Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • The Book of Zambasta

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2022. The Book of Zambasta. Metre and stress in Old Khotanese (Beiträge Zur Iranistik Band 49). Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

    Khotanese, a language belonging to the Iranian branch of Indo-European, which was spoken in the first millennium CE, has a rich literature including the Book of Zambasta, a poetic exposition of Mahāyāna Buddhism in 24 chapters. This poem makes use of three metres, whose nature has been a matter of controversy for more than a century. While its first editor, Ernst Leumann (1859–1931), regarded Khotanese metre as essentially quantitative (moraic) and derived it from a Proto-Indo-European metrical system supposedly reflected also in the Greek hexameter and the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, other scholars have understood it in very different ways: as a purely stress-based metre related to that of poetry in some other Iranian languages; as an adaptation of Indian metrics; or as representing a transitional stage from a quantitative to a stress-based system. The present work offers a closely-argued new analysis, demonstrating that the metre is indeed based on the quantitative (moraic) principle, but with an obligatory ictus in the cadences which leads to the systematic lightening of certain unstressed syllables. The results shed light on the equally controversial issue of Khotanese accentuation and many other aspects of the language and its history. The book includes the complete text of the poem with interlinear scansion. Additional fully searchable text-files available online make it possible for any reader to check the arguments and results.

    Table of Contents (ToC)

  • The Age of Persia

    Radner, Karen, Nadine Moeller & D. T. Potts (eds.). 2023. The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East Volume V: The Age of Persia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    The fifth and final volume of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East covers the period from the second half of the 7th century BC until the campaigns of Alexander III of Macedon (336-323 BC) brought an end to the Achaemenid Dynasty and the Persian Empire. Tying together areas and political developments covered by previous volumes in the series, this title covers also the Persian Empire’s immediate predecessor states: Saite Egypt, the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Lydia, among other kingdoms and tribal alliances. The chapters in this volume feature a wide range of archaeological and textual sources, with contributors displaying a masterful treatment of the challenges and advantages of the available materials. Two chapters focus on areas that have not enjoyed prominence in any of the previous volumes of this series: eastern Iran and Central Asia. This volume is the necessary and complementary final component of this comprehensive series.

    (more…)

  • The Sasanians in conflict

    The latest issue of Antiquité Tardive (30/2022) is out, which is a special issue dedicated to Sasanian history: “Les Sassanides en conflit: géopolitique de l’empire perse tardo-antique.”

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Les Sassanides en conflit : géopolitique de l’empire perse tardo-antique

    Philip Huyze, Introduction générale : l’empire sassanide dans le monde interconnecté de l’Antiquité tardive/ General introduction: the Sasanian empire in the interconnected world of Late Antiquity

    Samra Azarnouche, Présentation du dossier Les Sassanides en conflit : géopolitique de l’empire perse tardo-antique

    Hervé Inglebert, La place de l’empire sassanide dans les débats sur l’Antiquité tardive/ What place for the Sasanian Empire in the debates about Late Antiquity?

    (more…)

  • Gandhāran Art in its Buddhist Context

    Rienjang, Wannaporn & Peter Stewart (eds.). 2023. Gandhāran art in its Buddhist context. Oxford: Archaeopress Archaeology.

    This book considers Gandhāran art in relation to its religious contexts and meanings within ancient Buddhism. Addressing the responses of patrons and worshippers at the monasteries and shrines of Gandhāra, papers seek to understand more about why Gandhāran art was made and what its iconographical repertoire meant to ancient viewers.

  • Zoroastrianism: History, Religion and Belief

    This year, we missed to announce the ‘Zoroastrianism Summer Course‘, which is offered by the ‘Shapoorji Pallonji Institute of Zoroastrian Studies‘ and takes place at the Norwegian Institute in Rome.

    But we would like to take this opportunity to mention ‘Zoroastrianism: History, Religion and Belief‘, which has been designed by Dr Sarah Stewart and Dr Céline Redard and is offered as a free online course (MOOC).

  • The Rediscovery and Reception of Gandhāran Art

    Rienjang, Wannaporn & Peter Stewart (eds.). 2022. The rediscovery and reception of Gandhāran art. Oxford: Archaeopress Archaeology.

    From the archaeologists and smugglers of the Raj to the museums of post-partition Pakistan and India, from coin-forgers and contraband to modern Buddhism and contemporary art, this fourth volume of the Gandhāra Connections project presents the most recent research on the factors that mediate our encounter with Gandhāran art.

  • “Daiva Inscription” of Xerxes

    Yakubovich, Ilya S. 2023. “Daiva Inscription” of Xerxes: Historical account, ideological statement, or propaganda. Journal of Ancient History 83(1). 5–26.

    The so-called “Daiva inscription” of Xerxes found at Persepolis addresses the activity of this Achaemenid Persian king in two lands, one of which is said to have been in commotion, while the other is alleged to have been characterized by unacceptable religious practices. Xerxes stresses his involvement in the restoration of order in both countries but does not mention their names. Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Bactria were all adduced as candidates by twentieth century scholars, while the recent mainstream of scholarship tends to interpret the same accounts as abstract ideological statements without an anchor in time or space. The new approach advocated in this paper assumes that Xerxes resorted to historical narratives only in order to provide his own apologetic version of embarrassing events. In particular, his self-professed involvement in the destruction of the cults of evil gods is to be interpreted as a twisted account of the destruction of the Acropolis of Athens by the Persian army in 480 BC. In the wake of the disastrous war against the Greeks, Xerxes strove to present it as a successful special operation against the Greek deities.

  • Concepts of Resilience for the Study of Early Iranian Societies

    Bernbeck, Reinhard, Gisela Eberhardt & Susan Pollock (eds.). 2023. Coming to terms with the future: Concepts of resilience for the study of early Iranian societies. Leiden: Sidestone Press.

    The collection of essays in this book focuses on the highlands of Iran in pre-modern times, reaching from the Paleolithic to the medieval period. What holds the diverse contributions together is an issue that is closely related to debates in our own times: crises and how societies in the past dealt with them. We start from the premise that general circumstances in the fractured topographic structure of the Iranian highlands led to unique relations between ecological, social, economic and political conditions.

    In three sections entitled “Climate and palaeoenvironment”, “Settlement, subsistence and mobility” und “Political and economic institutions”, the authors ask what sorts of crises afflicted past societies in the Iranian highlands, to what extent they proved resilient, and especially what strategies they developed for enhancing the resilience of their ways of life. Looking for answers in paleoenvironmental proxy data, archaeological findings and written sources, the authors examine subsistence economies, political institutions, religious beliefs, everyday routines and economic specialization in different temporal, spatial and organizational scales.

    This book is the first volume of a series published by the German-Iranian research cooperation “The Iranian Highlands: Resiliences and Integration in Premodern Societies”. The goal of the research project is to shine a new light on communities and societies that populated the Iranian highlands and their more or less successful strategies to cope with the many vagaries, the constant changes and risks of their natural and humanly shaped environments.

  • Achaemenid Residences from Persepolis to Susa

    Yaghmaee, Esmail & Samira Imeni. 2022. Achaemenid Residences from Persepolis to Susa [Manzelgāh-hāye Haḵāmanešī az Taḵt-I Ğamšīd tā Šūš]. Tehran: Karnamak (in Persian).

    This book results from a series of archaeological surveys in south Iran, notably Fars province, which led to the recognition of structures remaining of palaces or pavilions. The authors discuss that these structures were residences of the king and members of the royal house who resided in these houses, which were surrounded by agricultural lands and plantations for royal hunts. Besides the hills and other archaeological finds, the column bases are considered an indicator of such residences. The residence in Dašt-i Gohar near Persepolis and the column base now kept in Rām Hormoz are considered, respectively, the first and last of these residences.

  • Iran and the Caucasus 26 (4)

    Iran and the Caucasus 26 (4)

    The latest issue of Iran and the Caucasus (26.4) contains several interesting contributions.

    Table of contents:

    • Li Sifei: Tubo-Sogdian Relations along the Silk Road: On an Enigmatic Gold Plaque from Dulan (Qinghai, China)
    • Sebastian Bitsch: Hell’s Kitchen: The Banquet in the Hereafter and the Reflexion of Zoroastrian Eschatological Motifs in the Qurʾān
    • Alex MacFarlane: The City of Brass and Alexander’s Narrow Grave: Translation and Commentary of Kafas added to Manuscript M7709 (Part 2)
    • Richard Foltz: The Survival of Ossetians in Turkey
    • Marco Fattori: The Elamite Version of A2Ha and the Verb vidiyā- in Old Persian
    • John D. Bengtson and Corinna Leschber: On Criticism of S. L. Nikolayev/S. A. Starostin, A North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary
    • Victoria Arakelova: The Talishis on Opposite Banks of the Araxes River: Identity Issues
    • Arsen K. Shahinyan: The Southern Boundaries of the Southern Caucasus
    • Adrian C. Pirtea: [Review of] Samuel N. C. Lieu, Glen L. Thompson (eds.), The Church of the East in Central Asia and China (China and the Mediterranean World, 1), Turnhout: “Brepols”, 2020.—xiii + 245 pp.