Ajem-Turkic or Ajami Turkic (; Türkī-yi ʿacemī, 'Persian Turkic' or 'Persian Turkish'), also known as Middle Azeri or Middle Azerbaijanian (), was the Turkic vernacular spoken in Iran between the 15th and 18th centuries. The modern Azerbaijani language 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 phase of the Safavids", it was called ḳızılbaşī in contrast to rūmī (Ottoman) and çaġatā’ī (Chagatai), due to its close relation to dialects spoken by the Qizilbash.
History Ajem-Turkic is descended from Old Anatolian Turkish, and is part of the southwestern branch of Oghuz languages. The language first appears during the 15th-century in Azerbaijan, eastern Anatolia, and Iran. It went through more development under the Turkic dynasties of the Aq Qoyunlu (1378–1503) and the Qara Qoyunlu (1374–1468), and also in Safavid Iran (1501–1736), whose ruling dynasty stemmed from Iranian Kurdistan, before migrating to Iranian AzerbaijanRoger M. Savory. "Safavids" in Peter Burke, Irfan Habib, Halil İnalcık: History of Humanity-Scientific and Cultural Development: From the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Taylor & Francis. 1999, p. 259.Matthee, Rudi. (2005). The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500-1900. Princeton University Press. p. 18; "The Safavids, as Iranians of Kurdish ancestry and of nontribal background (...)".
Savory, Roger. (2008). "EBN BAZZĀZ". Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. VIII, Fasc. 1. p. 8. "This official version contains textual changes designed to obscure the Kurdish origins of the Safavid family and to vindicate their claim to descent from the Imams."
Amoretti, Biancamaria Scarcia; Matthee, Rudi. (2009). "Ṣafavid Dynasty". In Esposito, John L. (ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. Oxford University Press. "Of Kurdish ancestry, the Ṣafavids started as a Sunnī mystical order (...)" and alongside Persian, adopting the Turkic language of the region, using the qizilbash (Turkic tribes) in the military to come to power.Savory 2007, p. 31: "Another factor which complicated the situation confronting Shah Ismā'īl in 1501 was the mutual antipathy between the Tajik, or Iranian, elements in Safavid society, and the Turkish, or more properly Turcoman, tribal forces (qizilbāsh) which had been largely responsible for bringing the Safavids to power but which in many cases came from outside the borders of Iran." Under them, Ajami Turkic, alongside Persian, Armenian, Georgian and Circassian,Blow 2009, pp. 165–6. "Georgian, Circassian and Armenian were also spoken [at the court], since these were the mother-tongues of many of the ghulams, as well as of a high proportion of the women of the harem. Figueroa heard Abbas speak Georgian, which he had no doubt acquired from his Georgian ghulams and concubines." was used at the court and uniquely in the military which consisted of the qizilbash, and also was a lingua franca from northern to southern Iran according to some, while according to Stephen Dale, its use largely stayed confined to the Azerbaijan province and remained a tribal/qizilbash phenomenon. According to Swedish Turkologist Lars Johanson, Ajemi Turkic was an "Azerbaijanian koiné" that functioned as lingua franca in the Caucasus region and in southeastern Dagestan, 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, .
Ajem-Turkic had already emerged as both a spoken and written language during the fifteenth century under the Aq Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu states. Following 1500, however, the language evolved into a supraregional variety extending beyond Azerbaijan itself and functioning across a wider geographical area. This development took place within the broad region centered around political hubs such as Isfahan. Prominent representatives of early Ajem-Turkic literature include poets such as Jahan Shah, Imadaddin Nasimi, and Muhammad Fuzuli.
Ajem-Turkic functioned as a lingua franca in the Caucasus and southeastern Dagestan. It was widely used within governmental circles and the military. During the Safavid period, the majority of soldiers reportedly spoke only this language and had no knowledge of Persian. Recording his observations in 1617–1618, the Italian traveler Pietro della Valle noted that Ajem-Turkic differed from Ottoman Turkish and contained numerous “Tatar,” that is, eastern Turkic, lexical elements.
Nevertheless, scholarly knowledge of Ajem-Turkic or Middle Azerbaijani remains limited, as only a small number of texts have been subjected to linguistic analysis. Bellér-Hann examined the Tarikh-i Khatai, dating from 1494–1495. Within the broader context of Oghuz languages, the relationships between Ajami Turkic and Ottoman Turkish, the classification of Azerbaijani dialects in Iran, and the linguistic processes resulting from contact between Persian and Turkic have constituted major areas of research within the Iran–Turk Project at the University of Mainz. In the sixteenth century, several works were translated into Ajem-Turkic by Muhammad al-Katib, known as Nishati Shirazi. One of these was the Shuhadanama, a 1538 translation of Husayn Va'iz Kashifi’s Persian work Rawzat al-Shuhada, originally composed in 1502–1503. The work contains narratives and legends concerning Ali ibn Abi Talib and the martyrs of Karbala. Another important translation was the Kitab-i Tazkira-i Shaykh Safi, completed in 1542, which was based on Safvat al-Safa, written by Ibn Bazzaz in 1358. This work recounts the life of Shaykh Safi al-Din.
Both works are regarded as important Shiʿi texts. Nishati explained that the purpose of these translations was to benefit Turkic students, Sufis, mullahs belonging to Turkic tribes, and the people of Turkestan who lacked knowledge of Persian. Among the political figures who encouraged this undertaking during the reign of Shah Tahmasp I were the Qizilbash official Shahqulu Khalifa Zulkadar, who held high-ranking positions in Tabriz and Qazvin at the Safavid court, and Qazi Khan Takalu, governor of Shiraz.
Literature
Since its appearance, Ajem-Turkic was heavily impacted by Persian, especially in its syntax. The Persian design of merging clauses 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).
References
Sources
Further reading