The Origins of Literary Persian

It has been known for more than a hundred years that New Persian is the direct continuation of Darius's Old Persian through Middle Persian, whose main representative is Pahlavi. Originally the Persian language was the language of Fars, in south-west Iran. However, it was in the extreme north-east, in Transoxiana, that new Persian first appeared as the language of literature, with the brilliant poetry of Rudaki and the succeeding poets. It is obvious that during the Sasanian era, Persian both as a colloquial language and as the language of religion, literature, government, and all official activities, rapidly spread toward the North and East of Iran. Following the Arab conquest, it continued to spread out as the main colloquial language of the Muslim conquerors. Thus in most of the Northern provinces of Iran, Persian superseded Parthian, the former language of those regions. At the same time it borrowed many words from Parthian and was also strongly influenced by Soghdian language. Eventually, therefore, the Persian language used in the North was perceived as being somewhat different from the original language which remained in use in the South, and was thus given a new name. As this language was used in the Sasanian capital, it was named dari, or the language of the court, or parsi dari [court Persian], in contradistinction to the Persian of Fars. Literary new Persian, in its outset, was Northern Persian, or dari Persian, as it was commonly called in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Thus, the new Persian language is heir to both Old Persian (through Pahlavi) and Parthian, just as the great Persian literature is heir to both Pahlavi literature and Parthian poetry.