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Judeo-Hamadani: The Language of Jews in Hamadan and Its Origins

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Saloumeh Gholami
Saloumeh Gholami*
Affiliation:
Goethe University, Frankfurt
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Abstract

The study of the language of religious minorities in Iran is particularly important for understanding the historical development and typology of Iranian languages. Historical and linguistic evidence substantiates the idea that Zoroastrians and Jews in cities in central and western Iran preserved their former vernacular language, whereas the majority of the population replaced it with Persian in the New Iranian period. This paper focuses on the language of Jews in Hamadan and has two main objectives: first, it examines numerous distinctive features of Judeo-Hamadani; second, it reviews and updates recent research to clarify the language origins, using data from new materials recorded during fieldwork in Hamadan from October 2018 to August 2019, and in Yazd in 2017.

Keywords

Judeo-IranianJudeo-HamadaniDialectologyTypologyHistorical DevelopmentFahlaviyat of Hamadan
Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 5-6 , December 2021 , pp. 769 - 805
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Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2021

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Footnotes

This work was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation under Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship for experienced researchers (Grant ID: DEU 1201300 FLF-E).

I am grateful to Tehran’s Jewish Association (Anǰoman-e Kalimiyān-e Tehrān) for their kind support of my fieldwork. The director of the association, Dr. Loghman Neoharai, issued permission for my fieldwork and documentation project. The great Haham, Dr. Younes Hamami Lalehzar, provided me with valuable information about the number of speakers of the language in Hamadan, Yazd and Kerman and introduced me to the community. I also would like to express my gratitude to these native speakers, Mr. Shalom Aruniyan (for Judeo-Yazdi), Mr. Nejat Rasad and Bijan Asef (for Judeo-Hamadani) and Mr. Kohan (for Judeo-Isfahani), who with unfailing patience so willingly shared their knowledge with me.

Finally, I thank the anonymous reviewers and the Iranian Studies editors for their careful reading of this manuscript and their insightful comments and suggestions.

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