Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Author: Shervin Farridnejad

Admonitions of the wise Ōšnar
Goshtasb, Farzaneh & Nadia Hajipour (eds.). 2014. Admonitions of Ošnar-i Dānā. Tehran: Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies.
The (h)andarz ī ōšnar ī dānāg “The Counsels of the wise Aošnar” (AŌD) is the conventional name of a short didactic treatise in Middle Persian belonging to the so-called andarz “wisdom-literature”. AŌD is pseudo-epigraphically ascribed to Aošnara- pouru.jira “Aošnara, the very wise”, a sage mentioned in Yt.13.131. He is also mentioned in Dēnkard VII.1.36 (DkM 598) to be coeval with the primeval king Kay-Kāōs. The frame story of AŌD is a so-called “number-litany”, in which a disciple asks the sage to give an andarz “wise saying” for every number from one to thousand. However the extant manuscripts of AŌD contains the andarz only up to number six.
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12/06/2015
Perspectives on Pasargadae
Mozaffari, Ali (ed). 2014. World heritage in Iran: Perspectives on Pasargadae. Heritage, Culture and Identity. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate.
Pasargadae is the location of the tomb of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Through the ages it was Islamised and the tomb was ascribed to the Mother of Solomon. It was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that archaeological evidence demonstrated the relationship between the site and Cyrus and it was appropriated into conflicting political discourses on nationalism and Islamism while concurrently acknowledged as a national and then a World Heritages site. However, Pasargadae is neither an isolated World Heritage site, nor purely a symbol of abstract state politics. Pasargadae and its immediate vicinity constitute a living landscape occupied by villagers, nomads and tourists.This edited volume presents for the first time a broad, multi-disciplinary examination of Pasargadae by experts from both outside and within Iran. It specifically focuses on those disciplines that are absent from existing studies, such as ethnography, tourism and museum studies providing valuable insights into this fascinating place. In its totality, the book argues that to understand World Heritage sites and their problems fully, a holistic approach should be adopted, which considers the manifold of perspectives and issues. It also puts forward a novel approach to the question of heritage, representation and construction of collective identity from the framework of place.
Table of Contents:
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10/06/2015
Zoroastrianism in Iran and India: Then and Now
Call for Applications
The Institute of Religious Studies at the University of Zurich (UZH) invites to the summer school:
Zoroastrianism in Iran and India: Then and Now
August 30th – September 2nd 2015
Zoroastrism is one of the oldest living religious traditions today. It shaped the Persian Empire and strongly influenced other religions, such as Judaism and Islam.
Zoroastrian communities today in Iran, India and in the diaspora are faced with typical challenges of modernity. They are confronted with the need to negotiate the preservation of tradition in the light of requirements of tolerance and the preservation of identity in an age of globalization.
Our Summer School appeals primarily to Master students and PHDs and will be conducted bilingually (English-German).
In lectures and workshops both historic and contemporary socio-scientific subject areas (rituals, beliefs, conflicts, etc.) are discussed with the contributors.
In the discussion with Zoroastrian guests the contemporary situation in India and Switzerland in particular will be analyzed.
Location
KAA E-11
Religionswissenschaftliches Seminar
Kantonsschulstrasse 1
8001 Zürich
- Registration is open until June 30th.
- Please register via E-Mail: sekr_luedd@theol.uzh.ch
- There is no participation fee.
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05/06/2015
History of Iran Podcast
History of Iran Podcast
The History of Iran Podcast project is an ongoing chronological attempt to trace the History of Iran in an innovative way of keeping the “dynastic framework as a useful way of organising the narrative”, but also “going to stop at certain points and explain and elaborate on certain points”. Starting with some general questions and topics on geography in the very first episodes, this series hosted by Khodadad Rezakhani is an ongoing account of the people, events, historic monents, political and cultural remarks that shaped the History of Iran. An invaluable resource for anyone that needs a ground level survey of the Iranian History.
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05/06/2015
Xerxes: A Persian life
Stoneman, Richard. 2015. Xerxes: A Persian life. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Xerxes, Great King of the Persian Empire from 486–465 B.C., has gone down in history as an angry tyrant full of insane ambition. The stand of Leonidas and the 300 against his army at Thermopylae is a byword for courage, while the failure of Xerxes’ expedition has overshadowed all the other achievements of his twenty-two-year reign.In this lively and comprehensive new biography, Richard Stoneman shows how Xerxes, despite sympathetic treatment by the contemporary Greek writers Aeschylus and Herodotus, had his reputation destroyed by later Greek writers and by the propaganda of Alexander the Great. Stoneman draws on the latest research in Achaemenid studies and archaeology to present the ruler from the Persian perspective. This illuminating volume does not whitewash Xerxes’ failings but sets against them such triumphs as the architectural splendor of Persepolis and a consideration of Xerxes’ religious commitments. What emerges is a nuanced portrait of a man who ruled a vast and multicultural empire which the Greek communities of the West saw as the antithesis of their own values.
About the author:
Richard Stoneman is Honorary Visiting Professor, University of Exeter, and the author of numerous books. He lives in Devon, UK.
04/06/2015
Magic, Myth and Folklore in Iran
Donaldson, Bess. 2015. The wild rue of Persia: Magic, myth and folklore in Iran. London: I. B. Tauris.
The Wild Rue is a unique study of myth and magic in Iran. Bess Donaldson spent thirty years in Iran as both missionary and teacher and in this classic work she records the beliefs and superstitions of country at a time when they were increasingly under threat from the tremendous changes brought about by the Shah’s program of modernization. This earlier way of life, with its belief in angels and the evil eye, and with its age-old rituals surrounding childbirth and burial, is recounted in an informed yet highly readable text. A unique study of magic, myth and folklore with chapters on cosmology, names and numbers, snakes, dreams, talismans and signs, childbirth, angels, the evil eye, and the calendar. A classic work, long unavailable but now back in print.
A preview of the book is available here.
About the author:
Bess Allen Donaldson was an American Presbyterian missionary and teacher. She began teaching at the Iran Bethel Girl’s School in 1910, eventually becoming its principal. Bess Donaldson spent thirty years in Iran, during which time she gathered the material for The Wild Rue.
03/06/2015
A new etymological dictionary of Persian language
Hassandust, Mohammad. 2015. The etymological dictionary of Persian. 5 Vols. Tehran: Academy of Persian Language and Literature.

The Etymological Dictionary of Persian is the most comprehensive and up-to-date work in the field of Classical and Modern New Persian historical lexicology and etymology. Since the publication of P. Horn’s Grundriss der neupersischen Etymologie (1893) and H. Hübschman’s Persische Studien (1895), enormous progress has been made in the field, and many etymologies have been revised or proposed. This new etymological dictionary, with more than 5500 entries, covers the entire principal vocabulary of Persian lexicon of both Iranian and non-Iranian origin, as well as the inherited lexicon of Persian and synthesizes the achievements of Iranian, and Indo-European, comparative linguistics over the last century. It covers also the vocabularies from diffrent sources of the Persian language attested in Classical poetry, historical narratives, mediaeval Farhangs “dictionaries”, as well as the vocabularies from modern urban and daily vernaculars.
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02/06/2015
The Zoroastrian and Manichaean religious controversy
Symposium on the Zoroastrian and Manichaean Religious Controversy:
«Ils disent que…». La controverse religieuse zoroastriens et manichéens.
12—13 June 2015, Collège de France

The two day conference seeks to investigate different topics regarding the “Zoroastrian and Manichean Religious Controversy”. It is organized within the framework of the chair “History and culture of pre-Islamic Central Asia”, Frantz Grenet (Collège de France) and with the scientific support of Jean-Daniel Dubois (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Studies).
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02/06/2015
A concise history of the Achaemenid Empire
Waters, Matthew W. 2014. Ancient Persia: A concise history of the Achaemenid Empire, 550-330 BCE. New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
The Achaemenid Persian Empire, at its greatest territorial extent under Darius I (r. 522–486 BCE), held sway over territory stretching from the Indus River Valley to southeastern Europe and from the western Himalayas to northeast Africa. In this book, Matt Waters gives a detailed historical overview of the Achaemenid period while considering the manifold interpretive problems historians face in constructing and understanding its history. This book offers a Persian perspective even when relying on Greek textual sources and archaeological evidence. Waters situates the story of the Achaemenid Persians in the context of their predecessors in the mid-first millennium BCE and through their successors after the Macedonian conquest, constructing a compelling narrative of how the empire retained its vitality for more than two hundred years (c. 550–330 BCE) and left a massive imprint on Middle Eastern as well as Greek and European history.
For more information, see here the Preface to this volume and the ToC.
About the author:
Matt Waters is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.
31/05/2015
From Old to New Persian
Utas, Bo. 2013. From Old to New Persian: Collected essays (Beiträge Zur Iranistik 38). Edited by Carina Jahani & Mehrdad Fallahzadeh. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag.
In a long series of essays, written during almost half a century, Bo Utas analyses the development of West Iranian languages, particularly Old, Middle, and New Persian, from various perspectives. The focus is placed on the transition from Middle to New Persian and the final essays (hitherto partly unpublished) especially elucidate this process in the light of an interaction between oral and written language.
This book is the second volume of collected articles by Bo Utas. The first volume, Manuscript, Text and Literature. Collected Essays on Middle and New Persian Texts, was published on the occasion of his 70th birthday as no. 29 in the series Beiträge zur Iranistik in 2008.
The seventeen articles in the present volume cover a time span of about 2,500 years and encompass all the stages of Persian. It also contains two entirely new articles, “The Grammatical Transition from Middle to New Persian” and “Between Spoken and Written: The Formation of New Persian”, which sum up much of Bo Utas’ philological research.
For more information, see the preface to this volume and the ToC.
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26/05/2015