Middle Persian

Middle Persian is an old language that was used in a big empire called the Sasanian Empire. It is also known by its own name, Pārsīk or Pārsīg. This language came from Old Persian, which was spoken in an even older empire called the Achaemenid Empire. Middle Persian was very important and was used in literature and writing for a long time.

After the Sasanian Empire ended, Middle Persian kept being used as a special and respected language. It is the direct ancestor of the language we call Modern Persian today. Modern Persian is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan (where it is called Dari), and Tajikistan (where it is called Tajik). So, Middle Persian helped shape the languages that many people speak now.

Name

Ērānīg is a word used to describe Middle Persian during the Sassanid period (224–651 CE). It comes from the root Ērān, meaning "Iran, Iranians", and means "belonging to Iran, the Iranian language". This term shows that the Sassanids saw themselves as ethnically and culturally Iranian.

Middle Iranian is the name for the middle stage of development of many Iranian languages and dialects. This stage began around 450 BCE and ended around 650 CE. One of these Middle Iranian languages is Middle Persian, which is the middle stage of the Persian language. The Persians called their language Parsig, meaning "Persian". Another Middle Iranian language was Parthian, the language of the northwestern Iranian peoples of Parthia proper. The Parthians called their language Parthawig, meaning "Parthian". Over time, this evolved into the word 'Pahlavi'.

When the Arsacids came to power in the 3rd-century BCE, they used written Greek as the language of government. But other Middle Iranian languages began to be written in a script derived from Aramaic because Aramaic had been the written language of government under the former Achaemenids. This practice continued under the Sassanids, who overthrew the Parthian Arsacids in the 3rd-century CE. Under Sassanid rule, Middle Persian became a important language. After the Sassanids were overthrown by the Arabs in the 7th-century, Iranian languages began to be written in Arabic script, and Middle Persian evolved into New Persian. However, some groups continued to use the older Middle Persian language and writing system. Over time, the name pahlavi began to refer to this late form of Middle Persian, especially in written Zoroastrian texts.

The ISO 639 language code for Middle Persian is pal.

History

Transition from Old Persian

The Middle Period of Iranian languages lasted from the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in the fourth century BCE until the fall of the Sasanian Empire in the seventh century CE.

During this time, the language changed a lot. Words, pronouns, and descriptions lost many of their special endings. Instead, little words called prepositions were used to show how words fit together. The way verbs worked also changed, and the language began to sound different in many ways.

Transition to New Persian

Today, Middle Persian evolved into New Persian and Luri. Changes happened slowly between late Middle Persian and early New Persian. By the 10th century, some differences were clear, like sounds changing, verbs working differently, and many new words coming from Arabic. The way words were written also changed.

Surviving literature

We have many old writings in Middle Persian. These come from special stones called Sasanian inscriptions, pieces of paper from Egypt, coins, and religious books. Most of these writings were recorded after the Sasanian Empire ended.

One important group of writings is from Zoroastrianism, the main religion of the Sasanian Empire. These books talk about the beliefs and rules of the religion. The earliest of these books were likely written in the 6th to 7th centuries, but most of them come from later times, between the 9th and 11th centuries. Even the copies we have today are mostly from the 14th century. There are also other types of Middle Persian writings used by different religious groups, like the Manichaean writings and those of the Church of the East. These writings help us understand how people spoke and wrote in the past.

Phonology

Vowels

The vowels of Middle Persian included several sounds. There were questions about whether some short vowels were distinct sounds or just variations of other vowels. These vowels likely came from older forms of the language, changing under certain conditions.

Consonants

Middle Persian had a range of consonant sounds. There were important changes between the earlier Arsacid period and the later Sassanid period. During this time, some sounds changed after voiced sounds, like voiced stops turning into semivowels. Other changes included voiceless stops and affricates becoming voiced under certain conditions.

Prosody

In Middle Persian, stress was placed on the last syllable of a word. This happened because earlier syllables after the stressed part of words in Old Persian were often shortened or removed.

Scripts

Main article: Pahlavi script

Main article: Manichaean script

Main article: Pazend

Middle Persian was written in many different scripts. These scripts show some differences because they come from different times and places.

The Pahlavi scripts come from an old writing system used in a big empire a long time ago. They mainly show the sounds made by consonants and use special words from another language to help understand the text. There are two main types:

1. Inscriptional Pahlavi was used on stones by kings and important people a long time ago. It has 22 letters that look quite different from each other.
2. Book Pahlavi was used in books and has many letters joined together, making some look the same.

The Manichaean script was made for writing Middle Persian by a teacher many years ago. It shows the sounds more clearly and has special letters to tell different sounds apart.

After some big changes happened, people sometimes used other ways to write these old texts, like using letters from newer scripts.

Transliteration and transcription

Transliteration of Pahlavi script

The Pahlavi script can be tricky because many letters look the same but stand for different sounds. When writing these letters, experts try to show what sound they originally made, even if the shapes look alike. For example, the word gōspand (meaning "domestic animal") is written as gwspnd, even though the letters for w and n look the same.

Some letters come from another language called Aramaic and are written in big letters to show they are not part of the main sound system. For example, the word ān is written as ZK but said as ʾn. There are also special ways to show letters that look wrong compared to their older forms.

Transliteration of Manichaean script

For the Manichaean script, similar rules apply. Certain sounds are shown with special letters. For example, the sound ṣ from Aramaic is written as c, and ḥ is written as h. The special letters for sounds like /x/, /f/, /β/, /ɣ/, and /ð/ are written as x, f, β, γ, and δ.

Transcription

Because these scripts do not tell us all the sounds clearly, experts also use a system to show the exact sounds of words. There are two ways to do this. One way shows how words might have sounded in an older time, and the other shows how they sounded during the Sassanid period.

Some special marks are used to show long vowels and certain sounds:

1. Long vowels are shown with a mark above them, like ā for /aː/.
2. Sounds like /w/ and /j/ are shown with w and y.
3. Certain soft sounds are shown with special marks, like š for /ʃ/.
4. The sound /x/ is shown as x, and its version with lips rounded is xw. The sound /ɣ/ is shown as γ.

Spelling

Pahlavi and Manichaean spelling had some special ways to write sounds. They used Aramaic letters like ṣ and ḥ to show the sounds /t͡ʃ/ and /h/. Both scripts could also use the letter p to show the sound /f/, and ṣ to show z after a vowel.

Pahlavi

Pahlavi often used Aramaeograms, which are Aramaic words used to write Persian words. For example, the word hašt meaning "eight" could be written as hšt or TWMNYA. Some verb and pronoun spellings came from Aramaic forms. For example, о̄y meaning "he" was written as OLE, from the Aramaic ʿlh meaning "onto him". Aramaic letters sometimes mixed up sounds, like using ḥ for h and k for q.

Pahlavi spelling did not always show sound changes that happened around the 3rd century. For example, the letters p, t, k, and c could sound like /b/, /d/, /ɡ/, and /z/ after vowels. The letter d could sometimes sound like /j/, as in pʾd for pāy meaning "foot".

Manichaean

Manichaean spelling was simpler than Pahlavi. It used ՙ before words that started with front vowels, like ՙym for im meaning "this", unlike Pahlavi which used ʾm. Both scripts sometimes used the letter p for /f/ and c for /z/ after vowels, even though these sounds had changed.

Manichaean also had special signs for some sounds but did not always use them consistently. It kept some Aramaic letters like q, ṭ, and h even though they represented the same sounds as k, t, and ḥ. The script also used double dots to mark some abbreviations and plural forms.

Grammar

The transition from Old to Middle Persian led to the loss of many grammatical endings, mainly due to the elision of unstressed word-final syllables. This shift transformed Middle Persian from a synthetic language, like Old Persian, into a more analytic one. The language now relies less on inflection and more on syntactic structures, such as prepositions and periphrases, to express grammatical meanings.

Middle Persian maintained a basic case system in its early forms, found in Sassanid rock inscriptions from the 3rd–4th centuries CE. This system included a direct case for subjects and predicative nominals, and an oblique case for indirect objects, genitive possessors, prepositions, and the subject/agent in ergative constructions. However, this case distinction was limited to plural nouns, certain family terms, and the first person singular pronoun. Over time, the case system broke down, and the oblique case forms became more generalized, eventually disappearing in most texts. New plural suffixes like -īhā also emerged, particularly in later Manichaean and Book Pahlavi texts.

Adjectives originally shared the same inflectional categories as nouns but became less inflected over time, especially in Book Pahlavi. Comparison of adjectives used suffixes like -tar for the comparative degree and -tom for the superlative. Adverbs were often formed from adjectives, nouns, or phrases by adding the suffix -īhā.

Verbs in Middle Persian had two stems: a present stem and a past stem, which also served as the past participle. The present tense distinguished four moods, while past and perfect tenses were expressed periphrastically. Personal endings varied, and there were specific forms for the subjunctive and optative moods. The language also featured periphrastic forms for past tenses, including the preterite, past preterite, perfect, and past perfect, with ergative alignment in transitive verbs.

Preverbs and prepositions were used to express direction and other relationships, and the language had a range of conjunctions and particles for linking clauses and expressing negation or emphasis. Word formation involved various suffixes for nouns, adjectives, and verbs, as well as prefixes that indicated negation, togetherness, or other qualities. Compounding was also a productive process, creating bahuvrihi compounds, determinative compounds, and others.

The numeral system was decimal, with cardinals and ordinals formed through specific patterns. Syntax generally followed a subject-object-verb order, with prepositions and enclitic pronouns playing important roles. Certain verbs were used impersonally, and phrasal verbs were common, often combining a noun with a verb like kardan (to do). The plural was used when referring to kings, and actions by superiors were introduced with the verb framūdan (to order).

Lexically, Middle Persian had fewer borrowings from Aramaic than might be expected, with some exceptions in theological texts. Pahlavi showed more influence from Parthian compared to Manichaean Middle Persian, and Zoroastrian texts sometimes borrowed terms from Avestan.

Samples

Here are a few examples of Middle Persian from different writings and scripts.

A sample of Inscriptional Middle Persian: Kartir's inscription (Kartir KZ 1) on the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht

A sample of Manichaean Middle Persian: excerpt from the Shābuhragān

A sample of Psalter Pahlavi Middle Persian: Psalm 130

A sample of Book Pahlavi Middle Persian (historical narrative): Beginning of The Book of Ardā Wirāz

A sample of Book Pahlavi Middle Persian (legendary narrative): an excerpt from the Lesser Bundahišn

Sample of Book Pahlavi Middle Persian (theological discourse): excerpt from the Lesser Bundahišn 2

Poetry

Here is a sample of Middle Persian poetry from a manuscript:

Vocabulary

Middle Persian, an old form of the Persian language, has many special word parts called affixes that change the meaning of words.

There are differences between Middle Persian and the Persian we speak today. For example, Middle Persian had words that started with two consonants together, like "spās" meaning "thanks." But modern Persian usually does not use two consonants at the start of a word. Instead, it often uses them at the end, like in the word for "horse."

Some words that sounded different in Middle Persian now sound the same in modern Persian. For instance, the words for "milk" and "lion," which used to be pronounced differently, are now both said as "šir." In some other forms of Persian, like Dari and Tajiki, the older sounds are still used.

Many words in English and Arabic come from Middle Persian. When these words moved into Arabic, some sounds changed to fit Arabic pronunciation rules.