books.google.com - Persian has been a written language since the sixth century B.C. Only Chinese, Greek, and Latin have comparable histories of literacy. Although Persian script changed—first from cuneiform to a modified Aramaic, then to Arabic—from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries it served a broader geographical...http://books.google.com/books/about/Literacy_in_the_Persianate_World.html?id=CjibFs9JlgoC&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareLiteracy in the Persianate World
