Ricerc@Sapienza

The papers analyses the indirect sources attesting the sonorisation of the Prot-Iranian *-k- in New Persian.

The linguistic situation in Iran at the beginning of the Islamic era is described in a famous passage going back to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ that has been discussed at length by scholars. Here new evidence based on Middle Persian inscriptions from the northern regions of historical Iran are introduced. These texts show that literacy was comparatively widespread in Late Sasanian and Early Islamic Iran, opening the way for a new understanding of linguistic developments in the years that have been dubbed do qarn-e sokut “two centuries of silence”.

This chapter looks at the long evolution of Persian, which is the only Iranian language to be substantially documented in all three periods of Old, Middle, and New Iranian on account of its close association with the main political centres for most of the time over the centuries: Old Persian with the Achaemenids, Middle Persian with the Sasanians, and New Persian with Islamic powers. The chapter ideally includes two parts, preceded by a brief survey of research on the three stages of the language.