Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Category: Articles

  • Sasanian Silver Coins from Atbatan Necropolis Near Demirchi (Shamakhi District, Azerbaijan)

    Huseynov, Rustam N. & Akif A. Guliyev. 2026. Sasanian Silver Coins from Atbatan Necropolis Near Demirchi (Shamakhi District, Azerbaijan). Azerbaijan Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology 2 (1): 99-105.

    This article presents a small group of Sasanian silver drachms discovered during archaeological excavations at Atbatan necropolis near the village of Demirchi in the Shamakhi region of Azerbaijan. The coins were recovered from burial contexts in association with human skeletal remains and accompanying grave goods, providing important archaeological evidence for the circulation of late Sasanian silver coinage in the Shirvan area. The study focuses on the typological and chronological attribution of the coins based on iconography, mint signatures, regnal dates, and Pahlavi legends preserved on the specimens. The Demirchi finds contribute to the growing corpus of Sasanian numismatic material discovered in Azerbaijan and provide new data on Sasanian influence, trade networks, and population contacts in the Shirvan region during Late Antiquity – Early Middle Ages.

  • Recovering a Sasanian Royal Book in Early Islam

    Zubani, Alessia. 2026. Recovering a Sasanian Royal Book in Early Islam: The Kitāb Ṣuwar mulūk Banī Sāsān and Its Arabic Transmission. Essays in Long Late Antiquity 1 (1): 73-95.

    This paper explores the recovery and translation of a Sasanian royal book during the early Islamic period, focusing on the Umayyad and early Abbasid eras. It examines the missing Kitāb Ṣuwar mulūk Banī Sāsān (“Book of the Portraits of the Sasanian Kings”), a work that depicted portraits of all Sasanian rulers, their reigns, and deeds. Although it is lost, Arab and Persian historians who had access to Arabic translations commissioned by the Umayyad caliph Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 724–743) described it in detail.

    The history of this text, as preserved by these Arab and Persian historians, highlights the interest in Iranian political literary traditions during the Islamic period, while also providing valuable information about the work and its earliest observed Arabic manuscript copy. Analyzing this information with contemporary and slightly later manuscripts provides insights into the work’s history as part of a specific political literary tradition and as a material manuscript artifact.

  • A Palace Built into a Mountain

    Maghsoudlou, Arvin. 2025. A Palace Built into a Mountain: Exploring the Modes of Audience Interaction and Reception at the Great Ayvan of Taq-e Bustan in Late Antiquity. Ancient West & East 24: 43-67.

    This study revisits the structure, imagery and scale of the Great Ayvan of Taq-e Bustan, employing a phenomenological approach to explore how it interacted with its potential Late Antique audiences. It argues that the monument departed from traditional Sasanian rock reliefs by blending features of landscape reliefs and palatial architecture into a hybrid programme, effectively engaging a diverse audience. The paper analyses how viewer interaction varied with proximity to the ayvan, with a particular focus on the complex and multisensory experience afforded to those granted access inside.

  • Two unpublished Bactrian documents

    Two unpublished Bactrian documents

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2026. Two unpublished Bactrian documents in the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait. Bulletin of SOAS FirstView. 1–8.

    Bactrian, the principal written language of pre-Islamic Afghanistan, was little known until the early 1990s, when more than 150 contracts, economic documents and letters, together with a few Buddhist texts, were acquired by collectors. Most of these were published by Nicholas Sims-Williams between 2001 and 2012 in three volumes entitled Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan. The present article presents two additional documents which have come to light more recently, a receipt for a sum of ten dirhams and a letter from an otherwise unknown ruler of Rōb, modern Rui in the Hindukush mountains. The text and translation of the documents are accompanied by a discussion of their linguistic and historical significance.

    Abstract

  • The Chronological Boundaries of the Persepolis Fortification Archive

    Stolper, Matthew W. 2025. The Chronological Boundaries of the Persepolis Fortification Archive. In Petra Goedegebuure & Joost Hazenbos (eds.), Ḫattannaš: A Festschrift in Honor of Theo van den Hout, 387-415. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    The Festschrift offered to Theo van den Hout contains several important and stimulating studies. The entire volume is available in open access via the hyperlink above. Among its contributions, an article by Matthew Stolper is particularly noteworthy, as it addresses a subject at the very core of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The study presents an edition of several texts from the Persepolis Fortification Archive which, despite their fragmentary condition, shed new light on the chronological boundaries of the Archive.

  • The Idea of “India” and “Gandāra” in the Earliest Iranian and Greek Sources

    King, Rhyne & Alice Collett. 2026. The Idea of “India” and “Gandāra” in the Earliest Iranian and Greek Sources. Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia 146 (2): 241-262.

    Hinduš, the Old Persian name for a region of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BCE), ultimately underlies the English word India. The history of the word Hinduš and its cognates has attracted considerable research, yet the precise referent of Hinduš in its Achaemenid context remains imperfectly understood. Achaemenid sources often group Hinduš together with the neighboring region of Gandāra, and analyzing the two regions together is key to understanding them. In this article we reassess the earliest appearances of Hinduš, Gandāra, and their cognates in the Iranian and Greek sources. We first demonstrate that Achaemenid knowledge of South Asia was vague, and although imperial administrators broadly located Hinduš in the lower Indus and Gandāra in the upper Indus, they did not use these toponyms entirely consistently. Next, we turn to the Classical Greek sources. The Greeks recognized Gandāra as a far eastern region of the Achaemenid Empire, but they expanded the idea of Hinduš, as Indikḗ, into a fantastical land on the edge of the world.

  • On Achaemenid-era metalworkers based on the Persepolis tablets

    Zehbari, Zohreh. 2025. The men who wrought the metals: On Achaemenid-era metalworkers based on the Persepolis tablets. Iran, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/05786967.2025.2551493

    While varied attempts have been made to study Achaemenid metal artefacts, we still know little about the craftsmen who wrought the metals. Metalworkers manufactured various products for different social classes and for different contexts, and must have played a notable role in the society of the Achaemenid period. The present paper aims to address the various textual and archaeological evidence attesting metallurgical specialisations, and to collect information regarding goldsmiths, silversmiths, blacksmiths, and bronze/coppersmiths who worked and travelled within the Persian empire, tracing different aspects of their activities and lives such as their status, wage, gender, and ethnicity. In addition, some previously unknown facts about the smiths’ condition will be presented according to the available documents and relevant comparisons with the neighbouring regions.

  • Another clay tag with Achaemenid Seal Impressions

    Treuk, Matheus. Another clay tag with Achaemenid seal impressions in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo, Brazil (MAE/USP). Arta 2026.001.

    Presented here is a clay tag bearing Achaemenid seal impressions, preserved at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and identified by registration number 0816 4-00235. The tag originally formed part of the so-called ‘Banco Santos’ or ‘CidCollection’. It clearly belongs to the dossier of 42 items previously published by Henkelman, Jones, and Stolper (ARTA 2004.001), as well as two additional items more recently published by Ignacio Márquez Rowe (ARTA 2025.001). The MAE clay tag was first published by the Brazilian Assyriologist Katia Maria Paim Pozzer in a 2004 catalogue accompanying a Brazilian exhibition of the CidCollection.

  • Land tenure and fiscal practices in the Aramaic corpus of Idumea

    Shahryari, Mitchka L.M.J. 2026. Land tenure and fiscal practices in the Aramaic corpus of Idumea: Bow-Fields and horse estates. BASOR 395: 179-194.

    The Idumean corpus of Aramaic ostraca sheds light on the structured administrative and fiscal system in the region. This publication raised the possibility of the presence of the terms qaštu (“bow-fields”) and, albeit conjecturally, “horse-estates,” which would offer the first concrete evidence of these land-management practices within the fiscal framework of the Idumean region. These findings resonate with other key terms already mentioned by scholars, such as iškaru and references to tax collectors, which underscore the Persian institutional system of taxation, labor organization, workforce allocation, and resource management. The fiscal vocabulary and classifications of landholding revealed in these texts display parallels with Babylonian, Persepolitan, and Egyptian models, while simultaneously reflecting local adaptations. The ostraca thus demonstrate that Idumea was an integrated part of a hybrid imperial structure that linked local agricultural communities to the broader Persian administration.

  • Two priest-brothers

    Two priest-brothers

    Colditz, Iris. 2026. Two priest-brothers: Theological argumentation, linguistic expressions and style in the second Epistle of Manuščihr. Bulletin of SOAS, FirstView. 1–14.

    The Middle Persian Nāmagīhā ī Manuščihr “Epistles of Manuščihr”, the Zoroastrian high priest of Pārs and Kermān, written in 881 ce, are an important testimony of an inner-Zoroastrian dispute on orthopraxy in early Islamic Iran. They reflect Manuščihr’s efforts to preserve the extensive purification ritual Baršnūm against being substituted with a simplified ritual by his brother, the teacher-priest (Hērbed) Zādspram. Manuščihr wrote three letters to make his position clear. His second letter, addressed to Zādspram, is interesting not only for its theological debate but also for the personal relationship it reveals between two priest-brothers. Manuščihr argues on an elaborate scholarly level by quoting from the religious authoritative texts, and expresses his brotherly love and responsibility for leading his younger brother back to the correct path. This article focuses on his theological argumentation but also on the debate, how the family ties may have affected it and how he used linguistic expressions and style in this context.

    Abstract