A Discussion on the Dialectology in the First PeriodFarsi-Hebrew Texts: The Existence of Eastern Words in Some Western-south Texts

There are words in some Farsi-Hebrew texts of the first period, which cannot be observed in the texts belonging to Iran’s west and western south. The main research question here is to what part of Iran these words belong. Through matching these words with texts written in different areas in Iran, the author concluded that these words can be observed only in the eastern areas and in Transoxiana, specifically in Heravi, Transoxiana and Sistani dialects, and their use in Farsi-Hebrew texts in the western south areas is a point, which has not been researched yet. Another question raises here: “Why are there words in the texts written in the western south of Iran, which belong to the east and eastern north?” Given the dearth of historical evidence, this question cannot be answered definitely. However, some reasons can be assumed as to why it occurred. By the existence of these words in these areas, it can be concluded that Hebrew societies in different parts of Iran including those in the west and western south had established communication with Hebrew societies in the east and eastern north. Such communication results is the shared usage of the same words in these two areas, though it cannot be expressed with complete certainty that whether these words had been prevalent among the Hebrew of western south or they have been just used as loan words. To answer these two questions, the present paper first investigates Hebrew dialects in Iran’s past and present texts; then, shared words existing in the east and eastern north of Iran, which are used in Farsi-Hebrew texts, are investigated.