Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Category: Books

  • East and West in the World Empire of Alexander

    Wheatley, Pat and Elizabeth Baynham. 2015. East and West in the World Empire of Alexander: Essays in Honour of Brian Bosworth. Oxford University Press.

    The essays in this volume – written by twenty international scholars – are dedicated to Professor Brian Bosworth who has, in over forty-five years, produced arguably the most influential corpus of historical and historiographical research by one scholar. Professor Bosworth’s name is often synonymous with scholarship on Alexander the Great, but his expertise also spreads far wider, as the scope of these essays demonstrates. The collection’s coverage ranges from Egyptian and Homeric parallels, through Roman historiography, to Byzantine coinage. However, the life of Alexander provides the volume’s central theme, and among the topics explored are the conqueror’s resonance with mythological figures such as Achilles and Heracles, his divine pretensions and military display, and his motives for arresting his expedition at the River Hyphasis in India. Some of Alexander’s political acts are also scrutinized, as are the identities of those supposedly present in the last symposium where, according to some sources, the fatal poison was administered to the king. Part of the collection focuses on Alexander’s legacy, with seven essays examining the Successors, especially Craterus, and Ptolemy, and Alexander’s Ill-fated surviving dynasty, including Olympias, Eurydice, and Philip III Arrhidaeus. Readership: Scholars and students interested in the life of Alexander the Great, and historiography, ancient history and civilizations, and mythology more generally.

    ToC: (more…)

  • Zoroastrian Cosmogony and Eschatology

    Timuş, Mihaela. 2015. Cosmogonie et eschatologie: articulations conceptuelles du système religieux zoroastrien. (Cahiers de Studia Iranica 54). Paris: Peeters Press.
    The book includes seven studies that use historiographical and philological methods to explore the historical and religious aspects of Zoroastrian cosmogony and eschatology. It undertakes a close reading of Middle Persian literature to identify and illustrate specific aspects of this religious system, such as the symmetry between the beginning and the end of the world. The author reads the historiography of Iranian studies, paying special attention to the French scholarship on this topic, in order to show how the modern history of religions transformed Christian theological concepts in its analysis of the Zoroastrian religion. The Addenda include several unpublished documents, relevant for the history of Zoroastrian studies in France.
    About the Author:
    Mihaela Timuş is Post-Doc fellow in the Romanian Academy, Institute for the History of Religions, History of Indian and Iranian Religions.

  • A manual for Iranian Studies

    Paul, Ludwig (ed.). 2013. Handbuch der Iranistik. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag.
    This manual for Iranian Studies  presents a comprehensive survey of status and trends of current research in the filed of Iranian Studies.  In 34 contributions, the most important disciplines of the field, namely history, literature, religion and language were examined by 33 authors on almost 500 pages. It comprised both the current state of Iran as well as  the Iranian cultural sphere in its geographic breadth and historical depth, from Anatolia to Central Asia and from the early history (7th millennium BC) Until today. The manual aims to provide a methodical presentation of research developments and tries to answer the questions such as: what research questions are fresh and interesting? why and in which research contexts they are important?
    All contributions of the manual are divided into three sections A, B and C.  The section A guides the reader through fundamental and self-reflexive methodological considerations to approach the subject. The section B provides a research overview, and the section C gives an alphabetical bibliography on each subject.

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  • The Transmission of the Avesta

    Cantera, Alberto (ed.). 2012. The Transmission of the Avesta. (Iranica 20). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
    The Avesta is a collection of liturgical texts considered as their sacred book by the Zoroastrian community. It contains the recitatives of the Zoroastrian liturgies still celebrated in the 17th century, some of them even celebrated until today. The texts integrated in these ceremonies were composed in different places and at different times, and transmitted orally for centuries. The exact date of the fixation of the ceremonies in the shape in which they are presented in the manuscripts and the creation of the different manuscripts is unknown. But today it is proven that even after the creation of the first manuscripts, the transmission of these liturgical texts was the result of a complicated process in which not only the process of copying manuscripts but also the ritual practice and the ritual teaching were involved. The only deep analysis of the written transmission of the Avesta was made by K. F. Geldner as Prolegomena to his edition of the Avesta. Since then, many new manuscripts have appeared. In The Transmission of the Avesta contributions by the main experts in this field are gathered: the oral transmission, the fixation of the different collections, the first writing down, and the manuscripts. Special interest is devoted to the manuscripts. Some contributions of the volume were presented at the correspondent colloquium held in Salamanca, September 2009; others were added in order to make of the volume a comprehensive work on the different aspects of the Avestan transmission.

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  • Studies on Iran and the Caucasus

    Bläsing, Uwe, Victoria Arakelova & Matthias Weinreich (eds.). 2015. Studies on Iran and the Caucasus: In honour of Garnik Asatrian. Leiden: Brill.

    This unique collection of essays by leading international scholars gives a profound introduction into the great diversity and richness of facets forming the study of one of earth’s most exciting areas, the Iranian and Caucasian lands. Each of the 37 contributions sheds light on a very special topic, the range of which comprises historical, cultural, ethnographical, religious, political and last but not least literary and linguistic issues, beginning from the late antiquity up to current times. Especially during the last decennia these two regions gained greater interest worldwide due to several developments in politics and culture. This fact grants the book, intended as a festschrift for Prof. Garnik Asatrian, a special relevance.

    Table of Contents:

    History and texts
    I. Early Mediaeval Period
    • Marco Bais: “Like a Flame Through the Reeds”: An Iranian Image in the Buzandaran Patmut‘iwnk‘
    • Jost Gippert: “The “Bun-Turks” in Ancient Georgia”
    • Dan Shapira: “On the Relative Value of Armenian Sources for the Khazar Studies: The Case of the Siege of Tbilisi”
    • Giusto Traina: “Some Remarks on the Inscription of Maris, Casit filius (Classical-Oriental Notes, 9)”
    II. Late Mediaeval Period
    • Kaveh Farrokh: “The Military Campaigns of Shah Abbas I in Azerbaijan and the Caucasus (1603-1618)”
    • Aldo Ferrari: “Persia and Persians in Raffi’s Xamsayi Melikʻutiwnnerə”
    • Hirotake Maeda: “New Information on the History of the Caucasus in the Third Volume of Afzal al-tavarikh”
    • Irène Natchkebia: “Unrealized Project: Rousseaus’ Plan of Franco-Persian Trade in the Context of the Indian Expedition (1807)”
    • Roman Smbatian: “Nadir’s Religious Policy Towards Armenians”
    Religion and Ethnography
    • Victoria Arakelova: “The Song Unveiling the Hidden”
    • Viacheslav A. Chirikba: “Between Christianity and Islam: Heathen Heritage in the Caucasus”
    • Matteo Compareti: “Armenian Pre-Christian Divinities: Some Evidence from the History of Art and Archaeological Investigation”
    • Peter Nicolaus: “The Taming of the Fairies”
    • Antonio Panaino: “The Classification of Astral Bodies in the Framework of a Historical Survey of Iranian Traditions”
    • Vahe S. Boyajian: “From Muscat to Sarhadd: Remarks on gwātī Healing Ritual within the Social Context”
    Linguistics
    • Uwe Bläsing: “Georgische Gewächse auf türkischer Erde: Ein Beitrag zur Phytonomie in Nordostanatolien”
    • Johnny Cheung: “The Persian Verbal Suffixes -ān and -andeh (-andag)”
    • Claudia A. Ciancaglini: “Allomorphic Variability in the Middle Persian Continuants of the Old Iranian suffix *-ka-“
    • Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: “Vowel Length in Middle Persian Verbal Endings”
    • Vladimir Livshits: “Some Khwarezmian Names”
    • Ela Filippone: “Kurdish bažn, Persian bašn and Other Iranian Cognates”
    • Adriano V. Rossi: “Once Again on Iranian *kund”
    • James R. Russell: “A Note on Armenian hrmštk-el”
    • Wolfgang Schulze: “Aspects of Udi-Iranian Language Contact”
    • Martin Schwarz: “Armenian varkaparazi and Its Iranian Background”
    • Donald Stilo: “The Poligenetic Origins of the Northern Talishi Language”
    • Matthias Weinreich: “Not only in the Caucasus: Ethno-linguistic Diversity on the Roof of the World”
    Ritual and Folklore
    • Anna Krasnawolska: “Hedayat’s Nationalism and His Concepts of Folklore”
    • Mikhail Pelevin: “Early Specimens of Pashto Folklore”
    • Nagihan Haliloğlu: “Activist, Professional, Family Man: Masculinities in Marjane Satrapi’s Work”
    • Khachik Gevorgian: “On the Interpretation of the Term “Futuwwa” in Persian Fotovvatnamehs“
    Historico-Political Issues
    • Çakır Ceyhan Suvari, Elif Kanca: “The Alevi Discourse in Turkey”
    • Pascal Kluge: “Turkey’s Border with Armenia: Obstacle and Chance for Turkish Politics”
    • Irina Morozova: “On the Causes of Socialism’s Deconstruction:
      Conventional Debates and Popular Rhetoric in Contemporary
      Kazakhstan and Mongolia”
    • Caspar ten Dam: “The Limitations of Military Psychology: Combat-stress and Violence-values among the Chechens and Albanians”
    • Garry W. Trompf: “The Ararat Factor: Moral Basics in Western Political Theory from Isaac Newton to John Stuart Mill”
    • Eberhard Werner: “Communication and the Oral-Aural Traditions of an East-Anatolian Ethnicity: What us Stories tell!”

  • Hellenism and the Achaemenid Empire

    Samiei, Sasan. 2014. Ancient Persia in Western History: Hellenism and the Representation of the Achaemenid Empire. (International Library of Iranian Studies 47). London: I.B. Tauris.
    Ancient Persia in Western History is a measured rejoinder to the dominant narrative that considers the Graeco-Persian Wars to be merely the first round of an oft-repeated battle between the despotic ‘East’ and the broadly enlightened ‘West’. Sasan Samiei analyses the historiography which has skewed our understanding of this crucial era – contrasting the work of Edward Gibbon and Goethe, which venerated Classicism and Hellenistic history, with later writers such as John Linton Myres. Finally, Samiei explores the cross-cultural encounters which constituted the Achaemenid period itself, and repositions it as essential to the history of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
    Here you can have a look inside the book.
    About the Autor:
    Sasan Samiei completed his PhD in Iranian History at University College London and also holds an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics (LSE).

  • Dēnkard IV

    Rezai 2014, Dk IVRezai, Maryam. Dēnkard IV. Transcription, Translation and Glossary. Elmi Publication. Tehran: 2014.

    Dēnkard “Acts of the religion”, divided into nine books, is a summary of knowledge of the Zoroastrian religioni, written in Middle Persian (Pahlavi), from which, the first two and the beginning of the third books are lost. Two compilers of Dēnkard are known to us, Ādurfarnbag ī Farroxzādān, first author and Ādurbād Ēmēdān, second author and compiler of the Dēnkard in 9th-century.

    The Dēnkard is primarily an apology for Zoroastrian religion, more specifically, Dēnkard IV, the shortest, is a text dealing with different subjects regarding the customs, arts, and sciences, which is from the same genre as one chapter of Book III.  It consists of a philosophical thoughts on the aməša spəntas; an account on the role of the Persian sovereigns in the defense of Mazdayasnian Religion from the Achaemenid Darius III up to Husrauw I; some thoughts on limited and limitless time, fate, action, and free will; some thought on learning Avesta and its commentary; on arts; on the four casts of poeple; as well as on the more abstract concepts of metaphysics, e.g. considerations on the afterlife, the necessity of Mazdayasna religion and the zoroastrian ethical triad.

    This volume contains a transcritption of the Dēnkard IV based on the Madan Edition as well as a Persian translation following by a facsimile of the printed Pahlavi text and a Pahlavi-Persian glossary.

    In Original:

    رضایی، مریم. دینکرد چهارم: آوانویسی, ترجمه، واژه‌نامه. انتشارات علمی. تهران: ۱۳۹۳

    reżāyi, maryam. dinkard-e čahārom: āvānevisi, tarğome, vāže-nāme. entešārāt-e ʿelmi. tehrān: 1393

  • Husraw I: Reconstruction of a Reign. Sources and Documents

    Jullien, Christelle (ed). 2015. Husraw Ier: Reconstruction d’un règne. Sources et documents (Cahiers de Studia Iranica 53). Paris. Peeters.

    The reign of Husraw I Anosirwan / Chosroes (531-579), the most remarkable one during the Sasanian dynasty, was pivotal in the history of Iran. During that period, far-reaching projects to restructure the state affected all strata of society, royal power was strengthened and the country experienced significant cultural development. No major scientific gathering was devoted to this subject, and here are published the proceedings of a symposium organized in Paris. Its aim was to bring together international scholars from various fields who work on often difficult-to-access or hitherto unpublished source material in several languages. The resulting interactions and intersecting perspectives help to piece together many facets of that reign, thus providing a rich contribution to the history of the East in the 6th century.

    For more information, see the Table of Contents of this volume.

  • Military Operations of Rome and Sasanian Iran

    Katarzyna Maksymiuk 2015Maksymiuk, Katarzyna. Geography of Roman-Iranian Wars. Military Operations of Rome and Sasanian Iran. Siedlce: Instytut Historii i Stosunków Międzynarodowych Uniwersytetu Przyrodniczo-Humanistycznego w Siedlcach, 2015.
    Until the second half of the second century AD the border between Rome and Iran was marked by the Euphrates, with Mesopotamia regarded as an integral part of the Parthian state. In 224 AD the power in Iran was taken over by the Sasanians, who sought to regain influence over the territory previously ruled by the Parthians. The change of the dynasty in Iran was perceived as a threat to the position of Rome in the Near East. It has result a series of conflicts resumed shortly after the overthrow of Parthian rule and Ardašīr I’s foundation of the Sassanid Empire, known as Roman–Sasanian Wars.
    This book is an expanded english translation of the in 2012 published original Geografia wojen rzymsko-irańskich. Działania Rzymu i Iranu w okresie sasanidzkim in Polish. The present work is primarily addressed to students and scholars of history. It presents a valuable collection of designing maps depicting topography of Roman-Iranian armed conflicts. The maps have been created on the basis of source texts reporting wars waged by Rome against the Sasanian Iran and only the towns and provinces which were mentioned by ancient writers while reporting specific conflicts have been marked. Moreover, the present work contains only maps of military operations in which Roman and Iranian armies directly participated.

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  • Ancient Iran and Islamic Identity

    Mozaffari, Ali. 2014. Forming national identity in Iran: The idea of homeland derived from ancient Persian and Islamic imaginations of place. London: I.B. Tauris.

    Modern Iran is a country with two significant but competing discourses of national identity, one stemming from ancient pre-Islamic customs and mythology, the other from Islamic Shi’i practices and beliefs. At one time co-existing and often mutually reinforcing, in more modern times they have been appropriated by intellectuals and the state who have drawn upon their narratives and traditions to support and authenticate their ideologies. The result has been an often-confused notion of identity in Iran. In this essential work, Ali Mozaffari explores the complex processes involved in the formation of Iranian national identity. He lays particular stress upon the importance of place, for it is through the concept of place that collective national identity and ideas of homeland are expressed and disseminated. The author reveals the ways in which homeland is conceived both through designated permanent sites and ritual performance, illustrating his arguments through an analysis of the ancient Achaemenid capital of Persepolis and the Shi’i rituals of Moharram.

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