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Books

Handbook of comparative and historical Indo-European linguistics

Klein, Jared S., Brian D. Joseph & Matthias Fritz (eds.). 2017. Handbook of comparative and historical Indo-European linguistics: An international handbook (Handbücher Zur Sprach- Und Kommunikationswissenschaft (HSK) 41/1). Berlin; Boston: de Gruyter.
This series of HANDBOOKS OF LINGUISTICS AND COMMUNICATION SCIENCE is designed to illuminate a field which not only includes general linguistics and the study of linguistics as applied to specific languages, but also covers those more recent areas which have developed from the increasing body of research into the manifold forms of communicative action and interaction. For “classic” linguistics there appears to be a need for a review of the state of the art which will provide a reference base for the rapid advances in research undertaken from a variety of theoretical standpoints, while in the more recent branches of communication science the handbooks will give researchers both an verview and orientation. To attain these objectives, the series will aim for a standard comparable to that of the leading handbooks in other disciplines, and to this end will strive for comprehensiveness, theoretical explicitness, reliable documentation of data and findings, and up-to-date methodology. The editors, both of the series and of the individual volumes, and the individual contributors, are committed to this aim. The languages of publication are English, German, and French. The main aim of the series is to provide an appropriate account of the state of the art in the various areas of linguistics and communication science covered by each of the various handbooks; however no inflexible pre-set limits will be imposed on the scope of each volume. The series is open-ended, and can thus take account of further developments in the field. This conception, coupled with the necessity of allowing adequate time for each volume to be prepared with the necessary care, means that there is no set time-table for the publication of the whole series. Each volume will be a self-contained work, complete in itself. The order in which the handbooks are published does not imply any rank ordering, but is determined by the way in which the series is organized; the editor of the whole series enlist a competent editor for each individual volume. Once the principal editor for a volume has been found, he or she then has a completely free hand in the choice of co-editors and contributors. The editors plan each volume independently of the others, being governed only by general formal principles. The series editor only intervene where questions of delineation between individual volumes are concerned. It is felt that this (modus operandi) is best suited to achieving the objectives of the series, namely to give a competent account of the present state of knowledge and of the perception of the problems in the area covered by each volume.
Seven chapters of the first volume of the Handbook of comparative and historical Indo-European linguistics are dedicated to Iranian linguistics:
  • Prods Oktor Skjærvø: “The documentation of Iranian”, 471–481.
  • Alberto Cantera: “The phonology of Iranian”, 481-503
  • Prods Oktor Skjærvø: “The morphology of Iranian”, 503-549
  • Thomas Jügel: “The syntax of Iranian”, 549-566
  • Velizar Sadovski: “The lexicon of Iranian”, 566-599
  • Philip Huyse: “The dialectology of Iranian”, 599-608
  • Agnes Korn: “The evolution of Iranian”, 608-624
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Articles

Royal Imagery on Kushan Coins

Vima Kadphises, gold dinar. © CNG Triton XII (6-1-2009), lot 421 (7.97g)
421 (7.97g)

Sinisi, Fabrizio. 2017. Royal Imagery on Kushan Coins: Local Tradition and Arsacid Influences. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 60(6). 818–927.

This article deals with the development of Kushan royal imagery as known from coins in the period between the 1st and the 3rd centuries AD, i.e. from the so-called Heraios series to the coins of Vasudeva. The aim is to challenge the traditional interpretative models which ascribed a crucial role to a Roman contribution, and to highlight instead first the role of the local numismatic tradition, which stretched back to the Graeco-Bactrians, and then the influx of patterns of royal imagery of western Iranian—namely Arsacid Parthian—origin, around the time when Vima Kadphises inaugurated a new imperial coinage.
Fabrizio Sinisi is a scholar of Iranian and numismatic studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), Vienna.
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Books

Manichaeism East and West

Detail of a Turfan Manichaen Illuminated Scroll; Turfan Antiquarian Bureau (Turfan, China), 81 TB 65:01 © Encyclopædia Iranica
Lieu, Samuel N. C. (ed.). 2017. Manichaeism east and west (Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum. Analecta Manichaica 1). Turnhout: Brepols.
This new volume brings the research on many aspects of the texts published in the Corpus up to date and signals new texts to appear in the Corpus. It includes important studies on the scientific dating of the Medinet Madi, codices as well as the newly discovered Manichaean texts in Chinese and Parthian from Xiapu in South China.
Table of Contents:
  • Dilâ Baran Tekin: “Mani and his teachings according to Islamic sources: An introductory study”
  • Jason Beduhn and Greg Hodgins: “The date of the Manichaean codices from Medinet Madi, and its significance”
  • Adam Benkato: “Incipits and Explicits in Iranian Manichaean texts”
  • Fernando Bermejo Rubio: “Violence and Myth: Some reflections on an aspect of the Manichaean Protology and Eschatology”
  • Iris Colditz: “On the names of ‘Donors’ in Middle Iranian Manichaean texts”
  • Jean-Daniel Dubois: “The Coptic Manichaean Psalm to Jesus (N° 245)”
  • Majella Franzmann: “The Elect Cosmic Body and Manichaeism as an exclusive religion”
  • Iain Gardner, Leyla Rasouli-Narimani: “Patīg and Pattikios in the Manichaean sources”
  • Matthew Goff: “Wild Cannibals or Repentant Sinners? The value of the Manichaean Book of Giants for understanding the Qumran Book of Giants”
  • Zsuzsanna Gulácsi: “Exploring the relic function of Mani’s Seal Stone in the Bibliothèque nationale de France”
  • Gábor Kósa: “Adamas of Light in the Cosmology Painting”
  • Claudia Leurini: “The Messiah in Iranian Manichaean Texts”
  • Samuel Lieu: “Manichaeism East and West”
  • Rea Matsangou: “Real and Imagined Manichaeans in Greek Patristic anti-Manichaica (4th-6th centuries)”
  • Enrico Morano: “Manichaean Sogdian poems”
  • Nils Arne Pedersen: “Observations on the Book of the Giants from Coptic and Syriac Sources”
  • Flavia Ruani. “John of Dara on Mani: Manichaean Interpretations of Genesis 2:17 in Syriac”
  • Jonathan Smith: “Persia, Sun, Fire, Execution, and Mercy: Jean Baudrillard’s postmodern reception of Charles Allberry’s A Manichaean Psalm-Book, Part II (1938)”
  • Christos Theodorou: “Heavenly Garment and Christology in Western Manichaean Sources”
  • Satoshi Toda: “Some Observations on Greek Words in Coptic Manichaean Texts”
  • Yutaka Yoshida: “Middle Iranian Terms in the Xiapu Chinese texts: Four aspects of the Father of Greatness in Parthian”
Categories
Articles

Descent and Inheritance in Zoroastrian and Shiʿite Law

A Zoroastrian family in Qajar Iran, circa 1910 © The National Geographic Magazine © The National Geographic Magazine

Macuch, Maria. 2017. Descent and inheritance in Zoroastrian and Shiʿite law: A preliminary study. Der Islam 94(2). 322–335.

The Twelver Shiʿite law of inheritance constitutes one of the most distinctive features of the legal system in comparison with Sunni law. Although there are major and even irreconcilable divergences between the Sunnite law of succession according to all four legal schools on the one hand and Twelver Shiʿite law on the other, no convincing explanations for this striking development within Islamic law itself, leading to two fundamentally distinct systems, have hitherto been put forward. The aim of this preliminary study is to call attention to several remarkable correspondences between the complex Iranian (Zoroastrian) law of succession, conceived to support the specific needs of aristocratic descent groups in the Sasanian period, and Twelver Shiʿite regulations, reflecting a very similar underlying concept of family ties and descent groups as a whole. The question is, whether these congruencies are purely coincidental or based on age-old social and traditional norms, which continued to be practised in the regions of the former Sasanian empire after the Islamic conquest. As Sasanian norms remained operative in customary law (now documented by Pahlavi legal documents from 8th century Tabarestān) during the formative period of Islamic law and the Sunnite regulations, being based to a large extent on pre-Islamic tribal law in Arabia, contrast sharply with the Shiʿite concept, it would be consistent to assume that certain precepts in the pre-Islamic Iranian system had an important impact on the development of the Twelver Shiʿite law of inheritance.
Categories
Articles

Ancient Iranian Terminologies of Armour and Textile

Gaspa, Salvatore, Cécile Michel & Marie-Louise Nosch (eds.). 2017. Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD. Lincoln, Nebraska: Zea Books.
This volume is the fruit of a longstanding collaboration in the field of textile terminologies. Since 2005, Cécile Michel and Marie-Louise Nosch have collaborated on numerous academic activities – joint teaching, lectures at conferences, experimental workshops, co-publishing and co-editing. The second conference on textile terminology was held in June 2014 at the University of Copenhagen. Around 50 experts from the fields of Ancient History, Indo-European Studies, Semitic Philology, Assyriology, Classical Archaeology, and Terminology from twelve different countries came together at the Centre for Textile Research, to discuss textile terminology, semantic fields of clothing and technology, loan words, and developments of textile terms in Antiquity.
Three contributions in this volume are related to Iranian Studies, all available for free to read, download and share:
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Books

Bridging Times and Spaces

Avetisyan, Pavel & Yervand Grekyan (eds.). 2017. Bridging times and spaces. Papers in ancient Near Eastern, Mediterranean and Armenian Studies. Honouring Gregory E. Areshian on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Bridging Times and Spaces is composed of papers written by colleagues of Professor Gregory E. Areshian on the occasion his 65th birthday reflecting the breadth and diversity of his scholarly contributions. The range of presented papers covers topics in Near Eastern, Mediterranean and Armenian archaeology, theory of interpretation in archaeology and art history, interdisciplinary history, historical linguistics, art history, and comparative mythology. The volume opens with an extensive interview given by Gregory Areshian, in which Gregory outlines the pathways of his academic career, archaeological discoveries, different intellectual quests, and the organic connections between research questions that he explored across different social sciences and the humanities, stressing the importance of periodizations in interdisciplinary history as well as his views on holism and interdisciplinary studies.

The table of contents is available here.  Five papers relate directly to Iranian Studies:

  • Touraj Daryaee: A Note on the ‘Great King of Armenia’
  • Michael Herles: Achaemenids and the Southern Caucasus
  • Ernst Stephan Kroll: Fortified Kura Arax Settlements in North-Western Iran
  • Daniel Potts: The Sale and Lease of Vineyards in Media Atropatene
  • David Stronach: Notes on the Representation of the Face of Cyrus the Great
Categories
Books

The History of the Argeads

Müllerm Sabine, Timothy Howe, Hugh Bowden & Robert Rollinger (eds.). 2017. The History of the Argeads. New Perspectives. (classica et orientalia 19), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

The Macedonian Argead Empire had an interesting and fascinating history already before its rise under its most famous rulers Philip II and his son Alexander III. Furthermore, the history of their predecessors provides a context for understanding their activities.
This volume, based on a conference on Argead Macedonia in 2015, offers an account of the place of Argead Macedonia in the wider ancient world from the sixth century BC to the second century AD and beyond. Argead Macedonia is explored in the context of its regal, structural, historical, courtly and military traditions. Its alliances and enmities, its political networks and environment are scrutinized – particularly in regard to Persia, but also to Greece. In order to look at Argead Macedonia from a wider angle, going beyond ancient literary topoi and views on Macedonia in isolation, the authors analyze in which ways the Argead monarchy was integrated into the wider Eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern world, influenced by it and having an impact upon it. The volume is divided into four sections. Different aspects such as Macedonia’s relationship with Achaemenid Persia, political and military matters, Argead coinage, dynastic profile and reception of the Argeads are examined.

The introduction and the table of contents are available here.

Categories
Articles

Trilingual Greek-Aramaic-Middle Persian Pharmaceutical Lexical List

Image from an 18th c. Syriac manuscript from Alqosh. Thomas touching the wounds of Jesus, with Simon Peter looking on. DFM 13, f. 60r. © hmmlorientalia

Müller-Kessler, Christa. 2017. A Trilingual Pharmaceutical Lexical List: Greek – Aramaic – Middle Persian. Le Muséon 130(1–2). 31–69.

This trilingual plant list in Greek, Aramaic, and Middle Persian (Pahlavi) is a late copy in the Aramaic square script from the Cairo Genizah of the ninth or tenth centuries with randomly applied Palestinian vocalisation (T-S K14.22). It is the second example of a trilingual lexical list, containing plant names after Barhebraeus’ plant list in the Menārath Kudhshē. The origin of the Vorlage speaks for Jundishapur as its place of completion, and Syriac used for the Aramaic glosses, since this fragment shows a number of Syriac calques, especially particles, which came in through the translation from one Aramaic dialect into another. This unique text source demonstrates again how closely interlinked Greek, Aramaic, and Middle Iranian were in Late Antiquity, despite the loss of most of the text material from this famous academy of medical studies. What this list makes also so valuable is the application of the grades of the plants’ effect that go back to Galen, as can be found in the remnant Syriac manuscript Mingana Syr. 661.
Christa Müller-Kessler is an scholar of Syriac and Aramaic Studies at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena.
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Articles

The Dynasty of Šahrwarāz in Egypt and Syria in the early 7th century

Sárközy, Miklós. 2017. “Šahrwarāz dinasztiája Szíriában és Egyiptomban a 7. század elején“, Világtörténet, 7. (39.) évfolyam, 2017. 2. 235-248.

The present paper discusses the foundation of the Syrian–Egyptian kingdom of Šahrwarāz. A well-known military leader of the Sasanian Empire who played a key-role in the Sasanian–Eastern Roman wars in the early decades of the 7th century AD, Šahrwarāz successfully conquered Syria and Egypt by 619 and became the military governor of these provinces. Being of obscure origin of the Northern Caucasus, Šahrwarāz started as a staunch supporter of Khusraw II but gradually distanced from his patron after some military failures and due to his own policy which soon resulted in a semi-independent Syrian-Egyptian kingdom ruled by Šahrwarāz by 626. His secret dealings with Eastern Roman forces in Syria soon led to his rising popularity in the eyes of emperor Heraclius who promised him the throne of Sasanian Iran. Eventually Šahrwarāz succeeded in usurping the Sasanian realm for a short period, therefore the vast resources at his disposal might have contributed to the spectacular downfall of the Sasanians.

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Books

Persian Interventions

Hyland, John. 2017. Persian interventions: The Achaemenid Empire, Athens, and Sparta, 450−386 BCE. Johns Hopkins University Press.

In Persian Interventions, John O. Hyland challenges earlier studies that assume Persia played Athens against Sparta in a defensive balancing act. He argues instead for a new interpretation of Persian imperialism, one involving long-term efforts to extend diplomatic and economic patronage over Greek clients beyond the northwestern frontier. Achaemenid kings, he asserts, were less interested in Ionia for its own sake than in the accumulation of influence over Athens, Sparta, or both, which allowed them to advertise Persia’s claim to universal power while limiting the necessity of direct military commitment. The slow pace of intervention resulted from logistical constraints and occasional diplomatic blunders, rather than long-term plans to balance and undermine dangerous allies.

John O. Hyland is an associate professor of history at Christopher Newport University.

The book is scheduled to be published in December 2017.