Lewis Carroll is a pen-name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was the author's real name and he was lecturer in Mathematics in Christ Church, Oxford. Dodgson began the story on 4 July 1862, when he took a journey in a rowing boat on the river Thames in Oxford together with the Reverend Robinson Duckworth, with Alice Liddell (ten years of age) the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, and with her two sisters, Lorina (thirteen years of age), and Edith (eight years of age). As is clear from the poem at the beginning of the book, the three girls asked Dodgson for a story and reluctantly at first he began to tell the first version of the story to them. There are many half-hidden references made to the five of them throughout the text of the book itself, which was published finally in 1865. Dari is spoken natively by the majority of the population in Afghanistan and is one of the two official languages of the country, the other being Pashto. In Afghanistan, Dari has served as the lingua franca for many years, and is the main language of communication between people in most Afghan cities. Many Dari speakers, especially those in Central and Northern Afghanistan, identify themselves as belonging to the Tajik ethnic group. Many members of other ethnic groups-including Hazara, Pashtun, Uzbek, and Pamiris-speak Dari as a second language as well. Dari has a number of dialects such as Shamali (Northern), Herati, Hazaragi, and Kabuli which is the basis of the standard language. Dari, along with Persian spoken in Iran and Tajik spoken in Tajikistan, is one of the three literary languages that stem from a common language spoken in the Middle Ages called Pārsi (Arabized as Fārsi). Together with Persian and Tajik, Dari belongs to the West Iranian branch of Indo-European languages. The term "Dari" is derived from the word "dar" which meant 'court' in the classical language. So Dari is "the language of the court".