Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Category: Articles

  • Zoroastrian Esotericism

    Zoroastrian Esotericism is a special issue of Religiographies, vol. 3, no. 1, edited by Mariano Errichiello, Daniel J. Sheffield, and Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina.

    Table of contents

    Editorial

    New Perspectives on the Study of Esotericism and Zoroastrianism
    Mariano Errichiello, SOAS University of London
    Francesco Piraino, Giorgio Cini Foundation / Harvard Divinity School
    Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, University of Oxford
    [PDF] 1-6

    Articles

    The Mazdean Esoteric Dimension between Ritual and Theology
    Antonio Panaino, University of Bologna
    [PDF] 7-26

    Exploring Zoroastrianism and Esotericism in the Context of Global Religious History
    Moritz Maurer, Institut für Religionswissenschaft, Universität Heidelberg
    [PDF] 27-43

    (more…)

  • Domestic Slaves in Zoroastrianism

    Foroutan, Kiyan. 2024. On the question of domestic slaves in late medieval and early modern Zoroastrianism. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, FirstView. 1–25.

    This article collects and analyses passages about male and female domestic slaves in the Persian Rivāyats. The Rivāyats consist of correspondence between Iranian and Indian Zoroastrians (Parsis) from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries ce. In these letters, Parsis sought the opinions of Iranian Zoroastrians on various doctrinal and ritual issues. The passages in question cover a range of subjects, including the issue of converting household slaves to Zoroastrianism, their participation in domestic religious ceremonies, the exposure of their dead bodies in the towers of silence, and marrying female slaves. These references to slaves challenge the conventional narrative that pre-modern Zoroastrians were oppressed, marginalized, and poor communities. This narrative has overshadowed these pieces of evidence and has caused them not to be studied seriously. This paper seeks to go beyond this traditional reconstruction by examining these texts based on their context. The passages reflect the actual socio-religious issues of Zoroastrians, especially Parsis, and demonstrate their participation in the slave-owning milieu of late medieval and early modern Gujarat and Iran rather than mere anachronistic elements or rhetorical tools reflecting a scholastic treatment of a defunct legal question.

    Abstract

  • Contributions to Iranian Etymology II

    Fattori, Marco. 2024. Contributions to Iranian Etymology II: Three Iranian Loanwords in Armenian and a Note on OIr. *abigna- ‘helper’. Iran and the Caucasus 28 (3), 289-300.

    In this article the possible Iranian etymology of three hitherto unexplained Old Armenian words is discussed: Arm. aptak ‘slap, blow’ < Ir. *apitāka-, to be compared with Man.Parth. and MP abdāg ‘assailant’; Arm. žapawēn ‘hem, border’ compound of Parth. *žī(h), equivalent of NP zeh ‘string, hem, decoration’ + Arm. apawēn ‘cover, shelter, refuge’; Arm. xawsim ‘to speak’ from a metathetic form of MIr. *wā̆xs-, inchoative formation from the root *vac- ‘to speak’. Finally, Szemerényi’s convincing explanation of Arm. awgnem ‘to help’ and zawravign ‘aid, helper, defender’ as related to an OIr. noun *abigna- ‘helper’ attested in several anthroponyms (e.g. OP Bagābigna-) is reaffirmed and substantiated since it remained mostly unnoticed in the subsequent literature.

  • Religious Conversion

    Vol. 15, no. 2 of the open access journal Entangled Religions is a special issue dedicated to the question of Religious Conversion in a Religiously Plural World.

    Religious conversion is a phenomenon that has intrigued scholars, theologians, and sociologists for centuries. As the conscious choice of a particular form of religion over another, it is eminently a form of religious contact. Religious conversion may be approached psychologically, sociologically, and conceptually. The contributions of this special issue show all three approaches and cover a wide array of geographical, social, and religious contexts.

    Benedikt Römer has an article on Neo-Zoroastrianism, titled Reversion, Revival, Resistance: Framing Iranian Neo-Zoroastrian Religiosities

  • Another bulla of Weh-Šāpur

    Miri, Negin & Cyrus Nasrollahzadeh. 2023. Another bulla of Weh-Šāpur, Ērān- Spāhbed of Kust-i-Nēmrōz from the Treasury of Mostazafan Foundation’s Cultural Institution of Museums in Tehran. ISIMU 26: 145-155.

    This paper introduces a newly-found Sasanian bulla that has two seal impressions, the major of which belongs to Wēh-šāpur, military chief or Ērān-spāhbed of kust-ī-nēmrōz or the south-southeast side of the Sasanian Empire during the reign of Ḵosrow I (539-579 AD). Since 2001 a number of spāhbed bullae have been identified and published. These significant objects confirmed the validity of historical narrations regarding quadripartition of military organization of the Sasanian Empire recorded in late and post-Sasanian literary sources. This sealing is part of a bullae collection kept in the treasury of Mostazafan Foundation’s Cultural Institution of Museums in Tehran and offers the fifth example of spāhbed Wēh-šābuhr seal impression so far known and published.

  • The Kushan Pantheon and the Significance of the Kushan Goddess Nana

    Cribb, Joe, Aman Ur Rahman & Pankaj Tandon. 2023. The Kushan pantheon and the significance of the Kushan goddess Nana, in the light of new numismatic evidence of iconography and identity. Journal Asiatique 311(2). 247–266.

    Numismatic evidence has played a large role in the study of Kushan religion. The earliest assessments recognised the Iranian nature of Kushan religion, but later focus on elements of naming and iconography from other culture particularly Greece and India have obscured this early analysis. Recently found inscriptions and coins allow a reassessment re-establishing a clearer view of the nature of Kushan religion and its expression in coin designs, contemporary art and architecture. The opportunity presented by the discovery of new numismatic imagery of the goddess Nana allows a reappraisal of her place in the pantheon and a review of the current perspectives on Kushan religion.

  • Painting Materials in the Sasanian City of Ardaxšīr Khwarrah

    Amadori, Maria Letizia, Valeria Mengacci Pierfrancesco Callieri, Alireza Askari Chaverdi, Matteo Bartolucci, Negar Eftekhari, Alessia Andreotti and Parviz Holakooei. 2024. Integrated investigations of painting materials in the Sasanian city of Ardaxšīr Khwarrah, near Firuzabad (Southern Iran). Heritage 7, 1202-1220.

    Ancient Ardaxšīr Khwarrah, today known as Shahr-e Gur, situated near the modern town of Firuzabad in Fars, Iran, holds historical significance as the inaugural capital city of the Sasanian Empire. During archaeological excavations conducted in 2005 by an Iranian–German team directed by Mas‘oud Azarnoush and Dietrich Huff, a mud-brick complex was uncovered, revealing a remarkably well-preserved stretch of wall painting and a polychrome painted floor. The discovery prompted the hypothesis of a potential funerary context dating back to the Sasanian period. Both the wall painting and painted floor have suffered extensive deterioration attributed to the environmental conditions of the archaeological site, which was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2020. To address the urgent need for preservation and further understanding of the site’s artistic and structural elements, an emergency diagnostic project was initiated. Non-invasive investigations were carried out on the wall and floor by optical digital microscopy and portable energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence. Additionally, representative minute samples underwent analysis through various techniques, including micro-X-ray fluorescence, polarised light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, micro-Raman spectroscopy, micro-Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and pyrolysis coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The palette of the floor and mural paintings were identified to contain red and yellow ochres, lead-based pigments, carbon black and bone white. The unexpected presence of Egyptian blue mixed with green earth was recognised in the green hues of the wall painting. The detection of protein material in both the wall painting and polychrome floor indicates the use of “a secco” technique, thereby shedding light on the artistic practices employed in Ardaxšīr Khwarrah.

  • The ezāfe-like construction in Old Iranian

    Gentile, Simone. 2024. The ezāfe-like construction in Old Iranian: A reassessment. Ricerche Linguistiche 1.

    This paper addresses the origins of the (proto-)ezāfe in Old Iranian, challenging traditional analyses that have classified the ‘ezāfe’-like structures in Avestan and Old Persian as adjectival formations. This hypothesis is primarily based on the case agreement between the relative pronoun and the head noun. This paper presents
    an alternative interpretation, proposing that these constructions should be viewed as relative clauses (RCs) with omitted copulas. From this perspective, the omission of the copula triggers the so-called attractio relativi, a phenomenon observed in various Indo-European languages, thus challenging prior claims. The idea that
    RCs may have served as precursors to the Persian ezāfe and potentially contributed to the formation of definite articles in some Middle Eastern Iranian languages remains compelling. However, in earlier stages, these structures are best understood as reduced RCs, lacking an explicit copula.

    Abstract

  • New remarks on §70 of the Bisotun Inscription

    Fattori, Marco. 2024. New epigraphic and exegetical remarks on paragraph 70 of the Bisotun inscription, Old Persian version (DB/OP IV ll. 88–92). Ricerche Linguistiche 1. 105–133.

    The preprint of the article is available from the author’s Academia page.

    This paper aims to provide a new edition of paragraph 70 of the Old Persian version of the Bisotun inscription (DB/OP IV ll. 88-92). Although this badly preserved passage received an enormous scholarly attention, only a few researchers could directly examine the inscription, and their editions differ significantly from one another. In absence of good published photographs, it is currently impossible to critically evaluate the reliability of these editions and propose new readings based on a first-hand inspection of the stone. To overcome this inconvenience, this article includes a full photographic documentation of the passage and a detailed discussion of each reading. Since this new examination of the inscription resulted in the improvement of several readings, the edition is followed by a commentary where a possible interpretation of the newly read words is offered.

    Abstract

  • Legal Disputes of Judeans in the Achaemenid Era

    Holtz, Shalom E. 2024. Foreign but fair: Legal disputes of Judeans in the Achaemenid era. Orientalia 92 (2): 185-201.

    In this study, we present newly discovered duplicates of three significant Old Babylonian literary texts. 1) An unpublished Louvre duplicate (AO 6161) of the Papulegara hymns collection, which is currently housed at the British Museum. 2) A recently published Geneva duplicate (MAH 16069) of the large hymnic ritual commonly referred to as Ištar-Louvre. 3) The Yale prism (YBC 2394), which contains an almost complete version of the Dialogue Between Father and Son. Previously, only a small fragment of this text was known. The paper provides a philological commentary and a thorough discussion of these duplicates, considering the relatively uncommon phenomenon of duplicate literary texts during the Old Babylonian period.