| Shirvani Arabic | |
|---|---|
| عربية شروانية | |
| Native to | Azerbaijan, Dagestan |
| Region | Caucasus |
| Extinct | Second half of the 19th century[citation needed] |
Afro-Asiatic
| |
| Arabic | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | None |
Shirvani Arabic (Arabic:عربية شروانية,romanized: ʿArabiyyah Shirwānīyya) is avariety ofArabic that was once spoken in what is now central and northeasternAzerbaijan (historically known asShirvan) and southernDagestan.
Arabic had been spoken in the region since theMuslim conquest of theSouth Caucasus at the beginning of the eighth century. It was brought there by Arab settlers consisting mostly of military staff, merchants and craftsmen fromIraq andSyria, and was used as an official language. It experienced decline after the weakening of theCaliphate in the thirteenth century and was gradually replaced byPersian/Tat andAzerbaijani. Groups of Arabs (mostly fromYemen) continued to immigrate to southern Dagestan influencing the culture and literary traditions of the local population who had already becomeMuslim by way of conversion.[1]
The latest documentation of the existence of Shirvani Arabic is attributed to the Azerbaijani historianAbbasgulu Bakikhanov who mentioned in his 1840 historical workGolestan-i Iram that "to this day a group of Shirvan Arabs speaks an altered version of Arabic." Arabic continued to be spoken in Dagestan until the 1920s mostly by upper-class feudals as a second or third language, as well as a language of literature, politics and written communication.[2]
North Caucasian resentment of theRussians for robbing them of their national history is doubled for the Daghestanis by the forced loss of theirArabic patrimony. In the nineteenth century, it was considered that the bestliterary Arabic was spoken in the mountains ofDaghestan. DaghestaniArabist scholars were famous, attracting students from the whole Muslim world. Thelingua franca in Daghestan before theRevolution wasArabic. Then, in the 1920s and 1930s, the main thrust of theanti-religious campaign, was to eradicate Arabic, a religious language, and replace it with Russian. The finest flower of Arabist scholarship disappeared inStalin'spurges.
— Bryan, p. 210[3]
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