For some 200 years, the English and Persianate worlds were in intimate contact. For a long time Englishmen learned Persian; from its first factory at Masulipatnam in 1611, the East India Company used Persian in administration and day to day business. Thus the first English works focused on philological, administrative and diplomatic concerns in India (many authors also wrote on Arabic and Hindustani), but from the 1820s English gradually replaced Persian and interactions with Iran became more important. The Iranian revolution largely cut our worlds apart, with precious few Americans picking up Persian during their Afghan adventure. Today, the number of English speaking Persians is far greater than the few hundred thousand Englishmen in India during the height of colonialism.

William Jones' Grammar - 1771

Sir William Jones (1746-94), a puisne judge at India’s highest court, launched Indo-European studies (alas, van Boxhorn, Çelebi, Coeurdoux and Lomonosov’s observations did not have such lasting impact, while Bopp, Young, Malte-Brun etc. referred to Jones'.)

In his introduction, he advertises emphatically for the study of Persian:

Thus, while the excellent writings of Greece and Rome are studied by every man of a liberal education, and diffuse a general refinement through our part of the world, the works of the Persians, a nation equally distinguished in ancient history, are either wholly unknown to us, or considered as entirely destitute of taste and invention.

Interestingly, the libraries of his time had a number of Persian manuscripts:

strange … that the fine productions of a celebrated nation should remain in manuscript upon the shelves of our public libraries, without a single admirer who might open their treasures to his countrymen, and display their beauties to the light … admired, like the characters on a Chinese screen, more for their gay colours than for their meaning.

He goes into detail about the reasons for English engagement with Persian:

dangerous to employ the natives as interpreters, upon whose fidelity they could not depend; and it was at last discovered, that they must apply themselves to the study of the Persian language

languages of Asia will now, perhaps, be studied with uncommon ardour; they are known to be useful, and will soon be found instructive and entertaining

He gives advice on learning the language with a “munshi” (in EIC usage, scribe or language tutor, but also administrator and scholar) and reading texts with such a guide to explain troublesome phrases and native allusions.

Pedagogy:

endeavoured to lay down the clearest and most accurate rules, which I have illustrated by select examples from the most elegant writers

whoever will study the Persia language according to my plan, will in less than a year be able to translate and to answer any letter from an Indian prince, and to converse with the natives of India, not only with fluency, but with elegance.

The editors vowelled all words in my (9th) edition, a sadly not universal habit.

Like most following works, the second half comprises with an “Abstract of the Arabick Grammar”:

Since one of the nouns in a compound word is often borrowed from the Arabick, a man who wishes to read the Persian books with satisfaction, ought to have a competent knowledge of both languages.

??? so he talks about word building at length, here adjectives formed by combining verbs with nouns (of which we get 3 pages):

The editor of my (9th) edition (from 1828) modified the appendix on Persian prosody:

The author himself cared greatly for about poetry as the core of a nation’s unique genius, as you can see in his essays and published translations from many languages.

The editor Samuel Lee considers the Urdu شرح قصیدةء جوهر التّركيب by Shiva Ram and Hayder Ali the best Eastern production on Persian Grammar.

Jones planed a second volume of Persian texts for learners, which never appeared. Rousseau and Moises both produced such companions. Of his 1801 Flowers of Persian Literature, Rousseau writes:

Prefaces, in general, are supposed by the greater part of readers to consist of trifling passages, or an useless display of eloquence, and are therefore not considered as of sufficient importance to deserve perusal : but this is an egregious mistake; for in the prefatory discourse, the author feels it a duty to incumbent upon himself, to acquaint the world with the nature of his work, the reasons which induced him to undertake it, and his motives for laying it before the public.

…a want of proper books for the instruction of his pupils. This is an obstacle which every gentleman hitherto engaged as a Persian master, has loudly complained of, but not one of them has attempted to obviate it.

Most interestingly, the final third provides a diachronic view of Persian:

Rev. Edward Moises' 1792 Persian Interpreter likewise defers to Jones, just “intended to remove some impediments” by providing texts and vocabulary. His redundantly florid and flowery preface extols the unknown advantages of Persian on literary (not professional grounds):

With what imagery he decries the wont of instructional material:

He does not dot texts, rather elides their need: As it’s “difficult to distinguish with precision the sound of one short vowel from another”, substitute “the Italic e” and “the most perplexing part of the Asiatic languages will be rendered extremely simple”! This is actually fantastic advice: Instead of focusing on what you can’t (efficiently) know, focus on what you can know and learn it. Uncertainty “will no longer affright [you] with an imaginary difficulty” and you can fill in the gaps later. in programming terms: Assume your environment and invariants are the ones which let you code right now.

Along these lines, Moises recommends many learning strategies to enable progress by ignoring difficult or tedious parts until later. In his day, this was particularly useful as the skeleton of Greco-Latin grammar blinded many students. He sometimes uses an interlinear approach:

Meerza Mohammad Ibraheem’s Grammar - 1841

• An Iranian, finding himself in England in 1841,
• dedicated to the Directors of the East-India Company

I, a native of Persia, undertake to communicate the elements of Persian Grammar to English Students, in an English dress.

No native of any Eastern country has hitherto attempted to exhibit the structure, genius, and idiomatic phraseology of his own language, through the medium of any European dialect.

…after my arrival in England I had the honour of an appointment at the East-India College. At that time I was an entire stranger to the English tongue. … [to learn English] I had recourse to the Elementary Works composed by the English Orientalists, for the express purpose of teaching Persian to English Students; in order that, by reversing the process, I might become a learner of English

The only extant Persian Grammars are those compiled by European Authors; few of whom have ever visited the people whose language they undertake to teach

Until this, all works were made by scholars or Englishmen having served in India, learning from Indian masters (using Afghan Persian.)

I seek to teach the Persian of Persians; –not the Persian only of books. …by those classes of native Persians who speak the language in its greatest purity.

The other feels great need to repeat that he does not reject the European Persianists before him:

must not however be imagined, that this statement is offered with the slightest intention to underrate the labours, or disparage the acquirements, of the Orientalists who have preceded me. if I should be found in any degree to have advanced beyond them, it will, in part, be owing to the instruction I have derived both from their merits and their failures I have not sought to supersede, but to assist, the philological labours of others. Their works are not rendered less useful by mine

On pedagogy:

I have endeavoured to lay down a more correct and simple system of Verbs and their Conjugations than is adopted in the works of my European predecessors

His dialogues serve as examples of syntax, for close study, they are not instructional textbook dialogues to learn the language from.

[eight 10+ page dialogues with] an English Gentleman, who has acquired a competent knowledge of the language of Persia, and is traveling in that country for improvement; and a native Persian friend, who has also resided long enough in England to be able to converse with facility in English. The former occasionally makes mistakes, which the latter corrects;–and an opportunity is thus afforded of exemplifying some of the Rules

Vowel or Diacritical Points have been used throughout

Vocabulary is simplify given as vowelled Persian with English:

Many small dialogues to illustrate grammatical points:

Duncan Forbes (1798-1868)

After 4 years in India, his weak constitution led him to become a professor, writing many language manuals for future East Indian civil servants.

A rather short grammar “confined entirely to its legitimate purpose – the instructing of beginners”:

the student will here find all the information of any consequence contained in larger volumes

those gallant bands of British Youth, who annually resort to India, destined to become, in their turn, the guardians of our Eastern Empire, an acquaintance with Persian is of the utmost importance. In the first place, it is the Court language of the Musulman Princes, and that of the higher classes generally

Curiously:

To the traveller in the East, a knowledge of it is as essential as that of the French used to be in Europe.

Had English already gained preeminence?

Bleeck’s Concise Grammar 1857

Bleeck (1829-77) wrote on Turkish, Persian and Avestan. Directionally a textbook, he states this work should “contain a greater variety of information” “since all other Grammars are deficient, either in Reading Lessons, or Dialogues, or both”:

Mirza Ibrahím’s are wholly unsuited to the beginner, and of very little use to the more advanced student, their avowed object being to teach not so much conversation as syntax.

Rather uniquely, Bleck concretely justifies (with uncomfortable comparisons) why Persian literature should interest:

the student will no doubt greatly prefer a few tangible names to any vague declarations of the ‘richness of Persian literature,’ ‘its extensive and hitherto undeveloped resources,’ etc.

Of pedagogy, it presents a “New Plan for Facilitating the Study of Languages”. Permit me a digression into his discussion of existing pedagogical methods. The dictionary process:

there are few words (especially in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, or Sanskrit) which have not at least three different significations; and it must be a very simple sentence of which you can determine the meaning without carrying four words in your head at once. Suppose, then, that the first meaning of each word happens to make no sense, as is frequently the case; you must not only burden your memory with twelve different meanings (for of course you cannot tell which of them may be wanted), but, since the four words may combine with one another in any possible manner, you will have no less than eighty-one distinct combinations… So much for the dictionary process.

I interrupt the quote for context: In the 1820s, James Hamilton began to teach classical languages through interlinear translation, which appear in early Hugos, Berlitzes, Trübners Simplified Grammars. (I personally prefer the dual text approach (like Assimil or Rousseau above).)

The Hamiltonian … posses an advantage … of speed; but are liable to the grave charge of inaccuracy … leave the student in ignorance of gender, declension, and conjugation … the Latin verb fero means properly ‘to bear or carry,’ but it very often occurs in the sense of ‘to relate’ (besides other meanings):– now, if the learner finds sometimes one meaning and sometimes the other, and sometimes a third or fourth, he will be wholly unable to say which is the primary and which the secondary meaning of the word, and must have recourse to a dictionary after all.

His own system? He states Falck Lebahn’s system approaches his Perhaps anti-climatic:

Let the text of the foreign language be printed on one page, and on the opposite page let there be a dictionary of all the words contained in the text; the plan of the dictionary to be this:– First, the root meaning of each word to be given, and next the meaning which is required to make sense in the particular passage where the word occurs. If this be properly done, you have really and truly a ‘Magic Dictionary;’ … the vocabulary may be arranged … [as required e.g. in a Latin line’s order]

Grammatical notes may also be added … sparingly … to call the attention of the pupil to some peculiarity of construction, than to encumber him with a load of rules.

Simple, but fair. My favorite textbooks, the 2nd generation Colloquials, simply put the lesson’s vocabulary at the end of a 1-2 page text, followed by the lesson’s new grammar. (I consider this approach superior to his, whose the English translation is rather disappointing (see the examples below).)

to reap the full advantages of my system, it would be desirable that the complete works of several authors … should be printed with the interleaved dictionary

To my knowledge, the closest work in extent (though wanting to student friendliness and formatting) is Newmark, Prifti & Hubbard’s Readings in Albanian.

A forward-thinker, he proposes statistically constructed chrestomathies:

advisable to point out certain selections which might be made in the different languages, calculated to furnish the student with an extensive supply of words; and to do this we must examine a little into what may be termed the Statistics of language. As a general rule, when you thoroughly acquainted with ten thousand words of a language, you can read any book in it with only occasional reference to a dictionary.

the entire writings of Virgil only contain about seven thousand different words, and those of Horace a similar number; though, owing to the great diversity between their respective subjects, Horace has about one thousand words which are not met with in Virgin, and vice versa. Thus, with eight thousand words…

In those days, many culture’s cannons stood strong:

As to the modern languages of Europe, the standard writers in each are so well known that it would be superfluous to mention their names; and any one desirous of compiling a Chrestomathy, whether in German, Italian, or Spanish, will be at no loss how to make a useful selection

Orientalists map, perhaps, be divided in their opinions as to the precise nature of the selections which it would be best to make in the respective languages, but in lieu of better:

While this “Concise Grammar” itself applies this method (at less length) to Persian, Bleeck furnished 14 examples:

• Armenian

  
• Georgian

  This was the first Georgian printed in England:

  

• Latin

  
• Persian

  
• Russian

  
• Swedish

  

A most interesting remark:

…works as are more particularly deserving the attention of the learner; noting at the same time whether they exist in print, or only in MS.

Perhaps the understanding was any student would be at one of the great universities of Europe with enough manuscripts handy, or in India with a munshi at hand.

Palmer’s Dictionary and Grammars 1882

Orphaned son of a schoolmaster, Palmer (1840-82) picked up Romani as a child. Later a London clerk, he learned French and Italian, by rubbing elbows with the foreigners he could find. After befriending Cambridge Hindustani professor Abdallah in 1860, he dove into orientalist studies (and later law), with Middle Eastern adventures and books interspersed.

Furthering the all too common typical conceit of finishing a Persian grammar with a treatment of Arabic’s, his 1882 Grammar of Hindustani, Persian and Arabic, by prepending the work with Hindustandi!

concise but practical introduction to the various languages, and at the same time to furnish students of comparative philology with a clear and comprehensive view of their structure

The attempt to adapt the somewhat cumbrous grammatical system of the Greek and Latin to every other tongue has introduced a great deal of unnecessary difficulty into the study of languages.

Where this proves impossible the difficulty is met by lists of exceptions and irregular forms, thus burdening the pupil’s mind with a mass of details of which he can make no practical use.

Palmer was able to present a rather ground-breaking work:

[instead] the structure of each language is carefully examined, and the principles which underlie it are carefully explained; while apparent discrepancies and so-called irregularities are shown to be only natural euphonie and other changes. All technical terms are excluded unless their meaning and application is self-evident

His audience, of course:

specially adapted for the requirements of Candidates for the Indian Civil Service and for the various Military and Civil Examinations in India.

Later that year, raiders robbed and killed Palmer and 2 companions, on mission to Egypt (described below), so his friend le Strange took over his final work Concise Dictionary (prepending Palmer’s Persian grammar).

1880, Professor Palmer had shown me many bundles of these slips, and fortunately then explained to me the method he intended to pursue

The basis of the work was the First Part, the Persian-English, a copy of which had been cut up, and each paragraph pasted on a separate slip in order that the English renderings might be arranged alphabetically.

as in Persian the number of simple verbs is extremely limited, and further, the majority of the Persian compound verbs would only occur in the reversed Dictionary, under the English noun or participle, not under the more appropriate infinitive: e.g. ‘To advise’ would be represented by ‘Advice,’ because the Persians, to express the verb, make use of the phrase ‘To give advice.’ … he intended merely to indicate in its proper place the auxiliary verb to be used with the noun or participle

A certain Sorabshaw Byramji Doctor reprinted Palmer’s dictionary under his name (with a fake date?), leaving le Strange “in vindication of the literary honour of [his] friend”:

This etching of the murders' execution says this of Palmer’s last days:

to detach the Arab tribes from the side of Arabi Pasha, the nationalist leader, and to use his influence, backed by English gold, with the sheikhs of the Bedouin, to secure the immunity of the Suez Canal from Arab attack … On 8 August he set out to meet the leading sheikhs to arrange the final terms of their allegiance. …. He took a naval officer, Flag-Lieutenant Harold Charrington, as a guarantee of his official status. Captain William John Gill RE, the traveller, also accompanied him, with the intention of turning aside and cutting the telegraph wire which crossed the desert and connected Cairo with Constantinople. … They were made prisoners and their baggage was plundered. There was at the time an order out from Cairo for Palmer’s arrest, dead or alive; but it is probable that the original motive of the attack was robbery. On the following morning, 11 August, the prisoners were driven about a mile to the Wadi Sudr, between al-‘Arish and Nakhl, and shot, Palmer being the first to die.

As an aside, his Simplified Grammar was part of Trübner’s series of grammars, which originally sought to heroically cover full language branches or Sprachbünde in single volumes. From this time publishers begin to release series of related books, often treating many languages by the same method

This volume will be followed by Grammars of the Keltic and Slavonic languages and dialects … The Keltic section will contain Welsch, Gaelic, Irish, and Breton; the Slavonic section will comprise Russian, Polish, Bohemian, Bulgarian; and the Scandinavian section Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian

Alas, to the best of my knowledge, none were ever completed. Instead of a treatment of the “Slavonic” languages, Morfill e.g. wrote a grammar of only Polish in 1884, then in 1887 of only Serbian (itself an interesting window into a language still being standardized), both short and their first treatments in English. Otté’s Swedish and Danish volumes were likewise published separately. Torceanu’s 1883 Roumanian and Harvey’s 1890 Spanish grammar exhibit further fragmentation.

The student of comparative philology will thus be able to form a correct idea of the structure of the language, and it may serve as a rudimentary handbook to any one who is anxious to read the works of such authors as Mickiewicz and Krasinski in the original.

Do note their “Hamiltonian” interlinear approach:

Platts' 1894 Grammar

Composed from 10 years of lecture material, the author (1830-1904), a professor at Oxford, uses the opposite of Forbes' compact, work, perhaps more fully embracing the diachronic philological approach than any other work:

The only grammar of Persian that has appeared in England since the year 1860 is that of Forbes; and of that work it may be said, without undue depreciation, that it is now behind the age. …researches of scholars in Pehlevi, Old Persian, and Zend, has enabled me to correct many notions

For example:

I have departed entirely from the practice of preceding grammars in endeavouring to treat [the verb’s] formation historically, instead of laying down a number of arbitrary rules

For the first time, the audience isn’t just the English:

To philology I have paid the more attention in the hope that Indian students, whether Hindu or Muhammadan, may be attracted to this study, and realize more fully the intimate relation which exists between their beloved Persian and the sacred language of the Hindus.

He handles word building at length:

Oddly, he puts vowelled words next to Latin transcriptions, but elsewhere gives undotted words with English translation:

His Hindustrani grammar sheds further light on his philological project:

conclude – (1) that, much as had been achieved in the field of Urdu Grammar by Europeans (and especially by Englishmen), that field had not been so thoroughly worked but that a great deal might be won from it; (2) that no small portion of the work which had been done was of a kind that afforded room for improvement.

…the views propounded are so directly opposed to those maintained by preceding grammarians, that I have felt constrained to support them by foot-notes, remarks, citations from native grammars, and the opinions of native scholars; and thus the work has to some extent assumed a polemical character, for which I consider an apology is due.

…succeeded in reducing to rule some constructions which have hitherto been regarded as arbitrary. And here I may be permitted to observe that there is little in the structure of Urdu of the loose and arbitrary character which some recent writers on the grammar of the of the language impute

in many instances, native scholars, no doubt, are unable to assign a satisfactory reason for the forms they use; but it is surely inconsequent to conclude from these facts that rules in such cases cannot be discovered, and that native scholars cannot be trusted to compose correctly in their own tongue. That “writers are guided by usage rather than by rule, and test the accuracy of a passage by the ear rather than by any recognized law,” is, in the main, true. But this practice is by no means confined to Urdu writers

St. Clair-Tisdall’s Conversation-Grammar - 1901

An Anglican priest, St. Clair-Tisdall published grammars of Persian, Hindustani, Gujarati and Punjabi along with Christian apologetics and essays on Islam.

Until this point, the best textbook (with lessons, passages and exercises,) his 1902 Modern Persian Conversation-Grammar employs the Gaspey-Otto-Sauer method and focuses on the Iranian variety:

to most Englishmen who have spent any time in India, Persian is known only in its antique form and pronunciation, which are still in large measure retained on the Afghan frontier and in other parts of India. This prevents the student from being intelligible to the natives of Persia

The author himself

found on endeavouring to enter into conversation with Shirazis in Bombay, that he was almost if not quite unintelligible to them, since many of the words, phrases and idioms he had learnt from the pages of Sa’di and other classical Persian authors have been superseded by others in the modern language … as if a foreigner, having discovered some corner of the world in which English was still spoken by the learned, just as it occurs in the Elizabethan writers and with the pronunciation of that distant day, had learnt the language from them and then tried to converse with the English people of to-day. … The Civil and Military authorities in England and India now, however, seem to have begun to grasp the fact

It has a good selection of handwritten sections in different hands, but employs Latin transcription in vocabularies and grammar sections.

The 2nd half covers the Arabic element of Persian, along with idioms, polite conversation and Turkishisms.

The (rather long) exercises look like this:

Philott’s Higher Persian Grammar - 1919

Lt Col Dr. Philott (1860-1930) wrote by far the most detailed reference grammar at 900 pages, ever noting differences between Afghan and Modern Persian and featuring 50 pages on rhetoric. I have little to say stands tall on its merits and erudition.

One sad note:

Owing to the War and the consequent loss of manuscript and proofs at sea and to other unfortunate causes, this work has been unduly long in issuing from the Press.

Elwell-Sutton - 1941

Elwell-Sutton’s Elementary Persian Grammar and Colloquial Persian are fantastic, condensed books using a Latin transcription to provide a cozy overview of Persian grammar and structure in little more than 100 pages. They introduced me to Persian and I don’t know anything more inviting.

In 1953, right before the coup against Mossadegh, he started Persian Oil: Study in Power Politics (besides our grammars and further books on Persian poetry.) He worked at the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in the 30s (today BP) and wrote about its history from the Knox D’Arcy & Reuter concessions on, the history of Britain and Iranian oil. Elwell-Sutton’s the first anti-colonialist author, discussing economic exploitation etc. but saw and documented the reaction too, publishing in 1955.

Lambton - 1953

Lambton played a direct role in that very coup, recommending no compromise with Mossadegh:

Professor Lambton, serving as a Foreign Office consultant, advised as early as November 1951 that the British government should persevere in ‘undermining’ Mossadeq, refuse to reach an agreement with him, and reject American attempts to find a compromise solution. ‘The Americans,’ She insisted, ‘do not have the experience or the psychological insight to understand Persia.’ - Khomeinism - Abrahamian

She worked on the response too:

suggesting ‘effective lines of propaganda’ that the British might use to turn the Iranian public opinion against Mossadegh. - All the Shah’s Men - Kinzer

Her Persian grammar is a rigorous guide, covering historical usage in depth, with the occasional historical text about e.g. mongols. As with most, the second half covers Arabic grammar.

John Mace

Colonial administration largely replaced by employment in oil companies, like Elwell-Sutton, Mace spent a decade in the Middle East (in Arab countries). In spite of the name, his grammar is less of a reference than Lambton’s, but a fair modern introduction to modern, colloquial Persian’s grammar and usage.