Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • The Nisibis War

    Harrel, John. 2016.  The Nisibis War: The Defence of the Roman East AD 337–363. Pen & Sword Military.

    The war of 337-363 (which the author dubs the ‘Nisibis War’), was an exception to the traditional Roman reliance on a strategic offensive to bring about a decisive battle. Instead, the Emperor Constantius II adopted a defensive strategy and conducted a mobile defence based upon small frontier (limitanei) forces defending fortified cities, supported by limited counteroffensives by the Field Army of the East. These methods successfully checked Persian assaults for 24 years. However, when Julian became emperor his access to greater resources tempted him to abandon mobile defence in favour of a major invasion aimed at regime change in Persia. Although he reached the Persian capital, Ctesiphon, he failed to take it, was decisively defeated in battle and killed. The Romans subsequently resumed and refined the mobile defence, allowing the Eastern provinces to survive the fall of the Western Empire.
    John Harrel applies his personal experience of military command to a strategic, operational, tactical and logistical analysis of these campaigns and battles, highlighting their long-term significance.

  • Zoroastrianism in the Levant

    Abouzayd, Shafiq (ed.). 2014. Zoroastrianism in the Levant: Proceedings of conferences held in 2010 & 2012. ARAM 26(1).

    Table of contents:

    Patricia Crone: “Pre-existence in Iran: “Zoroastrians, ex-Christians Mu‘tazilites, and Jews on the human acquisition of bodies”

    Oktor Skjærvø & Yaakov Elman: “Concepts of pollution in late Sasanian Iran. Does pollution need stairs, and dose it fill space?”

    Maria Macuch: “The case against Mār Abā, the Catholicos, in the light of Sasanian law”

    Sara Kuehn: “The dragon fighter: The influence of Zoroastrian ideas on Judaeo-Christian and Islamic iconography”

    Geoffrey Herman: “Like a slave before his master: A Persian gesture of deference in Sasanian, Jewish, and Christian sources”

    Michał Gawlikowski: “Zoroastrian echoes in the Mithraeum at Hawarte, Syria”

    Vicente Dobroruka: “Zoroastrian apocalyptic and Hellenistic political propaganda”

    Dan D.Y. Shapira: “Pahlavi Fire, Bundahishn 18”

    Matteo Compareti: “The representation of Zoroastrian divinities in late Sasanian art and their description according to Avestan literature”

    Bahman Moradian: “The day of Mihr, the month of Mihr and the ceremony of Mihrized in Yazd”

    Ezio Albrile: “Hypnotica Iranica: Zoroastrian ecstasy in the West”

    Andrew D. Magnusson: “On the origins of the prophet Muhammad’s charter to the family of Salman Al-Farisi”

    Predrag Bukovec: “The soul’s judgement in Mandaeism: Iranian influences on Mandaean afterlife”

    Daphna Arbel: “On human’s elevation, hubris, and fall from glory. Traditions of Yima/Jamshid and Enochmetatron – an indirect cultural dialogue?”

    Vicente Dobroruka: “The order of metals in Daniel 2 and in Persian apocalyptic”

    Myriam Wissa: “Pre-Islamic topos in Dhu’l-Nūn Al-Misrī’s teaching: A re-assessment of the Egyptian roots of the knowledge of the name of god and their interaction with Zoroastrianism in the Achaemenid period ”

    David H. Sick: “The choice of Xerxes: A Zoroastrian interpretation of Herodotus 7.12-18”

  • Bar Hebraeus The Ecclesiastical Chronicle

    Wilmshurst, David. 2016. Bar Hebraeus The Ecclesiastical Chronicle (Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 40). New Jersey. Gorgias Press.

    The Ecclesiastical Chronicle of the Syriac Orthodox polymath Bar Hebraeus (†1286), an important Syriac text written in the last quarter of the 13th century, has long been recognised as a key source for the history of the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Church of the East. Bar Hebraeus describes the eventful history of the “Jacobite” and “Nestorian” Churches, as they were then called, from their earliest beginnings down to his own time, against the background of christological controversies, Roman?Persian wars, the Arab Conquest, the Crusades and the 13th-century Mongol invasions. Two continuators bring the story down to the end of the 15th century, shedding valuable light on a relatively obscure period in the history of both Churches. The Ecclesiastical Chronicle was translated into Latin between 1872 and 1877, but has never before been fully translated into English. Gorgias Press is proud to publish the first complete English translation of this influential text, by respected Syriac scholar David Wilmshurst.

    This elegant translation of the Ecclesiastical Chronicle captures the flavour of Bar Hebraeus’s style, and is complemented by a facing Syriac text. Wilmshurst also provides a detailed introduction, setting the chronicle in its historical and literary context. His translation is accompanied by five maps, showing the dioceses of the two Churches and the towns, villages and monasteries of Tur ‘Abdin and the Mosul Plain. A helpful bibliography and index are also provided.

    David Wilmshurst was educated at Worcester College, Oxford, where he took a first-class BA degree in Classics (1979) and a D Phil degree in Oriental Studies (1998). He has spent much of his life in Hong Kong, and is one of the few modern scholars of the Church of the East who can read Syriac, Arabic and Chinese. He is the author of The Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Church of the East, 1318–1913 (Louvain, 2000), a study of the Christian topography of Iraq and Iran, and The Martyred Church (London, 2011), a general history of the Church of the East. Both books have been warmly praised by leading scholars.

     

    Table of Contents

    • Table of Contents (page 5)
    • Introduction (page 7)
      • Preliminary Remarks (page 7)
      • The Career of Bar Hebraeus (page 9)
      • The Literary Achievement of Bar Hebraeus (page 12)
      • The Chronicle of Bar Hebraeus (page 16)
      • The Ecclesiastical Chronicle as Literature (page 19)
      • The Ecclesiastical Chronicle as History (page 27)
    • Text and Translation (page 41)
      • Section One (page 42)
      • Section Two (page 350)
    • Appendix One: The Patriarchs and Maphrians of the Jacobite Church (page 547)
    • Appendix Two: The Patriarchs of the Church of the East (page 551)
    • Select Bibliography (page 555)
    • Index (page 559)
    • Maps (page 589)

  • Seleukid Royal Women

    Seleukid Royal Women is introduced by our guest contributor Khodadad Rezakhani, a Humboldt Fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies, Free University of Berlin.

    Coskun, Altay & Alex McAuley (eds.). 2016. Seleukid royal women: Creation, representation and distortion of Hellenistic queenship in the Seleukid Empire (Historia, Einzelschriften 240). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

    Khodadad writes:

    ‘The study of any period of ancient history of Iran away from political history is a welcomed change in scholarship. The arrival of this volume, edited by two of the most prominent scholars of the Hellenistic period and in a framing that embraces the multi-cultural nature of the Seleukid kingship is a most exciting development that needs to be celebrated. It should also be considered as a blue-print for future studies of similar calibre and scope in other periods of the history of the region. Hopefully, the proliferation of such studies would bring the history of “in-between” (to quote the prologue) more to the attention of the general audiences, as well as the scholars, of the ancient world. Perhaps the volume could have benefited from more in-depth studies of the majority of the (non-Greek speaking) areas of the Seleukid domains, a lacuna which is perhaps more a fault of the experts of these non-Greek speaking in-betweens than the erudite editors of the volume’.

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  • Change in the Approach to the Zoroastrian Liturgy

    Jashan ceremony, The Banaji Atash Behram in Mumbai, 2011 Photo © KainazAmaria
    Jashan ceremony, The Banaji Atash Behram in Mumbai, 2011 Photo © KainazAmaria

    Cantera, Alberto. 2016. A Substantial Change in the Approach to the Zoroastrian Long Liturgy: About J. Kellens’s Études avestiques et mazdéennes. Indo-Iranian Journal 59(2). 139–185.

    Between 2006 and 2013 J. Kellens published in five volumes (the last one together with C. Redard) a corrected version of the text edited by K.F. Geldner of the longest and most important Zoroastrian ritual usually known by the name of one of its variants as the Yasna. The text accompanies an experimental translation and both are followed by a commentary. J. Kellens is pioneering in translating and studying, not only the standard daily variant of the liturgy, but also its more solemn version. Furthermore, his work is the first attempt to read the complete text of the liturgy as the coherent text (although produced at different times) of an old and meaningful liturgy, although it has been traditionally understood as a late composition. As it appears in the manuscripts and is celebrated still today in India, the liturgy is the result of a series of conscious interpretations, reinterpretations and rearrangements of older versions. Despite of this, it is a coherent text and ritual in which each section of the liturgy plays a concrete role that J. Kellens has tried to bring to light for the first time. In the present review, I try to highlight the extraordinary importance of Kellens’ new approach to the Zoroastrian Long Liturgy and to expose his main achievements. At the same time, I expose the main weaknesses of this monumental work: 1. its dependence on the text edited by Geldner, which hides part of the ritual variety of the Long Liturgy; 2. the conscious disregard of the meta-ritual information provided by the Zoroastrian tradition about the performance of the liturgy; 3. J. Kellens’s Yasna-centrism that prevents him to recognize the close connections between the Long Liturgy and other minor rituals and the participation within the Long Liturgy of many short rituals that can be celebrated independently.
    Read the article here.
     About the Author:
    Alberto Cantera is a scholar of Ancient Iranian Studies and Avestan and Middle Persian Philology and Codicology. He is the director of the Institut of the Iranian Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin.

  • Late Sasanid and Early Islamic Period in the Marvdasht Plain

    Shobairi, Abazar, 2016. New evidence of late Sasanid and early Islamic period in the Marvdasht plain. In Denis Genequand (ed.), Proceedings of the 9th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, vol.2, 425–440. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

    This present paper is a brief report of a rescue excavation results as well as an analysis of the relative chronology of the material culture which was found during the excavation on the Marvdasht Plain. The result of the excavation can serve as an indication of the sequence of settlement from the Sasanid to the late Islamic period in the Marvdasht Plain and southwestern Iran generally.

  • Ancient tales of giants

    Goff, Matthew, Loren Stuckenbruck & Enrico Morano (eds.). 2016. Ancient tales of giants from Qumran and Turfan: Contexts, traditions, and influences (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 360). Mohr Siebeck.

    While there has been much scholarly attention devoted to the Enochic Book of the Watchers , much less has been paid to the Book of Giants from Qumran. This volume is the proceedings of a conference that convened in Munich, Germany, in June 2014, which was devoted to the giants of Enochic tradition and in particular the Qumran Book of Giants . It engages the topic of the giants in relation to various ancient contexts, including the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Mesopotamia. The authors of this volume give particular attention to Manichaeism, especially the Manichaean Book of Giants , fragments of which were found in Turfan (western China). They contribute to our understanding of the range of stories Jews told in antiquity about the sons of the watchers who descended to earth and their vibrant Nachleben in Manichaeism.

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  • Between Zoroastrianism and Islam

    Photo © Gianroberto Scarcia
    Marijan Molé (1924-1963). Photo © Gianroberto Scarcia

    Between Zoroastrianism and Islam
    International conference on the work of Marijan Molé

    Friday, June 24, 2016, École française d’Extrême-Orient – 22, avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris.

    Organized by Samra Azarnouche (EPHE).

    The works of Marijan Molé (1924-1963) has left a distinctive and lasting imprint on the field of Iranian Studies. His careful and insightful studies on the Avestan and Middle Persian literature, the Islamic mystical treatises as well as the Persian epics play an important role in our understanding of Iranian history, culture and religions. This conference focuses on one of the peculiarities of Molé’s research, namely the scholarly attempt at bridging the gap between pre-Islamic and Islamic Iranian Studies, between the different strata of religious and literary traditions, and between the great mythical and prophetic figures. The (recent) discovery of his Nachlass (IRHT and BULAC) gives us the opportunity to make an inventory of his legacy, which highlights the originality of his approach in the study of religions.

    Program (PDF):

    MOLÉ ET L’AVESTA: ENTRE TRADITION ET COMPARATISME

    • Jean Kellens: “le printemps des études gâtiques”
    • Philippe Swennen: “Marijan Molé à l’aube du nouveau comparatisme indo-iranien”

    PROPHÈTES ET HÉROS

    • Anna Krasnowolska: “Molé’s Early Works and his Study of Persian Epics”
    • Michel Tardieu: “Vies de Zoroastre, Vies de Mani, Vies de Muhammad :un apport de M. Molé à l’histoire des religions”

    COSMOLOGIE ET ESCHATOLOGIE : D’UNE TRADITION À L’AUTRE

    • Antonio Panaino: “Le gētīg dans le mēnōg et le système chiliadique mazdéen” selon la réflexion de Marijan Molé
    • Shaul Shaked: “Immortality and Eschatology”
    • Pierre Lory: “Marijan Molé, ‘Aziz Nasafî et l’Homme Parfait”

    RAYONNEMENT ET POSTÉRITÉ DE L’OEUVRE

    • Jaleh Amouzegar: “Marijan Molé en Iran”
    • Alexey Khismatulin: “He was years ahead of his time: Destiny of the Unpublished Works by Molé on the Naqshbandiya”
    • Conclusions: Frantz Grenet

     

     

  • Norouz in the Abbasid Literary Sources

    Norouz in Abbasid SourcesBorroni, Massimiliano & Simone Cristoforetti. 2016. An Index of Nayrūz Occurences in Abbasid Literary Sources. Phasar Edizioni.

    This volume is the result of a two-years research project entirely funded by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in 2012. The project focused on an exhaustive indexing of all edited Arabic sources mentioning the festival of Nayrūz (Nawrūz) in the Abbasid age (750-1258 CE). The preference given here to the Arabic form Nayrūz for the name of the first day of the Iranian traditional solar year is in agreement with the majority of the literary sources in Arabic language of the Abbasid period.

     

  • Iranian Studies in Honor of Pierre Lecoq

    Achaemenid Royal Archers, Coloured glazed terracotta brick panels, Susa, around 510 BC © Pergamon Museum, Berlin
    Achaemenid Royal Archers, Coloured glazed terracotta brick panels, Susa, around 510 BC © Pergamon Museum, Berlin

    Redard, Céline (ed.). 2016. Des contrées avestiques à Mahabad, via Bisotun. Etudes offertes en hommage à Pierre Lecoq. (Civilisations Du Proche-Orient Série III. Religion et Culture 2). Paris: Recherches et Publications.

    This  volume is dedicated to Pierre Lecoq, one of the prolific and renowned scholars of Ancient Iranian and Orietal Studies. The book consists of seventeen papers written by some of the foremost scholars in the field of Iranian Studies, essentially concerned with different aspects of Ancient Iranian Art, Archaeology, History, Numismatics and Religion, reflecting Pierre Lecoq’s scholarly interests.
    Table of Contents:
    • Bibliographie de Pierre Lecoq
    • Gilbert Lazard:  “Pour saluer Pierre Lecoq”
    • Rudiger Schmitt: “Zur altpersischen Grammatik und Inschriftenkunde”
    • Adriano V. Rossi: “Considérations sur le § 14 de DB et sur Āyadana-/ANzí-ia-an ANna-ap-pan-na É.˹MEŠ˺ šá DINGIR.MEŠ
    • Ela Filippone: “Goat-Skins, Horses and Camels: How did Darius’
      Army Cross the Tigris?”
    • Rémy Boucharlat: “À propos de parayadām et paradis perse : perpléxité de l’archéologue et perspectives”
    • Margaret Cool Root: “Tales of Translation: Leroy Waterman, Biblical Studies, and an Achaemenid Royal-Name Alabastron from Seleucia”
    • Jan Tavernier: “À propos de quelques noms iraniens dans les
      inscriptions lyciennes”
    • Georges-Jean Pinault: “Ariyāramna, the Pious Lord”
    • Jean Haudry: “Le rejeton des eaux”
    • Philippe Swennen: “Le Yasna Haptaŋhāiti entre deux existences”
    • Jean Kellens: “Stratégies du Mihr Yašt“
    • Antonio Panaino: “Later Avestan maɣauua– (?) and the (Mis)Adventures of a ‘Pseudo-Ascetic’”
    • Céline Redard: “Le fragment Westergaard 10”
    • Enrico Raffaelli: “The Amǝša Spǝṇtas and Their Helpers: The
      Zoroastrian ham-kārs”
    • Rika Gyselen: “Noeud d’Héraclès, noeuds lunaires et sceaux
      sassanides”
    • Agnès Lenepveu-Hotz: “L’emploi de mar … rā chez Firdausī: simple raison métrique ou cause linguistique?”
    • Halkawt Hakem: “Kurdistān, Le journal de la République de Mahabad (1946)”
    About the Editor:
    Céline Redard (PhD 2010) is a scholor of Ancient Iranian Languages and a Research Assistant at the Université de Liège, Département des Sciences de l’Antiquité, Langues et religions du monde indo-iranien ancien.