The Han Kitabulary: The Decline Of Persian Dynasty

Persian flourished as a language of prestige and elitism throughout Europe and Asia for centuries, but its importance began to diminish around the eighteenth century. In 1722, the fall of the Safavid Empire occurred and under the rule of Sultan Husayn, the Persian state suffered long term economic deterioration. It wasn’t until Nadir Shah of the Afsharid dynasty took power that political unity was restored, and for the first last time Persia’s borders were extended. However soon after this period, began the state’s decline, which led to the contraction of Persian around the Middle East and Asia. The decline of Persian can be attributed to factors such as imperial collapse, the rise of empires and nationalism throughout Europe and Asia, and …show more content…
In the Ming period, Persian began to disappear due to the introduction of using Chinese to create an Islamic syllabus called the Han Kitab. Han Kitab synthesized Islam and Confucianism, believing that Islam could be understood through the scope of Confucianism. Even though Arabic was widely used, the Chinese Muslims still used many Persian words in their vocabulary. The rise of the Han Kitab Islamic syllabus in Chinese and the revival of Arabic studies in China in the late 18th century helped accelerate the diminishing of Persian being used in …show more content…
Nile Green notes that while Iran didn’t reach out, other states did, such as the Ottoman Empire. He states “In 1904, for example, the Ottoman government dispatched books to fill a Muslim school library in Beijing and also made arrangements to send teachers, leading in 1907 to the dispatch from Istanbul to teach, via Arabic, at the Ottoman-supported Dar al-‘Ulum-e Hamidiyeh in the Chinese capital”. Due to new communication technologies, the use of Arabic saw a rise in China, which gradually replaced