Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Author: Arash Zeini

  • Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian Relations in Late Antiquity

    Kotyk, Jeffrey. 2024. Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian relations in Late Antiquity: China and the Parthians, Sasanians, and Arabs in the first millennium (Crossroads – History of Interactions across the Silk Routes 8). Leiden: Brill.

    What type of exchanges occurred between West and East Asia in the first millennium CE? What sort of connections existed between Persia and China? What did the Chinese know of early Islam?
    This study offers an overview of the cultural, diplomatic, commercial, and religious relationships that flourished between Iran and China, building on the pioneering work of Berthold Laufer’s Sino-Iranica (1919) while utilizing a diverse array of Classical Chinese sources to tell the story of Sino-Iran in a fresh light to highlight the significance of transcultural networks across Asia in late antiquity.

    Website Summary

  • TISS-Parzor Academic Programme

    ‘Parzor is delighted to announce its long awaited TISS-Parzor Online Academic Programme on Culture & Heritage Studies’. As part of this programme, you can ‘learn, gain credits, explore exciting issues of environment and sociology, craft, art, literature, theatre, cuisine as well as business and philanthropy’.

    Dr. Shernaz Cama announces the start of the TISS Parzor Online Academic Programme on Culture & Heritage Studies.

    For admissions and programme details, visit the TISS Website. Admissions are open till 31st August and open to all! Apply now!

  • Iranian Art

    Blair, Sheila, Jonathan M. Bloom & Sandra Williams (eds.). 2024. Iranian art from the Sasanians to the Islamic Republic. Essays in honour of Linda Komaroff (Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Introduces Iranian art from classical to contemporary media, showing how art can be a source for history and politics

    • Takes a broad view of the Persianate world
    • Opens a traditional field in new directions
    • Presents a combination of senior scholars and younger voices, and includes perspectives from Asia, Europe and the USA
    • Combines views from the academy, the museum and the laboratory, ranging from the practical to the theoretical

  • The Afterlife of Avestan Manuscripts

    Gholami, Saloumeh. 2023. The afterlife of Avestan manuscripts: Colophons and marginal notes. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

    The book is also available as open access e-book.

    This study investigates the role of paratext in Zoroastrian scribal tradition, with a focus on the Avesta manuscripts. It examines how paratexts, such as colophons and marginal notes, contribute to organizing and interpreting the content of these manuscripts. These elements not only structure the knowledge but also reflect the roles and activities of individuals involved in the manuscript’s lifecycle, from creation to reception. Additionally, the study explores how paratexts facilitate access to the main text, acting as a bridge that documents the history of each manuscript, its actors, and interaction with society. The analysis includes a diverse range of colophons and marginal notes, examining their structure, content, and relationship to their respective manuscripts.

    Short summary

  • Topographies of Rhetoric

    Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, University of Oxford, will deliver four public lectures at the École Pratique des Hautes Études:

    Topographies of Rhetoric and Moral Reasoning in Sasanian and Post-Sasanian Zoroastrianism

    (more…)

  • Iranian Syntax in Classical Armenian

    Meyer, Robin. 2023. Iranian syntax in classical Armenian: The Armenian perfect and other cases of pattern replication (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 53). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    A corollary of this linguistic analysis are new insights into the historical social dynamics between Armenian and Parthian speakers: the latter disappear from the region almost without any documentary trace after the fall of the Parthian Empire in 224 CE. This fact and a study of the historical data from surrounding cultures strongly suggest that the Parthians, who made up the ruling class in the Armenian Kingdom for almost four centuries, over the course of time identified with the Armenians and gave up their native tongue.

    Abstract

  • Ricerche Linguistiche

    Ricerche Linguistiche is a new journal, giving new life to an older version of itself. It is published annually and aims to provide ‘a venue for contributions in the fields of diachronic and historical linguistics concerning all levels of linguistic analysis, with a special focus on ancient Indo-European and Semitic languages, as well as Romance languages and varieties’. You can read more about the journal, its history and goals here. Sadly, the journal does not seem to be open access.

    It’s first issue has two articles of interest:

  • The ezāfe-like construction in Old Iranian

    Gentile, Simone. 2024. The ezāfe-like construction in Old Iranian: A reassessment. Ricerche Linguistiche 1.

    This paper addresses the origins of the (proto-)ezāfe in Old Iranian, challenging traditional analyses that have classified the ‘ezāfe’-like structures in Avestan and Old Persian as adjectival formations. This hypothesis is primarily based on the case agreement between the relative pronoun and the head noun. This paper presents
    an alternative interpretation, proposing that these constructions should be viewed as relative clauses (RCs) with omitted copulas. From this perspective, the omission of the copula triggers the so-called attractio relativi, a phenomenon observed in various Indo-European languages, thus challenging prior claims. The idea that
    RCs may have served as precursors to the Persian ezāfe and potentially contributed to the formation of definite articles in some Middle Eastern Iranian languages remains compelling. However, in earlier stages, these structures are best understood as reduced RCs, lacking an explicit copula.

    Abstract

  • New remarks on §70 of the Bisotun Inscription

    Fattori, Marco. 2024. New epigraphic and exegetical remarks on paragraph 70 of the Bisotun inscription, Old Persian version (DB/OP IV ll. 88–92). Ricerche Linguistiche 1. 105–133.

    The preprint of the article is available from the author’s Academia page.

    This paper aims to provide a new edition of paragraph 70 of the Old Persian version of the Bisotun inscription (DB/OP IV ll. 88-92). Although this badly preserved passage received an enormous scholarly attention, only a few researchers could directly examine the inscription, and their editions differ significantly from one another. In absence of good published photographs, it is currently impossible to critically evaluate the reliability of these editions and propose new readings based on a first-hand inspection of the stone. To overcome this inconvenience, this article includes a full photographic documentation of the passage and a detailed discussion of each reading. Since this new examination of the inscription resulted in the improvement of several readings, the edition is followed by a commentary where a possible interpretation of the newly read words is offered.

    Abstract

  • On the Etymology of pourušaspa-

    Volume 28, Issue 1, of Iran and the Caucasus has been published. We would like to point out Mehrbod Khanizadeh’s contribution in the issue:

    Khanizadeh, Mehrbod. 2024. On the etymology of the Avestan personal name pourušaspa-. Iran and the Caucasus 28(1). 72–86.

    This article discusses the formation and meaning of the Avestan personal name of Zarathuštra’s father, pourušaspa-. Taking side with the current scholarly view on the etymology and meaning of the word, i.e., *pourušāspa– → pourušaspa– ‘one who has grey horses’, it is argued here that the shortening of the vowel can be explained by an analogical model in Wištāsp Yašt 1.2, where pourušaspa– m. is described as pouru.aspa– ‘having many horses’. The article also challenges the view that Wištāsp Yašt 1.2 is a recent text.

    Abstract