Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Category: Books

  • شاه و نخبگان در شاهنشاهی هخامنشی

    به کوشش ووتر ف. م. هنکلمن. ۱۴۰۰. شاه و نخبگان در شاهنشاهی هخامنشی: گزیده مقالاتی در باب بایگانی باروی هخامنشی . ترجمه از یزدان صفایی و حمیدرضا نیک‌روش. تهران: موزه ملی ایران.

    Henkelman, W.F.M. (ed.). 2021. King and Elite in the Achaemenid Empire: Selected Studies based on the Persepolis Fortification Archive (Treasures of Ancient Iran 1). Translated by Yazdan Safaee & Hamidreza Nikravesh. Tehran: National Museum of Iran.

    کتاب شاه و نخبگان در شاهنشاهی هخامنشی مقالاتی را شامل می‌شود که موضوع آنها بر شبکه روابط میان شاه و گروه نخبگان اطراف او تمرکز دارد. این مقالات عمدتاً ماحصل تحقیق بر روی متون بایگانی باروی تخت‌جمشید هستند، یعنی یکی از مهم‌ترین منابع برای شناخت تاریخ هخامنشیان. مقالات مذکور در اصل به انگلیسی منتشر شده بودند و ترجمه فارسی آنها در این کتاب با هدف انتشار بخشی از نتایج پروژه بایگانی باروی تخت‌جمشید در دسترس قرار گرفته است. از این روی کتاب فوق‌الذکر مجموعه‌ای از مقالات محققان پیشتازی است که در این پروژه مشغول به تحقیق هستند: آنالیزا آتزونی، مارک گریسون، ووتر هنکلمن و متیو استولپر.

    کتاب حاضر مجلد نخست از مجموعه‌ای است به نام گنج‌آمار ایران باستان: منابع و مطالعات فرهنگ و تاریخ آغازین ایران که به همت موزه ملی ایران منتشر می‌شود که هدف آن انتشار ترجمه‌هایی فارسی از تحقیقات جدید در مورد ایران باستان است.

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  • Mani and His Religion

    Taqizadeh, Seyyed Hasan. Mani e la sua religione. Translated by Simone Cristoforetti and Andrea Piras, Mimesis, 2020.

    Mani and his Religion contains the text of two lectures that the well-known statesman and scholar Hasan Taqizadeh (1878-1970) gave at the Iranological Society of Tehran on 15 December 1949 and 1 February 1951, published in 1956. In addition to its importance in reconstructing the history of Manichaeism, the work testifies to the indefatigable cultural activity that Taqizadeh was able to carry out, despite his leading official positions in the politics and diplomatic representation of his country, Iran. His great courage and intellectual honesty led Taqizadeh to investigate an area – the dualistic religion of the heretic Mani – considered more than disreputable in Iran at the time, in the conviction that Mani and Manichaeism had represented one of the most important cultural phenomena in the history of late Iran and beyond. The translation proposed here is accompanied by a historical background of the author and a bibliographical update on the themes of the text.

  • Āẕar Kayvān: An Account of His Life, Writings and Beliefs

    Goštāsb, Farzāne. Āẕar Kayvān: zendegināme, ās̱ār-o ʿaqāyed [Āẕar Kayvān: An Account of His Life, Writings and Beliefs]. Pažuhešgāh-e ʿolūm-e ensānī-o moṭāleʿāt-e farhangī, 1400 š [2021].

    Āẕar-Kayvān (b. 1529 or 1533; d. 1609 or 1618) and his disciplines were founder of a sect in the 10th century which was known as “Āzarhušangiyān”. Very little is known about the historical details of his life, however, due to the attention ofĀẕar-Kayvān to the Philosophy of Illuminative School (Ḥekmat-e Ešrāq) and the Ancient Iranian tradition, he is mostly identified as a Zoroastrian mystic High Priest from Fārs, who emigrated to Inida during the reign of the Emperor Akbar Shah (r. 963-1014/1556-1605) in Mughal India.

    The present book is the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to the life, writings and beliefs of Āẕar-Kayvān and his followers.

    For the table of contents and the author’s preface see here.

  • History of the Caucasus

    Baumer, Christoph. 2021. History of the Caucasus, vol. 1: At the crossroads of empires. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.

    A landscape of high mountains and narrow valleys stretching from the Black to the Caspian Seas, the Caucasus region has been home to human populations for nearly 2 million years. In this richly illustrated 2-volume series, historian and explorer Christoph Baumer tells the story of the region’s history through to the present day. It is a story of encounters between many different peoples, from Scythians, Turkic and Mongol peoples of the East to Greeks and Romans from the West, from Indo-European tribes from the West as well as the East, and to Arabs and Iranians from the South. It is a story of rival claims by Empires and nations and of how the region has become home to more than 50 languages that can be heard within its borders to this very day.

    This first volume charts the period from the emergence of the earliest human populations in the region – the first known human populations outside Africa – to the Seljuk conquests of 1050CE. Along the way the book charts the development of Neolithic, Iron and Bronze Age cultures, the first recognizable Caucasian state and the arrival of a succession of the great transnational Empires, from the Greeks, the Romans and the Armenian to competing Christian and Muslim conquerors. The History of the Caucasus: Volume 1 also includes more than 200 full colour images and maps bringing the changing cultures of these lands vividly to life.

    Table of Contents:

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  • The Persians at the court of the great kings

    Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe (ed.). 2021. Die Perser am Hof der Großkönige. Darmstadt: wbg Philipp von Zabern.

    Was zählt, ist der Blickwinkel: wie die persischen Könige sich selbst sahen

    Die antiken Griechen hatten auf Grund von Vormachtrivalität in der Ägäis keine positive Meinung von den persischen Großkönigen. Griechische Quellen berichten von Dekadenz und Despotie am achämenidischen Hof. Doch wie sahen sich die Herrscher des ersten Weltreichs der Antike selbst? Ab Herbst 2020 sollte eine Sonderausstellung des Badischen Landesmuseums die Geschichte und das Selbstbild der Könige von Kyros II. bis zu Dareios III. zeigen. Umständehalber wurde der Begleitband zur Ausstellung zu einem Sonderheft der ANTIKEN WELT umgestaltet. Ein Bildband, der Einblicke in das Leben bei Hof gewährt und persische Quellen für sich sprechen lässt.

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  • The canal of Darius in Egypt

    Mahlich, Elena. 2020. Der Kanalbau unter Dareios I. Ein achämenidisches Bauprojekt in Ägypten (Bonner Ägyptologische Beiträge 11). Berlin: EB-Verlag Dr. Brandt.

    Aus dem achämenidenzeitlichen Ägypten liegen trotz einer vergleichsweise langen Herrschaft der Perser während der 27. Dynastie, die von der Eroberung Ägyptens durch Kambyses II. bis zum Jahr 404 v. Chr. dauerte und somit mehr als ein Jahrhundert umfasst, nur wenige keilschriftliche Quellen vor. Zu den besonders bemerkenswerten Funden ist das Konvolut der Kanalstelen zu nennen, die Dareios I. zum Anlass der Einweihung eines Kanals aufstellen ließ. Die Stelen berichten über den Bau dieses Kanals, der den Pelusischen Nilarm mit dem Roten Meer verband. Der vollendete Kanal wies eine Länge von 200 Kilometern auf, womit seine Ausmaße mit dem des modernen Suezkanals vergleichbar sind.

  • The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East

    Neumann, Kiersten & Allison Thomason (eds.). 2021. The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East. London: Routledge.

    Among other interesting subjects offered in this volume, a number of contributions explicitly deal with the material from ancient Iran:

    • Kiersten Neumann: To touch upon – A tactile exploration of the Apadana reliefs at Persepolis
    • Megan Cifarelli: Dress, sensory assemblages, and identity in the early first millennium bce at Hasanlu, Iran
    • Neville McFerrin: A sense of scale – Proprioception, embodied subjectivities, and the space of kingship at Persepolis
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  • Epic Iran

    Curtis, John, Ina Sarikhani Sandmann &Tim Stanley. 2021. Epic Iran: 5000 Years of culture. London: V&A Publishing.

    Iran was the home of some of the greatest civilizations of both the ancient and medieval worlds, but these achievements remain poorly known and largely misunderstood outside the country. Epic Iran tells the story of Iran from pre-Islamic through modern times and provides an opportunity to see pieces from key museum and private collections. This book combines the ancient and Islamic periods and continues the narrative into the contemporary world. It shows how civilized life emerged in Iran around 3,200 BC and how a distinctive Iranian identity formed 2,500 years ago has survived until today, expressed in the Persian language and in religious affiliations.

    Lavishly illustrated, some 250 images showcase pieces including goldwork, ceramics, glass, illustrated manuscripts, textiles, carpets, oil paintings, drawings, and photographs. Alongside the historical sweep are examples from contemporary artists and makers, demonstrating the rich antecedents still influencing some modern-day practitioners.

  • Introduction to the Avesta

    Kellens, Jean, and Céline Redard. 2021. Introduction à l’Avesta: Le récitatif liturgique sacré des zoroastriens. Les Belles Lettres.

    Almost all religions of the contemporary world refer to a book that their followers consider sacred. The Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrian communities of Iran, India and the diaspora is one of them, which bears witness to the origins of the pre-Islamic religion of the Iranian peoples.

    Something, however, demands a closer look. Often approached as the theoretical expression of a religious doctrine or the mirror of a forgotten history and geography, the Avesta is also a literary engine whose mechanisms can be dismantled, that is, the precise analysis of the mode of transmission, the particularities of structure and the liturgical intentions presided over these textual assemblies.

    Such is the ambition of this book, which traces the evolution of research from its origins to the advances of the 21st century, when our understanding of the Avesta was revolutionised.

    Table of Contents:

    • Introduction
    • Chapitre 1. Formation de la philologie avestique
    • Chapitre 2. La mise par écrit de l’Avesta
    • Chapitre 3. Le matériel manuscrit
    • Chapitre 4. Le texte transmis : l’Avesta
    • Chapitre 5. Analyse interne des textes constitutifs de l’Avesta
    • En guise de conclusion : un essai de chronologie

  • Iran’s Conversion to Islam

    Pohl, Walter & Daniel Mahoney (eds.). 2021. Historiography and identity IV: Writing history across Medieval Eurasia. Brepols.

    Explores the social function of historical writing from across various world regions from Europe through the Islamic world to China, around the turn of the millennium, and how they construct and shape identities, as well as communicate ‘visions of community’ and legitimate political claims.

    Historical writing has shaped identities in various ways and to different extents. This volume explores this multiplicity by looking at case studies from Europe, Byzantium, the Islamic World, and China around the turn of the first millennium. The chapters in this volume address official histories and polemical critique, traditional genres and experimental forms, ancient traditions and emerging territories, empires and barbarians. The authors do not take the identities highlighted in the texts for granted, but examine the complex strategies of identification that they employ. This volume thus explores how historiographical works in diverse contexts construct and shape identities, as well as legitimate political claims and communicate ‘visions of community’.

    Two chapters of this volume touch on subjects of Iranian studies: