In the 10th and 11th centuries, a number of authors who wrote in Arabic were aware of the existence of a language particular to the region of Khwarizm. Abu Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī is the most famous and knowledgeable of these authors, of course, being a native speaker of the Chorasmian language. But travellers and scholars such as Ibn Faḍlān and al-Maqdisi reported on this language, and their judgements on the way it sounded to them, but did not record any examples of the language.
Al-Biruni, or should we say, ī anbīcak
‘Abd al-Karīm al-Sam‘ānī (d. 1166), however, seems to have actually known something of the Chorasmian language. Originating from Merv in today’s northwestern Iran, not all that far from Khwarizm, he may have actually heard the language being spoken. In his biographical dictionary known as the Kitāb al-Ansāb (ed. Hyderabad, 1962, Vol. II, p. 353), he reports:
البيروني بفتح الباء الموحدة وسكون الياء آخر الحروف وضم الراء بعدها الواو وفي آخرها النون هذه النسبة الى خارج خوارزم فان بها من يكون من خارج البلد ولا يكون من نفسها يقال له فلان بيروني ست ويقال بلغتهم انبيژك ست والمشهور بهذه النسبة أبو ريحان المنجم البيروني
“al-Bayrūnī (with fatḥ/kasr of the 'b', sukūn of the 'y', ḍamm of the 'r', followed by 'w' and 'n'): This surname (nisba) refers to the outer parts of Khwarizm, for in that country if someone is from outside the town and not from the town itself they say of him fulān bayrūnī-st (فلان بيروني ست), but in their own language they say anbīcak yitti (read: انبيڅك يت). The person most well-known by this surname is the astronomer Abū Rayḥān al-Bayrūnī.”
The Persian dictionary Burhān-i Qāṭiʿ, compiled by Muḥammad Ḥusayn b. Khalaf al-Tabrīzī in 1062/1651-2 in Ḥaydarābād, mentions the use of two very particular terms in the language of the town of Khivaq in Khwarizm (ed. Muḥammad Muʿīn (Tehran, 1330-5 s./1951-6), Vol. II, 1183, also available here):
سوپ - به ضم اول و سكون ثانى و باى فارسى به زبان خيوق كه يكى از الكاى خوارزم است آب را گويند همچنان كه پكند با باى فارسى و كاف بر وزن سمند نان را و سوپ و پكند آب و نان است
sūp, with ḍamm on the first (letter) and sukūn on the second and a Persian 'b', in the language of Khivaq, which is one of the provinces of Khwarezm, they call “water” so, just as they call “bread” pakand. So sūp o pakand is 'water and bread'.
What better way to start this project than to discuss the name of the language and its (mis)spelling(s)?
Firstly, welcome to Chorasmian Online. This site is meant to provide an online home for everything concerning the Chorasmian language, from primary source materials such as digitized manuscripts, to modern scholarly publications. It will also be home to an upcoming project to complete a dictionary of Chorasmian (first begun by W. B. Henning, later continued by D. N. MacKenzie, and never finished). It is also one of the goals that, since Chorasmian is the least studied of the Middle Iranian languages, making the existing materials available to the public will stimulate interest and research on it, and hopefully also encourage institutions to make their own holdings available to interested scholars and students. This site will be updated regularly, so check back often, and please don’t hesitate to get in touch with suggestions or materials.
Map of the Achaemenid Empire (Chorasmia to upper-right)
The name of the region and the language have been rendered variously in works in European languages, with a bewildering variety of forms available in the literature, such as Chorasmian, Choresmian, Khwarazmian, Khwarezmian, and Khwarizmian (English); chwaresmisch, chvaresmisch, khwarezmisch (German); and Хорезмийский (Russian).
Chorasmian is based on the Greek form Χορασμία, attested in literature such as Herodotus and others. Choresmian seems to likewise be based on the Greek, but with a Persian -e- vowel in the second syllable for no clear reason.
Khwarezmian, though, is closer to a Persian form خوارزم, while Khwarazmian seems to be Persian or Arabic but with the second vowel drawn from the attested Old Persian form (h)uvārazmi-. The Arabic form usually occuring in the extant textual sources is خُوارِزْم khuwārizm, hence the spelling Khwarizmian, though khuwārazm seems to be also be attested or at least normalized in modern editions.
Of all these spellings, Chorasmian or Khwarizmian seem to me the most correct, as both reasonably accurately transcribe the name as it is attested in ancient sources. Yet, Khwarezmian, thanks to the significance of D. N. MacKenzie’s publications, has been the most commonly used even though Persian is much less relevant for the study of the language than Arabic, and all the existing primary sources are in an Arabic textual context. In principle, I rather support use of Khwarizmian, for consistency with the Arabic sources of the language. But, I have chosen to go with Chorasmian here since it is closest to the way most speakers of European languages actually pronounce the word, regardless of spelling. In a way, it is also consistent with Europeanizations of Middle Iranian language names in general, since we write and say Sogdian rather than sughd-ian, Bactrian rather than aria-n, and so on.
The name of the region itself is attested in Avestan sources as acc.sg. xvaīrizəm (e.g. Yašt 10.14, and in Old Persian as nom.sg. (h)uvārazmiš <u-v-a-r-z-mi-i-š> (e.g.XPh, lines 21–22). These two also disagree on the second vowel! (And both may be only approximations of how natives of the region pronounced the placename.) The word itself looks like a compound, with the first part derived from *hwāra- “low” (as was already recognized by MacKenzie (1983, p. 1244). The second part could be *zm-, the zero-grade of *zam- “land”. The compound would have a meaning of “low-lands”—not unreasonable given the low elevation of the marshy regions south of the Aral Sea.
