Iskandar Ding
@iskdin
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PhD candidate in Yaghnobi and Sogdian linguistics @SOAS . Devotee of the Iranian and Persianate world.
London
Joined December 2015
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Christian tombstone with Syriac inscription from Quanzhou, Fujian, SE China, from the Mongol (Yuan) period. I’d be exceedingly grateful if anyone could decipher the text.
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This Persian textbook published in China in 1988 for Uyghur and Chinese speaking learners is def one of the best Persian textbooks - and one of the most interesting language textbooks - I’ve come across.
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When people talk of the Persianate world,the Sino-Persian heritage is often left out of the discourse. Few scholars are aware of the Persian heritage in China and ever fewer take this heritage in southeastern China seriously. One of the rare academic endeavours to acknowledge us:
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My obsession these days has been learning this beautiful script and I’m utterly in love.
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Learning Lithuanian as an Indo-Iranologist is intellectually orgasmic.
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開齋吉慶！عید فطر مبارک !
Eat well, drink well, but don’t be wasteful. Think of the less fortunate and pray for humanity.
Cf. Qur’ān 7:31, in picture below, in Arabic, Xiao’erjing (Chinese in Perso-Arabic script), and Chinese in Chinese script.
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«لغت‌نامهٔ دانشکدهٔ زبان هوئی (زبان مسلمان)» （回回館雜字）که در قرن ۱۵ میلادی تألیف شده است، یکی از کهن‌ترین فرهنگ‌های زبان فارسی است و ویژگی‌های گویش فارسی‌زبانانی را که با خطائیان (چینیان) رفت و آمد داشتند، نشان می‌دهد. از همین لغت‌نامه معلوم می‌شود که گویش فارسی مسلمانان
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Children in China also grow up with stories of Mullah Nasreddin, knowing him as 阿凡提 Āfántí, a legendary, witty figure from the Uyghur community. The Chinese name evidently comes from the character’s Uyghur name نەسىردىن ئەپەندى Nesirdin Ependi (< Gr. αὐθέντης).
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Some of the essential references of my thesis.
Many people see ‘Wow you know so many languages!’ I see a complete tragedy and a sadistic, gatekeeping desire intrinsic to my subject. I’m fortunate enough to be able to read academic Russian and Japanese bc I’m from China. But then
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This drive would take the same amount of time as a drive from Paris to Sofia, within the European Union, but is practically impossible to do.
I fantasise about the day we could do this. Or with a train: the next train to Lahore arrives in 5 minutes, calling at Kabul, etc…
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Totally vibing how Hui Muslims in Gansu, northwestern China are just switching between Persian and Arabic and Chinese (not on this page) and quoting the Qur’ān fittingly.
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People who try to be smart and ask 'but which Chinese, Mandarin or Cantonese', when someone from China says they speak Chinese, please stop. Cantonese is but one of the many Chinese languages. Unless you're from Guangdong, or Canton, in colonial romanisation, you don't speak
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Part of the Sini calligraphy scroll of الأسماء الحسنى by Haji Noor Deen (Mi Guangjiang 米廣江) at his exhibition at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum. The vertical arrangement almost makes it look like the Mongolian script, which is indeed the vertical version of another Semitic script.
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Due to a period of history that many don’t know nowadays even in China, teaching material for Albanian as a second language is amazing in China.
The second picture shows a study text in a 1970s Albanian textbook for Chinese learners, dissing the Soviet Union.
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The beginning of the Sogdian Rustam story, which is not included in the Persian Shāhnāma. I’ve tried to render it as close as possible to what I imagine as fluent Sogdian speech.
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What an excitingly bold book! Finally got the paperback edition.
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The real Turco-Persian mixed language is Äynu (Eynu), spoken by a people referred to as ‘abdal’ by Uyghurs, in the Khotan region of Xinjiang. ‘Sizni nigalap bisyar xendiliduq’ is a legit phrase in Äynu. Research is scarce and language is dying (500 speakers now apparently).
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Many know that in the Perso-Turkic world, the Muslim name محمد Muḥammad has a phonetically shortened version Mehmet/Mammad, but fewer know that in Central Asia, this is further shortened to Mat, and used in compound names such as Matqāsim, Matyusuf etc. Noteworthy is that one
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One thing I love about Iranian linguistics/philology is that the secondary literature is in so many languages, which greatly satisfies my need as a language nerd.
Here’s the best Sogdian textbook ever. In Japanese.
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This Uyghur strawberry tea I’ve been cherishingly slow in drinking is sadly coming to an end. Always loved the brand name - Zarapshan, from the Persian zar-afšān زر افشان ‘gold-scattering’, also name of a major river in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
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Tajik driver, after us having a whole lively chat, asked if I ‘understand Tajik’. I was like well aren’t we chatting? He said no because you speak so nicely like an Afghan I am speaking ‘adabi’ with you, if I speak kuchagi you won’t get me.
It’s true. What a diglossia situation
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When I was learning Turkish years ago, the teacher asked us one day what we found to be the most difficult. People’s answers varied from vocab to pronunciation to grammar. This Iranian Qashgai classmate, who actually spoke Turkish fluently, said ‘the script’.
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I feel happy and emotional to be holding this beautiful volume in my hands. May God bless Peter Sanders
@petersanders_
’s artistry and diligence! Our communities have never been showcased internationally with as much appreciation and humanity as in this magnum opus.
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Spending too much time in Western academia has made me unaware that Soviet Russian introductions to Iranian philology are the most clear, systematic, and learner-friendly texts. Found these in Tashkent today - perfect for mending gaps in knowledge!
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An important volume that catalogues the inscriptions which testify to a historical vibrant Muslim community in China’s southeastern Fujian Province, now largely ignored by mainstream Islamic Studies. My ancestral traces are also on the record.
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An exciting volume titled ‘Poems of the Palestinian Struggle’, People’s Literature Press, 1975, Beijing. One ode to Gaza (2nd pic) is by a certain ‘Sa. A. Hussain’ - any idea who that is?
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My new blog, where I seek to discuss Persianate literature - be it in Persian, Turkic, Urdu, Arabic, or other languages - intertexually. Here's the first post, thank you for your support:
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Ever since being called a ‘Mongoloid’ during my field trip in Tajikistan, I’ve been conscious of my phenotypical heritage. This has concretised as a desire to improve my Mongolian:
‘Embellish your body with wisdom rather than material goods’ - as my teacher taught me today.
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Arabs should take the Persian پ چ گ ژ when they need to represent these sounds. I don’t understand why they don’t (I do).
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Chuffed to see the Sini (i.e. Chinese) style of Arabic calligraphy in Shāh-i Zinda, Samarkand. This is even more heart-warming with Persian, the ancestral language of the Hui, spoken all around in this ancient city.
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میراث زبان فارسی در چین همین است که مسلمانان چینی‌زبان (ملت «هوی» یا «دونگَن» که بسیاری از آنان اصل فارسی‌زبان دارند) پنج وقت نماز را هنوز به فارسی می‌گویند: بامداد، پیشین، دیگر، شام، خفتن.
Fuzhou Mosque, SE China. The five prayers still bear their Persian names.
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In 1405, the 5th karmapa of Tibet visited Emperor Yongle of China, upon the latter's invitation. A scroll of painting was produced to depict he event. The commemorative texts on the scroll are in five languages: Chinese, Hui (Persian), Uyghur, Tibetan, and
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I’d like to know which Persian variety still uses the infinitive خُسبیدن xusbīdan ‘to fall asleep’ or indeed, says می‌خُسبم، می‌خُسبی mēxusbam, mēxusbī etc., actively, instead of خواب رفتن x(w)āb raftan. 15 c. Persian speakers that the Chinese met would apparently say it.
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I found out recently that the Mongolian word for Sinophone Muslims (Hui/Dungan) is ᠬᠣᠲᠤᠩ (Хотон in Cyrillic) ‘Khoton’. Would it refer to Mongolian-speaking Muslims in Mongolia? What’s the etymology of this word?
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Happy Valentine's. Saʿdī of Shērāz, at least in his Gulistān, once fell in love with a young grammarian he met at the mosque of Kashgar. The most superb philological flirtations ensued. Romance did not blossom, but Behzād gave us a lasting impression of this beautiful encounter:
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Old Turkic, like later Turkic, likes synonym pairs. I love how gül čičäk in Islamic/Persianate Turkic here in Old Turkic has a Chinese element, 花 hua instead of the Persian گل gul. Text from the Turkic translation of the Suvarṇaprabhāsa Sutra (Golden Light Sutra).
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Tīramāh (تیرماه), literally ‘dark-month’, still used in Tajik Persian to mean ‘autumn’, was recorded with the same meaning in the 15th-century Persian-Chinese glossary《回回馆杂字》 Huihui Guan Zazi ‘Glossary of the Muslim (Persian) Language’.
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Honoured to attend the Nawroz jashn at the Zoroastrian Centre of London. First time in my life. Didn’t know I had to wear a cap like the Muslim prayer cap - should have brought my own. Got lent one by the Centre. Felt at home esp when people prayed with hands stretched out 🤲🏼.
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Many Sinophone people rightly criticise Mandarin chauvinism. However, it's disconcerting that they discredit Mandarin for its supposed 'impurity', citing ad nauseam that it is the result of population mixture between 'Han people' and 'nomadic tribes'. This argument, which aims to
@tutuji132435
@Marufkhon
@iskdin
“Northern Chinese” aren’t the original inhabitants. they are a mixture of northern nomadic tribes and local Han within last 1000 years. Whereas Hans from Warring State (2000 Years) period were driven south retaining old classical languages. Cantonese is one of those.
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Visited the synagogue in Bukhara today. The Torah case is said to be 1,000 years old. Also can anyone identify what the book with facing Cyrillic transliteration is? I’m once again reminded of my ignorance of the Aramaic-Hebrew script and lack of knowledge of Judaism…
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There are many gems on Inner Asian studies published in China these days, such as this comparative study of the Mongolian translation of कालिदास Kālidāsa’s मेघदूत Meghadūta with the Sanskrit original and its Tibetan translation.
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Tajik Persian translation of one of the best known philosophical tales of the contemporary word, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince. Iranian Persian speakers may find the title شهزادهٔ خُردَگک interesting.
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‘Menu’ is taomnoma طعام‌نامه in literary Uzbek. I think it’s amazing. Persian should adopt it.
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کتاب فوق‌العاده زیبای نوشتهٔ استاد نسرین داستان «عناصر هنر چینی در نگارگری ایرانی» را به دست آوردم. ظاهراً نسخهٔ فارسی وجود ندارد. امیدوارم به زودی به فارسی هم ترجمه شود.
‘Chinese Elements in Persian Paintings’ by Nasrin Dastan (2022). A gorgeous find.
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Reading out an extract from the Persian part of Kitāb al-rashḥa al-sharīfa - a hagiography of Ibrāhīm Wiqāyatullāh Ma 馬明心, founder of the Jahriyya Sufi order in China. It was a 19th century original composition in Arabic and Persian from Gansu in the aftermath of the Manchu
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What a joy to find out that Ahura Mazdā entered Mongolian (Cyrillic script хурмаст) to denote the concept of heaven, through the Old Uyghur qurmuzta, from the Sogdian xwrmzt’, which was how Buddhist Sogdians and Uyghurs called Śakra, ruler of the Trāyastrimśa heaven.
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A beautiful 1944 Chinese translation of Rustaveli’s ვეფხისტყაოსანი ‘The Knight in the Panther’s Skin’, through Wardrop’s 1938 English version. One of the translators, 韓侍桁 Han Shiheng, was a member of the League of Left-Wing Writers, a dissenting voice in the Republic of China.
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More often than not, the questioner wants to show off their western(ised) view of the world, or to judge their interlocutor - Mandarin being the 'establishmental norm' and therefore evil, and Cantonese the rebellious, real humanity, therefore good. If you're such, you don't
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Surprised to find a Chinese translation of the 1976 Persian selection of the Avesta by Jalil Doostkhah. More surprised to find the word daēnā rendered as 丁 dīng - a common Hui Muslim surname that came from the Ar. دین which came from the Persian dēn which came from daēnā…
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Rahbar-i Fārsī, a Persian textbook published in Tashkent in 1917, has a story where a father takes his boy out of a new-method (usūl-i jadīda) school in Samarkand and brings him to a muallim in Bukhara.
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Vocalising a part of the famous Sogdian Manichaean parable ‘Tale of the Pearl-borer’ (Marγārt-sumbē Āzend). An English translation can be found here
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My all-time favourite expression is the Uyghur exclamation: ۋاي جان Way jan! expressing annoyance, pain, impatience, not-so-pleasant surprise, complaint… Simple but powerful. I haven’t heard it among any other people in the Persianate world.
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I don’t know if I’m alone in finding the Disneyfication of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva disturbing. These historical masjids, madrasas, and mausoleums, beautifully restored and filled with gift shops that sell the same items, now seem built for the purpose of tourism only.
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Yaghnobi birth ritual apparently still has the custom of rubbing honey on the new-born’s hand or lips (pullai lapi yo dasti kafiš), which the Sogdians of Samarkand also had, as recorded by the 舊唐書 ‘Old Book of Tang’, so that the child would be a good merchant and become rich.
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Great questions asked - inspired too many ideas in my head that caused too much speech congestion (will use this as proof that I have ADHD). Thank you
@TheUsmanButt
for inviting me to talk about topics dear to my heart!
Central Asia: the forgotten heart of Islamic civilisation? MEMO in Conversation with Iskandar Ding
@iskdin
In this week’s MEMO in Conversation, we speak to Iskandar Ding, when we think of the great cities of Islamic history, we tend to think of Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Isfahan
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‘A Study on the Contact between Old Uighur and Sogdian, Tocharian Languages’, received in the post today after the long lockdown in Shanghai. An exciting read on the Iranian, Tocharian, Semitic, even Greek influence on one of the oldest recorded Turkic languages.
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Georgian is the most difficult language I’ve ever tried to learn but I love it infinitely for its creativity -
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Many people in China know the thing as a Manchu dessert called ᠰᠠᠴᡳᠮᠠ sačima 沙琪瑪, but I once got something very similar called чакчак čakčak in an Uzbek restaurant in London. How many people in North Asia also have variants of this?
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'In the Persian script, everything is clear, but Latin is confusing', he said. People looked at him in utter incomprehension, but I understood where he was coming from - there's no such a thing as a 'difficult/unsuitable script'. If a script is your native one, it's easy.
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I deeply believe that all script reforms are politically motivated with little to no scientific backing. In the case of many 'Eastern' peoples wishing to switch to Latin (more ridiculously, from Cyrillic to Latin), it says nothing but a sense of unprofessed sense of inferiority
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Wow some scammers don’t give up even when faced with Sogdian.
Also which machine suggested to this person that Sogdian was Hausa?
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剎那 chànà (< Skt. क्षण kṣaṇa) ‘instant’ is my favourite Sanskrit loan in Chinese.
@avzaagzonunaada
informed me that the Bengali word এখন ækʰɔn ‘now’ is এ ‘this’ + খন ‘instant’ < Skt. क्षण. ‘這剎那’ would be a Chinese calque on it and I think it’d be a wonderful word for ‘now’.
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I will be a very happy man the day I can read Vepxist’q’aosani in the original.
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@Shiny_Kween
Apart from the ‘in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit’, which is in Syriac, it’s in Qarakhanid Turkic, but in Syriac script.
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‘Today, most Uyghurs are Muslims. For centuries, however, Uyghurs were Buddhists’ - dunno if it’s actually in the book, but this line that promotes this exciting upcoming volume risks drawing a hasty equivalence between ancient Uyghurs and modern Uyghurs.
Now available! "A HISTORY OF UYGHUR BUDDHISM is notable for its narrative briskness, analytical rigor, and imaginative verve."
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Not cheap to get these books shipped from China but totally worth it. Probably the best studies on Salar so far!
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Advice for political correctness you didn't ask me but important:
When meeting someone from China, or of Chinese descent, don't ever ask 'Do you speak Mandarin or Cantonese?'
Ask, 'Which language do you speak?' If they've said they speak Chinese - 'Which variety do you speak?'
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Uzbekistan is probably the most exciting place in Central Asia right now in terms of national language publishing. Trendy foreign titles are being translated, classical works are being reprinted, and tons of new books are being written, all in Uzbek.
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آیین مانوی در ناحیهٔ شیاپو 霞浦 Xiapuی ولایت فوجیان 福建 Fujianی چین گواه تاریخ طولانی تبادل فرهنگی میان چین و ایران‌زمین است. اکثر مردم بی‌خبراند که آیین مانوی تا قرن ۱۹ (م) به صورت مخلوط با آیین‌های محلی در شیاپو موجود بود. صفحهٔ زیر نمونه‌های محلی از تصویر مانی نشان می‌دهد.
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I know there is a diversity of rice-cooking methods, but, being too attached to the Chinese style, I can never accept the method whereby the rice is boiled in an excessive amount of water before being drained.
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Found a rare textbook for Turkmen in China so reading some Turkmen atm - what a joy of a language if you know Persian, Uzbek/Uyghur, Turkish and Azerbaijani! Surprised to find the word owadan ‘beautiful’, as it is the same word, obadon, in Yaghnobi. I assume from آبادان ābādān?
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Since I was asked just now about the genealogy of Turkic languages, just a reminder that -
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For those who wish to start Mongolian with the Mongolian script but also with the help of IPA, this is a fantastic website. You will learn the sweet Inner Mongolian accent:
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Happened just now. Posting screenshot due to word limit. I think this counts as what is for now called Anti-Asian Racism (note: not ‘hate’).
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While Iranians in the diaspora are arguing which flag to use, the Tajiks have come up with this bomb - the Drafš-i Kāviānī on the Presidential Standard.
Politics aside, it’s quite a nice flag, and I don’t even like flags.
(Photo taken in the Tajik National Museum)
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Went to a Uyghur friend’s place and was overjoyed to see these yayma qaqlar, or lavâshak in Iranian terminology, from Ghulja. These are also found in China (called 果丹皮 guǒdānpí in Chinese) outside of the Uyghur Region. I was addicted to them as a child.
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My favourite Turkic would forever be the Uzbek-Uyghur dialect continuum - the most melodic, expressive, artful, and grammatically nuanced Turkic idiom.
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Every time I read about the Turco-Persian synthesis, I recall the Turkicised syntax of Bukharan Persian, esp. the wonderful genitive construction, e.g. 'ma-ya padar-am-a madrasa-š' 'my father's school', which corresponds neatly to the Uzbek 'me-ning ota-m-ning madrasa-si' :
Turks and Persians have such an intertwined, intimate history, that it's hard to think of one another as strangers.
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‘Jumu’ is a very sweet particle in modern Uyghur that roughly corresponds to the English ‘ok/alright’. I’ve wondered about the etym. Seeing it in a book next to the Chinese equivalent 好吗, I suddenly realised that it’s likely from the Persian جور jōr ‘ok/alright’ + Turkic ‘mu’.
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I'm by no means the first person to do this but still quite chuffed to have come up with this pair of parallel sentences:
Skt. Dáme dáhyati agníh.
Lit. Namè dẽga ugnìs.
'In the house burns a fire.'
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#langtwt
Don’t you sometimes just want to escape life and live in a country for a year to learn the language (almost) from scratch, intensively, without distraction, not caring about whether it’s ‘useful’ for your life and career? For me this country is Albania. What’s yours?
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Random linguistic coincidence/false friends thought:
Chinese: 哥哥 (gēge) 'elder brother'
Persian: کاکا (kākā) 'elder brother, uncle'
Kurdish: کاک (kāk) 'sir'
Azerbaijani: qaqaş (gagash) 'bro, mate'
Manchu: ᡤᡝᡤᡝ (gege) 'princess'
Georgian: გოგო (gogo) 'girl'
#langtwt
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یک متن فارسی از چین:
ر سال ۱۴۰۵ میلادی، کرمابا (ཀརྨ་པ་)ی پنجم تبت به دعوت پادشاه یونگ‌لو(永樂)ی چین - پادشاه سوم دودمان مینگ، قدم به پایتخت آن کشور گذاشت. به مناسبت این ملاقات یک طوماردست نقاشی انجام شد که روی آن متون به ۵ زبان تالیف کردند: چینی، هوئی،
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I used to think that Latin rhotacism (intervocalic voiced s > r) was unthinkable, like how could s become r, then I heart how Turkish people pronounce the word-final [r], which basically sounds like a [ʃ], which then sounds like a retracted [s̠].
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There are two designations of Sinophone Muslims: ‘Hui’ in China and ‘Dungan/Tungan’ in Central Asia (incl. Xinjiang). The etymology of these two terms has always been conjectural. There is more or less a consensus on the term ‘Hui’ 回, considering it as from the older Chinese
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Murġ should be understood as ‘bird’, its classical meaning, not ‘chicken’. It is in Chinese 鴕鳥, also camel (鴕) + bird (鳥). Guess it’s Greek logic.. στρουθοκάμηλος
‘sparrow-camel’?
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The discourse that Tajiks of Bukhara and Samarkand are just ‘Persianised Uzbeks’ is eerily similar to and as destructive as the ‘mountain Turks’ discourse on Kurds…
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Beautiful Uyghur/Hui restaurant in Dushanbe called ‘Alijon’. They ran out of lagman by 9pm but offered ‘laghmoni biryoni’. Helping a friend decide, I hesitated for a second and waiter showed a pic and I realised that I hadn’t used this word in the sense of ‘fried’ for a while.
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I’m today years old when I clocked that the Russian name Ruslan is in fact arslan/aslan…
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Just been thinking now incredibly lucky I am to have learnt Persian from Afghans, Eastern Turki from Uyghurs, and Arabic from a Palestinian teacher.
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