Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • Epic Iran

    Curtis, John, Ina Sarikhani Sandmann &Tim Stanley. 2021. Epic Iran: 5000 Years of culture. London: V&A Publishing.

    Iran was the home of some of the greatest civilizations of both the ancient and medieval worlds, but these achievements remain poorly known and largely misunderstood outside the country. Epic Iran tells the story of Iran from pre-Islamic through modern times and provides an opportunity to see pieces from key museum and private collections. This book combines the ancient and Islamic periods and continues the narrative into the contemporary world. It shows how civilized life emerged in Iran around 3,200 BC and how a distinctive Iranian identity formed 2,500 years ago has survived until today, expressed in the Persian language and in religious affiliations.

    Lavishly illustrated, some 250 images showcase pieces including goldwork, ceramics, glass, illustrated manuscripts, textiles, carpets, oil paintings, drawings, and photographs. Alongside the historical sweep are examples from contemporary artists and makers, demonstrating the rich antecedents still influencing some modern-day practitioners.

  • Introduction to the Avesta

    Kellens, Jean, and Céline Redard. 2021. Introduction à l’Avesta: Le récitatif liturgique sacré des zoroastriens. Les Belles Lettres.

    Almost all religions of the contemporary world refer to a book that their followers consider sacred. The Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrian communities of Iran, India and the diaspora is one of them, which bears witness to the origins of the pre-Islamic religion of the Iranian peoples.

    Something, however, demands a closer look. Often approached as the theoretical expression of a religious doctrine or the mirror of a forgotten history and geography, the Avesta is also a literary engine whose mechanisms can be dismantled, that is, the precise analysis of the mode of transmission, the particularities of structure and the liturgical intentions presided over these textual assemblies.

    Such is the ambition of this book, which traces the evolution of research from its origins to the advances of the 21st century, when our understanding of the Avesta was revolutionised.

    Table of Contents:

    • Introduction
    • Chapitre 1. Formation de la philologie avestique
    • Chapitre 2. La mise par écrit de l’Avesta
    • Chapitre 3. Le matériel manuscrit
    • Chapitre 4. Le texte transmis : l’Avesta
    • Chapitre 5. Analyse interne des textes constitutifs de l’Avesta
    • En guise de conclusion : un essai de chronologie

  • Iran’s Conversion to Islam

    Pohl, Walter & Daniel Mahoney (eds.). 2021. Historiography and identity IV: Writing history across Medieval Eurasia. Brepols.

    Explores the social function of historical writing from across various world regions from Europe through the Islamic world to China, around the turn of the millennium, and how they construct and shape identities, as well as communicate ‘visions of community’ and legitimate political claims.

    Historical writing has shaped identities in various ways and to different extents. This volume explores this multiplicity by looking at case studies from Europe, Byzantium, the Islamic World, and China around the turn of the first millennium. The chapters in this volume address official histories and polemical critique, traditional genres and experimental forms, ancient traditions and emerging territories, empires and barbarians. The authors do not take the identities highlighted in the texts for granted, but examine the complex strategies of identification that they employ. This volume thus explores how historiographical works in diverse contexts construct and shape identities, as well as legitimate political claims and communicate ‘visions of community’.

    Two chapters of this volume touch on subjects of Iranian studies:

  • The Srōš Drōn – Yasna 3 to 8

    Redard, Céline. 2021. The Srōš Drōn – Yasna 3 to 8. A Critical Edition with Ritual Commentaries and Glossary (Corpus Avesticum 3). Leiden: Brill.

    This book is a multi-faceted study of the Srōš Drōn, comprising chapters 3 to 8 of the Yasna ceremony, the core ritual of the Zoroastrian religion. It provides a critical edition produced with the electronic tools of the project The Multimedia Yasna, and a study of the performative aspects of the Srōš Drōn both through the lens of the ritual directions and in comparison with the Drōn Yašt ceremony.
    By analysing the Srōš Drōn both as a text attested in manuscripts and as a ritual performance, Céline Redard applies a new approach to unlock the meaning of these chapters of the Yasna.

  • Orodes II

    Olbrycht, Marek. 2021. Orodes II. In Encyclopædia Iranica Online, edited by Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.

    ORODES II (r. 58/57-37 BCE), king of Parthia, son of Phraates III (r. 70-57 BCE), and father of Phraates IV (q.v.). During his reign, the empire of the Arsacids (q.v.) reached the zenith of its power and scored significant victories against Rome.

    From the entry

  • Commagene in its Local, Regional and Global Hellenistic Context

    Blömer, Michael, Stefan Riedel, Miguel John Versluys & Engelbert Winter (eds.). 2021. Common dwelling place of all the gods: Commagene in its local, regional and global Hellenistic context (Oriens et Occidens Band 34). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

    (more…)

  • Zoroastrianism: History, Religion, and Belief

    SOAS is offering an online course that explores ‘the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism, its languages, and the challenges faced by Zoroastrian communities today’. The course is taught by Dr Sarah Stewart and Dr Celine Redard.

    یک دوره چهار هفته‌ای برای آشنایی با دین زرتشتی، زبان‌های وابسته و چالش‌هایی که جوامع زرتشتی امروز با آنها روبرو هستند.

  • Medes in the desert

    Potts, Daniel. 2021. Medes in the desert: Thoughts on the mounted archer near Taymā’. In: Claudia Bührig et al. (eds.), Klänge der Archäologie: Festschrift für Ricardo Eichmann, 335-342. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

    Detail of petroglyph of equestrian figure near Tayma’

    The equestrian figure engraved on a rock outcrop near Taymā’ is analyzed. Details of the horse and rider are discussed which support the identification of the horse as an Assyrianizing image, and the rider as a Mede. The significance of the image is treated in light of the tradition of rapid overland communication in the Achaemenid empire.

  • Iranian names in Nebenüberlieferungen of Indo-European languages

    Martirosyan, Hrach. 2021. Iranische Namen in Nebenüberlieferungen Indogermanischer Sprachen (Iranisches Personennamenbuch, 5. 3). Wien: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

    The Iranian element is the largest layer of the Armenian borrowed lexicon. It comprises a period of more than 2.500 years starting from pre-Achaemenid times up to the modern period. Also the number of Armenian personal names of Iranian origin is quite large, roughly estimated one quarter of all Armenian personal names. The Armenian evidence is of vital importance for completing the Iranian onomasticon. In many cases, Middle Persian and Parthian namesakes of Armenian personal names are not directly attested. Besides, Armenian helps to determine the exact shape of Iranian names. The present fascicle of the “Iranisches Personennamenbuch” aims to collect and etymologically interpret all the Iranian personal names, which are attested in Armenian texts up to 1300 CE. Occasionally, it also comprises names that are attested at a later stage but are likely to belong to earlier periods, as well as younger forms that are related with older names and are therefore relevant for the philological or etymological discussion of the latter. The volume comprises 872 entries and includes (1) names of Iranian people of various kinds (kings, queens, princes, generals, etc.) that occur in Armenian texts, and (2) names of Iranian origin that were/are borne by Armenian people. It includes a huge range of new etymologies or corrected versions of pre-existing etymologies, as well as new names and corrected forms of names discovered in critical texts and voluminous corpora of inscriptions and colophons of Armenian manuscripts that have not been available for earlier researchers of the Armenian onomastics.

  • William Barker, Xenophon’s ‘Cyropædia’

    Grogan, Jane (ed.). 2020. William Barker, Xenophon’s ‘Cyropædia’ (Tudor and Stuart Translation 13). Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association.

    William Barker’s translation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia is the first substantial translation from Greek directly to English in Tudor England. It presents to its English readers an extraordinarily important text for humanists across Europe: a semi-fictional biography of the ancient Persian emperor, Cyrus the Great, so generically rich that it became (in England as well as Europe) a popular authority and model in the very different fields of educational, political and literary theory, as well as in literature by Sidney, Spenser and others.

    This edition, for the first time, identifies its translator as a hitherto overlooked figure from the circle of Sir John Cheke at St John’s College, Cambridge, locus of an important and influential revival of Greek scholarship. A prolific translator from Greek and Italian, Barker was a Catholic, and spent most of his career working as secretary to Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk. What little notoriety he eventually gained was as the ‘Italianified Englishman’ who told of Howard’s involvement in the Ridolfi plot. But even here, this edition shows, Barker’s intellectual patronage by Cheke and friends, and their enduring support of him, his translations and the Chekeian agenda, can be discerned.