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Reviews

Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran

Zoroastrianism: modern Zoroastrian priest tending a temple fire. Image © Encyclopædia Britannica

Sheffield, Daniel. 2015. Review of Monica Ringer, Pious Citizens: Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2011). International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) 47(4). 833–835.

Pious Citizens trace ideas of “true” and “rational” religion in Western India and Iran between the years 1830 and 1940. Her story begins in the city of Bombay, where in the early 19th century traditional networks of Parsi authority were disrupted by the rise of merchant capital in the metropole and emigration away from older centers of communal hierarchy. This forms the backdrop for the beginning of the Zoroastrian reform movement, in which religious and social reform were linked.
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Articles Reviews

Research on Yaghnobi

Benkato, Adam. 2015. Review article: Recent work in Yaghnobi Studies. Iran and the Caucasus 19. 283–294.

This review article discusses various issues raised by the two reports of the Italian missions to the Yaghnob Valley in Tajikistan. It aims to provide a critical review of the publications,  which present a broad variety of new research on the Yaghnobi people, as well as a more general discussion of the methodology involved in studying this group.

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Online resources Reviews

Review: The Sasanian world through Georgian eyes

McCollum, Adam Carter. 2015. Review of Stephen H. Rapp Jr: The Sasanian world through Georgian eyes. Caucasia and the Iranian Commonwealth in late antique Georgian literature. SEHEPUNKTE 15(9).

The bibliographic information for the book under review is:

Rapp, Stephen. 2014. The Sasanian world through Georgian eyes. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.

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Reviews

Review: The nativist prophets of early Islamic Iran

Dabiri, Ghazzal. 2015. Review essay: The nativist prophets of early Islamic Iran: Rural revolt and local Zoroastrianism. Journal of Persianate Studies 8. 115–121.

The bibliographic information for the book under review is:

Crone, Patricia. 2014. The nativist prophets of early Islamic Iran: Rural revolt and local Zoroastrianism. Cambridge University Press.

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Reviews

Review of Éric Pirart’s ‘Le sort de Gâthâs’

Ferrer, Juan. 2014. Review of Éric Pirart (ed.). 2013. Le sort de Gâthâs et autres études iraniennes in memoriam Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin (Acta Iranica 54). Leuven-Paris-Walpole, MA: Peeters Publishers. Aula Orientalis 32. 388–391.

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Journal Online resources Reviews

Review of ‘The comprehensive history of Iran’

Yazdan Safaee, one of BiblioIranica’s team members, has written useful and accessible reviews of the first five volumes of the 20 volume comprehensive history of Iran, which were announced by Shervin in May 2015. The reviews are in Persian and accessible from Yazdan’s own website:

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Reviews

Review: Sasanian coins

Heidemann, Stefan. 2013. Review of  Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, M. Elahé Askari & Elizabeth J. Pendleton: Sasanian Coins: A sylloge of the Sasanian coins in the National Museum of Iran (Muzeh Melli Iran), vol. 1 & 2. London: Royal Numismatic Society in assoc. with the British Institute of Persian Studies. JOSA 45. 117–123.

Read the review here.

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Reviews

Review: The millennial sovereign

Truschke, Audrey. 2014. Review of Afzar Moin: The millennial sovereign: Sacred kingship and sainthood in Islam. New York: Columbia University Press. International Journal of Middle East Studies 46. 809–842.

The Millennial Sovereign recovers a shared world of sacred kingship that pervaded India, Iran, and Central Asia in early modernity. A. Azfar Moin argues that a Timurid-based social dispensation produced a particular type of sovereignty in which a ruler promoted his political claims largely through embodied spiritual practices.

Read the review here.

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Reviews

Two reviews

Brody, Robert . 2014. Review of Shai Secunda: The Iranian Talmud. University of Pennsylvania Press. Zion 79(3). 435–437.

See also here for another review of Shai’s book.

Mokhtarian, Jason. 2014. Review of Shai Secunda & Steven Fine (eds.): Shoshannat Yaakov, Jewish and Iranian studies in honor of Yaakov Elman. Zion 79(3). 438–442.

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Reviews

Review: Medieval Christian and Manichaean remains

Dickens, Mark. 2014. Review of Samuel Lieu, Lance Eccles, Majella Franzmann, Iain Gardner & Ken Parry (eds.): Medieval Christian and Manichaean remains from Quanzhou (Zayton) (Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum, Series Archaeologica et Iconographica 2). Turnhout: Brepols. 395–429.

Read the review here.