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Ancient Persian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2026

Kevin T. van Bladel
Kevin T. van Bladel
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut

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Ancient Persian
A Linguistic History
 , pp. i - ii
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2026
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/cclicenses/

Ancient Persian

When ancient Persian conquerors created a vast empire from the Mediterranean to the Indus, encompassing many peoples speaking many different languages, they triggered demographic changes that caused their own language to be transformed. Persian grammar has ever since borne testimony to the social history of the ancient Persian Empire. This study of the early evolution of the Persian language bridges ancient history and new linguistics. Written for historians, philologists, linguists, and classical scholars, as well as those interested specifically in Persian and Iranian studies, it explains the correlation between the character of a language’s grammar and the history of its speakers. It paves the way for new investigations into linguistic history, a field complementary with, but distinct from, historical linguistics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Kevin T. van Bladel is Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University. He is also author of The Arabic Hermes (2009), From Sasanian Mandaeans to Sabians of the Marshes (2017), Written Middle Persian Literature under the Sasanids (2024), and numerous articles on Arabic, Greek, Iranic, Sanskrit, and Syriac textual traditions.

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