Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • The Babylonian Talmud

    Amsler, Monika. 2023. The Babylonian Talmud and late antique book culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

    In this book, Monika Amsler explores the historical contexts in which the Babylonian Talmud was formed in an effort to determine whether it was the result of oral transmission. Scholars have posited that the rulings and stories we find in the Talmud were passed on from one generation to the next, each generation adding their opinions and interpretations of a given subject. Yet such an oral formation process is unheard of in late antiquity. Moreover, the model exoticizes the Talmud and disregards the intellectual world of Sassanid Persia. Rather than taking the Talmud’s discursive structure as a sign for orality, Amsler interrogates the intellectual and material prerequisites of composers of such complex works, and their education and methods of large-scale data management. She also traces and highlights the marks that their working methods inevitably left in the text. Detailing how intellectual innovation was generated, Amsler’s book also sheds new light on the content of the Talmud.

    From Cambridge Core

  • Derbent: What Persia Left Behind

    Derbent: What Persia Left Behind, is a documentary directed by Pejman Akbarzadeh. For more information, including a timeline and screening schedules, visit derbentonline.com.

    Trailer

    Registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 6th-century Derbent (Darband) fortification complex is considered the largest defensive structure of Sasanian Persia (Iran) in the Caucasus.
    “Derbent: What Persia Left Behind”, also explores the unique architecture of the massive fortress, and how it has been preserved for some fifteen centuries by Persian, Arab, Turkish and Russian rulers. Built strategically in the narrowest area between the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Sea, the fortification includes the northernmost Middle Persian (Pahlavi) inscriptions in the world, which are in danger of destruction. The 42-km defence wall of the complex that extended toward the Black Sea had already been destroyed in the Soviet era.

    From the film’s website

  • Studi Iranici Ravennati

    Panaino, Antonio, Andrea Piras and Paolo Ognibene (eds). 2023. Studi iranici ravennati IV (Indo-iranica et orientalia, Lazur 25). Milan: Mimesis.

    This volume collects a number of scientific articles dealing with history, linguistics, philology, archaeology, ethnology and anthropology of the ancient and modern Iranian peoples.

    From the website

  • The Book of Zambasta

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2022. The Book of Zambasta. Metre and stress in Old Khotanese (Beiträge Zur Iranistik Band 49). Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

    Khotanese, a language belonging to the Iranian branch of Indo-European, which was spoken in the first millennium CE, has a rich literature including the Book of Zambasta, a poetic exposition of Mahāyāna Buddhism in 24 chapters. This poem makes use of three metres, whose nature has been a matter of controversy for more than a century. While its first editor, Ernst Leumann (1859–1931), regarded Khotanese metre as essentially quantitative (moraic) and derived it from a Proto-Indo-European metrical system supposedly reflected also in the Greek hexameter and the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, other scholars have understood it in very different ways: as a purely stress-based metre related to that of poetry in some other Iranian languages; as an adaptation of Indian metrics; or as representing a transitional stage from a quantitative to a stress-based system. The present work offers a closely-argued new analysis, demonstrating that the metre is indeed based on the quantitative (moraic) principle, but with an obligatory ictus in the cadences which leads to the systematic lightening of certain unstressed syllables. The results shed light on the equally controversial issue of Khotanese accentuation and many other aspects of the language and its history. The book includes the complete text of the poem with interlinear scansion. Additional fully searchable text-files available online make it possible for any reader to check the arguments and results.

    Table of Contents (ToC)

  • The Age of Persia

    Radner, Karen, Nadine Moeller & D. T. Potts (eds.). 2023. The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East Volume V: The Age of Persia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    The fifth and final volume of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East covers the period from the second half of the 7th century BC until the campaigns of Alexander III of Macedon (336-323 BC) brought an end to the Achaemenid Dynasty and the Persian Empire. Tying together areas and political developments covered by previous volumes in the series, this title covers also the Persian Empire’s immediate predecessor states: Saite Egypt, the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Lydia, among other kingdoms and tribal alliances. The chapters in this volume feature a wide range of archaeological and textual sources, with contributors displaying a masterful treatment of the challenges and advantages of the available materials. Two chapters focus on areas that have not enjoyed prominence in any of the previous volumes of this series: eastern Iran and Central Asia. This volume is the necessary and complementary final component of this comprehensive series.

    (more…)

  • The Sasanians in conflict

    The latest issue of Antiquité Tardive (30/2022) is out, which is a special issue dedicated to Sasanian history: “Les Sassanides en conflit: géopolitique de l’empire perse tardo-antique.”

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Les Sassanides en conflit : géopolitique de l’empire perse tardo-antique

    Philip Huyze, Introduction générale : l’empire sassanide dans le monde interconnecté de l’Antiquité tardive/ General introduction: the Sasanian empire in the interconnected world of Late Antiquity

    Samra Azarnouche, Présentation du dossier Les Sassanides en conflit : géopolitique de l’empire perse tardo-antique

    Hervé Inglebert, La place de l’empire sassanide dans les débats sur l’Antiquité tardive/ What place for the Sasanian Empire in the debates about Late Antiquity?

    (more…)

  • Gandhāran Art in its Buddhist Context

    Rienjang, Wannaporn & Peter Stewart (eds.). 2023. Gandhāran art in its Buddhist context. Oxford: Archaeopress Archaeology.

    This book considers Gandhāran art in relation to its religious contexts and meanings within ancient Buddhism. Addressing the responses of patrons and worshippers at the monasteries and shrines of Gandhāra, papers seek to understand more about why Gandhāran art was made and what its iconographical repertoire meant to ancient viewers.

  • Zoroastrianism: History, Religion and Belief

    This year, we missed to announce the ‘Zoroastrianism Summer Course‘, which is offered by the ‘Shapoorji Pallonji Institute of Zoroastrian Studies‘ and takes place at the Norwegian Institute in Rome.

    But we would like to take this opportunity to mention ‘Zoroastrianism: History, Religion and Belief‘, which has been designed by Dr Sarah Stewart and Dr Céline Redard and is offered as a free online course (MOOC).

  • The Rediscovery and Reception of Gandhāran Art

    Rienjang, Wannaporn & Peter Stewart (eds.). 2022. The rediscovery and reception of Gandhāran art. Oxford: Archaeopress Archaeology.

    From the archaeologists and smugglers of the Raj to the museums of post-partition Pakistan and India, from coin-forgers and contraband to modern Buddhism and contemporary art, this fourth volume of the Gandhāra Connections project presents the most recent research on the factors that mediate our encounter with Gandhāran art.

  • “Daiva Inscription” of Xerxes

    Yakubovich, Ilya S. 2023. “Daiva Inscription” of Xerxes: Historical account, ideological statement, or propaganda. Journal of Ancient History 83(1). 5–26.

    The so-called “Daiva inscription” of Xerxes found at Persepolis addresses the activity of this Achaemenid Persian king in two lands, one of which is said to have been in commotion, while the other is alleged to have been characterized by unacceptable religious practices. Xerxes stresses his involvement in the restoration of order in both countries but does not mention their names. Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Bactria were all adduced as candidates by twentieth century scholars, while the recent mainstream of scholarship tends to interpret the same accounts as abstract ideological statements without an anchor in time or space. The new approach advocated in this paper assumes that Xerxes resorted to historical narratives only in order to provide his own apologetic version of embarrassing events. In particular, his self-professed involvement in the destruction of the cults of evil gods is to be interpreted as a twisted account of the destruction of the Acropolis of Athens by the Persian army in 480 BC. In the wake of the disastrous war against the Greeks, Xerxes strove to present it as a successful special operation against the Greek deities.