Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Month: June 2023

  • The Persian Empire, the Greeks and Politics

    Tourraix, Alexandre. 2022. L’empire perse, les Grecs et le politique. Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté.

    L’empire perse achéménide fascine les Grecs, qui le perçoivent de façon très déformée, et qui comprennent mal son fonctionnement. Au ve siècle avant J.-C, son observation alimente leur réflexion politique, parallèlement à la stasis, terme par lequel ils désignent les conflits internes de leurs cités. Dans ce double exercice, Hérodote, les Tragiques et les Sophistes pensent le politique, et ils préparent la naissance de la théorie politique au siècle suivant. Le débat sur la meilleure constitution en procède : Hérodote le projette sur les conjurés perses de 522 (III, 80-82). La crise qui éclate cette année-là dans l’empire perse tient à ce que la succession de Cyrus, mort en 530 avant J.-C., n’était pas réglée, bien qu’il ait désigné son fils Cambyse pour lui succéder. Ce dernier a probablement compromis lui-même ce processus, en faisant éliminer son frère Bardiya, en dévoyant à cette fin le rituel originellement babylonien du substitut royal, ignoré des Grecs en tant que tel, mais transformé par eux de façon totalement inconsciente sur le mode du dédoublement et de la ressemblance. L’instrument de cette machination, le mage Gaumāta, était devenu Bardiya, en vertu même du rituel, et il a prétendu régner à la place de Cambyse avant même sa mort, survenue selon toute apparence de façon accidentelle. Darius, probable cousin de Cambyse, a renversé le mage avec 6 conjurés, pour régner à son tour, en prétendant restaurer la légitimité dynastique. Le débat constitutionnel qui précède son avènement chez Hérodote est fondé sur une arithmétique élémentaire opposant constamment le petit nombre, réduit jusqu’au chiffre un, un effectif un peu plus important, mais qui demeure restreint, et le grand nombre. Cette distinction se retrouve entre la monarchie, pouvoir d’un seul, l’oligarchie, pouvoir d’une minorité, et la démocratie, pouvoir du grand nombre. Les Grecs l’appliquent au champ du politique, alors que le monde indien répartissait les fonctions duméziliennes selon le même critère. L’historiographie grecque des rois mèdes et perses est fondée sur une typologie d’inspiration tout aussi tri-fonctionnelle, qui réserve à chacun d’entre eux un rôle : roi fondateur et organisateur, roi guerrier, souverain lié à la Troisième Fonction. Cette typologie n’est pas un carcan rigide, et elle s’adapte à chacun des règnes, et à chacun des monarques.

  • Social History of Zoroastrians of Yazd

    Tašakorī, ʿAlī-ʾAkbar. 2020. tārīḫ-e ejtemāʿī-ye zartoštīyān-e yazd [Social History of Zoroastrians of Yazd]. 3 vols. Irvine: Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture at the University of California.

    Ali Akbar Tashakori’s three-volume Social History of Zoroastrians of Yazd (in Persian) deals with the social history of the Yazdi Zoroastrians from the medieval to modern times. While the focus is primarily on the Yazdi community, the work also covers the wider history of Iranian Zoroastrians. The book examines the challenges faced by Zoroastrians in the medieval and early modern periods, as well as the beginning of the nineteenth century social and intellectual empowerment among Iranian Zoroastrians supported by the Parsis of India. It also highlights the growing political and economic influence of the community in the late Qajar and early Pahlavi era, as well as the remarkable role of the Pahlavis in elevating the status of Zoroastrians within Iranian society as a whole.

    The first volume covers the lives of Zoroastrians of Yazd starting with the arrival of Islam in Iran, in 641 AD, until the formation of the Anǧoman-e Nāṣerī of Yazd in 1892 AD. This book discusses the treatment of Zoroastrians under the new Muslim rulers who regarded them as monotheists and “people-of-the-book”. It highlights two massive internal migrations to the Yazd region elevating its status as the center of Zoroastrianism. It also focuses on the formation of Anǧoman-e Akāber-Ṣāheb by Parsis and their efforts to abolish the Jazzieh tax and improve Zoroastrians’ lives. 

    The second volume covers the formation of Anǧoman-e Nāṣerī by Keykhosro Khān-Ṣāheb in 1892 AD until the beginning of Pahlavi dynasty in 1924 AD.

    This third volume covers the period that starts with the rise of Reza Shah and the formation of a secular government, which relied heavily on the pre-Islamic image of Iran, something which had a direct influence on promoting the social status of Zoroastrians. This volume focuses on the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah and the modernization of Iran, two elements with a profound influence on the lives of Zoroastrians of the Yazd region.

  • A Historiography of Persian Art: Past, Present and Future

    A special issue of the Journal of Art Historiography: A Historiography of Persian Art: Past, Present and Future, No. 28, June 2023, guest edited by Yuka Kadoi and András Barati.

    Table of Contents

    • Yuka Kadoi: ‘A Twenty-Year Retrospect on ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art’: Polarising Islamic art, consolidating Persian art’
    • Nile Green: ‘The rekhta of architecture: the development of ‘Islamic’ art history in Urdu, c.1800-1950’
    • Ebba Koch: ‘Discovering Mughal painting in Vienna by Josef Strzygowski and his circle: the historiography of the Millionenzimmer’
    • Henry P. Colburn: ‘A brief historiography of Parthian art, from Winckelmann to Rostovtzeff’
    • Iván Szántó: ‘West-östlich diplomacy and connoisseurship in the late Habsburg Empire: Baron Albert Eperjesy and his dispersed collection of Persian art’ 
    • Kassiani Kagouridi: ‘Musealisation and ethno-cultural stereotypes in Persian art: the case of Baluch carpets ca. 1870s – 1930s’ 
    • Tomasz Grusiecki (Boise State University), ‘Rethinking the so-called Polish carpets’
    • Dorothy Armstrong: ‘Persophilia and technocracy: carpets in the World of Islam Festival, 1976’
    • Jaimee K. Comstock-Skipp: ‘The ‘Iran’ Curtain: the historiography of Abu’l-Khairid (Shaybanid) arts of the book and the ‘Bukhara School’ during the Cold War’
    • Robert Hillenbrand: ‘Eric Schroeder: maverick polymath’
    • Andrea Luigi Corsi: ‘A matter of timing: the modern history of a ‘Sasanian’ silver plate from Rashy’
    • Johannes L. Kurz: ‘Dashi 大食 reconsidered’ 
    • Jens Kröger: ‘Kurt Erdmann (1901-1964)’
    • Jens Kröger: ‘Carl Johan Lamm (1902-1981)’
    • Joachim Gierlichs: ‘Ernst Cohn-Wiener (1882-1941) and his contribution on Islamic Art and Architecture in Central Asia’ 

  • Servant or Slave

    Sheikh, Hossein. 2023. Servant or slave: The Old Persian words Bandaka, Marika and Daha and their cognates in Middle Iranian languages. In: Jeannine Bischoff, Stephan Conermann and Marion Gymnich (eds.), Naming, defining, phrasing strong asymmetrical dependencies: A textual approach, 55-67. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.

    In this paper, I will briefly examine the concept of superiority/inferiority in the Achaemenid administrative system in particular and in the ancient Iranian world in general. In doing so, I will focus on the word bandaka, its meanings and its nuance in Iranian languages in the context of ancient Near Eastern culture, as this word plays a very important role in the definition of terminology related to slavery and associated terms in the Iranian world. In addition, I will discuss two additional words related to this topic that shed more light on the concept of superiority/inferiority in Ancient Iranian societies. Our main sources for this study are inscriptions, letters and contracts from a variety of Western and Central Asian cultures. In this study, I chose three Middle Iranian languages, Sogdian, Pahlavi, and Bactrian, because the geography in which these languages were spoken was a part of the Achaemenid Empire.

  • Studia Iranica, vol. 50

    Volume 50 of Studia Iranica (2021) is out in two issues. For a table of contents of individual issues, see below.

    Volume 50, issue 1:

    • Michał MARCIAK, Robert S. WÓJCIKOWSKI, Daniele MORANDI BONACOSSI & Marcin SOBIECH: The Battle of Gaugamela in the Navkur Plain in the Context of the Madedonian and Persian Art of Warfare
    • Meysam LABBAF-KHANIKI: The Sasanian Stuccoes of Notheastern Iran Khorasanian Imagery in Late Antiquity
    • Rika GYSELEN, Samra AZARNOUCHE & Mohammad-Ali AMIR-MOEZZI: Une ‘traduction’ moyen-perse du verset du Coran 5:8 sur un poids d’époque omeyyade
    • Maryam NOURZAEI & Thomas JÜGEL: The Distribution and Function of Person-Marking Clitics in Balochi Dialects from an Areal Perspective
    • Compte rendu
    (more…)

  • Luxury and Power

    Fraser, James, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones & Henry Bishop-Wright. 2023. Luxury and power: Persia to Greece. London: British Museum Press.

    Luxurious objects are celebrated for their exoticism, rarity and style, but also disparaged as indulgent, extravagant and corrupt. The ancient origins of these attitudes emerged at the boundary between the imperial Persian and democratic Athenian Greek worlds.

    Luxury was at the centre of the royal Persian court and behaviours of ostentatious display rippled through the imperial provinces, whose elite classes emulated luxury objects in lesser materials. But luxury is contrastingly depicted through Athenian eyes – within the philosophical context of early democratic codes and the historical context of the Greco-Persian Wars, which suddenly and spectacularly brought eastern luxuries into the imagination of the Athenian populace for the first time. While Athenian writers rejected luxury as eastern, despotic and corrupt, the elite adopted Persian luxuries in imaginative ways to signal status, distinction and prestige.

    Under the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great and its subsequent kingdoms, royal Achaemenid luxury culture would be adopted and displayed by the Macedonian and local elite across the Greek and Middle Eastern worlds: behaviours of ostentatious display were a means to seek advantage in the new Hellenistic world order.

    Ultimately, this publication demonstrates how competing political spins woven around 2,500 years ago still continue to shape the modern perceptions of luxury today.

  • Iranica Antiqua, Volume 57

    The table of contents of the latest issue (57) of the journal Iranica Antiqua:

    • Kathryn KELLEY, Logan BORN, M. Willis MONROE, Anoop SARKAR: On Newly Proposed Proto-Elamite Sign Values
    • Mohammad BAHRAMI: The Evidence of a Castle of the Ellipi Kingdom in Khorramabad, Western Iran
    • Esmail HEMATI AZANDARYANI, Hossein NASERI SOMEEH, Mehrdad MALEKZADEH, Hossein TORABZADEH, Michael ROAF: Haji Khan. A Median Temple in Hamadan Province, Iran
    • Anahit Yu. KHUDAVERDYAN, Seda H. DEVEJYAN, Ruben H. DAVTYAN, Azat A. YENGIBARYAN, Arshak A. HOVHANESYAN, Shota A. VARDANYAN: Disability and Murder. A Paleopathological Case of Ankylosing Spondylitis in a Woman from the 7th-6th Century BC Lori Berd Burial (Armenia) with Skeletal Evidence of Probable Fatal Blade Injuries
    • Amir SAED MUCHESHI, Mohammad E. ELIASVAND, Shoaib FAIZI, Amir ESNA-ASHARI, Shreya SARMAH, Mojgan SEIF PANAHI, Ali BEHNIA: Qaleh Qamchoqay. An Archaeological Investigation into a Defensive Castle in the Province of Kurdistan, Iran
    • Mahnaz SHARIFI: Second Season of Excavation at Cham Routeh in Seimare, Ilam Province, Iran
    • Mozhgan JAYEZ: What has been done and what has to be done? Statistical Assessment of Iranian Paleolithic Research 1906-2021

  • The Cambyses Logos

    Schwab, Andreas & Alexander Schütze (eds.). 2023. Herodotean Soundings: The Cambyses Logos. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.

    This volume is dedicated to the logos of Cambyses at the beginning of Book 3 in Herodotus’ Histories, one of the few sources on the Persian conquest of Egypt that has not yet been exhaustively explored in its complexity. The contributions of this volume deal with the motivations and narrative strategies behind Herodotus’ characterization of the Persian king but also with the geopolitical background of Cambyses’ conquest of Egypt as well as the reception of the Cambyses logos by later ancient authors. “Herodotean Soundings: The Cambyses Logos” exemplifies how a multidisciplinary approach can contribute significantly to a better understanding of a complex work such as Herodotus’ Histories.

  • Equine Rations of Bread and Wine at Persepolis

    Potts, Daniel. 2023. ‘Pain et vin:’ Equine Rations of Bread and Wine at Persepolis in their Broader Historical Context. Cheiron 3/1: 25-47.

    In the early fifth century BC rations of bread and wine were issued to small numbers of horses at Persepolis, the Achaemenid Persian capital located in what is today the southwest Iranian province of Fars. Although considered puzzling by many students of ancient Persian history, ample evidence exists in the historical and equine veterinary literature of mediaeval through early twentieth century date attesting to the widespread practice of giving bread and wine to horses for both nutritional and therapeutic reasons. This evidence is reviewed in order to contextualize the Persepolis evidence within the broader framework of equine management across space and time.

  • The Remaking of the Silk Road

    Wen, Xin. 2023. The king’s road: Diplomacy and the remaking of the Silk Road. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    The King’s Road offers a new interpretation of the history of the Silk Road, emphasizing its importance as a diplomatic route, rather than a commercial one. Tracing the arduous journeys of diplomatic envoys, Xin Wen presents a rich social history of long-distance travel that played out in deserts, post stations, palaces, and polo fields. The book tells the story of the everyday lives of diplomatic travelers on the Silk Road—what they ate and drank, the gifts they carried, and the animals that accompanied them—and how they navigated a complex web of geographic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. It also describes the risks and dangers envoys faced along the way—from financial catastrophe to robbery and murder.
    …
    In shifting the narrative of the Silk Road from the transport of commodities to the exchange of diplomatic gifts and personnel, The King’s Road puts the history of Eastern Eurasia in a new light.

    From the website