Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Month: June 2016

  • Forgotten religions in the Middle East

    We rarely introduce non academic books. The following volume, however, is too close to our interests to be ignored:

    Russell, Gerard. 2015. Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms. Simon & Schuster UK.

    Despite its reputation for religious intolerance, the Middle East has long sheltered many distinctive and strange faiths: one regards the Greek prophets as incarnations of God, another reveres Lucifer in the form of a peacock, and yet another believes that their followers are reincarnated beings who have existed in various forms for thousands of years. These religions represent the last vestiges of the magnificent civilizations in ancient history: Persia, Babylon, Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. Their followers have learned how to survive foreign attacks and the perils of assimilation. But today, with the Middle East in turmoil, they face greater challenges than ever before.
    For more on the book, see its website. William Dalrymple has reviewed it for the Guardian.

  • Sasanian fantastic creature Baškuč

    Matiashvili, Irma & Helen Giunashvili. 2016. Sasanian fantastic creature Baškuč (*Pasku(n)č) in Georgian Christian culture. In Dato Barbakadse & Jürgen Trinks (eds.),
    Chancen und Schwierigkeiten des interkulturellen Dialogs über ästhetische Fragen. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Entwicklungen in der Kaukasusregion (Transkulturelle Forschungen an den Österreich-Bibliotheken im Ausland 13), 145–158. LIT Verlag.

    Die Frage, ob und wie philosophische und kulturwissenschaftliche Reflexionen dazu geeignet sind, kulturelle Distanzen und die Möglichkeiten ihrer Überwindung zu klären, wird in diesem Band sowohl in grundsätzlich-philosophischen Überlegungen als auch anhand besonders aussagekräftiger Beispiele des jeweiligen Kulturkreises behandelt. Die ausgewählten Beiträge einer Tagung in Tbilisi mit TeilnehmerInnen aus Armenien, Georgien und Österreich zeugen davon, dass in der Kaukasusregion mit ihrer wechselvollen Geschichte, ihrer tief verwurzelten Volkskultur und nicht zuletzt den künstlerischen und politischen Konflikten im Streben nach einer spezifischen Moderne höchst komplexe Entwicklungen und Beziehungen zu beobachten sind. Analysen der Literatur, der bildenden Kunst, der Musik und des Films machen dies konkret.

  • Studies in honour of Stephanie Jamison

    Gunkel, Dieter, Joshua Katz, Brent Vine & Michael Weiss (eds.). 2016. Sahasram Ati Srajas. Indo-Iranian and Indo-European studies in honor of Stephanie W. Jamison. Beech Stave Press.

    The renowned Indologist and Indo-Europeanist Stephanie W. Jamison has now been honored with this extensive collection of essays by colleagues and students from around the world. The contributors represent a virtual who’s-who of Indo-Iranian and Indo-European scholarship and have produced contributions on everything from Vedic (e.g., Joel Brereton, George Cardona, Paul Kiparsky, Thomas Oberlies) to later Sanskrit (e.g. James Fitzgerald, Hans Henrich Hock, Ted Proferes) to Iranian (e.g. Mark Hale, P. Oktor Skjærvø) to other Indo-European languages (e.g. Dieter Gunkel, Martin Joachim Kümmel, Alan Nussbaum, Don Ringe, Michael Weiss). The volume also includes posthumously published articles by Lisi Oliver and Martin West. In all, these scholars have provided a worthy and rich tribute to a scholar whose own rich scholarship has been so vital to numerous subfields of linguistics, literary, religious, and cultural studies.

    A table of contents is available here.

  • Counsel for kings

    Marlow, Louise. 2016. Counsel for kings: Wisdom and politics in tenth-century Iran, vol. I & II (Edinburgh Studies in Classical Arabic Literature ). Edinburgh University Press.

    Volume I: The Nasihat al-muluk of pseudo-Mawardi: Contexts and themes.

    Volume II: The Nasihat al-muluk of pseudo-Mawardi: Texts, sources and authorities.

    For the table of contents, see above links.

    A textual and contextual study of an early Arabic mirror for princes

    Mirrors for princes form a substantial and important genre in many pre-modern literatures. Their ostensible purpose is to advise the king; at the same time they assert that the king, if he is truly virtuous, will appreciate being reminded of the contingency of his power. The unknown author of the Counsel for Kings studied in this book wrote in a distinctive early tenth-century Iranian environment. He deploys an abundant set of cultural materials representing ‘perennial wisdom’ of mixed provenances, which he reinvigorates by applying them to the circumstances of his own time and place.

    The first volume situates Counsel for Kings in its historical context. The second volume gives direct access to a substantial portion of the text through translation and commentary.

    Key features

    • Integrates the evidence of Counsel for Kings with established materials for the study of Samanid history

    • Demonstrates the interplay of mirrors for princes with other forms of literary expression, such as anthologies of adab, historiographical, theological, philosophical and homiletic writings, encyclopaedic works and poetry

    Louise Marlow is Professor of Religion and Program Director for Middle Eastern Studies and Wellesley College.

  • SOAS: Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion 2016

    Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mani.jpg

    The 2016 Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion will be delivered by Iain Gardner, University of Sydney.  The lectures are:

    1. Mani’s Background and Early Life: Who was He and What did He Think He was Doing?
    2. Mani’s Career as the ‘Apostle of Jesus Christ’: His Missions and the Community he Founded
    3. Mani’s Death: Inter-Religious Conflict in Early Sasanian Iran and the Memory of the Apostle

    For more information, see  Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion: SOAS.

  • Sasanian legal terminology in religious context

    Capital and Yield: Sasanian Legal Terminology in Religious Context

    A lecture by Arash Zeini on the occasion of a meeting of Corpus Avesticum (CoAv), a European network of scholars aiming to create new and accessible editions of the Zoroastrian sacred texts.

    Location: Institute of Iranian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

    Time: 16.06.2016, 18:00 – 20:00

    Arash Zeini (PhD 2014, SOAS), is a scholar of Ancient Iranian and Zoroastrian philology, history and culture. His main research interests include the study of ancient Iran, Zoroastrianism, particularly the late antique exegesis of the Avesta, and aspects of digital humanities.

  • Incense in the Zoroastrian Rituals

    A pilgrim lays offerings of candles and incense at the Zoroastrian mountain shrine at Chak Chak (Pir-e Sabz), during the annual pilgrimage, Yazd, Iran, 16th June 1994. Photo © Kaveh Kazemi
    A pilgrim lays offerings of candles and incense at the Zoroastrian mountain shrine at Chak Chak (Pir-e Sabz), during the annual pilgrimage, Yazd, Iran, 16th June 1994. Photo © Kaveh Kazemi

    Workshop: Trade Going Up in Smoke? Contact and Exchange in Incense Practices — The Southern Levant as Case Study

    Käte-Hamburger-Kolleg “Dynamics in the History of Religions Betwenn Asia and Europe”

    14-15 June 2016, Bochum, Germany

    Götz König (Berlin): “The Use of Incense in the Zoroastrian Rituals and its Eschatological Meaning”

    Rüdiger Schmitt (Münster): “Incense Practice in the Family and Household Religion of the Levant in the Iron Age”

    (more…)

  • A Dictionary: Christian Sogdian, Syriac and English

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2016. A Dictionary: Christian Sogdian, Syriac and English, Reichert Verlag.

    Many works of Syriac literature were translated into Sogdian, a Middle Iranian language originating in the region of Samarkand and widely spoken along the so-called “Silk Road”. This Christian Sogdian literature, which includes biblical, liturgical, ascetic and hagiographic texts, is chiefly known from a cache of manuscripts discovered in 1905 at the site of the ruined monastery of Bulayïq in the Turfan oasis. It is important for Syriac studies, since the Sogdian translations were often made on the basis of earlier recensions than those which survive in Syriac and since some texts are no longer extant in Syriac. It is no less important for Sogdian and Middle Iranian studies, since those texts whose Syriac originals can be identified provide a firm basis for the understanding of the Sogdian language; moreover, the material in Syriac script, with its elaborate system of vocalic points, is a unique source of information on the pronunciation of Sogdian.
    The present Dictionary is designed to be accessible both to Iranists, whether or not they know Syriac, and to Syriacists, whether or not they know Sogdian. It consists of two main sections followed by a comprehensive English index. Part 1, arranged by Sogdian lemmata, provides a complete listing of all words attested in published Christian Sogdian texts, both in Syriac and in Sogdian script, including variant spellings, full parsing of all inflected forms, and details of their equivalents in the most closely corresponding Syriac parallel text. In Part 2 the same material is arranged by Syriac lemmata. The two parts together make it possible to see what Syriac form or forms any Sogdian word can represent and how any Syriac word or idiom is translated into Sogdian. The dictionary thus fulfils a range of functions. Firstly, it will provide a reliable guide for anyone who wants to read the extant Christian Sogdian texts; secondly, it will assist future editors in identifying, restoring and translating Christian Sogdian texts; and thirdly, it will contribute to the study of the transmission of literature from Syriac into Sogdian and the techniques of the translators.

    For more information see the Table of Contents  and read the Preface of this volume.

    About the Author:

    Nicholas Sims-Williams, is an Emeritus Professor (2015) of Iranian Philology and Central Asian Studies and Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.