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Books

Pre-Islamic Iran from the Creation to the Parthians

Hameen-Anttila, Jaakko (ed.). 2017. Al-Maqrīzī’s al-Ḫabar ʻan al-bašar. vol. V, section 4: Persia and its kings, part I (Bibliotheca Maqriziana 5). Leiden: Brill.

Al-Maqrīzī’s (d. 845/1442) last work, al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar, was completed a year before his death. This volume, edited by Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, covers the history of pre-Islamic Iran from the Creation to the Parthians. Al-Maqrīzī’s work shows how Arab historians integrated Iran into world history and how they harmonized various currents of historiography (Middle Persian historiography, Islamic sacred history, Greek and Latin historiography).

Among al-Ḫabar’s sources is Kitāb Hurūšiyūš, the Arabic translation of Paulus Orosius’ Historiarum adversum paganos libri vii. This source has only been preserved in one defective copy, and al-Maqrīzī’s text helps to fill in some of its lacunae.

Continue reading “Pre-Islamic Iran from the Creation to the Parthians”
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Events

Corpus Avesticum Berolinense

Today, the Institute of Iranian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, received the confirmation of funding for Corpus Avesticum Berolinense (CAB), a long-term project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for 12 years . The goal of CAB is to edit all Zoroastrian rituals preserved in the Avestan language. This is excellent news for the institute and the discipline. The BiblioIranica team congratulates Prof. Alberto Cantera for this achievement. It is more than well-deserved.

See the institute’s announcement for more information.

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Books

The Sanskrit Yasna

Goldman, Leon. 2017. The Sanskrit Yasna Manuscript S1. Facsimile Edition (Corpus Avesticum / Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 2 South Asia, 32/1). Leiden: Brill.
The manuscript S1 is one of the chief witnesses to the Sanskrit Yasna, containing the Avestan text of the Zoroastrian Yasna liturgy to chapter 46.19, together with a Sanskrit translation and commentary. This book contains the complete, full-colour set of facsimile images of S1.
An introduction by Leon Goldman provides an overview of the Zoroastrian Sanskrit tradition together with a discussion of the S1 manuscript covering its physical appearance, its age and history, and for the first time, a detailed palaeographic analysis of the Avestan and Sanskrit text.
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Articles

A Zoroastrian Doctrine in the Manichaean Reception

Panaino, Antonio. 2017. The end of time and the ‘Laws of Zoroaster’. A Zoroastrian doctrine in the Manichaean reception. In Francesco Calzolaio, Erika Petrocchi, Marco Valisano & Alessia Zubani (eds.), In limine. Esplorazioni attorno all’idea di confine, 61–68 (Studi e Ricerche 9). Venezia: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari.

Zoroastrian theology clearly insisted on the assumption that historical time was limited and that in its borders ‘evil’ should be destroyed. Practically, ‘time’ and ‘space’ were a sort of weapon used by Ohrmazd in order to entrap Ahreman and his demonic army. In this spatio-temporal frame – work, the end of historical time involved also the end of Ahreman himself, so that one of the actions enacted by the ‘Antagonist Spirit’ would be that of trying to delay and stop its regular course. Recent studies on the Manichaean Coptic Kephalaia of Dublin confirm the importance of this Mazdean doctrine and present a direct witness of this theological dogma, which was presented in a way conveniently fitting for the Gnostic religion professed by Mani.
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Journal

Bulletin of the Asia Institute 27

Issue 27 of the Bulletin of the Asia Institute will be published this December. The information on this issue is not yet available on the journal’s website, but the content has been circulated, which we are publishing here.

Bulletin of the Asia Institute 27

December 2017

Articles

  • Frantz Grenet, “More Zoroastrian Scenes on the Wirkak (Shi Jun) Sarcophagus”
  • Yaakov Elman and Mahnaz Moazami, “PV 5.1–4 in the Context of Late Antique Intellectual History”
  • Harry Falk, “The Ashes of the Buddha”
  • Peter Skilling, “Śrāvakas, Buddhas, and the Buddha’s Father: Inscribed Artefacts in the U Thong National Museum”
  • V. H. Sonowane, “Rock Paintings Depicting Stupas in Gujarat, India”
  • Domenico Agostini and Shaul Shaked, “Sasanian Seals of Priests”
  • Nicholas Sims-Williams, “A Bactrian Document of the Fifth Century c.e.”
  • Salman Aliyari Babolghani, “Achaemenid Elamite dayāuš (~ Old Persian dahyāu̯-š)”
  • Dieter Weber, “Accountancy of a Zoroastrian Craftsman in Early Islamic Times (662–664 CE)”
  • Stefan Zimmer, “The Etymology of Avestan 2čiqra- ‘Descent, Progeny'”
  • Zhang Zhan, “Kings of Khotan During the Tang Dynasty”

Reviews

  • Lieu and Mikkelsen, eds. Between Rome and China (Albert E. Dien)
  • Hansen. The Silk Road: A New History with Documents(Jenny Rose)
  • Mair and Hickman, eds. Reconfiguring the Silk Road: (Jenny Rose)

v + 170 pp.

Individual orders $80 + shipping or pdf online $50

Categories
Books

Persian Art: Image-making in Eurasia

Kadoi, Yuka (ed.). 2017. Persian Art: Image-making in Eurasia. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

In this illustrated book, nine contributors explore multifaceted aspects of art, architecture and material culture of the Persian cultural realm, encompassing West Asia, Anatolia, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia and Europe. Each chapter examines the historical, religious or scientific role of visual culture in the shaping, influencing and transforming of distinctive ‘Persian’ aesthetics across the various historical periods, ranging from pre-Islamic, medieval and early modern Islamic to modern times.

Table of Contents:
  • Judith A. Lerner: “The Visual Culture of Greater Iran: Some Examples of Kushano-Sasanian Art”
  • Matteo Compareti: “The Late Sasanian Figurative Capitals at Taq-i Bustan: Proposals Regarding Identification and Origins“
  • Richard Piran McClary: “Architecture of the Wider Persian World: From Central Asia to Western Anatolia in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries”
  • Yuka Kadoi: “From Acquisition to Display: The Reception of Chinese Ceramics in the Pre-modern Persian World”
  • Tobias Nünlist: “Devotion and Protection: Four Amuletic Scrolls from Safavid Persia”
  • Iván Szántó: “The Minarets of Hurmuzgan”
  • Raquel Santos: “Persia, India or Indo-Persian? The Study of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century Knotted Pile Carpets”
  • Francesco Stermotich-Cappellari: “The Calligraphic Art of Mishkin Qalam”
  • Markus Ritter: “The Kashan Mihrab in Berlin: A Historiography of Persian Lustreware”
Categories
Articles

The Sasanian Navy revisited

Dmitriev, Vladimir. 2017. The Sasanian navy revisited: An unwritten chapter in Iran’s military history. International Journal of Maritime History 29(4), 727-737.

In modern historiography, Sasanian Iran is commonly perceived as a land power. However, various primary sources indicate that the Sasanian navy played an important role in the military efforts of the Persians in late antiquity. The Sasanian navy was established to ensure the external security of the Persian state by exerting control over the sea lanes in the Persian Gulf region, and based on the aspiration of the Sasanid authorities to enhance their military and political, as well as commercial, influence in the northern part of the Indian Ocean. The most dynamic phase of the Persian navy’s activities occurred during the reign of Khosrow Anushirwan (531–579 CE), when fleet operations enabled the Persians to conquer Yemen and there was an attempt to establish the navy in the Black Sea basin. The last phase of Sasanian naval activity took place during the Byzantine–Persian war of 602–628 CE. In this conflict, the Persian fleet initially achieved some success in the Mediterranean Sea, but eventually it was completely defeated by the more skillful Byzantine navy. The main areas of the Persian navy’s activities were the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. The Sasanids’ attempts to establish fleets in the Black Sea in the 540s and Mediterranean in the 620s were ended by Byzantium. After the fall of the Sasanian Empire, Persian ships became part of the Arabian armed forces and for some time continued to participate in wars on the side of the Arabs, whose victories over the Byzantines were, to some extent, due to the naval experience of the Persians.

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Articles

The Dēnkard Against its Islamic Discourse

Rezania, Kianoosh. 2017. The Dēnkard Against its Islamic Discourse. Der Islam 94(2).

The Dēnkard is the most exhaustive Pahlavi work ever produced in Zoroastrianism. Due to the large amount of information included in it, this body of work has often been referred to within the field of Iranian Studies as a ‘Zoroastrian Encyclopedia’. This article discusses two main points. First, it holds that it was not the intention of the Dēnkard’s authors and editors to compose a Zoroastrian encyclopedia in the 9th and 10th centuries. By contrast, the independent texts which serve as the basis of this compilation deal with other religions or present a Zoroastrian apologetic. It also claims that the Dēnkard has not been perceived as an encyclopedia in later Zoroastrianism. Second, the article scrutinizes the editorial process that led to this book. It furthermore argues that the Dēnkard, in its current form, has been structured to resemble the Zoroastrian world history comprising nine millennia. This article aims, moreover, to show that the last three books of the Dēnkard aim to depict Zoroastrians as belonging to the People of the Book. The article finally argues that the Dēnkard should be considered entirely a theological apologetic within an inter-religious context, which was mainly carried by Muslim theologians.

 

 

Categories
Books

Crowns, hats, turbans and helmets

Maksymiuk, Katarzyna & Gholamreza Karamian (eds.). 2017. Crowns, hats, turbans and helmets. The headgear in Iranian history. Volume I: Pre-Islamic Period. Siedlce & Tehran: Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities.

Table of contents:

  • Joanna SZKLARZ: Significance of the Helmet in fight between Sohrāb and Gordāfarid
  • Dan-Tudor IONESCU: The Use of the Tiara as symbol of Persian Achaemenid Kingship: why Alexander the Great didn’t adopt it?
  • Svyatoslav V. SMIRNOV: Revising Seleukid Iconography: A Person Wearing Helmet and Conflict of Imageries
  • Ulf JÄGER: Morion-type Helmets of Gandhāra. A rare Kušān-period helmet-type of the 1st to the 3rd / 4th century CE – A very first preliminary attempt
  • Mariusz MIELCZAREK: Arms and Armour on Kušān coins. Royal images
  • Patryk SKUPNIEWICZ, Marcin LICHOTA: Diadem on the head from Khalchayan battle scene and possible reconstruction of the composition
  • Katarzyna MAKSYMIUK: Ram’s Horns as a Religious Element of Sasanian Kings’ Military Equipment (notes to Amm. Marc. XIX.1.3)
  • Gholamreza KARAMIAN, Kaveh FARROKH, Adam KUBIK, Mandana TAHERI OSHTERINANI: An Examination of Parthian and Sasanian Military Helmets (2nd century BC-7th century CE)
  • Ilkka SYVÄNNE: A Note on the Methodology regarding the Reconstruction of the Late Roman Helmets in Art, Archaeology and Analysis
  • Marta CZERWIENIEC-IVASYK: Helmet or a crown? – A few comments on the margin of the Sasanian coins discovered in the Baltic Sea area
  • Adam KUBIK: Sasanian lamellar helmets
  • Patryk SKUPNIEWICZ: On the Helmet on the Capital at Ṭāq-e Bostān again
  • David NICOLLE: One-piece Sasanian and Early Islamic Helmets
  • Sergei Yu. KAINOV: The Helmet from Krasnodar Territory
Categories
Articles

A Jewish Convert to Imāmī Šīʿism

Halft, Dennis. 2017. Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī: A twelfth/eighteenth-century Jewish convert to Imāmī Šīʿism and his critique of Ibn Ezra’s commentary on the four kingdoms (Daniel 2:31-45). In Miriam Lindgren Hjälm (ed.), Senses of scripture, treasures of tradition: The Bible in Arabic among Jews, Christians and Muslims (Biblia Arabica 5), 280–304. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract of the article:

This study explores the previously unstudied anti-Jewish Persian polemic Anbāʾ al-anbiyāʾ by the Jewish convert to Twelver Šīʿī Islam, Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī, the father of Ḥāǧǧī Bābā Qazvīnī Yazdī. It examines Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī’s discussion of a medieval Jewish controversy concerning the four-kingdom schema in the book of Daniel and Ibn Ezra’s interpretation of the dream-vision in favor of Islam as the fourth kingdom. The study shows that Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī, besides his reference to Muslim works in Persian, relied on different (partly printed) Jewish textual sources in the original Hebrew and Aramaic (Miqraʾot Gedolot, Neḇuʾat ha-yeled, Sefer haš-šorašim, Sefer Josippon), from which he quoted in his own Persian translation/adaptation. He thus made internal Jewish debates accessible to native Muslim scholars, such as Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, who borrowed from Anbāʾ al-anbiyāʾ. Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī was a cross-cultural intermediary and go-between who expanded the traditional range of Šīʿī polemical arguments against Judaism in pre-modern Iran.

Continue reading “A Jewish Convert to Imāmī Šīʿism”