Daylami language

Not to be confused with Deylami Gilaki, a dialect of the Gilaki language.

Daylami, also known as Daylamite, Deilami, Dailamite, or Deylami (Persian: دیلمی, from the name of the Daylam region), is an extinct language that was one of the northwestern branch of the Iranian languages. It was spoken in northern Iran, specifically in the mountainous area in Gīlān.

Daylami
Daylamite, Deylami, Dailamite, Deilami
ديلمی
Native to	Iran
Region	South Caspian Sea, Daylam
Ethnicity	Daylamites
Era	900–1300AD[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Caspian Daylami
Writing system	Persian alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	None

Parviz Natel Khanlari listed this language as one of Iranian dialects spoken between the 9th and 13th centuries. Istakhri, a medieval Iranian geographer, has written about this language, as did Al-Muqaddasi, a medieval Arab geographer, who wrote "they have an obscure language and they use the phoneme khe /x/ a lot."^[1] Abū Esḥāq Ṣābī had a similar report on people in the Deylam highlands who spoke a distinct language.^[2]

According to Wilfered Madelung, in the early Islamic period the language of the Deylamites was a northwestern Iranian language. One of the characteristics of this language was an added ī sound between consonants and ā (Lāhījān=Līāhījān, Amīrkā=Amīrkīā).^[3]

Notes

1. Mehdi Marashi, Mohammad Ali Jazayery, Persian studies in North America: studies in honor of Mohammad Ali Jazayery, Ibex Publishers, Inc., 1994, ISBN 0-936347-35-X, 9780936347356, p. 269.
2. Wilferd Madelung. Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābī on the Alids of Tabaristān and Gīlān. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Jan., 1967), pp. 17-57, University of Chicago Press.
3. Wilferd Maelung, Deylamites Encyclopedia Iranica Archived 2009-05-31 at the Wayback Machine.