Shirvani Arabic
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| Shirvani Arabic | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Azerbaijan, Dagestan (Russia) | |
| Region: | Caucasus | |
| Language extinction: | Second half of the 19th century | |
| Language family: | Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Arabic Shirvani Arabic |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | – | |
| ISO 639-3: | – | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Shirvani Arabic was a dialect of Arabic that was once spoken in what is now central and northwestern Azerbaijan (historically known as Shirvan) and Dagestan (southern Russia). Arabic was spoken in this region since the Muslim conquest of the South Caucasus at the beginning of the 8th century. It was brought here by Arab settlers comprised mostly of military staff, merchants and craftsmen from Syria and Baghdad, and was used as an official language. It experienced decline after the weakening of the Caliphate in the 13th century and was gradually replaced by Persian/Tat and Azeri. Groups of Arabs (mostly from Yemen) continued to immigrate to southern Dagestan influencing the culture and literary traditions of the local population who had already become Islamized.[1] The latest documentation of the existence of Shirvani Arabic is attributed to the Azeri historian Abbasgulu Bakikhanov who mentioned in his 1840 historical work Golestan-i Iram that "to this day a group of Shirvan Arabs speaks an altered version of Arabic."[2] Arabic continued to be spoken in Dagestan until the 1920s mostly by upper-class feudals as a second or third language, as well as a language of literature, politics and written communication.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Anna Zelkina. The Arabic Linguistic and Cultural Tradition in Dagestan: an Historical Overview. Arabic as a Minority Language by Jonathan Owens (ed.). Walter de Gruyter Publ. Berlin: 2000. ISBN 3110165783
- ^ Golestan-i Iram by Abbasgulu Bakikhanov. Translated by Ziya Bunyadov. Baku: 1991, p. 21
- ^ Literatures of the North Caucasus and Dagestan by L.G.Golubeva et al.
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