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This article is about the language spoken in Afghanistan. For the court language Dari, see Early New Persian. For Zoroastrian Dari see Dari (Zoroastrian).

Dari (Template:PerB) is the official name for the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan and is a synonymous term for Parsi.

Origin of the word "Dari"

There are different opinions about the origin of the word Dari. The majority of scholars believe that Dari refers to the Persian word darbār, meaning "Court", as it was the formal language of the Sassanids. This opinion is supported by medieval sources and early Islamic historians.

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).

Another option is that Dari refers to the Achaemenid coins in Bactria, called Daric, which were distributed by court. Here daric means "golden" (Template:PerB or Template:Rtl-lang from Template:Rtl-lang gold).

Geographical distribution

In Afghanistan Dari is also generically called Farsi, as are all languages in the Persian sub-group of languages. It is not to be confused with either Parsi-Dari or Dari (Zoroastrian), Iranian languages of the Central Iran sub-group, spoken in some Zoroastrian communities.

Iranian languages are widely used language in Central Asia both by native speakers and as trade languages. Many of these languages are frequently mutually intelligible.

Dari is a branch of the Indo-Iranian (Indo-Aryan) languages, a subfamily of the Indo-European languages. There are three different phases in the development of Indo-Iranian languages: Old, Middle, and Modern. Old Dari/Farsi and the Avestan language represents the old stage of development and were spoken in ancient Bactria. The Avestan language is called Avestan because the sacred scriptures of Zoroastrianism, Avesta, were written in this old form. Avestan died out long before the advent of Islam and except for scriptural use not much has remained of it. Old Dari, however, survived and there are many written records of old Dari, in cuneiform called Maikhi, in Khorasan. Old Dari was spoken until around the third century BC. It was a highly inflected language.

Dari is the major language of Afghanistan, and is spoken in the northern and western parts, and the capital, Kabul, in the east. Approximately 70% of the population of Afghanistan are native speakers.

Also, due to large emigration from Afghanistan, there are thousands of Dari speakers around the world, notably in North America, Australia and many European countries. There are small minority groups of Dari speakers in Pakistan (mainly in NWFP).

Grammar

The syntax of Dari does not differ greatly from Iran's Persian. The stress accent in Dari is different, but just as prominent as those in Iran's Persian. To mark attribution, spoken Dari uses the object marker -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, the verb “to have” (Persian: dāshtan) is used before any other verb to indicate a continuous action. While in Dari, the expression "dar hālé" (at the moment of), is used with the simple present or past tense to express a continuous state. Nevertheless, some Dari speakers in Afghanistan have recently adopted the structure used by Iranians.

History

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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 Middle Persian, or to a classic style of Persian language. 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.

The Muslim conquests broke the continued chain of the Persian language and Arabic (for two hundred years, i.e. 7–8 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 (or Dari) was influenced by Arabic loanwords and was written in the Arabic script. New Persian (or Dari) became the main language of people of Transoxiana and Khorasan in 9th century, and later, it became widespread in other parts of Iran, as well as non-Iranian regions such as India, and Anatolia . Therefore, Transoxiana and Khorasan are regarded by many as the birthplace of Persian language and Persian literature.

The Old, Middle, and New Persian are and represent the same language at three stages of its history. The New Persian language is what is called today as Farsi or Dari. "Farsi" is the local name of the Persian of Iran and "Dari" is the local name of the Persian spoken in Afghanistan. The New Persian remains close to the Middle Persian in many respects. However, New Persian has taken many words from Arabic, 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.

Opinions about Dari's emergence

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There are different opinions concerning how Dari was formed and developed, and concerning the region where Dari came into existence.

Mohammad Taqi Bahar, a famous Iranian poet and scholar, writes in his book Sabk-Shenasi:

Some people say that Dari is the same old Persian, others believe 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 al-Muqaffa, believe that Dari was the language of Capital. It was the most fluent language of the Sassanid period and contained a large number of Eastern words, especially those of Balkh.

He continues:

As the people of Samarkand and Bukhara narrated books and poetries in Dari language 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.

Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa (d. 706) writes in his book Al-fehrest: Pahlavi refers to Pahla, which is the name of five cities: Isfahan, Ray, Hamadan, Mah-Nawand and Azerbaijan. But Dari is the language of citizens and that of Court. It is one of the languages of Khorasan and eastern regions (of Persia); the language style of Balkh has more influence on it. While Parsi (Farsi) is the language of Zoroastrian religious leaders, and the people of Persia (Iran) spoke in this language.

Despite the confusing explanation of Ibn Muqaffa about Pahlavi, Dari and Farsi, we can still conclude that Dari was the language of eastern regions of Persia, i.e. Balkh. Parsi was the official language of the Zoroastrian religion, which is said to be the vehicle of literature later known as Dari. The differences between Parsi (Farsi) and Dari in accent, vocabulary, and expressions have evolved over time and is mostly like American English and British English. 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.

According to Prof. Shahrestani, former president of the Faculty of Persian literature of Kabul University, Dari was formed during the rule of Behman Ibn-e Espandyar, one of the Kavi Kings in Balkh, who ruled probably before the Common Era. In several old books including Burhan-e Qāté, it is mentioned that “At the period of Behman’s ruling, son of Espandyar, people came from different regions to his court and did not understand each others’ languages. Therefore, he ordered the scholars to make a fluent Farsi language, and named it Dari.” Hence, we can say with most certainty that Dari is almost a 2000-year-old language.

From a historical viewpoint, Dari was a developed form of Parti or Parthian Pahlavi having been influenced by Sogdian and Takhari languages. In comparison, Farsi was a developed form of Sassanian Pahlavi.

In 1951, some inscriptions were found in Surkh Kotal of Baghlan (200km north of Kabul) which demonstrate the similarities between Takhari and Dari languages. These inscriptions, written on a stone, were found in one of the Kushanian Temples, which are 1,800 years old. 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 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. He has called his language Parsi but has also called it Dari when trying to attribute his poems to a rich language.

Dari after Islam

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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, i.e. 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.

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 ibn Wasif, and Hanzala-e Badghisi. The Lubab ul-Albab of Zahiriddin Nasr Muhammad Aufi claims one Abbas of Merv as the first poet, who composed a poem in honor of Khalifa al-Ma'mun on the occasion of his entry into that city of Merv in 809 A.D.

Ibn Wasif, a secretary of Ya'qub bin Laith as-Saffar 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 Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids and Seljukids who encouraged poetry and had hundreds of poets in their courts. Most of the well-known Persian poets lived during those periods.

Political views on the language

Some people do not consider the Persian spoken in Afghanistan to be a separate dialect or language. They consider it to be just Persian. Dari is used by certain scholars in Tajikistan and Iran, including Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, to refer to the Persian language. It is also believed by some that Dari should not be called Afghan Persian, because it already existed centuries before the creation of Afghanistan, or the use of the word Afghan. Linguists prefer the terms Western Farsi for the spoken Persian in Teheran, and Eastern Farsi for the Persian spoken in most of Afghanistan, and eastern Iram.

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).

Notes

1. G. Lazard in Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Darī - The New Persian Literary Language", Online Edition 2006, (LINK)
2. Ebn al-Nadim, ed. Tajaddod, p. 15; Khwārazmī, Mafātīh al-olum, pp. 116-17; Hamza Esfahānī, pp. 67-68; Yāqūt, Boldān IV, p. 846
3. [http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v7f1/v7f134.html "Daric" Encyclopedia Iranica
4. This point is mentioned in the Persian book Yādgār-e Zarīrān
5. "Parsi-Dari" Ethnologue
6. "Dari, Zoroastrian" Ethnologue
7. "Afghānistān: (v.) languages" by L. Dupree, Encyclopædia Iranica Online Edition 2006.
8. Dr. Jalal Matini, Iranshenasi Magazine, No.2, Year 2002, LINK
9. Dr. Jalal Matini, Iranshenasi Magazine, No.2, Year 2002, LINK
10. Sabk-Shenasi (Vol.1), Taqi Mohammad Bahar, Amir Kabir's Publications, 1337 Tehran
11. History of the Philosophical Sciences of Iran", Haqiqat Abdul Rafi, Komash Publications, 1372 Tehran, page 39
12. Shahrestani, Shah Ali Akbar, Emergence and Development of Farsi-Dari language, 1999, New Delhi, India
13. Nicholas Sims-William, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, Bactrian Documents from Ancient Afghanistan, 1997, LINK
14. Ethnologue Report for Afghnistan

External links

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

• Languages of Afghanistan
• Languages of Pakistan
• Persian dialects and varieties
• Southwestern Iranian languages