Azerbaijani language

Iranian languages

Another recent discovery by the name of Safina-yi Tabriz has given sentences from native of Tabriz in their peculiar Iranic dialect. The work was compiled during the Ilkhanid era. A sample expression of from the mystic Baba Faraj Tabrizi in the Safina^[24]:

Languages of Azarbaijan

Talysh language

According to Vladimir Minorsky, around the 9th-10th century:^[7]:

Languages of Iran

Tat language

Azari, also spelled Adari, Adhari, is the name used for the Iranian language which is spoken in Azerbaijan in many villages. It was the dominant language in Azarbaijan before it was replaced in many regions by the Azerbaijani language, which is a Turkic language.^[1].

Azari is believed to be a part of the dialect continuum of Northwest Iranian languages. As such, its ancestor would be close to the earliest attested Northwest Iranian languages, Median. As the Northwestern and Southwestern Iranian languages had not yet developed very far apart by the first millennium AD, Azari would also still have been very similar to classical Middle Persian (also called Pahlavi). Azari was spoken in most of Azerbaijan at least up to the 17th century, with the number of speakers decreasing since the 11th century due to the Turkification of the area. According to some accounts, it may have survived for several centuries after that up to the 16th or 17th century. Today, Iranian dialects are still spoken in several linguistic enclaves within Azerbaijan. While some scholars believe that these dialects form a direct continuation of the ancient Azari languages,^[2], others have argued that they are likely to be a later import through migration from other parts of Iran, and that the original Azari dialects became extinct.^[3] The name "Azari" is derived from the old Iranian name for the region of Azerbaijan. The same name for the region, in a Turkified form, was later adopted also to designate the modern Turkic language "Azeri". Professor Iqrar Aliyev states that^[4]:

Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn Al-Masudi (896-956), the Arab historian states:

Following the Islamic Conquest of Iran, Middle Persian, also known as Pahlavi, continued to be used until the 10th century when it was gradually replaced by a new breed of Persian language, most notably Dari. The Saffarid dynasty in particular was the first in a line of many dynasties to officially adopt the new language in 875 CE. Thus Dari, which contains many loanwords from its predecessors, is considered the continuation of Middle Persian which was prevalent in the early Islamic era of western Iran. The name Dari comes from the word (دربار) which refers to the royal court, where many of the poets, protagonists, and patrons of the literature flourished. (See Persian literature)

Etymological studies verify that the extinct dialects spoken from Baku to Semnan before 11th century, all originated from a common source. In other words, the people of Azerbaijan spoke the same language spoken by the Medes. (See UCLA's distinguished professor Ehsan Yarshater's report in: Majaleh-ye Dâneshkadeh-ye Adabiyât, “مجله دانشكده ادبيات”, year 5, No. 1-2, p 35–37.) According to Dehkhoda Dictionary, "the language of Azarbaijan is a branch of the Iranian languages known as Azari". (entry for "Azari", 2006 edition) Azari researcher Ahmad Kasravi Tabrizi in his book "The ancient tongue of Azarbaygan" (زبان باستان آذربایگان) supports this and reports that the medieval historian Yaqut al-Hamawi used the phrase Al-Ajam ol-Azariyah ("The Azari Iranian") in his books Mo'ajjem al-Udabā and Mo'jem al-Baladān. In other sources such as Surat al-Ardh (صورة الأرض) by Ibn Hawqal, Ahsan al-Taqāsim by Moqaddasi, and Al-Masālik wa al-Mamālik by Istakhri, people in Azerbaijan are recorded to be speaking Iranian languages. Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa identifies the Iranian languages as such:

Obviously, this was all before the Turkic arrival. Encyclopedia Iranica quotes Ibn al-Nadim's book Al-fihrist in verifying that all the Median and Persian lands of antiquity (including what is today known as Azerbaijan) spoke one language. And Tabari in 849 also mentions that poets in Maragheh recited Pahlavi poetry. Some Azerbaijani poets however, such as Qatran Tabrizi, used the word "Persian" and "Pahlavi" interchangeably to describe their native language. The historian Hamdollah Mostowfi even goes as far as describing variants of "Pahlavi" spoken in different areas of Azerbaijan (then part of Greater Persia). In his book Tarikh Gozideh, he describes eight poets from Azerbaijan, calling them Ahl-ol She'r Men-al-Ajam (Iranian poets), all Persian by tongue. By now, of course, Dari and Pahlavi had merged into one, as successive dynasties moved from east to west. Suffice it to say that the number of records and documents from Azerbaijan in the Pahlavi language are so numerous that it has left no doubt that this was indeed the native tongue of Azerbaijan before the arrival of the Turks. Many words in the current Azeri vocabulary in fact are of Pahlavi origin. (See studies in Nashriyeh Adabiyāt of Tabriz University, by Dr. Mahyār Navābi, year 5 and 6. Also see Farhang-i Kamāleddin Teflisi, Ajāyeb al-Makhluqāt by Najibeddin Hamadāni, and also the books: Majmal-ol-Tavārikh, Al-qasas, Iskandar-Nameh e Qadeem, and others for lists of words.) The current Turkic Azeri language spoken in Azerbaijan begins its steadly replacement of the old Pahlavi only with the beginning of the Safavid dynasty's rule in Persia. Earlier, many Turkic speaking nomads had chosen the green pastures of Azerbaijan, Aran and Shrivan for their settlement as early as the advent of the Seljuqs. However, they only filled in the pasturelands while the farmlands, villages and the cities remained Iranic in language. The linguistic conversion of Azerbaijan went hand in hand with the coversion of the Azeris into Shiism. From 1501 and the advent of the Safavid dyansty to 1639 and the Treaty of Zohab between the Ottoman Empire and Persia, perhaps over two million people were forcefully removed from the common battlefields between the two warring states. These included eastern Anatolia (to include all of Armenia, northern Kurdistan), all of Azerbaijan, Shirvan and Aran (the last two being known presently as the Republic of Azerbaijan). The Shias were moved east and the Sunnis to the west. The Christians were moved every which way, from Isfahan to Mazandaran, from Marash to Adana. Hundreds of thousands of Turkic speaking Shia nomads from central and eastern Anatolia were resettled in Azerbaijan and Shirvan. Even a larger numbers of Iranic speaking Sunni Azeris/Azaris fled west into the Ottoman Empire from the oppression of the Shia extremism of the early Safavids. Many settled as far afield as Iznik near Istanbul. The famous Iznik glazed pottery and fiance work still has a strong Tabrizi flavor—even today, four hundred years later! Some of these old timer, Iranic speaking, Sunni Azeris moved as far as the new Mughal Empire in India. In short, as Azerbaijan, Shrivan and Aran became steadily more Shia, they also became steadily more Turkic speaking. The process is nearly complete today. Historians report Pahlavi being spoken in Tabriz as late as the 17th century. (See Rowdhat ul-Jinan by Hafez Hosein Tabrizi [d997 A.H.], and Risaleh ye Anārjāni written in 1577). Even the Ottoman Turkish explorer Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682) mentions this in his Seyahatname. He also reports that the elite and learned people of Nakhichevan and Maragheh spoke Pahlavi, during his tours of the region As late as 1820s, many neighborhood in Tabriz were still Iranic speaking, although fully Shia by this time. By the late 1800s, the Turkification of Azerbaijan was near completion with the old Iranic speakers found solely in tiny isolated recesses of the mountains or other remote areas (such as Harzand, Galin Guya and Anarjan). Even the heavily populated Kurdish tribes of Azerbaijan, most importantly the great Qashqai tribe switched from Kurdish to Turkic Azeri in the course of the 19th century as they accept Shiism for their religion. The old timer Shaqaqis still can muster some Kurdish, while the newer generations are fully assimilated. The old Iranic, Pahlavi based language of Azerbaijan, is now extinct, unless one considers Harzandi and other isoglosses to be remnant of it.