Judeo-Persian

What is Judeo-Persian?

"Judeo-Persian" properly denotes the literary Jewish form of New Persian; the spoken varieties were local dialects with Jewish traits (JLP/Shapira). The earliest surviving evidence of New Persian in any form is written in Hebrew letters: an 8th-century merchant’s letter from Dandan Uiliq on the Silk Road. The earliest known Judeo-Persian Pentateuch (Torat Mosheh) is dated 1319, and 11th-century Afghan Genizah documents — such as a woman’s letter from Nāzuk bat Yosef — show a living Jewish Persian literary culture. Judeo-Persian literature flourished in 14th–17th-century Iran (Shahin Shirazi’s biblical epics, the poet Imrani, illuminated Fath Nama manuscripts) and 17th–19th-century Bukhara, with a late revival in Jerusalem. Written in Hebrew characters with Hebrew-Aramaic loans (fewer than Yiddish), it preserves archaic Iranian features lost in standard New Persian — making it crucial evidence for historians of Persian. Related Jewish Iranian languages (Judeo-Shirazi, Judeo-Yazdi, Judeo-Kashani) are endangered as Iranian Jews shifted to standard Persian in the 20th century (Borjian 2014 via JLP). Today its speakers cluster in Israel, Los Angeles, and small communities in Iran. A language, not a dialect of Hebrew: Judeo-Persian is an Iranian (Indo-European) language written in Hebrew script — its grammar and lexicon are Persian, not Hebrew.