Middle Persian, Early Judeo-Persian, History of Magic

The paper deals with the etymology and dialectology of Turkic armut, Persian armud 'pear'. The interrelations of these phytonymical families were treated a few years ago by Prof. Uwe Bläsing who considered the Turkic words borrowed from a Middle Iranian language (viz. Pahlavi, because of some isolated attestation in this language), but also the Ira-nian words probably borrowed from a third (unknown) language of the Irano-Caucasian area. On the basis of an extensive areal study (with original materials from the archive of the Balochi Etymological Dictionary Project, L'Orientale University, Naples) the author argues for a back dating of the Iranian attestations, and the preservation in many modern Iranian dialects of a lexical type believed to be isolated in Middle Persian.

From the very old time, Iran hosted numerous nations by various religions. Jews is one of the people whom were forced to migrate to Iran in Assyria and Babylonian era. In the time of Achaemenid, Parthian and Sassanid period they attempted to protect their identification and culture. It must be noted that both Iranian and Jews people influenced each other. The probing into Zoroastrian and Jewish holy texts illustrates that there are some similarities between these two. Zoroastrianism put fundamental influences on Jewish eschatology and angelology and Jewish believes affected Zoroastrian’s Holy book in different eras. As historical and linguistic inquiry on Zoroastrian’s Holy book prove that this book was written in different epochs under the influence of Jewish notions. Although having different hand written and language, they benefited Farsi language and had various Iranian dialects. The Jews invented a style in which upon it, they composed poetry in Farsi Language and Hebrew handwriting. They called this style Farsihood and under the influence of Iranian poets composed poems. Some of the Jewish poets like Babai Ben lotf and Shahin utilized this style. Farsihood embraces not only literature but the translation and explanation of Old Testament and historical events. So it is important for its linguistic and historical points of view.

Die iranischen Juden bilden bis heute eine der ältesten jüdischen Gemeinden in der Diaspora, deren historische Wurzeln bis zur Zeit des ersten Tempels in das 6. Jh. v. Chr. zurückreichen. Weiterhin bestehen jüdische Schulen, Synagogen und andere soziale, unpolitische Organisationen im Iran, sodass die jüdische Gemeinde Irans die größte im Nahen Osten außerhalb Israels darstellt. Die speziellen religiösen und kulturellen Eigenschaften des iranischen Judentums sind vor allem durch judäo-persische Literatur überliefert, deren vielfältige literarische Gattungen von Übersetzungen des Pentateuchs und weiteren exegetischen Werken, hebräischer Grammatik und Lexikographie, Kommentare und Übersetzungen des Talmuds, Halacha und Midrasch, Ritualen und liturgischer Poesie bis zur epischen und romantischen Poesie reichen, sowie moderne Tageszeitungen und Zeitschriften umfasst. Der Vortrag gibt einen Überblick über das iranische Judentum anhand einiger Beispiele aus der judäo-persischen Literatur.