On the lexical evidence of the concept of “leader” in Middle Persian and Arabic languages

Abstract

In New Persian (hereafter NP) there are more than two dozen Arabic borrowings, attested in different dictionaries and partly still using today for the concept of "leader" [8], while most of the words for the same concept in Middle Persian (hereafter MP) are of Iranian origin. The present article introduces and examines the lexemes attested in Middle Persian and Arabic with the meaning "leader, leader, commander". The choice of the Middle Persian language is due to the task of showing the features of the public perception of the concept "leader" and its expressions at the linguistic extent in Sassanid Iran, still free from strong Arab influence. On the other hand, the choice of Arabic is due to the fact that it shows the enormous influence that the Arab world had already in the post-Sassanid period on the Iranians' perception of the concept of "leader", and, consequently, the Arabic language itself, in the level of linguistic thought, in the face of Arabic borrowings to denote the concept of "leader" in NP. The Arabic loanwords in NP, used for the concept of "leader", are presented in the authors' previous paper [8], because of which the present examination is limited in the presentation of the denotants of the concept of "leader" only in Sasanian Middle Persian and Arabic.