The pre-modern dialect of Shiraz in the poetry of Shams, son of Nasir, from Shiraz (d. 1362 C. E.): text edition, grammar, and dialectology

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ludwig Paul
• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics ; Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 272013538

West Iranian dialectology deals with the evolution and genetic classification of West Iranian languages and dialects. So far, scholars have often focussed on the Middle West Iranian languages Middle Persian and Parthian, and on modern languages and dialects like New Persian, Kurdish, Baluchi, Mazandarani, etc. An important literary source for the study of West Iranian, pre-modern (10-16 cent. C. E.) dialect literatures in various regions of Iran (e.g., Tabari in North Iran, Fahlaviyat poetry in Northwest Iran), have been largely neglected in Iranian studies so far.The work of Shams, son of Nasir (Persian: Shams pus-i Nasir), from the 14th century C. E., stands out among the pre-modern West Iranian dialect literatures, both in quantity and scope. It has been preserved in two manuscripts of unequal age and length, and has hardly been worked upon scholarly so far. Its high importance for West Iranian dialectology is still unknown to many Iranologists. The philological study of this work and its language will make accessible an Iranian primary source of extraordinary importance, and promises to yield many results for Iranian literary history, and above all for West Iranian dialectology.The present proposal aims first at an edition of a part of Shams' poetic oeuvre (835 verses, based on the older manuscript), as a prerequisite for a pioneering linguistic analysis of the 14th century dialect of Shiraz. Based on this edition, the lexicon and grammar (phonology, morphology) of this dialect shall be worked out. Then, in a further step, the dialectological analysis and genetical classification of the dialect shall be attempted, in the context of West, and South West, Iranian.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Iran
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Hassan Rezai Baghbidi; Professor Dr. Ali Ashraf Sadeghi