Author: Shervin Farridnejad

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Events

The Hidden Face of Surat

the-hidden-suratThe Hidden Face of Surat: Exploring the History of a Cosmopolitan Centre, 1540-1750

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Distinguished Professor and Irving & Jean Stone Chair in Social Sciences, UCLA

The Second JESHO Lecture on Asian History, organised by Brill Academic Publishers and Institute of Iranian Studies (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

03.11.2016, 18:00
Aula at the Campus (court 1.11), University of Vienna
Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Wien

The great port of Surat in western India dominated accounts of Indian Ocean trade between the late sixteenth and mid eighteenth century. Consolidated first by an Ottoman notable, it became the Mughal Empire’s western window into the worlds of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. In this lecture, I explore Surat’s other, less visible, aspect: namely as an intellectual centre, that brought together diverse and sometimes competing traditions. In turn, we shall see how this vibrant intellectual life was tied up both to certain structures of politics, and to commercial exchange at various scales.

Programm (PDF)

Sanjay Subrahmanyam is Professor and Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences at UCLA. He taught at Paris from 1995 to 2002 as Directeur d’études in the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, holding a position on the economic and social history of early modern India and the Indian Ocean world. In 2002, Subrahmanyam was appointed as the first holder of the newly created Chair in Indian History and Culture at the University of Oxford, a position he held for two years before moving to a chair in UCLA. From July 2005 to June 2011, he served as founding Director of UCLA’s Center for India and South Asia. In 2013, Sanjay Subrahmanyam was elected to a Chair in Early Modern Global History at the Collège de France in Paris. He is the author of The Career and Legend of Vasco de Gama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Three Ways to be Alien: Travails and Encounters in Modern Eurasia (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2011; Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012).

Convenor
Paolo Sartori, Institute of Iranian Studies, Editor–in-Chief of JESHO
Hollandstrasse 11−13, 1020 Vienna
T: +43 1 51581-6516
paolo.sartori@oeaw.ac.at

Categories
Books

Yezidism and Yezidi Studies

kurdish-studies-42-2016-yezidism-coverKreyenbroek, Philip G. & Khanna Omarkhali (eds.). 2016. Yezidism and Yezidi Studies in the early 21st century (Special Issue. Vol. 4, No 2, Kurdish Studies). London: Transnational Press.

The present volume deals with recent trends and developments in the Yezidi community, and analyses contemporary portrayals of the Yezidis. The initial focus is on the far-reaching consequences of ISIS’s (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria genocide of Yezidis in the Sinjar region of Iraq which began in August 2014, and its possible implications for the Yezidi religion generally. Further contributions discuss how the Yezidis have recently been described in Western media and academic literature.

Table of contents

  •  Martin van Bruinessen: “Editorial”
  • Philip Kreyenbroek, Khanna Omarkhali: “Introduction to Special Issue: Yezidism and Yezidi Studies in the early 21st Century”
  • Irene Dulz: “The displacement of the Yezidis after the rise of ISIS in Northern Iraq”
  • Eszter Spat: “Hola Hola Tawusi Melek, Hola Hola Şehidêt Şingalê: Persecution and the development of Yezidi ritual life”
  • Veronica Buffon, Christine Allison: “The gendering of victimhood: Western media and the Sinjar genocide”
  • Philip Kreyenbroek, Khanna Omarkhali: “Yezidi Spirits? On the question of Yezidi beliefs: A review article”
  • Khanna Omarkhali: “Transformations in the Yezidi tradition after the ISIS attacks. An interview with Ilhan Kizilhan”

 

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Books

Personal names in Parthian epigraphical sources

pnb-schmitt-2016Schmitt, Rüdiger. 2016. Iranisches Personennamenbuch Band 2/Faszikel 5: Personennamen in parthischen epigraphischen Quellen. (Österreichische Akademie Der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse; Iranische Onomastik 15). Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW).
This volume of the Iranisches Personennamenbuch (Lexicon of Iranian personal names) presents a full collection of the personal names attested between 150 BCE and 300 CE in Parthian epigraphical sources, inclusive of patronymics and family names as well as the topographical names derived from personal names. Also non-Parthian and even non-Iranian (Semitic, Latin, etc.) personal names are taken into account, as they are part of the onomastic material attested in an Iranian language. The presentation of the names in principle is the same as in the earlier volumes of the Iranisches Personennamenbuch: First comes a full listing of all references (with the kind of the text and its provenance given in abbreviated form), then a sketchy prosopographical characterisation of the person(s) bearing the name, and finally the section on the morphological and etymological interpretation of the name, in which a cautious judgement is attempted. Here the names attested in the Old Iranian and the other Middle Iranian languages (together with their collateral tradition), now known in much greater numbers than at the time of Ferdinand Justi’s Iranisches Namenbuch (1895), are quoted in a fitting manner. Full indexes make all the names accessible that are quoted by way of comparison.
About the Autor:
Rüdiger Schmitt ist emer. Professor für Vergleichende Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft und Indoiranistik der Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken.
Categories
Events

The Christian Sogdian Gospel Lectionary E5 in Context

bildschirmfoto-2016-09-27-um-12-08-04
The monastery at Bulayïq, Dafusan’gaicum, Tulufan/Turpan, Xinjiang © Chiara Barbati 2015

Lecture and Book Presentation at Tehran University

The Christian Sogdian Gospel Lectionary E5 in Context

Department for Iranian Studies at the University of Tehran in cooperation with The Austrian Academy of Science (ÖAW) present:

Lecture : “The Christian Sogdian Gospel Lectionary E5 in Context”
By: Dr. Chiara Barbati (Institute of Iranistik, Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Date: Wednesday, 5th October, 2016
Place: University of Tehran, Faculty of Literature, Kamal Hall (4th floor)

On the basis of a thorough philological-linguistic study, the book aims primarily at reintegrating the complex whole of the various phenomena that have contributed to creating what in modern scholarship runs under the name of Christian Sogdian Gospel Lectionary E5, a set of manuscript fragments preserved in the Turfan Collection in Berlin. The study applies a precise methodology that puts various disciplinary approaches on the same level in order to relate and interconnect textual, material and historical-cultural aspects. Specific codicological characteristics are considered in correlation with the broader manuscript tradition to which the fragments belong. The discussion of the Gospel lectionary leads to reflections on the transmission, reception and development of a specific body of religious knowledge, namely that of the Church of the East. The exploration of linguistic phenomena takes also into consideration the processes at work in the missionary history of the Church of the East in Central Asia between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in the Oasis of Turfan in present-day Xinjiang, China. The book therefore addresses Iranologists as well as students of Eastern Christianity and of manuscript cultures.

Chiara Barbati (PhD 2009) is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Iranian studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW).  She specializes in Ancient and Middle Iranian languages. Her main fields of research are Sogdian language and literature with particular regard to the Christian Sogdian texts in relation to its Syriac sources, history of eastern Christianity through primary sources (Syriac) as well as secondary sources (Sogdian, Middle Persian, New Persian), paleography and codicology of pre-Islamic Iranian manuscripts and Iranian dialectology from an historical point of view.

 

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Books

Zoroastrianism: Religious texts, theology, history and culture

moazoroasMoazami, Mahnaz (ed.). 2016. Zoroastrianism: A collection of articles from the Encyclopaedia Iranica  (Encyclopaedia Iranica Extracts – EIE), 2 vols. New York: Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation.
 Zoroastrian theology, cosmology and cosmogony, history of the faith, its rituals and ceremonies, Avestan and Middle Persian texts, festivals such as Nowruz, Mehregan and Sada, and a host of other topics, hitherto dispersed amidst other entries in their alphabetical sequence in the Encyclopædia Iranica, are gathered together here under one cover. The volume enables the readers to chart their way through complex traditions and debates throughout history, and brings into focus the interdependence of these pioneering contributions. As a thought-provoking and authoritative work of reference, it is a testimony to the fine scholarship and remarkable erudition of its contributors, scholars who have been foremost in ensuring that the Encyclopædia Iranica maintains its high reputation for authoritative comprehensiveness and pioneering research.
List of Contents:

Volume 1

  • Religious Concepts and Philosophy
  • Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism
  • The Elements in Zoroastrianism
  • The Divine Beings (Yazatas)
  • Demons, Fiends, and Witches
  • Zoroastrian Literature
  • Sacrifices and Offerings

Volume 2

  • Ablutions and Purification Ceremonies
  • Prayers, Hymns, and Incantations
  • Priestly Titles and Prominent Zoroastrian Priests
  • Legal Aspects of Zoroastrianism
  • Death and the Afterlife
  • Festivals
  • Places of Worship
  • Zoroastrian Heroes and Adversaries
  • Mythical and Historical Locations
  • Parsi Communities

About the Editor:

Mahnaz Moazami is a Visiting Professor at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies of Yeshiva University. Her research focuses on religion in pre-Islamic Iran, and she has published several articles on different aspects of Zoroastrianism.

Categories
Books

Iranian Linguistic Studies in memoriam Xavier Tremblay

Acta Iranica 57Pirart, Eric (ed.). 2016. Études de linguistique iranienne: in memoriam Xavier Tremblay. (Acta Iranica 57). Leuven: Peeters.
The 57th volume of the Acta Iranica is dedicated to the memory of late Xavier Tremblay (* 26. 6. 1971, Lille—15. 11. 2011), in order to celebrate his contribution to Iranian and Indo-European Studies. Even unfinished, the work of Xavier Tremblay plays a fundamental role to our understanding of the origins of the Zoroastrian liturgy.
Table of Contents (PDF):
  • Philippe Swennen: “Xavier Tremblay et la liturgie longue proto indo-iranienne. Présentation
  • Alberto Cantera: “On Avestan text criticism (2): the accusative singular of the ū̆- and ṷa- stems in the long liturgy”
  • Juan Jose Ferrer Losilla: “Preconsonantal nasals in the Avestan alphabet”
  • Jost Gippert: “Albano-Jranica II: Avestan +āfše”
  • Jean Kellens: “Deux apologues sur le feu rituel“
  • Jaime Martinez-Porro: “The orthography of the Avestan diphthongs aē and aō in the munuscripts of the long liturgy”
  • Antonio Panaino: “The World’s Conflagration and the Manichaean “Great Fire” of 1468 years”
  • Éric Pirart: Les cvi de l’Avesta”
  • Nicholas Sims-Wiliams: “Bactria—Balkh: variations on a place-name”
Categories
Events

Minorities in Iran and Beyond in Memory of Rudolf Macúch

Rudolf Macúch (1919-1993)
Rudolf Macúch (1919-1993)

Minorities and Majorities in the Middle East and Asia

In Memory of Rudolf Macúch (1919-1993)

The Department of Comparative Religion is honoured to invites to the conference titled “Minorities and Majorities in the Middle East and Asia” which will take place at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava on the days of 14th and 15th of September. The conference is dedicated to the memory of the world-renowned scholar Professor Rudolf Macúch. The talks cover different aspects of the religions and cultures of minorities, especially in today Iran and Iraq, from Mandaeans, Christians, Yezidis, Yārsān (Ahl-e Haq) and Sufīs to Buddhists, ect.

Organizers: Department of Comparative Religion, Comenius University in Bratislava
Slovak Association for the Study of Religions
Venue: Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Arts, 2 Gondova St.

Conference programme (PDF):

Wednesday, 14th September 2016

  • Maria Macuch: “Rudolf Macuch – A Life Dedicated to the Study of Minorities”
  • Eden Naby: “Modern Assyrian Culture and Prof Rudolf Macuch”
    Mahmoud Jaafari-Dehaghi: “Professor Rudolf Macúch at the University of Tehran”
  • Jiří Gebelt: “Rudolf Macúch’s Contributions to the Mandaean Studies in the Light of Current Research”

PANEL 1: The Mandaeans of Iran

  • Muhammad Allahdadi: “Are Mandaeans Men of the Book? A Study of the Evolution of Shi’a Jurists’ Ideas about Mandaeans As Men of the Book”
  • Mohsen Jafari: “The Mandaeans: The Lost Tribe of the Iranian Constitution”
  • Reza Yarinia: “The Mandaean Cosmological Structure and Its Manifestation in the Purity of Creatures”
  • Behnam Eskandari: “The Mandaeans’ Mythical and Religious Communications with Other Religions”

Thursday, 15th September 2016

PANEL 2: Diasporas

  • Martin Klapetek: “The Near Orient? The Transfer of “Otherness” to European Contexts”
  • Torsten Tschacher: “On Being a Multiple Minority: ‘Indian Muslims’ in Singapore between ‘Race’ and ‘Religion”
  • Katarína Šomodiová: “The Iraqi Christian Community in Slovakia”

PANEL 3: Multiplied and fragmented minorities

  • Alam Saleh: “The Fragmented Middle East: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Religion”
  • Attila Kovács: “Minority-Majority Dynamics and the Public Space in the Old City of Jerusalem: A Visual Approach”
  • Dušan Deák: “Emplacing the Saintliness: Rural Muslim Religiosity between Vaishnavas Sufis and Demons”

PANEL 4: Minority policies

  • Luboš Bělka: “Minority Religion: The History of Russia´s Policy towards Tibetan Buddhism in Buryatia (1717-2016)”
  • Marko Jovanović: “Uyghur Separatism: A Fight for Cultural or Religious Identity?”
  • Eszter Spät: “Religion and Nation-Building among the Yezidis of Iraq”

PANEL 5:  Minorities and Religious Dogmatics

  • Alireza Bahrami: “Exploring Islam’s View about the Men of the Book”
  • Lukáš Větrovec: “Present-Day Reflections of the Viewpoints of Ibn Taymiyya on Non-Muslim Communities”
  • Qasem Muhammadi: “Religious Minorities ‘the Self’ or ‘the Other’ in the Islamic Government as Presented in the Shi‘a School of Thought”

PANEL 7: Religious fractions and groups

  • Seyedeh Behnaz Hosseini: “Yārsān-a religious minority in Iran”
  • Mahmoud Jafari-Dehaghi: “Buddhism in the East of Iran”
  • Abdolmajid Etesami: “Zayd Ibn Ali Ibn Husayn (a.s.) and the Imamate”
  • Matej Karásek: “Christian sannyasis and Christian ashram movement in India: minors amongst Hindus or Christians?”

PANEL 8: Minorities and majorities in literature & writing

  • Łukasz Byrski: “Writing Systems and the Minorities”
  • Deepra Dandekar: “Popular Islamic Literature and Muslim Minoritization in India”
  • Miklós Sárközy: “Wladimir Ivanow and his memoirs about Iranian Ismailis and Gypsies”
  • Estiphan Panoussi: “Hungarian Calvinist Church in Budapest Hungary Classifications of Difficulties of Some Verbal Roots and Homonyms the the Senaya Dialect of Neo-Aramaic”
Categories
Books

Pahlavi and Judeo-Persian Bible Manuscripts

The Pahlavi Psalter. Ps 5 recto: Psalms 121 (opening is missing) and 122; discovered at Bulayïq/ Turfan oasis. © Turfanforschung (BBAW), Digitales Turfan-Archiv
The Pahlavi Psalter. Ps 5 recto: Psalms 121 (opening is missing) and 122; discovered at Bulayïq/ Turfan oasis.
© Turfanforschung (BBAW), Digitales Turfan-Archiv

Pehlivanian, Meliné, Christoph Rauch & Ronny Vollandt (eds.). 2016. Orientalische Bibelhandschriften aus der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – PK. Eine illustrierte Geschichte. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

The volume presents an illustrated history of the Oriental Bible Manuscripts from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. It includes discriptions of the manuscripts which are among the oldest and most fascinating items in the Oriental Collection of the State Library of Berlin. The overwhelming majority of the manuscripts presented here come from the very cradle of the Abrahamic religions. The texts range across more than 1,500 years of Christian and Jewish history in the Near and Middle East and Africa, from Late Antiquity to the 19th century.
They are written documents which have, not least, also left
traces in the Islamic tradition. Another concern of the volume is to allow readers insights into the extremely extensive and varied collection of Oriental manuscripts in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, whose outstanding treasures are in many cases only known to specialists in the field. The biblical texts, written on leather, parchment, papyrus, and paper bear witness not only to the complexity of the religious and theological traditions, but also impressively document the diversity of materials to be found in the Oriental manuscript culture, and not least the artistic achievements of the “Peoples of the Book”.

Some most related chapters of this book regarding the Iranian Studies are:

  • Dennis Halft OP: “The ‘Book of Books’ in Persian” (pp. 150-154)
  • Dennis Halft OP: “A Persian Gospel Manuscript and the London Polyglot” (pp. 155-157.)
  • Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: “A Middle Persian Pahlavi Psalter-Fragment in the Berlin Turfan Collection” (pp. 114-116).
  • Simone-Christiane Raschmann: “Christian Texts from Central Asia in the Berlin Turfan Collection” (pp. 105-113).
  • Friederike Weis: “Illustrated Persian Tales of the Prophets (Qis.as. al-anbiyāʾ) (pp. 163-172).
Categories
Books

History of Sogdian Merchants

histoire-des-marchands-sogdiens-9782857570608_0de la Vaissière, Etienne. 2016. Histoire des marchands sogdiens. Troisième édition révisée. (Institut des hautes études chinoises (Collège de France) 32).
The Sogdian Traders were the main go-between of Central Asia from the fifth to the eighth century. From their towns of Samarkand, Bukhara, or Tashkent, their diaspora is attested by texts, inscriptions or archaeology in all the major countries of Asia (India, China, Iran, Turkish Steppe, but also Byzantium). This survey for the first time brings together all the data on their trade, from the beginning, a small-scale trade in the first century BC up to its end in the tenth century. It should interest all the specialists of Ancient and Medieval Asia (including specialists of Sinology, Islamic Studies, Iranology, Turkology and Indology) but also specialists of Medieval Economic History.
This volume is the third revised edition of the orginal published in 2002 and translated into english in 2005 by James Ward.
Étienne de la Vaissière (PhD 1999) in History, is Assistant Professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. His courses and research are devoted to the economic and social history of medieval Central Asia.
Categories
Books

Greek Views of India and the Parthian Empire

207_111Wiesehöfer, Josef, Horst Brinkhaus & Reinhold Bichler. 2016. Megasthenes und seine Zeit. Akten der Internationalen Tagung „Megasthenes, Apollodoros and Isidoros. Greek Views of India and the Parthian Empire“. Kiel,27. –30.6. 2 012. . Vol. 1. (Classica et Orientalia 13). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
The volume comprises a collection of the articles,  presented initially at the conference “Images of the Orient: Megasthenes, Apollodorus of Artemita and Isidore of Charax”, held from 27.06. until 30.06.2012 at the Institute for Classical Archaeology of the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel (Germany). The contributions of this volume deal with Megasthenes, the Greek ethnographer and explorer in the Hellenistic period, as a central object of study. He became an ambassador of Seleucus I Nicator of the Seleucid dynasty possibly to Chandragupta Maurya in Pataliputra, India and played an important role on the transition of the Greek notions of India as semi-mythical Wonderland and the geographical remit of great gods and heroes (Semiramis, Hercules, Dionysus, etc.) towards a verifiable plave with native traditions; however without a complete relinquishing the old topical descriptive and explanatory patterns . Megasthenes reports, is among the earliest well-known Western accounts of India.
Table of Contents:
  • Josef Wiesehöfer; Horst Brinkhaus: “Megasthenes und Indien im Fokus althistorischer Forschung”
  • Reinhold Bichler: “Herrschaft und politische Organisation im älteren Indien-Bild der Griechen und in der klassischen Alexander-Historie”
  • Horst Brinkhaus: “Zum aktuellen Stand der Arthaśāstra
    -Forschung: Kann Kauṭilya noch als Kronzeuge für Megasthenes gelten?”
  • Veronica Bucciantini: “Megastene e la ‘Reiseliteratur’:
    resoconti di viaggio tra descrizione, memoria e rappresentazione”
  • Bruno Jacobs: “Megasthenes’ Beschreibung von Palibothra und
    die Anfänge der Steinarchitektur unter der Maurya-Dynastie”
  • Sushma Jansari; Richard Ricot“: Megasthenes and the  ‘Astomoi’:  a case study into ethnography and paradoxography”
  • Grant Parker: “Roman Megasthenes: towards a reception history”
  • Daniel T. Potts: “Cultural, economic and political relations between Mesopotamia,  the Gulf region and India before Alexander”
  • Duane W. Roller: “Megasthenes: His Life and Work”
  • Robert Rollinger: “Megasthenes, mental maps and Seleucid royal ideology: the western fringes of the world or how Ancient Near Eastern empires conceptualized world dominion”
  • Kai Ruffing: “Die Ausbildung des literarischen Indienbildes bis Megasthenes”
  • Oskar von Hinüber: “Aśoka und die Griechen”
  • Josef Wiesehöfer: “Seleucids and Mauryas”