Nationalism, Pure-Writing and the Formation of the Academy of Persian Language in the First Pahlavi Era

Academies of language are products of the growth and development of nationalistic thoughts, the formation of modern government in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the dominance of the “national language” issue. But in Iran the Academy of Persian Language, as the academy of the national language of Iran, was not just the product of choosing and introducing Persian as the national language of Iran. It came into existence as a result of the prevalence of excessive “pure” -writing, which was always a serious manifestation of archaic nationalism in the field of language and literature. The history of pure-writing is traced back to the era of the Mughals of India and Safavids, and production of distorted books such as “Dasatir” written by Zoroastrians of India. Furthermore, the history of forming a council for creating words and preventing disorder in the dictation of words dates back to the era of Naser-al-Din Shah Qajar. In the late Qajar Era and during the Constitutional Era this process became one of the serious concerns of the archaist intelligentsia, and its heritage was passed on to the first Pahlavi era. During Reza Shah’s reign, and in the cultural atmosphere of that era – in which nationalism was dominant over all reformations and sociocultural activities – pure-writing, which involves the avoidance of foreign words, especially Arabic and Turkish words, received serious official endorsement. The chaos which followed led to the formation of a scientific society, and eventually to the Academy of Persian Language, charged with selecting and coining Persian words in a precise way. In this paper the progress of these developments is studied and analysed, based on resources of the first Pahlavi era.