From Persian To Arabic 1939 (Concluded)

From Persian to Arabic (Concluded)
Author(s): M. Sprengling
Source: The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Jul.,
1939), pp. 325-336
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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FROM PERSIAN TO ARABIC-Concluded

M. SPRENGLING
Shdhpuhr in his brief but vicious thrust westward gained surprising but
fleeting victories in Roman territory in Asia. Persian influence in those territories, aside from the introduction of Manicheism, was perhaps not greatly
enhanced thereby. Shahpuhr took Greco-Roman treasures, including arts
and crafts to Persia with him. He did not have to go to Antioch to secure
those Western elements of wisdom which, with other things, he is said to have
incorporated in his Avesta. Much wisdom of this sort he might have obtained
from Mdni, who to all appearances was in high favor at his court and frequently in close contact with his person, even on these Western campaigns. No one
to the writer's knowledge has yet looked for any sign of Manichaean influence
in anything that might be identifiable as Shahpuhrian Avesta.5 One thing is
universally identified-the writing of Persian in a Western alphabet, which
Mani taught his people. This had little permanent success, except perhaps in
whatever impetus it gave to the development of the Avestan alphabet, in
Persia proper. Khurasqn became its major habitat, and thence it spread eastward, not westward.
Western Iranistdn clung for all but its Avesta to "good old-fashioned"
Pahlavi. The result was that with the coming of the Arabs and Islam, however much or little else the Arabs may be found to have given the Persians,
they presently did introduce to them their alphabetic writing. With the Koran, official correspondence, and the transfer of the tax bureaus from Persian to
Arabic, this traveled eastward apace. When with the Saff rids in the latter
half of the third Moslem (= the ninth Christian) century and more fully with
the Samanids throughout the fourth Moslem (= the tenth Christian) century
Persian literature became once more really articulate in Khurasan and adjacent regions, the orthography of the Persian language in Arabic alphabetic
writing was soon thoroughly developed. With the rise in Persian letters came
the unfolding of a more than semi-independent unfolding of general culture in
the Moslem Far East, in many ways comparable to that in Spain, the Moslem Far West. Together with Persian poetic, epistolary, and other literature
much of the same nature was written in Arabic, a section of Arabic literature
made much of in the fourth volume of al-Thacdlibi's Yatimat al-Dahr, which
still continues to receive cavalierly treatment beneath its due merits in the latest revision of Brockelmann's Geschichteder arabischen Literatur. A number
of their poets and writers of letters were bilingual.
5 The late A. V. Williams Jackson's studies (JRAS, 1924, 213-27, and Modi Memorial
Volume, 34 ff.) refer to something quite different.
325

326
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES
Even in earlier Siminid times these men were hardly quite so humble in
their provincial feeling as E. G. Browne assumed in his Literary History of
Persia, I, 465 f. Browne did not fully see through the nature of the poetic
lines he quotes (p. 466) from one of the earliest Samanid poets, the first to
receive mention as such in Thacalibi (op. cit., 2-7), Abfi Ahmad ibn Abi Bakr
al-Kitib ibn iHamid. His lines reflect the dual face of the Saminid realm and
its rulers, who dealt as independent sovereigns with Turkish kings and emperors of China eastward and assumed a generally loyal and submissive attitude toward the waning glory of the caliphate of Baghdad west of them. His
model in the West was AlI .. . . ibn Bassim, who died 302 A.H. = A.D. 914/15.
Accordingly, his pen was steeped in the most biting satire, which spared neither his father nor his brother. He seems not, however, to have belittled and
besmirched Bukhara, as did his Tdhirid contemporary. And he certainly held
no low opinion of himself, his art, his cunning, and his culture; rather very
much to the contrary. This must be kept in mind when we read his squib even
in Browne's mild, but otherwise perfectly correct, translation: "Wonder not
at a man of cIrdq in whom thou seest an ocean of learning and a treasure of
culture; Wonder rather at one whose home is in the lands of ignorance if he be
able to distinguish head from tail." His esteem of his own abilities is clearly
understated quite as much as his people's opinion of the cIrakite's worth is an
overstatement. That he calls his country, half-jestingly, the land of ignorance
or barbarism may have a sting of its own; he was thoroughly convinced that his
country and its rulers were not giving him the position due to his merits and
ability, and, indeed, preferred to confer the chancellorship he coveted on men
whom he considered quite openly stupid fools. The irony of these verses, some
of it rather subtle, seems quite to have escaped Browne's fine mind, now nearly
forty years ago.
Nor does the one paragraph quoted from Thacalibi in Browne (op. cit.,
365 f.) do full justice to the galaxy of learned, artistic, or otherwise able men
who shone at the court of Bukhara throughout the Samdnid century. Among
them, reminding one of Sassanian times, was a curiously large number of
younger sons of Abbasid caliphs (Thacilibi, op. cit., 84, 87, 112), some of not
much worth, one at least of extraordinary polish and culture, but all lending
splendor to the court at which they resided. For the purely Persian poets and
writers Thacdlibi, of course, has little interest: they may be found in Eth6's
contribution to the Fleischer Festschrift and in Browne.
One of the qualities admired in some of these men is the excellence and
beauty of their handwriting. With no attempt at complete enumeration,
mention may be made from Thacalibi of AbaicAli al-ZMiz~ni,whose handwriting took the eye (p. 70; not a literal translation!), and who in spite of the excellence of his handwriting was also an excellent poet (p. 71); of Abi cAlI
Mubammad ibn CIsa al-Damghdni, the beauty of whose handwriting became
proverbial (p. 69); and, lest it be thought that all the men thus signalized
wrote only Arabic, of Abii al-Tib (or Tayyib) al-Mu*cabi Mubammad ibn

FROM PERSIAN TO ARABIC
327
a poet of note in both Persian and Arabic, whose handwriting was the
H.atim,
acme of perfection (p. 15; not a literal translation!). With a song on the reedpen by al-Maafini (p. 108) it may be well to recall the mention of the pen by
Persian names, with or without other writing implements, cited from Persian
poets of this age by Firdausi's nephew Asadi in his Lughat i Furs (ed. Horn)
e.g., Faralawi (p. 86, fol. 52); Khusrawani (p. 90; fol. 54r); cAsjadi, with Firof Ghaznah (p. 68, fol. 41r); Tayydn (p. 43, fol.
dausi at the court of
than all these in some respects is Dakiki's comparison
27). More importantMah.mild
of Chinese writing with the letters of a parchment or paper writing-tablet by
Kustd, which would be some sort of Syriac letters, Nestorian Christian or
Manichaean (p. 5, fol. 5r).
All this helps to throw new light on a passage in al-Nadim's Fihrist so difficult that to the present day it has never been correctly or satisfactorily read.
A very imperfect, in fact wholly erroneous, attempt by Schroeder to solve it
has been pointed out by Miss Nabia Abbott in AJSL, LVI, 72.6 A real advance in the reading of the one Persian word in the sentence has been made
over previous efforts by the well-known Persian scholar, Mojtaba Minovi, in
the Bulletin of the American Institute for Iranian Art and Archaeology, V,
No. 2 (December, 1937), 143, note 1. Since he is not nearly so well versed
in Arabic as in Persian, as Miss Abbott has pointed out (op. cit., pp. 81 f.),
Minovi makes no attempt at all to read the Arabic. Yet, if one keeps in mind
the situation in Khurasan as just now outlined together with the date of
Ibn Mu1klah,on the one hand (died 940), and on the other of the Fihrist,
written in 987 and revised until near the time of al-Nadim's death early in
the fifth Moslem (eleventh Christian) century (i.e., shortly after A.D.1010/11),
that little sentence loses much of its super-difficulty. It reads: al-firdmiazwa
minhu yastakhriju al- cAjam wabihi yukirr?inahadutha karnand (or
Masterwahuwa naucdni al-Ndsir' wal-mudawwar, "The Master-taught (ork.urband)
skilled): From it the Persians derive their origin (in their scripts), and they
acknowledge it (English: they claim it as their own). It is new in our age (or
in our neighborhood). And it is of two kinds, the Ndqirite and the rounded."
Now the Fihrist was first written in 987, and little, if anything, added after
A.D. 1000. Interest in handwriting as a fine art was great. Ibn Muklah, who
died in A.D. 940, had just laid down his principles for the writing of regular
Arabic in any type of script or handwriting then in use in the Arabic world,
as Miss Abbott has amply demonstrated in the article referred to and in her
Rise of the North Arabic Script. A pretty large number of such styles of handwriting are first mentioned in the chapter of which our sentence forms a part,
among them an IgfahRni, not for the writing by Persian but by Arabic penmen. Then follows our sentence as now read.
I We take this
opportunity to correct two misprints in the article. In word eight of
this important passage, by some inadvertence in proofreading after kr one "tooth," b or n,
has been omitted. On p. 73 Ibn cAbd Rabbihi, not being of the mucammarin, though he
lived in all conscience long enough, was born in 860, not in A.D. 800.

328
There can, apparently, be little doubt as to what it refers to. Khurasdn

was producing Persian poetry and other literature. It was producing excellent
penmen, the artistry of whose writing was much admired. In this, as in other
things, it went its own way, perhaps, again as in much else, with a polite bow
toward Baghdad. Ibn Muklah's forms and mathematicized proportions were
surely known in Khurasin no long time after they were formulated. It may
well be that Ibn Mu]klah'sfeat led the eastern Persians to a recognition of the
artistic possibilities and beauties of their own habits and practices. Knowledge and recognition of these, coming from the provinces, would be a bit slower in coming to Baghdad than such things went in the opposite direction.
Hence al-Nadim describes them as new or recent in his time or in his neighborhood.
Exactly what the new script was, cannot be gathered from al-Nadim's
words; he did not consider it necessary to describe it in detail, for everyone
around him interested in such things could see it. But I believe that a fairly
probable guess may be hazarded. DakIki knew Chinese and Syriac forms of
writing. Like the Chinese, the Syriac, holding the page sideways, with the
right edge up, was written from top to bottom (neither from right to left, nor
from left to right, though of course Syriac was then read from right to left, by
holding the page right side up after a quarter-turn clockwise). In the way
they were written both gave the effect of hanging from the upper edge or margin of the page. Now the most typically Persian style of writing in Arabic
letters is presently known (though apparently not yet to al-Nadim) as Taclik,
"Suspension," or Nastdclik, "Copy or Book-handwriting (nashki) Suspension."
It may be that with the solution of this age-old puzzle in the Fihrist, bringing
it together with the development of Persian in Khorasan and with Dakiki's
significant little verse, we are also nearer than we ever were before to the date
and the manner of the origin of Persia's pride in the matter of fine writing,
Taclik and Nastaclik. If this derivation takes a little from the pride of the
Arabs in adding to their letters as formed by the Persians another influence,
neither Persian nor Arabic, it is little that is taken away. And, in taking it, a
greater source of pride is added. For Moslem Arabs and Persians here accomplished long ago what Kipling only yesterday declared impossible; they make
East and West to meet and in mingling to produce a new page of beauty and
charm unheard of. These are not pennons pendant in straight and orderly
rows for all their curlicues, like Chinese and Syriac, nor parallel lines of forms
geometrically exact, though Arabesqued, like the Arabic of Ibn Muklah;
these are festoons and streamers tossed by the winds of Amul, Bukhara, and
Ghaznah in Persian gardens and maiddns and so flung on the page, arranged
in oblong, rhomboid panels or parallelograms instead of Arabic's parallel lines.
Of the two kinds into which it is divided by the Fihrist, one is defined by a
descriptive term, the "Rounded." Anyone who has seen a fairish number of
pages of Tacli or Nastacllk will know that it would not be difficult to put a
great deal of it under this head. The other term is not in itself descriptive; it

329
is taken from a proper name, a personal name or epithet Nadir-the Ndeirite

variety. This might be the name of a famous penman, whom this writer does
not know nor has now the time to search for. At least as great is the probability that it is the name of a famous patron of learning and the arts. Without
great and exhaustive search two men come to mind in that time and neighborhood, one early and one late in Sdminid times. One is the cAlid whom Thac
Mlibi(63) names briefly in an anecdote about deafness "al-Ndeir al-Utrfish (the
Deaf), Lord of Tabaristan." Clement Huart (EI, article "Tabaristan," III,
627, col. 2) names him "al-HIasanibn cAli, with the cognomen al-Nigir alKabir," and notes his revolt against the Samdnids in 914 and his death in
ibn cAli al-Utriish,
917. Barthold (Turkestan, 214) calls him simply
H.asan d. iran. Philol., II,
perhaps with Tabari (III, 2292). Paul Horn (Grundriss
564) still more briefly says "the cAlid
al-Utrfish." E. G. Browne's
to the Index (pp. 18 and 50), a long
Mustawfi i Kazwini gives him, accordingH.asan
ibn cAll ibn Hasan ibn cUmar (Tab., I, 2073, 3472 f.,
cAlid genealogy,
H.asan
Futf2h, 110) ibn cAll ibn al-Muh.taba (should be al-MujIII, 2526; Biladhuri,
tabs the Chosen, i.e., the prophet Mohammed) and the nickname al-Utrfish,
to which the English abstract of contents adds (p. 65) the title "an -NAsir biD
llah." The other is the father of Mahmiad of Ghaznah, the astonishing Turkish slave Sabuktagin (EI, following Marquart-Markwart? Subuktegin).
Emir of Ghaznah since April 20, 977, he became presently the founder of a
great though short-lived empire and dynasty, at whose court the poets and
writers, once foregathered at Samanid Bukhard, found new patronage and
prosperity, just as five centuries later the schools of Samarkand, including the
peerless Behzad, were taken over en masse after the passing of the Timurids,
first by Shaibini Khan, and then, after his defeat and death, transferred bodily by the victorious Safawids (the grande Sophies of the English writers of
that day) to enhance the glories of their Ardabil and Tabriz. Eth6 (op. cit.,
p. 55) and Biichner (EI, IV, 132) give his titulary epithet simply as Niqir alDin; with Bichner Barthold's Turkestan (261) dates the conferring of this
epithet upon him in 994, but gives the complete form "Nlgir al-Din wa dDawla." If this truly marks the first appearance of the epithet and the calligraphic style of the Fihrist is named after him, the naming to find room in the
Fihrist must have taken place very shortly thereafter. There may be other
possibilities, probabilities, or even a certainty, for the investigation of other,
younger students to find.
A major difficulty to be overcome in this interpretation lies in the fact that
this section of the Fihrist deals exclusively with Koranic scripts (Khutit almasahif). To meet this we may first of all observe that al-firamfiz is immediately preceded by al-sijilla, i.e., the script proper to official documents of
state. If this was used in al-Nadim's time for the writing of masdhif, i.e.,
Koranic volumes, why not al-firdmftz in our interpretation? Or, there being
no punctuation to show what belongs together and what does not, what is to
prevent our reading together as one al-sijilli al-firdmfiz, "the master-skilled

330
documentary script?" If entire Korans were not written in this script,

verse suggests that perhaps single verses were thus calligraphed, to beDa.icc's
put together in highly prized calligraphic albums or to be hung singly as decorations
on parlor walls, as we or, at least, our parents used to hang Bible and other
verses as mottoes on our walls. On the other hand, it is at least possible that
at that time, perhaps for a time only and then discontinued as heretical
were so written. That then and there entire
bidcahor novelty, entire
maqdif
copies of the Koran were indeed produced, as a pious exercise even by great
viziers and monarchs at times, would be a certainty, even though we had no
documentation for it. For good measure we know of at least one maqhafbegun
or ordered, though it may never have been finished (Thacilibi, Yatimah, IV,
4). If it be objected that we know no Taclic so early and perhaps no Arabic
at all, we may first of all counter with the question, "What
Korans in
Tacli
of
extant
manuscripts of the Koran do we really know? And how
percentage
much do we know about that which perished?" Precisely in Samanid Khurasin that must have been a very considerable amount, as the passage from
Avicenna's autobiography excellently presented in Barthold's Turkestan
(pp. 9 f. with n. 4) shows.
In concluding this moving picture of culture's pendulum swinging from
Persian to Arabic and from Arabic to Persian, another title to honor for the
Moslem Arabs obtrudes itself upon our attention. If there is life and reality
in the historical sketch here unrolled, that is due chiefly to the excellent, in
some respects unprecedented, work of Arabic historians. If Herodotus and his
Greeks are the fathers of history, then the vivid and very human early Arabic
historians are its mothers. If, like Herodotus, one typical representative is to
be chosen from them, that cannot be a multigossip like Hisham ibn al-Kalbi,
nor the philosophizing theorist Ibn Khaldfin, whose "social process" is a foreign excrescence on the body of history, though it may be the first conscious
sociology, who is therefore a stepmother, not a mother, to history-but someone like al-Madi~ini, al-Biladhuri, or al-Mascildi, for choice. From these
Arab Moslems we have much to learn. Few modern historians have advanced
in their conception of what constitutes history beyond Herodotus, and many
have remained far behind him in style and clarity of presentation. Very few,
indeed, among modern historians know history as it is written in Arabic, and,
of these, fewer still among those who know Arabic words to read or to speak
sense the true values, the human fulness and vividness of early Arabic historians. Far too much of what is still written, published, and advertised as
history is exactly what Mr. Henry Ford says it is. Dead facts are marshaled
in vainly glorified array with little, squeaking ulterior motives and purposes
peeping through holes in the backdrop. The Arabs saw things differently, and,
in the measure in which we have succeeded in doing them justice, there is presented here what history, a great picture, must be to be of value-a segment
of human life, real human beings and their actual living of life as they saw

331
it and thought it worth while. And that, even for Mr. Henry Ford and his
very real and very human fellow-Americans, if they will take a look-and
have eyes to see-is something else again.
VIZIER
In the study of the shift of the administration from Persian to Arabic the introduction of the title "vizier" (wazir) in the Arabic-Moslem Empire was cited
among other things as an element of Persian which entered the Arabic world
at the very end of the Umayyad dynasty's rule. This statement caught the
eye of Miss (Dr.) Nabia Abbott, who, in her dissertation on The Kurrah
Papyri, written years ago, though published in 1938, had with the approval
of this writer made an incidental statement of her own on this subject on
page 58 of her study.
Miss Abbott proceeds from the sketch of the Shiite historian Ibn al-Tikta1kd
who in his Fakhri, written in A.D. 1301, says briefly that the title was introduced by the Abbasids, who fixed and defined more clearly and fully the functions of this office, whose incumbents in Umayyad times had been designated
as scribes, secretaries, or counselors. She then refers the question to Nicholson's Literary History of the Arabs, pages 256 f., with note 2.
The entire problem, really several problems, whether vizier is a Persian or
an Arabic title, when and in what degree Persian influence enters into its introduction, when and in what manner or meaning it is first found in Arabic literature, cannot be solved and presented in a short note. Such a study might be
a profitable subject for a doctoral dissertation or for a bit of extensive research
work by a younger scholar, capable of handling both Arabic and Persian material. Perhaps the collection of, on the whole, fairly well-known material here,
a little more fully and in part more critically than the writer has found anything elsewhere, may start notes from others or a more complete study by another.
Starting with Persian no comparable word or form seems to occur in Old
Persian. In Avestan, including Gathic, the adjective vi-dira- is used in the
positive three times, according to Bthl., AirWb., col. 1438, and once in a
curiously written superlative form, for which with AirWb., col. 1445, one
should compare Grdr.d. ir. Phil., I, 1, section 52 of the well-known ? 268. The
active meaning "deciding, decider" seems to prevail, though in one case, at
least, Bartholomae's reading prefers the passive or past participle sense "decided, convinced, certain." The word is a not unusual compound. The first
element is the adverb, very commonly used as a preverb, vi-, which in Modern
Persian usually appears as gu-; for our purpose at this point attention may be
called to Modern Persian guzidan, "to choose, select." The second element
is derived from or related to the verb kay- (AirWb., col. 441), which appears
most commonly in the modified forms day-, cin, and in the meanings "select,
distinguish, separate"; in Modern Persian it appears as fdan, Edn-. In the

332
THE AMERICANJOURNALOF SEMITIC LANGUAGES
compound form viPitan, equivalent of Modern Persian guzidan, the verb is

fairly common in the Middle Persian of literature, Pahlavi, Book Pahlavi.
The simplex Citan likewise occurs, used as in Modern Persian for both "collect" and "select." With these verbs are found the nouns vitcIar ("decider"
and "decision"), vizir, and, much more frequently, viCir. This Pahlavi word
has been most fully treated by Bartholomae in his studies on the extremely
difficult intricacies of Sassanian law. Of the eight special studies published
between 1913 and 1923, the most specific statement appears in SbAW, Heidelberg (1920), No. 18, on pages 39 f. Two meanings only are given: first, "a
legal opinion, judgment, decision," and, second, "a legal document containing
or based on such a decision and certified by an official seal." Ndldeke in the
much-quoted passages of his Tabari (pp. 53 and 444 f.) was less definite and
insists only that in Pahlavi the word bears abstract meaning throughout, i.e.,
it is not used to designate an office, rank, or man. In one place only, so far
as I know, is a meaning "judge" claimed for the simple vi'ir. Haug in a long
note to his translation of
I, 16, 144-46, published from manunow probably in Munich, two sections of the
Ard.a-Viraf,
scripts then belonging to him,
difficult Dankart. In the second, with the approval of West (Glossary and
Index, p. 237), he finds a vi~ir followed by an apparently synonymous ddtkar,
both referring to judges of some sort. At the moment of writing not even
West's translation in the SBE is at hand, nor can an exhaustive search for
other literature be made. It is possible, even probable, that this reading has
been challenged by others. Nbldeke must have known this passage when he
made his sweeping statement seven years after Haug's publication and five
years after the appearance of West's Glossary. An exhaustive list of occurrences of the word must be found in Kai Barr's card index, preparatory to a
complete Pahlavi dictionary, for which we will all be grateful to him. In the
meantime it must suffice here to venture the statement, that in the Dankart
(ed. Madan), page 309, lines 5, 7, 10, and 14, viar is clearly "legal opinion,
judgment," the judge in this passage being always datbaror -var; on page 790,
line 7, as a synonym with ddtbar, Ohrmazd as the supreme judge is entitled
vitirkar; this suggests that the Haug passage, if correct as printed, must be
read vidr- u ddtkar,with the kar appended to both vit'r and dat. In any case
the general statement of N6ldeke and the more specific exposition of Bartholomae on the meaning or meanings in which vidir is used in Book Pahlavi stand
in spite of this passage.
The extensive publications of Turfan Pahlavi cannot here be examined in
detail. The few that are at hand at this writing do not use the word at all.
The fact is that in actual Pahlavi of any kind vi'ir alone does not seem to occur
at all as the title of any functionary great or small in the Sassanian Empire.
As a compound it does occur, like the simplex in connection with law courts
and their decisions, in one case at least applied to the highest possible court
of appeal, Ahuramazda himself. Soghdian seems to offer little beyond its
wCart,"decision."

333
For more, though nothing that is very satisfactory or decisive, other languages in touch with Pahlavi offer some material. It is curious and significant
that archaic initial v is found only in conservative legal language in Armenian
(cf. Hiibschmann, Arm. Gr., p. 248, No. 627). The change to or dialect variant in g is well represented, and with curious frequency this form is used for an
official. As Georg Hoffmann (Ausz. Syr. Mart., p. 62, n. 542) and N6ldeke
(Tabari, p. 444, n. 3) saw at nearly the same time, the gezirpat of the Talmud
is a form of our word. N6ldeke, with a curious lapse from his usual caution,
assumed that this title might have been used for all the cabinet ministers of
Sassanian Persia except the prime minister. Christensen (L'Iran, p. 131, n. 1)
had a letter from him before his death, in which he abandons this notion.
Hoffmann's note is often quoted, but rarely or never so that its full import
becomes clear. The note concerns an official, called in Syriac rBl
gezlraye,
"chief of gendarmes." Hoffmann identifies him altogether with the wholly
Persian loan-word of the Talmud, gezirpat. The Talmud places this official
on a level with supervisors of plowlands and of the distribution of water in
irrigation canals. Both the Talmud and the Syriac Acts of Martyrs belong
just about in the middle of Sassanian times, about the middle of the fifth
century A.D. Hoffmann and Hiibschmann (Arm. Gr., p. 264, No. 29 with n. 2;
P.St., pp. 163 and 272) give ample references for the use of the word gizir
in Modern Aramaic, Armenian, Persian, and Turkish; never the actual head
or mayor of a village, as has been falsely stated, but at most his second, a
sort of beadle rather than a bailiff. The excellent Turkish-French dictionary
of Diran K616kian describes him as a public household servant under the
orders of a village chief. N6ldeke (ZDMG, XXXV, 233) shows that this word
was used for such a beadle as early as A.D. 201. Since it is still in use in the
same way, this is manifestly one of the petrefactions of public human life in
the Persian or partly Persianized regions of Asia and as such has at best only
a remote connection with the vizier, who is found as minister of state, often
prime minister, in Moslem states and empires. This Persian petrefact has
furnished modern Spanish its alguacil, alvazil, etc., "police beadle or bailiff,"
formerly "headsman," in the navy "provider of fresh water" (Horn, Grd.d. np.
Etym., p. 242, n. 1).
The use of w(v)azir, and under its influence gazir (gizir), and that of vacar
and vadargarin literary Modern Persian is interesting and instructive.
The first thing to be noted is that in his Arabic-Persian dictionary Mulkaddamat al-Adab (ed. J. G. Wetzstein, printed 1843, p. 46) Zamakhsari lists
wazir as an Arabic word with sultafn,malik, walT,mawla,
camid,
shib,
.dajib,
ra:s, sayyid, camil, etc., and defines it in Persian by dast?2r.
Before continuing we pause a moment for another interesting official in this
is defined as amir of the bazaar, amir of bazaar and soldiery,
list. The
amir of the'urt.
soldiery (la'kar). The plural 'urat are said to be the pick (khairat)
of the army (jund), and the Surt(is described as their head (sahib). Here is the

334
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMITIC
LANGUAGES
vd&crpatof the KdZ inscription, line 34, AJSL, LIII (January, 1937), 134 and
142.
Now, to proceed, when wazir (Persian pronunciation vazir) is used in Modern Persian, the very form betrays it as an Arabic word. Whether it be used of
the-or any-vizier, an assistant in general, or a lowly porter or burdenbearer, that is Arabic and not Persian. The use of the word for a learned man
in the Persian of India is a curious but not unreasonable development.
When gizir is pronounced gazir, that is a clear indication of Arabic influence on this Persian word, just as is its use as a synonym of vazir for a vizier.
Though the choice of the Arabic word for an official of the government may be
due to Persian influence, though the introduction of the function or position
and its development and definition may owe much to the administration of
Sassanian Persia, its court, and the organization of its government, the word
as such, used as a title for a high official of the state, is Arabic, a gift of Moslem Arabic to Modern Persian. Gazeras a collector of revenue has more of the
color of true Persian. Its romantic use in the sense of "hero, champion" may
be traced to both Arabic and Persian, though Arabic influence here also seems
to be the stronger.
Very different is the case of vajar and vacar, "decree, decision," vajargar,
vacargar, "mufti, judge, adviser and decider of legal problems, especially in
religious law." These are genuinely Persian. Steingass' designation of the
fourth form as Arabic is clearly a mistake, perhaps a simple misprint. The
Persian lexicographers say that it is used also in the sense of "prophet, apostle." That may be true, but the passage quoted from them by Vullers does
not prove it; the meaning "mufti, canon-lawyer, judge in canonical law,"
meets all the requirements of that passage and, indeed, fits more truly its context.
That the position and functions of the vizier in the Moslem-Arabic world
and perhaps the choice of the word that became his title belong to the drift
from Persian to Arabic is fairly probable. Clear precision in determining exactly what was derived, when, where, and how, is thus far scarcely attained,
perhaps with the means at hand unattainable. To begin and end with Abbasid
times using only late literary sources, as does Hitti in his History of the Arabs
(pp. 318 ff.), is not sufficient. Even for this much Hitti might with profit have
used at least something of Ibn al-Mukaffac at this point. But the gap between
Ibn al-Mukaffacand the reform of Kavidh (Kubad) and Chosroes Anoshirwan
is still very great. Particularly when Ibn al-Mukaffac sings the praises of the
secretarial vizier, it is not easy to see clearly the Persian speech and terminology upon which his Arabic rests. But he himself is not the original creator of
that Arabic for Persian. Some vital spans in the bridge between him and what
came before have been repaired or rebuilt in the foregoing study. Much, very
much, remains undone, some of which can perhaps be recovered. If Mani and
the orthodox Manichaeans do not furnish the material, the Mazdakites,
heretically reformed Manichaeans as Christensen has shown them to be, give

335
us something that looks like a lead. Christensen in his L'Iran (pp. 335 ff.)
makes excellent use of the brief but manifestly good account of Shahristdni
(ed. Cairo, 1347/48 = 1928/29, on the margins of Ibn JHazm, II, 69 f.).
Mazdak depicts God and his heavenly government after the model of Chosroes
and his court, as Mazdak knew it after the initial reforms of Kavddh. Just
under the four great powers next to the throne, a body of seven (the planets)
is organized as a college or cabinet of wazxrs. What is the Persian behind this
word wazir?
As the heavenly court of Mazdak reflects that of Chosroes I and his father,
so the assessment and administration of tax income and expenditure in
Umar's time, especially in the IrSi, echoes or continues the practice introduced or reformed by the same rulers of Sassanian Persia (N61deke, Tabari,
p. 247 with notes). What is said in N6ldeke before the story which Christensen finds interesting (L'Iran, p. 367) is at least as important as the anecdote
itself, which merely illustrates the same situation from another angle. As
Nildeke observes, in Anoshirwan's reformed administration a body of judges,
manifestly ecclesiastical or religious, is inserted between the king and the tax
officials. They are to supervise the tax perception. The story of Pdbak, which
follows, makes him a scribe, but his function in the tale is supervision of the
just use and expenditure of the state's means and monies. Is this the point at
which the dipir (kdtib, scribe or secretary) and the vi&ir(kar)meet and merge
to issue in the wazir?
An exhaustive study of the use of wazir in Arabic before it became an accepted official title cannot here be undertaken. That is work for a younger
scholar with more leisure for such a job, which must be done before or when
the Arabic world undertakes the creation of an adequate modern dictionary.
Here a proper beginning must suffice. This must take the form of a critical examination of at least the few occurrences of the word noted by De Goeje for
Nicholson in his Literary History of the Arabs (p. 256, No. 2), to which Miss
Abbott referred in her Kurrah Papyri (p. 58, n. 6).
It will be best to begin with the latest, because it must be eliminated. For
Abu Bakr as the wazir of Mohammed reference is made to a poem quoted in
Ibn Sacd, III, 121. This is a poem by Muslim al-Batin (or al-Butain) inveighing against extravagant Shiites, who denied the rightful caliphate to Abu
Bakr and cUmar (al-Fariak). YA.dit (Buldan, II, 702, and Index, p. 344) and
Ibn Taghribardi (ed. Juynboll and Matthes, I, 609) show that this man lived
and Damascus; that he accompanied
most of his life in Syria, between
in
to
211=
.Him?
that he belongs, therefore, in
ibn
Egypt
826/27;
Abdallah
Tahir
the time of the caliph al-MaDmfin. That such a man in such a poetical context
calls Abu Bakr the waz?rof Mohammed is no evidence that Mohammed did so.
The most important passage adduced by De Goeje is Tabard, II, 78, line
ibn Badr the Ghuddnite eulogizing
10. This is a line from a poem by
and adopted brother of MucAwiyah. In
his patron and friend, Ziydd, viceroy
I.1rithah
this line he says, "Your brother is the caliph of God, the son of Harb, and

336
THE AMERICANJOURNAL OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES
you are his wazcr. What a wazsr!" This IIHrithah is a good old Arab, one of
the prominent men of Tamim, neither as wise and able nor as good a Moslem
as his friend Ahnaf ibn Kais. He was a lover and connoisseur of Persian wines,
denounced by Ali, favored by ZiyAd, and after ZiyAd's death presently also
by cUbaidallah, son of ZiyAd. He occupied minor administrative posts under
Ziyqd in Fdrs, and under Ziyad's sons in AhwAz and Naisdbilr. Hdrithah
who knew
with and like Ziydd was therefore one of those early Arabs in
a good deal about Persian government and administration. And
cIr.kthis man is,
so far as the passages quoted go, the first to use for a man like Ziyad as a
descriptive epithet, hardly yet an official title conferred by Mucawiyah,
wazir. On the Persian side it may be said that, as such, Ziydd certainly stood
as a judge or moderator between his kings or caliphs, cAll and Mucdwiyah,
and the tax collectors, on the one hand, the tax-money disbursers, on the
other. On the Arabic side Ziydd was a true wazir to MucAwiyah in that he
bore for him the burden (wizr) of the government of the difficult
cIr.kain.
Here, indeed, for the first time wazir has clearly a governmental and probably
a Persian color.
Neither of these is present in the third passage quoted from Ibn KIutaibah's
Liber Poesis et Poetarum (p. 414, 1. 1). This is purely Arabic. The men concerned are of those who pass from the pre-Islamic into the Islamic world. One
Hudhalite, Khalid ibn Zuhair, is justifying against another, Khuwailid ibn
Khdlid Abfi Dhu'aib, his faithless conduct in the matter of wooing for him a
woman. He wins her for himself and says in justification, not quoting exact
words literally: You have no cause for complaint. You are merely getting
what you gave. You were to woo her for your cousin, but you wanted her
for yourself, "though you were the true friend of his soul and the bearer of its
burden (waziiruh)" of love.
With all this it may still be true that cAbdalhamid ibn Yahyd, the friend
of Ibn al-Mu1kaffac,was the first great katib who bore officially under Marwdn
II the title of wazir. Marwdn II was in other respects a great reforming organizer. Most of what we know about him beyond his misfortunes exists in
shredded and fragmentary notes. A reorganization of the chief secretary's
office making him prime minister under Marwan II would be easily overlooked
by most Arabic and modern historians in the confusion of the Umayyad
debacle.
[For leisure and means this study owes thanks to the Wieboldt gift for Arabic
and Islamic studies in the University of Chicago.]


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