The Turkish Dialect of the Khalaj

Abstract

In the cold December of 1906 I was returning from Borūjerd to Tehran. At every village on the road I inquired whether there existed any local curiosities. At Kondūrūd I was told that the inhabitants belonged to the Turkish Khalaj tribe and spoke Khalajī. I had only a couple of hours to jot down a few sentences in the dialect which struck me by its unusual features. It was too late to call back my men who, by that time, had gone ahead, and I had to content myself with the hope that some Khalaj might turn up in the capital. Indeed I had an inhabitant of “Khalajestān” brought to me from the bazaar only to discover that he spoke an Iranian dialect. I revisited Solṭanābād in 1917 in circumstances of war. At my request, the governor's men got hold of two Khalaj villagers, but the latter were so frightened that the official summons might mean some trouble in store for them that they hardly answered my questions and most pathetically asked me to let them go in peace.