Dari (Afghanistan)

Dari (دری) is the local written name for the Persian language in Afghanistan used mainly in official papers. While the Afghans in their daily usage and spoken language call this language Persian (locally: Fârsi) they are commanded by the government to use the name "Dari' for it while writing. "Dari" is an abbreviation of the name Court Persian (Fârsi-yi Dari). The name Court Persian was used in old times to refer to the Standard form of Persian.

Geographical distribution

Persian is the major language of the country and is spoken in the northern and western parts including the capital Kabul in the east. Approximately 60% of the population of Afghanistan is native speakers, with bilingualism widespread. It is the primary language of the Tajik, Hazara, and Chahar Aimak peoples. The language serves as the means of communication between speakers of different languages in Afghanistan.

Grammar

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

History

Dari is the language of the Sassanids and the official Zoroastrian priesthood language. It emerged as the language of the Persians after the defeat of the Parthians by Ardeshir I in 226 CE. Dari is also refereed to as Middle Persian. The term "middle" Persian suggests the existence of an Old Persian and a New Persian. The Old Persian being the language of the Achaemenids which was overshadowed by Greek after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Dari emerged as the spoken language of the Persian courts of the 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. Officially, Farsi is The Persian of Iran and Dari is the Persian spoken in Afghanistan.

Before perusing any further, it is important to explain the term Iran. Aryānām Xšaθra of the Avestan language (and Sanskrit) 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 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 implies to the modern citizens of the Islamic Republic Iran but also to those who speak Persian (New Persian i.e. Farsi, Dari etc.).

The Old, Middle and New Persian are and represent the same language at three stages of its history. Persian originated in Persa (Persis of Greeks and Fars of Arabs) and is differentiated by dialectical features, still easily recognizable from the dialects prevailing 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 Fihrist lists the five languages of Persia at the end of the Sassanid rule:

Dari - the language of Fahla country (ancient Media);
Dari - the language of the capital, Ctesiphon
Parsi - language of the Mobads and scholars
Suryani - spoken in Sawan
Khuzi of Khuzistan

The last two are not Iranian but Semitic. Parsi was the official language of the state and the Zoroastrian religion, which is said to be the vehicle of literature later known as Dari. Of Dari, Ibn al-Muqaffa knew nothing of, thus he named Middle Persian Parsi, and used the term Dari to describe the dialect of Media. As for Dari, it was the usual spoken language not only in the capital but most likely of a large part of the empire also. Dari is derived from dar or darbār, meaning "court (language)". In everyday conversation Dari was used and Parsi was the written and scholarly language. At the beginning there was little difference between Parsi and Dari. However, over the years, Dari has evolved into a dialect of Middle Persian (Parsi), this distinction was realized and noted by the Sassanids towards the end of their rule. Dari, as a spoken language branched to different dialects, the most important of which was Dari, the language of Parthia which had preserved the oral literature of the poetic tradition of Parthia. Under the Sassanids prestige, Dari spread into the east and Transoxiana regions of the empire suppressing local tongs. 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.

On the other hand, since Parsi (Middle Persian) was the official language, most of the government officials used it to keep records. With the advent of Islam, Arabic slowly replaced Parsi as the official language. The spoken language of Dari however remained intact. It was particularly strong in rural places especially among the dihqān class who held on to it ever harder. The Shu'ubiyya controversy is an example of Persian (Lang.) nationalism. It is known that pre-Islamic Persia had some brilliant poetry, but the reason so little of it has survived as M. Boyce argues, is because most of the poetry was oral. When Arabic became the scholarly language, Dari, to a certain extent, was forgotten for a while. Although there are traces that indicate Arabic and Dari poetry flourishing side by side. As mentioned above, Parsi as an official language was overshadowed by Arabic with the coming of the Muslims. Dari being an everyday language stored the folklore of the Persians (lang.) Thus, in order to revive the Persian literature one had to find a widely used Persian language. Dari presented the perfect tool for this task. However, Dari was a vernacular language at the time, therefore, measures were taken to standardize and formalize Dari in order for it to be used in Royal courts. 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 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 ^* in 809 A.D. Ibn Wasif a secretary of Ya'qub b. al-Laith of the Saffarid dynasty, who praised the sultan, on his recent victory in Herat and Pushang in Arabic verses. Not understanding his secretary of chancery, Yaqub asked: "Why must something be recited that I can't understand?" Thus Mhd b. Wasif, to please the sultan began writing in Dari.

It is said that Dari poetry borrowed its verse-from Arabic literature. Hanzala and Ibn Vasif 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 in their courts, gathered many poets and were patron of a magnificent yet lost art.

Political views on the language

Some people do not consider Afghani 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).

Many speakers of Dari from Afghanistan, are also able to speak languages from neighboring countries, such as Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

Literature

G. Lazard in Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Darī - The New Persian Literary Language", Online Edition, (LINK)

External links