Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • Fake Prostration in Late Antique Literature and the Ambiguities of Domination

    Nabel, Jake. 2026. Fake Prostration in Late Antique Literature and the Ambiguities of Domination. Studies in Late Antiquity 10 (3). 265-293.

    Ancient Greek literature transmits two episodes in which a petitioner before a king performs a fake act of prostration. The deceiver creates the appearance of a submissive bow, but he actually executes a dierent gesture unrelated to court protocol—or so he tells himself. A parallel tradition in late antique Jewish literature deploys the same motif: A persecutorial ruler urges a Jewish martyr to perform a fake bow in order to create the illusion of idol worship. Jointly considering these three cases for the first time, this article interprets the collective fake bowing tradition as a late antique meditation on the the atrics of royal power and their ability to coopt resistance. This reading is guided by Lisa Wedeen’s Ambiguities of Domination, which advances a theory of how autocratic regimes employ public ceremonies as instruments of social control. Wedeen argues that author itarians stage spectacles that are widely regarded as preposterous nonsense by their producers and consumers, but that nevertheless prove eective disciplinary mechanisms by inculcating habits of submission. It is of no avail to privately dissent from the mean ing of such ceremonials, as their power comes from the choreography of compliance, not the manufacture of belief. Applied to the fake prostration scenes of late antique literature, Wedeen’s theory enjoins a critical view of the fake bow as a form of resistance to impe rial domination.



  • Elephantine in Its Persian Imperial and Administrative Context

    Elephantine in Its Persian Imperial and Administrative Context

    Moore, James D. 2026. Aspects of Judean Life. Elephantine in Its Persian Imperial and Administrative Context. Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns.

    Aspects of Judean Life focuses on Elephantine during the fifth century BCE, developing a comprehensive model of Achaemenid Persian imperial governance in Egypt and situating the Judean colony within that framework. It reconsiders the colony at Elephantine not as a band of foreign mercenaries living private lives but as colonial state dependents embedded within Achaemenid systems of land-for-service taxation and imperial administration. Far from isolated, the Judeans emerge as active participants in—and beneficiaries of—the structures of empire.

  • Bulletin of the Asia Institute 32

    Volume 32 (2024-2025) of the Bulletin of the Asia Institute (New Series) has been published.

    Table of contents:

    • Robert Rollinger and Josef Wiesehöfer: Designating the King in the Womb of His Mother: From Assyrian through Sasanian Times
    • M. Rahim Shayegan: Rethinking the Achaemenid World Order: Space, Religion, and Communicative Strategies
    • Fabrizio Sinisi: On the Early History of the Image of Mithra in the Indo-Iranian Borderlands
    • Anca Dan and Frantz Grenet: The Triumph of Dionysus and Heracles on a Gold Tray from Datong (Pingcheng, Capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty, 398–494 CE)
    • Samra Azarnouche: The “Ḵosrow Cup”: Looking anew into the Persian Grail
    • Frantz Grenet: Two Newly Identified Šāhnāme Stories in Panjakent Paintings
    • Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani: Iranian Rock Crystal
  • Studies on the maritime, economic, and military history of antiquity

    Studies on the maritime, economic, and military history of antiquity

    Reinard, Patrick, Christian Rollinger, Pascal Warnking, Julian Degen & Mateo González Vázquez (eds.). 2026. Kybernetes. Studien zur Seefahrts-, Wirtschafts- und Militärgeschichte der Antike. Festschrift für Christoph Schäfer zum 65. Geburtstag (Muziris 6). Münster: Zaphon.

    Among other interesting contributions, the following articles may interest the readers of Bibliographia Iranica:

    • Julian Degen: Some Notes on Ship Types and Maritime Mobility in Strabo’s Geography and the Periploi
    • Clemens Steinwender: Überlegungen zur Bedeutung der Schifffahrt im sasanidischen Imperium
    • Robert Rollinger: The Aegean Worlds and the Achaemenid-Persian Empire: Imperial Borderlands and the ‘Persian Wars’

  • Contextualizing Imperial Borderlands

    Contextualizing Imperial Borderlands

    Rollinger, Robert & Degen, Julian (eds.). 2026. Contextualizing Imperial Borderlands. 9th Century BCE – 9th Century CE and Beyond (Afro-Eurasian Transformations ‒ Ancient Worlds and Beyond 1). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

    The first volume of the new series Afro-Eurasian Transformations ‒ Ancient Worlds and Beyond comprises a collection of papers whose overarching topic pertains to the study of territories situated beyond direct imperial control. Nonetheless, more subtle and elusive traces of imperial impact can be detected in this geographical area.

    The purpose of this collection is to introduce this expanse as “imperial borderlands”. In addition, it includes a variety of contributions from experts in selected fields. With its broad temporal and geographical scope, ranging from the 1st millennium BC to the end of antiquity and beyond, covering the Afro-Eurasia worlds, the volume presents the first concentrated study on the phenomenon of imperial borderlands.

  • Governance in Bactrian Documents

    Governance in Bactrian Documents

    Huseini, Said Reza. 2026. Local government reflected in Bactrian documents. Afghanistan 9(1). 85–103.

    Drawing on an analysis of Bactrian documents produced between the early fourth and the late eighth century, the article shows that local government was the foundation of political structure in Bactria. By focusing on three areas of Guzgan, Rob and Kadagstan, the article demonstrates that these areas had their own rulers who managed them through local administration staffed by local people, who handled social, economic, political and military issues. The authority of these rulers was limited to their areas, and none of them could interfere in other areas. Local government was the most effective way to manage Bactria’s diverse geography and its multicultural populations. It persisted even after Bactria became part of the Persian, Huns, Turks, and Arab Muslim empires’ political systems. It was a model of governance well adapted region’s diverse population and proved far more stable and long-lived than the unitary governments of modern Afghanistan that provoked regional opposition and regularly collapsed.

    Abstract
  • The Pahlavi Codex MK

    The Pahlavi Codex MK

    Hintze, Almut & JamaspAsa, Kaikhusroo Minocher. 2026. The Pahlavi codex MK: Facsimile edition (Iranica 36). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

    The manuscript MK of the family collection of Dastur Dr Kaikhusroo M. JamaspAsa, is the oldest extant Pahlavi codex. Written in 1322 by the Zoroastrian priest and scribe Mihraban Kayhusraw, it offers 38 texts, most of which form part of the genre of Andarz, or Wisdom, literature, while others, such as the Book of Deeds of King Ardashir, the founder of the Sasanian royal dynasty, belong to Middle Persian court literature.
    This volume, edited by Kaikhusroo M. JamaspAsa and Almut Hintze, offers an Introduction with a detailed description of the physical condition of the manuscript and a survey of its contents. The main part consists of facsimiles of the entire manuscript, with headings and marginal notes identifying individual texts and paragraphs. The book concludes with an index of texts and a bibliography.

    The table of contents is here.

  • Sogdian Christians

    Sogdian Christians

    Sheridan, Daniel . 2026. Sogdian Christians. Networks, books, homilies, and medicine. Turnhout: Brepols.

    After centuries of obscurity, the Sogdian people have once again been recognized as the premier long-distance traders of the famed Eurasian trade routes of late antique and early medieval Eurasia, popularly referred to as the “Silk Roads.” Similarily, a previous Christian association with Sogdians and their language had also been all but forgotten until the archeological finds at the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, this study explores some of the results of Sogdian Christians having once moved within a confluence of networks, with connections to the wider Christian world and the transcontinental trading networks of the Sogdians. Furthermore, extant evidence shows the once wide-spread currency of the Sogdian language among Christians throughout Central Asia. Through the case studies of book culture, knowledge transmission, and the healing arts, the prominence of the “Sogdian element” in Christian activities outside of the Roman world becomes readily apparent not just for the history of Christianity but also the histories of Central Asia, China, and others.


  • Technological Traditions in Late Antiquity Dashtestan Ceramics

    Naderi, Sona and Zohreh Zehbari. 2026. Technological traditions in Late Antiquity Dashtestan ceramics: A multiscale analytical approach. Primitive Tider (Special Issue 2026: Espens Festskrift): 147-162.

    This paper presents a multiscale analysis of ceramic technology from the Dashtestan region of southern Iran, focusing on the Late Antique period (approximately 3rd–9th centuries CE). Rather than treating pottery types as fixed cultural markers, the study investigates the organization, transmission, and evolution of ceramic production practices across the period and the regional landscape. The analysis begins by defining technological traits using a standardized set of macroscopic characteristics of pottery sherds. These variables act as proxies for underlying technological choices and ceramic recipes. By combining multivariate similarity analysis (Gower Distance), lowdimensional visualization (UMAP), and community detection (Leiden Clustering), the research identifies nine discrete technological groups of production practices operating within the larger ceramic landscape in the region. Chronological and locational overlays reveal temporal drift and spatial participation within these traditions. This suggests that technological changes were gradual and embedded in regional interaction networks, rather than occurring through breaks or isolated workshop traditions. The results suggest a regionally connected ceramic production system, in which recipes and techniques were shared across many sites.

  • Reassembling knowledge

    Benfey, Thomas. 2026. Reassembling knowledge: Science, medicine, and philosophy in Sasanian and early Islamic Iraq and Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    The scholars of the Sasanian empire—the last antique superpower whose extensive territories encompassed much of Mesopotamia, the Iranian plateau, and the Caucasus—played a pivotal role in world intellectual history. They developed a distinctive synthesis of Indian and Greco-Roman learning, which would have a formative impact on Islamic civilization in the wake of the empire’s fall to Arab armies in the 7th century CE. Drawing on a wide range of texts in languages including Arabic, Middle Persian, Syriac, Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, Thomas Benfey closely examines these scholars, their contributions, and the shifting contexts in which they lived and worked. From the court of the sixth-century King of Kings Khusrō I to early Abbasid Baghdad, this book explores key developments in philosophy, medicine, and astral science and the institutional and historical contexts in which they took place. Benfey highlights the distinctive features of this decisive era, tracing intellectual continuity and change into the early Islamic period.

    Book description