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Beiträge zur Iranistik und zum iranischen Manichäismus

Santos, Diego M. & Marcos Albino. 2024. Beiträge zur Iranistik und zum iranischen Manichäismus I (PHILOLOGIA – Sprachwissenschaftliche Forschungsergebnisse, 276). Hamburg: Dr. Kovač.

Dieser voraussichtlich erste Band eines gemeinsamen, den iranischen Sprachen und dem iranischen Manichäismus gewidmeten Werkes enthält drei Kapitel, von denen jeder eine selbstständige Untersuchung darstellt.

In “Manichäisch Parthisch zād-murd ‘geboren werden (und) sterben’” wird versucht nachzuweisen, dass zād-murd ein kopulatives Kompositum aus zwei kurzen Infinitiven und eine Lehnprägung nach Gandhari *jadimarana– (~ buddh. Sanskrit jātimaraṇa-) ‘Geburt und Tod; Saṃsāra’ ist.

In “Parthisch zan(a)g ‘Art, Gattung’” wird vorgeschlagen, dass zan(a)g eine dekompositionelle Bildung vom Kompositum wispzan(a)g ‘aller Arten’ ist.

In “Mittelpersisch wāz ud wāg ‘Sprache und Rede’” wird die Phrase wāz ud āwāg, welche in zwei Fragmenten des Šābuhragān bezeugt ist, als Übersetzung einer Phrase in Genesis 11.1 erklärt. Dazu wird eine etymologische Erklärung von āwāg entworfen.

Alle drei Kapitel enthalten darüber hinaus Beobachtungen zu mehreren mitteliranischen Texten und Wörtern.

To see ToC, select pages, and index click here.

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Histoires perses

Lenfant, Dominique. 2025. Dinon de Colophon, Héraclide de Kymè : Histoire perses (Fragments édités, traduits et commentés par Dominique Lenfant, nouvelle édition revue et augmentée). Paris, Les Belles Lettres.

Dès le lendemain des guerres médiques, des Grecs d’Asie Mineure composèrent des Persica. Loin de se limiter aux conflits gréco-perses, ces Histoires perses étaient consacrées au passé et aux coutumes de l’empire perse. Chaque génération ambitionna ensuite de renouveler le genre. Un demi-siècle après Ctésias, Dinon de Colophon et Héraclide de Kymè poursuivent ainsi la tradition. Tout en cultivant les anecdotes piquantes et les histoires d’intrigues, ils décrivent l’univers du Grand Roi – de ses prérogatives et du luxe qui l’entoure aux subtiles hiérarchies qui organisent sa cour. Sans se contenter des habituels clichés sur les « barbares » ou les vaincus des guerres médiques, ils dévoilent un pan méconnu de la vision grecque des Perses.

Leur témoignage est cependant biaisé tant par leur point de vue grec et leurs objectifs littéraires que par la transmission fragmentaire de leurs textes. Il requiert de ce fait une approche spécifique. Le présent ouvrage donne ici, dans une nouvelle édition revue et augmentée, avec le texte et la traduction de leurs fragments, un commentaire qui prend en compte leur mode de transmission et qui les confronte à l’ensemble des sources, grecques et non grecques, textuelles et iconographiques. Il permet d’apprécier les apports de ces sources à l’histoire de l’empire perse et propose un aperçu général du genre des Persica, livrant de précieux aperçus sur les rapports de la culture grecque avec le monde perse.

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Brill’s Companion to the Campaigns of Philip II and Alexander the Great

Anson, Edward M. (ed.). Brill’s Companion to the Campaigns of Philip II and Alexander the Great (Brill’s Companions to Classical Studies, 10). Leiden: Brill.

This Companion whose contributions come from an outstanding array of experts deals exclusively with the military campaigns of Philip II and his son Alexander the Great and the forces that fought in them. In addition to discussions of the strategy and tactics of the two commanders, the Companion examines those elements that went into the determination of these strategies and tactics. Chapters will be devoted to the logistics of these campaigns, military recruitment and training, the care of diseased and injured soldiers, military organization and equipment, and much more. While no study can ever be truly complete, this Companion comes far closer that any such previous attempt.

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Xerxes against Hellas

Funke, Peter, György Németh, András Patay-Horváth & Josef Wiesehöfer (eds.). Xerxes against Hellas: An Iconic Conflict from Different Perspectives (Oriens et Occidens 44). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

It is almost exactly 2500 years ago that the decisive clashes of the Persian Wars at Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataia took place. These battles were attributed world-historical significance in antiquity and, even more so, in the centuries that followed. Yet, the details of what happened, as well as their military-political and cultural impact and detailed evaluation, have been the subject of much controversial research, not least because of the difficult nature of the sources. The present volume is the outcome of a conference held in Budapest which celebrated the anniversary of Xerxes’ expedition against Hellas by discussing old and new questions related to the war and the history of its reception. It was jointly organised by the editors of the volume and attracted speakers from around the globe.

The volume brings together scholars of all branches of classical studies and related disciplines and is organised in two sections: (i) Graeco-Persian Wars, Diplomacy and Acculturation, (ii) Commemorating and remembering the war from antiquity to the present. 19 contributors from 10 different countries provide a good overview of ongoing studies in the field.

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Journal

Dabir (vol. 11)

Volume 11 of Dabir (2024) is now available both online and in print, featuring two issues:

Table of Contents:

  • David Gilinsky: A Newly Discovered Jewish Persian Poet
  • Mateusz M.P. Kłagisz: A Supplementary Contribution to Research on Turkish Köse, Iranian Kuse and Their Slavic Zoomorphic Counterparts
  • Esmaeil Matloubkari: wkl or hwkd: Reading the Legitimizing Title on the Sasanian King Walāsh Coin
  • Yusef Saadat: nihang and āhang: Two Administrative Terms in Middle Persian and Bactrian
  • Hossein Sheikh: One Hundred Thousand Greetings! The Opening Section of Early Judeo-Persian Letters
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Ash-Sharq

The two issues of volume 8 of Ash-Sharq are published and contain several interesting contributions. Below are listed the articles that deal with Iranian studies:

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The Capture of Jerusalem

Anthony, Sean W. & Stephen J. Shoemaker. 2024. The capture of Jerusalem by the Persians in 614 CE by Strategius of Mar Saba (Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Near East 5). Chicago: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures.

In 614 CE, the armies of Sasanid Persia shocked the Eastern Roman Empire when they besieged and captured Jerusalem, taking a large swath of its population into captivity along with the city’s patriarch and the famed relic of the True Cross. This astounding Persian victory over Christian Jerusalem was a key episode in the last war between Rome and Persia in 602–628 CE and occurred at the high tide of Persian advances into the Roman territories in Asia Minor, the Levant, and Egypt. Among those taken captive was a certain Strategius, a monk of Mar Saba, who subsequently took it upon himself to compose a homily recounting the events leading up to the Persian siege of the Holy City and its aftermath.

Strategius presents his pious and harrowing account as that of an eyewitness to many of the events he recounts. For events he did not himself witness, he purports to rely on contemporary informants who did, making his treatise a source with few parallels in late antiquity. Although Strategius’s original account in Greek is lost, it survives via later translations into Georgian and Christian Arabic, two languages that attained prominence in the monasteries of Palestine during the Islamic period. This volume provides, for the first time, a complete side-by-side English translation of both the Georgian and the Arabic recensions.

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Journal

Iran and the Caucasus 28 (4-5)

The issues 4-5 of volume 28 of Iran and the Caucasus are published and contain several interesting contributions. Below are listed the articles that deal with Iranian studies:

  • Marco Ferrario: Restricted Access Expanders of the Realm. Sacred Kingship and Empire in Early Achaemenid Central Asia
  • Matthias Weinreich: Restricted Access Out of the Mouth of Babes … (Ps. 8:2). Children as Mediums in Pahlavi Literature
  • Mariam Gvelesiani: Georgia and Sasanian Iran. Some Aspects of Royal Imagery in Early Christian Georgian Art and Literary Tradition
  • Saloumeh Gholami and Mehraban Pouladi: Linguistic Insights from a Bilingual Letter: The Malati Dialect of Zoroastrian Dari in Yazd Part I. Transcription, Translation, and Linguistic Structure

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Recent Studies on Persian-Greek Relations

Kühne, Sebastian. 2024. Kommunikation, Konsens und Konflikt: neuere Untersuchungen zu den persisch-griechischen Beziehungen (Oriens et occidens 43). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

Sebastian Kühne addresses selected aspects of the political interactions between the Greek city-states of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE and the Achaemenid Empire. He examines the relationships that developed between these two powers from a consistently Persian perspective. The study focuses on the mechanisms of diplomatic exchange between the Greek poleis and the Persian Great Kings and, building on this, the outcomes of these political interactions, which have gone down in history as the “King’s Peace” and the “Peace of Pelopidas.” Finally, the analysis highlights the tools available to the Achaemenid rulers to assert their interests vis-à-vis the Greek city-states. Through his analysis, the author revises older scholarly views that have dominated previous studies on Greek-Persian agreements and military conflicts, bringing to light new aspects regarding the diplomatic exchanges between Greece and the Achaemenid Empire.

For the table of contents see here.

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New Voices in Iranian Archaeology

Alizadeh, Karim & Megan Cifarelli (eds.). 2024. New voices in Iranian archaeology. Barnsley: Oxbow Books.

This volume highlights the excellent, wide-ranging work of a diverse collection of Iranian archaeologists, the new voices in Iranian archaeology. Archaeology in Iran has developed in lockstep with the discipline of archaeology itself, in part due to the colonial endeavors that provided impetus for Europeans to travel to distant lands and extract antiquities and other commodities. But centuries before western archaeologists broke ground on excavations in the lands that would in 1935 be called Iran, a deep and meaningful engagement with and reverence for the past was a thread running through Iranian culture since antiquity. For millennia, the residents and rulers of ancient Iranian lands have admired, interacted with, inscribed, invented stories about, and imitated the visible, often ruined, monuments of their ancestors that dotted the landscape

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