Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • Studia Persica 23

    Studia Persica 23

    Afshin-Vafaie, Mohammad & Pejman Firoozbakhsh (eds.). 2024. Studia Persica in memory of Dr. Mahmoud Afshar Yazdi, volume 23. Tehran: Dr. Mahmoud Afshar Endowment Foundation.

    The volume contains several interesting papers on different aspects of Iranian Studies. Here is the table of contents:

    • S. ALIYARI BABOLGHANI: Old Persian <θ> /θ₁, θ₂/: Phonetic Value(s) and Phonological Development(s) into Middle Persian
    • D. DURAND-GUÉDY: The State of the Rum Saljuqs as Reflected in the Honorific Titles (alqāb) of its Servants: Edition and Commentary of the khiṭāb Section of Ms. Marʿashī 11136 (Qiṣṣa-yi salāṭīn)
    • A. A. KHOSRAVI: Pahlavi Inscriptions in the Name of Yazdgird III on Silk Textiles Found in China
    • D. STILO: The Category of Stative in Three Iranian Languages
    • A. A. TONOYAN & V. S. VOSKANIAN: Caucasian Persian (Tati): History of Study, Current State and Perspectives
    • S. AYDENLOO: A Reconsideration of the Infinitive čaftan and its Use in the Shahnameh
    • A. ARGHAVAN: Saʿdī’s Tomb and the Oldest Representations of the Čahāršanba-sūrī Festival in Shahnameh Manuscripts
    • I. AFSHAR: Bookbinding
    • M. AFSHIN-VAFAIE: Dodarz madōz: Concerning One of Ḫusraw Anōširwān’s Dicta
    • M. OMIDSALAR: Nibelungenlied as a Folk Epic and the Shahnameh as a Literary Epic
    • B. IMANI: Anwār al-Rawḍat wa Asrār al-Bayḍat: Similes of Sayf al-Dīn Isparanganī’s Lost Work, Rawḍat al-Quds wa Bayḍat al-Uns
    • H. BORJIAN: Persian Lexemes in the 14th-Century Rasulid Hexoglot
    • J. BASHARI: The Compendia of Asʿad b. Aḥmad Kātib, a Shirazi Sufi from the 15th Century CE
    • A. R. BAHARLOO & K. MOTAGHEDI: The Šikl-i Šāh Relief at Tanga-yi Band-i Burīda: The Last Qajar Rock-carving from the Time of Naser-al-Din Shah
    • S. SAJJADI: Zaryāb, the Creative Cultural Architect
    • Y. SAADAT: The Origin of the Philosophical Senses of Middle Persian Words ǰahišn and ǰadag and the Arabic Word ʿaraḍ
    • M. R. SHAFI’I KADKANI: Qazvin’s Public and Private Libraries from the beginning to the 13th Century CE
    • E. SHEYKH-OL-HOKAMAEE & P. AKBARI: The Mosque of the Šayḫ al-Islām Madrasa in Qazvin and its Endowment Document, dated 1903
    • A. A. SADEGHI: On Muṣāḥib’s Persian Encyclopedia
    • A. SAFARI AGH-GHALEH: The Background of the Wāq Figure in Iranian Art and its Relationship to the Wāq-Wāq and Zaqqūm Trees
    • A. TABIBZADEH: Šammarān or Hāmāwarān? A Toponym in Iranian Mythical and Historical Sources
    • M. ABDEAMIN & B. ABOUTORABIAN: Tehran Arg Mosque, Also Known as Masǧid-i Mādar-i Fatḥʿalī-Šāh
    • M. EMADI HAERI: Three Ascetic Verses from the 11th Century CE: Newly-found Verses by Abū al-Muẓaffar Tirmadī and Ḫwāǧa Imām-i Zāhid
    • P. FIROOZBAKHSH: The Persian Translation of al-Fātiḥa Attributed to Salmān-i Fārsī
    • A. R. QAEMMAQAMI & V. IDGAH TORGHABEHI: The Word, bīmār: A Study of its Etymology and Pronunciation
    • M. MOHAMMADI: On the Fahlavi Origin of the Wīs u Rāmīn
    • D. MONCHI-ZADEH: Die Fabelwesen (Persian translation by A. R. QAEMMAQAMI)
    • R. MOUSAVI TABARI: An Investigation of Two Persian Words: low and lāw
  • East and West (vol. 64)

    East and West (vol. 64)

    The latest volume of East and West contains several interesting articles, some of which deal with aspects of ancient Iran.

    • M. Minardi, A. Bekbauliev: Report on the First Campaign of Excavations of 2023 at Bazar-kala, with Additional Considerations on the Urbanism of Ancient Chorasmia
    • S. Tusa, M. Vidale, I. Caldana, E. Lant, Faizur Rahman, L.M. Olivieri: A “Bactrian Lady” and Other Terracotta Figurines from Aligrama, Swat
    • S. Aliyari Babolghani: A Short Note on the So-called Conjugation IIm in Achaemenid Elamite
    • M.C. Benvenuto: Notes on the Bactrian Personal Name Σανδο
    • E. Filippone: Paratactic and Hypotactic Strategies in the Discourse Organization of the Multilingual Achaemenid Texts
    • F. Pompeo: Who are They Rebelling against? The Constructions of hamiçiya- bav- in the Achaemenid Royal Texts
    • A.V. Rossi: Rüdiger Schmitt and Achaemenid Iran
  • Iran and Persianate Culture in the Indian Ocean World

    Iran and Persianate Culture in the Indian Ocean World

    Peacock, Andrew (ed.). 2025. Iran and Persianate Culture in the Indian Ocean World. London: Bloomsbury.

    Most of the historiography of the Iranian world focuses on interactions and migrations between Iran, Central Asia and India. Nonetheless, this Iranian world was also closely connected to the maritime one of the Indian Ocean. While scholarship has drawn attention to diverse elements of these latter interactions, ranging from the claims to Shirazi descent of East African communities, to Persian elements in Malay literature, and Iranian communities of merchants in China, such studies have remained largely isolated from one another. The consensus of historiography on the Indian Ocean presents it as an ‘Arabic cosmopolis’, or, in earlier times, a Sanskrit one. The aim of this book is thus to bring together scholars working on disparate aspects of Persianate interactions with the Indian Ocean world from antiquity to modern times to provide a more rounded picture of both the history of the Persianate world, broadly conceived, and that of the Indian Ocean.

    The book brings together a collection of internationally renowned scholars from a variety of disciplines – including archaeology, history, literature, linguistics, art history – and covers interactions in Iran’s political and commercial relations with the Indian Ocean world in history, Persian-speaking communities in the Indian Ocean world, Persian(ate) elements in Indian Ocean languages and literatures, Persian texts dealing with the Indian Ocean, and connections in material culture.

    Table of Contents

    List of Figures and Tables
    List of Contributors
    Acknowledgements

    Introduction
    A.C.S. Peacock

    Chapter 1. The Sasanian Origin of Siraf?
    Seth M.N. Priestman
    Chapter 2. Mark Marking on Ceramic Transport Jars – Clues to Persianate Actors and Networks in the Indian Ocean World (8th through 10th Centuries AD)
    Elizabeth Lambourn
    Chapter 3. The Shirazis in East Africa, myth or reality?
    Mark Horton
    Chapter 4. Maritime relations between the Persian Gulf and China: An overview from the Song through the Ming periods (10th-17th centuries)
    Ralph Kauz
    Chapter 5. The Role of Iran in the Islamicisation of the Maldives
    Jost Gippert
    Chapter 6. Medieval Khurasan and the Indian Ocean World
    A.C.S. Peacock
    Chapter 7. From Devas to Muwakkils: Manifestations of Indic Gods in Persianate Works
    Maya Petrovich
    Chapter 8. Traditional Malay Conversion Narratives, Sufi Hagiography, and Persian Historiography: Crafting Political Legitimacy while “Centring the Periphery” in the Malay World
    Alexander Wain
    Chapter 9. The Jami? al-barr wa’l-ba’r: The place of ‘birds of paradise’ in the elaboration of Perso-Islamicate traditions in the eastern frontiers of Indonesia
    Raha Ebrahimi
    Chapter 10. Another Ship of Persians to Siam in the 17th Century: An Account of a Persian Shi?i Anthology in Patna, Dhaka and Burma
    Majid Daneshgar
    Chapter 11. Arabic-Persian Bilingualism and Persianate Identities in the Early Modern Western Indian Ocean: The Case of Mirza Muhammad Fayyaz
    James White
    Chapter 12. Unfinished Hyperboles! Adam’s Footprint in Sri Lanka and Wonder on the Edge of Modernity
    Vivek Gupta
    Chapter 13. Rejecting the Persianate Past: A Pioneering Urdu History of the Indian Ocean
    Nile Green
    Chapter 14. Royal Exile in the Indian Ocean: Reza Shah’s Sojourn in Mauritius
    H.E.Chehabi

  • Kingship and Empire under the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great and the Early Seleucids

    Kingship and Empire under the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great and the Early Seleucids

    Harrison, Stephen. 2025. Kingship and empire under the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great and the early Seleucids. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    This book offers the first systematic, comparative analysis of the ideology of kingship and empire under the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great and the early Seleucids. It explores key issues thematically such as legitimation, representations of empire and royal space. Through this method, Stephen Harrison breaks traditional periodisation offering new insights into long-term trends. The book challenges existing narratives about the relationship between the Achaemenids and their successors.

    Rather than focusing on the mere facts of continuity and change, the study advocates for a more complex understanding of the Achaemenids’ impact on monarchical ideology under Alexander and the Seleucids. Harrison’s comparative approach brings the three empires into dialogue with one another and thus treats them all equally through this lens. The methodology highlights the uniqueness of particular strategies deployed by different rulers and isolate ideas which were distinctively ‘Achaemenid’, ‘Alexandrine’ or ‘Seleucid’ as opposed merely to identifying monarchical commonalities.

  • Studia Iranica (52/2)

    The new issue of Studia Iranica is out (volume 52, issue 2). Here is the table of contents:

    • En hommage à notre collègue et ami, cofondateur et premier codirecteur de Studia Iranica, membre du comité de rédaction, Philippe Gignoux 1er mars 1931, Solaize – 21 septembre 2023, Montmorillon
    • FATTORI, Marco: Avestan haēma and Middle Persian xēm ‘Character, Disposition’ On a Forgotten Line in the Iranian Xwaršēd Niyāyišn
    • GYSELEN, Rika: Aštād yazd-ayār, général du roi sassanide Husraw II Une trace sigillographique
    • NOURZAEI, Maryam: On Nominal and Pronominal Morphosyntax in Kholosi
    • DZITSTSOITY, Yuriy, FALILEYEV, Alexander: Ossetic qæbys / γæbes ‘Embrace’ and sæt / sætæ ‘Saliva’ Etymological Notes
    • RICHARD, Francis: Un témoignage inédit de la posterité de l’œuvre du peintre Behzād Collaboration ou émulation entre les peintres Qāsem-‘Ali et Behzād dans le Ketābḫāneh de Hérat
    • RYBÁR, Lukáš: Habsburg Intelligence on Safavid Persia. The Case of Michael Černović
    • GYSELEN, Rika: Philippe Gignoux (1931-2023)
    • Comptes rendus
  • Manichaeism: Encounters with Death

    Manichaeism: Encounters with Death

    Towers, Susanna. 2025. Manichaeism: Encounters with death. Studies in the material, spiritual and parabolic body (Studia Traditionis Theologiae 61). Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

    Born in Persian Mesopotamia in the year 232 CE, the self-proclaimed prophet Mani promulgated a dualist faith that rapidly spread throughout the Roman Empire, Central Asia and China. This monograph comprises a series of studies of the Manichaean conceptualization of death and the afterlife in the context of Manichaean soteriology, eschatology and anthropology. Material, documentary and liturgical evidence is analysed to enrich knowledge of Manichaean funeral ritual and mourning practice. The book explores the thematic symbolism of the corpse in Manichaean parabolic literature, offering fresh interpretations and exploring the influence of Buddhist teachings on the impermanence of the body, karma and metempsychosis.

    Summary
  • Amélie Kuhrt

    Amélie Kuhrt

    Briant, Pierre. 2025. Amélie Kuhrt. 23 September 1944 – 2 January 2023. Biographical memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy 22: 483-503.

    Amélie Kuhrt, eminent historian of the Ancient Near East, and more specifically renowned for her teaching at University College London, for actively contributing to organising the Achaemenid History Workshops and for her many leading publications on the Achaemenid Empire and Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylonia, died on 2 January 2023, after living for several years with Parkinson’s disease.

  • An Achaemenid Column Base from Farouq

    Shobairi, S.A. 2025. An Achaemenid column base from Farouq. ARTA 2025.003.

    This paper examines a column base from the Achaemenid period (ca. 550–330 BC), discovered in the village of Farouq, approximately 20 kilometers northeast of Persepolis, and provides a report and analysis of the issues surrounding this column base. Although its original location remains uncertain, similar examples have been documented at well-known Achaemenid sites in Fars. These parallels offer a basis for chronological analysis and may yield insights into the intended function of the column base.

  • Reflections on the Tapestry of Family and Household in Ancient Iran

    Reflections on the Tapestry of Family and Household in Ancient Iran

    Jahangirfar, Milad (ed.). 2025. Reflections on the Tapestry of Family and Household in Ancient Iran (Studia Persica 6). Bologna: Persiani Editore.

    This volume offers a collection of ten articles focusing on various aspects of family and household in ancient Iran (ca. the 2nd millennium BCE to ca. the end of the 7th century CE). This book deals with aspects of the family in pre-Islamic Iran that are less explored or require renewed attention. The contributions draw upon a range of sources, including Old Elamite documents, Middle Elamite terracotta figurines, Sogdian wall paintings, Old Persian inscriptions, Achaemenid administrative tablets, and passages from the Avesta and Middle Persian texts. The inclusion of references to Greek, Latin, and Armenian writings, and passages from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh enriches the discussion by bringing in alternative perspectives and accounts of relevant issues. Approaching the topic from a multidisciplinary perspective helps to create a more nuanced understanding of the role of family and household in ancient Iran.

    Contents
    – Introduction (Milad Jahangirfar)
    – Script and Witness as a Hereditary Vocation in the Old Elamite Period (Mohammad Amin Mirghaderi)
    – Household Religion in Context: Middle Elamite Terracotta Figurines and Their Judahite Counterparts (Francesco Del Bravo)
    – The Divine Couple Formed by Nana and Nabu/Tiš in Sogdian Art: A Powerful Amulet for the Protection of Children and Households (Matteo Compareti)
    – Some Reflections on the Concept of “Family” in the Gāthās (Mina Kambin)
    – “For the Increase of the House”: Children in Ancient Iran (Jenny Rose)
    – Some Remarks on the Family in pre-Islamic Iran according to the Ardā Wīrāz-nāmag (Mateusz M.P. Kłagisz)
    – Ancient Iranian Women at War: A Gender Role at Variance than the Greco-Roman Familial System? (Kaveh Farrokh)
    – Parthian Hostages in Rome: Keeping Alive Royal Family Members during the Parthian Kingdom (Berta González Saavedra and Juan Antonio Álvarez-Pedrosa Núñez)
    – The Institution of Zoroastrian Marriage xwēdōdah: Genesis and Typology (Pavel Basharin)
    – About the xwēdōdah Once Again (Katarzyna Maksymiuk and Joanna Szklarz)

  • Deciphering Arachosian Tribute at Persepolis

    Deciphering Arachosian Tribute at Persepolis

    Barnea, Gad. 2025. Deciphering Arachosian tribute at Persepolis: Orthopraxy and regulated gifts in the Achaemenid Empire. Religions 16(8): 965.

    Inscribed trays, plates, mortars, and pestles made of beautiful green chert bearing formulaic administrative textual formulae were found during excavations at the Persepolis Treasury in the 1930s. These implements and the enigmatic formulae inscribed upon them present scholars with a complex and unique challenge whose correct interpretation holds important implications for the study of Achaemenid history, imperial administration, and relations between ancient Arachosia (roughly modern-day Afghanistan) and the centers of power, as well as—as I argue in this article—for the symbiosis between administration and cult in antiquity. They continue to be hotly debated ever since their inauspicious initial publication by Bowman in 1970, yet they have thus far remained obscure. By comparing these finds with material and textual data from across the Achaemenid empire and early Parthian sources, this article offers a new comprehensive study of these objects. My analysis suggests that these objects are to be considered as a more systematized and tightly controlled Arachosian form of “informal taxation”—namely, regulated gifts—which are comparable to similar imperial donations found in the Treasury at Persepolis. Specifically, they take part in an “economy of fealty” demonstrating loyalty to king and empire through the adherence to the era’s Mazdean ritual orthopraxy.