The Daylami language, also known as ''Daylamite'', ''Deilami'', ''Dailamite'', or ''Deylami'' (Deilami: , from the name of the
Daylam region), is an
extinct language that was one of the northwestern branch of the
Iranian languages. It was spoken in northern
Iran, specifically in the mountainous area in
Gīlān,
Mazandaran, and
Ghazvin
Qazvin (; fa, قزوین, , also Romanized as ''Qazvīn'', ''Qazwin'', ''Kazvin'', ''Kasvin'', ''Caspin'', ''Casbin'', ''Casbeen'', or ''Ghazvin'') is the largest city and capital of the Province of Qazvin in Iran. Qazvin was a capital of the ...
Provinces.
Parviz Natel Khanlari
Parviz Natel Khanlari ( fa, پرویز ناتل خانلری; March 20, 1914 – August 23, 1990) was an Iranian literary scholar, linguist, author, researcher, politician, and professor at Tehran University.
Biography
Parviz Natel Khanlar ...
listed this language as one of Iranian dialects spoken between the 9th and 13th centuries.
Istakhri, a medieval Iranian geographer, has written about this language, as did
Al-Muqaddasi
Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī Bakr al-Maqdisī ( ar, شَمْس ٱلدِّيْن أَبُو عَبْد ٱلله مُحَمَّد ابْن أَحْمَد ابْن أَبِي بَكْر ٱلْمَقْدِسِي), ...
, a medieval Arab geographer, who wrote "they have an obscure language and they use the phoneme ''khe'' /x/ a lot." Abū Esḥāq Ṣābī had a similar report on people in the Deylam highlands who spoke a distinct language.
According to Wilfered Madelung, in the early Islamic period the language of the Deylamites was a northwestern Iranian language. One of the characteristics of this language was an added ī sound between consonants and ā (
Lāhījān=Līāhījān, Amīrkā=Amīrkīā).
[Wilferd Maelung, Deylamite]
Encyclopedia Iranica
Notes
{{Iranian languages
Northwestern Iranian languages
Languages of Iran
Extinct languages of Asia
Languages attested from the 9th century
Languages extinct in the 13th century
Caspian languages