Fahlavīyāt a designation given especially to the quatrains and by extension to the poetry in general composed in the old dialects of the Pahla/Fahla regions.

According to Ibn Nadeem who quotes Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ in his Al-Fihrist, Fahla consisted of five regions, namely Isfahan, Ray

Ray, Iran

Rey or Ray , also known as Rhages and formerly as Arsacia, is the capital of Rey County, Tehran Province, Iran, and is the oldest existing city in the province....

, Hamadan

Hamadan

-Culture:Hamadan is home to many poets and cultural celebrities. The city is also said to be among the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities.Handicrafts: Hamadan has always been well known for handicrafts like leather, ceramic, and beautiful carpets....

, Māh Nehāvand, and Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...

. Khwarizmi describes it as a region consisting of Ray

Tehran

Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...

, Isfahan, Hamadan

Hamadan

-Culture:Hamadan is home to many poets and cultural celebrities. The city is also said to be among the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities.Handicrafts: Hamadan has always been well known for handicrafts like leather, ceramic, and beautiful carpets....

, Dinavar (Kermanshah), Nehāvand, Mehrajān-qaḏaq, Māsabaḏān, and Qazvin

Qazvin

Qazvin is the largest city and capital of the Province of Qazvin in Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 349,821, in 96,420 families....

. The use of fahla (< Mid. Pers. pahlaw) for designating Media

Medes

The MedesThe Medes...

 goes back to late Arsacid times .

The specimens of fahlavī poems quoted in Persian texts are mostly attributed to the above-mentioned regions. Nevertheless, from the linguistic point of view the Fahla area may have extended to Gilan. Thus fahlaviyat include poems composed in the former Iranian dialects of western, central, and northern Persia.

List of Authors

The following are some authors whose works are recognized in the general genre of Fahlaviyat:

• Awhadi Maraghai
• Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani
• Baba Taher
  Baba Taher
  Baba Tahir, was an 11th century poet in Persian literature and mystic.-Biography:Baba Tahir is known as one of the most revered and respectable early poets in Iranian literature. Most of his life is clouded in mystery. He was born and lived in Hamadan, the capital city of the Hamedan Province in...
  
  
• Safi-ad-din Ardabili
• Mama 'Esmat Tabrizi
• Maghrebi Tabrizi
• Homam Tabrizi
• Bondar Razi

External links

Fahlaviyat in Encyclopedia Iranica by Dr. Ahmad Taffazoli, http://www.iranica.com/articles/fahlaviyat

See also

• Awhadi Maraghai
• Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani
• Baba Taher
  Baba Taher
  Baba Tahir, was an 11th century poet in Persian literature and mystic.-Biography:Baba Tahir is known as one of the most revered and respectable early poets in Iranian literature. Most of his life is clouded in mystery. He was born and lived in Hamadan, the capital city of the Hamedan Province in...
  
  
• Languages of Iran
  Languages of Iran
  Different publications have reported different statistics for the languages of Iran; There have been some limited census taken in Iran in 2001, 1991, 1986 and 1949-1954.The following are the languages with the greatest number of speakers :...
  
  
• Middle Persian
  Middle Persian
  Middle Persian , indigenously known as "Pârsig" sometimes referred to as Pahlavi or Pehlevi, is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions as well. Middle Persian is classified as a...
  
  
• Parthian language
  Parthian language
  The Parthian language, also known as Arsacid Pahlavi and Pahlavanik, is a now-extinct ancient Northwestern Iranian language spoken in Parthia, a region of northeastern ancient Persia during the rule of the Parthian empire....
  
  
• Iranian languages
  Iranian languages
  The Iranian languages form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages which in turn is a subgroup of Indo-European language family. They have been and are spoken by Iranian peoples....
  
  
• Talysh language
  Talysh language
  The Talyshi language is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken in the northern regions of the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and the southern regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Historically, the language and its people can be traced through the middle Iranian period back to the ancient...
  
  
• Tat language
  Tat language
  The Tat language or Tat/Tati Persian or Tati is a Southwestern Iranian language and a variety of Persian spoken by the Tats in Azerbaijan and Russia. According to the Ethnologue, it's spoken by 18,000 people in Azerbaijan, 8000 in Iran, and 2300 in Russia. Its written form is related to Middle...
  
  
• Kurdish language
  Kurdish language
  Kurdish is a dialect continuum spoken by the Kurds in western Asia. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages....
  
  
• Persian language
  Persian language
  Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
  
  
• Gilaki language
  Gilaki language
  The Gilaki language is a Caspian language, and a member of the northwestern Iranian language branch, spoken in Iran's Gīlān Province.The language is divided into three dialects: Western Gilaki, Eastern Gilaki, and Galeshi . Furthermore, the Gilaki language is closely related to Mazanderani, and the...
  
  
• Old Azari language