Pakistan's Persian national anthem
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The speaker's name is Shabnam Nasimi. She is a British-Afghan social activist, writer, and political commentator.
Ghaznavid; Urdu; Arabization; Turkish; Afghanistan; Turandot
Selected readings
- "The Story of Puccini & Turandokht" — Puccini turned this Central Asian heroine into a Chinese princess; if readers ask for it, I may devote a separate post about how this happened
- "Turandot and the deep Indo-European roots of 'daughter'" (3/16/20)
- "More on Persian kinship terms; 'daughter' and the laryngeals" (3/18/20)
- "Correspondences between Ancient Greek doȗle (voc.) 'slave' and 奴隷 Jpn dorei / Tw lô·-lē" (10/9/25)
- "A cricket writer enlightens us on the Urdu tense system" (8/31/10)
- "Language in Pakistan", (12/28/2007)
- "Camp language" (12/31/2007)
- "Scripts, scriptures and scribes" (1/2/2008)
Chris Button said,
April 28, 2026 @ 5:17 pm
Would this be similar to composing the UK national anthem using words only originally of French descent?
So could one say in this case that it's in Persian but not in Farsi (despite Persian and Farsi ultimately being variants of the same word)?
cameron said,
April 28, 2026 @ 5:25 pm
the name "Pakistan" is itself Persian. they chose a Persian word, because to them Persian connoted Islam. but the word "pakistan" is so emphatically Persian that to an Iranian it sounds Zoroastrian
Martin Schwartz said,
April 28, 2026 @ 6:01 pm
Very interesting video , with very nice graphics. But Ithink it should be added that a problem was not only the Indic (= Hindi = Hindu, i.e.
non-Muslim) matter (Urdu is much like Hindi but with many more
Persian and Arabic words, and modified Persian script vs. Devanagiri),
but the fact that not only Urdu is spoken in Pakistan,, but Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi, Brahui, Hindko, and Saraiki and maybe other langs.,
making the historically eminent Persian, as a non-native ethnically neutral choice, suitable for the anthem.The last map showed not the
Pakistan region not 1000 years earlier than the foundation of the modern state, but more line 2000 years–the Achæmenian Empire– earlier. Nasimi's pronunciation
is notably Anglo, as it were: pæk- vs. pa:kista:n, GHali:b vs.
GHa:lib (also with stress difference), etc. But her given name
is pleasantly Persian; šabnam (Iranian and Afghani /šabnæm/
*'night-moisture' = 'dew'. And despite my minor carps
(in effect, goldfish), she is to be congratulated for this production.
By the way, speaking of "Pækistan", ihe word is ta:liba:n,
not tælibæn rhyming wqith reibæn (Rayban™); both Pashto and
Persian distinguish æ from a: (and yes, my a: is a bit inexact;
maybe â, of which my keyboard is capable, is better)
Martin Schwartz
as to precise a
Martin Schwartz said,
April 28, 2026 @ 6:05 pm
Very interesting video , with very nice graphics. But Ithink it should be added that a problem was not only the Indic (= Hindi = Hindu, i.e.
non-Muslim) matter (Urdu is much like Hindi but with many more
Persian and Arabic words, and modified Persian script vs. Devanagiri),
but the fact that not only Urdu is spoken in Pakistan,, but Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi, Brahui, Hindko, and Saraiki and maybe other langs.,
making the historically eminent Persian, as a non-native ethnically neutral choice, suitable for the anthem.The last map showed not the
Pakistan region not 1000 years earlier than the foundation of the modern state, but more line 2000 years–the Achæmenian Empire– earlier. Nasimi's pronunciation
is notably Anglo, as it were: pæk- vs. pa:kista:n, GHali:b vs.
GHa:lib (also with stress difference), etc. But her given name
is pleasantly Persian; šabnam (Iranian and Afghani /šabnæm/
*'night-moisture' = 'dew'. And despite my minor carps
(in effect, goldfish), she is to be congratulated for this production.
By the way, speaking of "Pækistan", ihe word is ta:liba:n,
not tælibæn rhyming wqith reibæn (Rayban™); both Pashto and
Persian distinguish æ from a: (and yes, my a: is a bit inexact;
maybe â, of which my keyboard is capable, is better)
Damb dumn robot keeps on calling athe above duplicate. Sorry.
Martin Schwartz
Martin Schwartz
as to precise a
Lucas Christopoulos said,
April 28, 2026 @ 7:49 pm
The symbolism on the flag of Pakistan is older and non-Muslim in its origins (see here).
Martin Schwartz said,
April 29, 2026 @ 12:20 am
@Chris Button: ?? Fārsi: is what people who speak the language
in question call it; P—–n is the conventional word for it in English.
@Cameron (may one call you Kāmrān ?): Tghose who don't know
P'n should know that in the latter lang. pâk means 'clear,
pure, holy' without any specifically Muslim associations.
NB I'm trying to avoid the rob(idi)ot caaling me a dulicator
and messing with my message.
Martrin Schwartz
Martin Schwartz said,
April 29, 2026 @ 12:24 am
I meant "Those"
MS
Philip Taylor said,
April 29, 2026 @ 4:56 am
Martin — "Damb dumn robot keeps on calling athe above duplicate." — but it was. And it is !
Chris Button said,
April 29, 2026 @ 5:13 am
@ Martin Schwartz
Exactly. Why would I have made my comment otherwise?
But people in Pakistan don't generally speak Farsi. And Persian and Farsi are the same word (/p/ = /f/). So this might be the one case where you can actually argue for a distinction that otherwise doesn't really exist.
J.W. Brewer said,
April 29, 2026 @ 7:20 am
Is it reasonably easy to hit that high a percentage of Persian-origin words in the most formal register of Urdu for e.g. a short speech, or is this an artifact of the anthem's lyrics being in a poetic/literary register that no one uses for other purposes even in fairly formal contexts?
The internet advises that the words of India's national anthem (from a poem by Tagore) are in a heavily Sanskritized literary register of Bengali (sadhu basha) that is little-used these days. Part of the self-conscious/artificial creation of that register by 19th-century intelligentsia seems to have involved purging the lexicon of Persian-origin loanwords that were in common use in ordinary Bengali, giving you a sort of mirror image of the Pakistani anthem's register. (A different Tagore text is used for the current national anthem of Bangladesh and is apparently controversial there, although the internet isn't immediately telling me what register it's in and Tagore apparently wrote in more than one.)
J.W. Brewer said,
April 29, 2026 @ 9:48 am
To Chris Button's question, I now remember that James Joyce occasionally engaged in the aesthetic stunt of trying to write with as many Romance-origin lexemes (whether acquired via French or directly from Latin) as possible, but he could never completely avoid Anglo-Saxon-origin "function words" despite such valiant efforts as "very distracting spectacles in various latitudes by our terrestrial orb offered together with images, divine and human, the cogitation of which by sejunct females is to tumescence conducive."
Yves Rehbein said,
April 29, 2026 @ 12:17 pm
one wonders what is that one Urdu word
J.W. Brewer said,
April 29, 2026 @ 12:26 pm
@Yves Rehbein: Apparently this one: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%DA%A9%D8%A7#Urdu
Tom Dawkes said,
April 29, 2026 @ 5:06 pm
@Martin Schwartz. As Shabnam is a thoroughly assimilated British speaker of English she is naturally using the regular British pronunciation of Pakistan with [pæk]. It's no worse than the very common US pronunciation of Italian pasta with initial [pa:s].
Martin Schwartz said,
April 29, 2026 @ 11:34 pm
@ Chis Button: Er … OK. I've already grumped about Eng speakers
using the F. name for the lang. Btw, the origin of this parrticular
p>f is that the Arabs, after invading the place, used a sound for the p- which became f- And I won't actually argue
@Tom Dawkes: Sure. I was just sayin' ,not saying it's bad.
And many of the herein aforementioned group pronounce "pasta"
as "basta", which to an Italian might mean that the speaker from the latter group hasd enough of that comestible, none of which do I think is bad. Now we'll see if the cmptrrobopolice man will give me a hard time.
Martin Schwartz
Adam Idress said,
April 30, 2026 @ 6:04 am
Fascinating piece. It's interesting how Persian remained the language of administration and high culture in the region for so long, even influencing early Pakistani identity. The national anthem being in Persian is one of those things that surprises people who don't know the history. Shabnam Nasimi's perspective adds a nice touch too. Thanks for sharing this, Victor.
Barbara Phillips Long said,
April 30, 2026 @ 7:41 pm
What struck me about Pakistan's national anthem was how European the music sounded. I think a lot of national anthems send mixed messages, and this may be particularly true in countries that are former colonies.
ajay said,
May 1, 2026 @ 4:05 am
What struck me about Pakistan's national anthem was how European the music sounded.
Yes, it's interesting – I guess it was written at a time when most independent nations were European, or at least European-settled, and so that was just what national anthems sounded like.
There is a story that the Tibetan national anthem was "God Save The King" for a while because the Tibetan bandmaster had formerly worked in India and thought it was just a generic "Play This At National Occasions" tune that anyone could use.
David Marjanović said,
May 3, 2026 @ 7:21 am
That's how it worked within Europe, too. Germany's imperial anthem had the tune of God Save the King, too; Germany's democratic anthem has the tune of Austria's imperial one (itself taken from many versions of a Burgenland Croatian folk song).
Jalaluddin said,
May 7, 2026 @ 10:45 am
In January 1950, the President of Indonesia visited Pakistan and there was no national anthem to pay tribute to the foreign dignitary at that time. In the same year, a much-awaited visit of the Shah of Iran demanded urgency for the national anthem of Pakistan.
The government asked the NAC to finalise the lyrics and move forward with the final anthem. However, despite several attempts, the committee failed to do so.
Finally, on 21st August 1950, the government adopted Ahmad G. Changla’s tune for the national anthem. The same tune was performed without any lyrics in front of the Shah of Iran and several other foreign dignitaries until 1954.