Dari, also known as Farsi Dari, Dari Persian, Eastern Persian, or Afghan Persian, is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the Afghan government's official term for the Persian language;Lazard, G. "Darī – The New Persian Literary Language ", in Encyclopædia Iranica, Online Edition 2006. it is referred to as Afghan Persian or Eastern Persian in many Western sources. The decision to rename the local variety of Persian in 1964 was more political than linguistic to support an Afghan state narrative. Dari Persian is most closely related to Tajiki Persian as spoken in Tajikistan and the two share many phonological and lexical similarities. Apart from a few basics of vocabulary, there is little difference between formal written Persian of Afghanistan and Iran; the languages are mutually intelligible. Dari is the official language for approximately 30.6 million people in Afghanistan and it serves as the common language for inter-ethnic communication in the country.
As defined in the 2004 Constitution of Afghanistan, Dari is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan; the other is Pashto. Dari is the most widely spoken language in Afghanistan and the native language of approximately 25–50% of the population. Dari serves as the lingua franca of the country and is understood by up to 78% of the population.
Dari Persian served as the preferred literary and administrative language among non-native speakers, such as the Turco-Mongol peoples including the Mughals, for centuries before the rise of modern nationalism. Also, similar to Iranian Persian and Tajiki Persian, Dari Persian is a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 AD), itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenids (550–330 BC).Lazard, Gilbert 1975, "The Rise of the New Persian Language"in Frye, R. N., The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 4, pp. 595–632, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In historical usage, Dari refers to the Middle Persian court language of the Sassanids.Frye, R. N., "Darī", The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Brill Publications, CD version
Etymology Dari is a name given to the New Persian language since the 10th century, widely used in Arabic (compare Istakhri, Al-Maqdisi and Ibn Hawqal) and Persian texts.
Since 1964, it has been the official name in Afghanistan for the Persian spoken there. In Afghanistan, Dari refers to a modern dialect form of Persian that is the standard language used in administration, government, radio, television, and print media. Because of a preponderance of Dari native speakers, who normally refer to the language as Farsi (, "Persian"), it is also known as "Afghan Persian" in some Western sources.
There are different opinions about the origin of the word Dari. The majority of scholars believe that Dari refers to the Persian word () or (), meaning 'court', as it was the formal language of the Sassanids. The original meaning of the word dari is given in a notice attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffa' (cited by Ibn al-Nadim in Al-Fihrist).Ebn al-Nadim, ed. Tajaddod, p. 15; Khjwārazmī, Mafātīh al-olum, pp. 116–17; Hamza Esfahānī, pp. 67–68; Yāqūt, Boldān IV, p. 846 According to him, was the language spoken by priests, scholars, and the like; it is the language of Fars." This language refers to Middle Persian. As for , he says, "it is the language of the cities of Al-Mada'in; it is spoken by those who are at the king's court. [Its name] is connected with presence at court. Among the languages of the people of Khorasan and the east, the language of the people of Balkh is predominant."
Dari Persian spoken in Afghanistan is not to be confused with the language of Iran called Zoroastrian Dari (also known as "Behdinani", or sometimes pejoratively referred to as "Gabri" or "Gavruni"),. which is a language of the central Iranian subgroup spoken in some Zoroastrian communities.
History Dari comes from Middle Persian, which was spoken during the rule of the Sassanid dynasty. In general, Iranian languages are known from three periods, usually referred to as Old, Middle, and New (Modern) periods. These correspond to three eras in Iranian history, the Old Era being the period from some time before, during, and after the Achaemenid period (that is, to 300 BCE), the Middle Era being the next period, namely, the Sassanid period and part of the post-Sassanid period, and the New Era being the period afterwards down to the present day.
The first person in Europe to use the term Deri for Dari may have been Thomas Hyde in his chief work, (1700).
Dari or Deri has two meanings. It may mean the language of the court: "the Zebani Deri (Zeban i Deri or Zaban i Dari = the language of Deri), or the language of the court, and the Zebani Farsi, the dialect of Persia at large (...)"John Richardson, London, 1777 pg. 15
It may also indicate a form of poetry used from Rudaki to Jami. In the fifteenth century it appeared in Herat under the Persian-speaking Timurid dynasty. The Persian-language poets of the Indian subcontinent who used the Indian verse methods or rhyme methods, such as Abdul-Qādir Bēdil and Muhammad Iqbal, became familiar with the araki form of poetry. Iqbal loved both styles of literature and poetry, when he wrote: Kuliyat Iqbal, Iqbal Academy Publications, 1990, Lahore, Pakistan
This can be translated as:
Even though in euphonious Hindi is sugar – (But) the rhyme method in Dari is sweeter.
usually means 'bliss', 'delight', 'sweetness'; in language, literature and poetry, also means 'euphonious' or 'melodic'.
Hafez, the 14th-century Persian poet, referencing Bengal:
English translation:
All the parrots of India have started crushing sugar Through this Persian candy which is going to Bengal.
Here ('Rock candy of Persia') is a metaphor for the Persian language and poetry.
Persian replaced the Central Asian languages of the Eastern Iranic peoples. Farghana, Samarqand, and Bukhara were starting to be influenced by Dari, and were originally Khwarezmian- and Sogdian-speaking areas during Samanid rule. Dari Persian spread around the Amu Darya region, Afghanistan, and Khorasan after the Arab conquests and during Islamic-Arab rule. The replacement of the Pahlavi script with the Arabic script in order to write the Persian language was done by the Tahirids in 9th century Khorasan. Dari Persian spread and led to the extinction of Eastern Iranian languages such as Bactrian and Khwarezmian with only a tiny amount of Sogdian descended Yaghnobi speakers remaining, as the ancestors of Tajiks started speaking Dari after relinquishing their original language (most likely Bactrian) around this time, due to the fact that the Arab-Islamic army which invaded Central Asia also included some Persians who governed the region like the Sassanids. Persian was a prestigious high-ranking language and was further rooted into Central Asia by the Samanids. Persian also phased out Sogdian. The role of lingua franca that Sogdian originally played was succeeded by Persian after the arrival of Islam.
Distribution
Dari is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan. In practice, though, it serves as the de facto lingua franca among the various ethnolinguistic groups.
Dari Persian is spoken by approximately 25–80% of the population of Afghanistan. Tajiks, who comprise 27–39% of the population,Mobasher, Mohammad Bashir. Political Laws and Ethnic Accommodation: Why Cross-Ethnic Coalitions Have Failed to Institutionalize in Afghanistan. Diss. 2017, p. 42. Link: are the primary native speakers, followed by Hazaras (9%) and Aymāqs (4%). Moreover, while Pashtuns (37–48%) natively speak Pashto, those living in Tajik and Hazara dominated areas also use Dari Persian as their main or secondary language. Thus, non-native Persian-speaking groups have contributed to the increased number of Persian speakers within Afghanistan. The World Factbook states that about 80% of the Afghan population speaks Dari Persian. About 2.5 million Afghans in Iran and Afghans in Pakistan, part of the wider Afghan diaspora, also speak Dari Persian as one of their primary languages.
Dari Persian dominates the northern, western, and central areas of Afghanistan, and is the common language spoken in cities such as Balkh, Mazar-i-Sharif, Herat, Fayzabad, Panjshir, Bamiyan, and the Afghan capital of Kabul where all ethnic groups are settled. Dari Persian-speaking communities also exist in southwestern and eastern Pashtun-dominated areas such as in the cities of Ghazni, Farah, Zaranj, Lashkar Gah, Kandahar, and Gardez.
Cultural influence
Dari Persian has contributed to the majority of Persian borrowings in several Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Punjabi, Bengali, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Sindhi, Saraiki, Hindko, Marathi, etc. and others, as it was the administrative, official, cultural language of the Persianate Mughal Empire and served as the lingua franca throughout the Indian subcontinent for centuries. Often based in Afghanistan, Turkic Central Asian conquerors brought the language into South Asia. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties.Sigfried J. de Laet. History of Humanity: From the seventh to the sixteenth century UNESCO, 1994. p 734 The sizable Persian component of the Anglo-Indian loan words in English and in Urdu therefore reflects the Dari Persian pronunciation (see this for more). For instance, the words and come from the anglicisation of the Afghan Persian pronunciation; in Iranian Persian they are pronounced and . Persian lexemes and certain morphological elements (e.g., the ezāfe) have often been employed to coin words for political and cultural concepts, items, or ideas that were historically unknown outside the Indian subcontinent, as is the case with the aforementioned "borrowings". Dari Persian has a rich and colorful tradition of proverbs that deeply reflect Afghan culture and relationships, as demonstrated through the works of Rumi and other literature.Zellem, Edward. 2012. Zellem, Edward. 2012.
Differences between Iranian and Afghan Persian There are phonological, lexical, and morphological differences between Afghan Persian and Iranian Persian. For example, Afghan Farsi has more vowels than Iranian Farsi.
Phonological differences The phonology of Dari Persian as spoken in Kabul, compared with Classical Persian, is overall more conservative than the accent of Iran's standard register. In this regard, Dari Persian is more similar to Tajiki Persian. The principal differences between standard Iranian Persian and Afghan Persian, as based on the Kabul dialect, are:
The merging of majhūl vowels with ma'rūf vowels (i.e., and into and respectively) is a phenomenon in Iranian Persian, whereas in Afghan Persian, they are still kept separate. For instance, the identically written words 'lion' and 'milk' are pronounced the same in Iranian Persian as , but differently as for 'lion' and for 'milk' in Afghan Persian, similar to Tajiki Persian. The long vowel in "quick" and "strength" is realized as in Iranian Persian; in contrast, these words are pronounced and respectively by Persian speakers in Afghanistan (and Tajikistan). The Classical Persian high short vowels and tend to be lowered in Iranian Persian to and , unlike in Dari where they might have both high and lowered allophones.