mainly to rely on research based on a stylistic approach (Bahār 1942).
Early New Persian has been further discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. For contemporary lit-
erary or standard New Persian of Iran, a comprehensive reference grammar is provided by
Rubinčik (2001), to which the descriptions by Lazard (1989), Perry (2007), and Windfuhr
and Perry (2009) should be added. Phillot’s grammar (1919) is still useful. Less attention
has been paid to the spoken informal variety: apart from more or less detailed informa-
tion in some grammars (e.g. Meneghini and Orsatti 2012: 255–63) or independent studies
(e.g. Alfieri and Barbati 2010), the reference work for the spoken informal variety is that by
Lazard (1957).
For literary Early New Persian, Gilbert Lazard’s ample description (1963) of the language
of the most ancient prose texts of New Persian literature is destined to remain the standard
authority for many years to come; for the language of ancient New Persian poetry see Lazard
(1964: vol. 1, 41–6). In Persian, a comprehensive linguistic study of both prose and verse
New Persian texts up to the mid-thirteenth century is given by Xānlari (1986). Very good

studies of the language of single authors are offered by editors of classical texts like Maḥjub
(1959: 33–56) in the preface to his edition of Gorgāni’s poem Vīs va Rāmīn, or Shafiʿi Kadkani
(1987: 181–209) in the preface to his edition of Asrār al-tawḥīd by Muḥammad b. Munawwar.
For the language of the Šāhnāme, Wolff ’s glossary (1935) is still a valuable research tool.
As to studies more specifically related to the history of the language, a comprehensive and
still useful reconstruction of the earliest attestations of New Persian was offered by Henning
(1958: 77–81, 86–9). Orsatti (2007b: 102–72) provides a critical survey of the most ancient
New Persian documents in Hebrew, Syriac, and Manichaean scripts. The verbal system of
literary New Persian from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries is the subject of a thorough
study by Lenepveu-Hotz (2014), who also takes into account Early Judaeo-Persian docu-
ments. For the actual phonetic reality of Classical New Persian, Meier (1981) provides us with
a true mine of information, mainly based on the analysis of rhymes in early and classical
poetry. Telegdi (1955) offers an important historical, mainly lexical study of Persian verbs
with the ‘prefixes’ bar, dar, farā, foru, and bāz ~ vā.
Two volumes gathering articles on various aspects of the history of Persian have been re-
cently edited by Paul (2003b) and Maggi and Orsatti (2011). Quite useful is the publication
of a volume collecting Lazard’s articles on the formation of the New Persian language (1995)
and a volume collecting Utas’s contributions to the history of Persian (2013). Finally, men-
tion should be made of recent multi-author works such as the one edited by Karimi, Stilo,
and Samiian (2008).
2.5 Old Persian: documentation, use, script,

and parallel tradition
Old Persian is documented in the inscriptions of the Achaemenid kings (558–330 BC). These
epigraphic texts—which mark the beginning of writing in Iranian languages—are free from
modifications due to textual tradition, but form a comparatively small corpus (Lecoq 1997;
Schmitt 2009; cf. Huyse 2009: 73–83). Most inscriptions are from Fars, ancient Elam, and
Media, that is, from the first regions which the Persians occupied and annexed in the seventh
and sixth centuries BC after their immigration to south-western Iran and which formed the
core of their empire. The inscriptions date from the time from Darius I (522–486 BC) to
Artaxerxes III (359–338 BC), but most of them are from the times of Darius I and Xerxes
I (486–465 BC). Later texts are short, repetitive, and mostly not accompanied by versions in
other languages, unlike the earlier inscriptions, that display Elamite, Babylonian, and, if pro-
duced in Egypt, Egyptian texts beside the Old Persian ones as a mark of continuity with the
previous powers whose territories had been incorporated into the Persian empire. For more
information on Elamite, refer to Chapter 3.
Though Old Persian was the Iranian dialect spoken in Fars and the native tongue of the
Achaemenids, the language of the inscriptions is a formal language with many loanwords
and an archaizing character. Old Persian as we know it from the inscriptions with its spe-
cial features was meant as a means to promote the prestige of the kings and their feats. Its
written use was, thus, very delimited. The same holds true for the quasi-alphabetic writing
system of the cuneiform Old Persian script (Hoffmann 1976; Lecoq 1997: 59–72, 285), which
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imitated ealier writing systems of ancient Near East in the use of wedge-shaped marks and
was not conceived for everyday usage, but as a prestige script for a prestige language. This is
confirmed by the fact that, after an incubation period, the script was first adopted extensively
for adding the Old Persian text (Schmitt 1991) to the original Elamite and Bablonian texts
of Darius I’s Bisotun inscription aimed at royal self-portrayal and propaganda following his
contrasted accession to the throne, and that it was employed for epigraphical texts partly in-
accessible and, thus, not intended to be actually read. This is precisely the case, for instance,
of the Bisotun inscription engraved into the rock more than 20 m above the closest point
reachable by climbing and 60 m above the nearby caravan trail.
Old Persian did not spread across the multiethnic Achaemenid empire, where a large
number of languages were in use (Schmitt 1993). The language of the central administra-
tion, the official correspondence, and the local administration in some provinces was the
so-called Official Aramaic, while Persian had virtually no role in the actual administration
of the empire (see Chapter 3 for more information on Aramaic). Even for the court admin-
istration in Persepolis the language used was Elamite, just like Babylonian in Babylonia,
Egyptian in Egypt, and Greek and other local languages in Asia Minor. A consequence of the
multilingualism of the Achaemenid empire is the occurrence, in foreign language sources,
of numerous Old Persian and other Iranian words and names that are not preserved in the
comparatively small textual corpus and form the so-called parallel tradition (Hinz 1975;
Tavernier 2007).
2.6 Old Persian innovations
A number of innovations characterize Old Persian as against the other Iranian languages
(Iranian languages are further discussed in Chapter 3). The most conspicuous phonological
changes—which enable one to distinguish in part genuine Persian words from loanwords
(section 2.7)—are the following (Schmitt 1989: 68–70):
1) Old Persian ϑ, d, d, as against s, z, z in the other Iranian languages, from Iranian *ts,
*dz, *dz resulting from the Indo-Iranian palatals *ć, *ȷ́, *ȷ́ʰ (cf. Vedic ś, j, h) < Indo-
European *ḱ, *ǵ, *ǵʰ: for instance, Old Persian *daϑa ‘ten’ (> Middle and New Persian
dah) indirectly attested in *daϑa-pati ‘decurion’, *daϑa-pa- ‘decury’, and *daϑa-
hva- ‘one tenth’ of the parallel tradition (Tavernier 2007: 419, 451, 455), but Young
Avestan dasa, cf. Vedic dáśa < Indo-Iranian *dáća; Old Persian present stem dā-nā-
‘to know’ (> Middle and New Persian dān-), but Avestan zā-nā-, cf. Vedic jā-nā́-<
Indo-Iranian *ȷ́ā-nā́-; Old Persian adam ‘I’ (> Middle Persian an), but avest. azəm, cf.
Vedic ahám < Indo-Iranian *aʰám.
2) Old Persian ç (= [ss]?) from Iranian *ϑr resulting from Indo-Iranian *-tr- and pre-
served elsewhere as such or in its continuations: for instance, Old Persian puça-‘son’
(> Middle Persian pus and pusar [with -ar by analogy with other nouns of relation-
ship] > New Persian pesar), but Avestan puϑra-, cf. Vedic putrá- < Indo-Iranian
*putrá-; Old Persian xšaça- ‘kingdom, kingship, power’, but Avestan xšaϑra- (or
the borrowed Middle Persian > New Persian šahr), cf. Vedic kṣatrá-< Indo-Iranian
kšatrá-.
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3) Old Persian s, as against sp elsewhere apart from Khotanese and Wakhi š, from Indo-
Iranian *ću̯ < Indo-European *ḱu̯: for instance, Old Persian asa-‘horse’ (also in asa-
bāra-‘horseman’ > Middle Persian aswār > New Persian savār), but Avestan aspa-(or
the borrowed Middle Persian asp > New Persian asb) and Old Khotanese aśśa-[aša-],
cf. Vedic áśva-< Indo-Iranian *áću̯a-.
4) Old Persian šiy from the Iranian cluster *ϑi̯ resulting from Indo-Iranian *ti̯ and
preserved elsewhere: for instance, Old Persian hašiya-‘true’, but Avestan haiϑiia- <
Iranian *haϑi̯a-, cf. Vedic satyá-< Indo-Iranian *sati̯á-.
In the nominal and pronominal inflections, the Indo-European and Indo-Iranian eight
case system (nominative, accusative, vocative, genitive, dative, ablative, instrumental,
locative), which is still preserved in Avestan, was reduced to six cases in Old Persian
in that all functions of the dative were subsumed by the genitive endings and the abla-
tive virtually merged with the instrumental. Moreover, several other originally differing
endings came to coincide because of the loss of most final consonants, so that, for ex-
ample, a single ending -āyā stands for the genitive-dative, ablative (< Iranian *-āyah),
locative, and instrumental singular (< Iranian *-āyā) of the ā-declension nouns (see
Chapter 9 for more discussion on case).
Likewise, the verbal system exhibits restructuring with losses and innovations (Skjærvø
1985). Notably, there is no longer any opposition of aspect between the rare aorist forms
and the prevailing imperfect, which denotes both progressive and completed action (see
section 2.6.1 on the inherited perfect and a new periphrastic past tense), so that the formal
third singular aorist active adā ‘he created’, preferred by Darius I and others in the solemn
formula seen in (1a), interchanges in otherwise virtually indentical contexts with Darius’s
two occurrences of the more colloquial imperfect adadā (1b–c):2
(1) a haya šiyāti-

m
adā martiya-hyā (DNa 3–4 etc.)3
who.M[NOM.SG] happiness-ACC.SG create.AOR[3SG] man-GEN.SG
b haya šiyāti-m adadā martiya-hyā (DSe 4)

who.M[NOM.SG] happiness-ASS.SG create.IPRF[3SG] man-GEN.SG
c haya adadā šiyāti-m martiya-hyā (DNb 2–3)

who.M[NOM.SG] create.IPRF[3SG] happiness-ACC.SG man-GEN.SG
‘(Ahuramazdā) who created happiness for man’.
Peculiar of Persian from its earliest stage are also some lexical items. Thus, the Indo-
Iranian verbs for ‘to speak, say’ *u̯ač- and *mrau̯H-/m
ruH- are continued in Avestan as
vac- and mrū- (cf. Vedic vac- and brav-), but are replaced in Old Persian by verbs that
2
Labels with specialized meanings and additional labels used in this chapter for glossing
are: aor = aorist, ezf = ezafe (also for the Middle Persian relative particle, 2.10.2), gen = genitive-dative,
hort = hortative particle, ins = instrumental-ablative, iprf = imperfect, iprt = imperativ.
3 The now standard system of sigla for referring to the Old Persian inscriptions was introduced
by Kent (1953) and expanded by others (Schmitt 2009: 7). Old Persian quotations in this chapter are
basically from Schmitt’s edition (note r̥ = [ər]), but no dot is used in a.u = aʰu etc., as no ambiguity with
the diphthong au̯ is possible, and accent marks are added when appropriate.
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apparently were originally used with honorific force: θanh- ‘to say’ (cf. Middle Persian
saxwan ‘word, speech’ > New Persian saxon, soxan) from an original meaning ‘to praise,
announce’ witnessed by Avestan saŋh- ‘to announce, declare’ and Vedic śaṃs- ‘to praise,
announce’; and gaub- ‘to say’, only attested in the middle diathesis with the meaning ‘to
call oneself ’ (> Middle Persian gō(w)-, guftan ‘to say, speak’ > New Persian gū(y)-, goftan),
from an original meaning ‘to praise, announce’ witnessed by Sogdian γwβ- ‘to praise’,
Choresmian γwβ(y)- ‘to praise oneself, boast, be proud’, etc. Similarly, Old Persian does
not continue Indo-Iranian *ćrau̯-/ć ru- ‘to hear’ (cf. Avestan sru- and Vedic śrav-),4 but
has the vivid metaphorical ā-xšnu- ‘to hear’ ← ‘to sharpen (the ears)’ (> Middle Persian
āšnaw-, āšnūdan, cf. New Persian šenav-, šenudan), whose original meaning is preserved
in Avestan hu-xšnuta- ‘well-sharpened’ and Vedic kṣṇav- ‘to whet, sharpen’ (cf. Schmitt
1989: 84; Cheung 2007: 113–14, 334, 456–7).
2.6.1 New perfect and pluperfect

The old synthetic perfect occurs only once in the optative (caxriyā third singular active to
kar-‘to do’ in DB 1.50) and is actually replaced, in the indicative, by a new periphrastic for-
mation with resultative value (Skjærvø 2009b: 144–5). This new perfect consists of the -ta-
past participle and the auxiliary ah-‘to be’, which is omitted in the third singular, and occurs
with both intransitive (2) and transitive verbs (3):
(2) Pārsa-hyā martiya-hyā dūrai̯ r̥šti-š parāgmatā

Persian-GEN.SG man-GEN.SG far.away spear-NOM.SG arrive.PST.PTCP.F[NOM.SG]
‘the Persian man’s spear has arrived far away’ (DNa 43‒5).
(3) Çūsā-yā paru fraša-m framāta-m,

Susa-LOC.SG much(NOM.SG.N) wonderful-NOM.SG.N order.PST.PTCP-NOM.SG.N,
paru fraša-m kr̥ta-m
much(NOM.SG.N) wonderful-NOM.SG.N do.PST.PTCP-NOM.SG.N
‘In Susa, much wonderful work has been ordered, much wonderful work has been
executed’ (DSf 56–7).
When the copula is in the imperfect, the formation has pluperfect value (4):
(4) xšaça-m, taya hacā amāxam tau̯mā-yā

kingship-NOM.SG REL[NOM.SG.N] from 1PL.GEN family-INS.SG
parābr̥ta-m āha, ava adam
take.away.PST.PTCP-NOM.SG.N be.IPRF[3SG], that[ACC.SG.N] 1SG.NOM
patipada-m akunav-am
back.in.place-ACC.SG.N do.IPRF-1SG
‘I re-established the kingship which had been taken away from our family’ (DB 1.61‒2).
4 The conservative Old Persian past participle passive çuta-‘famous’ ← ‘heard of ’ is only found as the
first member in proper names attested in the parallel tradition (Tavernier 2007: 161–2).
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Since the -ta- past participle has a passive meaning with transitive verbs, their new perfect is
also only passive and contrasts with the present and the imperfect that have both active and
passive constructions. When an agent is expressed, this is in the genitive-dative (5):
(5) utā taya manā kr̥ta-m utā

and REL[NOM.SG.N] 1SG.GEN do.PST.PTCP-NOM.SG.N and
taya=mai̯ piç-a kr̥ta-m,
REL[NOM.SG.N]=1SG.OBL father-GEN do.PST.PTCP-NOM.SG.N,
avas=ci Auramazdā pā-tu
that.ACC.SG.N=INDF Ahuramazdā[NOM.SG.M] protect-IPRT.3SG
‘and may Ahuramazdā protect whatever I have done and whatever my father has done’
(← ‘ ... what has been done by me and what has been done by my father’) (XPa 19‒20).
This construction with the agent in the genitive-dative, often referred to as the ‘manā kr̥tam
construction’, is the systematization of inherited expressions occasionally found in Avestan
(Haig 2008: 23–88; Jügel 2015: 68–80, 322–4, 571–8) and is at the origin of the Middle Persian
ergative construction (section 2.10.5).
The so-called ‘potential construction’ consisting of a past participle and the verbs kar-‘to
do’ (active) and bav-‘to become’ (passive) expresses (successful) completion of an action in
Old Persian (Filippone 2015).
2.6.2 Beginnings of the ezafe construction

The relative pronoun haya-/taya-5 used to join a modifier to a usually preceding substantive
(Kent 1953: 85; Skjærvø 2009b: 100–1) is another construction which is also found in Avestan
and developed further as the Middle Persian relative particle (section 2.10.2) and the New
Persian ezafe. For more discussion on ezafe, refer to Chapters 3, 6, 7, 9, and 19. The modifer
can be an apposition, an adjective (6), or a modifying noun or pronoun (7):
(6) hau̯=mai̯ ima xšaça-m frābara taya

he=1SG.OBL this[ACC.SG.N] kingdom-ACC.SG.N bestow.IPRF[3SG] rel[ACC.SG.N]
vazr̥ka-m taya uvasa-m
great-ACC.SG.N REL[ACC.SG.N] possessed.of.good.horses-ACC.SG.N
umartiya-m
possessed.of.good.men-ACC.SG.N
‘He bestowed this kingdom on me, great, possessed of good horses (and) good men’
(DSf 11–12).
(7) kāra haya manā ava-m kāra-m

army[NOM.SG] REL.M[NOM.SG] 1SG.GEN that-ACC.SG.M army-ACC.SG.M
taya-m Vahyazdāta-hya6 aja vasai̯
REL-ACC.SG.M Vahyazdāta-GEN.SG beat.IPRF[3SG] greatly
‘my army beat that army of Vahyazdāta greatly’ (DB 3.45‒6).
5
The stem haya-is used for the nominative singular masculine and feminine, the stem taya-for all
other cases. The Old Persian relative pronoun is an innovation which resulted from the univerbation of
the Indo-Iranian demostrative pronoun *sá-/t á-and relative pronoun *i̯á- (Avestan ha-/t a- and ya-).
6 So spelled.
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With appositions, the case of the relative pronoun and the apposition is the same as that
of the modified noun: nominative Gaumāta haya maguš (DB 1.44), accusative Gaumātam
tayam magum (DB 1.49–50) ‘Gaumāta the Magian’.
2.7 Loanwords in Old Persian
As there are Old Persian words and names in the parallel tradition, so there are a number of
loanwords in the Achaemenid inscriptions. A Semitic word such as Aramaic mašk ‘skin’ with
the emphatic state suffix -ā (rather than Babylonian mašku) was borrowed as the -ā- declen-
sion word maškā-(> Middle and New Persian mašk ‘leather bottle’) to refer to the ‘(inflated)
skins’ used by Darius’s army as floats to cross the Tigris (DB 1.86: Schmitt 2014: 213).
Most loanwords, however, concern kingship and administration and are probably of
Median origin, though the phonological developments observed in these loanwords differ
from the Old Persian ones but are not specifically Median: because the Persians had been
subject to the Medes until the conquest of Media by Cyrus II (558–530 BC), it is only natural
that the Persians regarded themselves as their political heirs and took up their political ter-
minology. Thus, on the one hand, it is virtually certain that the epithets vispa-zana- ‘having
all (kinds of) men’ and uv-aspa- ‘having good horses’ that qualify the empire (and contrast
with everyday Old Persian visa- ‘all’ and asa- ‘horse’ < Indo-Iranian *u̯íću̯a- and *áću̯a-)
come from Median because the outcome sp of Indo-Iranian *ću̯ is documented by the
Median form spáka ‘bitch’ quoted by Herodotus (Histories 1.110.1; cf. Old Persian *saka-‘dog’
> Middle and New Persian sag). On the other hand, one can only postulate a Median origin
for xšāyaϑiya- ‘king’ (> Middle and New Persian šāh), with -ϑiy- instead of expected Old
Persian -šiy- < Iranian *-ϑi̯-, because the Median outcome of Iranian *-ϑi̯-is not otherwise
known (Schmitt 1984: 185–96).
Part of the political terminology adopted from Median goes ultimately back to earlier
Near Eastern formulas: for example, the expression vašnā Auramazdāha ‘by the greatness/
might of Ahuramazdā’ (Skjærvø 2007: 903, 935, instrumental of *vazar-/v ašn- ‘greatness’,
cf. vazr̥ka-‘great’ > Middle Persian wuzurg > New Persian bozorg) correponds to Urartian
Ḫaldinini alsuišini/ušmašini ‘by the greatness/might of Ḫaldi’; and the title xšāyaϑiya
xšāyaϑiyānām ‘king of kings’ corresponds to Babylonian šar šarrāni. Both formulas betray a
non-Iranian origin because the modifying genitives (Auramazdāha, xšāyaϑiyānām) follow
the modified nouns instead of preceding them, as is commonly the case in Old Iranian.
The regular word order of the title was restored in Middle Persian šāhān šāh > New Persian
šāhan-šāh (Meillet and Benveniste 1931: 14–15; Colditz 2003: 63–4).
2.8 From Old to Middle Persian
Grammar and spelling mistakes frequently found in the inscriptions of Artaxerxes I (465–
24), II (404–359), and III point to a language already approaching Middle Persian with con-
fusion and loss of endings and conflation of different antecedents. Some of the mistakes
are unsuccessful endeavours to restore the by then archaic forms (Kent 1953: 23‒4; Schmitt
1989: 60): for example, the genitive-dative singular (formed by appending the a-declension
Book.indb 15 18-Jun-18 8:15:40 PM

ending -ahyā also to nominatives of other declensions) occurs instead of the nominative and
vice versa in genealogies from Artaxerxes I onwards and, in an inscription of Artaxerxes III,
the regular i-declension singular accusatives būmim ‘earth’ and šiyātim ‘happiness’ (e.g. DNa
2, 4) are replaced by būmām and šāyatām (A³Pa 2, 4) with the more common ā-declension
ending. The latter mistake also reveals that the word had become šāt or the like by the mid-
fourth century (cf. the historical Pahlavi spelling <šʾtˈ> for the Middle Persian adjective šād
‘happy’ < Old Persian šiyāta-) because the -ā- resulting from -iyā- was erroneously restored
as -āya- on account of the coincident outcome -ā- from earlier -āya- found, for instance, in
xšāyaϑiya-‘king’ > Middle Persian šāh (see Schmitt 1999: 59–118 for a detailed study of the
features of ‘Late Old Persian’).
During the long Greek and Parthian domination of Iran by the Seleucids (305–125 BC)
and the Arsacids (247 AC–224 BC), the documentation of Persian is scarce and provides
little linguistic information: a damaged and hardly readable inscription on Darius I’s tomb
at Naqš-e Rostam near Persepolis, where the words ḥšʾyty wzrk ‘great king’, mʾhy ‘month’,
and possibly slwk ‘Seleucus’ have been recognized, is thought to have been written phonet
ically in Early Middle Persian in Aramaic script at the request of some noble Persian in the
early Seleucid period (Boyce and Grenet 1991: 118–20); the legends on the third series of
coins of the rulers of Fars, where <BRH> (from Aramaic <brh> br-eh ‘his son’ with suffixed
pronoun inappropriate to the context instead of <br> bar one would expect if the legends
were actually written in Aramaic) must stand for Middle Persian pus ‘son’, attest to the use
of aramaeograms (conventionally transliterated by capital letters) for writing Persian from
about the end of the second century BC (Henning 1958: 25); and an inscription on a bowl
from the time of Ardašīr II, king of Fars in the second half of the first century BC and a vassal
of the Arsacids, is the first known and readable Middle Persian inscription (Skjærvø 1997a).
Under the Arsacid dynasty, Parthian gained a dominant position in Iran as the vehicle
of Iranian culture, including oral epic poetry (Boyce 2003), and this caused a first batch of
Parthian words, recognizable from phonological changes contrasting with the Persian ones,
to enter Middle Persian (cf. section 2.9 on later Parthian loanwords), whence they then
reached New Persian as in the case of such a political term as Parthian šahr → Middle Persian
šahr ‘kingdom, country; city’ > New Persian šahr ‘city, town’ (as against Old Persian xšaça-<
Iranian *xšaϑra-: see Tedesco 1921: esp. 198–9 on -hr- and cf. section 2.6, no. 2) or such a term
common in military and epic contexts as Parthian asp → Middle Persian asp > New Persian
asb ‘horse’ (as against Old Persian asa-< Indo-Iranian *áću̯a-: cf. section 2.6, no. 3).
2.9 Middle Persian: documentation

and scripts
Middle Persian formed in post-Achaemenian times as a development of Old Persian and its
use was confined to Fars until the rise of the Sasanian dynasty (224–651 AD), when it began
not only to be more substantially employed in writing, but also to spread outside its region of
origin, as it became the language of administration and communication in the Sasanian em-
pire. Middle Persian continued to be used as a living language for a while in post-Sasanian
times and as a church language by the Zoroastrians in Iran and India and the Manichaeans
Book.indb 16 18-Jun-18 8:15:40 PM

in Chinese Central Asia. Major Middle Persian texts date from the third century, on account
of the connection of the language with the ruling dynasty, and the ninth century, when it
enjoyed a revival due to the endeavour on the part of the Zoroastrians to preserve their re-
ligious tradition after the spread of Islam. The use of Middle Persian spans, thus, over many
centuries and well beyond Fars. This is the reason why various linguistic stages and devel-
opments are mirrored by the different text groups that document it (survey in Durkin-
Meisterernst 2014: 15–25 with references).
2.9.1 Inscriptional Middle Persian

The first substantial text group are the inscriptions (Huyse 2009: 90–102). Most important
and comparatively extensive are the third-century ones of the Sasanian kings Šābuhr I (241–
72) on the Kaʿbe-ye Zardošt at Naqš-e Rostam and Narseh I (293–302) at Pāikūlī in Iraqi
Kurdistan, the prominent Zoroastrian priest Kerdīr, and the court dignitary Abnūn. The
other royal inscriptions (none are known after Šābuhr III, 383–8), the coin legends, and the
inscriptions on seals, gems, bullae, and vessels provide less linguistic information.7 Similarly
to what happened with the Achaemenids, only the first Sasanians Ardašīr I (224–40) and
Šābuhr I produced trilingual inscriptions in Middle Persian as well as in Parthian and Greek
in continuity with the previous imperial powers of the Seleucids and the Arsacids, while
Šābuhr I already gives up Greek in a few inscriptions and Narseh in the Pāikūlī inscription
uses only Parthian besides Middle Persian. Inscriptions by subsequent, fourth-century kings
are in Middle Persian only.
2.9.2 Manichaean Middle Persian

A second text group, essential for the study of Middle Persian phonology, is the Manichaean
literature in Middle Persian (Sundermann 2009) initiated in the third century by Mani him-
self (216–77), the founder of the Manichaean religion. He was at the court of King Šābuhr
I and dedicated him a description of his doctrine in Middle Persian titled Šābuhragān, which
survives in comparatively extensive fragments. A number of other dogmatic, homiletic, and
hymnic works composed by Mani and his disciples and followers are known from Middle
Persian manuscript fragments recovered from Turfan in Chinese Central Asia. The bulk of
them, either translations or original compositions, must go back to the time when Persian
speaking Manichaeans were still in Iran, before escaping persecution by the Zoroastrians,
and bears witness to the language as spoken in the early Sasanian centuries (Durkin-
Meisterernst 2014: 9–11), though a few texts may have been produced in Central Asia and
some late features are occasionally detected (Durkin-Meisterernst 2003).
7 The same applies to the legal and administrative documents (few third-century texts from Dura-
Europos in present-day Syria, various papyri from seventh-century Egypt, documents on parchment and
linen from seventh-century Iran (Weber 2008), and a number of ostraka from post-Sasanian Iran) and
the late private inscriptions in cursive script mostly on tombs (Huyse 2009: 100–5), including the Middle
Persian-Chinese one from Xi’an in China (Rezai Baghbidi 2011).
Book.indb 17 18-Jun-18 8:15:40 PM

2.9.3 Zoroastrian Middle Persian

Since Narseh’s Pāikūlī inscription (between 293 and 296) is the last royal inscription with a
Parthian version and none of the few short private Parthian inscriptions in Parthia is pre-
sumably later than the fourth century, it is likely that, at some point, the Sasanians imposed
Middle Persian as the only official and written language of Iran with the consequence that it
gradually spread everywhere from the fourth century on and even became the only recog-
nized language of Zoroastrianism as the state religion of the Sasanian empire, thus marking
the cultural triumph of Persia. The replacement of Parthian by Persian outside Fars brought
about, by reaction, the introduction of a further number of Parthian loanwords in Persian
(Boyce 1979: 116–17; see also section 2.14 with n. 22). This is why, whereas the Manichaean
texts basically represent genuine Middle Persian in its provincial purity (Sundermann
1989b: 139), a large number of Parthian loanwords characterizes conversely the late Sasanian
speech varieties mirrored in the literature in Zoroastrian Middle Persian (also called Book
Pahlavi). Though no manuscript is earlier than the fourteenth century, the Zoroastrian
books were produced in the ninth and tenth centuries also on the basis of earlier textual
tradition and form the third and largest text group of Middle Persian, which comprises, be-
sides translations of large portions of the Avesta, other religious, doctrinal, didactical, and
juridical texts, as well as a few non-religious ones (Macuch 2009).
It is noteworthy that, unlike later Zoroastrian Middle Persian, the early Avesta transla-
tions are linguistically conservative and preserve a morphology and syntax comparable to
Inscriptional and Manichaean Middle Persian and the Pahlavi Psalter (section 2.9.4) and
mirror a comparably early stage of the language (Cantera Glera 1999, who contrasts ‘Old
Pahlavi’ with Book Pahlavi). For more information on Pahlavi, refer to Chapters 3 and 11.
2.9.4 Christian Middle Persian

After their separation from the patriarchate of Antioch and the Western church chiefly for polit-
ical reasons in the fifth century, Christians in Sasanian Iran used Middle Persian both in original
texts and in translations before eventually abandoning it in favour of Syriac as their sole church
language (Henning 1958: 77–8; Sims-Williams 1992: 534). The scant remnants of Middle Persian
texts produced and used by Christians form a fourth, small text group consisting just in frag-
ments of the so-called Pahlavi Psalter (ed. Andreas and Barr 1933) dated by scholars between
the fourth and the seventh century (Durkin-Meisterernst 2006: 6–78) and a fragmentary list of
Pahlavi aramaeograms, both found in Bulayïq (Turfan).
2.9.5 Middle Persian scripts

Apart from Manichaean texts, for which the clear and unambiguous Manichaean script is used,
all other text groups are written in varieties of the highly conservative Pahlavi script derived
from the script used in the Achaemenid period for writing Official Aramaic (Skjærvø 1996;
Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 29–74).
8
Carbon-14 dating of the Pahlavi Psalter now shows it to be not earlier than the late eighth or ninth
century (Dieter Weber, lecture at a workshop in Berlin in 2010).
Book.indb 18 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

The Pahlavi script is characterized by a heterographic writing system that combines words and
endings written phonetically with hundreds of frequently occurring words (verbal and nom-
inal stems, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, and conjunctions) written as aramaeograms (or
heterograms), that is, written in their Aramaic or pseudo-Aramaic shape but read as the corre
sponding Persian words (Utas 1988), much like the Latin ligatures & <et> and @ <ad> one reads
and and at in English (cf. <BRH> pus ‘son’ in section 2.8). For more information on heterograms,
refer to Chapter 11. The script also abounds in historical spellings that mirror the phonology of
the language in the last centuries BC and probably no longer correspond to the evolution of the
language at the time when the texts were written from the third century on, as is shown by the
contemporary Manichaean spellings: thus, Manichaean <pyd>, <p(y)dr> indicate that the word
for ‘father’ was already pronounced pid, pidar (direct and oblique < Old Persian nominative pitā
and accusative *pitaram, section 2.10.1, no. 1) with voiced postvocalic d in AD 300 ± 50 in contrast
with Pahlavi <pytˈ>, <pytl> with historical <t>, used besides the aramaeograms <ABˈ>, <ABYtl>
(see the groundbreaking article by MacKenzie 1967, and its implementation in MacKenzie 1971).
In contrast to the conservative writing conventions of the Pahlavi script which lasted un-
changed until its demise and even introduced pseudo-historical spellings, its ductus under-
went a process of cursivization, which increased the intricacies of the script in that the shapes
of several letters came to coincide in the Zoroastrian books and especially the papyri and the
ostraka (Henning 1958: 46–9).9
2.10 A new language type: survivals

and innovations
In comparison with Old Persian, Middle Persian (Table 2.1) is characterized by phonological
changes that resulted in a phonemic system very close to the Early New Persian one:
1) lenition of consonants in non-initial position through (a) voicing of the old voiceless

occlusives p, t, k > b, d, g after voiced sounds10 (xšap-‘night’ > šab; nominative brātā
‘brother’ > direct brād; bandaka-‘vassal, follower’ > bandag ‘servant’); (b) voicing of
old č > *ǰ after vowels and subsequent assibilation and depalatalization of secondarily
voiced *ǰ and original ǰ > *ž > z in all positions (hacā ‘from’ > az; present stem jīva-‘to
live’ > zī(w)-); (c) spirantization of the old voiced occlusives b, d, g > w, y, y (naiba-
‘good’ > nēw; pāda-‘foot’ > pāy; baga-‘god’ > bay);
2) contraction of the old diphthongs ai̯, au̯ > ē, ō (dai̯va-‘demon’ > dēw; gauša-‘ear’ >
gōš) and introduction of short e and o (dahyu- ‘land, district’ > deh ‘land; village’;
Auramazdā-> Ohrmezd (Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 131–2);
9
After the Pahlavi script was restricted to Zoroastrian circles in Islamic times, Middle Persian
texts in Pahlavi script were occasionally transposed in Avestan script (Pāzand, twelfth century) or even
Arabo-Persian script (Pārsī, twelfth and thirteenth centuries) with adaptation to contemporary spoken
Persian and replacement of aramaeograms and difficult words (Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 23–5). On
the possibility of obtaining information on Early New Persian from Pāzand texts, see Lazard (1991);
Klingenschmitt (2000: 195–6); and the criticism by de Jong (2003).
10 Cantillations and transcriptions in Sogdian script of Manichaean Middle Persian texts use <β δ γ>
to record the late allophones [β δ γ] of postvocalic /b d g/that Middle Persian shares with Early New
Persian (Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 58, 116–17; cf. section 2.16.2).
Book.indb 19 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

Table 2.1 Middle Persian phonemes (adapted from Durkin-Meisterernst

2014: 114ff.)11
īi ūu
ēe ə (?) ōo
āa
Labial Labiodental Dental Palatal Velar Laryngeal

Plosive p b t d k g
Affricate f c j
Spirant s z š (ž) x xw γ (?) h
Nasal m n ŋ (?)
Liquid rl
Approximant w y
3) general loss of vowel and coda in final syllables due to accentuation of the previous
syllables (pati ‘in, at’ > pad; mártiya-‘man’ > mard; genitive-dative plural martiyā́nām
> oblique plural mardān).12
The last mentioned change amounted to the loss of very many of the old nominal and verbal
endings and brought about the disintegration of the Old Persian morphological system and
its restructuring into a new Middle Persian one. Nouns and pronouns no longer distinguish
gender (as against Old Persian masculine, feminine, and neuter) and their inflection is reduced
first to two cases and then one case in the singular and plural, the dual number having vanished
(see Chapter 9 for more discussion on case). Also the verbal inflection lost many forms and
categories: the rare aorist, perfect, and future13 temporal stems, the middle diathesis, the dual
number, and virtually all the secondary endings are not continued, modal forms are much re-
duced, and rare imperfect and -ya- passive forms survive for a short time. Each verb has just a
present stem, from which analytical forms are obtained, and a past participle in -t/-d (< Old
Persian -ta-), which combines with auxiliary verbs into past periphrastic formations.
The loss of the old inflectional richness affected heavily the morphology and syntax of
Persian, which greatly expanded the use of periphrastic verb forms (section 2.10.5) and
11 In this chapter, vowels with macrons are used in the phonological and the conventional scholarly
transcriptions for long vowels. Likewise, ’ is used for [ʔ], c j for [ʧ] [ʤ], š ž for [ʃ] [ʒ], and y for [j].
12 On the transformations of the accentual systems from Proto-Iranian to Old and Middle Persian, see
Klingenschmitt (2000: 210–15); Huyse (2003: esp. 47–61, 95).

13 The only possible but debated future form in Old Persian is the ‘historical future’ patiyāvanhyai̯ ‘I
will/was to implore’ in DB 1.55, if read correctly (Schmitt 2014: 275–6). However, later forms like Middle
Persian paywah-(Inscriptional <ptwḥ->, Manichaean <pywh->) ‘to implore, entreat’, without -n- and
with -h-as part of the present stem, rather point to an Iranian root *u̯ah-‘to venerate, implore, pray’—
which also continues in Avestan, Parthian, and Bactrian—and seem incompatible with the idea that
patiy-ā-van-hy-ai contains the future suffix -hy-(< Indo-Iranian *-si̯-) added to the root van-< Indo-
Iranian *u̯an-‘to desire’, otherwise unattested in Iranian (Cheung 2007: 405–6).
Book.indb 20 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

resorted more and more to preverbal particles (bē lit. ‘out’, hamē lit. ‘always’) to express
aspectual distinctions (Brunner 1977: 157–68; Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 388–90) and pre-
positions (especially pad ‘to, at, in, on, etc.’, ō ‘to, at, etc.’, az ‘from, because of, etc.’, and the
postposition rāy ‘for, for the sake of, etc.’) to express and disambiguate syntactical functions
of nouns and pronouns, including those of the agent through pad (8) and az (9) and the
direct object through ō (10), rarely used for inanimate objects (Paul 2003a: 188–90; Durkin-
Meisterernst 2013: 251), and, in late texts, rāy (11), though agent and direct object were basi
cally expressed by the oblique case alone, which was mostly endingless in the singular (see
Brunner 1977: 116–55; Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 298–359, 386, for the sources of the ex-
amples; cf. section 2.17.8, with n. 32):
(8) ud hān rōšnī ud xwašan īg yazd-ān, ī az nox pad āz ud

and that light and beauty EZF god-PL, which from beginning by Āz and
Ahremen ud dēw-ān ud parīg-ān zad būd, ...
Ahremen and demon-PL and witch-PL smite.PST.PTCP be.PST.PTCP, ...
‘and that light and beauty of the gods, which was smitten in the beginning by Āz and
Ahremen and the demons and the witches, ... ’.
(9) dēn ī xwarāsān pad wisp šahr ud pāygoš āfur-īh-ā-nd

religion EZF east in every country and region bless-PASS-PRS.SBJV-3PL
jāydān az wisp yazd-ān
for.ever by all god-PL
‘The religion of the east should be for ever blessed by all the gods in all countries and
regions!’
(10) uzdēsparist-ān kē parist-ē-nd ō pahikar-ān

idolator-PL who worship-PRS.IND-3PL OBJ image-PL
‘idolators who worship images’.
(11) ābāyed ka14 ān šagr-ān rāy zīndag ō amāh āwar-ē-d

it.is.necessary that those lion-PL OBJ alive to 1PL bring-PRS.IND-2PL
‘It is necessary that you bring us those lions alive’.
Word order is comparatively less free in Middle Persian and may contribute in part to
make clear the relationships of words in a clause (Mękarska 1981–4; Durkin-Meisterernst
2014: 262–3).
The language moved, thus, from the mainly synthetic morphological patterns of Old
Persian to the decidedly more analytic type of Middle Persian (Henning 1958: 89–90).
2.10.1 Two-case declension and shift from case

to number opposition
Substantives, adjectives, and pronouns preserve conspicuous remnants of a two-case system
(Table 2.2) with a direct case used for the subject and the predicate noun, and an oblique case
14
See section 2.18 on the late confusion of ka ‘when, if ’, kē ‘who, which’, and kū ‘where; that; than’.
Book.indb 21 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

Table 2.2 The early two-case system of Middle Persian

Singular Plural
Direct Oblique Direct Oblique

Nouns of relationship -Ø -ar -ar ‑arān (-arīn, -arūn)
Other nouns -Ø -Ø -Ø -ān (-īn, ‑ūn)
First singular pronoun an man
used for direct object, indirect object, agent, to express possession, and with prepositions,
the postposition rāy, and the relative particle (in the plural, either the direct or the oblique
case could express the direct object). The two cases (Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 197–203,
206–8; on the prehistory of the system, see Huyse 2003; Cantera 2009) are formally distin-
guished only in:
1) the singular and plural of the nouns of relationship in -dar < Old Persian -tar- (sin-
gular: direct brād < nominative brātā, oblique brādar < accusative *brātaram; plural:
direct brādar < nominative *brātara, oblique brādarān < analogical genitive-dative
*brātarānām) and pus ‘son’ (Old Persian puça-) with analogical pusar;
2) the first person singular pronoun: direct an < *anam < Old Persian nominative adam
(Sims-Williams 1981: 166); oblique man < genitive-dative manā;15
3) the plural of all other substantives, adjectives, and non-personal pronouns (oblique
-ān, more rarely -īn, -ūn < Old Persian genitive -ānām, *-īnām, -ūnām).
The two-case system occurs coherently only in Inscriptional Middle Persian but is on
the verge of dissolution and vanishes in time. Already in the Pahlavi Psalter the oblique
plural is used in a few instances as a general plural form (Skjærvø 1983), as regularly hap-
pens in Manichaean Middle Persian, which only distinguishes two cases in the nouns of
relationship and the first person singular pronoun (Sims-Williams 1981: 166–7 1). The two-
case system is still functional in the early Avesta translations, as is particularly clear for
the nouns of relationship (Cantera Glera 1999: 194–202). The further development during
the Sasanian period resulted ultimately in the simplification of the system in Zoroastrian
Middle Persian, where man is the only form of the first person pronoun, the old oblique
-ān is the general plural ending (so that an opposition of number prevails on the oppo
sition of case), and only the nouns of relationship keep the old singular direct and oblique
forms (brād, brādar) but without any functional distiction. The next step will be taken
by New Persian, where only originally oblique singular forms in -ar survive (singular
barādar, plural barādarān).
In late texts, both Manichaean and especially Zoroastrian, there also occurs the
plural ending -īhā (Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 201), the antecedent of New Persian -hā
(cf. section 2.17.10, n. 35).
15 The enclitic personal pronouns (singular -m, -t, -š; plural -mān, -tān, -šān), most often suffixed to
the first word in a clause, only function as oblique in all text groups (Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 208–10,
291–6), as is still the case in New Persian.
Book.indb 22 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

2.10.2 Relative pronouns and relative particle

The Middle Persian relative pronoun and particle ī (Manichaean also <ʿyg> īg with
suffixal -g < -ka-) continues Old Persian haya-/t aya-in both its values as a pronoun proper
and as a device connecting substantives with modifiers (section 2.6.2). Middle Persian ī fol-
lows head nouns or pronouns and connects them to modifying dependent nouns or nominal
phrases (12–13), prepositional phrases (14), adjectives and adjectival phrases (15), and even
clauses (16) (see Boyce 1964: 28–9, 37–47; Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 268–7 1, for the sources
of the examples):
(12) ō wimand ī Xūzestān

to border EZF Xuzestan
‘to the border of Xuzestan’.
(13) pad nām ī=š pidar

in name EZF=3SG.OBL father
‘in the name of his father’.
(14) aw-īn ī andar diz

that-PL EZF in fortress
‘those in the fortress’.
(15) āstānag ī naxwistēn ī abardar mahy ud mehmdar az abārīg-ān

threshold EZF first EZF higher greater and broader than other-PL
‘the first threshold, higher, greater, and broader than the other ones’.
(16) čē ēn=iz ī nūn amāh ō ēn handēmān ī yazd-ān

because this=too EZF now 1PL to this presence EZF god-PL
mad h-ē-m, ...
come.PST.PTCP be-PRS.IND-1PL, ...
‘because this too, that we have now come to the presence of the gods, ... ’.
This construction largely compensates for the loss of the Old Persian genitive-dative and
other indirect cases, so that it occurs much more commonly in Middle Persian. It is the
direct antecedent of the New Persian ezafe construction with -e (doxtar-e bāhuš ‘intelligent
girl’, mardom-e Gilān ‘the people of Gilan’, etc.; cf. section 2.17.9), though the Middle and New
Persian constructions have partly different functions and the New Persian one occurs even
more frequently.
In addition to the relative pronoun ī, Middle Persian, like the other Middle Iranian lan-
guages, also uses the inherited interrogative pronouns kē ‘who? and čē ‘what?’ with relative
force, though, in this function, reference to living beings or inanimated things is not always
distinguished (Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 216, 415–30).
2.10.3 Present and modal forms

Middle Persian present stems continue Old Iranian present stems formed by means
of a variety of suffixes, whose presence is partly obscured by phonological changes
Book.indb 23 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

Table 2.3 Manichaean Middle Persian endings of the present

(after Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 232ff.)16
Indicative Imperative Subjunctive Optative
1 singular ‑ēm (‑am, ‑om) ‑ān
2 ‑ēh > ‑ē - Ø (‑ē) ‑āy
3 ‑ēd (‑ad) ‑ād ‑ēh > ‑ē
1 plural ‑om, ‑ēm (‑am) ‑ām
2 ‑ēd ‑ēd ‑ād
3 ‑ēnd ‑ānd
(e.g., with suffix *-nau̯-, Old Iranian *kr̥-nau̯- ‘to do’ > Old Persian ku-nau̯- > Middle
Persian kun-; cf. section 2.6, no. 1 for an example [dān-‘to know’] of the old suffix -nā- and
section 2.10.4 on the old suffix -sa-). It is commonly held that, in the inflection of the present
(Table 2.3), two suffixes came to prevail: Old Persian -aya- > Middle Persian -ē- for indicative
and imperative; Old Persian -a- with the addition of the subjunctive suffix -a- (> -ā-> Middle
Persian -ā-) for subjunctive and the optative suffix -i- (-ai̯-> Middle Persian -ē-) for optative,
only attested in the third singular -ē < -ēh < *-ait (?) (Sundermann 1989: 148–50). Recently,
Durkin-Meisterernst (2014: 241) has suggested that also the subjunctive contains the old
suffix -aya- (-aya- + -a- > -ayā-> Middle Persian -ā-), which provides a unified historical ex-
planation of the inflection of the present with parallels in Middle Indo-Aryan.
A conspicuous exception is the third singular present of the copula ast ‘is’, which con-
tinues the suffixless inherited Old Persian form as-ti with the ending added directly to the
root. The rest of the paradigm is levelled and based on the stem h-(hēm, hē, etc.).
Differently from Inscriptional and Manichaean Middle Persian, the Pahlavi Psalter, and
the early Avesta translations, later Zoroastrian Middle Persian only has subjunctive forms
for the third persons singular and plural (Cantera Glera 1999: 177–87; Durkin-Meisterernst
2014: 232–9).
In the absence of a specific form for the future, this is expressed by the indicative present
as the mood of plain statements and the subjunctive present as the mood of wish and pos-
sibility. Combined with the particle ēw/hēb, the indicative acquires an exhortative meaning
similar to the imperative and optative (Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 377–81).
2.10.4 New verb suffixes: causatives, denominatives,

‘inchoatives’, and passive
New present stem formations that compensate for the loss or change of function of old ones
(e.g. the suffix -aya- also forming causatives in Old Persian [Kent 1953: 72–3] but turned into
16 Alternative endings only attested in Inscriptional and Zoroastrian Middle Persian are enclosed in
parentheses.
Book.indb 24 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

a general present suffix in Middle Persian) are produced by a few suffixes with clearly defined
functions (Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 228–30):
1) -ēn- makes an intransitive verb transitive (rōzēn- ‘to make bright’ from rōz- ‘to
shine’), changes a transitive verb into a causative (zāmēn- ‘to send’ from zām- ‘to
lead’), and forms denominatives with causative meaning (pērōzēn- ‘to make vic-
torious’ from pērōz ‘victorious, victor’);
2) the so-called ‘inchoatives’ add synchronically the suffix -s- (< Old Persian -sa-, no
longer productive in its original inchoative value: Kent 1953: 71; Weber 1970) to the
past participle without final -t to form intransitive verbs (hanzafs-‘come to an end,
become perfect’ from hanzām-, hanzaft- ‘to finish, fulfil’);
3) -īh- forms passives (dānīh-‘to be known, recognized’ from dān-‘to know, recognize’;
kēšīh- ‘to be taught’ from a suffixless denominative *kēš- ‘to teach’ from kēš ‘(false)
teaching’) and is possibly a transformed reflex of the Old Persian suffix -ya-.
2.10.5 Imperfect, periphrastic past tenses, ergative

construction, and periphrastic passive
The old synthetic imperfect survives in only few forms in the early inscriptions (ʾkylydy
/akirīy/‘was made’ < Old Persian akariya; Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 244–6) and the third
singular anād, plural anānd of the verb ‘to be’ (if based ultimately on forms of the Old Persian
imperfect with stem āh- < a-ah- developed by analogical and conflation processes: see
Skjærvø 1991 and 1997b: 171–2). All other past tenses (Table 2.4) are expressed by periphrastic
formations consisting of a past participle and inflected forms (including periphrastic ones)
of the indicative and, more rarely, the subjunctive or the optative of the auxiliary verbs h-‘to
be’ (the third singular present being always omitted), ēst-, ēstād ‘to stand’, and baw-, būd ‘to
become’ as follows:17
Table 2.4 Middle Persian past tenses (PP = past participle)
Preterite PP + present of h‑ šud hēm I went, have gone

šud he went, has gone
Past preterite PP + preterite of h‑ šud būd hēm I had gone
šud būd he had gone
Perfect PP + present of ēst‑ šud ēstēm I have gone
šud ēstēd he has gone
nibišt ēstēd it is (stands) written
Pluperfect PP + preterite of ēst‑ šud ēstād hēm I had gone
šud ēstād he had gone
nibišt ēstād it was (stood) written
17
Skjærvø’s terminology (2009a: 218–19) is adopted here for past tenses in Middle Persian.
Book.indb 25 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

The periphrastic past tenses are a development and an expansion of the new perfect and
pluperfect of Old Persian (section 2.6.1). The periphrastic formation is further discussed
in Chapter 3. On the one hand, periphrastic past tenses of intransitive verbs have an active
meaning: for example, āmad hēm ‘I came’. On the other hand, when they occur with the
passive past participle of transitive verbs (cf. the Old Persian ‘manā kr̥tam construction’),
they have a passive meaning and the logical subject, if expressed, is grammatically an agent
in the oblique case: thus, from paymōz-, paymōxt ‘to don, wear; dress’, paymōxt hēm ‘I was
dressed’, paymōxt būd hēm ‘I had been dressed’, man paymōxt hēnd ‘I dressed them’ ← ‘they
were (hēnd) dressed by me (man)’ (Sundermann 1989b: 152–3). This gives rise to a situation
of split ergativity in that ergative alignement only occurs in the past of transitive verbs but
not in the past of intransitive verbs and the present of all verbs (Haig 2008: 89–129; Durkin-
Meisterernst 2014: 392–400; Jügel 2015: 81–95, 325–44, 626–806).
Besides the synthetic passives in -īh-, a periphrastic passive present can be formed by
combining a passive past participle with the present of baw-‘to become’: paymōxt bawēm ‘I
am (being) dressed’ (Sundermann 1989b: 152; Skjærvø 2009a: 221; cf. the Old Persian passive
‘potential construction’, section 2.6.1).
2.11 The linguistic situation in late

Sasanian Iran
An account by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 757 AD), a native of Fars who translated numerous works
from Middle Persian into Arabic and may be accordingly regarded as a realiable witness,
makes it possible to outline the linguistic situation in late Sasanian Iran. The account, which
must refer to the end of the Sasanian period in the mid-seventh century, has been trans-
mitted by Ibn al-Nadīm in his Fihrist (about 987 AD) and other early Arabic writers, and
studied in detail by Lazard (1971a) in its implications for the subsequent history of Persian.
According to it, five languages were then in use in Iran, including two non-Iranian ones:18
soryāni, that is, Aramaic; xuzi, possibly a survival of Elamite in Khuzistan; pārsi, the lan-
guage used in Fars and by the Zoroastrians priests (mowbad) and the learned people; dari,
used at the royal court (dar) and in the east up to Balkh (present-day Afghanistan); and
pahlavi, used in the historical region of ‘Fahlah’ (Pahle, north-western Iran).
In this context, pahlavi refers to the Parthian language still spoken in north-western
Iran at that time (Middle Persian Pahlaw means ‘Parthia’), while pārsi and dari denote
two varieties of Middle Persian, that must have coexisted during the formative period that
preceded the origin of New Persian (section 2.14). On the one hand, pārsi was Persian
proper, that is, the spoken language of Fars and southern Iran that also formed the basis of
the written religious and literary language. On the other hand, dari was a more innovative
variety that was spoken at the Sasanian court in Ctesiphon (al-Madā’in) in Mesopotamia,
but, as the prestigious language of the imperial capital, also spread east and was to form
the basis of New Persian.
18
New Persian equivalents are substituted here for al-Nadīm’s arabicized terms.
Book.indb 26 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

2.12 Chronological and other divisions

of New Persian
The history of New Persian, or simply Persian, covers a period ranging from the time of the
oldest documents assumed to be written in New Persian, in the eighth century AD, until
now. This span of time can be divided on the basis of various criteria—linguistic, histor-
ical, or a blending of both—and various divisions have been proposed (Windfuhr 1979: 166;
Paul 2013a: 258). The very beginning of the New Persian linguistic period is a controversial
issue. It is usually connected with the historical change brought about by the conquest of
Iran by Muslim Arabs and the end of the Sasanian empire in the mid-seventh century, but
this is only a conventional starting point based on extra-linguistic data. Indeed, it is unlikely
that such however epochal change, which afterwards also entailed a change of religion from
Zoroastrianism to Islam and the adoption of the Arabic script to write Persian, could have
any immediate consequences on the languages spoken in Iran (see Chapter 11 for more on
the influence of Arabic on Persian).
A possible division of the history of New Persian reckons three major periods, which cor-
respond to the traditional major periods in the history of Persian literature.
1) The first or archaic period, usually referred to as Early New Persian (Paul 2013b), lasts
from the first attestations of New Persian to the beginning of the thirteenth century.
It spans over several historical epochs, from the inclusion of Iran into the Arabic cal
iphate to the first Mongol incursions on Iran.
2) The period of Classical New Persian begins with the blossoming of Persian classical
literature in the thirteenth century, the century of Saʿdi, and is usually considered to
reach the eve of modern Iran.19 Starting from the thirteenth century, literary New
Persian reached a unitary form all over Iran, losing the dialectal features still present
in Early New Persian texts and giving rise to a canon, to which the literary language
shall adhere for the centuries to come. In this period the literary language exerted an
increasing influence on the old non-Persian dialects, which in some cases were even
supplanted, or survived longer only among the religious minorities of Iran (Yarshater
1974). Literary New Persian also exerted a unifying influence on the spoken varieties
of Persian, and the old Persian dialects were replaced by new dialects issued from the
encounter of the literary language with the old dialectal substratum. An example are
the old dialect of Isfahan studied by Tafażżoli (1971) and the modern one (Smirnova
1978). For more discussion on Persian dialects, see Chapters 3, 13, and 14 and for
more information on Isfahani, see Chapter 3.
3) Lastly, the period of Modern and Contemporary New Persian, from the mid-eighteenth
century to the present day, is characterized by an increasing influence, on the develop-
ment of the literary language as well as on Persian literature, of European culture and
languages: French, English, and—in the Central Asian varieties of Persian—Russian.
19 Criticism of the concept of ‘Classical Persian’ as a term referring to any linguistically based
definition of any period of the history of the New Persian language has been voiced by Paul 2002.
However, in the absence of a better definition, such term has been retained here.
Book.indb 27 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

Within each of these periods it is appropriate to distinguish between literary and non-
literary language varieties. Non-literary texts such as inscriptions, coins, and private
documents (letters, legal documents, etc.) are particularly important because, compared
to literary texts, they usually display linguistic features closely related to the everyday lan-
guage of a certain region and time. Moreover, inscriptions, coins, and private documents
are normally preserved in the original, while literary texts have mostly undergone a long
transmission that may have altered their linguistic reality because of the normalizing inter-
vention of copyists.
A last distinction concerns the presence of a high (or written) and a low (or spoken) vari
ety in Contemporary New Persian, as suggested by Jeremiás (1984) in a study on the in-
terpretation of the contemporary linguistic situation of Iran in terms of diglossia, though
this has been questioned by Perry (2003; summary of the matter in Rossi 2015). For more
information about diglossia, see Chapters 13 and 19. In actual fact, a distinction between a
spoken variety—with a further stylistic differentiation between a formal, official, or edu-
cated spoken sub-variety, and an informal, familiar, or colloquial spoken sub-variety—and
a literary or, for modern times, a standard variety should be taken into account not only for
Contemporary New Persian, but, with the due differences, also for each period in the history
of Persian (see Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, and 15 for more on colloquial form).
2.13 Early New Persian texts

in different scripts
Especially in the case of Early New Persian, it is important to take further into account the
differences between varieties reflected in documents in various scripts (Table 2.5). Indeed,
Early New Persian is documented not only by texts in Arabic script, but also by texts in other
scripts, emanating from the Persian speaking religious minorities spread all over Iran.
For Early New Persian the following documents should be considered, besides the texts in
Arabic script: Judaeo-Persian texts, that is, Persian texts in Hebrew script; Manichaean New
Persian texts; Persian texts in Syriac script; Zoroastrian New Persian texts in Pahlavi script
(on these, see de Blois 2000 and 2003). Judaeo-Persian undoubtedly represents the most im-
portant corpus, both for the quantity and quality of its documents, and for their ancientness.
Apart from single studies and editions, an overall study of the language of the Early Judaeo-
Persian texts, including some unpublished private letters, has been recently provided by Paul
(2013c). Like New Persian in Syriac script, which, however, offers a much smaller corpus,20
and unlike Manichaean and Zoroastrian New Persian, Judaeo-Persian has a continuation
into later periods. Later Judaeo-Persian texts are less interesting from the viewpoint of lin-
guistic history, however, as their language can be considered ‘an offshoot of Classical Persian’
(Shaked 2010: 321) and their orthography appears as a mere transliteration of Arabo-Persian
orthography (Meier 1981: 108).
20 Christians used the Pahlavi script in Sasanian Iran (section 2.9.4). In the Islamic period, they
normally used the Arabic script, even dating their manuscripts according to the Hegira, the Islamic
era. On this phenomenon and the cultural dynamics among the various ethnic-religious minorities in
ancient Iran, see Orsatti 2007a.
Book.indb 28 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

Table 2.5 New Persian documents in different scripts (with abbreviations)
Early New Persian in Arabic script

Marriage contract (Scarcia 1963, 1966)
Codex Vindobonensis (facsimile ed. Muwaffaq 1972)
QQ: Qur’ān-i Quds (Revāqi 1985; Lazard 1990)
AT: Asrār al-tawḥīd (Shafiʿi Kadkani 1987a)
Judeo-Persian
Ar: Argument (MacKenzie 1968; Shaked 1971a: 178–80; MacKenzie 1999: 671–3; MacKenzie 2011)
Du1: Letter from Dandān Uiliq 1, Central Asia, northeast of the Khotan oasis (Utas 1968;
Lazard 1988)
Du2: Letter from Dandān Uiliq 2 (Zhang and Shi 2008)
Ez1: Tafsir of Ezechiel, first part (Gindin 2007)
Gen: Tafsir to Genesis (Shaked 2003)
Kd: Karaite document (Shaked 1971b)
Lr: Law report of Ahvaz (Asmussen 1965; MacKenzie 1966; Shaked 1971a: 180–2)
Ta (A, B, C): three inscriptions of Tang-i Azao, western Afghanistan (Henning 1957)
Manichaean New Persian

Ha: Bilawhar and Būdāsaf (Henning 1962: 91–8)
Hb: qaṣīda (Henning 1962: 98–104)
Lehrtext (Sundermann 2003)
Manichaean New Persian fragments (Provasi 2011)
New Persian in Syriac script

Baptism (Orsatti 2003a)
Glosses (Maggi 2003)
Matthew (Maggi 2005)
Psalms (Sundermann 1974; Sims-Williams 2011: 353–61)
New Persian in Latin script

Codex Cumanicus (Monchi-Zadeh 1969, Bodrogligeti 1971)
Five eighth-century Judaeo-Persian documents represent the earliest attestation of New

Persian and go back to a period when the Arabic alphabet had probably not yet been adapted
to writing Persian (section 2.19). These are three inscriptions from Tang-i Azao in western
Afghanistan dated 1064 of the Seleucid era corresponding to 752 AD (Henning 1957)21 and
two letters from Dandan Uiliq in the Khotan region in Chinese Central Asia, datable be-
tween 780 and 790 AD (Utas 1968 with references, and Zhang and Shi 2008). To these one
may add a number of New Persian glosses in Syriac texts basically from the first half of the
eighth century (Maggi 2003).
21 Rapp (1967: 55–6) unconvincingly questioned Henning’s dating and proposed the much later date
of 1299–300 CE.
Book.indb 29 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

The Manichaean New Persian documents published so far (Henning 1962; Sundermann
1989a, 2003; Provasi 2011) can be dated to the tenth and eleventh centuries and come from the
territory formerly occupied by the Sogdian colonies of Chinese Turkestan in Central Asia.
The earliest original documents of New Persian in Arabic script, both literary and not,
go back instead to the eleventh century. They are the so-called Codex Vindobonensis, a
pharmacological treatise of the end of the tenth century by Abū Manṣūr Muwaffaq b. ʿAlī
al-Hirawī, copied by the poet Asadī in Šawwāl 447/December 1055–January 1056 (facsimile
editions: Muwaffaq 1972, 2009), and, among non-literary documents, the Marriage con-
tract from Bāmiyān, Afghanistan, dated 470/1078 (Scarcia 1963 and 1966) as well as a deed
concerning a sale of land from Khotan dated 501/1107 (Margoliouth 1903 with facsimile;
Minorsky 1942 correcting the date as 501 instead of 401 of the Hegira).
2.14 Dialectal classification of the Early

New Persian documents: pārsi and dari
A major dialectal division of Early New Persian is that between pārsi, ‘Persian’ tout court, diffused
all over southern Iran and in the first centuries of Islam still linguistically close to literary Middle
Persian, and dari ‘(the language) of the court’, which covered the regions of northern Iran from
west to east (Lazard 1971a, 1975a, 1993; cf. section 2.11). Each of these major dialectal varieties
Table 2.6 Dialectal and chronological classification of ENP documents
North/North-West Iran North-East Iran
Tafsir of Ezechiel, first part (Ez1): eleventh Inscriptions of Tang-i Azao (Ta): 1064 Seleucid/752 AD
century
Tafsir of Genesis (Gen): eleventh century Letters of Dandān Uiliq (Du1, Du2): datable to the
or after second half of the eighth century
Codex Vindobonensis: dated Šawwāl
447/December 1055–January 1056
Marriage contract: dated 470/1078
Matthew: datable Herat eleventh century
Psalms in Syriac script: before mid-thirteenth century
South-West Iran South-East Iran (Sistan)

Glosses: first half of the eighth century Qur’ān-i Quds (QQ): datable to the second half of
the eleventh century
Argument (Ar): tenth century or earlier
Karaite document (Kd): 1262 Seleucid/
950 AD
Law report of Ahvaz (Lr): Ahvāz
(Khuzistan, south-western Iran), 1332
Seleucid/1020 AD
Baptism: before the thirteenth century
Book.indb 30 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

of Early New Persian are divided into western and eastern sub-varieties (see Table 2.6): pārsi is
known from documents originating from south-western (Khuzistan) and south-eastern Iran
(Sistan) respectively; likewise, dari is known from documents originating from north-western
or central Iran, and north-eastern Iran and Transoxiana (Lazard 2014). One of the most im-
portant dialectal features is the treatment of initial wi-(Lazard 1987: 174; 2014: 93–4), which is
gu-in north-eastern dari and hence in literary New Persian, and bi-(still close to Middle Persian
wi-) in documents from southern Iran.
The glottonyms dari and pārsi have different meanings in different periods:
1) At the end of the Sasanian epoch dari may have referred to the oral register of Middle
Persian, spoken at the Sasanian court (dar) and more broadly in the capital city of
Ctesiphon, on the Tigris. It was a variety of Middle Persian endowed with prestige
and probably more innovative compared to written or literary Middle Persian.
2) In the first decades of Islam, dari, the spoken variety of Middle Persian, received a
strong burst to expansion thanks to the successive waves of conquest. Indeed, Persian
was the language of the Islamic conquests towards Central Asia; and the glottonym
dari came to refer to the northern and north-eastern varieties of Persian. In this
movement towards north and north-east, dari superseded other Iranian languages
such as Parthian and Sogdian, also borrowing some features from them and thereby
increasingly differing from the Middle Persian (pārsi) still spoken in southern Iran.22
3) When, in the ninth century, literary New Persian arose in the courts of north-eastern
Iran, dari was the linguistic variety at the basis of literary New Persian. Then pārsi-e
dari, or simply dari, came to mean ‘literary New Persian’.
Correspondingly, pārsi as opposed to dari means:
1) The written register of Middle Persian, that is, literary Middle Persian.
2) The more conservative south-western variety of Persian, which continued to be
spoken and written during the first centuries of Islam. When, by the beginning of
the thirteenth century, the new unitary literary language originated in north-eastern
Iran spread all over Iran, pārsi ceased to be attested.
3) Persian in general as opposed to its literary variety (dari or pārsi-e dari).
2.15 Later New Persian texts in other

alphabets, the Codex Cumanicus,
and Persian as a lingua franca in Asia
Later New Persian texts written in alphabets other than Arabic, for instance Armenian and
Latin, are also relevant for reconstructing the earlier stages of Persian. The so-called Codex
Cumanicus (Venice, Marciana Library, MS Lat. DXLIX 1597, dated 1330) is one of the most
ancient New Persian texts in Latin script and furnishes rich linguistic material. Its first
22 See Lentz (1926) on Parthian elements in the Šāhnāme and Henning (1939) on Sogdian loanwords
in New Persian.
Book.indb 31 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

part contains a Latin–Persian–Cuman lexicon, whose original was probably composed by

Genoese merchants in Solghat, Crimea, in 1324–5 (Drimba 1981; Drüll 1980 proposes a some-
what earlier date). It represents a kind of manual for interpreters (Ligeti 1981). The Persian
linguistic material, whose dialectal characterization poses not easily solvable problems
(MacKenzie 1992), has been published and studied by Monchi-Zadeh (1969) and Bodrogligeti
(1971). As to the reasons for the presence of Persian in a manual for interpreters to be used in
fourteenth-century Crimea, a Turkish speaking area, the commonly accepted theory is that
Persian functioned as lingua franca in the Black Sea region (see Vásáry 2005) as well as in
large parts of Asia (for criticism against this theory, see Orsatti 2003b; Orsatti 2007b: 51–5; and
Bausani 1969a: 517 for the sea-trade language in Asia). Transcriptions of Persian texts in Latin
script made by Catholic missionaries or European travellers to Safavid Iran multiply in the
seventeenth century and provide important linguistic data (Orsatti 1984; Perry 1996).
The more or less occasional rendering of Persian through the Latin alphabet may be
heavily conditioned by the spelling conventions the transcriber uses to write his own lan-
guage (Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, etc.). A trivial example is the use of <j> (jaber for xabar)
to write the uvular fricative x in the transcription of a Persian translation of the Koran in
Latin script made by a Spanish missionary at the beginning of the seventeenth century
(Vatican Library, MS Vat. Pers. 51: Bodrogligeti 1961).
If the occasional use of the Latin script entails the difficulty just exposed for reconstructing
the linguistic reality of a text, other writing systems more stably used for writing New Persian
and other Iranian languages pose two kinds of equally thorny problems: the presence of histor-
ical spellings, which is particularly cumbersome in Manichaean New Persian;23 and the coex-
istence of different orthographic layers, whereby old and new spellings occur in the same text.
2.16 New Persian phonology

in historical perspective
2.16.1 Contemporary New Persian of Iran

Before dealing with earlier stages of the phonology of Persian, it is appropriate to sketch the
phonological system of Contemporary New Persian as a term of comparison. For literary
Contemporary New Persian of Iran, Pisowicz (1985) establishes a phonological system of 6
vowel and 24 consonant phonemes (Table 2.7).
For vowels, the distinctive character opposing /e/to /i/, /a/to /ā/,24 and /o/to /u/is
timbre, that is, the different tongue positions and rounding vs. non-rounding. A difference
of length between the two series /e a o/and /i ā u/is only perceptible in an open unstressed
syllable, whereas in a stressed position the length of all vowels is more or less identical. The
23 To write New Persian, the followers of Manichaeism used the Manichaean alphabet. Because Middle
Persian and Parthian were the languages of Manichaean liturgy, New Persian Manichaean orthography
shows influence from both these languages’ orthography. On the adaptation of the Manichaean script to
write New Persian, see Henning 1958: 73–5; Henning 1962: 90–1; Orsatti 2007b: 150–64.
24 The symbol ā indicates a mid, back, labialized vowel [ɒ], distinct from mid, central, unlabialized a.
This symbol is used here in analogy with the symbol used in the scholarly transcription of Persian.
Book.indb 32 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

Table 2.7 Phonological system of literary Contemporary New Persian

i u
e o
aā
Labial Labio-dental Dental Alveolar Palatal Uvular Laryngeal

Plosive p b t d k g q ʔ
Affricate c j
Fricative f v s z š ž x h
Nasal m n
Liquid lr
Approximant w y
diphthongs ey and ow are interpreted as a sequence of two phonemes each, /e + y/and /

o + w/, the latter phoneme only occurring after /o/.
As to consonants, the opposition between the two series of plosives /p/~ /b/, /t/~ /d/, /k/
~ /g/, and affricates /c/~ /j/is of tenseness rather than of voicing. This kind of opposition had
already been recognized for plosives and affricates in colloquial educated Contemporary
Tehrani New Persian by Provasi (1979). The realizations of /q/(written ġeyn and qāf ) as [q]‌,
[ɢ], or [ʁ] (= γ) are mere allophones conditioned by position. Pisowicz regards the palatal
articulation of /k g/, that is, [kʲ gʲ], as their chief realizations in Contemporary New Persian
of Iran.25
2.16.2 Classical and Early New Persian

For Classical and Early New Persian Pisowicz reconstructs a vocalic system consisting of
three short vowels /i a u/, five long vowels /ī ē ā ō ū/, and two monophonemic diphthongs
/a͡y a͡w/(Table 2.8). As to consonants, there is no /v/phoneme, because present-day v-at the
head of a syllable was realized as /w/. The opposition between the two series of plosives, af-
fricates, and fricatives was of voicing, not of tenseness as in Contemporary New Persian. The
ancient ‘Iranian labiovelar’ /xw/, subsequently reduced to and merged into /x/, was still pre-
served. The voiced uvular fricative /γ/contrasted with the plosive /q/of Arabic and Turkish
loanwords.
The methods Pisowicz follows for his reconstruction are diverse, first and foremost the
study of Persian texts in Latin alphabet like the Codex Cumanicus (section 2.15) and of New
Persian borrowings in other languages. The analysis of morphophonological alternations
25 For colloquial educated Contemporary Tehrani Persian, Provasi (1979) reconstructs a system of
only twenty-two consonantal phonemes, not recognizing as phonemes /ʔ/and /ž/of the literary variety.
As to vowels, the distinctive character opposing /i u ā/to /e o a/is tenseness vs. laxeness.
Book.indb 33 18-Jun-18 8:15:41 PM

Table 2.8 Phonological system of Early and Classical New Persian

īi ūu
ē ay ō aw
āa
Labial Labio-dental Dental Alveolar Velar Uvular Laryngeal

Plosive p b t d k g q ʔ
Affricate c j
Fricative f s z š ž x xw γ
h
Nasal m n
Liquid lr
Approximant w y
in the contemporary language is also important. For example, alternations like Xosrow
‘(King) Xosrow’ ~ xosravi ‘regal’ and miravam ‘I am going, I go’ ~ berow ‘go!’ attest to an
ancient pronunciation aw of the present-day diphthong ow. The development aw > ow is
confirmed by Arabic loanwords in Persian as Arabic dawr > Contemporary New Persian of
Iran dowr ‘circle’.
Comparison with present-day Persian of Afghanistan (also called Dari) is useful because
of its conservative character. Dari retains a vocalic system with three short vowels /æ e o/
(the two last ones still articulated close to /i u/) and five long vowels /ī ē ā ō ū/matching
the Classical New Persian ones. Indeed, Afghan Persian still retains long /ē ō/(the so-called
majhul vowels ‘unknown’ to Arabic), which in New Persian of Iran have merged into /ī ū/re-
spectively (see below in this section on their possible outcomes ay and aw).
As to consonants, the opposition of voicing recognized for Early and Classical New
Persian between the two series of plosives, affricates, and fricatives is maintained in
Afghan Persian. Moreover, Classical New Persian presents an opposition between /γ/and
the new phoneme /q/introduced through the massive entrance of Arabic and Turkish
loanwords. This opposition has disappeared from New Persian of Iran but is preserved in
Afghan Persian.
Dari also suggests that the final -e of Iranian and Arabic words in Contemporary New
Persian of Iran was formerly -a. This is confirmed by spoken Contemporary New Persian
of Iran, where final -e alternates with -a before the postposition -rā, for instance, xāne-rā ~
xuna-ro ‘the house (direct object)’. Words such as ke ‘who’, ce ‘what’, se ‘three’, by contrast, al-
ways retain final -e, thereby attesting to the original presence of a different vowel.
Meier (1981: 86–103) gives a complete survey of the development of the majhul vowels
/ē ō/of Early and Classical New Persian on the basis of the analysis of rhymes and especially
of infractions of the rule which prohibits rhyming /ē/with /ī/and /ō/with /ū/. He concludes
that the merging of /ē ō/into /ī ū/(šēr ‘lion’ > šīr, now a homonym of šīr ‘milk’; bō ‘smell’ >
bū) originated in western Iran and spread eastwards, without reaching Afghanistan, and that
it was still in progress in central Iran in the first half of the thirteenth century. Starting from
Book.indb 34 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

cases where ē rhymes with the diphthong ay and ō with aw (the latter rhyme being more fre-
quent and even tolerated by theoreticians like Šams-e Qeys in the thirteenth century), Meier
shows that the real pronunciation of the two diphthongs was very close to the majhul vowels
and that /ē ō/in some cases merged with /ay aw/, as is indicated by Middle Persian nō ‘new’ >
Classical New Persian naw, or by double outcomes like Nēšābūr and Nayšābūr. Lastly, Meier
(1981: 127–56) draws up a list of suffixes and endings that had the form of long -ē in Classical
New Persian: indefinite -i (yā-ye nakere); relative or determinative -i (yā-ye ešārat or taʿrif );
the verbal suffix -i denoting unreal or habitual action (section 2.17.4); and diminutive -i.
For more information on indefinite, see Chapter 6. By contrast, the verbal ending and the
copula of the second person singular, the gerundive ending, the suffix of abstraction (yā-ye
maṣdari), and adjectival -i (yā-ye nesbat) were long -ī.
Early New Persian knows fricative allophones for postvocalic /b d g/. In texts in Arabic
script, [β] is written ‫ﭪ‬, afterwards abandoned. In ancient manuscripts up to the mid-thir-
teenth century, the allophone [δ] of /d/is written with letter ḏāl, also present in Arabic loan-
words. Early New Persian δ is not generally considered as a phoneme. However, de Blois
(2006: 94) thinks that, given the existence of a phoneme /ḏ/in Arabic loanwords (presum-
ably pronounced δ in Early New Persian, as in Arabic), postvocalic δ in Persian words should
also be regarded as a separate phoneme. In both the Arabic and the few Persian words which
retained δ < d—as gozaštan ‘to pass’ and gozāštan ‘to let pass, to put’—the ancient interdental
fricative merged afterwards with /z/.26 The fricative allophone of postvocalic /g/is not at-
tested in texts in Arabic script, presumably because the spelling with ġeyn would have given
rise to confusion with the phoneme /γ/, but is testified to in other scripts (Maggi 2003: 118).
Delabialization of /xw/> /x/already occurred in the thirteenth century. Indeed, it appears
already concluded in the Persian language reflected in the Codex Cumanicus (first half of
the fourteenth century; section 2.15), as is revealed by spellings such as <ghos> ‘pleasant’ for
Early and Classical New Persian xwaš, Contemporary New Persian xoš. Delabialization of
/xw/entailed the change a > o, as in the preceding example, but had no effect before /ē/ or
/ā/: Early New Persian /xwēš//xwāst/> Contemporary New Persian /xiš//xāst/ (Pisowicz
1985: 121–3; Meier 1981: 74–85; Cipriano 1998: 293–365).
Several questions are still debated. First of all, the existence and phonological status
of short e and o in Early New Persian, either as a possible continuation of Middle Persian
/e o/(section 2.10, no. 2), or as allophones of /i/(or possibly of /a/) and /u/respectively. For
Early Judaeo-Persian the existence of [e]‌is generally accepted (Paul 2013c: 42–3, section 26).
Another question concerns the time when the couples /ī/~ /i/, /ā/~ /a/, and /ū/~ /u/begun
to be contrasted through timbre, with an articulation shift of /i/towards e and /u/towards
o, and with a back pronunciation of /ā/contrasting with a slight palatalization of /a/. The
Codex Cumanicus already shows the beginning of the moving of /i/towards e, /u/ towards
o, and /a/towards æ, written e (Bodrogligeti 1971: 43–45), a phenomenon more widely at-
tested in seventeenth-century Latin transcriptions of Persian. It is significant that, in
spoken Contemporary New Persian of Iran, short i is still retained near /š k c j/and in the
26 Recent summaries of the question of ‘dāl and ḏāl’ are de Blois 2006: 94–6; Orsatti 2007b: 94–8;
Filippone 2011: 185–6. Orsatti (2018, forthcoming) regards the complementary distribution of dāl and ḏāl
in literary manuscripts mainly as a rule intended to bring order in the multifarious dialectal realizations
of /d/in Early New Persian. Therefore, in what follows the fricative allophones of /d b g/are mirrored in
transcriptions of Early New Persian texts only if they are so recorded in writing.
Book.indb 35 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

proximity of syllables containing etymologically long i. As to the back articulation of /ā/, a

pre-thirteenth-century text in Syriac script from South-West Iran provides an early example
in rwos for rās(t) ‘openly, truthfully’ (Baptism 10), where the vowel is vocalized as o and final
-t is lost as in the present-day spoken language (Orsatti 2003a: 166). Finally, the first instances
of a closing and backing of /ā/> o, u before nasals go back to the fifteenth century according
to Pisowicz (1985: 79); but Ṣādeqi (1984) discusses earlier occurrences of this change in some
toponyms (as Bisotun/Behistun), which he traces back to the variety of Middle Persian
spoken in Khuzistan between the third and the fifth centuries AD.
2.17 From Middle to New Persian:

morphosyntactic continuity
and innovation
The earliest documents of New Persian display a language still close to Middle Persian,
but signals of later development are already visible. The most striking changes—some
of them already attested in late Pahlavi texts influenced by New Persian—concern the
verbal system.
2.17.1 Ergative construction
The ergative (passive) construction of transitive verbs in the past (section 2.10.5) gives way to
an accusative (active) construction (Ergativity is further discussed in Chapter 8). This hap-
pens in parallel with a gradual change of the value of the past participle of transitive verbs,
mainly acquiring an active meaning: Middle Persian dīd hēm ‘I was/have been seen’ > New
Persian dīdam ‘I saw/have seen’, with amalgamation of the ancient past participle, in its new
function as past stem, with the auxiliary verb. Early examples of the New Persian active con-
struction are (17) and (18):
(17) ʾn by hštym
ān bi-hišt-ēm
that ADV-abandon-1PL
‘we abandoned that one’ (Ar L4).27
27
This text also offers older constructions, as: kyš ʾyn kʾrhʾ ʾdst yšmʾ dʾd kē-š īn kārhā u-dast-i šumā
dād ‘who gave these matters into your hands (lit. ‘who (by) him these matters (were) given into your
hands)’ (Ar P5–6), where traces of ergativity may be seen (cf. Orsatti 2007b: 121 with n. 197 and Paul
2013c: 127, section 156). On possible traces of ergativity in literary Early New Persian texts, cf. Lazard
1963: 257–8, sections 319–20 and Lenepveu-Hotz 2014: 57. Modern constructions, already attested in
Early New Persian literary texts, like goft-eš ‘he said’ (also applied to intransitive verbs: raft-eš ‘he went
(out)’) are considered as remnants of the ergative construction (Maḥjub 1959: 49).
Book.indb 36 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

(18) wbr kwndwm28 ʾny nbyšt bwdy

u bar-xwānd-um ān=i nibišt būd-ī
and ADV-read.PST-1SG that=which write.PST.PTCP be.PST-2SG
‘and I read what you had written’ (Du2 7).
Possible transitional forms (Paul 2008a: 192) are provided by combinations of an old past par-
ticiple like nibišt in (18) with the verbal endings, followed by the third singular present or,
more often, past of būdan ‘to be’ to obtain present perfect, as in (19–20), or past perfect (= plu-
perfect) forms of transitive and intransitive verbs, as in (21–22) (Paul 2013c: 132, section 164c
and 134 section 168b; Lenepveu-Hotz 2014: 56–7, qq.v. for the sources of the examples):
(19) ʾb prystʾdnd hyst

āb firistād-end hest
water send.PST.PTCP-3PL be.PRS.3SG
‘They have sent water’.
(20) kwšk bwdynd hyst

xušk būd-end hest
dry be.PST.PTCP-3PL be.PRS.3SG
‘they have become dry’.
(21) mwlk gryptynd bwd

mulk girift-end būd
kingship take.PST.PTCP-3PL be.PST.3SG
‘they had seized kingship’.
(22) ʾbʾz ʾmdnd bwd

abāz āmad-and būd
back come.PST.PTCP-3PL be.PST.3SG
‘they had returned’.
2.17.2 Old subjunctive
There are only scant traces of the old subjunctive with long thematic -ā- (section 2.10.3) in
subordinate clauses like rasād ‘it shall arrive’ in (23):
(23) ʾg(r) yn nʾmh by šmʾ rsʾd

agar īn nāma bē (i)šmā29 ras-ād
if this letter to you.2PL arrive.PRS-SBJV.3SG
‘if this letter shall arrive to you’ (Du2 23).
28 Transliterations in the examples reproduce the word division found in the manuscripts, so that
alignment with transcription and glossing is at times approximate.

29 In Du1 and Du2 the second person plural pronoun is išmā.
Book.indb 37 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

In Early and Classical New Persian, only third singular forms, as bād < baw-ād in (24), of
the old subjunctive with precative value are found (Lazard 1963: 338–9 section 474, where
a single occurrence of the third plural is recorded). Today, only bād survives in set combin-
ations like zende bād ‘viva!’ or har ce bād-ā bād ‘what will be will be’.
(24) yʾr ʾš ʾw bʾd

yār=aš ō bād
helper=POSS.3SG he be.PRS.SBJV.3SG
‘May He be his helper’ (Ta A3).
2.17.3 Towards a new present subjunctive

Because of the virtual disappearance of the old subjunctive, Early and Classical New Persian
have no formally marked subjunctive distinct from the present indicative: the new present
subjunctive with grammaticalization of the prefix bi- did not appear before the sixteenth
century (Lenepveu-Hotz 2014: 249, 303).
The prefix bi-, used in Early and Classical New Persian with both present and past forms,
has probably to be identified with the Middle Persian adverb and preverb bē ‘outside; out,
away’ (Lazard 1975b). Its function ranged from cases where it retained its full lexical meaning
(raft ‘he went’ ~ bi-raft ‘he went away, left’) to cases where it seems to be only a means for em-
phasizing the verb (Lazard 1963: 298–326, sections 394–448). Some scholars rather recognize
an aspectual perfective value in forms with bi-(MacKinnon 1977; Josephson 1993 and 1995
for late Zoroastrian Middle Persian; to a different conclusion, coinciding with that by Lazard
for New Persian, had come for Middle Persian Brunner 1977: 159–60).
Possibly as a consequence of the disappearance of the old subjunctive, which expressed fu-
ture time reference in both main and subordinate clauses, in Early and Classical New Persian
present forms with bi-also acquired a future value (section 2.22.1). The bi-+ present forms, as
well as the unmarked present, i.e. present without bi-nor (ha)mē, also developed, especially in
subordinate clauses, a modal value as irrealis (Jahani 2008: 159–60). It is from these values of
the present forms with or without bi-that the new subjunctive was at last developed.
For Early and Classical New Persian only the present of ‘to be’ might show some clear
modal opposition between the three different forms-ast/buwad/bāšad ‘(s/he, it) is’, the latter
being a new form only developed in New Persian. Lenepveu-Hotz (2014: 251–68) has studied
the values of these forms from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries and recognizes an oppo
sition ‘permanent’ vs. ‘transitory’ between buwad and bāšad (some scholars had attributed
a future meaning to bāšad), and just an opposition of emphasis between -ast and buwad
(Lenepveu-Hotz 2014: 266). The form buwad disappeared almost completely in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries (Lenepveu-Hotz 2014: 267).
2.17.4 Optative
A new optative came into existence in Early and Classical New Persian. It inherited the two
values of unreal or habitual action (cf. English would) of the old optative (Lazard 1984a: 4–6,
10–11). Unlike the Middle Persian optative (section 2.10.3), the new optative has a complete
Book.indb 38 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

conjugation obtained by the suffix -ē appended to the verbal endings combined with the
past stem (unreal and habitual action) or, more rarely, with the present stem (only unreal
action): duzdī kardam-ē ‘I used to be a thief ’, agar mā dānistēm-ē ‘if we had known’.30 This
verbal suffix—possibly originated from Middle Persian hy hē < Old Iranian *hait, third sin-
gular optative of ah-‘to be’—has also a form -ēd in some Early New Persian texts in Arabic
script from the region of Herat (Lazard 1963: 328, section 450). It is written -y and occa-
sionally -yh in Judaeo-Persian (Paul 2013c: 115, section 137). In Manichaean New Persian the
verbal suffix -ē is written with the numeral ‘one’ (<I> in transliteration), like the indefinite
article -ē and the final vowel of the adverb and verbal prefix hmI hamē ‘always’. Subsequently,
the verbal suffix -ē gradually fell into disuse and its two values —apparently beginning with
that of habitual action—were subsumed by the prefix mi-. The suffix -ē survives today only in
forms like bāyest-i ‘it was, would be, would have been necessary’ and, perhaps, in other fixed
expressions like guy-i ‘one would say’ (Lenepveu-Hotz 2014: 157–62).
2.17.5 Passive
Some Early Judaeo-Persian forms attest to a survival of the old synthetic passive in -īh-
(section 2.10.4, no. 3), with shortening of the vowel: ʾyʾryhynd ayār-ih-ind ‘they will be
helped’, bwrhʾd bur-ih-ād ‘it may be cut’, gwyhyd gōw-ih-id ‘it is (being) said’ (Paul 2013c: 136,
section 171; Lenepveu-Hotz 2014: 61–6).
Periphrastic passives, formed mainly with the auxiliary āmadan ‘to come’, are very fre-
quent both in Early Judaeo-Persian (Paul 2013c: 136–7 section 172) and in Early New Persian
in Arabic script (Lazard 1963: 345, section 490). However, (25) provides an interesting in-
stance of an analytic present passive (karda buwad) formed with a past participle still with
passive meaning, and the auxiliary buwad like in Middle Persian:
(25) qʾr ʾy prmwdy ʾš skt qwnwm tʾ krdh bwd

kār=i farmūd-ī=aš saxt kun-um tā karda buw-ad
work=which order.PST-2SG=it hard do.PRS-1SG that do.PST.PTCP be.PRS-3SG
‘the work which you ordered, I shall work hard, so that it shall be done’ (Du1 29).
Already at the end of the eleventh century, the auxiliary āmadan lost ground in favour of
šudan ‘to become’, originally ‘to go’, though the former appears still retained under certain
circumstances (for example, to indicate a process vs. a state) or in a stylistically high level
(Lenepveu-Hotz 2014: 66–72).
2.17.6 Hortative
Faint traces of the old hortative, consisting of the particle (h)ē (< Middle Persian hēb, ē(w))
before a present (Lazard 1984a: 6–8; cf. section 2.10.3) as seen in (26) and (27), are found in
30 On these forms in Early New Persian, see Lazard 1963: 327–38, sections 449–72; Paul 2013c: 126,
section 153 and 130–1, section 162. For occurrences of the verbal suffix -ē directly after the stem, with or
without an enclitic personal pronoun, see Lazard 1963: 329–31, sections 452–4.
Book.indb 39 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

Manichaean New Persian and northern Early Judaeo-Persian (Du1, Gen), but are unknown
to Early New Persian in Arabic script:
(26) hyb wyrʾyd

hē wīrāy-ad
HORT arrange.PRS-3SG
‘he should arrange’ (M 9011 /A/6, Provasi 2011: 143).
(27) yzyd kwdh ʾy yʾr bʾšd

īzid/ēzid xudah ē yār bāš-ad
god lord HORT helper be.PRS-3SG
‘may the Lord God help (us)!’ (Du1 1).31
Even in north-eastern Early Judaeo-Persian texts, the hortative seems to be marginal and
perhaps stylistically marked. Compare ē ... bāšad in (27) with bād in (24), with the hortative
alternating with old subjunctive.
2.17.7 Causative and past stem suffixes

Causatives with the suffix -in- (written yn or simply n, Middle Persian -ēn-, section 2.10.4,
no. 1), with the vowel probably already shortened, occur in the Early Judaeo-Persian
texts from south-western Iran (Paul 2013c: 137, section 173): by ʾngyzynyd bi-angēz-
in-īd ‘He (God) aroused’ (Ar E11). These causatives are an important dialectal feature
distinguishing the southern (pārsi) variety from the northern and north-eastern (dari)
one (section 2.14): texts in dari (and hence literary New Persian) present instead a north
ern dialectal causative form in -ān- instead of -ēn-. The causative form is also discussed in
Chapter 3 and Chapter 7.
From the northern dialect also originate the past stems with -ād- instead of -īd- like firist-
ād-an ‘to send’ as against f(i)rist-īd-an in south-western Judaeo-Persian (Henning 1933: 213,
222–3; Paul 2013c: 110, section 125b).
The fragment from a Persian version of the Gospel of Matthew in Syriac script (elev-
enth century) edited by Maggi shows an interesting causative in -ān- formed from the past
verbal stem instead of the present stem (košt-ān-īd-ēd ‘you have had murdered’, Matthew,
l. 12), which is a noteworthy dialectal feature typical of north-eastern (dari) Persian (Maggi
2005: 639).
2.17.8 Prepositions, postposition -rā, and circumpositions

Besides the postposition -rā, Early Judaeo-Persian has a number of simple or compound
prepositions and a variety of circumpositions or frame prepositions (Paul 2003a; Paul
2013c: 143–50, section 180–4).
31
On this passage, cf. Lazard 1988: 205–9.
Book.indb 40 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

As a remedy to the loss of a formal distinction between subject and object in Middle
Persian (at least in the singular), the direct object came to be marked—like the indirect ob-
ject and the beneficiary—by the postposition -rā (Middle Persian rāy), as in (28), or by the
directional preposition u/o ‘towards’, possibly also pronounced a (Middle Persian ō), as in
(29).32 The preposition u, unknown to Persian texts in Arabic script, is mainly attested in
south-western Judaeo-Persian texts (Lazard 2009), though it also occasionally occurs in
northern texts: ʾpyš a-pēš ‘near, before’ (Du2 8).33
(28) kwdʾ mn rʾ frstyd

xudā man=rā f(i)ristīd
god I=OBJ send.PST[3SG]
‘God has sent me’ (Ar N1–2).
(29) ʾḥṣrʾ kyrd ʾdnyʾl

iḥżār34 kird u=Danyāl
summoning do.PST[3SG] OBJ=Daniel
‘she summoned Daniel’ (Lr3).
Other prepositions and circumpositions could also mark the direct object: u ... -rā (direct
or indirect object), az mar ... (-rā) lit. ‘for, because of ’ (30), or just mar ... (-rā) (31), the
circumposition mar ... -rā being a north-eastern form (Lazard 1963: 382–4 sections 575–7):
(30) ʾgr ... ʾzmrš by kwšy

agar ... az mar=aš bi-kuš-ī
if ... OBJ OBJ=it ADV-kill.PRS-2SG
‘if ... you kill it’ (Ar C12–13).
(31) bzwurg kwunaδ xwδʾh mr drwyešāʾn rāʾ

buzurg kun-aδ xuδāh mar darwēšān=rā
great make.PRS-3SG god OBJ poor=OBJ
‘the Lord makes great the poor’ (Psalms IIr3–4).
After a long and slow evolution, among all these forms only -rā survived in the modern
language. By losing—though not completely even now—its old values as a marker of the
beneficiary and the indirect object, it specialized to express the direct object under certain
32 Middle Persian rāy marked the cause, purpose, beneficiary, indirect object, and hence possession;
its use for the direct object is a late development. Likewise, Middle Persian ō ‘to’ could also mark the
indirect and—in late Manichaean Middle Persian—the direct object (Lazard 2009: 169–70). See (10) and
(11), section 2.10.
33 The preposition u is well-known in Persian dialects of western Iran (Filippone 2011: 198). Lazard
(1986: 252) has suggested that a survival of this preposition—reduced to a short vowel and then
disappeared from pronunciation—can be detected when a complement has no preposition in the
contemporary spoken language: mira(va)m šahr ‘I am going to the town’.
34 For a discussion of this reading, see Orsatti (2007b: 111–13). The same reading is given by Paul
(2013c: 144, section 180b).
Book.indb 41 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

grammatical (determinate vs. indeterminate; human vs. non-human; topicalization) and

pragmatic constraints (Paul 2008b).
Besides u/o, Early Judaeo-Persian knows a directional preposition bē ‘to, towards’, prob-
ably from the Middle Persian adverb bē ‘out’ used to reinforce ō in the compound prepo
sition bē ō ‘towards’. The preposition bē (Lazard 1986 and Shaked 1989) is attested in southern
texts like Ar and QQ, and in northern texts, as can be seen from (23). It possibly merged
afterwards with pa(d), later ba ‘to, at, in, on’, which also acquired a directional meaning
(section 2.18–2.19).
2.17.9 Ezafe as a relative pronoun

A characteristic feature of Early Judaeo-Persian is the preservation of the ezafe, a particle
linking a noun with a following adjective or nominal determinant, in its old value as a rela-
tive pronoun (section 2.10.2), as in (18) and (25). In Manichaean New Persian, examples are
to be found, inter alia, in Lehrtext: i xwad xuškī u sardī ‘which itself (is) dryness and cold’
(Lehrtext d2), and i tarī u sōzāgī ‘which (is) moisture and burning’ (Lehrtext d4).
In Early New Persian in Arabic script there are only scant traces of such value of the ezafe,
both written and not written (Lazard 1963: 490–1, sections 855–6). An instance of the ezafe
in its value as a relative pronoun, written by letter yā attached to the preceding word, is to be
found in (32):
(32) Bū Saʿīd=rā bar suft gīr tā qurṣ=i bar

Abu Saʿid=OBJ on shoulder take.PRS[IMP.2SG] so.that round.loaf=which on
ān ṭāq=ast furō gīr-ad
that niche=be.3SG down take.PRS-3SG
‘take Abu Saʿid on your shoulders, so that he can bring down the round loaf which is
on that niche’ (AT 17.24–18.1).
2.17.10 The plural ending -ihā/-hā

For the plural of nouns, continuations not only of the regular ending -ān (section 2.10.1),
but also of the late ending -īhā of Middle Persian are well attested in both Early Judaeo-
Persian (Paul 2013c: 73–6, sections 77–9) and in Early New Persian in Arabic script (Lazard
1963: 195–6 sections 149–52).35 As for the latter ending, in Judaeo-Persian the form -ihā (with
a probably already shortened -i-) occurs mainly in religious texts, and -hā in non religious
texts (Paul 2013c: 73 section 78a). In Early New Persian in Arabic script the form -ihā, explic
itly vocalized with short i, is seldom attested. The Marriage contract of 1078 from Bāmiyān
shows a form -hāy apparently unattested elsewhere. The early distribution of the forms is
not very different from today’s usage, with -ān being used for nouns denoting animate be-
ings though not exclusively (full description of the classical and modern distribution of the
35 On the origin of Middle Persian -īhā, see Salemann 1895–1901: 282, 284–5; Horn 1898–1901: 100;
Henning 1958: 81, 90, n. 1; Sundermann 1989b: 155.
Book.indb 42 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

endings in Moʿin 1977: 28–81). The ‘exceptions’ are so many that the original distribution
of the old ending -ān and the late ending -hā might seem mainly a matter of use. When the
Arabic loanwords entered Persian, however, they received the Persian endings -ān or -hā
depending on the opposition human vs. non-human, which indicates that this opposition
became at some time relevant in the choice of the ending. When, much later, the European
loanwords entered the Persian language, only -hā was still a living and productive ending.
2.17.11 Comparative and superlative

Middle Persian had the superlative suffixes -tom and -ist, and the comparative suffix -tar
(also with superlative force); the material and identifying suffix -ēn (Darmesteter 1883: 139)
could be added to obtain -tomēn and potentially *-tarēn when the adjectives were used at-
tributively (Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 203–5 with n. 103). Among these suffixes, literary
New Persian only continues -tar and -tarīn, as well as -īn with elative force. In Early New
Persian, there is no clear distinction yet between the comparative and superlative functions
of -tar and -tarīn respectively, as these may express both meanings (Lazard 1963: 206–14
sections 181–99). Old ‘irregular’ comparatives like mih ‘bigger’, kih ‘smaller’, and bih ‘better’,
were re-marked with -tar (mih-tar, kih-tar, bih-tar) and both old and new forms could re-
ceive the suffix -īn (mih-īn ~ mih-tar-īn, kih-īn ~ kih-tar-īn, bih-īn ~ bih-tar-īn), which is pre-
sumably also to be recognized in numerals (awwal-īn ‘first’, duwwum-īn/duyyum-īn ‘second’,
etc.).36 Only later -tar specialized to express the comparative and -tarīn to express the rela-
tive superlative (‘the most ... ’), albeit with syntactic restrictions, because only -tar forms with
superlative force are admitted when used predicatively.
2.18 From Middle to New Persian: notable

phonetic changes
Early New Persian documents from both north-eastern (Ta inscriptions) and south-western
Iran (Glosses) show that by the mid-eighth century final -g had already disappeared after a
long vowel: qy ʾyn nywy qnd kē īn niwē kand ‘who incised this inscription’ (Ta A2), with niwē
‘inscription’ < Middle Persian nibīg.37 As a consequence, the adjectival suffix -īg had become
-ī as in gurgānī ‘[pistachio nut] of Gorgan’ (Glosses 4). Instead, -g was still retained after -a, as
in Glosses 5 banušag ‘middle-sized pistachio nut’, 10 drīmag ‘wormwood’, and 14 jāmag ‘cup’
(for a thorough discussion of the matter, see Ciancaglini 2008: 54–7, 72–7).
The old form of the abstract suffix -īh is retained in Early Judaeo-Persian documents of
south-western origin. In north-eastern Iran, the very conservative Manichaean New Persian
36 The suffix -in was, and still partially is, in co-occurrence with and has been gradually replaced by
adjectival -i in both material adjectives (Paul 2007) and numerals (Orsatti 2005: 791): bolurin ~ boluri
‘of crystal’, avvalin ~ avvali ‘first’. See (15) for Middle Persian examples of an -ist-ēn superlative and
regular and irregular comparatives.
37 For a discussion of this word, cf. Henning 1957: 337; Provasi 2011: 150.
Book.indb 43 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

orthography also keeps the Manichaean Middle Persian spelling -yẖ, but a tenth-century
poem proves that the abstract suffix had actually become -ī: in Ha22, farāmōšīh ‘oblivion’
with final -h would not fit the meter. Conflation of the suffixes -īg and -īh is also occasionally
attested by Manichaean Middle Persian texts (Durkin-Meisterernst 2014: 175–6).
The metrics of Manichaean New Persian texts also shows that the third singular ending
-yd had a short vowel (Manichaean New Persian /ad/and Judaeo-Persian /ed/or /id/).
Manichaean New Persian texts, from north-eastern Iran, appear innovative in many re-
spects. The new form br bar ‘on, upon’, with loss of initial a-, alternates with older ʾbr abar,
and bʾ bā ‘with’ alternates with ʾbʾ(g) abā (de Blois 2006 s.vv.), thereby indicating that new
and old forms occurred together, unless the latter are mere historical spellings. In Early
Judaeo-Persian, the new form yār ‘friend’ already occurs in TA and Du1 instead of older
ayār, as can be seen in (24) and (27).
One of the Manichaean New Persian fragments (M 595a+; Provasi 2011: 161–62, 166) shows
a curious inverse spelling for the verbal prefix bi-, written <pd> like the preposition pa(d),
later ba < Middle Persian pad ‘to, at, in, on’. This may indicate that the scribe of this fragment
perceived the two morphemes as homophonous and confused them, whereas south-western
Judaeo-Persian texts still had pa(d) with voiceless initial consonant.
The spellings kʾ, ky, and kw originally corresponding to Middle Persian ka ‘when, if ’, kē
‘who, which’, and kū ‘where; that; than’ still occur in Manichaean New Persian (where the
spelling kʾ/qʾ prevails) as well as in the south-western Early Judaeo-Persian Argument; but
they tend to interchange and conflate probably on account of formal coalescence (de Blois
2006: 106 s.v. kʾ; Provasi 2011: 165–66 s.vv. kʾ, kw, ky; MacKenzie 1968: 252).
2.19 The birth of literary New Persian and

the adoption of the Arabic alphabet
The main languages of culture in Iran in the first centuries after the conquest were Arabic
and, still, literary Middle Persian (Zoroastrian Middle Persian literature was entrusted to
writing in the first centuries of Islam). From a piece of information provided by the ninth-
century Arab historian Balāḏurī, we know that Middle Persian in Pahlavi script was used
for administration until the late seventh or the early eighth century in western Iran and
even longer in eastern Iran, before being replaced by Arabic (Xānlari 1986: vol. 1, 307–14).
In the same years, the coinage reform of 77/696 under caliph ʿAbd al-Malik, directed at re-
moving all symbols associated with the former Sasanian rule, put an end to the so-called
Arab-Sasanian coinage (Mochiri 1981: 168; Bates 1987), a very interesting example of co-
occurrence of such literary languages as Arabic and Middle Persian in the early decades after
the conquest.
The birth of literary New Persian, which entailed a new literature in the vernacular lan-
guage of Iran, is more a major cultural than a merely linguistic issue. It is connected with the
rise of courts more or less independent from the Arabic Abbasid caliphate in eastern and
north-eastern Iran and the emergence of a new Persian ruling class not sufficiently assimi-
lated to Arabic culture (Lazard 1971b, 1975a). The variety of Persian spoken in north-eastern
Iran (dari) came, thus, to be the basis of the literary language (section 2.14).
Book.indb 44 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

We do not know when, where, and for what purposes (administration, literature, pri-
vate documents, etc.) the Arabic script was first adapted for writing Persian. When, towards
the mid-ninth century, the new poetry in the vernacular language of Iran emerged in the
courts of eastern and north-eastern Iran, it was certainly written down in Arabic script. As
this poetry consisted of substituting Persian for Arabic within the pattern of Arabic poetry
(Bausani 1960: 307–11), one can suppose that the establishment of a New Persian orthog-
raphy in Arabic script was a part of this experiment. What is sure is that New Persian in
Arabic script is exempt from the historical spellings which hamper the study of New Persian
texts in other writings including, perhaps, Judaeo-Persian (one cannot exclude that an adap-
tation of the Hebrew alphabet to write Persian had already begun in Sasanian times, as was
claimed by Bacher 1904).
The Arabo-Persian orthography betrays a clear normalizing aim. Middle Persian ka
‘when, if ’, kē ‘who, which’, and kū ‘where; that; than’ (section 2.18) merged in what had prob-
ably become a single new form ki, so that they were no more distinguished in writing and
were spelled ky or kh (or simply k-joined on to the following word, and -k after ān ‘that’) in
early Arabo-Persian orthography. Likewise, of the prepositions bē ‘to, towards’ and pa(d) ‘to,
at, in, on’ (sections 2.17.8 and 2.18), only the latter survived, also subsuming the directional
meaning of bē. Its initial voiceless labial, perhaps also by influence of Arabic bi-‘with, for, by’,
became voiced and was written b-(generally joined on to the following word) even in manu-
scripts that use the four letters <p c ž g> added to the Arabic alphabet for writing Persian
phonemes (Lazard 1963: 387 section 582). The preposition u/o < Middle Persian ō, apparently
not very frequent in dari (section 2.17.8), was dropped from pronunciation and from the
literary language. The suffixes -īh of abstract nous and -īg of adjectives, which had formally
merged (section 2.18), were both represented by -y -ī and the latter also merged, both for-
mally and functionally, with the Arabic relation suffix -iyyun (-ī of nisba).
The ezafe disappeared from writing (though of course not from pronunciation), apart from
rare cases where it is written <y> even after words ending in a consonant (Lazard 1963: 200
section 162). Though it is generally admitted that the ezafe had already been shortened in New
Persian, these occasional spellings, as well as its metrical value as either short or long, point
to the presence of a long variant of the ezafe in Early New Persian (Meier 1981: 131–2). The use
of the ezafe as a relative pronoun (section 2.17.9), probably already marginal in north-eastern
Persian (dari), was ousted from the literary language, though some memory of it may survive
until now in such expressions as vaqt-i(-i) ānjā residam ... ‘(in) the time (in which) I arrived
there ... ’ or in ce kār-i bud(-i) kardi ‘what kind of work was this (that) you did?’, where one can
postulate the fall of a no longer written nor pronounced relative ezafe.
The Early New Persian conjunction u ‘and’ < Middle Persian ud, though being a short
vowel, was written <w> as an independent word. However, in the non-literary Marriage con-
tract of 1078 the conjunction was regularly written only at clause beginning, where it sup-
posedly begun to be pronounced wa as in Arabic (Orsatti 2018, forthcoming).
2.20 The Arabic element in Persian
In the orthography of the earliest, eighth-century Judaeo-Persian documents (Ta, Du1,

Du2), Persian /k/is written <q>, so that kaph was left to represent Persian /x/, for which no
Book.indb 45 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

special Hebrew letter was available.38 Only a couple of Arabic loanwords are to be found in
Du2: hqym ḥakīm ‘doctor’ (Du2 4, 13) and hrb ḥarb ‘war’ (Du2 33). They are written without
any attempt to transliterate their Arabic spelling by distinguishing Arabic emphatic ḥā from
non-emphatic hā, as it happens in later Judaeo-Persian.39 This suggests that Arabic loan-
words had not yet massively entered the current Persian language in the eighth century.
The situation is significantly different from the tenth and eleventh centuries onwards,
when texts in Hebrew (especially the legal documents Kd and Lr) and Manichaean scripts
are full of Arabic loanwords. Their orthography shows a careful attempt to represent the
original Arabic spelling by means of the possibilities offered by the relevant alphabets
(Orsatti 2007b: 110–13, 158–63). A Manichaean New Persian text datable to the eleventh cen-
tury (Sundermann 2003: 251) testifies to the spread, precisely in ‘this time’, of a new philo-
sophical lexicon of Arabic origin, when it says that the body is dominated by jhl ‘ignorance,
foolishness’ (Arabic jahl), ‘which the people of this time call lust (Arabic hawā) and temp-
tations (Arabic waswās)’ (qš40 xlg ʾyg ʿyn zmʾng hwʾ ʾwd wswʾshʾ hmI xwʾnʾnd k-aš xalq-i īn
zamāna hawā wa waswāshā hamē xwānand, Lehrtext, c10–11).
Scholars generally agree that the Arabic element entered Persian as learned loanwords from
the written Arabic language (Telegdi 1973: 52; Bausani 1978: 13–14; Pisowicz 1985: 19). In Persian
texts in Arabo-Persian script and, as far as possible, Hebrew, Syriac, and Manichaean scripts,
Arabic loanwords retained their original spelling, though they were probably pronounced ac-
cording to Persian phonology, as they are today. This seems to be evidence of their origin from
books. However, Perry has recently suggested that a number of Arabic loanwords, which he
terms ‘pre-literate Arabisms’, entered Persian by way of speech and that the Arab settlements
before and after Islam were a major contributing factor to the Arabicization of Persian (Perry
2009a: 54; Windfuhr and Perry 2009: 419). In his view, among Arabisms of this kind there are
words assimilated to Persian morphology and phonology like mosalmān ‘Muslim’ (perhaps a
plural with metathesis from Arabic muslim41) and such onomastic elements as mir from amir
‘prince’ or Bu from Abu ‘father’, which underwent the same loss of initial a-as Persian words at
the beginning of the New Persian linguistic period (Perry 2014; cf. section 2.18).
The percentage of Arabic lexicon varies according to the literary genre and increases over
time at least until the twelfth century (Skalmowski 1961; Lazard 1965; Bausani 1969b; Telegdi
1973; Utas 1978). Lyrical poetry of the new type, i.e. composed according to Arabic prosody,
is from the beginning rich in Arabic words and phrases referring to the common Islamic cul-
ture (exemplarily, Koranic quotations). What is considered one of the most ancient pieces of
New Persian poetry, the six line panegyric that Muḥammad b. Waṣīf presented to the Saffarid
Yaʿqūb-i Lays in the aftermath of his victory in 251/865—preserved in the anonymous Tārīx-
i Sīstān (eleventh century, with later additions)—is already Arabicized in its lexicon and
prosody (ed. Lazard 1964:vol. 2, 13–14). The vocabulary of epic poetry is less Arabicized.
Though Arabic loanwords very often received Persian suffixes, with Arabic broken plurals
even re-pluralized (Moʿin 1977: 81–87), the preservation of the original spelling of Arabic
38 Afterwards, Hebrew qōph came to be used for Arabic /q/, and kaph for both /k/and /x/with or
without diacritic.
39 In Judaeo-Persian, Arabic <ḥ> is transliterated by Hebrew ḥēth and Arabic <h> by Hebrew hē.
40 In Manichaean orthography, <q> and <k> alternate to write /k/, while the new letter <q̈> was
created for Arabic /q/. On the spelling hmI for hamē, see section 2.17.4.
41 On this word and other possible explanations of its origins, see Moʿin 1977: 80–1.
Book.indb 46 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

loans may have entailed the awareness of their non-Iranian origins, at least in a learned con-
text. Indeed, poetry seems to betray a sort of artificial and scholarly pronunciation of Arabic
loanwords. For example, the letters which in Persian have and probably had one and the
same phonetic reference (<z z ż ẓ> /z/, <s s̱ ṣ> /s/, <h ḥ> /h/, and <ʾ ʿ> /ʔ/) never rhyme to-
gether (Meier 1981: 103). Nowadays, Arabic words or expressions of common use like baʿd,
baʿd az ‘after’ are felt as of a lower stylistic register in comparison to their Persian counter-
parts (pas, pas az).
The orthography of the Arabic loanwords has remained unchanged throughout the his-
tory of the New Persian written tradition, which suggests the idea of the Arabic vocabulary of
Persian as an immutable set. Only one morphological class of Arabic loanwords has undergone
a change since its embedding into New Persian. This is the Arabic loanwords with tā marbūṭa
(about 1500 items), which entered Persian either with the ending -a (later -e) or -at, according
to semantic features and stylistic choices: -a is felt as ‘more concrete’, -at as ‘more abstract’.
A consistent part of the words originally borrowed with -at (about 200 out of 800) shifted to -a
in the course of the past thousand years and some 40 items present a double sorting with dif-
ferent meanings: qovve ‘(military) force, (industrial) energy; faculty’ is felt as a concrete, count-
able noun, whereas qovvat ‘strength, power’ is felt as an abstract noun (Perry 1991, 1995).
The massive entrance of Arabic loanwords has sometimes been considered responsible for
the falling into disuse of the ancient Iranian verbs in New Persian, and their gradual replace-
ment by ‘compound verbs’ or verbal periphrases formed by an Arabic noun and a Persian
infinitive, as andišidan ~ fekr kardan ‘to think’. However, both Telegdi (1950–1951: 321) and
Ciancaglini (2011: 3) have noticed that such periphrases are also based on Persian words,
as in the cases of por kardan ‘to fill’ or kušeš kardan ‘to strive’, the latter alternating with
the corresponding simple verb kušidan. Ciancaglini (2011) has shown that the verbal peri-
phrases of the type noun + kardan are very ancient, and must be traced back to Indo-Iranian.
Compound verbs are further discussed in Chapters 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 17, and 19.
2.21 Turkish influence on Persian
Starting from the second half of the eleventh century, Turkish peoples moved from Central
Asia to Iran, furnishing the basis for a long series of Turkish dynasties. This led to the
Turkization of wide areas of Iran, particularly in western and north-eastern Iran, where
different varieties of Turkish supplanted Persian first in rural areas and later also in towns,
thereby gradually reducing the area where Persian was spoken. In Azerbaijan and eastern
Transcaucasia, this process may be considered accomplished around the fourteenth century
(Lornejad and Doostzadeh 2012: 18–19, 143–88).
Turkish was widely spoken in Iran. For the Safavid epoch, a number of European travelers
attest to the diffusion of Turkish as a language spoken both at the court in Isfahan and largely
by the population (Orsatti 2003b). Turkish loanwords, mainly relating to the domains of
power, politics, and popular culture, are less numerous than the Arabic ones.42 However, the
42 On Turkish loanwords in Persian, see Doerfer 1963–75; for Turkish words in classical poetry, see
Ganjei 1986, and Lornejad and Doostzadeh 2012: 93–108.
Book.indb 47 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

influence of Turkish languages and dialects on Persian of Iran, especially on its phonology,
was very strong. The Turkish adstratum has been considered responsible for the replacement
of the opposition of length between /i a u/and /ī ā ū/by an opposition of timbre, as well as
for the fronting of /a/(Pisowicz 1985: 90, 93); though the front articulation of /a/, represented
by e in seventeenth-century European transcriptions in Latin alphabet, might also be due
to the influence of the coeval dialect of Isfahan (Pisowicz 1985: 97–8; Smirnova 1978: 11–12).
The Turkish adstratum has also been regarded as a contributing cause for the replacement of
the opposition of voicing between /p/~ /b/, /t/~ /d/, /k/~ /g/, and /c/~ /j/by an opposition
of tenseness, and for the dephonologization of the opposition between /q/and /γ/(Pisowicz
1985: 106, 113).
Grammatical influences are more difficult to prove. The particular syntactic construction
seen in (33) has been explained as a calque on Turkish (Pisowicz 1985: 91), but the unsound-
ness of the Turkish hypothesis has been shown by Rubinčik (2001: 355–58) in a thorough dis-
cussion of this construction in the framework of Persian syntax:
(33) ʿamu zan=eš mariż=e

uncle wife=POSS.3SG ill=be.PRS.3SG
‘the wife of (my) uncle is ill’.
However, Turkish influence can certainly be seen in expressions with the modifier before the
head noun like Nāder Šāh as against Šāh ʿAbbās, Mirzā Ṣādeq as against ʿAbbās Mirzā, or juje
kabāb as against kabāb-e barre (Perry 2001).
In the case of lexical doublets like Persian xar ~ Turkish olāɣ ‘donkey’, kārd ~ cāqu ‘knife’,
bānu ~ xānom ‘lady’, āheste ~ yavāš ‘slowly’, the Turkish loanwords tend to occupy a lower
sociolinguistic register than their Persian counterparts (Perry 2001: 196).
2.22 Post-classical developments
2.22.1 Periphrastic future
Apart from the loss of the New Persian optative (section 2.17.4), a major development in the
verbal system of post-classical New Persian is the rise of a new periphrastic future with the
auxiliary xwāstan ‘to want, will’. While the phrase xwāham raft(an) had both a volitional and
a future force in Early and Classical New Persian, xwāham raft, with the shortened form of
the infinitive (raft), is grammaticalized in post-classical New Persian to express only the fu-
ture: ‘I will go’ (Jahani 2008; Lenepveu-Hotz 2014: 183–97).
In Middle Persian, future time reference was mainly expressed by subjunctive in both
main and subordinate clauses (Lazard 1984a: 2). The disappearance of the old subjunctive
may have been the reason for the meaning of future to be expressed just by the present. On
the one hand, Jahani (2008: 158–63) has shown that, of the three present forms of Early and
Classical New Persian—unmarked present (without prefix),43 present with bi-, and present
43
‘Non-past’ in Jahani’s terminology.
Book.indb 48 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

with (ha)mē—only unmarked forms and less often forms with bi- can have future time
reference, whereas she found no examples of present with (ha)mē with future force in her
corpus of Early and Classical New Persian. On the other hand, Lenepveu-Hotz (2014: 190)
has shown that only present forms occur in subordinate clauses to express the future, the
periphrastic forms with xwāstan being restricted to principal clauses. These remarks clearly
suggest that the two concurrent ways of expressing the future in Early and Classical New
Persian—present with or without be- and periphrasis with xwāstan—specialized in later
Persian as the new subjunctive and the new future respectively.
2.22.2 Progressive present and past

The post-classical creation of a progressive present and past with the auxiliary dāštan ‘to
have’ is also relevant: dār-am mi-rav-am ‘I am going’, dāšt-am mi-raft-am ‘I was going’. This
periphrasis probably originated from northern or central Persian dialects and is little at-
tested in the literary language (Jeremiás 1993).
2.22.3 Possessive expressions
In Early and Classical New Persian, there occur various possessive expressions such as ān-i
... (34), az ... (35), ān-i ... -rā (36), ... -rā (37):
(34) īn kūdak ān=i kī=st?

this boy that=of who=be.PRS.3SG
‘whose is this boy?’ (AT 17.17).
(35) īn az šumā=st
this of you.2PL=be.PRS.3SG
‘this is yours’ (AT 24.25).
(36) ʾny mrʾ

ān=i ma=rā
that=of I=OBL
‘that belonging to me’ (Du1 4).
(37) dyinēʾ pāk̇ mšyiḥāʾ rāʾḣ

dīn=i pāk mašīhā=rā
religion= EZF pure Christ=OBL
‘the pure religion (is) of Christ’ (Baptism 4, 8, 12).
These expressions have been replaced in post-classical New Persian of Iran by an ezafe con-
struction with māl ‘property’: māl-e man ‘property of me, mine’ (see Chapters 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
and 19 for more discussion on this topic). The latter is still used with possessive meaning in
standard Contemporary New Persian but, in the colloquial variety, also has other meanings
Book.indb 49 18-Jun-18 8:15:42 PM

such as in (38), where it expresses origin, and is being replaced by the complex preposition
barāy-e ‘for’ to express possession as in (39):
(38) in gardanband māl=e Irān=e

this necklace property=of Iran=be.PRS.3SG
‘this necklace is from Iran’.
(39) in ketāb barāy=e man=e

This book for= EZF I=be.PRS.3SG
‘this book is mine’.
2.22.4 The birth of the ‘relative -i’

In Persian a bare noun without any article may refer either to a whole class of items (esm-e
jens ‘generic noun’ in traditional grammar: ketāb ‘book’ instead of other things) or to a fully
determinate referent (ketāb ‘the book’, already known or referred to). Very early, however, a
need was felt for a more unambiguous reference. Already in Late Middle Persian (Josephson
2011: 36–7) and Early New Persian (Orsatti 2011: 75–80), the suffix -ē of the yā-ye nakere, the
‘indefinite article’, developed a strong individualizing meaning and was redundantly used
with nouns and nominal phrases endowed with a determinate value to highlight the indi-
viduated or fully determinate meaning of the referent. This particular individualizing value
of the yā-ye nakere (Daniel Paul 2008 for Contemporary New Persian), which can be iden-
tified as the yā-ye ešārat, the ‘deictic -i’ of Persian grammarians, probably originated in the
spoken language as a means to emphasize the individuated or fully determinate reference to
a denotatum. Indeed, it is only occasionally attested in literary texts, as in (40):
(40) īn nā-kardan=ē=t pindār=ast

this NEG-do.INF=ART=POSS.2SG immagination=be.PRS.3SG
‘(it is) this your non-doing (that) is illusory!’(AT 34.22).
In such usage, the suffix -ē had the same value as the modern suffix -e/-he of the spoken lan-
guage, the so-called ‘definite article’, which redundantly indicates an individuated or fully
determinate referent: ye tork-e ‘a Turk’ (not any Turk, but a certain one), doxtar-e ‘the girl’,
ān āqā-he ‘that Sir’. An accented variant of the yā-ye nakere in this particular individualizing
value still survives as a facultative and stylistically marked suffix in pronominal or adverbial
expressions of the spoken language like digar-i ~ digar ‘the other’, un-var-i ~ ān var ‘on the
other side’, in-jur-i ~ in jur ‘in this way’, kodum-yek-i ~ kodām yek ‘which one’ (Orsatti 2005;
2011: 53–65).
At a later stage in the history of Persian the individualizing value of the ancient -ē suffix
gave rise to the ‘relative -i’, the suffix marking the head-noun of determinative relative
clauses (Orsatti 2011: 81–5). Indeed, it has been noted that in Early and Classical New Persian
the ‘relative -i’ before a determinative relative clause was less frequent than today: its usage
was optional and, after a substantive with specific or determinate reference, especially if pre-
ceded by a demonstrative, it was altogether omitted: waqt-ē ki ... ‘when’ (AT 19.20), dar ān
waqt ki ... ‘at that time, when ... ‘ (AT 25.1). The grammaticalization process of suffix -i (<-ē) as
Book.indb 50 18-Jun-18 8:15:43 PM

a marker of the head noun of determinative relative clauses was brought to completion only
in modern times (Jahani 2000b).
2.23 Summary
In this chapter, we looked at the evolution of Persian and provided a brief description
of the most significant features of Old, Middle, and New Persian, with an analysis of
the main changes over time. Besides an introductory section (2.1) the chapter includes
ideally two parts, preceded by a quick survey of research on the three stages of the lan-
guage (sections 2.2–2.4): the first part discusses the transition from Old Persian to Middle
Persian (sections 2.5–2.11) and the second how Middle Persian became New Persian and
finally Modern and Contemporary Persian (sections 2.12–2.22).
Book.indb 51 18-Jun-18 8:15:43 PM

From Old To New Persian: Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti

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OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, Sat Jun 16 2018, NEWGEN

F ROM OLD TO NEW PE RSIA N

2.1 Over 2,500 years of Persian

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8 Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti

2.2 Research on Old Persian

2.3 Research on Middle Persian

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From Old to New Persian 9

the standpoint of historical linguistics. Durkin-​Meisterernst (2014) provides now a thor-

2.4 Research on the history of New Persian

A comprehensive history of the New Persian language is still a desideratum. However,

Book.indb 9 18-Jun-18 8:15:40 PM

10 Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti

2.5 Old Persian: documentation, use, script,

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From Old to New Persian 11

2.6 Old Persian innovations

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12 Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti

(1) a haya šiyāti-​

b haya šiyāti-​m adadā martiya-​hyā (DSe 4)

c haya adadā šiyāti-​m martiya-​hyā (DNb 2–​3)

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From Old to New Persian 13

2.6.1 New perfect and pluperfect

(2) Pārsa-​hyā martiya-​hyā dūrai̯ r̥šti-​š parāgmatā

(3) Çūsā-​yā paru fraša-​m framāta-​m,

(4) xšaça-​m, taya hacā amāxam tau̯mā-​yā

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14 Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti

(5) utā taya manā kr̥ta-​m utā

2.6.2 Beginnings of the ezafe construction

(6) hau̯=mai̯ ima xšaça-​m frābara taya

(7) kāra haya manā ava-​m kāra-​m

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From Old to New Persian 15

2.7 Loanwords in Old Persian

2.8 From Old to Middle Persian

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16 Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti

2.9 Middle Persian: documentation

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From Old to New Persian 17

2.9.1 Inscriptional Middle Persian

2.9.2 Manichaean Middle Persian

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18 Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti

2.9.3 Zoroastrian Middle Persian

2.9.4 Christian Middle Persian

2.9.5 Middle Persian scripts

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From Old to New Persian 19

2.10 A new language type: survivals

1) lenition of consonants in non-​initial position through (a) voicing of the old voiceless

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20 Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti

Table 2.1 Middle Persian phonemes (adapted from Durkin-​Meisterernst

Labial Labiodental Dental Palatal Velar Laryngeal

Klingenschmitt (2000: 210–​15); Huyse (2003: esp. 47–​61, 95).

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From Old to New Persian 21

(8) ud hān rōšnī ud xwašan īg yazd-​ān, ī az nox pad āz ud

the standpoint of historical linguistics. Durkin-Meisterernst (2014) provides now a thor-

(1) a haya šiyāti-

b haya šiyāti-m adadā martiya-hyā (DSe 4)

c haya adadā šiyāti-m martiya-hyā (DNb 2–3)

2.6.1 New perfect and pluperfect

(2) Pārsa-hyā martiya-hyā dūrai̯ r̥šti-š parāgmatā

(3) Çūsā-yā paru fraša-m framāta-m,

(4) xšaça-m, taya hacā amāxam tau̯mā-yā

(5) utā taya manā kr̥ta-m utā

2.6.2 Beginnings of the ezafe construction

(6) hau̯=mai̯ ima xšaça-m frābara taya

(7) kāra haya manā ava-m kāra-m

2.9.1 Inscriptional Middle Persian

2.9.2 Manichaean Middle Persian

2.9.3 Zoroastrian Middle Persian

2.9.4 Christian Middle Persian

2.9.5 Middle Persian scripts

1) lenition of consonants in non-initial position through (a) voicing of the old voiceless

Table 2.1 Middle Persian phonemes (adapted from Durkin-Meisterernst

Klingenschmitt (2000: 210–15); Huyse (2003: esp. 47–61, 95).

(8) ud hān rōšnī ud xwašan īg yazd-ān, ī az nox pad āz ud

(9) dēn ī xwarāsān pad wisp šahr ud pāygoš āfur-īh-ā-nd

(10) uzdēsparist-ān kē parist-ē-nd ō pahikar-ān

(11) ābāyed ka14 ān šagr-ān rāy zīndag ō amāh āwar-ē-d

2.10.1 Two-case declension and shift from case

Table 2.2 The early two-case system of Middle Persian

2.10.2 Relative pronouns and relative particle

(14) aw-īn ī andar diz

(15) āstānag ī naxwistēn ī abardar mahy ud mehmdar az abārīg-ān

(16) čē ēn=iz ī nūn amāh ō ēn handēmān ī yazd-ān

2.10.3 Present and modal forms

Table 2.3 Manichaean Middle Persian endings of the present

2.10.4 New verb suffixes: causatives, denominatives,

2.10.5 Imperfect, periphrastic past tenses, ergative

Table 2.4 Middle Persian past tenses (PP = past participle)

Table 2.5 New Persian documents in different scripts (with abbreviations)

Five eighth-century Judaeo-Persian documents represent the earliest attestation of New

Table 2.6 Dialectal and chronological classification of ENP documents

South-West Iran South-East Iran (Sistan)

part contains a Latin–Persian–Cuman lexicon, whose original was probably composed by

2.16.1 Contemporary New Persian of Iran

Table 2.7 Phonological system of literary Contemporary New Persian

Labial Labio-dental Dental Alveolar Palatal Uvular Laryngeal

diphthongs ey and ow are interpreted as a sequence of two phonemes each, /e + y/and /

2.16.2 Classical and Early New Persian

Table 2.8 Phonological system of Early and Classical New Persian

Labial Labio-dental Dental Alveolar Velar Uvular Laryngeal