Search Results for “pashto”

• PASHTO LANGUAGE

  Cross-Reference

  See AFGHANISTAN vi. PAŠTO.

• ANĪS

  L. Pourhadi

  a daily Kabul newspaper, in Darī (Persian), with some articles in Pashto.  

• KĀBOL MAGAZINE

  Wali Ahmadi

  a monthly magazine with the full title Kābol:ʿElmi, adabi, ejtemāʿi, tariḵi. The periodical was founded by the Kabul Literary Society (Anjoman-e Adabi-e Kābol), 1931-40.

• AFŻAL KHAN ḴAṬAK

  J. Enevoldsen

  (b. 1075/1664-65), chief of the Ḵaṭak tribe, Pashto poet, and author ofTārīḵ-emoraṣṣaʿ.

• KABUL LITERARY SOCIETY

  Wali Ahmadi

  (Anjoman-e adabi-e Kābol), the first official academic and cultural association of Afghanistan, 1930-40.

• COLETTI, Alessandro

  Adriano Rossi

  (b. Trieste, 1928, d. Rome, 1985), Italian scholar of Iranian languages and general oriental subjects, co-author with his wife, Hanne Grünbaum, of the most comprehensive Persian-Italian dictionary (1978) published in modern times.

• BELLEW, HENRY WALTER

  D. Neil MacKenzie

  (1834-92), surgeon and amateur orientalist. Throughout his service he took a lively interest in the languages and ethnography of the peoples within his charge.

• ORMURI

  Ch. M. Kieffer and EIr.

  language spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Ormur or Baraki.

• ACƎKZĪ

  C. M. Kieffer

  (ACAKZĪ, or AČƎKZĪ, AČAKẒĪ), a tribal grouping of Paṧtūn clans in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

• GRYUNBERG TSVETINOVICH, ALEKSANDR LEONOVICH

  Vladmir Kushev

  (b. St. Petersburg, 1930; d. St. Petersburg, 1995), Russian linguist who specialized in Iranian languages.

• BIBLE viii. Translations into other Modern Iranian Languages

  Kenneth J. Thomas

  John Leyden, a gifted Scottish linguist and poet who went to Calcutta in 1803 as a surgeon’s assistant for the East India Company and subsequently became a professor at the College of Fort William, was involved in translating the Gospels into a number of languages, including both Pashto and Bal­uchi.

• BURUSHASKI

  Hermann Berger

  language spoken in Hunza-Karakorum, North Pakistan, containing some Iranian loanwords of various origins.

• EASTERN IRANIAN LANGUAGES

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  term used to refer to a group of Iranian languages most of which are or were spoken in lands to the east of the present state of Persia.

• BĀNŪ

  W. Eilers

  originally “lady,” now also in common use as an alternative to ḵānom “Madam, Mrs.” (from Turkish xan-ım “my lord”).

• Bečka, Jiři

  Manfred Lorenz

  (1915-2004), a noted Czech scholar of Iran, Afghanistan, and particularly, Tajikistan.

• ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTION

  John R. Payne

  The most generally accepted definition of an ergative construction begins with the notion that languages utilize three primitive syntactic relations, referred to as S, A, and O. S is the subject of an intransitive clause, A is the subject of a transitive clause, and O is the object of a transitive clause.

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• GAHĪZ

  Nassereddin Parvin

  weekly newspaper published in Kabul from January 1968 to April 1973, owned, edited, and published by Menhāj-al-Dīn Gahīz (1922-73), who was apparently assassinated by Soviet agents.

• ORANSKIĬ, IOSIF MIKHAILOVICH

  Ivan Steblin-Kamensky

  It is difficult to name a field of Iranian studies which was not included in Oranskii's studies: history of Iranian studies, history of the teaching of Persian and other Iranian languages, the study of the languages themselves, the development of their grammatical structure, etymology, language contacts, dialectology, ethnology, etc.

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• DORN, JOHANNES ALBRECHT BERNHARD

  N. L. Luzhetskaya

  (1805-1881), pioneer in many areas of Iranian studies in Russia. He never visited Afghanistan, but he nevertheless established the scientific basis for Afghan studies, particularly the first systematic description of Pashto.

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• KIEFFER, CHARLES MARTIN

  Daniel Septfonds

  (1923-2015), French linguist and ethnographer of Afghanistan.

• FESTIVALS x. IN AFGHANISTAN

  NANCY HATCH DUPREE

  Festive ceremonies in Afghanistan mark special religious days and major events in individual life cycles. Few are formally organized, being celebrated primarily to keep family bonds strong and community ties congenial.

• EṢLĀḤ

  Nassereddin Parvin

  title of several Persian-language newspapers, especially the major 20th-century Kabul daily.

• BĪDĀR

  Nassereddin Parvin

  (lit. awake) the name of three Persian periodicals, two of which were published in Tehran in 1923 and 1951 and the other in Mazār-e Šarīf in 1925.

• CHARPENTIER, JARL

  Bo Utas

  (Hellen Robert Toussaint; b. 17 December 1884, d. 5 July 1935), Swedish Indologist, Indo-Europeanist, and Iranist, born in Gothenburg as the son of an army officer.

• MORGENSTIERNE, Georg Valentin von Munthe af

  Fridrick Thordarson

  Norwegian linguist and orientalist, specializing in Indo-Iranian languages, particularly those spoken in Afghanistan, the Pamirs, and the northwest of the Indian subcontinent (1892-1978).

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• AFGHANISTAN vi. Paṣ̌tō

  G. Morgenstierne

  Paṣ̌tō is an Iranic language spoken in south and southeastern Afghanistan, by recent settlers in northern Afghanistan, in Pakistan (North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan), and on the eastern border of Iran. 

• INDO-IRANIAN FRONTIER LANGUAGES

  Elena Bashir

  This article surveys Indo-Iranian frontier languages the territory of present-day Pakistan, which have been under the cultural and linguistic influence of successive stages of the Persian language since the time of the Achaemenid Empire.

• ḴALAJ i. TRIBE

  Pierre Oberling

  tribe originating from Turkistan, generally referred to as Turks but possibly Indo-Iranian.

• CLOTHING xiii. Clothing in Afghanistan

  Nancy Hatch Dupree

  The most diagnostic item of clothing is headgear; and even the ubiquitous turban (Pers. langōtā, dastār, Pashto paṭkay, pagṛi), which can vary in length from 3 to 6 m, takes on distinguishing characteristics, depending on the arrangement of folds.

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• ENŠĀʾ-ALLĀH KHĀN, SAYYED

  M. Asif Naim Siddiqui

  (b. Moršedābād, 1756; d. Lucknow, 1818), Urdu-Persian poet and writer.

• FOLKLORE STUDIES ii. OF AFGHANISTAN

  Margaret A. Mills and Abdul Ali Ahrary

  Folklore may be defined as roughly comprising the oral-traditional component of culture, complementary or competitive with an official, canonical “written” culture, but this definition presents certain problems.

• DŌRĪ

  Daniel Balland

  river in southern Afghanistan, the main tributary of the Arḡandā.

• FOLK POETRY

  Philip G. Kreyenbroek

  in Iranian languages. The term ‘folk poetry’ can be properly used for texts which have some characteristics marking them as poetry and belong to the tradition of the common people, as against the dominant ‘polite’ literary cult

• CHEESE

  Daniel Balland

  In Persia and Afghanistan both nomadic pastoralists and sedentary peasants make the same basic kinds of domestic cheese. The only clear distinction is between acid and rennet cheeses, both made from mixed milks, except in Gīlān; there acid cheeses are usually prepared from cow’s and buffalo’s milk and rennet cheeses from ewe’s and goat’s milk.

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• KANDAHAR vi. 20th Century, 1901-73

  M. Jamil Hanifi

  city in southern Afghanistan (lat 31°36′28″ N, long 65°42′19″ E). Kandahar expanded substantially during the second half of the 20th century by attracting rural labor and by developing new residential quarters (šahr-e naw) and public buildings. 

• CLOUDS

  Eckart Ehlers

  Large tracts of central Persia and the adjacent arid plateaus of Afghanistan lie under cloudless skies for most of the year, which contributes to typical “conti­nental” climatic conditions.

• ḠUR

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  a region of central Afghanistan, essentially the modern administrative province (welāyat) of Ḡōrāt.

• FLOYER, ERNEST AYSCOGHE

  Josef Elfenbein

  Floyer became the first station chief at Jāsk in 1870, although he was only seventeen, and served until 1877. Goldsmid encouraged his station and substation staff to explore their surroundings, and Floyer was one of those who responded, taking a long leave of absence in 1876-77.

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• CHURNS AND CHURNING

  Marcel Bazin and Christian Bromberger

  There are three distinct ways in which milk is normally processed. In the first it is heated, pressed, and squeezed dry to make cheese (panīr). Cheese making is uncommon in the Persian world. The other two methods begin with conversion of the milk into yogurt.

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• KANDAHAR v. In the 19th Century

  Shah Mahmoud Hanifi

  city in southern Afghanistan (lat 31°36′28″ N, long 65°42′19″ E), the second most important in the country and the capital of Kandahar province.

• KĀBOLI

  Rawan Farhadi and J. R. Perry

  the colloquial Persian spoken in the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, and its environs. It has been a common and prestigious vernacular for several centuries, since Kabul was long ruled by dynasts of Iran (the Safavids) or India (the Mughals) for whom Persian was the language of culture and administration.

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• ʿERFĀN (2)

  Nassereddin Parvin

  title of two Persian magazines and a newspaper.

• CASES

  Gernot L. Windfuhr

  term "case" used on at least three linguistic levels: 1. semantic role of a noun (phrase), such as agent, patient, experiencer, and possessor; 2. syntactic function, such as subject, direct object, and indirect object; 3. morphological means, such as nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive.

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• BĒṬANĪ

  Daniel Balland

  a Pash­tun tribe on the eastern edge of the Solaymān moun­tains. The recent history of the Bēṭanī has been largely determined by the land that they now inhabit, adjacent to the plains of the middle Indus and the Wazīr uplands.

• FLAGS ii. Of Afghanistan

  Habib Borjian

  Nāder Shah’s (1929-33) policy of moderate reforms was reflected in the flag he reportedly used when he seized power—the tricolor flag introduced by Amān-Allāh; it was soon modified as a bound sheaf of wheat circling a stylized mosque, which recalls the mausoleum of Aḥmad Shah Dorrānī.

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• DAŠT-E NĀWOR

  Gérard Fussman

  lit. “plain of the lake”; a depression (average elev. 3,100 m) 60 x 15 km with a brackish lake in the center, located at 33° 41’ N and 67° 46’ E, about 60 km west of Ḡaznī.

• MACKENZIE, DAVID NEIL

  Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst

  Believing that the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies would be the institution most suited to his interests, Mackenzie enrolled there in September 1948. Because Pashto was not offered, he chose Persian, and completed the three-year B.A. course in 1951.

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• ḎORRAT

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  maize or (Indian) corn, Zea mays L. (fam. Gramineae), with many varieties and hybrids.

• KĀRIZ i. Terminology

  Xavier de Planhol

  underground irrigation canals, also called qanāt.

• ANA’L-ḤAQQ

  A. Schimmel

  “I am the Truth,” the most famous of the Sufi šaṭḥīyāt (ecstatic utterances, or paradoxes).

• BYRON, ROBERT

  Robert Irwin

  (1905-1941), British travel writer and amateur historian of architecture. 

• KĀRIZ iii. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONTEXTS

  Xavier de Planhol

  The major significance of the kārēz lies in its continuous discharge throughout the year. In contrast, irrigation systems that rely on surface water runoff can completely cease to discharge water during the dry season.

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• GARDĪZ

  Daniel Balland

  (Gardēz), a city in the Solaymān Mountains of eastern Afghanistan, 122 km south of Kabul. The city is situated at 2,300 m above sea-level, in a large intramountainous depression watered by the upper course of the Rūd-e Gardīz.

• MÜLLER, FRIEDRICH

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  (1834-1898), Austrian scholar of linguistics and ethnography. He was the founder and main advocate of the so-called “linguistic ethnography.” He worked on a genealogical classification and a description of all the languages around the globe known at his time (and often examined for the first time by himself). 

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• AFGHANISTAN xii. Literature

  R. Farhādī

  Under Aḥmad Shah Dorrānī, Afghanistan continued to play its long-standing role as a center of Persian literature and a transmitter of literary currents between Transoxiana and Islamic India. 

• DARDESTĀN

  NIGEL J. R. ALLAN, D. I. EDEL’MAN

  The toponym Dardestān is a social and political construct. Its currency toward the end of the 19th century in many ways reflected an attempt by supporters of imperial India to link the Indian northwestern frontier tracts to Kashmir, with which the British had treaties.

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• DARMESTETER, JAMES

  Mary Boyce and D. N. MacKenzie

  (b. Château-Salins, Alsace, 12 March 1849, d. Paris, 19 October 1894), the great Iranist, was the son of a Jewish bookbinder, who in 1852 moved to Paris to improve his children’s educational opportunities.

• IRAN vi. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS (3) Writing Systems

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  Writing systems for Iranian languages include cuneiform (Old Persian); scripts descended from “imperial” Aramaic, two Syriac scripts, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic, Georgian, and Latin.

• DORRĀNĪ

  Daniel Balland

  probably the most numerous Pashtun tribal confederation, from which all Afghan dynasties since 1747 have come. The Dorrānī confederation is a political grouping of ten Pashtun tribes of various sizes, which are further organized in two leagues of five tribes each.

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• BARLEY

  M. Bazin, D. Balland

  The cultivation of barley in Iran, like that of wheat, goes back to the origin of agriculture itself. Both botanical and archeological data locate the beginning of the “Neolithic revolution” in the Fertile Crescent, where both wild barley, Hordeum spontaneum, and a wide-grain kind of wild wheat, Triticum dicoccoides can still be found.

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• FELT

  Daniel Balland and Jean-Pierre Digard

  (namad), material produced by process of felting, the entanglement of animal fiber in all directions, done to form a soft and homogeneous mass. The technique was originally devised in nomadic communities of Central Asia (Pazyryk, 5th to 3rd centuries BCE).

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• BĀRAKZĪ

  D. Balland

  (singular Bārakzay), an ethnic name common among the Pashtun of Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Baluch of southeastern Iran. The oldest settlement area is between Herat and the approaches to the Helmand valley.

• EŠKĀŠ(E)MĪ

  I. M. Steblin-Kamensky

  or Ishkashmi; one of the so-called “Pamir group” of the Eastern Iranian languages spoken in a few villages of the region of Eškāšem straddling the upper reaches of the Panj river.

• EDUCATION xxvii. IN AFGHANISTAN

  M. Mobin Shorish

  By the end of the 19th century, mosque schools (maktabs) and madrasas had lost their vitality, rigor, and scope. Internecine struggles among the ruling Abdālī  and subsequently among the Moḥammadzai clan ensured that no trace of regular and systematic education remained in the country.

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• GYPSY ii. Gypsy Dialects

  Gernot L. Windfuhr

  The languages and dialects popularly called “Gypsy” (< Egipcien < qebṭi “Coptic, Egyptian”) constitute three major groups: Asiatic or Middle Eastern Domari, Armenian Lomavren, and European Romani.

• DARRA-YE NŪR

  Daniel Balland

  name of a small tributary valley on the right bank of the Konar river in eastern Afghanistan and the corresponding subdistrict of Nangrahār province.

• FARHĀD (1)

  Heshmat Moayyad

  romantic figure in Persian legend and literature, best known from the poetry of Neẓāmī Ganjavī as a rival with the Sasanian king Ḵosrow II Parvēz (r. 591-628) for the love of the beautiful Armenian princess Šīrīn.

• BELDERČĪN

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  (quail, Coturnix coturnix L.). The quail is mentioned in both the Bible and the Koran. Allusions to these Koranic reminiscences are occasionally found in Persian poetry. Various virtues are attributed to the quail in traditional or popular Islamic medicine.

• IRAN vi. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  The term “Iranian language” is applied to any language which is descended from a proto-Iranian parent language (unattested by texts) spoken, presumably, in Central Asia in the late 3rd to early 2nd millennium BCE.

• ṢOBḤI, FAŻL-ALLĀH MOHTADI

  Moojan Momen

  (1897-1962), Persian school teacher, who is best known as a children’s storyteller, collector of folktales, broadcaster, and Bahai apostate.

• DERAḴT

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  tree, shrub.

• DIALECTOLOGY

  GERNOT L. WINDFUHR

  the terms dialect and language overlap; in general, language refers to the more or less unified system of the phonology, grammar, and lexicon that is shared by the speakers of a country, or geographic region, or a socially defined group, whereas dialect (Pers. lahja, gūyeš) focuses on varieties of a language.

• FARR(AH)

  Gherardo Gnoli

  Avestan Xᵛarənah, lit. “glory,” according to the most likely etymology and the semantic function reconstructed from its occurrence in various contexts and phases of the Iranian languages.

• ČŪPĀN

  Jean-Pierre Digard

  or čōbān “shepherd” (Mid. Pers. and NPers. šobān); even today the shepherd remains a central figure, in both the technological life and consequently the symbolic life, of all systems of animal husbandry.

• BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND CATALOGUES i. In the West

  J. T. P. de Bruijn

  European interest in Iranian bibliography was awakened in the 16th and early 17th centuries, when manuscripts were brought to the West in ever-increasing numbers and became much sought after by humanists engaged in Oriental studies.

• TENTS i. General Survey

  Jean-Pierre Digard

  The most common type of tent in Iran and Afghani­stan is the “black tent” (constructed of bands of woven goat hair stitched together), which is known from Mauritania to India.

• ḤAQIQAT (1)

  Nasseredin Parvin

  (“truth”), title of six different Persian-language newspapers or periodicals, published at various times in Tehran, Rašt, Isfahan, Kabul, and Aarhus (Denmark).

• HÜBSCHMANN, (JOHANN) HEINRICH

  Erich Kettenhofen and Rüdiger Schmitt

  Hübschmann felt himself to be an orientalist. Originally an Iranian scholar, through his fundamental studies he became also the founder of modern Armenian linguistics; for it was he who created a solid basis for future historical-comparative research in this field.

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• BĀRĀN

  D. Balland

  It is interesting to note that in modern Iranian languages violent and dangerous rainfall events are often designated by borrowings from Arabic (ṭūfān for typhoon, barq for lightning, raʿd for thunder, sayl for sudden deluge), whereas for phenomena considered beneficial a terminology of Iranian origin has been preserved.

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• BĪD

  Wilhelm Eilers, Hūšang Aʿlam

  common desig­nation in modern Persian for the genus Salix L., willow. Willow trees are found in all the Iranian lands, mainly along streams and canals.

• LOCUST

  Cyrus Abivardi

  (in modern taxonomy, Pers. malaḵ-e mohājer), the term used for any gregarious, short-horned grasshopper. The generic Persian term malaḵ (vs. Mid. Pers. mayg in the Pahlavi Vendidad; Av. maδaxa-) is regarded as a borrowing from an Eastern Iranian language (cf. Pashto malax[ay]).

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• CROW

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  a bird of the family Corvidae, represented in Persia and Afghanistan by six genera. Several of their features are more or less reflected in Persian literature and folklore. In poetry the blackness of  the feathers (par[r]-e zāḡ) has often been used in similes to emphasize the blackness or darkness of a lock of hair, a certain night, clouds, and the like.

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• BARF “SNOW”

  D. Balland, B. Hourcade, and C. M. Kieffer

  On the tropical margins of the Irano-Afghan plateau, snow is in fact exceptional below an altitude of 1,000 meters. Not that it cannot fall in abundance there, but then it is a memorable event. In the remaining two-thirds of the territory of Iran and Afghanistan snow is a common occurrence.

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• ETIQUETTE

  Nancy H. Dupree

  (Pers. nazākat, ādāb-e moʿāšarat), defined as the observance of conventional decorum particularly among the elite, is itself part of the wider topic of adab.

• ENCYCLOPAEDIA IRANICA

• LENTZ, OTTO HELMUT WOLFGANG

  Gerd Gropp

  Lentz wrote no voluminous book, but many essays in periodicals, including pioneer works on Turfan texts, Iranian dialects, local eastern systems of time reckoning, and loanwords in Mid. Iranian. His doctoral dissertation on North Iranian elements in the Šāh-nāma (1926) won him immediate recognition.

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• CUCUMBER

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  Cucumis sativus L. (of the family Cucurbitaceae), in Persia generally called ḵīār (with occasional slight variants), a term that is also em­ployed to designate the fruit of certain other plants.

• ḠILZĪ

  M. Jamil Hanifi

  or ḠALZĪ, one of three major Pashtun/Paxtun tribal confederations in Afghanistan.

• BACTRIAN LANGUAGE

  N. Sims-Williams

  The Iranian language of ancient Bactria (northern Afghanistan) of the Kushan period is the only Middle Iranian language whose writing system is based on the Greek alphabet.

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• BENVENISTE, ÉMILE

  Gilbert Lazard

  (1902-76), French scholar, eminent Iranist, and one of the greatest linguists of his era. At a very young age he caught the attention of the dean of linguistics in France, Antoine Meillet, and was soon engaged in the research activities that he was to pursue through half a century.

• KAŠK

  Francoise Aubaile-Sallenave

  (Ar. kešk, Turk. keşk), Persian term used primarily for a popular processed dairy food but also applied to various grain products, both in Iran and widely in the Middle East.

• FRANCE xii(a). IRANIAN STUDIES IN FRANCE: OVERVIEW

  Vincent Hachard and Bernard Hourcade

  The genuine beginning of Persian studies in France began with the foundation in Istanbul and Smyrna (Izmir) of a “School of languages for the young” in 1669 to train translators of Ottoman Turkish for French consulates.

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• BREAD

  Hélène Desmet-Grégoire

  Persian nān. In modern Iran bread is the dietary staple food for the population and accounts, on the average, for 70 percent of the daily caloric intake.

• CHORASMIA iii. The Chorasmian Language

  D. N. MacKenzie

  Old Chorasmian was written in an indigenous script descended from the Aramaic, brought to the region by the administration of the Achaemenid empire and characterized by heter­ography, that is, the occasional writing of Aramaic words to represent the corresponding Chorasmian.

• BALUCHISTAN iii. Baluchi Language and Literature

  J. Elfenbein

  Baluchi is the principal language of an area extending from the Marv (Mary) oasis in Soviet Turkmenistan southward to the Persian Gulf, from Persian Sīstān eastward along the Helmand valley in Afghanistan, throughout Pakistani Makrān eastward nearly to the Indus river, including in the south the city of Karachi.

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• HEPHTHALITES

  A. D. H. Bivar

  (Arabic Hayṭāl, pl. Hayāṭela), a people who formed apparently the second wave of “Hunnish” tribal invaders to impinge on the Iranian and Indian worlds from the mid-fourth century CE.

• LEYLI O MAJNUN

  A. A. Seyed-Gohrab

  narrative poem of approximately 4,600 lines composed in 584/1188 by the famous poet Neẓāmi of Ganja.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY xi. AFGHANISTAN

  Christine Noelle-Karimi

  The historiography of the day not only bears witness to the perceptions current at the time but also was subject to reinterpretation as new historical predilections arose. The available historical accounts may thus be read on several levels.

• MINT

  Shamameh Mohammadifar

  a strongly scented herb of genus Mentha of flowering plants in the Labiatae family, with many medicinal properties.

• BLACK SEA

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  an almost entirely landlocked sea (lat 40°55’ to 46°32’ N, long 27°27’ to 41°42’ E). Its surface is more than 423,000 km², and its maximum depth is 2,244 m. In this article only the Achaemenid period is considered.