William L. Hanaway

Introduction. Persian as Koine: Written Persian in World-historical Perspective

Persian emerged as the common language of court life and administration in the Islamic world east of Baghdad in the 8th and 9th centuries (2nd and 3rd centuries into the Islamic era). The process began in Khurasan, the large historical region of southwest-central Asia, which besides the northeast quadrant of modern Iran included most of modern Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, and northern Afghanistan. Persian radiated out from the pre-Islamic cities that became new power centers, filling the vacuum left by the declining political (as distinct from symbolic) role of the Caliphate in Baghdad. Persian spread to its greatest extent five centuries later, under Mongol and Turkic administrations, when it stretched from the Balkans in the west to southern India in the south and along the trade routes into central China in the east. A century later, it began to give way to the rise of vernacular languages—first in the west, where the use of Ottoman Turkish increased in the 15th century. It finally declined significantly in the east in India in the 19th century, where the British replaced it formally with Urdu and English in 1835. Over the past century and a half Persian has undergone a process of functional transformation, passing into the status of a classical language, as locally people began to write in Pashto, Sindhi, Urdu, and other vernaculars in the peripheral territories of the Islamic world. In the 20th century, at the expense of losing its unitary identity and universally standard form, Persian achieved the modern status of national language in three countries—in Afghanistan, (where it was renamed dari), in Iran (as Fārsi), and in Tajikistan (where it was renamed tajiki, or tojiki when transliterated from Cyrillic). It is still spoken widely in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and the southern littoral of the Persian Gulf, and continues to flourish among post-revolutionary diaspora communities in America, Asia, and Europe. Disciplines Anthropology | Near Eastern Languages and Societies | Reading and Language | Social and Behavioral Sciences This book chapter is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_papers/86

Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order

Foreword Preface Contributors Note on Transliteration and Referencing Introduction: Persian as Koine: Written Persian in World-historical Perspective -Brian Spooner and William L. Hanaway PART I. FOUNDATIONS 1 New Persian: Expansion, Standardization, and Inclusivity -John R. Perry 2 Secretaries, Poets, and the Literary Language -William L. Hanaway 3 The Transmission of Persian Texts Compared to the Case of Classical Latin -A.H. Morton PART II. SPREAD 4 Persian as a Lingua Franca in the Mongol Empire -David Morgan 5 Ottoman Turkish: Written Language and Scribal Practice, 13th to 20th Centuries -Linda T. Darling 6 Persian Rhetoric in the Safavid Context: A 16th Century Nurbakhshiyya Treatise on Insha -Colin P. Mitchell PART III. VERNACULARIZATION AND NATIONALISM 7 Historiography in the Sadduzai Era: Language and Narration -Senzil Nawid 8 How Could Urdu Be the Envy of Persian (rashk-i-Farsi)! The Role of Persian in South Asian Culture and Literature -Muhammad Aslam Syed 9 Urdu Insha: The Hyderabad Experiment, 1860-1948 -Anwar Moazzam 10 Teaching Persian as an Imperial Language in India and in England during the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries -Michael H. Fisher PART FOUR. THE LARGER CONTEXT 11 The Latinate Tradition as a Point of Reference -Joseph Farrell 12 Persian Scribes (munshi) and Chinese Literati (ru). The Power and Prestige of Fine Writing (adab/wenzhang) -Victor H. Mair Afterword Glossary Index

The Oral Background of Persian Epics: Storytelling and Poetry

connect all these motives in a coherent interpretation and to explain each one of them through the others, while keeping view of the major cultural themes, it would seem specious to underline its few shortcomings. They are, in fact, very much the same as those affecting similar studies on broad intellectual issues: a rather sketchy historical frame and textual evidence that, while being highly readable and suggestive, is selected so as to confirm ex post the thesis being presented. Thus, one would rather reverse the connection established between ‘the growth of literacy’ and the booming of the secretarial and administrative output. As would happen elsewhere in the Islamic world— the case of al-Andalus is, again, indicative—it was the growing cost of maintaining a standing mercenary army, together with the advent of a military caste, which stimulated the growth of a state administration. In its turn, the bureaucracy became increasingly dependent on the literate milieu and the increased demand for competent writers broadened both the ranks of the udab a’ class and the expertise and formal training needed for competing for posts and rewards.

Interview with Dr. Yarshater

THE EDITORS OF IRANIAN STUDIES, IN DISCUSSIONS WITH DR. EHSAN Yarshater, Editor of the Encyclopaedia Iranica, felt that an interview with Dr. Yarshater would add an interesting dimension to the reviews of the Encyclopaedia published in this issue of Iranian Studies. When the procedure for the interview was raised with Dr. Yarshater it was thought both by him and by the editor that a face-to-face interview might not produce the detailed and considered answers to the editors questions that would best represent Dr. Yarshaters views and also be of most interest to the readers of the journal. It was decided, therefore, that the editor would submit a list of written questions to Dr. Yarshater and that he would reply to them in writing, after taking adequate time to think through his answers. The results of this process are presented here.