Mani in Cambridge: A Day-Symposium on Manichaean Studies | Ancient India & Iran Trust
On Saturday 25 March, as part of an ongoing research project, we are holding a one day Symposium on Manichaean Studies sponsored jointly by the Ancient India and Iran Trust, the International Association of Manichaean Studies and the Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum Project.
Participants: M. A. Andrés-Toledo, T. F. Aufderheide, A. Cantera, S. Farridnejad, J. Ferrer, L. Goldman, A. Hintze, J. Kellens, G. König, J. Martínez-Porro, A. Panaino, B. Peschl, É. Pirart, P. Widmer and A. Zeini
Programme:
23 March
J. Kellens: “Exégèse et grammaire: le destin de l’Ahuna Vairiia”
A. Panaino: “Y. 71-72 and the end of the Ritual”
É. Pirart : “Pour de nouveaux fragments avestiques”
G. König: “Xorde Avesta as an editorial concept? Some considerations.”
A. Cantera: “Yašt ī keh /yašt ī meh: Sasanian taxonomies of the rituals in Avestan language”
K. Rezania: “When the text and diagram do not accord. On the textual and diagrammatic representations of the ritual surface of Barǝšnum in Avestan manuscripts”
B. Peschl: “Simple thematic presents with root vowel ā in Avestan: Textual corruption, genuine Avestan innovation or PIE archaism?”
J. Martínez-Porro & A. Cantera: “huuarə.xšaētəm. …. raēm and the aporias of the archetype”
J. Ferrer: “Paleographie et édition”
T. F. Aufderheide: “Avestisch <ṇ>: Über den Einfluss der einheimischen Sprachwissenschaft des Alten Indiens zur Verschriftlichung des Avesta”
F. Dragoni: “The Pāzand of M51”
P. Widmer: “Editing the Atharvaveda in the 21st century: The Zurich Paippalada project”
24 March
A. Hintze/L. Goldman: “Transcribing Avestan manuscripts”
M. A. Andrés-Toledo: “Editing the Pahlavi Widewdad”
A. Zeini: “Editing the Pahlavi Yasna”
S. Gholami: “Editing the colophons of Avestan manuscripts”
Round Table: “Editing Avestan texts in the 21th century: Problems and perspectives”
Time & Place: 23.03.2017 – 24.03.2017, Institute of Iranian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin
Center for Iran, Balkans and Central European Studies
Bulgarian National Library “St, Cyril and Methodius’’
Sofia University ‘’St. Kliment Ohridski’’
23-24 February 2017
Center for Iran, Balkans and Central European Studies in partnership with the Cyril and Methodius National Library of Bulgaria, the “St. Kliment Ohridski” Sofia University, and Allameh Tabataba’i University are going to convene the international conference on “Persian Manuscripts in the Balkans and Central Europe”. The conference will be held in Sofia, with the contributions of scholars and researchers from 16 countries, expert in codicology. Scope of the topics to be discussed in this conference includes: Persian manuscripts; Persian documents; manuscripts about Iran in other languages; documents about Iran in other languages; and exploring Eastern manuscripts. Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU) will publish the approved papers. Along with the conference, a workshop on “Codicology” will also be held.
The Gandhara Connections project identifies chronology and dating as one of the key problems outstanding in the study of Gandharan art. Chronology is not only fundamental for establishing the nature of Gandharan art’s connections with the traditions of Greece and Rome, but also for any other systematic attempt to put it in context or explain its development.
For more details about the workshop, see the draft programme.
Rituals play a prominent role in Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest continuous religions of humanity. The importance and practice of the Zoroastrian rituals extend over a wide range of social and local environments, from houses to fire temples as well as from antiquity to modernity. While the sources for exploring Zoroastrian rituals in pre-modern times are predominantly confined to traditional and priestly texts, we have a broader set of sources for modern and contemporary times, including the living ritual tradition of priests and laities. The lecture deals with the presence and importance of the rituals as well as the ritualistic traditions in Zoroastrianism.
You can download the whole program of this talk series here.
Shervin Farridnejad is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Institute of Iranian Studies (IFI) at the Academy of Science (ÖAW) in Vienna and at the Institute of Iranian Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Many congratulations to Professor Elton Daniel, who has been appointed the Interim Director of the Center for Iranian Studies and Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopædia Iranica. See below for the full text of the announcement:
It is with great pleasure that the Board of Directors of the Foundation announces the appointment of Professor Elton Daniel by Columbia University as the Interim Director of the Center for Iranian Studies and Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopædia Iranica.
For many years now, the Encyclopædia has consistently benefitted from Professor Daniel’s impressive contributions as an erudite scholar with a formidable knowledge of Iranian culture as well as proven qualities as an able and energetic administrator. During his tenure as Professor of History at the University of Hawaii, he served for four years as Senior Research Scholar and Associate Editor of the Encyclopædia at the Center for Iranian Studies, ensuring a steady progress in publishing well researched and edited entries. Since then, Professor Daniel has been closely involved with the progress of the project, reviewing entries before publication as well as contributing several substantial articles of his own.
As an international enterprise, the Encyclopædia project requires exceptional leadership with a wide range of experience and close familiarity with current scholarship worldwide. In the course of his academic career, Professor Daniel has studied and taught in different continents (including in the Middle East and Iran) and has held several prestigious fellowships. As well as authoritative articles and monographs on early medieval history in which his linguistic and philological expertise in Persian, Arabic and Turkish are displayed to the full, he has written a highly acclaimed general history of Iran intended for a general readership which is now in its second edition.
The Board welcomes Professor Daniel’s appointment and looks forward to working with him in ensuring the successful progress of the project under his leadership.
For the orientation in space and the linguistic expression of spatial relations of objects, different coordination systems can be used. One of these systems utilizes fixed cardinal directions. The four compass points north, south, east and west constitute the cardinal directions of our absolute frame of reference. Did the Old Iranians employ the same frame of reference likewise with these compass points?
After the representation of different coordination systems, absolute, intrinsic and relative, the paper addresses the Old Iranian absolute frame of reference. By means of the orientation of Achaemenian palaces, the order of countries in the Old Persian list of nations as well as Avestan linguistic evidence, it will be demonstrated that the Old Iranian people did not used our todays compass points for their orientation in space, but employed a different absolute frame of reference. The paper will present the cardinal directions of this system.
You can download the whole program of this talk series here.
Kianoosh Rezania is a professor of Western Asian Religious Studies at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
International Workshop, organized by the Institute of Iranian Studies (IFI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and Vienna Linguistic Society and the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
13.12-15.12.2016, Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences
The seventh annual conference of LUCIS focuses on Islamic Central Asia, both from a historical and contemporary perspective. Central Asia today is often regarded as a periphery of the Islamic world, but this region with its fluid borders, stretching into present-day Afghanistan, Russia, China, Mongolia, Iran and the Caucasus, has been for a long period the cradle of empires that ruled over large parts of the globe.
Central Asia in the past has been at the heart of the trade network known as the Silk Road, a premodern highway of global interaction. The idea of a New Silk Road today demonstrates Central Asia’s increasing importance as a centre stage of geopolitical interests. Comprehending the complex history of Central Asia by taking into account its dynastic and regional historiographies and more recent nationalistic narratives is crucial for perceiving the current dynamics of this vast region.
Analysing commemorative practices across Central Asia may provide a prolific framework to outline the complexity of its group identities, in modern times often constructed as nationalistic narratives. In this conference we propose to focus on the notion of memory and commemoration in Central Asia from past and present perspectives, in a broad sense, in order to shed light on the complexities of this fascinating and understudied region.
Themes
Rather than focusing on a single period, medium or language of commemorative practices, the conference will take a comparative and connective perspective. Questions that may be addressed include:
Narratives: How does literary and artistic production reflect imperial ideology and commemorative culture? How were dynastic members commemorated and rehabilitated? How were genealogies concocted and manipulated in order to commemorate the ancestral origins? How were important events commemorated?
Sites: How were visions of kingship articulated in commemorative dynastic shrines and landscapes across Central Asia? How did religiously diverse commemorative practices contribute to the development of a distinct royal visual morphology? How were urban centres transformed through the diverse visual lexicon of local Islamic cult activities? How are historical shrines and cults commemorated in the present?
Religions: How was commemorative culture influenced by orthodox Islam and Sufism? What was the impact of these complex theological interactions on the intellectual life and artistic production throughout Central Asia? How are religious commemorative practices used in contemporary nationalistic discourses?
The themes of the conference are broad on purpose, as we wish to welcome speakers from different disciplines and backgrounds.
Please find the full programme of the LUCIS annual conference here.