Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum Iran: A late Sasanian Hoard from Orumiyeh

    Akbarzadegh, Daryoosh & Schindel, Nikolaus. 2017. Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum Iran: A late Sasanian Hoard from Orumiyeh. (Veröffentlichungen zur Numismatik 60). Wien: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

    The present volume from series “Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum” (SNS) deals with a treasure found in the region of Piran-Shahr in the north-west of Iran in 2007 and is one of the largest and most important collections of coins from Sasanian era which includes a quantity of 1267 drachmas. The collection informs us about not only the history of the coin and money in Iran during the Late Antiquity, but also about the economic history of the Sasanid empire, for which there are hardly any sources. The publication is prepared by a cooperation of the Austrian Academy of Sciences with RICHTO, the Research Institute of ICH (Iran Cultural Heritage, Handcrafts and Tourism Organization).

  • Stone Vessels in the Near East during the Iron Age and the Persian Period

    Squitieri, Andrea . 2017. Stone Vessels in the Near East during the Iron Age and the Persian Period. (Archaeopress Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology 2). Oxford: Archaeopress.

    This book focuses on the characteristics and the development of the stone vessel industry in the Near East during the Iron Age and the Persian period (c. 1200 – 330 BCE). Three main aspects of this industry are investigated. First, the technology behind the manufacture of stone vessels, the tools and techniques, and how these changed across time. Second, the mechanisms of exchange of stone vessels and how these were affected by the changing political landscape through time. Third, the consumption patterns of stone vessels in both elite and non-elite contexts, and how these patterns changed through time. The aim is to evaluate how the formation of new regional states, occurred in the Iron Age I-II, and their subsequent inclusion within large-scale empires, in the Iron Age III and Persian period, transformed the Near Eastern societies by exploring how the stone vessel industry was affected by these transformations. For the period and area under analysis, such a comprehensive study of stone vessels, covering a wide area and connecting this industry to the broader socioeconomic and political landscapes, has never been attempted before.

  • Review of Semiramis’ Legacy

    Safaee, Yazdan. 2017. “[review of] Semiramis’ Legacy: The History of Persia According to Diodorus of Sicily“, Iranian Studies 50:5, 752-754.

    This is the most recent work on Diodorus of Sicily, a famous ancient historian who dealt with the history of ancient Iran, translated by an eminent scholar who has previously also translated Ctesias’ Persica. The book under review offers an English translation of the text together with a valuable introduction to Diodorus, his method, his views, and the structure of the Bibliotheca historica, and is also followed by a rich investigation of the extant manuscripts and of some editions of Diodorus’ Bibliotheca.

  • The Architecture of the Persian Period in the Levant

    Khries, Hashem. 2017. The Architecture of the Persian Period in the Levant. Scholar Press.

    This book is a comprehensive study of the Levantine architecture in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. The current book is unprecedented in its contents and the manner in which it addresses the subject since it contains all Persian-period sites in the whole Levant -as an integrated entity- that contains building remains. It also handles the Achaemenid impacts – both the direct and indirect ones- on the tradition of the Levantine architecture through conducting a descriptive, analytical and interpretative study of the buildings under consideration. Another perspective adopted here is that of functionally characterizing each excavated context, thus reaching assessments which are not only typologically based. This has resulted in a better understanding of the nature of the social, economic, political, and religious life in the entire Levant.

     

  • The History of the ‘Slave of Christ’

    Butts, Aaron Michael &  Gross, Simcha. 2017. The History of the ‘Slave of Christ’: From Jewish Child to Christian Martyr. ( Persian Martyr Acts in Syriac: Text and Translation 6). New Jersey: Gorgias Press LLC .

    The first critical editions and English translations of the two Syriac recensions of a fascinating text which narrates the story of a young Jewish child, Asher. After converting to Christianity and taking the name ʿAḇdā da-Mšiḥā (‘slave of Christ’), he is martyred by his father. In a detailed introduction, Butts and Gross challenge the use of this text by previous scholars as evidence for historical interactions between Jews and Christians, reevaluating its purpose and situating the story in its Late Antique Babylonian context.

     

  • Art, Culture, Literature & Society in Qajar Iran

    Art, Culture, Literature & Society in Iran during the Qadjar Era

    Second Conference of Iranian Studies organized by the Cultural Attaché of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran

    Berlin, June 30 – July 2, 2017

    Read the detailed conference proframme here.

    Conference Programme:

    Language and Literature

    • Roxane Haag-Higuchi: “Umkehr und Erwachen: zur Literaturgeschichte der Qadscharenzeit”
    • Karolina Rakowiska: “Das Bild der Frau in der Literatur zur Zeit der Qadscharen Dynastie”
    • Bert G. Fragner: “Das Zeitalter der Qadscharen im Urteil von Historikern und Geschichtsschreibern während der letzten 150 Jahre”
    • Documentary Film: “Die Geschichte des Journalismus im Iran”
    • Eva Orthmann: “Der grenzüberschreitende Einfluss des Persischen”
    • Saiid Firuzabadi: “Joseph von Hammer-Purgstalls Beitrag zur Bekanntmachung der persischen Literatur in der Zeit der Qadscharen-Dynastie”

    Art History

    • Shervin Farridnejad: “Judeo-Persian Miniatur Painting and Illustrated Manuscripts from late 17th to early 20th centuries”
    • Negar Habibi: “Landschaftsmalerei während der Q adscharen-Dynastie (von Malereien im europäischen Stil bis zu Kamal-ol-Molk)”
    • Kianusch Mootaghedi: “Analyse der siebenfarbigen Kacheln der Qadscharen-Epoche”
    • Nicoletta Fazio: “Too Modern for the Showcase? How Qajar Art made it in the Museum”
    • Boris von Brauchitsch: “Die Kunst der Fotografie im Vergleich: Analyse zweier Fotoalben vom Golestan-Palast”

    Maps and Travelogues

    • Birgitt Hoffmann: “Reiseberichte aus der Qadscharen-Epoche”
    • Christine Nölle-Karimi: “Qajar Envoys in Khiva”

    Cities

    • Heinz Gaube: “Kaschan zur Zeit der Qadscharen”
    • Sima Taefi: “Teheran, eine glanzvolle Erinnerung an die Qadscharen-Epoche”

    Politic

    • Seyed Ali Moujani: „Die Nation der Schia“ und der „Märtyrerkönig“ – Nāserad-Din Schahs Politik bezüglich der heiligen Stätten in Irak”
    • Oliver Bast : “Die Qadscharen und Europa während des ersten Weltkrieges”
    • Ali Bahramian: “Der Übergang von der Schrift zum Druck in der Zeit der Qadscharen-Dynastie”
    • Ulrich Marzolph: “Lithographie in der Zeit der Qadscharen-Dynastie”

    Workshops

    • Thomas Ogger/Sayfollah Shokri: “Iranian Music Instrumenst”
    • Hamid Reza Shureshi: “Calligraphy Workshop”

     

  • Regional History and the Coin Finds from Assur: From the Achaemenids to the Nineteenth Century

    Butcher, Kevin & Heidemann, Stefan. 2017. Regional History and the Coin Finds from Assur: From the Achaemenids to the Nineteenth Century. (Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 148). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

    In July 1914, the excavation of one of the most significant capitals in human history, Assur, ended successfully. After a division of finds, the objects were dispatched to Berlin on the eve of the First World War. Assur is currently the most important reference site for coin finds in northern Iraq. They constitute an independent source for the history of the settlement, the Tigris region, and for coin circulation after the fall of the Assyrian empire in 614 BC, from the Achaemenid to the late Ottoman empire. These coin finds fill an important gap in the history of Assur, whose name in the post-Assyrian period is hardly attested to. For the Arsacid period, the coin finds highlight the surprising permeability of the border from the Roman provinces to Arsacid north-eastern Mesopotamia.

    With the Sasanian conquest in about 240/1, life in Assur apparently stopped. For the following 1,600 years we can distinguish at least three separate settlement phases, and almost each phase corresponds to changing names for the city. While we do not know what the settlement between the 7th and 8th century was called, in the 12th and 14th centuries it was referred to as al-‘Aqr. For this period, we have more literary references to its history, at least compared with the preceding 1,800 years. The coin finds, together with the textual references, allow for an insight into the political and economic development of “a large village”. For the 17th and 18th centuries, the coins point to a revived settlement, now under the name of Qal’at Shirqat.

     

  • Parthian Great King’s rule over vassal Kingdoms

    Gregoratti, Leonardo. 2017. “Sinews of the other Empire: Parthian Great King’s rule over vassal Kingdoms” in H. Teigen and E. Seland (eds.), Sinews of Empire: Networks in the Roman Near East and Beyond, 95-104. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

    The Great Kings of Parthia, belonging to the Arsacid dynasty, ruled a large empire in south-western Asia, from India to the Euphrates, for more than three centuries (first century BC–third century AD). Within the large geographical area controlled by the Arsacids, next to the satrapies directly controlled by royal officers, a series of autonomous kingdoms existed, ruled by local dynasties, which in some cases existed before the coming of the Parthians, and whose authority over their territories was acknowledged by the Great King. Unlike the Roman ones, the Parthian vassal kingdoms never ceased to be one of the most important means the Great King had at his disposal to control key areas of his vast dominions. This paper investigates the different solutions the Arsacids conceived and put into action in order to keep control over those political subjects. The employment of three main forms of action: maintaining a local dynasty, temporary direct occupation and the creation of a client kingdom ruled by an Arsacid monarch, over the whole spectrum of client states will be the subject of the investigation.

  • Mountain Peoples in the Ancient Near East

    Balatti, Silvia. 2017. Mountain Peoples in the Ancient Near East The Case of the Zagros in the First Millennium BC (Classica et Orientalia 18), Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag.

    Since Prehistory, communities principally engaged in herding activities have occupied the intermontane valleys and plains of the Zagros (Western Iran). Relations, tensions and cultural exchange between the inhabitants of the mountains and the Mesopotamian plains already occurred during the Bronze Age. These contacts increased in the course of the 1st millennium BCE, as is suggested by Near Eastern and subsequently by Greek and Latin sources which provide us with numerous new names of peoples living in the Zagros. The present volume investigates the social organisation and life style of the peoples of the Zagros Mountains in the 1st millennium BCE and deals with their relationships with the surrounding environment and with the political authorities on the plains.

    Among these peoples, for example, were the ‘fierce’ Medes, breeders and purveyors of fine horses, the Manneans, who inhabited a large territory enclosed between the two contending powers of Assyria and Urartu, and the ‘warlike’ Cosseans, who bravely attempted to resist the attack of Alexander the Great’s army. The Southern Zagros Mountains, inhabited by mixed groups of Elamite and Iranian farmers and pastoralists, were also of key importance as the home of the Persians and the core area of their empire. Starting from Fārs, the Persians were able to build up the largest empire in the history of the ancient Near East before Alexander.

    The interdisciplinary approach adopted in this study, which juxtaposes historical records with archaeological, zooarchaeological, palaeobotanical and ethnographic data, provides a new, holistic and multifaceted view on an otherwise little-known topic in ancient history.

     

  • Some stamp seals of Achaemenid date

    Collon, Dominique & John Curtis. 2017. “Some stamp seals of Achaemenid date“, In Y. Heffron, A. Stone and M. Worthington (eds), At the Dawn of History: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of J.N. Postgate, 765-780. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns.

    This paper discusses a collection of 17 distinctive bronze stamp seals. They are all plaques or tablets of bronze, more or less flat on both surfaces, and square or rectangular in shape. More than half of them have a distinctive ladder-pattern border around the decorated face of the seal. The designs are usually highly stylized but sometimes more naturalistic. These seals may be compared with a stone seal from Nimrud and a silver ring from Kamid el-Loz. They apparently date from the Achaemenid period, 5th-4th century BC, and probably derive mostly from the western part of the Persian empire.