Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Category: Books

  • Debating Cyrus

    Debating Cyrus

    Johnson, David M., Gabriel Alexander Danzig and Rodrigo Illarraga (eds.). 2026. Debating Cyrus: Leadership in Xenophon’s ›Cyropaedia‹ (Xenophon Studies 2). Berlin: De Gruyter.

    Is Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great the model leader he seems to be, or does his apparent success actually demonstrate the dangers of imperialism and one-man rule?

    Debating Cyrus gathers contributions from many of the world’s leading scholars in Xenophontic Studies, and features scholars with a wide range of approaches to reading classical texts. Our essays discuss the surprisingly subtle techniques Xenophon employs, and study topics including ambition, the rule of law, hunting, tragedy, romance, and the use Cyrus makes of love and fear. A cluster of essays considers Cyrus’ one apparent failure — the failure to ensure his kingdom will prosper after him. Other essays show what we can learn about the Cyropaedia by comparing it to other works by Xenophon and his contemporaries.

    Our aim is not to resolve the debate about Cyrus, a debate that will live on as long as readers care about Xenophon’s magisterial account of the founder of the greatest empire of his day and disagree about what sort of leadership to expect from a leader like Cyrus. Our goal is to prepare readers to engage in the debate themselves.

  • Herodotus and Women

    Herodotus and Women

    Zaccarini, Matteo. 2024. Erodoto e le donne: La presenza femminile nelle Storie. Rome: Carocci.

    Elena partì da Sparta con i Troiani, ma, forse, fu una fuga volontaria più che un rapimento. La regina di Lidia, disonorata dal marito, congegnò una vendetta esemplare e teatrale. L’etera Rodopi, in origine una schiava, divenne una figura leggendaria grazie alla fama e a un monumento eccezionali. L’uomo più potente al mondo, il Gran Re persiano Serse, rischiò la rovina per via della rivalità tra donne di corte. In Grecia i Persiani furono sconfitti, ma la straordinaria Artemisia, unica donna tra le loro fila, uscì vincitrice su tutti. A guardar bene poi, la vittoria dei Greci fu dovuta anche a una bambina prodigio, Gorgo. E così via. Attraverso figure femminili ordinarie o eccezionali, le Storie di Erodoto indagano gli aspetti più profondi della natura umana, costruiscono un universo complesso e sfaccettato, insinuano il dubbio sul senso delle grandi guerre e sulle gesta dei grandi uomini. Di volta in volta con sottigliezza, ironia, tragica consapevolezza e incredibile modernità. Prima monografia sul tema, il volume analizza la narrazione del “padre della Storia” sul femminile e ripensa gli stereotipi sulla misoginia degli antichi Greci.

  • Kleines Gatha-Lesebuch

    Kleines Gatha-Lesebuch

    Hoffmann, Karl. 2025. Kleines Gatha-Lesebuch: Aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben von Bernhard Forssman, unter Mitwirkung von Jürgen Habisreitinger. Mit einem Beitrag von Almut Hintze. (Ed.) Bernhard Forssman. Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing.

    This book is open access and can be downloaded here.

    Dieses Buch enthält Stücke aus den “Gathas”: poetischen Texten, als deren Verfasser Zarathustra angesehen wird, der Stifter der Parsen-Religion. Die Sprache dieser Dichtungen ist eine frühe Stufe des Avestischen, einer Schwestersprache des Altpersischen im alten Iran. Die sprachliche und inhaltliche Deutung der Gathas stößt auf zahlreiche Schwierigkeiten. Der bedeutende Avesta-Forscher Prof. Karl Hoffmann (1915 – 1996) legte sich für seinen Unterricht eine Sammlung von verhältnismäßig einfachen Textstücken mit eigenen Übersetzungen an. Diese Sammlung wird nunmehr aus seinem Nachlass herausgegeben, erweitert um verschiedene Beigaben, u.a. um einen Beitrag von Prof. Almut Hintze (London) über die Gathas und um ein vollständiges Vokabular.

  • Scent, Colour and Glitter in the Ancient World

    Scent, Colour and Glitter in the Ancient World

    Soudavar Farmanfarmaian, Fatema. 2025. Scent, colour and glitter in the ancient world: A comparative history of aromatics, cosmetics and adornment, from the Mediterranean to the China Seas. London: I.B. Tauris.

    Aromatics, cosmetics and personal adornment have had a major role in the evolution of human society, particularly in the cradles of civilization between the Nile and the Indus.

    Far from being concerned with the frivolities of vain pursuits, their study touches on religion, cosmology, rituals and magic, life and the afterlife, sexuality and procreation, artistic expression, technology, craftsmanship, aesthetics, administrative structures, long­-distance trade and cross-cultural exchanges – in sum, all the essentials that underpin human civilization.

    This richly illustrated book provides a history of luxury items from the Neolithic period to late Antiquity. Egyptian and Mesopotamian cosmetics are discussed first, along with the vast region between the Nile and the Indus, with the Iranian plateau at its core. Through the latter, the book ventures westwards to the Greco-Roman world and eastwards to the Indian subcontinent and China. The differing focus of each chapter gives a fuller picture of the global role of aromatics, cosmetics and jewellery within a broader civilizational framework that includes archaeological discoveries that have come to light in the last six decades.

    Description
  • Le livre de Yōišta Friiāna

    Le livre de Yōišta Friiāna

    Pirart, Éric. 2025. Le livre de Yōišta Friiāna. Introduction, édition, traduction et commentaire (Publications d’Études Indo-Iraniennes 5). Strasbourg: Université de Strasbourg.

    Yōišta Friiāna est un héros mythologique présent dans toutes les strates de la littérature zoroastrienne ancienne et médiévale, l’archaïque Uštauuaitī Gāθā, deux Yašt de l’Avesta récent, le Dēnkard et d’autres livres pehlevis. Sa confrontation avec un démon, contée dans le petit livre pehlevi qui porte son nom, rappelle fortement le mythe grec d’Œdipe et de la Sphinx.

    Résumé
  • Dabir (vol. 12)

    Dabir (vol. 12)

    Volume 12 of Dabir (2025) is now available both online and in print, featuring two issues:

    • Salman Aliyari Babolghani: The Imperfect with the t-Type Prefix in New Iranian and Its Connection to the Old Iranian Augmented Imperfect Optative
    • Majid Daneshgar: Reading Ismāʿīlī Islam in Aceh: Shāh Shams Sabziwārī’s Poems Copied in the 15th-Century Indonesia
    • Meysam Mohammadi: Middle Persian, Early New Persian and Fahlawī Quotations in Tārīx-e Qom
    • Salman Aliyari Babolghani: The Verb ‘to Become’ and Its Significance in Western Iranian Historical Dialectology: the Case of Persian and Lori
    • Majid Daneshgar: An Unknown Malay-Javanese Booklet Belonging to Thomas Erpenius: Early Days of the Shaṭṭārī Prayers in Indonesia
    • Pouria Shokri and Ahmad Salehi Kakhki: The Morphology and Classification of Tiles from the Ilkhanid Era until the Timurid Invasion, with Emphasis on Techniques, Forms, and Glazes
    • Hossein Sheikh: Review of Zamāna wa Zindagi-ye wa Kārnāma-ye Mollā Huseyin Wāˁiz-i Kāšifi, written by Mostafa Gohari-ye Fakhrabad
    • Sun Wujun[孫 武軍] and Chen Fan[陳 帆]: Review of Zhonggu Xianjiao Dongchuan Jiqi Huahua Yanjiu 中古祆教東傳及其華化研究 [Studies on the Spread of Zoroastrianism in Medieval China], written by Zhang, Xiaogui [張小貴]
  • Studies on Middle Babylonian texts from Haft-Tappe

    Studies on Middle Babylonian texts from Haft-Tappe

    Nikkhah Bahrami, Gita. 2025. Untersuchungen zu mittelbabylonischen Texten aus Haft-Tappe (dubsar 27). Münster: Zaphon.

    G. Nikkhah Bahrami’s study offers a comprehensive edition and cultural-historical and economic-historical investigation of the texts in Middle-Babylonian Akkadian found at Haft-Tappe in the province Khuzestan in southwestern Iran. Following a brief introduction (I.), paleography, syllabary, orthography, and other philological questions concerning the texts are discussed (II.). The third section (III. historical aspects) addresses the question of identifying Haft-Tappe with Kabnak, as well as questions related to the rulers documented at Haft-Tappe and their building activities. After discussing place names and terrain features (IV.), religious and cultic aspects (V.), the legal questions of those texts containing terminology reminiscent of legal contexts are examined (VI.). An overview of social aspects (VII.) addresses the titles of officials, occupational names, and the role of women in the texts from Haft-Tappe; another section examines administrative terminology, data formulas, and the names of administrative departments (VIII.). Following the overview of the various materials that are the focus of each text (IX.), the administrative texts are arranged in the edition (Part B) according to the following categories: metal, stone and glass, reed and wood, mineral substances, textiles, shoes, animal husbandry, foodstuffs, labor, and labor; followed by editions of “Stone Inscription III” and fragmentary texts. Extensive indexes of names and occupational titles, as well as a list of the specifically attested sign forms, supplement the monograph.

  • Persia’s Greek Campaigns: Kingship, War, and Spectacle on the Achaemenid Frontier

    Persia’s Greek Campaigns: Kingship, War, and Spectacle on the Achaemenid Frontier

    Hyland, John O. 2025. Persia’s Greek campaigns: Kingship, war, and spectacle on the Achaemenid frontier. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Persia’s Greek Campaigns offers a bold reassessment of the wars between the Achaemenid Persian kings and the Greek city-states (c. 499–449 bce). These conflicts, and especially Xerxes’s invasion of Greece (480–479 bce), are remembered as foundational events in Greek history, but the “Persian version” remains neglected. The Persians left no campaign narratives to compare with the Greek accounts of Herodotus and Aeschylus—but their documents, artwork, and artifacts offer the foundations for a new interpretive study. Achaemenid royal inscriptions, seals and documents from Persepolis, and texts from earlier Near Eastern empires illuminate Persian worldviews and approaches to frontier warfare. Persia’s Greek campaigns did not emerge from policies of infinite expansion or “East-West” struggle, but drew on a long tradition of Near Eastern royal display through expeditions to distant frontiers. Such campaigns advertised a king’s heroic credentials, possession of divine favor, and achievement of universal power. Xerxes’s journey from Iran to Athens marked the pinnacle of this tradition, combining ideological spectacles with masterful logistical preparation. It achieved its principal goals through the seizure and burning of Athens, but its unexpected and embarrassing defeats at Salamis and Plataea undermined the intended image of royal grandeur. The resulting transition to an era of diplomatic consolidation marked a vital step in the evolution of history’s first “world empire.”

  • Palmyra, the Roman Empire, and the Third Century Crisis

    Palmyra, the Roman Empire, and the Third Century Crisis

    Raja, Rubina & Eivind Heldaas Seland. eds. 2025. Palmyra, the Roman Empire, and the Third Century Crisis: Zooming in and Scaling up from the Evidence. Stuttgart: Steiner.

    The third century is often seen as a period of crisis in the Roman world, marked by political upheaval, violence, war, religious strife, hyperinflation, climatic instability, pandemics, and border incursions. These troubled times, however, coincided with the peak of Palmyra’s prosperity. They encompassed the Syrian city’s drift towards centralized rulership and short-lived political hegemony in the Near East, as well as its reach for imperial power and downfall in the years 270–272 CE.

    How can this discrepancy between metropolitan crisis and peripheral prosperity be explained? Along with experts on different aspects of Palmyra, this volume gathers contributions from leading scholars working with the Roman Empire, and with neighboring regions inside and beyond the imperial borders. Highlighting parallels, discrepancies, connections, and disconnections between developments in Palmyra and other parts of the world with which Palmyra interacted, the aim is a more critical, detailed, and nuanced understanding of the situation in the Roman Near East in the third century CE.

    Table of contents: click here.

  • Sasanian Law in its Social Context

    Sasanian Law in its Social Context

    Macuch, Maria. 2025. Sasanian law in its social context (Iranica 34). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

    Sasanian law has remained largely an unknown entity outside the specific field of Iranian Studies due to the immense difficulties involved in understanding the relevant legal sources. Sasanian Law in its Social Context by Maria Macuch is the first attempt to reconstruct the legal system of Sasanian Iran (224–651 CE), systematically and in detail, covering all areas of law as far as they can be reconstructed on the basis of the available material.
    Macuch focuses mainly on Middle Persian sources and original documents in the Pahlavi cursive script, but also makes extensive use of other significant legal texts mentioning Sasanian law, including the Babylonian Talmud, Syriac, Arabic and New Persian sources. Besides describing the basic institutions in all legal fields, the work aims to understand fundamental legal concepts reconstructed from the dispersed, often fragmentary and enigmatic material, and to explain the main functions of the vast network of intertwined legal constructions in the field of family and property law. It is argued that this specific complex of characteristic institutions, unique to the Sasanian legal system, only makes sense within the framework of a strictly hierarchical social system that granted considerable privileges to its aristocratic and religious elite. The significant impact of Sasanian law on other legal systems is discussed throughout the work and specifically in the last chapter. Numerous Middle Persian texts with new editions and translations by the author are assembled in the appendices. Pahlavian legal terms and phrases are clarified in the glossary.