Middle Persian

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Middle Persian
𐭯𐭠𐭫𐭮𐭩𐭪 (Pārsīk or Pārsīg)
Region	Sasanian Empire (224–651)
Ethnicity	Persians
Era	Evolved into Early New Persian by the 9th century; thereafter used only by Zoroastrian priests for exegesis and religious instruction
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Southwestern Middle Persian
Early form	Old Persian
Writing system	Pahlavi scripts, Manichaean script, Avestan alphabet, Pazend
Language codes
ISO 639-2	pal
ISO 639-3	Either: pal – Zoroastrian Middle Persian ("Pahlavi") xmn – Manichaean Middle Persian (Manichaean script)
Glottolog	pahl1241  Pahlavi
Linguasphere	58-AAC-ca

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Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg (Pahlavi script: 𐭯𐭠𐭫𐭮𐭩𐭪, Manichaean script: 𐫛𐫀𐫡𐫘𐫏𐫐‎, Avestan script: 𐬞𐬀𐬭𐬯𐬍𐬐) in its later form,^[1][2] is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Persian continued to function as a prestige language.^[3] It descended from Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid Empire and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian, an official language of Iran, Afghanistan (Dari) and Tajikistan (Tajik).