Pahlavi

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A historical form of the Middle Persian language used mainly in inscriptions and literature during the Sasanian Empire
2. Referring to a script derived from Aramaic used for writing Middle Persian and other languages
3. Pertaining to the cultural and linguistic heritage associated with the period of Persian rule before the Islamic conquest

Etymology: Pahlavi began as a name for a language and a people before it became a word about culture. In Classical Persian, "pahlawī" meant "Parthian," referring to the Parthians, the Iranian dynasty whose empire rivaled Rome in the centuries before the Sasanians, and to the heroic age of Iran that the Persians looked back on before the arrival of Islam. The root "pahlaw" is the Persian form of that people's name, and the suffix "-ī" simply turns it into an adjective meaning "of or relating to." The word therefore carried two strands of meaning at once: a place-and-people name and a sense of an older, pre-Islamic Iranian past. The scripts and writing of that era came to be called Pahlavi too, and this is why scholars still speak of Pahlavi texts. When the word was taken into English, it kept this sense of a distinct, pre-Islamic Iranian inheritance rather than a general notion of "ancient." Its meaning in English therefore tracks the Persian one closely, centering on the language and culture of that earlier era.

Synonyms: pahlavi script, middle persian, pahlavi language