Kaghaz
Kaghaz (Persian: کاغذ) is the Persian word for paper. It was borrowed and adapted into many other languages.[1]
History
The Persian word kaghaz is a borrowing from Sogdian kʾɣδʾ, itself in turn possibly borrowed from Chinese (紙).[1] The Persian word was loaned into numerous other languages, including Arabic (كاغد)[a], Bengali (কাগজ), Georgian (ქაღალდი), Kurdish, Marathi (कागद), Nepali, Telugu, and the various Turkic languages.[1] Through the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans the Persian kaghaz entered the languages of the region through Ottoman Turkish (كاغد), including Serbian, where it generated the word for "documentation" (ćage).[1]
The increased access to paper had spread from China to Samarqand in Transoxania and then Khorasan by the mid-8th century.[1] By 981, paper had spread to Armenian and Georgian monasteries in the Caucasus.[1] It spread to India by the 13th century.[1]
The modern historian Nile Green explains that the increased access to paper had a role in the expansion of Persian into bureaucratic and in turn literary activities, that is, the domain of written Persian ("Persographia") in large parts of Eurasia.[2]
See also
- History of paper
- Persianate society
- Greater Iran
- Unruled Paper (film), English name of the Persian film Kāghaz-e bi Khatt
Notes
- ^ Nile Green adds that the Persian word was loaned into Arabic at an early stage, a development which shaped the spelling of the Persian word itself.[1]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Green, Nile (2019). "Introduction: The Frontiers of the Persianate World (ca. 800–1900)". In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0520972100.
- ^ Green, Nile (2019). "Introduction: The Frontiers of the Persianate World (ca. 800–1900)". In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. pp. 4, 22. ISBN 978-0520972100.
Further reading
- Floor, Willem; Desvergnes, Amélie Couvrat (2022). History of Paper in Iran, 1501–1925. Mage Publishers. pp. 1–276. ISBN 978-1949445428.
External links
