The Huzi or Khuzi were a people who inhabited Susiana (modern Khuzestan in Iran) from antiquity until several centuries after the Muslim conquest of Persia, and who spoke a distinct language of their own, the Huzi language. The name of Khuzestan province derives from that of this people, and cities such as Ahvaz and Hoveyzeh likewise recall their historical presence in the region.

Beyond their ethnic and linguistic significance, early Islamic-era medical sources refer to a group of physicians designated al-Khūz and the al-Khūzi lineage, associated with the medical school of Gondishapur; their views are quoted by physicians such as Rāzi and Pour Sinā.

Name and etymology The name of the people is recorded in Old Persian as Ūvja (uvaja/uvja), and appears in some Achaemenid inscriptions as Hūjiya. In Middle Persian the name became Huzi, and later Arab authors rendered it Khūzī. In modern scholarship the people and their language are referred to variously as Huzi or Khuzi.The New Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 1, 1995, p. 169. Greek authors recorded the name as Uxii.

The shift from initial u- to hu- in the name is comparable to similar developments in Old and Middle Persian vocabulary, for instance the historical spellings Ōhrmazd / Hōrmazd, and to features of present-day dialects of southwestern Iran. In southwestern Iranian dialects still spoken in Khuzestan and neighbouring provinces, including Bakhtiari, Shushtari and Dezfuli, an initial h sometimes corresponds to an older u. According to one account, documents and maps rendered the name of the region as "Huzestan" until the end of the Safavid period.

History The earliest references to the people occur in the Achaemenid inscriptions, which mention the land of the Ūvja and associate it with the territory of modern Khuzestan. In the Islamic period, Ibn al-Muqaffa' (8th century) and later Ibn Hawqal (10th century) referred to them as Khūzī.

Language

The Huzi language remained the common speech of the region through the Sasanian period and for several centuries after the Muslim conquest of Khuzestan. Gilbert Lazard, drawing on scattered notices in the works of geographers and historians, observed that the language could not be written in the Arabic script. Bertold Spuler characterised it as related to neither Persian nor Arabic and regarded it as a survival of Elamite. According to the account of Ibn al-Muqaffa' preserved in the Fihrist, Khuzi was one of the five languages current among Iranians in the late Sasanian period and the vernacular of Huzestan. Early Muslim geographers reported that, alongside Arabic and Persian, the Khuzis had a language of their own that was neither Hebrew, nor Syriac, nor Persian.

Relationship to the Elamites Some scholars have regarded the Huzi as descendants of the Elamites. Van Bladel has examined the question in detail in a study of the language of the Xūz and the fate of Elamite.

The Huzi in the history of Iranian medicine Major medical works of the Islamic period refer to a group of physicians as al-Khūz, with the nisba al-Khūzī. According to modern research, the Khuzis were a circle of scholars of the Gondishapur medical school who set out their medical views in works such as Kunnāsh al-Khūz, Jāmiʿ al-Khūz and Shūsmāhī li'l-Khūz.

The writings of the Khuzis were repeatedly cited as authorities in Islamic-era medical literature, but no complete copy of any of them survives; their medical views are therefore known mainly through quotations by later physicians. One study devoted to recovering these quotations examined four works in full, the Canon of Medicine of Ibn Sīnā, the Hāwi of Rāzī, the "Kitab Al-jami li-mufradat al-adwiya wa al-aghdhiya" of Ibn al-Baitar, and the Book on Pharmacy and Materia Medica (Saydana) of Bīrūnī, and extracted the references to the Huzi from them.

The first monograph on the subject, Khuz and Khuzi in the Iranian School of Medicine by Mohsen Naseri and Farzaneh Ghaffari, with a preface by Ali Akbar Velayati, was published in 2011 by the Academy of Persian Language and Literature and Shahed University together with Almaʿi Press. The book is arranged in four parts: the Khuzis in history (covering the geography of Khuz, the etymology of the name, the Khuzi language and dialect, its script, the Khuzis and Gondishapur, the academy and its teachers, and the fate of Gondishapur); the recovery and translation of Khuzi opinions from the four source works; Khuzi materia medica and pharmacopoeia; and a discussion of the findings. The authors treat Avestan-era medicine, Achaemenid medicine, the Gondishapur school and the Khuzi school as the turning points in the history of Iranian medicine.

Legacy The name of Khuzestan province (Huzestan), and those of cities such as Ahvaz and Hoveyzeh, derive from the name of this people. It has also been suggested that the present-day inhabitants of southwestern Iran preserve traces of cultural and linguistic traditions attributed to the Huzi, and that words in the Dezfuli, Shushtari, Southern Luri and Bandari dialects are survivals of the Huzi language.

See also Huzi language Academy of Gondishapur Khuzestan province Ahvaz

References

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