Middle Persian

This article should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{lang}}, {{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and {{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used - notably pal for Pahlavi. See why. (October 2021)

Middle Persian
𐭯𐭠𐭫𐭮𐭩𐭪 (Pārsīk or Pārsīg)
Region	Sasanian Empire (224–651)
Ethnicity	Persians
Era	Evolved into Early New Persian by the 9th century; thereafter used only by Zoroastrian priests for exegesis and religious instruction
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Southwestern Middle Persian
Early form	Old Persian
Writing system	Pahlavi scripts, Manichaean script, Avestan alphabet, Pazend
Language codes
ISO 639-2	pal
ISO 639-3	Either: pal – Zoroastrian Middle Persian ("Pahlavi") xmn – Manichaean Middle Persian (Manichaean script)
Glottolog	pahl1241
Linguasphere	58-AAC-ca

This article contains Persian text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.

Middle Persian, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg (Inscriptional Pahlavi script: 𐭯𐭠𐭫𐭮𐭩𐭪, Manichaean script: 𐫛𐫀𐫡𐫘𐫏𐫐‎, Avestan script: 𐬞𐬀𐬭𐬯𐬍𐬐) in its later form,^[1][2] is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Persian continued to function as a prestige language.^[3] It descended from Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid Empire and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian, the official language of Iran (also known as Persia), Afghanistan (Dari) and Tajikistan (Tajik).