Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • Sasanian Iran in the context of Late Anitquity

    Daryaee, Touraj (ed.). 2018. Sasanian Iran in the context of Late Anitquity: The Bahari lecture series at the Oxford University (Ancient Iran Series VI). Irvine: Jordan Center for Persian Studies.
    The essays in this volume discuss various aspects of the Sasanian Empire, presented on the occasion of the inauguration of the Bahari Chair in Sasanian Studies at Oxford University in 2014.
    • Michael Alram: “The Numismatic Legacy of the Sasanians in the East”
    • Matthew P. Canepa and Johnathan W. Hardy: “Persian Palace Architecture, Garden Design and Digital Archaeology”
    • Touraj Daryaee: “The Tripartite Sasanian Vision of the World”
    • Antonio Panaino: “Books without Ritual – Ritual without Books”
    • Giusto Traina: “The Rise of the Sasanians”
    • Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina: “A Father, a Daughter, and a Son-in-Law in Zoroastrian Hermeneutics”
    • Arash Zeini: “The King in the Mirror of the Zand“

  • Looking East: Iranian History and Culture under Western Eyes

    Looking East: Iranian History and Culture under Western Eyes

    The latest issue of journal Electrum features  Electrum, with the issue gathering the contribution of the workshop “Looking History: Iranian History and Culture under Western Eyes” held at 2016 in Ravenna, Italy.

    Electrum, Volume 24 (2017)

    • Paolo Ognibene: “Sguardi incrociati greco-scitici”
    • Christopher Tuplin: “War and Peace in Achaemenid Imperial Ideology”
    • Francesca Gazzano: “The King’s speech. La retorica dei re persiani fra Eschilo, Erodoto e Tucidide”
    • Federicomaria Muccioli: “Peucesta, tra lealismo macedone e modello persiano”
    • Omar Coloru: “Potere e territorio. Gli Achemenidi nei Geographikà di Strabone”
    • Leonardo Gregoratti: “Corbulo versus Vologases: A Game of Chess for Armenia”
    • Eran Almagor: “Plutarch and the Persians”
    • Edward Dąbrowa: “Tacitus on the Parthians”
    • Tommaso Gnoli: “Mitrei del Vicino Oriente: una facies orientale del culto misterico di Mithra”
    • Giusto Traina: “L’Armenia di Ammiano Marcellino”
    • Andrea Piras: “Persianao, mago e guerriero. Note sulla caratterizzazione di Mani e dei manichei nelle fonti greco-latine del IV secolo”
    • Antonio Panaino: “Iranica nella Disputatio de Christo in Persia”
    • Andrea Gariboldi: “Pratiche economiche e monetali nei documenti pahlavi del Tabaristān (VIII sec.)”
    • Reviews

     

  • A Zoroastrian Funerary Building of Ancient Chorasmia

    Minardi, Michele & Shamil Amirov. 2017. The Zoroastrian Funerary Building of Angka. Topoi 21. 11–49.
    This paper presents the results of the 2016 field campaign of the Angka-kala Archaeological Expedition (AGKE) at Angka Malaya (“Small Angka”), a particular site of which the original function is here assumed to have been of funerary nature. The ruins of Angka Malaya (27 km north of the modern city of Turktul) stand close by the larger stronghold of Angka-kala in today’s Republic of Karakalpakstan (northern Uzbekistan), a territory once part of the antique Iranian polity of Ancient Chorasmia.

  • On Yaakov Elman

    Perpetual Motion: Shai Secunda on Yaakov Elman, who passed away on July 29, 2018.

  • Zoroastrian Mythology: Cows and Bulls in Ancient Iran

    Pirart, Eric. 2018. Mythologie zoroastrienne: vaches et taureaux en Iran. Paris: Editions L’Harmattan.
    Éric Pirart rassemble ici les données de l’eschatologie générale mazdéenne. La rigueur philologique et la mythologie comparée sont les deux outils mis en oeuvre dans l’approche de la tradition zoroastrienne qui est fragmentaire. L’examen des mythes grecs qui mettent en scène un taureau fournit-il ainsi quelques clés dans l’interprétation de textes iraniens singulièrement lapidaires. Vaches et taureaux, chez les peuples conducteurs de troupeaux, étaient au centre de l’imaginaire et de la métaphysique.

  • Afghanistan: A new journal

    Afghanistan is a refereed journal published twice a year in April and October. It covers all subjects in the humanities including history, art, archaeology, architecture, geography, numismatics, literature, religion, social sciences and contemporary issues from the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. Articles are not restricted to the present borders of Afghanistan and can include the surrounding regions, but must relate to Afghanistan.

    It’s first issue (Volume 1, Issue 1) is now out.

    Table of contents:

    • Thomas Barfield: Introduction: The American Institute of Afghanistan Studies
    • Francesca Fuoli: Incorporating north-western Afghanistan into the British empire: experiments in indirect rule through the making of an imperial frontier, 1884–87
    •  Nile Green: From Persianate pasts to Aryan antiquity. Transnationalism and transformation in Afghan intellectual history, c.1880–1940
    • Elisabeth Leake: Afghan internationalism and the question of Afghanistan’s political legitimacy
    •  Zafar Paiman: Le monastère de Qol-e-Tut à la lumière des fouilles archéologiques
    • Jürgen Paul: Alptegin in the Siyāsat-nāma
    • Claude Rapin and Frantz Grenet: How Alexander entered India. With a note on Ortospana (the ancient name of Ghazni?)
    • Paul Wordsworth: The hydrological networks of the Balkh Oasis after the arrival of Islam: a landscape archaeological perspective
    • Recent books relating to Afghanistan

    The website of journal is available here.

  • Dating the reigns of Xerxes and Artaxerxes

    Gertoux, Gérard. 2018. Dating the reigns of Xerxes and Artaxerxes. In Pascal Attinger et al, (eds.), Text and Image Proceedings of the 61e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Geneva and Bern, 22–26 June 2015. 179-206. Leuven – Paris – Bristol, CT: Peeters.

    The pivotal date of 465 BCE for the death of Xerxes has been accepted by historians for many years without notable controversy. However, according to Thucydides, a historian renowned for his high chronological accuracy, Themistocles met Artaxerxes, who had succeeded Xerxes, his father, just after the fall of Nexos  which occured after the fall of Skyros dated at the beginning of the archonship of Phaedo in 476 BCE, according to Plutarch (Life of Theseus §§35,36). Thus, the meeting with Themistocles would have occurred soon after 475, not 465. The present Achaemenid chronology comes mainly from official Babylonian king lists which ignore coregents and usurpers. This official version is contradicted by contracts dated in “year, month, day” proving the existence of frequent co-regencies and usurpers. In addition, according to the astronomical tablet referenced BM 32234 the death of Xerxes is dated 14/V/21 between two lunar eclipses, one dated 14/III/21 (26 June 475 BCE), which was total, and a second dated 14/VIII/21 (20 December 475 BCE), which was partial. Thus the death of Xerxes has to be dated 24 August 475 BCE. Likewise, the death of Artaxerxes I is fixed precisely by Thucydides just before a partial solar eclipse (21 March 424 BCE) which would imply an absurd co-regency of Darius II with a dead king for at least one year! In fact, Plutarch and Justinus have effectively described a long co-regency of Artaxerxes but with his first son Darius B (434-426), not Darius II, and afterward two shorts reigns: Xerxes II for 2 months then Sogdianus for 7 months, which occurred before the reign of Darius II. The title of Xerxes (496-475) in Egypt and the data of Diodorus confirm the co-regency of 10 years with Darius, as do Elephantine papyri with many double dates both in civil and lunar calendars.

  • Plutarch and the Persica

    Almagor, Eran. 2018. Plutarch and the Persica.  Edinburgh University Press.

    This book addresses two historical mysteries. The first is the content and character of the fourth century BCE Greek works on the Persian Achaemenid Empire treatises called the Persica. The second is the method of work of the second century CE biographer Plutarch of Chaeronea (CE 45-120) who used these works to compose his biographies, in particular the Life of the Persian king Artaxerxes.

    By dealing with both issues simultaneously, Almagor proposes a new way of approaching the two entangled problems, and offers a better understanding of both the portrayal of ancient Persia in the lost Persica works and the manner of their reception and adaptation nearly five hundred years later. Intended for both scholars and students of the Achaemenid Empire and Greek imperial literature, this book bridges the two worlds and two important branches of scholarship.

    Key features

    • Builds a picture of the character and structure of the lost Persica works by Ctesias of Cnidus, Deinon of Colophon, Heracleides of Cyme

    • Shows how Plutarch used the Persica works in his Lives with a specific focus on Artaxerxes

    • Considers the depiction of famous figures such as Alexander the Great and Themistocles in Plutarch’s works

  • Achaemenid Grants of Cities and Lands to Greeks

    Kholod, Maxim. 2018. Achaemenid Grants of Cities and Lands to Greeks: The Case of Mentor and Memnon of Rhodes. Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 58, 177-197.

    The first grant probably consisted of Ilium, Cebren, and Scepsis and vicinity, while the second was either in the same part of the Troad or in the coastal region between Adramyttium and the Caicus.

    Source of the abstract: GRBS.

  • A Unified Gospel with Exegetical Comments in Classical Persian

    Hassanabadi, Mahmoud, Carina Jahani & Robert Crellin (eds.). 2018. A Unified Gospel in Persian: An old variant of the Gospels along with exegetical comments by Yahyā Ibn Ayvaz-e Tabrīzī-ye Armanī (Studia Iranica Upsaliensia 33). Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

    Today we are accustomed to thinking of the Bible as a single entity, i.e. as ‘the Bible’, a well-defined corpus containing a set number of books. In late antiquity and in the Middle Ages, however, the situation was much more fluid. This fluidity showed itself not only in the fact that parts of the Bible would often circulate independently, but also in that Bible texts were often known in vernacular languages both in direct translations, but also in interlinear glosses and poetic paraphrases. It is in this context that the Unified Gospel is to be seen. Unifications of the gospel texts are often called Diatessaron (through the four), and, although this name has not been used for the Persian text presented in this book, it can still be seen as belonging to the Diatessaron tradition.

    The Unified Gospel presented here was compiled in Persian by a certain Armenian who calls himself Yahyā Ibn Ayvaz-e Tabrīzī-ye Armanī. The actual time of the compilation cannot be determined from the existing manuscripts. The main manuscript for this edition is kept in the National Library and Archives of Iran. It was finalized on 9 Rajab 1111 A.H. (corresponding to 31 Dec. 1699) by a scribe named Khusraw, son of Bahrām. Other manuscripts, which are introduced in detail in the Persian introduction, have also been taken into account in this edition. In addition to the actual Gospel texts, there are numerous exegetical comments by the compiler, which are of great value for a deeper understanding of how the text was interpreted in former times. The language also shows certain archaic features, both in the vocabulary and the syntax, which indicate that the original work most likely dates to pre-Safavid times.

    It is not entirely clear for whom this Unified Gospel in Persian was produced. The compiler finds that the people of his time had turned away from God and instead sought worldly affairs, spending their time reading stories and poems full of deceit and darkness instead of reading the Gospel. The Gospel was not available to them in Persian, a language of which they had better knowledge than the languages into which the Gospels had already been translated. This was the reason why the compiler/translator undertook the work which resulted in the present manuscript, which is particularly valuable due to the large number of comments to the Bible text added by the compiler.