Guess Arabic would be either your native language (because it wasn't dead) or your equivalent to Latin or something like that, it's hard to compare all these languages but Arabic was for sure important,Turkish and Persian contain many Arabic words
A bit more complicated in that Arabic was typically the language of religion, Persian of administration, poetry, and literature, and Turkic was what was spoken by the armies, who were made up of steppe nomads or slaves that came from steppe nomads.
No, no one spoke English like that. There were 2 major Muslim worlds throughout most of Islamic history.
The Persianate world which stretches from Bosnia to Burma with Turkic, Persianate, Indic, Tibetan, Tatar, Crimean and even the Hui Chinese all the way to Bejing all being a part of it.
The Arab world which is all of North Africa parts of the Horn of Africa down to Zanzibar and Arab speaking parts of the Middle East like parts of modern day Syria, Sunni parts of Iraq, Jordan Palestine and the Peninsula.
There are minor ones too like the south East Asian world, the western sub Saharan world and etc
For the Muslim Persianate world (the majority of Muslims), Persian was the French, Arabic was the Latin and their local language was their local language.
For the Muslim Arabic world (the minority), Arabic was their Latin, Arabic was the French and Arabic was their local language
There was no single, continuous “Persianate world” stretching from Bosnia to Beijing in any meaningful linguistic or social sense. Persian influence was never that expansive, nor was it the organizing cultural language across most Muslim societies. The Balkans were Ottoman Turkish, not Persianate. Administration, military command, law, and daily elite life there functioned in Ottoman Turkish, with Arabic reserved for religion and local vernaculars spoken by the population. Persian had no societal role in the Balkans and was, at most, a marginal literary curiosity for a tiny circle of educated elites in Istanbul, not a lived language shaping Balkan Muslim society.
More broadly, Persian did not function as a universal “French of Islam.” Its influence was regional and uneven, concentrated primarily in Iran, parts of Central Asia, and South Asia, and even there it competed with Turkic and Indic languages. In Anatolia, the Balkans, and much of the Ottoman world, Ottoman Turkish dominated, not Persian. In China, the Hui were neither Persian-speaking nor Persianate; they were Arabic-literate in religious contexts and otherwise embedded in Chinese linguistic and cultural frameworks. Lumping them into a Persianate civilizational bloc is simply wrong.
By contrast, the Arab world actually did exhibit linguistic coherence. Arabic was simultaneously the vernacular, the religious language, and the language of administration and high culture across North Africa, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and beyond. That unity never existed for Persian. Persian was not a mass language across the Muslim world, did not replace local languages, and did not bind Muslim societies into a single cultural-linguistic sphere comparable to Arabic in Arab lands.
I never said there was a single continuous Persianate world, if I did I apologize, I’m referring more so to the cultural sphere of influence in the Islamic world which Marshall Hodgson wrote about.
I say this as an Indian who speaks Urdu, is fluent in Turkish, and is between B1 and A2 in Uzbek, Uyghur, Farsi, Arabic and classical Chaghtai. The sphere of influence is pretty obvious especially if you read classical famed works of poetry and literature
Ottoman Turkish had many Persian and Arabic loanwords was written in a Perso-Arabic script and was unintelligible with vernacular Turkish. It was replaced / turkified because of Ataturks reforms.
What you call Ottoman language was in reality only a palace language. Common people didn't know or even understand it. They spoke normal Turkish with regional varieties, which had much less Persian or Arabic influences.
True,but there were places that didn't entirely speak Arabic and had other languages ,like north Africa with Berber and Al-Andalus with Mozarabic ,but did eventually adopt Arabic more generally at some point
Andalusi society overwhelmingly spoke Arabic. Arabic was the dominant language of urban life, administration, literature, science, and high culture in al-Andalus, and it was the primary spoken language of Muslims and a large portion of Jews and Christians alike. Mozarabic was not the language of Andalusi society as a whole but a set of Romance dialects used mainly by Christian minorities, often in rural or lower-status contexts, and even there it was frequently bilingual with Arabic. By the height of al-Andalus, Arabic functioned as the common public language, while Mozarabic survived only in limited communal and informal settings. Claiming that al-Andalus “spoke Mozarabic rather than Arabic” fundamentally misunderstands both the linguistic hierarchy and the social reality of the period.
I imagine that Tamazight, the language of the Berbers, was also spoken by some people of Berber origin in Al-Andalus, at least at the start. But it would have been looked down on. In Al-Andalus, the Muslims of purely Arabic origin discriminated against the Berbers iirc. That was one source of conflict in the later years of Al-Andalus.
Andalusi society was a lot of different things over several centuries. Early on the majority of population absolutely spoke local Romance language varieties. You'd need to wait until at least the 11th century (if not the 12th century) for the majority of the population to become Islamic and/or Arabic-speaking.
It was the lingua Franca of the Middle East through the 6th century, and has entered religious texts across the Middle East just as Latin did in Catholicism (though in different ways). It was also succeeded by Arabic in the same sort of way English would eventually become the western lingua Franca over 1500 years later. If you have a better suggestion I’m happy to research.
Idk, English was a nothing language 200 years ago, the high of British empire leaded to it's modern day power but before it Latin, French, German and even Polish were more used international (Polish before Poland colapsed of course)
Persian was not the “French of Islam.” That comparison greatly exaggerates its reach and misunderstands how Muslim elites actually operated. Persian had real influence in certain regions, especially Iran, parts of Central Asia, and South Asia, but it was never a universal prestige language across the Muslim world. In major Muslim polities such as the Ottoman realms, including the Balkans and Anatolia, Persian had no demographic or administrative role and little relevance to elite governance. The Balkans were Ottoman Turkish, not Persianate. Arabic, by contrast, was far more widely used among Muslim elites, as it was essential for religion, law, scholarship, and legitimacy, linking scholars and rulers across regions in a way Persian never did. Unlike French in early modern Europe, Persian did not function as a shared elite language across political and cultural boundaries, and portraying it as such significantly overstates its historical role.
This is wrong. Ottomans used Persian extensively but stopped after Safavid rivalry in 16th century due to political reasons. This doesn’t mean that they completely ceased to produce Persian texts though.
I’d also add that a lot of the preceding Turkic states in Anatolia have exclusively used Persian as an administration language and did not produce any Turkish language texts at all. You have no Seljuk administration documents in Turkic and the famous poets of Turkish like Yunus Emre was producing works in the very late Seljuk period.
By the 1830s, the [East India] Company came to view Persian as an "impediment to good governance", culminating in a series of reforms; the Madras and Bombay Presidencies dropped Persian from their administration in 1832, and in 1837, Act No. 29 mandated the abandonment of Persian in official proceedings throughout India in favour of vernacular languages.
Persian was considered authentic and Ottomans used in art and poetry but somehow self declared historians and iranian Nationalits claim it was "official language" in Ottoman Empire without any proof.
im sure it was used as a government/administration language to some extent but to shade in the whole extent of the ottomans as a minority language is just lol
Persian was never the official language in the Ottoman Empire. It was used as a language for poetry by the elite around 1500-1800. The "Ottoman Turkish" had some loanwords from Persian, but that was about it. The official court language was Turkish, modified with some Arabic and Persian influence.
To state that the official language of the empire was Persian is beyond ridiculous, especially considering the religious and diplomatic state. Ottomans were Sunnis, and they were in a rivalry with the Shiite Turks ruling over Persia. To declare Persian as the official language would mean submitting to their number 1 rival.
Your claim is so utterly ridiculous, so please provide the sources where you found out about this nonsense. I have never in my life seen or heard or read anything claiming the official Ottoman language to be Persian.
So in the Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian language and etymology there is a layer of words we call turkisms , which are words that have oriental etymology, whether from the Ottoman empire, or from the many Turkic and nomadic tribes passing and settling around..
Turcisms make up almost 10% of vocabulary of the standard Serbo-Croatian, where:
Arabic is around 40% of the words , mostly related to religion, administration and science (eg. dženaza - funeral, harač - tax, šejtan - devil)
Turkic is around 40 % of the words, mostly related to warfare and tools, crafts, construction (eg. čelik - steel , top - cannon, juriš - advance, charge)
Persian is around 15-20% of the words, mostly related to household items, clothing and art (eg. duvar - wall , čarape - socks , badem - almond)
Persian was never a minority language in either the Ajuran Empire or the Sultanate of Zanzibar. Persian traders rarely interacted with the Ajuran Empire in Somalia. It was the Omanis and the Turks.
Now the Sultanate of Zanzibar had a large Persian population (In fact, a large fraction of the Swahili have Persian paternal ancestry) but they were Sunni Persians who historically spoke Arabic, not Persian and were largely from the coastal part of Shiraz(To this day a sub-tribe of the Swahili called the Shirazi exist in Kenya's Lamu region) so while ethnically Persian, they spoke Arabic and the second generation spoke Swahili as their primary language.
16th-17th Century was the golden age of Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya. The king policies was focused on turning the kingdom into an international trading hub. He wanted to employ skilled foreigners to work in big positions in court (due to them not having a military power base like the Thai nobles). A Safavid Persian merchant named Sheik Ahmad arrived at the capital, married a noble woman and received the position of Chief Ministry of Civilian, his family is one of the oldest surviving noble family that’s still existed.
There are also other Persian merchants who often traded with Malaysia and South of Thailand. They had influenced local religions, cultures and food.
The Bunnag, a branch descended from Sheikh Ahmad, who mostly converted to Buddhist, was the most powerful Thai aristocratic family during the early Rattanakosin period until Rama V. They were the one who helped Rama V becoming the king. Their power got reduced by Rama V when he abolished slavery, but still remains the most prestigious noble family in Thailand, only believe the main line of royal family.
There's also the Shia branch who remains Muslim and has been holding the title of chief of Islam in Thailand for over 400 years until the revolution in 1932.
The sultanate of Singora, in modern day Songkhla, was founded by supposedly a Persian who fled from Java. The last ruler of Singora when it was destroyed by Ayutthaya was the maternal grandfather to king Rama III.
Iirc one of the royal families of Siam originated from some Persian traders who married into the nobility and became Buddhists. I think they kept Persian as a court language for a bit but I’m not sure how long
Yes, they are the same language, Farsi is the native word used to refer to the language, Persian is a foreign rendition of it, like how Suomi is the word Finns use to describe their language, and Finnish is its foreign equivalent.
Making Persian a minority language and then transposing it along the reach of the entire Ottoman empire is just fucking wild. It was a court language. The moment you left Istanbul no one cared.
The areas in India refer to the Sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda. While both experienced very significant Persian influence, neither were "nominal vassals" of Iran
Indeed, they were never even remotely posing as Persian vassals.
They along with the Bahmani sultanate that came before them were trying hard to attract Persian talent and they used Persian in court and for some administration, but if there was one thing they focused hard on it was asserting themselves as independent entities from other empires (such as the Mughals).
Along with Ahmadnagar to their north, which is somehow a different color despite being very similar, also had their own elite language with Persian influence: Dakani.
Looking some more at that map one wonders why also why Bidar is somehow also not colored at all despite being formed by the only bit that did not break away from the original bahmani sultanate which was very much a persianate state itself. Also never an Iranian vassal but definitely a state with Persian court language.
Indian Shias were generally not twelvers at this point, and even if they had been that would not make them Safavid vassals.
The conflicts they had with the Mughals were also not at all religiously motivated, just good old imperialism.
As far as I know the propaganda used by the Mughals against them was based on how much more prestigious Timurs lineage was compared to the young dynastic upstarts in the south rather than faith.
"Modern academics reject the authenticity of the primarily Iranian origin claim, although recent genetic evidence points towards noticeable Iranian admixture. They point to the relative rarity of Iranian customs and speech, lack of documentary evidence of Shia Islam in the Muslim literature on the Swahili Coast, and instead a historic abundance of Sunni Arab-related evidence. The documentary evidence, like the archaeological, "for early Persian settlement is likewise completely lacking"."
This map is inaccurate and borders on historical misrepresentation, as Persian was not spoken by any demographic in the Arab world, apart from negligible and highly localized minorities in parts of Iraq such as Kurds whose language cannot be considered Persian, and even there it never operated as a societal language. In the sixteenth century, Ottoman Turkish was the sole language of imperial administration and state authority. Arabic dominated all aspects of life in the Arab provinces, including daily speech, religion, law, education, and local governance, and it also appeared at the Ottoman court in Istanbul in religious and scholarly contexts due to its indispensable role in Islamic legitimacy. Persian, by contrast, had no administrative status, no religious function, and no social foundation in the Arab world. It was not used in governance, not spoken in everyday life, and not embedded in communal, legal, or institutional structures. Its use was overwhelmingly confined to elite court poetry and literary posturing within the Ottoman imperial court, where it functioned as a prestige affectation rather than a living language. Persian never developed a demographic base because it was never socially transmitted, never publicly required, and never tied to political, religious, or economic participation. Any depiction suggesting broad Persian linguistic or cultural influence across Arab regions therefore grossly distorts the historical record and conflates limited courtly literary fashion with genuine demographic or societal presence.
When Islam spread, the Sassanids fell. Most of them gradually became Muslim over time. In various ways, they were very advanced at the time compared to the Arabs when it came to the administration of a State. The Arabs had only began to unite around a decade or two before the Sassanids fell and the land they controlled was small and filled with Arabs. Now, they toppled one of the major powers at the time and they needed to manage the new lands. Who better to learn from than the Persians? It was their land in terms of they lived there, they understood the people who lived there and how to communicate to them. They had better technology and resources than the Arabs at the time too. They employed Persians in high positions within the State to manage it and used Persian language to do so.
Nah it did not happen like that. The early Caliphate was very far from Persia, then when the Umayyads took over they relied on Aramaic and Greek-speaking elites in the Levant. The shift to Persians happened later with the Abbasids.
You mean name or dish itself? If it's just name it might come from persian. Naan means flat bread in parsi but naan bread isn't persian origin. I asked Iranian friend they don't have anything like naan in Iran.
Iranian here cool map dunno if it's correct or not the only thing I was thought in school is that in ottoman empire and india farsi was being used with this map Balkan and Yemen and Africa is new to me
What are the Iranian vassals in the Deccan?
Also the Mughals in the beginning of their dynasty used Turki as their court language specifically because of its obscurity.
Bijapur and Golconda shia rulers, they plotted with the shia persian rulers against shah jahan and Aurangzeb.
Aurangzeb was too powerful for them tho, rest is history
Aurangzeb failed his first invasion of the Deccan. He then returned to the Deccan a second time and conquered it, but never returned to Delhi and spent the rest of his life putting down incursions and rebellions in the Deccan. As soon as Aurangzeb died Hyderabad Subah consisting of most of the Deccan conquests split off under the Nizam of Hyderabad and was never again under Mughal control.
The Deccan was literally only under Mughal control for twenty odd years. Oh, and also the only reason Aurangzeb won the siege of Golconda was due to treachery and treason in the fort. Not because he was a great commander.
Aurangzeb had conquered Golconda. He was the prince then, his father gave it back.
He later as the emperor captured it, and annexed it.
Till 1857, the nizams were nominal mughal vassals, BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, they were sunni. nizam-ul-mulk even pleaded with nadir shah to not completely ransack Delhi.
Open a book and read it. It will be lengthier than your WhatsApp forwards, but it'll open your eyes.
Aurangzeb conquered Golconda only once, in 1687. He laid siege in 1656, but was recalled by Shah Jahan. This siege was not successful. Before that Shah Jahan made the remaining Bahmani Sultanates agree to pay tribute to the emperor in 1633. That's it.
I don't know why you're obsessed with the Sunni-Shia schism.
Seems like you're the one leaning too much on WhatsApp forwards.
It's dumb. Just because Persian spoken in the eastern regions of the Ottoman Empire doesn't mean the it was a minority language in Croatia and Hungary.
yea the culture "azeri" was formed because of the mix of turks andiranians. You call them azeri not iranian turks. Safavid was a azeria kingdom which is iranian-turko like you said.
but its mostly turkic as university of oxford states.
It was widespread and a language of culture. I would expect a big minority of the eastern regions and most nobility and scholars to know persian, even if it was not official at court.
It was not, it was only used as literary and poetic tool in the ottoman court in Istanbul. It was not used for science politics military or administration. It was never used in the Arab provinces at all nor in much of the empire. This map grossly over exaggerated its influence.
The status of Persian in the Muslim world was similar to that of French in Europe until 19th century
Which is so interesting cause you’d think Arabic would be considered that
Guess Arabic would be either your native language (because it wasn't dead) or your equivalent to Latin or something like that, it's hard to compare all these languages but Arabic was for sure important,Turkish and Persian contain many Arabic words
A bit more complicated in that Arabic was typically the language of religion, Persian of administration, poetry, and literature, and Turkic was what was spoken by the armies, who were made up of steppe nomads or slaves that came from steppe nomads.
Would Arabic not be the English of the Islamic world, and Aramaic be Latin?
No, no one spoke English like that. There were 2 major Muslim worlds throughout most of Islamic history.
The Persianate world which stretches from Bosnia to Burma with Turkic, Persianate, Indic, Tibetan, Tatar, Crimean and even the Hui Chinese all the way to Bejing all being a part of it.
The Arab world which is all of North Africa parts of the Horn of Africa down to Zanzibar and Arab speaking parts of the Middle East like parts of modern day Syria, Sunni parts of Iraq, Jordan Palestine and the Peninsula.
There are minor ones too like the south East Asian world, the western sub Saharan world and etc
For the Muslim Persianate world (the majority of Muslims), Persian was the French, Arabic was the Latin and their local language was their local language.
For the Muslim Arabic world (the minority), Arabic was their Latin, Arabic was the French and Arabic was their local language
There was no single, continuous “Persianate world” stretching from Bosnia to Beijing in any meaningful linguistic or social sense. Persian influence was never that expansive, nor was it the organizing cultural language across most Muslim societies. The Balkans were Ottoman Turkish, not Persianate. Administration, military command, law, and daily elite life there functioned in Ottoman Turkish, with Arabic reserved for religion and local vernaculars spoken by the population. Persian had no societal role in the Balkans and was, at most, a marginal literary curiosity for a tiny circle of educated elites in Istanbul, not a lived language shaping Balkan Muslim society.
More broadly, Persian did not function as a universal “French of Islam.” Its influence was regional and uneven, concentrated primarily in Iran, parts of Central Asia, and South Asia, and even there it competed with Turkic and Indic languages. In Anatolia, the Balkans, and much of the Ottoman world, Ottoman Turkish dominated, not Persian. In China, the Hui were neither Persian-speaking nor Persianate; they were Arabic-literate in religious contexts and otherwise embedded in Chinese linguistic and cultural frameworks. Lumping them into a Persianate civilizational bloc is simply wrong.
By contrast, the Arab world actually did exhibit linguistic coherence. Arabic was simultaneously the vernacular, the religious language, and the language of administration and high culture across North Africa, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and beyond. That unity never existed for Persian. Persian was not a mass language across the Muslim world, did not replace local languages, and did not bind Muslim societies into a single cultural-linguistic sphere comparable to Arabic in Arab lands.
I never said there was a single continuous Persianate world, if I did I apologize, I’m referring more so to the cultural sphere of influence in the Islamic world which Marshall Hodgson wrote about.
https://shc.stanford.edu/arcade/interventions/persianate-words-and-worlds
I say this as an Indian who speaks Urdu, is fluent in Turkish, and is between B1 and A2 in Uzbek, Uyghur, Farsi, Arabic and classical Chaghtai. The sphere of influence is pretty obvious especially if you read classical famed works of poetry and literature
Ottoman Turkish had many Persian and Arabic loanwords was written in a Perso-Arabic script and was unintelligible with vernacular Turkish. It was replaced / turkified because of Ataturks reforms.
What you call Ottoman language was in reality only a palace language. Common people didn't know or even understand it. They spoke normal Turkish with regional varieties, which had much less Persian or Arabic influences.
True,but there were places that didn't entirely speak Arabic and had other languages ,like north Africa with Berber and Al-Andalus with Mozarabic ,but did eventually adopt Arabic more generally at some point
Andalusi society overwhelmingly spoke Arabic. Arabic was the dominant language of urban life, administration, literature, science, and high culture in al-Andalus, and it was the primary spoken language of Muslims and a large portion of Jews and Christians alike. Mozarabic was not the language of Andalusi society as a whole but a set of Romance dialects used mainly by Christian minorities, often in rural or lower-status contexts, and even there it was frequently bilingual with Arabic. By the height of al-Andalus, Arabic functioned as the common public language, while Mozarabic survived only in limited communal and informal settings. Claiming that al-Andalus “spoke Mozarabic rather than Arabic” fundamentally misunderstands both the linguistic hierarchy and the social reality of the period.
I imagine that Tamazight, the language of the Berbers, was also spoken by some people of Berber origin in Al-Andalus, at least at the start. But it would have been looked down on. In Al-Andalus, the Muslims of purely Arabic origin discriminated against the Berbers iirc. That was one source of conflict in the later years of Al-Andalus.
Andalusi society was a lot of different things over several centuries. Early on the majority of population absolutely spoke local Romance language varieties. You'd need to wait until at least the 11th century (if not the 12th century) for the majority of the population to become Islamic and/or Arabic-speaking.
11th maybe 10th
That's why I said not entirely,it could have possibly been not your main language,but yeah,guess Al-Andalus wasn't the best of examples
Thanks for breaking it down
Why would Aramaic be Latin? Trying to understand the logic there.
It was the lingua Franca of the Middle East through the 6th century, and has entered religious texts across the Middle East just as Latin did in Catholicism (though in different ways). It was also succeeded by Arabic in the same sort of way English would eventually become the western lingua Franca over 1500 years later. If you have a better suggestion I’m happy to research.
But all of that is pre-Islam. Aramaic stopped being an important language in the Caliphate within a couple of centuries.
Oh Thankyou :)
Idk, English was a nothing language 200 years ago, the high of British empire leaded to it's modern day power but before it Latin, French, German and even Polish were more used international (Polish before Poland colapsed of course)
Persian was prestigious, Arabic was religious.
Maybe kinda like French and Koine Greek?
It was but more so in the western Islamic world, plus this map over-exaggerates.
No wonder Saudi Arabia is their arch nemesis today, similar to Greece Turkey I guess
Saudi Arabia and Iran’s animosity is a modern thing from the 80s, and it’s partially an extension of Iran-US animosity.
Nope Saudi vs Iran is a centuries old thing, goes even back to pre-islamic times.
What are you even talking about? There is no Saudi Arabia before the 20th century or any unified Arabia except at the onset of Islamic conquests.
read about Arab vs Ajam
This map is an exaggeration and it’s better to say , its status was the same as French in the “ eastern Islamic world”.
Persian was not the “French of Islam.” That comparison greatly exaggerates its reach and misunderstands how Muslim elites actually operated. Persian had real influence in certain regions, especially Iran, parts of Central Asia, and South Asia, but it was never a universal prestige language across the Muslim world. In major Muslim polities such as the Ottoman realms, including the Balkans and Anatolia, Persian had no demographic or administrative role and little relevance to elite governance. The Balkans were Ottoman Turkish, not Persianate. Arabic, by contrast, was far more widely used among Muslim elites, as it was essential for religion, law, scholarship, and legitimacy, linking scholars and rulers across regions in a way Persian never did. Unlike French in early modern Europe, Persian did not function as a shared elite language across political and cultural boundaries, and portraying it as such significantly overstates its historical role.
This is wrong. Ottomans used Persian extensively but stopped after Safavid rivalry in 16th century due to political reasons. This doesn’t mean that they completely ceased to produce Persian texts though.
I’d also add that a lot of the preceding Turkic states in Anatolia have exclusively used Persian as an administration language and did not produce any Turkish language texts at all. You have no Seljuk administration documents in Turkic and the famous poets of Turkish like Yunus Emre was producing works in the very late Seljuk period.
Minority language is wrong. it wasn't a minority language, it was used in literature and art.
This is like calling latin a minority language when its in fact litergical language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language_in_the_Indian_subcontinent
The Ottoman Empire ? Maybe in the Middle East but the Balkan region I don’t think so
Persian was considered authentic and Ottomans used in art and poetry but somehow self declared historians and iranian Nationalits claim it was "official language" in Ottoman Empire without any proof.
im sure it was used as a government/administration language to some extent but to shade in the whole extent of the ottomans as a minority language is just lol
It was the official langauge of the court in the early years.
"My source is that I made it the fuck up"
Maybe you could do a tiny bit of research before coming up with insults?
Persian was never the official language in the Ottoman Empire. It was used as a language for poetry by the elite around 1500-1800. The "Ottoman Turkish" had some loanwords from Persian, but that was about it. The official court language was Turkish, modified with some Arabic and Persian influence.
To state that the official language of the empire was Persian is beyond ridiculous, especially considering the religious and diplomatic state. Ottomans were Sunnis, and they were in a rivalry with the Shiite Turks ruling over Persia. To declare Persian as the official language would mean submitting to their number 1 rival.
Your claim is so utterly ridiculous, so please provide the sources where you found out about this nonsense. I have never in my life seen or heard or read anything claiming the official Ottoman language to be Persian.
So in the Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian language and etymology there is a layer of words we call turkisms , which are words that have oriental etymology, whether from the Ottoman empire, or from the many Turkic and nomadic tribes passing and settling around..
Turcisms make up almost 10% of vocabulary of the standard Serbo-Croatian, where:
Arabic is around 40% of the words , mostly related to religion, administration and science (eg. dženaza - funeral, harač - tax, šejtan - devil)
Turkic is around 40 % of the words, mostly related to warfare and tools, crafts, construction (eg. čelik - steel , top - cannon, juriš - advance, charge)
Persian is around 15-20% of the words, mostly related to household items, clothing and art (eg. duvar - wall , čarape - socks , badem - almond)
Persian was never a minority language in either the Ajuran Empire or the Sultanate of Zanzibar. Persian traders rarely interacted with the Ajuran Empire in Somalia. It was the Omanis and the Turks.
Now the Sultanate of Zanzibar had a large Persian population (In fact, a large fraction of the Swahili have Persian paternal ancestry) but they were Sunni Persians who historically spoke Arabic, not Persian and were largely from the coastal part of Shiraz(To this day a sub-tribe of the Swahili called the Shirazi exist in Kenya's Lamu region) so while ethnically Persian, they spoke Arabic and the second generation spoke Swahili as their primary language.
Someone probably already answered this, but what’s the story of Persian in Thailand?
16th-17th Century was the golden age of Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya. The king policies was focused on turning the kingdom into an international trading hub. He wanted to employ skilled foreigners to work in big positions in court (due to them not having a military power base like the Thai nobles). A Safavid Persian merchant named Sheik Ahmad arrived at the capital, married a noble woman and received the position of Chief Ministry of Civilian, his family is one of the oldest surviving noble family that’s still existed.
There are also other Persian merchants who often traded with Malaysia and South of Thailand. They had influenced local religions, cultures and food.
The Bunnag, a branch descended from Sheikh Ahmad, who mostly converted to Buddhist, was the most powerful Thai aristocratic family during the early Rattanakosin period until Rama V. They were the one who helped Rama V becoming the king. Their power got reduced by Rama V when he abolished slavery, but still remains the most prestigious noble family in Thailand, only believe the main line of royal family. There's also the Shia branch who remains Muslim and has been holding the title of chief of Islam in Thailand for over 400 years until the revolution in 1932. The sultanate of Singora, in modern day Songkhla, was founded by supposedly a Persian who fled from Java. The last ruler of Singora when it was destroyed by Ayutthaya was the maternal grandfather to king Rama III.
Iirc one of the royal families of Siam originated from some Persian traders who married into the nobility and became Buddhists. I think they kept Persian as a court language for a bit but I’m not sure how long
Nobility clan, specifically the Bunnag family is the most famous one.
So Persian is Farsi, right? Why do all my older movies sound like they are speaking English when they are speaking Persian/Farsi?
Yes, they are the same language, Farsi is the native word used to refer to the language, Persian is a foreign rendition of it, like how Suomi is the word Finns use to describe their language, and Finnish is its foreign equivalent.
Even though Farsi is an Arabic corruption of indigenous Parsi, but yeah Iranians call it Farsi for now.
Making Persian a minority language and then transposing it along the reach of the entire Ottoman empire is just fucking wild. It was a court language. The moment you left Istanbul no one cared.
There were quite famous Persian authors in bitlis and Albania
The areas in India refer to the Sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda. While both experienced very significant Persian influence, neither were "nominal vassals" of Iran
Indeed, they were never even remotely posing as Persian vassals.
They along with the Bahmani sultanate that came before them were trying hard to attract Persian talent and they used Persian in court and for some administration, but if there was one thing they focused hard on it was asserting themselves as independent entities from other empires (such as the Mughals). Along with Ahmadnagar to their north, which is somehow a different color despite being very similar, also had their own elite language with Persian influence: Dakani.
Looking some more at that map one wonders why also why Bidar is somehow also not colored at all despite being formed by the only bit that did not break away from the original bahmani sultanate which was very much a persianate state itself. Also never an Iranian vassal but definitely a state with Persian court language.
Oh yeah, looking at it again- omitting Bidar is a really glaring error.
They were kinda. They had shia rulers, who fought against the northern Sunni rulers.
Thats... not what a vassal is...thats not how any of this works
Indian Shias were generally not twelvers at this point, and even if they had been that would not make them Safavid vassals.
The conflicts they had with the Mughals were also not at all religiously motivated, just good old imperialism. As far as I know the propaganda used by the Mughals against them was based on how much more prestigious Timurs lineage was compared to the young dynastic upstarts in the south rather than faith.
Sir, this is bullshit
If only the map had modern borders
How were Golconda and Bijapur vassals of Iran?
No
The sultanate of Zanzibar had a large Persian population.
Edit: This is not completely true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirazi_people
"Modern academics reject the authenticity of the primarily Iranian origin claim, although recent genetic evidence points towards noticeable Iranian admixture. They point to the relative rarity of Iranian customs and speech, lack of documentary evidence of Shia Islam in the Muslim literature on the Swahili Coast, and instead a historic abundance of Sunni Arab-related evidence. The documentary evidence, like the archaeological, "for early Persian settlement is likewise completely lacking"."
More specifically from Shiraz
This map is inaccurate and borders on historical misrepresentation, as Persian was not spoken by any demographic in the Arab world, apart from negligible and highly localized minorities in parts of Iraq such as Kurds whose language cannot be considered Persian, and even there it never operated as a societal language. In the sixteenth century, Ottoman Turkish was the sole language of imperial administration and state authority. Arabic dominated all aspects of life in the Arab provinces, including daily speech, religion, law, education, and local governance, and it also appeared at the Ottoman court in Istanbul in religious and scholarly contexts due to its indispensable role in Islamic legitimacy. Persian, by contrast, had no administrative status, no religious function, and no social foundation in the Arab world. It was not used in governance, not spoken in everyday life, and not embedded in communal, legal, or institutional structures. Its use was overwhelmingly confined to elite court poetry and literary posturing within the Ottoman imperial court, where it functioned as a prestige affectation rather than a living language. Persian never developed a demographic base because it was never socially transmitted, never publicly required, and never tied to political, religious, or economic participation. Any depiction suggesting broad Persian linguistic or cultural influence across Arab regions therefore grossly distorts the historical record and conflates limited courtly literary fashion with genuine demographic or societal presence.
When Islam spread, the Sassanids fell. Most of them gradually became Muslim over time. In various ways, they were very advanced at the time compared to the Arabs when it came to the administration of a State. The Arabs had only began to unite around a decade or two before the Sassanids fell and the land they controlled was small and filled with Arabs. Now, they toppled one of the major powers at the time and they needed to manage the new lands. Who better to learn from than the Persians? It was their land in terms of they lived there, they understood the people who lived there and how to communicate to them. They had better technology and resources than the Arabs at the time too. They employed Persians in high positions within the State to manage it and used Persian language to do so.
Persian also was very poetic
Nah it did not happen like that. The early Caliphate was very far from Persia, then when the Umayyads took over they relied on Aramaic and Greek-speaking elites in the Levant. The shift to Persians happened later with the Abbasids.
Even to this day, there is significant Iranian influence in Indian language (Hindi) and cuisine.
Samosa (originally Persian), naan bread, etc
Words: dost (friend), shahr (city), bazaar (market), garm (warm), and numbers such as yek/ek (one) and panj/paanch (five)
The names for numbers don't come from persian, correct yourself.
Both have origins in Proto -Indo Iranian language
But that doesn't make it persian
Ek from Sanskrit eká- and paanch from Sanskrit panca-. The rest are accurate tho
You mean name or dish itself? If it's just name it might come from persian. Naan means flat bread in parsi but naan bread isn't persian origin. I asked Iranian friend they don't have anything like naan in Iran.
what is that state in central Scandinavia?
Jamtland
Iranian here cool map dunno if it's correct or not the only thing I was thought in school is that in ottoman empire and india farsi was being used with this map Balkan and Yemen and Africa is new to me
In Thailand?
What are the Iranian vassals in the Deccan? Also the Mughals in the beginning of their dynasty used Turki as their court language specifically because of its obscurity.
Bijapur and Golconda shia rulers, they plotted with the shia persian rulers against shah jahan and Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb was too powerful for them tho, rest is history
This is a stupid reading of the history.
Aurangzeb failed his first invasion of the Deccan. He then returned to the Deccan a second time and conquered it, but never returned to Delhi and spent the rest of his life putting down incursions and rebellions in the Deccan. As soon as Aurangzeb died Hyderabad Subah consisting of most of the Deccan conquests split off under the Nizam of Hyderabad and was never again under Mughal control.
The Deccan was literally only under Mughal control for twenty odd years. Oh, and also the only reason Aurangzeb won the siege of Golconda was due to treachery and treason in the fort. Not because he was a great commander.
Aurangzeb had conquered Golconda. He was the prince then, his father gave it back. He later as the emperor captured it, and annexed it.
Till 1857, the nizams were nominal mughal vassals, BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, they were sunni. nizam-ul-mulk even pleaded with nadir shah to not completely ransack Delhi.
Open a book and read it. It will be lengthier than your WhatsApp forwards, but it'll open your eyes.
Thanks for the answers, I appreciate it. Were they official vassals of Safavid Iran and what were the official names of the political entities?
Nizamshahi of Golconda and adilshahi of Bijapur
Aurangzeb conquered Golconda only once, in 1687. He laid siege in 1656, but was recalled by Shah Jahan. This siege was not successful. Before that Shah Jahan made the remaining Bahmani Sultanates agree to pay tribute to the emperor in 1633. That's it.
I don't know why you're obsessed with the Sunni-Shia schism.
Seems like you're the one leaning too much on WhatsApp forwards.
It's dumb. Just because Persian spoken in the eastern regions of the Ottoman Empire doesn't mean the it was a minority language in Croatia and Hungary.
I think you can add Crimea, Romania too. We carried the words there too.
thats not iran, its the safavids so they should be listed as offical court languag not as "iran"
Safavid empire was an iranian kingdom, what are you talking about ?
it wasnt, it was azeri
Azeris are iranian turks
yea the culture "azeri" was formed because of the mix of turks andiranians. You call them azeri not iranian turks. Safavid was a azeria kingdom which is iranian-turko like you said.
but its mostly turkic as university of oxford states.
So it was a minority language in the ottoman empire
It was widespread and a language of culture. I would expect a big minority of the eastern regions and most nobility and scholars to know persian, even if it was not official at court.
It was not, it was only used as literary and poetic tool in the ottoman court in Istanbul. It was not used for science politics military or administration. It was never used in the Arab provinces at all nor in much of the empire. This map grossly over exaggerated its influence.