GREEK LOANWORDS IN MEDIEVAL NEW PERSIAN

It's perfectly reasonable that the number of borrowed words from the Greek language into the Persian one should vary,depending on the kinds of texts and on the fields of learning.in contrast to Islamic religious scholarship (apart from the Koran’s Greek loanwords, which naturally passed into Persian) the secular or 'ancient sciences' seem to be the domain of Greek terminology; Aristotelian philosophy, medicine and all its related fields,as well as the occult sciences were filled with words of Greek origin. We should also keep in mind that during the Islamic period, Persian learned literature was largely modelled upon Arabic precursors; and that these, whether they were direct or indirect translations from Greek or Arabic originals, tried to minimize the vocabulary which was foreign and sounded unfamiliar. This was contrary to the position often accorded to Arabic in Persian, in which non-Arabic technical terminology was, as a rule, replaced by loan-adaptations or at least by words of common, even if non-technical, currency. A lot of non-Arabic words were not considered foreign, due to their complete assimilation into the language. Trade and administration were other paths through which Greek words entered Persian. In the end, the majority of Greek linguistic elements that remained in Persian were proper names- particularly those of ancient authors- as well as terms of merchandise and units of measure.To provide a balanced description, it should be noted that essentialy any Greek word seen in Arabic could be incorporated into Persian, whether it is considered as purely Arabic or correctly identified as being of Greek origin.

Along with their division into semantic fields, Greek lexical items in Persian can also be distinguished by their route and time period of borrowing;taking into account the historical 'pauses' which defined the periods of potential contact and the fact that, for most of their history, the two linguistic areas of Iranian and Greek were not contiguous. The Muslim conquest and, with it, the fall of the Sasanians,  the linguistic shift to Iranian, and the period of literary inactivity of what subsequently emerged as New Persian represented a historical moment in the introduction of Greek into Iranian. 
 There is a fundamental difference between the Greek words that entered Persian before the Muslim conquest and those borrowed after the conquest. The former passed either directly or via Aramaic from Greek into Pahlavi, while the latter inevitably had Arabic as their proximate origin before entering Persian. This is true for most of the Greek terms of Medicine and pharmacy used in Persian (e.g., ṯāfisā < Gk. thapsia, Thapsia granica L., and qarābāḏin, < Gk. graphidion “booklet”). 

There are, however, a number of notable exceptions that show traces of an intra-Iranian passage from the Sasanian period into New Persian and are not limited to the medical context; for example, yāra (Gk. hiera “holy”), teryāk (Gk. thēriakē “treacle”), stēr (Gk. statēr “stater,” New Per. sir, a unit of weight), and deram, derham “dram, dirham,” q.v. (Gk. drakhmē). On the other hand, Greek medical and medicinal terms, first borrowed during the Sasanian or early post-Sasanian periods, gradually stopped being used in Persia, at least before the final shift to neo-Persian. These terms, however, were taken by Arabic and were later re-introduced from Arabic into Persian; examples of this trend are  qawlanj (< Gk. kōlik “colic”) and the more common variant of the just-mentioned yāra, iyāraj.
 From the field of astronomy, we see cases of  late Middle Iranian Greek loanwords which first passed into Arabic before making their way back into Persian:  the names Baṭlamiyus (Gk. Ptolemaios, “Ptolemy”) and Majesṭi (Gk. Megísiē, “Almagest”).We can reasonably deduce that from the same late middle-Iranian period, such Persian medical loanwords in Arabic as bersām and sarsām were derived,loanwords from Greek pleuritis, inflammation of the side, “pleurisy” and phrenitis, inflammation of the brain, “frenzy,” respectively.

As mentioned before, proper names, mostly of authors, are a large group of Greek elements in Persian. The majority of these come from the fields where the Greeks excelled,such as medicine and mathematics; Esmāʿil Jorjāni’s Ḏaḵira-ye ḵᵛārazmšāhi   is an excellent medical source for Greek names in Persian.

Below there are some words of Greek origin, which are quite common in Persian:

Anthroponyms

 (A) Pre-Islamic period: Alaksandar “Alexander,” Baṭlamiyus (see above); (B) Islamic period: Arisṭuṭālis “Aristotle,” Eskandar “Alexander,” Aflāṭun “Plato,” Faluṭin “Plotinus,” Boqrāṭ “Hippocrates,” Ṯāvon “Theo,” Jālinus “Galen,”. There are a lot of names, which belonged to famous Greek writers from the fields of philosophy, science, and medicine, and they were introduced into Persian via Arabic.

Toponyms

Islamic period (through Arabic): Aṯiniya “Athens,” Eskandariya “Alexandria,” Ankuriya “Ankara,” QaysÂāriya “Caesarea,” Rumiya “Rome,” Aṭrābolos “Tripoli”; (through the Anatolian Turkish language): Senub “Sinope,” Sivās “Sivas.”

Astronomy

 Islamic period (through Arabic): Baršāvoš “Perseus,” Dalfin “Delphinus,” Qanṭuris “Centaurus,” Qiṭus “Cetus,” and Qifāvus “Cepheus.”

Biblionyms

Abiḏimiyā, < Epidēmía “the Epidemics of Hippocrates,” Urḡānun < Organon “the Organon of Aristotle,” Isāḡuji < Eisagōgē “the Isagoge of Porphyry,” Bāri Armāniās < Perì Hermēneías “Aristotle’s De interpretatione,” Ṯāwolujiyā “Theología, Pseudo-Aristotle’s Theology,” < Qaṭājānes < Kata genē Galen’s De compositione medicamentorum.”

Administrative terms 

Pre-Islamic period: daftar (register, account book) < diphthéra “parchment” 
 Islamic period: barid (the official postal and intelligence service of the Caliphate and early Islamic states) < berēdos “post-horse,” possibly borrowed directly from Greek into Arabic and then passed into Persian.

Units of currency and measure

Pre-Islamic period: deram, derahm < drakhmē; dinār < dēnárion (Lat. denarius); pul < obolos; stēr < statēr; Islamic period (through Arabic): derham (by “retrograde derivation from Ar. quasi-pl. darāhem, see Spitaler), qest < xéstēs, “pint,” qerāṭ < kerátion “carat.”

General terms

eqlim < klima, “clime,” sābun < sápōn, “rotten, putrid,” manjaniq < manganikón, “pulley,” buqalamun < hupokálamon, “moiré cloth, etc.,” qāmus < ōkeanós “ocean,” āb(a)nus < ebenos “ebony,” ṭumār < tomárion “document, tract,” qalam < kálamos “reed,” qerṭās < khártēs “sheet of papyrus,” qānun < kanōn “straight-edge, rule,” yāqut “ruby” (retrograde singular from Arab. quasi-pl. yawāqit) < hiákinthos “sapphire, zircon, etc.,” zabarjad < smáragdos “emerald.”

Medical terms

 The works of major Greek authorities in Medicine,such as Galen, had been translated in Arabic, along with Dioscorides' classic book known in Arabic as Fi hayula ʿelaj al-ṭebb and Ketab al adwia al-mofrada. These sources held an abundance of Greek medical terms. The book of Dioscorides was studied in its Arabic translation and it was translated into Persian .The few examples from these translated books on different subjects give us an idea of the amount of words coming from the Greek language.
 (a) Morbidity, etc.: fanṭāsiya < phantasía, “display; imagination,” ilāvus < eìleos, “intestinal disease,” farāniṭes, qarāniṭes (by misreading of fāʾ) < phrenitis, “frenzy,” māliḵuliā < melancholia; 
(b) Materia medica: anisu,anisun < anison, anēthon “dill, anise,” qulqās < kolokási- "Egyptian lotus,” qalqand(is) < khálkanthon, khalkánthes “copper sulfate solution”; 
(c) Pharmacy: eyāraj, qarābāḏin, teryāq.

Philosophical terms

 hayulā < hulē, “wood, timber; matter,” faylasuf (perh. by retrograde derivation from Ar. quasi-pl. falāsefa) < philósophos “philosopher.”

Alchemical terms

 eksir < xērion “desiccative powder for wounds,” ṭelasm < télesma “payment, outlay,” kimiā < khumeía “melting; alchemy.”

Religious terms

Eblis < diábolos “slanderer; the Devil,” Edris < Andre‚as, enjil < euangélion “reward for good news; gospel.”

Adapted from: Encyclopedia Iranica