Khwārezmian (Khwarezmian: , ''zβ'k 'y xw'rzm''; also transliterated Khwarazmian, Chorasmian, Khorezmian) is an extinct
East Iranian language closely related to
Sogdian. The language was spoken in the area of
Khwarezm (Chorasmia), centered in the lower
Amu Darya
The Amu Darya, tk, Amyderýa/ uz, Amudaryo// tg, Амударё, Amudaryo ps, , tr, Ceyhun / Amu Derya grc, Ὦξος, Ôxos (also called the Amu, Amo River and historically known by its Latin name or Greek ) is a major river in Central Asi ...
south of the
Aral Sea (the northern part of the modern
Republic of Uzbekistan
A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...
and the adjacent areas of
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
and
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan ( or ; tk, Türkmenistan / Түркменистан, ) is a country located in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the s ...
).
Knowledge of Khwarezmian is limited to its Middle Iranian stage and, as with Sogdian, little is known of its ancient form. Based on the writings of Khwarezmian scholars
Al-Biruni and
Zamakhshari, the language was in use at least until the 13th century, when it was gradually replaced by
Persian for the most part, as well as several dialects of Turkic.
[CHORASMIA iii. The Chorasmian Language](_blank)
/ref>
Sources of Khwarezmian include astronomical terms used by al-Biruni, Zamakhshari's Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
– Persian–Khwarezmian dictionary and several legal texts that use Khwarezmian terms and quotations to explain certain legal concepts, most notably the Qunyat al-Munya of Mukhtār al-Zāhidī al-Ghazmīnī (d. 1259/60).
The noted scholar W.B. Henning
Walter Bruno Henning (August 26, 1908 – January 8, 1967) was a German scholar of Middle Iranian languages and literature, especially of the corpus discovered by the Turpan expeditions of the early 20th century.
__TOC__
Biography
Walter Hennin ...
was preparing a dictionary of Khwarezmian when he died, leaving it unfinished. A fragment of this dictionary was published posthumously by D.N. MacKenzie in 1971.
Writing system
Before the advance of Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...
in Transoxiana (early 8th century), Khwarezmian was written in a script close to that of Sogdian and Pahlavi with its roots in the imperial Aramaic script. From the few surviving examples of this script on coins and artifacts, it has been observed that written Khwarezmian included Aramaic logograms or ideograms, that is Aramaic words written to represent native spoken ones e.g.
𐡔𐡍𐡕 (ŠNT) for سرذ, ''sarδ'', "year", 𐡍𐡐𐡔𐡉 (NPŠY) for خداك, ''xudāk'', "self" and 𐡌𐡋𐡊𐡀 (MLK') for اى شاه, ''ī šah'', "the king".
After the advance of Islam, Khwarezmian was written using an adapted version of the Perso-Arabic alphabet with a few extra signs to reflect specific Khwarezmian sounds, such as the letter څ which represents /ts/ and /dz/, as in the traditional Pashto
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...
orthography.[THE KHWAREZMIAN GLOSSARY—I, D. N. MacKenzi]
Link
/ref>
Unicode
Khwarezmian script was added to the Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
Standard in March, 2020 with the release of version 13.0.
The Unicode block for Khwarezmian, called Chorasmian, is U+10FB0–U+10FDF:
See also
* Afrighids
* al-Khwārizmī
* Ancient Iranian peoples
* Al-Biruni
*Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the fo ...
*Iranian peoples
The Iranian peoples or Iranic peoples are a diverse grouping of Indo-European peoples who are identified by their usage of the Iranian languages and other cultural similarities.
The Proto-Iranians are believed to have emerged as a separate ...
*Iranian languages
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are groupe ...
* Khwarezm
*Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheisti ...
* Zamakhshari
Notes
Literature
;The Khwarezmian Glossary:
* .
* .
* .
* .
* .
Further reading
* .
* .
External links
Encyclopedia Iranica, "The Chorasmian language" by D.N. Mackenzie
https://web.archive.org/web/20040201160726/http://iranianlanguages.com/
{{DEFAULTSORT:Khwarezmian Language
Medieval languages
Eastern Iranian languages
Extinct languages of Asia
Languages attested from the 2nd century BC
Languages attested from the 1st millennium
Languages extinct in the 11th century