Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Author: Yazdan Safaee

  • The Unfinished Story of the Babylonian Version of the Bīsotūn (Behistun) Inscription (DB Bab.)

    Hackl, Johannes. 2025. The Unfinished Story of the Babylonian Version of the Bīsotūn (Behistun) Inscription (DB Bab.). Iraq. Published online 2025:1-20. doi:10.1017/irq.2025.10033

    This article revisits the editorial history of the Babylonian (Akkadian) version of the Bīsotūn (Behistun) Inscription (DB) to establish the extent of the surviving text in light of a re-examination of the inscription at Mount Bīsotūn (Behistun). Questions arising about the reliability of the standard edition presented in Von Voigtlander (1978) prompted a critical review of her new readings, which significantly expand the text by approximately two-thirds compared to what previous commentators recorded and what is visible on the rock face today. The article focuses on the results of this scrutiny, supported by information from Von Voigtlander’s correspondence with George G. Cameron and Matthew W. Stolper, highlighting the implications of their discussions.

  • The Pahlavi Papyri in their Historical Context

    The Pahlavi Papyri in their Historical Context is the second round of the Pahlavi Papyri Workshop to be held in Innsbruck: Tuesday, 25 November – Wednesday, 26 November 2025. The workshop is organized by Bernhard Palme, Robert Rollinger and Touraj Daryaee.

    Address: Seminar rooms 04K100/04M100 (4th floor) and 14 (1st floor), Ágnes-Heller-Haus, Innrain 52a, 6020 Innsbruck

    To see the program, click here.

  • Chotano-Sogdica. Linguistic Studies on Sogdian and Khotanese

    Chotano-Sogdica. Linguistic Studies on Sogdian and Khotanese

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2025. Chotano-Sogdica. Linguistic Studies on Sogdian and Khotanese (Grammatica Iranica, 4). Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press.

    Über ein halbes Jahrhundert lang, seit 1972, hat Nicholas Sims-Williams viele wichtige Artikel über die älteren iranischen Sprachen veröffentlicht, insbesondere über das östliche Mitteliranisch (Sogdisch, Baktrisch und Khotanisch). Nahezu alle seine Artikel über Sogdisch und Khotanisch sind im vorliegenden Band zusammengefasst, zusammen mit drei völlig neuen Artikeln mit den Titeln „Is there a ‘predicative instrumental’ in Sogdian?“, „Yaghnobi and the Sogdian ‘Rhythmic Law’“ und „The locative singular in Old Khotanese“. Die Ergänzungen und Korrekturen, die aufgrund der fünfzigjährigen Fortschritte im Verständnis dieser Sprachen notwendig geworden sind, werden durchgehend hinzugefügt, jedoch sorgfältig vom Originaltext getrennt, um das Auffinden von Verweisen auf frühere Versionen zu erleichtern. Das Buch wird durch detaillierte Register ergänzt und ist ein unverzichtbares Nachschlagewerk für Studierende und Wissenschaftler, die sich für zentralasiatische Geschichte und Literatur sowie für iranische und indogermanische Linguistik interessieren.

  • The Zoroastrian funeral ritual for living souls

    Nayebossadrian, Zhaleh. 2025. The Zoroastrian funeral ritual for living souls. Culture and Religion. 1-14.

    This study presents a comprehensive investigation into a Zoroastrian funerary rite, ‘Zīnda-ruwān-yaštan’, performed during their lifetime for the well-being of their living soul. The research draws on Zoroastrian scriptures and ethnographic sources to trace the origins and eventual decline of the ‘Zīnda-ruwāni’ ritual through a combination of historical, textual, and epigraphic analysis. The finding emphasises the ritual’s adaptability in response to evolving socio-political circumstances. Concentrating on ‘Srōš Yazata’, the divine entity believed to guide souls following death, the ceremonial practice underscores its profound spiritual import in assuaging death anxieties. The study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the evolution of Zoroastrian funerary customs within various historical contexts. It demonstrates how Zīnda-ruwāni functioned to alleviate death-related anxieties within a dynamic socio-religious milieu, providing reassurance amid political and economic instability.

  • Achaemenid court logistics between royal capitals of Susa and Persepolis

    Achaemenid court logistics between royal capitals of Susa and Persepolis

    Salaris, Davide. 2025. ‘Royal’ road, ‘royal’ needs: a GIS-based approach to Achaemenid court logistics between royal capitals of Susa and Persepolis. Antiquity. Published online 2025:1-8.

    This article redefines the concept of the Achaemenid ‘Royal’ Road using GIS-based route modelling to reconstruct possible roads between Susa and Persepolis. By integrating logistical and environmental parameters, it shows how royal mobility required a specialised infrastructure—distinct from ancillary roads—tailored to the operational scale of the Achaemenid court.

  • Parthica (vol. 26)

    Parthica (vol. 26)

    Volume 26 of the journal Parthica (2024) contains several contributions of relevance to Iranian Studies.

    • R. PALERMO – E. FRANCO – M. LA PORTA – C. RASMUSSEN: Exploring the Hellenistic period in North Mesopotamia landscape studies and excavations at Gird-I Matrab (Iraqi Kurdistan), p. 9
    • C. LIPPOLIS – V. MESSINA – G. PATRUCCO – A. SPANO: Rapid digital documentation of endangered archaeological contexts. A case-study from Seleucia on the Tigris (central Iraq), p. 29
    • M. MORIGGI: Aramaic graffiti in the houses of Hatra: The epigraphic point of view, p. 41
    • A.A. CHAVERDI: Two newly discovered artifacts from the city of Gur, Ardaxsir-Xwarrah, Firuzabad, p. 47
    • F. IZZI: Ain Sinu (Ninawa, Iraq): A military outpost on the Sasanian western limes? New studies on the military architecture of the Sasanian empire, p. 55
    • K. MAKSYMIUK – P. SKUPNIEWICZ: A silver plate with an ostrich hunt scene from the Wyvern Collection, p. 85
    • E. RASHIDIAN: The landscape elements of a dastgerd according to the Bozpar Valley and similar case studies in the Iranian highlands, p. 103
  • The Achaemenid Dynastic Myth and Jewish Scribes in the Late Persian Period

    The Achaemenid Dynastic Myth and Jewish Scribes in the Late Persian Period

    Leuchter, Mark A. 2025. An Empire Far and Wide: The Achaemenid Dynastic Myth and Jewish Scribes in the Late Persian Period. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    This book offers a new approach to evidence to examine Persian imperial ideology and surveys literary products of ancient Jewish scribes to analyze the influence of Persian imperialism on the development of Yehudite scribal ideology and presents an argument for the existence of Judaism in the Persian period.

  • Calque and Loanword in Early ʿAbbāsid Time (750–800 CE)

    Calque and Loanword in Early ʿAbbāsid Time (750–800 CE)

    Abedi, Milad & Johannes Thomann. 2024. The emergence of Arabic scientific terminology at the eastern contact zone: Calque and loanword in early ʿAbbāsid time (750–800 CE). Asiatische Studien – Études Asiatiques 78(4). 705-717.

    Superstratum languages often become substratum languages after military defeats. This was the case with Middle Persian in the Islamic Empire. There were different phases of interference between Middle Persian and Arabic. For example, Middle Persian terms, especially in administration and technology, were borrowed into Arabic. Later, in the first decades of Abbasid rule, a new scientific terminology was developed in Arabic based on translations of Sanskrit and Middle Persian texts in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Besides that, some scientific concepts of Chinese origin were received too. Most of these early Arabic scientific texts are lost, having been replaced later in the 3rd/9th century by translations of Greek scientific works. However, many fragments of them are preserved in secondary tradition, and such materials have been only partially studied. This paper will discuss cases of Arabic borrowings, including calques and loanwords from Sanskrit and Middle Persian.

  • Man, Landscape, and Society in Arsacid and Sasanian Iran

    Man, Landscape, and Society in Arsacid and Sasanian Iran

    Cereti, Carlo Giovanni, Pierfrancesco Callieri & Vito Messina (eds.). 2025. Eranshahr. Man, Landscape, and Society in Arsacid and Sasanian Iran (Collana Convegni 75). Rome: Sapienza Università Editrice.

    This fourth volume of the Atlas of the Ancient Near East (OCAVOA) collects 15 contributions by members of the three Units composing the PRIN 2017 ‘Eranshahr: Man Landscape and Society in Arsacid and Sasanian Iran. Texts, material culture, and society from Arsaces to Yazdegard III. Three case studies: Pars, Pahlaw and Khuzestan’ (2017PR34CS). These papers were presented during the conclusive workshop of the project, held in Ravenna on February 22-23, 2024. The project was conceived in 2017 and launched in 2018, representing a collaborative effort by a multidisciplinary team of scholars from Sapienza University of Rome, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, and Turin University, as well as several international partners. The project aimed to study the long millennium bridging two important transition periods in the history of western Asia, the first marking the passage from the Seleucid to the Arsacid era, the second being the fall of the Sasanian Empire and the rise of the Islamic Caliphate. In this framework, the book contains a set of archaeological, historical-geographical, and cultural studies on three ancient regions of western Iran during the Arsacid, Sasanian, and early Islamic periods, which combine into a coherent and innovative narration, shedding new light on the Iranian world in Antiquity, Late-Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages and opening the way for future investigations.

  • From Alexander to Kanishka

    From Alexander to Kanishka

    Bousdroukis, Apostolos. 2025. D’Alexandre à Kanishka : Interactions culturelles dans les fondations des successeurs d’Alexandre, du Proche-Orient à la vallée de l’Indus, aux époques hellénistique, romaine et arsacide : Volume I & Volume II (MDAFA 35). Athens: École française d’Athènes.

    From the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indus Valley, the successors of Alexander the Great founded, as early as the 4th century BCE, an impressive network of cities inspired by Macedonian urban models. Who were their inhabitants? How did these cities function and evolve within such diverse cultural contexts as the Near East, Mesopotamia, or Bactria? In this two-volume work, Apostolos Bousdroukis invites us to rediscover these foundations through a scholarly investigation grounded in the most recent archaeological evidence. Civic institutions, public monuments, sanctuaries, domestic architecture, and religious practices are all examined, not only in their local particularities but also in their capacity to absorb, transform, or blend Greek and indigenous traditions. Far from offering a simple urban history, this study sheds light on the complex interactions between Greek settlers and local populations — encompassing processes of adoption, adaptation, and cultural hybridization. It reveals how these cities became dynamic centers of exchange and cultural innovation, contributing to the shaping of new identities in a world undergoing profound transformation.