Afghan Folktales from Herat: Persian Texts in Transcription and T ...

“Khorasani features.” The fact that poets coming from this region spoke their local Khorasani dialects in their everyday life is well attested to by the Tabaqât of Ansâri (eleventh century AD), written in “the old language of Herat,” published by V. Ivanow in 1923. Hence a diachronic study of the Khorasani dialects in general and Herati in particular, which have still preserved many archaic features, would cast considerable light on the formation of the language of the Persian classical literature—a common heritage of the peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (Tajiks).

The Herati dialect's linguistic importance from the synchronic perspective is based on two key factors. As one of the Khorasani dialects, which I classify as “central” within the continuum of modern Persian-Dari-Tajiki dialects (Ioannesyan 2007), it serves as a bridge between the Persian dialects of western Iran and the Tajiki of Central Asia, while given the geographic position of Herat as a city (situated on the border between modern Afghanistan and Iran), its dialect shares many common characteristics with both—the Persian dialects of Iran and those of Afghan Persian (Kabuli Persian/Dari)—and in this sense serves as a bridge between the Persian and Afghan Persian languages. Though historically the name “Khorasan” in a broader sense can be applied to a vast region stretching from the territory of modern eastern Iran farther eastward and embracing the whole of modern Afghanistan, from a synchronic linguistic standpoint, this term is applied to “minor Khorasan,” which covers the northeastern part of Iran (Khorasan province) and the northwestern part of Afghanistan (mainly Herat and Ghur provinces). Accordingly, the “Khorasani dialects” imply the Persian and Afghan Persian dialects of this area.

The region in question, as a result of its long political instability and constant wars, has never been open to field research, especially by westerners. My monograph, The Herati Dialect of the Dari Language of Modern Afghanistan, based on the materials collected by me in Afghanistan, provides the first and only systemic synchronic study and description of the dialect so far. The book (which is in Russian and is not translated into English) contains a supplement consisting of original texts about everyday life, but it leaves out the large amount of folklore texts I collected in Afghanistan.