Ajem-Turkic (''Türkī-yi ʿacemī''; 'Persian Turkic' or 'Persian Turkish'), also known as Middle Azeri, is used to refer to the Turkic

vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...

spoken in

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

between the 15th and 18th century. The modern

Azerbaijani language Azerbaijani () or Azeri (), also referred to as Azeri Turkic or Azeri Turkish, is a Turkic language from the Oghuz sub-branch spoken primarily by the Azerbaijani people, who live mainly in the Republic of Azerbaijan where the North Azerbaija ...

is descended from this language.

Name

The term is derived from earlier designations, such as ''lingua turcica agemica'', or ''Turc Agemi'', which was used in a grammar book composed by the French writer Capuchin Raphaël du Mans (died 1696) in 1684. Local texts simply called the language ''türkī''. During "the

Isfahan Isfahan ( fa, اصفهان, Esfahân ), from its Achaemenid empire, ancient designation ''Aspadana'' and, later, ''Spahan'' in Sassanian Empire, middle Persian, rendered in English as ''Ispahan'', is a major city in the Greater Isfahan Regio ...

phase of the

Safavids Safavid Iran or Safavid Persia (), also referred to as the Safavid Empire, '. was one of the greatest Iranian empires after the 7th-century Muslim conquest of Persia, which was ruled from 1501 to 1736 by the Safavid dynasty. It is often conside ...

", it was called ''ḳızılbaşī'' in contrast to ''rūmī'' ( Ottoman) and ''çaġatā’ī'' ( Chagatai), due to its close relation to dialects spoken by the

Qizilbash Qizilbash or Kizilbash ( az, Qızılbaş; ota, قزيل باش; fa, قزلباش, Qezelbāš; tr, Kızılbaş, lit=Red head ) were a diverse array of mainly Turkoman Shia militant groups that flourished in Iranian Azerbaijan, Anatolia, the ...

History

Ajem-Turkic is descended from

Old Anatolian Turkish Old Anatolian Turkish (OAT, tr, Eski Anadolu Türkçesi, ''EAT'') is the stage in the history of the Turkish language spoken in Anatolia from the 11th to 15th centuries. It developed into Early Ottoman Turkish. It was written in the Arabic scr ...

, and is part of the southwestern branch of

Oghuz languages The Oghuz languages are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family, spoken by approximately 108 million people. The three languages with the largest number of speakers are Turkish, Azerbaijani and Turkmen, which, combined, account for more t ...

. The language first appears during the 15th-century in

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...

, eastern

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

, and Iran. It went through more development under the Turkic dynasties of the

Aq Qoyunlu The Aq Qoyunlu ( az, Ağqoyunlular , ) was a culturally Persianate,Kaushik Roy, ''Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750'', (Bloomsbury, 2014), 38; "Post-Mongol Persia and Iraq were ruled by two tribal confederations: Akkoyunlu (Wh ...

(1378–1503) and the

Qara Qoyunlu The Qara Qoyunlu or Kara Koyunlu ( az, Qaraqoyunlular , fa, قره قویونلو), also known as the Black Sheep Turkomans, were a culturally Persianate, Muslim Turkoman "Kara Koyunlu, also spelled Qara Qoyunlu, Turkish Karakoyunlular, Eng ...

(1374–1468), and particularly in Safavid Iran (1501–1736), whose ruling dynasty stemmed from Azerbaijan. Under them, Ajem-Turkic, alongside Persian, was used at the court and in the military, and was a ''

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

'' from northern to southern Iran. According to Swedish

Turkologist Turkology (or Turcology or Turkic studies) is a complex of humanities sciences studying languages, history, literature, folklore, culture, and ethnology of people speaking Turkic languages and Turkic peoples in chronological and comparative conte ...

Lars Johanson Lars Johanson (born 8 March 1936 in Köping, Sweden) is a Swedish Turcologist and linguist, an emeritus professor at the University of Mainz, and docent at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, University of Uppsala, Sweden. He has been ...

, Ajemi Turkic was an "Azerbaijanian koiné" that functioned as ''lingua franca'' in the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...

region and in southeastern

Dagestan Dagestan ( ; rus, Дагеста́н, , dəɡʲɪˈstan, links=yes), officially the Republic of Dagestan (russian: Респу́блика Дагеста́н, Respúblika Dagestán, links=no), is a republic of Russia situated in the North C ...

, and was widely spoken at the court and in the army. According to É. Á. Csató et al.:É. Á. Csató, B. Isaksson, C Jahani. ''Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case Studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic'', Routledge, 2004, p. 228, .

Literature

Since its appearance, Ajem-Turkic was heavily impacted by

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

, especially in its

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

. The Persian design of merging

clause In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...

s which Ajem-Turkic had inherited from Old Anatolian Turkish was strengthened due to its continuous contact with Persian. Sources for the study of Ajemi-Turkic include the prose texts of Nishati ( fl. 1530–after 1557), the ''Tarih-i Hatai'' (''Tārīkh-i Khatāʾī'', 1494/95); ''Şühedaname'' (''Şühedānāme'', 1539); and ''Tezkire-i Şeyh Safi'' (''Tedhkire-i Şeykh Ṣafī'', 1542/43).

Name

History

Literature

References

Sources

Further reading