Ibn Sīnā's Remarks on a Khwarizmian Sound

Abstract In his study of Arabic phonetics, Asbāb ḥudūṯ al-ḥurūf (The Causes of the Genesis of the Consonants), Ibn Sīnā briefly surveys some speech sounds found in languages other than Arabic, among them one particular to Khwarizmian, an Iranian language attested primarily in glosses to Arabic manuscripts of the 13th century. This study attempts to elucidate the sound Ibn Sīnā describes both through reference to his own system of phonetic terminology and through comparison with extant material in the Khwarizmian language.

The Khwarizmian language, belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family and spoken in the fertile delta of the Amu Darya river south of the Aral Sea, was long known to have existed only through the reports of the famed polymath AbūRayḥ an al-Bırunı( d. ). In one of his most important extant works, al-At ̱ ar al-baqiya 'an al-qurun al-khaliya (Chronology), he discusses various calendrical terms, giving the names of the months, days, and lunar stations in Khwarizmian as he does for Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Syriac, and Sogdian. 1 In the same work, al-Bırunı̄also laments the Arab conquest of Khwarizm which led to the destruction of older institutions, especially to a loss of the knowledge of writing in * It is a pleasure to offer this study to François de Blois, with whom I studied Khwarizmian some years ago, in honour of his incomparable scholarship at the intersections of Arabic and Iranian philology. For drawing my attention to the remarks of Ibn Sınādiscussed herein and commenting helpfully on a draft of this paper, I thank Kevin Van Bladel. 1 Sachau, Eduard, The Chronology of Ancient Nations (London, ), pp. - and -. The name of the region and the language have been rendered variously in works in European languages: "Chorasmian" and "Choresmian" are based on Greek Χορασμία while "Khwarezmian" is based on Persian ‫ﺧ‬ ‫ﻮ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﺭ‬ ‫ﺯ‬ ‫ﻡ‬ and "Khwarazmian" seems to be based on the Old Persian form (h)uvarazmiš. The Arabic form occurring in the extant textual sources is khu- . For consistency with the Arabic-language source material, I use Khwarizm/Khwarizmian throughout this piece. The name of the region itself is attested as Avestan as x v aīrizəm (acc.sg.) in addition to Old Persian as (h)uvarazmiš <u-v-a-r-z-m i -i-š> (nom.sg.), which may be derived from * hwara-"low" (as was already recognized by David MacKenzie ('Khwarazmian language and literature', in The Cambridge History of Iran Vol. III, Part  (), p. ) plus * zm-(zero-grade of * zam-"land") with a likely meaning of "low-lands"-not unreasonable given the low elevation of the marshy (in antiquity) region south of the Aral Sea.
"From diverse corners of the world the sciences were transferred into Arabic, were embellished, inhabited in hearts, and the niceties of the language flowed through their arteries and veins, even though each nation prefers their language, which it is familiar with and used to and uses in fulfilling its needs with its peers and familiars. I measure this against my own self, for I was brought up in a language which, were science ever to be immortalized in it, it would be as astounding as a mule in a waterspout or a giraffe among thoroughbreds. Then I went over to Arabic and Persian, and am a stranger in each language and struggle in each one. But I would prefer insults in Arabic to praise in Persian! He who has ever engaged with a book of science translated into Persian will know the truth of my words -how its elegance disappeared, its sense darkened, its visage blackened, and its usefulness was voided. For this language (Persian) is only fit for reciting the legends of kings or bedtime stories". 5 Reports such as al-Bırunı's were already an indication that the Khwarizmian language continued to be spoken at least up until the turn of the first millennium-later in fact, than the other known Iranian languages of Central Asia, Sogdian and Bactrian, are attested in their respective homelands. 2 Sachau, Chronology, . We now know that the pre-Islamic Khwarizmian writing system was derived from the Aramaic script, as were the scripts of most of the other Middle Iranian languages, see Vladimir A. Livshits, 'The Khwarezmian Calendar and the Eras of Ancient Chorasmia', Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae  (), pp. - and more recently Pavel Lurje, 'Some New Readings of Chorasmian Inscriptions on Silver Vessels and Their Relevance to the Chorasmian Era', Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia , no. - (), pp. -. Some documents in the Aramaic-derived Khwarizmian script have been discovered, but all are very difficult to read and have yet to be successfully deciphered and edited in their entirety; a number of ossuaries with Khwarizmian inscriptions are a partial exception. This article will not deal with those sources. 3 Al-Bırunı̄also composed a separate treatise on the political history of Khwarizm, Kitab al-musamara fı̄akhbar Khuwarizm (Telling Tales about the Affairs of Khwarizm) which is lost and now known only from quotations in other works. 4 For example E. S. Kennedy, 'al-Biruni', in Dictionary of Scientic Biography, vol.  (), pp. -.

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Emphasis and translation mine. The introduction to the Pharmacology was edited and translated into German from Arabic by Max Meyerhof ('Das Vorwort der Drogenkunde des Beruni', Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften  (), pp. -) while Hamarneh and Said (Sami K. Hamarneh & Hakim Mohammad Said, Al-Biruni's Book on Pharmacy and Materia Medica,  vols. (Smithsonian Institution, printed under the auspices of the Hamdard National Foundation, Karachi, Pakistan, -)) provide a handwritten edition of the entire text with translation into English and a commentary. An updated and more legible edition would be a worthwhile endeavour, especially considering the difficulty of the numerous pharmacological terms in the various languages given in Arabic transcription. The passage quoted here is based on Meyerhof's edition, see Meyerhof, 'Das Vorwort der Drogenkunde des Beruni', p.  (German), p.  (Arabic), which has some irregularities. The Pharmacology was actually known only in its Persian version until Zeki Velidi Togan discovered the Arabic original in .

The Khwarizmian Sources
However, nothing else was really known of Khwarizmian until a series of spectacular discoveries made by the Beshkiri scholar Zeki Velidi Togan (-) between the s and s, which revealed two groups of Khwarizmian source material written in a modified Arabic script and recorded in Arabic texts. 6 One is comprised of Islamic legal texts in Arabic containing Khwarizmian sentences. Chronologically, the first of these is a compendium entitled Yatı̄mat al-dahr fı̄fatawā'ahl al-'aṣ r (The Matchless Pearl of the Age on the Fatwas of Contemporaries) composed by Muḥ ammad 'Ala' al-Dın al-Tarjumanı̄al-Khuwarizmı̄(d. ), several manuscripts of which contain Khwarizmian sentences in Arabic script. 7 Next comes a similar type of text entitled Qunyat al-munya li-tatmı̄m al-gunya (The Acquisition of that which is Desired for the Completion of the Sufficiency), compiled in the early  th century by Najm al-Dın al-Zahidı̄al-Ghazmını̄(d. ). 8 The Qunya is itself a summary of a now-lost work entitled Munyat al-fuqaha' by the teacher of al-Ghazmını, Fakhr al-Dın al-Qubaznı̄(known as Qaḍ ı̄Badı'), the Qunya itself repeating much of the material of the Yatı̄ma probably via the Munya. Several manuscripts of the Qunya contain extensive text in Khwarizmian. Then, about a century later the Khwarizmian material of the Munya and the Qunya was gathered into an untitled compendium by yet another scholar of Khwarizmian origin, Jamal al-Dın al-'Imadı̄(d. ca. ). This latter work, otherwise untitled, has been called the Risala (Treatise). 9 The Yatı̄ma / Qunya groups of texts give cases of Islamic law taken from real life in medieval Khwarizm, often including dialogue in Khwarizmian and a discussion of the extent to which utterances in Khwarizmian have the same value under Islamic law as utterances in Arabic. Composed around the  th century CE, they show a language still in wide daily use, albeit with much borrowing from Arabic and Persian. Though undoubtedly under pressure from both, Khwarizmian appears in the texts as a still-vital language with, for example, established strategies for integrating both Arabic and Persian loans: consider the abstract noun 6 As it happens, Meyerhof's work on the foreword to al-Biruni's Pharmacology was nearly contemporary to Togan's discovery of Khwarizmian texts, as Meyerhof notes ('Das Vorwort der Drogenkunde des Beruni', ). . This Yatı̄ma is not to be confused with al-Tha'alibı's Yatı̄mat al-dahr fı̄maḥ asin 'ahl al-'aṣ r from more than two centuries prior. ḥ l'l'wk [ḥ alalawak] meaning something like "halal-ness", derived from the Arabic word ḥ alal and the Khwarizmian nominal suffix -'wk [-awak]. 10 In the  th century, Khwarizm had long been under the rule of a succession of Turkic rulers and would be subjugated by the Mongols. Khwarizmian society was no doubt multilingual, with Arabic, Persian, and even Khwarizmian Turkic playing roles. The following extract from the Qunya illustrates how this text functions, how questions of language and law were considered, and the multilingual context of Khwarizm at that time. The passage first gives text in Khwarizmian (in Arabic script) and then proceeds to give an Arabic translation, as follows: If a Khwarizmian man says "my brave lad" [är oglum] in Turkish to his slave in the course of pleasantry, and if through the pleasantry he has no intention [to manumit him] whatsoever, will manumission proceed from that word or not? No. 11 The Arabo-Khwarizmian script has typically been transliterated rather than transcribed in publications by Iranists, and appears as follows in MacKenzie's edition of the text (short vowels are not written other than when indicated by the taškı̄l, which is represented in superscript): kʾs ʾy mrc ʾy xwʾrzm wsʾc fy γ a šyʾk fy zβʾk fy trkʾnk ʾ a r ʾ u γ o l u m o ʾwdʾs hyc kdʾmkʾm wʾc nk u wr ny βʾc pʾ γšyʾkʾwy a ʾʾc i ʾyckʾm cy nʾn lfẓ ʿ i tq wʾ kδ a ʾk. kδʾk i .
The second group of Khwarizmian source material is found in certain manuscripts of the Muqaddimat al-adab, the famed Arabic dictionary of al-Zamakhsharı̄(d. ), himself also a native of Khwarizm, which have interlinear glosses in Khwarizmian. Though it was long thought that the main manuscript was his autograph, it is more probable that it dates from around , nevertheless not long after the author's death. 12 This material provides 10 MacKenzie, The Khwarezmian Element in the Qunyat al-munya, p. .

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Qunya, passages - (MacKenzie, ibid., pp. -, , ). For more about the style of these works see David N. MacKenzie, 'Khwarezmian in the Law Books', in Études Irano-Aryennes offertes à Gilbert Lazard (Paris, ), pp. -. By "Turkish" (bi-t-turkiyyati) is certainly not meant modern (Anatolian) Turkish but rather one of the Turkic languages or varieties that were current in  th -century Khwarizm. 12 Togan published a facsimile of the manuscript, located in Konya, see A. Zeki Velîdî Togan, Documents on Khorezmian Culture, Pt. : Muqaddimat al-Adab, with the translation in Khorezmian / Horezm Kültürü Vesikları, Kısım : Horezmce tercümli Muqaddimat al-Adab (Istanbul, ). An edition was later given by Johannes Benzing, Das chwaresmische Sprachmaterial einer Handschrift der "Muqaddimat al-Adab" von Zamaxšari (Wiesbaden, ), whose understanding of the Khwarizmian words was heavily critiqued by MacKenzie in a series of articles. Another copy of the Muqaddimat al-adab with Khwarizmian glosses was discovered in the s; it was copied, according to its colophon, in / (Nuri Yüce & Johannes Benzing, 'Chwaresmische Wörter und Sätze aus einer choresmtürkischen Handschrift der Muqaddimat al-Adab', Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft , no.  (), pp. -). Henning had begun working on a Khwarizmian dictionary independently of Benzing but only the initial part was ready and was only published posthumously, Walter B. Henning, A Fragment of a Khwarizmian Dictionary, edited by D. N. MacKenzie (London, ). the majority of the known Khwarizmian lexicon with over , glosses, often individual words or brief phrases rather than sentences.
Taken together, all these sources shed light on Khwarizmian as it was written in the  th and  th centuries in the Arabic script. And indeed, the manuscripts' relative consistency in spelling and use of new letter-forms leads one to assume that they in fact are written in a roughly 'standard' Arabo-Khwarizmian script, even if later copyists did not always adhere to it or understand the Khwarizmian. And if, as al-Bırunı̄mentions, the Arab conquest ultimately led to the loss of knowledge of the indigenous script, it would be unsurprising if an Arabo-Khwarizmian one had developed soon after. Just as the Arabic script was extended to represent certain sounds required for Persian, such as ‫ﭺ‬ for [c] and ‫ﭖ‬ for [p], at some point it was also extended to represent Khwarizmian, in particular by the innovation of a new letter: ‫,څ‬ a ḥ a' with three dots on top. 13 This ‫څ‬ of the texts has been transliterated with a c by Iranists, as can be seen in the above extract from the Qunya. This goes back to Henning, who proposed transliterating c for ‫څ‬ on the basis of both modern Pashto where the letter ‫څ‬ represents [ts] and modern Ossetic in which Iranian * čand * -ti-become [ts], a sound change which Henning proposed also for Khwarizmian. 14 Later, Henning proposed that c encodes both this [ts] and a voiced allophone [dz]-also as in Pashto, where ‫څ‬ was used for [ts] and [dz] from the late  th century until the  th century when the separate sign ‫ځ‬ (a ḥ a' with hamza above) was developed for [dz]. 15 Khwarizmian has a [c] ‫ﭺ‬ besides this ‫,څ‬ a distinction made quite consistently in the Qunya/ Risala, though somewhat irregularly in the Muqaddima. 16 The conditions under which both sounds occur have not been sufficiently clarified, however.
Since the Qunya is rather consistently pointed, it is possible to see that [c] ‫ﭺ‬ occurs primarily in Persian loanwords (such as č'h 'pit' from Persian cǎh) but also in inherited Khwarizmian words as a secondary change from earlier consonant clusters (such as ' čn 'to be thirsty' < * tršn-). There are a handful of words written with čwhere the čmay go back to Old Iranian * č(such as cřm 'skin' < * cǎrman-, but this could also be a Persian loan), but the majority of words with older * čare written with the ‫څ‬ (such as cm 'eye' < * cǎšman-or cf'r 13 Khwarizmian also uses a fa' with three dots above to represent [v], seemingly a distinct phoneme from [w]. This letter occurs also in very early New Persian manuscripts as a way of indicating [β] since the waw already indicated [v]. It is thus not uniquely Khwarizmian, but the fact that they are shared is suggestive. . In Pashto the affricates [ts] and [dz] derive from the depalatalisation of older * čand * ǰ, respectively. In Khwarizmian, older * ǰ as well as * ž seem to become [z]. 16 The manuscripts of the Muqaddima, particularly the one with the most extensive Khwarizmian glosses edited by Benzing (Das chwaresmische Sprachmaterial), use not only ‫څ‬ "underpointed" to ‫ﺥ‬ but also ‫ﭺ‬ underpointed to ‫ﺝ‬ for words which seem on the basis of their occurrence elsewhere or their etymology to have ‫.څ‬ This makes the task of establishing the possible difference between [ts] and [c] in native Khwarizmian difficult. Additionally, a few words in the Muqaddima are pointed as ‫څ‬ and ‫ﺝ‬ simultaneously for an unknown reason: 'cwn is pointed as ‫څ‬ and ‫ﺝ‬ (Henning, A Fragment of a Khwarizmian Dictionary, p. ), and 'f c'wy is ‫څ‬ and ‫ﭺ‬ (ibid., p. ). Although the first of these is suggestive of an attempt at indicating a voiced sound, perhaps it is merely decorative as in the same manuscript simultaneous pointing is also found on 'δr (one point under and one over the dal), nm'sry (n and b), and zwz (z and ž).
'four' < cǎθwara-); the conditions under which * čis preserved as [c] have yet to be fully established. Several other sound changes in Khwarizmian have evidently led to c being a frequently occurring letter: these include the palatalisation of * t, 17 the palatalisation of * k, and also seemingly the palatalisation of * d, in the environment of high vowels or the palatal glide [y].
As mentioned, it was words such as βncy which led Henning to suggest that ‫څ‬ not only encoded a voiceless affricate [ts] but also a voiced counterpart [dz] deriving from earlier * d; many if not most of these cases involve the sequence * -nd-, one of the few places where * d did not change into a fricative [ð] as it does elsewhere. We shall return to this discussion. In any case, this ‫څ‬ seems to have been invented specifically for the needs of Khwarizmian and these manuscripts represent the earliest attestation of the letter ‫,څ‬ at least three centuries before it is used for Pashto for the first time. Yet when it was first used for Khwarizmian cannot be said with any certainty. Manuscripts of al-Bırunı's works in which he cites Khwarizmian terms do not employ the ‫,څ‬ perhaps because they were copied by later, non-Khwarizmian-speaking scribes who did not know of the letter-in the Edinburgh manuscript (copied ) of the Chronology, the ultimate source of Sachau's manuscripts, words with c are written with either ‫ﺝ‬ or ‫ﭺ‬ , and in the Beyazıt manuscript, the oldest ( th c.) and best manuscript of the Chronology, such words are written with either no points The palatalisation of t [t] to c [ts] does not seem to have taken place yet in the attested pre-Islamic Khwarizmian texts, or, if it had, the older writing system based on the Aramaic script did not represent the change after it had taken place in the spoken language. Moreover, it is worth pointing out, as MacKenzie already noted, that "there are many examples of differing developments of certain sounds, suggesting either a mixture of dialects or the adoption of loanwords from several neighbouring languages" (David N. MacKenzie, 'Chorasmia III: The Chorasmian Language' in Encyclopedia Iranica (online edition, /), url: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/chorasmiaiii (last accessed  December ). It is a possible scenario that the redactors of the  th -century texts gathered examples from informants from different areas with knowledge of different varieties. ‫)ﺡ(‬ or just one ‫)ﺝ(‬ 18 -or because it had not been invented yet for the language. The earliest Khwarizmian source in Arabic script, the Konya manuscript of the Muqaddimat al-adab, does not appear until perhaps the end of the  th century. But as with most ancient languages which are known today only in written form, it is difficult to know exactly how certain sounds were pronounced, and this ‫څ‬ is no exception. Fortunately, though, there exists a contemporary source potentially able to shed some light on the matter.

Ibn Sına's Remarks on Khwarizmian
Written between his arrival at the Iṣ fahan court of 'Ala' al-Dawla in  and his death in , Ibn Sına's treatise Asbab Ḥ udut̰ al-Ḥ uruf (The Causes of the Genesis of the Consonants) gives a rigorous treatment of Arabic phonetics, detailing the various sounds in the Arabic language and the parts of the mouth involved in producing them. 19 While the treatise draws on ancient traditions, especially Galen, it also contains unique and novel arguments about the physical production of sound, no doubt based on Ibn Sına's medical expertise. Several features of the work, from the order in which the letters are discussed to the linguistic terminology to several of the concepts (such as qal' "sudden separation" and ruṭ uba "moisture"), set it apart from the classical Arabic linguistic traditions. 20 In addition, the treatise has a chapter entitled fı̄l-ḥ uruf al-šabı̄ha bi-hadhihı̄l-ḥ uruf wa-laysat fıl ughat al-'arab "Regarding consonants similar to these [Arabic] consonants but not in the language of the Arabs", 21 in which are discussed both Arabic consonants which are produced incorrectly by non-Arabs, as well as sounds that were not part of Arabic but occurred in other languages with which he was familiar. His method involves comparing these sounds to the Arabic consonants he describes earlier in the treatise. For example, Ibn Sınānotes that other languages have "gǐ̄m-like" consonants, "among them [being] the consonant which is pronounced at the beginning of the noun 'well' in Persian, which is cǎh" (minha1 8 My thanks to François de Blois for the information about the pointing in these manuscripts; de Blois adds (personal communication) that pointing and vocalisation in the Edinburgh manuscript is largely decorative. Henning ('Mitteliranisch', ) suggests that al-Bırunı̄employed an already-existing Arabic orthography for Khwarizmian in his Chronology, but I do not see how this can be proven. l-ḥ arfu lladhı̄yunṭ aqu bihi fı̄awwali smi l-bi'r bi-l-farisiyyati wa-huwa čah). 22 Because of properties such as its place of articulation, Persian [c], Ibn Sınānotes, and correctly from a modern linguistic perspective, that it is similar to the Arabic [g]. He then states that there are other sounds which are not in Arabic or Persian but in other languages, such as a "ṣ ad-like" (šibh al-ṣ ad) consonant and a "sı̄n-like" (šibh al-sı̄n) consonant, for which he neither specifies the language in which they occur nor gives any examples. He then goes on to describe a "zaȳ-like sı̄n that is frequent in the language of the people of Khwarizm" (sı̄nun za'iyyatun takṯ aru fı̄lughati 'ahli khuwarizm). 23 Before coming to a discussion of this sound, it is worth asking whether Ibn Sı̄nāwas referring to that which we now know of as the Khwarizmian language, as opposed to a distinctive local variety of (New) Persian, since he says the "language of the people of Khwarizm" (lughat 'ahl khuwarizm) while the somewhat later sources discussed in the first part of this paper use "Khwarizmian" (khuwarizmı); these latter sources were, of course, written by actual speakers who no doubt knew what to call their own language, even in Arabic. Scholars of the generation just prior to Ibn Sı̄nāwere aware of, or had encountered, a distinct language in the region, though for the most part they did not give it a specific name: the geographer al-Maqdisı̄(d. ) simply mentions that the "language of the people of Khwarizm cannot be understood" (lisan 'ahl khuwarizm lāyufhim) 24 while the noted traveller Ibn Faḍ lan (d. ) was somewhat more judgmental, writing in his travelogue that "the Khwarizmians are the most barbarous of people, both in speech and in custom. Their speech sounds like the cries of starlings (kalamuhum 'ašbaha šay'in bi-ṣ iyaḥ i z-zarazı̄r). There is a village…whose inhabitants are known as Kardaliya, and their speech sounds like the croaking of frogs (kalamuhum 'ašbahu šay'in bi-naqı̄qi ḍ -ḍ afadi')". 25 Ibn Ḥ awqal (d. ca. ), who was in Khwarizm in , was more objective, stating that "[the Khwarizmians'] language is unique to them, no other like it is spoken in Khurasan (wa-lisan 'ahlihāmufrad bi-lugȧtihim wa-laysa bi-khurasan lisan 'alālugȧtihim)". 26 So well before even al-Bı̄runı̄wrote about it, scholars of the time seem to have been aware of a particular and seemingly unique language in the region, and this general knowledge is likely to have been available to Ibn Sı̄na.
More importantly, however, Ibn Sınāspent about a decade, until , living and working in Khwarizm at the court of the Khwarizm-Shahs at Gurganj, where he undoubtedly heard Khwarizmian being spoken and actually overlapped with al-Bırunı, with whom he also corresponded later in life. 27 In fact, like his polymath colleague, Ibn Sınāmay also even have been a speaker of a non-Persian Iranian language before learning and mastering both Persian and Arabic. 28 Given all this, it seems certain that Ibn Sınāis indeed referring to the Khwarizmian language known to us. 22 Sara, A Treatise on Arabic Phonetics, p. . Sara's commentary to this chapter of the work is quite brief and does not attempt to compare Ibn Sına's descriptions with data from the languages he alludes to (Persian and Khwarizmian). 23 Sara, A Treatise on Arabic Phonetics, pp. -, -. Sara seems to be unfamiliar with the Khwarizmian language, calling it the "dialect of Khwarizm, area north east of Tehran" (ibid., p. ). How the sı̄n and zaȳ are to be combined is at first glance difficult to envisage. Not so for the next sound described in the chapter, however, which is a š ı̄n-like zaȳ (zaȳ š ı̄niyya) of the kind, Ibn Sınāsays, heard in Persian when they say žarf 'deep' (zaȳun š ı̄niyyatun tusma'u fıl -lughati l-farisiyyati 'inda qawlihim žarf  [š] from the list, as they, also occurring in Arabic, would not have merited any special comment by Ibn Sına. We can also eliminate [c] since he describes that separately from the sı̄n za'iyya, as mentioned. What then could the sound be? Since Ibn Sınāunfortunately cites no example from the Khwarizmian language, we must interpret his description of the consonants to determine what sound he understands this sı̄n za'iyya to be. First is that the sı̄n za'iyya is based on the construction of the sı̄n, the description of which is rather concise: from Balkh to Bukharāspoke only New Persian. In fact, al-Bırunı̄frequently cites words from "Bukharan" (al-bukhariyya) in his Pharmacology next to Sogdian and several other languages; the examples given suggest that "Bukharan" was very close to, if not a variety of, Sogdian, cf. Henning, 'Mitteliranisch', p. . Al-Maqdisı̄also noted that the language of Sogdiana was similar to that of the rural districts of Bukharā(wa-li-ṣ -ṣ ugḋ lisan 'alāḥ ida yuqaribuha alsinat rasatı̄q bukhara), but his examples of Bukharan speech seem to be simply Persian, cf. Collins, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions, p. . 29 Sara, A Treatise on Arabic Phonetics, pp. -, -.

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This method of describing a sound not occurring in Arabic, or at least not represented in the Arabic script, by citing two Arabic sounds which combine to yield something close to it may derive in part from an earlier work. Ḥ amza al-Iṣ fahanı̄(d. after ), in his al-Tanbı̄h 'alāḥ uduṯ al-taṣ ḥ ı̄f, mentions several Persian consonants, such as the [p] which is "between the fa' and the ba'" (bayna l-fa' wa-l-ba'), see al-Iṣ fahanı, al-Tanbı̄h ʿalāḥ uduṯ al-taṣ ḥ ı̄f, nd edition, edited by Muḥ ammad As'ad Ṭ alas (Beirut, ), pp. -. Notably, his description of a few consonants corresponds to what is known of late Middle Persian or Early New Persian phonology.