Khwārezmian (Khwarezmian: ; also transliterated Khwarazmian, Chorasmian, Khorezmian) is an extinct
Eastern 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 ( ),() also shortened to Amu and historically known as the Oxus ( ), is a major river in Central Asia, which flows through Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. Rising in the Pamir Mountains, north of the Hindu Ku ...
south of the
Aral Sea
The Aral Sea () was an endorheic lake lying between Kazakhstan to its north and Uzbekistan to its south, which began shrinking in the 1960s and had largely dried up into desert by the 2010s. It was in the Aktobe and Kyzylorda regions of Kazakhst ...
(the northern part of the modern
Republic of Uzbekistan
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and the adjacent areas of
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...
and
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan is a landlocked country in Central Asia bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest and the Caspian Sea to the west. Ash ...
).
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
Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (; ; 973after 1050), known as al-Biruni, was a Khwarazmian Iranian scholar and polymath during the Islamic Golden Age. He has been called variously "Father of Comparative Religion", "Father of modern ...
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)
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Sources of Khwarezmian include astronomical terms used by al-Biruni, Zamakhshari's Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
– 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).
Writing system
Before the advance of Islam
Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...
in Transoxiana
Transoxiana or Transoxania (, now called the Amu Darya) is the Latin name for the region and civilization located in lower Central Asia roughly corresponding to eastern Uzbekistan, western Tajikistan, parts of southern Kazakhstan, parts of Tu ...
(early 8th century), Khwarezmian was written in a script close to that of Sogdian and Pahlavi with its roots in the Imperial Aramaic script
The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian peoples throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects und ...
. From the few surviving examples of this script on coins and artifacts, it has been observed that written Khwarezmian included Aramaic logograms or ideograms
An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek 'idea' + 'to write') is a symbol that is used within a given writing system to represent an idea or concept in a given language. (Ideograms are contrasted with phonograms, which indicate sounds of speech ...
, that is Aramaic words written to represent native spoken ones e.g.
𐿃𐾾𐿄 (ŠNT) for سرذ, ''sarδ'', "year", 𐾾𐿁𐿃𐾺 (NPŠY) for خداك, ''xudāk'', "self" and 𐾽𐾼𐾻𐾰 (MLK') for اى شاه, ''ī šah'', "the king".
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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, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...
orthography.[THE KHWAREZMIAN GLOSSARY—I, D. N. MacKenzi]
Link
/ref>
Unicode
Khwarezmian script was added to the Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
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
Iranian peoples, or Iranic peoples, are the collective ethnolinguistic groups who are identified chiefly by their native usage of any of the Iranian languages, which are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages within the Indo-European lang ...
*Al-Biruni
Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (; ; 973after 1050), known as al-Biruni, was a Khwarazmian Iranian scholar and polymath during the Islamic Golden Age. He has been called variously "Father of Comparative Religion", "Father of modern ...
*Central Asia
Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...
*Iranian peoples
Iranian peoples, or Iranic peoples, are the collective ethnolinguistic groups who are identified chiefly by their native usage of any of the Iranian languages, which are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages within the Indo-European langu ...
*Iranian languages
The Iranian languages, also called the 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 langu ...
* Khwarezm
*Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism ( ), also called Mazdayasnā () or Beh-dīn (), is an Iranian religions, Iranian religion centred on the Avesta and the teachings of Zoroaster, Zarathushtra Spitama, who is more commonly referred to by the Greek translation, ...
* Zamakhshari
Notes
Literature
;The Khwarezmian Glossary:
* .
* .
* .
* .
* .
Further reading
* .
* .
External links
Encyclopedia Iranica, "The Chorasmian language" by D.N. Mackenziehttps://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
Khwarazm