This contribution revisits the problems regarding the interpretation of one interesting text from Achaemenid Bactria, A9, and proposes a tentative reading and translation which varies from the one offered by the first editors (Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked). The said text records a transaction between a certain Bagavant and his wife Vartan (wrtn).
Baghdād: From its Beginnings to the 14th Century offers an exhaustive handbook that covers all possible themes connected to the history of this urban complex in Iraq, from its origins rooted in late antique Mesopotamia up to the aftermath of the Mongol invasion in 1258. Against the common perception of a city founded 762 in a vacuum, which, after experiencing a heyday in a mythical “golden age” under the early ʿAbbāsids, entered since 900 a long period of decline that ended with a complete collapse by savage people from the East in 1258, the volume emphasizes the continuity of Baghdād’s urban life, and shows how it was marked by its destiny as caliphal seat and cultural hub.
Booth, Phil & Mary Whitby (eds.). 2022. Mélanges: James Howard-Johnston (Travaux et mémoires 26). Paris: Association des Amis du centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance.
Apart from a brief stint as a Junior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, in 1968-9, James Howard-Johnston spent his entire academic career at Oxford University. After a period as Junior Research Lecturer at Christ Church from 1966-71, he was then University Lecturer in Byzantine Studies and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College until his retirement almost forty years later in 2009. In the mid-2000s he served briefly as interim president of Corpus. From 1972 to 1987 he was also passionately involved in local politics, serving as an Oxford City Councillor and Oxfordshire County Councillor. His retirement from politics was accompanied by a stream of publications that has continued to the present day.
Throughout his career, James cultivated a number of interests, for example, the political and military history of Byzantium, the Eurasian steppe, and the Sassanid empire; Byzantine historiography; medieval law and commerce; and, perhaps most importantly, the history of warfare, and in particular the “world crisis” that dramatically and permanently reorganized the Middle East during the seventh century. Readers of James’s bibliography through 2022, which we include at the beginning of this volume, will perceive the simultaneous cultivation of all these interests, but also a growing preoccupation with the seventh century, which intensified from the 1990s onward and culminated in two masterpieces of scholarship produced during his retirement-or, as James would put it in his typical self-deprecating style, his “defuncation.” The first, Witnesses to a world crisis, represents the distillation of many years of deep reflection on the various sources of seventh-century political history, as well as a profound reflection on the rise of Islam and the Arab conquests. The second (of which Witnesses is in many ways the prequel), The Last Great War of Antiquity, is now the first comprehensive history of the final conflict between the Roman and Iranian empires, a great subject of which James has long been the acknowledged master.
Some related contributions to the Iranian Studies in this volume:
Ainslie, Roger, Mohammad Arman Ershadi & Davit Naskidashvili: Qalʿeh Kharabeh in northern Iran: a Sasanian military tent city for ten thousand mounted soldiers?
Booth, Phil: Egypt under the Sasanians (619–29): “stability, continuity, and tolerance”?
Greenwood, Tim: Adontz, Armenia and Iran in late antiquity.
Gyselen, Rika: La géographie administrative de l’Empire sassanide: ce que le Šahrestānīha-ye Ērānšahr ne dit pas.
McLynn, Neil: Ammianus Marcellinus and the making of Persian strategy.
Taylor, David G. K.: The Syriac version of Strategios’ History of the Persian conquest of Jerusalem.
Vevaina, Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw: The Coals Which Were His Guardians…’: The Hermeneutics of Heraclius’ Persian Campaign and a Faint Trace of the ‘Last Great War’ in Zoroastrian Literature.
Wiesehöfer, Josef: Alfred von Gutschmid, Theodor Nöldeke and the beginnings of the Sasanian Empire.
Zychowicz-Coghill, Edward: The Byzantinist of Isfahan: Ḥamza ibn al-Ḥasan on Greek and Roman history.
The work of the Polish-Slovenian Iranian scholar Marijan Molé (1924-1963) has had a profound influence on the religious sciences that can be observed to this day. In barely fifteen years (1948-1963), he was able to give unprecedented impetus to Iranian studies, thanks to the meticulous study of corpora ranging from the Avesta and Middle Persian Zoroastrian literature to treatises on Islamic mysticism, including Persian epics and mythical gestures. Too soon interrupted, the vast project that he had begun during his years of study in Krakow and which he pursued in Paris and Tehran had as its main axis the uncovering of a unitary system that would underpin the evolution of a religious doctrine over the long term, an “Iranian continuity”.
The recent discovery of his Nachlass (IRHT and BULAC, Paris) provides us with the opportunity to take stock of his legacy and to try to highlight the originality of his approach and his contribution to the history of ideas and to the intellectual debate on the religions of Iran, by identifying both the achievements and the dead ends, the innovations and the extensions.
The present volume gathers the contributions on Zoroastrianism and Islamic mysticism, presented at the international study day entitled “Between Mazdeism and Islam”, dedicated to the work of Marijan Molé, which was held on 24 June 2016 in Paris.
Table of Contents
Chronologie de la vie de Marijan Molé (1924-1963)
Bibliographie de Marijan Molé
Gianroberto Scarcia: “Souvenir de Marijan Molé”
Anna Krasnowolska: “Marijan Molé’s Early Works and his Study of Persian Epics
Jean Kellens: “1956-1964: Le printemps des études gâthiques”
Philippe Swennen: “Marijan Molé à l’aube du nouveau comparatisme indo-iranien”
Zoroastrianism is both an ancient and still practiced religion. At its height it was the state religion of the Sasanian empire (224 to 651 AD) that ruled in the land of Persia. Arab conquest of the area destroyed that empire and a multitude eventually converted to Islam. Under Islamic rule Zoroastrians lived under severe restrictions, persecution while paying burdensome taxes. Many converted to Islam to escape these conditions and so Zoroastrian numbers dwindled. By 1850 no more than 8000 lived in their original homeland. Those who survived did see some periods of prosperity and eventually thrived under the secularizing rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi (1925-41) and his son (1941-79) who promoted an Iranian nationalism that embraced the Zoroastrian heritage. The main challenge to Zoroastrian persistence was the increasing secularism of society. With the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran once again the nation’s Zoroastrians found themselves subject to myriad discriminations, even their touch deemed polluting. Islam permeated Iran to a degree not seen before. The present work offers a unique socio-political history of the challenges faced by the Zoroastrian community from the 19th to 21st centuries as they confronted and adapted to the dramatic changes before them. The author, Anthropologist Janet Kestenberg Amighi lived and researched among her Zoroastrian in-laws in Iran from 1971-1978 and subsequently visited post-revolutionary Iran several times. This work is based on scholarly research as well as over 120 interviews with Zoroastrians, amusing personal experiences and the knowledge and experiences of her collaborator Bahman Moradian, an Iranian Zoroastrian scholar and community activist. Their collaboration provides varied insights and analyses of the socio-cultural and political change we see happening over the decades. The diverse Zoroastrian community perspectives are well represented.
Giovanni B. Lanfranchi / Simonetta Ponchia / Robert Rollinger: Introduction
Antonio Daniele: Saluto dell’Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova
I Key Note Lectures
Paolo Matthiae: The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Syria and Iraq and the Perspective of a Rebirth
Marc Van De Mieroop: Making Peace in the Ancient Near East
Kurt A. Raaflaub: Making and Experiencing Peace in the Ancient World
II Ancient Near East and Egypt
Manfred Bietak: The Antagonism between Animosity and Peace-making in Ancient Egypt: Between Ideology and Practical Foreign Policy: An Extended Synopsis
Seth Richardson: Raiders, Neighbours, and Night-time: “Hybrid Peace” in Babylonia
Stefano de Martino: Making Peace in the Hittite Kingdom
Salvatore Gaspa: Making Peace in the Ancient Near East of the First Millennium BCE: The Case of the Assyrian Empire
Martti Nissinen: Peace and Peacemaking in the Hebrew Bible
Ann C. Gunter: Commemorating the End of Conflict in the Ancient Near East: Material Perspectives
Matthew Waters: Peace in Pieces: Making Peace in Elam
Josef Wiesehöfer: Peace and Views of Peace in Achaemenid Iran
III The Mediterranean Worlds and Beyond
Christoph Schäfer: Making Peace in the Hellenistic World
Wolfgang Spickermann: Problems of Making Peace in the Roman Republic: The Case of Appius Claudius Caecus and King Pyrrhus
Sven Günther: Frames of Making Peace and Treaties in the Roman Empire
Umberto Roberto: Making Peace with the Goths and the Burial of Athanaric in Constantinople (January 381): A Note on Jordanes, Getica 28, 142–145
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller: Many Eyes of the World? Making Peace between Byzantium and Other Empires, 600–1200 CE
The exceptional place women held in Manichaeism, in everyday life or myth, is the object of this book. Relying on firsthand Manichaean texts in several languages and on polemical sources, as well as on iconography, the various papers analyze aspects of women’s social engagement by spreading Mani’s doctrine, working to support the community, or corresponding with other Manichaean groups. Topics such as women’s relation to the body and elect or hearer status are also investigated. The major role played by female entities in the myth is enlightened through occidental and oriental texts and paintings discovered in Central Asia and China.
The Battle of Marathon changed the course of history in ancient Greece. To many, the impossible seemed to have been achieved – the mighty Persian Empire halted in its advance. What happened that day, why was the battle fought, and how did people make sense of it? This bold new history of the battle examines how the conflict unfolded and the ideas attached to it in antiquity and beyond. Many thought the battle offered lessons in how people should behave, with heroism to be emulated and faults to be avoided. While the battle itself was fought in one day, the battle for the idea of Marathon has lasted ever since. After immersing you in the battle, this work will help you to explore how the ancient Athenians used the battle in their relations between themselves and others, and how the battle continued to be used to express ideas about gods, empire, and morality in the age of Alexander and his successors, at Rome and in Greece under the Roman Empire, and in the ages after antiquity, even in our own era, in which Marathon plays a remarkable role in sport, film, and children’s literature with each retelling a re-imagining of the battle and its meaning. A clash of weapons, gods, and principles, this is Marathon as you’ve never seen it before!
Table of Contents Introduction
Athenians at a Turning Point
The Greek World
Persia
Revolt in Ionia
The Plain of Marathon
The Fight
Surviving Marathon
Events after Marathon
Memories of Marathon in Fifth-Century Art and Literature
The Hunt for Ancient Israel celebrates the contribution of Diana V. Edelman to the field of biblical studies and celebrates her personally as researcher, teacher, mentor, colleague, and mastermind of new research paths and groups. It salutes her unconventional, constant thinking and rethinking outside the box, and her challenging of established consensuses. This volume includes essays addressing biblical themes and texts, archaeological fieldwork, historical method, social memory and reception history.
This volume highlights and advances new developments in the study of Edom and Idumea in eighteen essays written by researchers from different disciplines (history, archaeology, Assyriology, epigraphy, memory studies, and Hebrew Bible studies). The topics examined include the emergence of Idumea, the evolution of Edomite/Idumean identity, the impact of the Arabian trade on the region, comparative and regional studies of Idumea and Judah, studies of specific sites, artifacts, epigraphic and literary sources, and a section on literary and ideological constructions and memories of “Edom” reflected in the Hebrew Bible. This volume is a “go-to” for all who are interested in the current state of research about Edom and Idumea.
