Dari (Afghanistan)

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Dari (دری) is the official name for the Persian language in Afghanistan, popularly and locally known as Farsi. "Dari" is an abbreviation of Darbārī, meaning "royal court", a reference to the court language of Sassanids.

Contents 1 Origin of the word "Dari" 2 Geographical distribution 3 Grammar 4 History 5 Political views on the language 6 Literature 7 Notes 8 External links

[edit] Origin of the word "Dari"

There are different opinions about the origin of the word Dari.

Some scholars say that it is derived from dara, meaning "valley", as it developed in the valleys of Hindu Kush mountains (located in northern Afghanistan)^[1].

However, the majority of scholars believe that Dari refers to the Persian word darbār, meaning "Court", as it was the formal language of the Sassanids^[2][1]. This opinion is supported by medieval sources and early Islamic historians^[3].

Another similar opinion is referring Dari to the Greek coins in Bactria, called Daric, which were disbributed by court. This point is mentioned in the Persian book Yādgār-e Zarīrān.

[edit] Geographical distribution

Dari is the major language of Afghanistan, and is spoken in the northern and western parts, and the capital, Kabul, in the east. Approximately 60% of the population of Afghanistan are native speakers, though many are bilingual. The language serves as the means of communication between speakers of different languages in Afghanistan. Also, due to heavy Afghan immigration, there are thousands of Dari speakers around the world notably in North America, Australia and many European countries.

[edit] Grammar

The syntax of Dari does not differ greatly from Iran's Persian, but the stress accent is less prominent in Dari than in Iran's Persian. To mark attribution, spoken Dari uses the suffix -ra. The vowel system also differs from that of Iranian Persian, to some degree.

In addition, the major grammatical difference is the usage of continuous tense. In Iran's Persian, they use the verb “to have” (Persian: dāshtan) before any other verb to indicate a continuous action. While in Dari, they use the expression "dar hālé" (at the moment of), with the simple present or past tense to express a continuous state. Nevertheless, some Dari-speaking Afghans have recently adopted the structure which is used by Iranians.

[edit] History

Dari was the official language of the Sassanids' court. It emerged as the language of the Persians after the defeat of the Parthians by Ardeshir I in 226 CE. Dari is also referred to as Middle Persian. The term "middle" Persian suggests the existence of an Old Persian and a New Persian. Old Persian was the language of the Achaemenids, which was overshadowed by Greek after the conquests of Alexander the Great.

Dari came into existence in Khorasan (mostly in Northern regions i.e. Balkh) and in Transoxiana (North of Amu Darya and Bactrian regions) approximately 2000 years ago^{[citation needed]}. It then emerged as the spoken language of Persian courts of Sassanids. The Muslim conquests again broke the continued chain of the Persian language and Arabic (for two hundred years, i.e. 6–8 century CE) became the official language. The Persians, however, did not forget their own language and little by little, Middle Persian was being shaped into New Persian but with the addition of a considerable amount of Arabic and Parthian words in the Arabic script. This new style was the mother of both Farsi and Dari. "Farsi" is the local name of the Persian of Iran and "Dari" is the local name of the Persian spoken in Afghanistan.

The term Iran is derived from Aryānām Xšaθra. In the Avestan language (and Sanskrit), this is "the land of the Aryans", a people of the Central Asian Steppes who came down from beyond the Oxus river in about 2000 B.C. Pashtuns, Persians, and Kurds are among the descendants of these tribes. Most authors do not really distinguish between Iranian, Aryan, and Persian. They use these terms to mean either race, language, culture, or nationality. The modern term Iran is taken from the Middle Persian expression Erān Šahr (itself being a variation of the Old Persian and Avestan name Aryānām Xšaθra) which means the "land of the Aryans", and is actually the name given to vast land between the Hindu Kush mountains and Mesopotamia (see also: Continental Iran). Persian is another confusing term, which not only applies to the modern citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but also to those who speak Persian (New Persian i.e. Farsi, Dari, and so on).

The Old, Middle, and New Persian are and represent the same language at three stages of its history. Persian originated in Persia (Persis of Greeks and Fars of Arabs) mostly in northeastern regions (i.e. Bactria), and is differentiated by dialectical features, still easily recognizable from the dialects prevailing in South, Central, and South Western Asia. The New Persian remains close to the Middle Persian in many respects. However, New Persian has taken many words from Arabic and Parthian, as opposed to Middle Persian which was influenced, to a lesser degree, by Aramaic. The grammatical structure has also undergone minor changes, mainly in relations to verbal morphology and syntax. For example, in New Persian as in German, verbs usually end a sentence.

Ibn al-Muqaffa, in his book Al-fihrist, lists the five languages of Persia at the end of the Sassanid rule:

• Pahlavi (Old Persian) – the language of Pahla country (ancient Media);
• Dari – the language of the Court and the capital (Ctesiphon) and the language of the eastern parts of Persia (Khorasan)^[2]
• Parsi – language of the Zoroastrian religious leaders and scholars
• Suryani – spoken in Sawan
• Khuzi of Khuzistan

The last two are not Iranian but Semitic. Parsi was the official language of the Zoroastrian religion, which is said to be the vehicle of literature later known as Dari. As for Dari, it was the usual spoken language in the capital and in the court, and probbaly in a large part of the eastern regions of the empire. The differences between Parsi (Farsi) and Dari in accent, vocabulary, and expressions have evolved over time. Today, Dari and Farsi are considered as two different dialects. By the 9th century, the Dari of Khorasan was the dominant speaking language of the Sassanian empire. In the Middle of the 8th century, Abu Muslim's Arab armies spoke Dari. And it is this language which kept a sense of unity among the Arabized Persians and thus emerged as a national identity through literature.

Dari was influenced by the Parthian, Sogdian and Takhari languages^{[citation needed]}. Inscriptions that demonstrate this were found in Surkh Kotal of Baghlan (200km north of Kabul) in 1951. These inscriptions, written on a stone, were found in one of the Kushanian Temples, which date back 1,800 years 4. The inscriptions contain 160 words in 25 lines, and are in Takhari (Modern classification: Tokharian B: Western Tocharian: Kushan Tocharian), written in Greek script. In these inscriptions, the similiarity between Tocharian and Dari can be noticed^{[citation needed]}. Mohammad Taqi Bahar, a famous Iranian poet and scholar, wrote in Sabk-Shunasi (Volume 1):

Some people say that Dari is the same old Persian, others say that Dari is a dialect of the Soghdi language common in the north of Amu Darya and Samarkand. While others, relying on the statements of Abdullah ibn-e Muqaffa, believe that Dari was the language of the Capital [city]. It was the most fluent language of the Sassanid period and contained a large number of Eastern words, especially those of Balkh.^{[citation needed]}

He continues:

As the people of Samarkand and Bukhara (regions in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) wrote text and poetry books in Dari after Islam and the poets of Khorasan also narrated their poems in this language, Dari came step by step from Khorasan to Persia (modern day Iran). I can say as a conclusion that Dari is the language of the people of Bukhara and Balkh.^{[citation needed]}

With the advent of Islam, Arabic slowly replaced the Persian language. Pre-Islamic Persia is said to have had a strong poetic tradition, but little of it has survived, according to M. Boyce, because most of it was not written down. When Arabic became the scholarly language, Persian fell into disuse. Today, both Farsi and Dari contain equal combination of Arabic and Turkish vocabulary. The reason that Dari reserved its pure and original language style and expressions, while Farsi could not, is that the people of the eastern regions of Persia, Khorasan, had less contact and interaction with other foreign languages, although the language of the people of Transoxiana was affected by Russian. Farsi was influenced by some European languages — particularly by French — in the late years of the Qajar Dynasty and during the Pahlavi dynasty. An important difference between Dari and Farsi can be noticed after the 18th century. Before the 16th century, we do not observe any remarkable difference between the works written in different regions of Persia. Works written in Dari in India during the Moghul Empire had a different language style and usage of expressions than the works written in Farsi in Iran, whereas the language of the people of Khorasan reserved its old Khorasani style. Three distinct schools were created in Persian poetry and literature: Khorasani, Iraqi and Hindi.

From a historical viewpoint, Dari was a developed form of Parti or Parsawi or Parthian language (Ashkanian Pahlavi) having been influenced by Sogdian and Takhari languages. In comparison, Farsi was a developed form of Sassanid Pahlavi. In all, over Greater Iran (Persia) people called their spoken language Farsi, whereas they attributed the word "Dari" for a pure, original language with a correct structure. Zabihullah Safa, an Iranian scholar, reporting from the book "Burhān-é Qāté'" says: "Any word which does not have any error/mistake is called Dari e.g. اشکم و شکم، بگوی و گوی، اشتر و شتر, etc. So اشکم، بگوی and اشتر are Dari words. And some people believe that it was the language of some cities like Balkh, Bukhara, Badakhshan, and Merv". Another example can be Hafez Shirazi, a famous Persian poet who lived in Shiraz, one of the cities of contemporary Iran; he has called his language Parsi but has also called it Dari when trying to attribute his poems to a rich language.

The earliest Dari writing goes back to 752 in letter form. However, by the 10th century, a tremendous amount of literature was written and translated into Dari. The first attempts to revive Persian were in poetic form. Among the first poets according to Tarikh-i Sistan, were Abu Hafas Soghdi, Mohammad b. Wasif, and Hanzala of Badghis. The lubabu's-albab of Mohammad Awfi claims one Abbas of Merw as the first poet, who composed a poem in honor of Khalifa al-Ma'mun on the occasion of his entry into that city Merv in 809 A.D. Ibn Wasif, a secretary of Ya'qub al-Laith of the Saffarid dynasty, praised the sultan on his recent victory in Herat and Phoshanj in Arabic verses. Not understanding his secretary of chancery, Yaqub asked: "Why must something be recited that I can't understand?" Thus, Ibn Wasif, to please the sultan, began writing in Dari. Hanzala and Ibn Wasif were the leading men, in local Persian courts, who led the way for a patriotic literary revival. Much credit also goes to dynasties of Tahirids, Saffarids, Samanids, and Ghaznavids and patrons such as bin lays of Saffar, Nasr II of Saman and Sultan Mahmud and Mas'ud of Ghazna who had many poets at their courts.

[edit] Political views on the language

Some people do not consider Afghan Persian itself to be a dialect or a language. They consider it to be the written language (written Persian, with no dialects), and Persian (locally: Fârsi) the spoken language (spoken Persian, which has many different dialects). It is also believed by some that Dari should not be called Afghan Persian, because:

• It already existed centuries before the creation of Afghanistan
• The term is also used by certain Tajikistani and Iranian scholars to refer to the Persian language, including Mahmoud Dowlatabadi
• Afghan (in its original meaning) refers to Pashtuns only, who do not speak Persian but Pashto

This variety of Persian spoken in Afghanistan is distinct from the language of the Zoroastrians who live in Yazd and Kerman, Iran, which is also called Dari (or Gabri).

[edit] Literature

• G. Lazard in Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Darī - The New Persian Literary Language", Online Edition, (LINK)
• S. Sakaria, Concise English - Afghan Dari Dictionary (Kabul: Ferozsons, 1965).

[edit] Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} "Persian Dari", by the Circle Of Ancient Iranian Studies, (LINK)
2. ^ ^{a b} G. Lazard in Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Darī - The New Persian Literary Language", Online Edition 2006, (LINK)
3. ^ Ebn al-Nadim, ed. Tajaddod, p. 15; Khwārazmī, Mafātīh al-olum, pp. 116-17; Hamza Esfahānī, pp. 67-68; Yāqūt, Boldān IV, p. 846

[edit] External links

• Dari Alphabet (www.afghan-web.com)
• (Persian) International Symposium of Masters of Persian language discusses the name of this language
• Persian speaking people and the names of persian language

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