Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca


    Green, Nile (ed.). 2019. The Persianate world: The frontiers of a Eurasian lingua franca. Oakland, California: University of California Press.

    Persian is one of the great lingua francas of world history. Yet despite its recognition as a shared language across the Islamic world and beyond, its scope, impact, and mechanisms remain underexplored. A world historical inquiry into pre-modern cosmopolitanism, The Persianate World traces the reach and limits of Persian as a Eurasian language in a comprehensive survey of its geographical, literary, and social frontiers. From Siberia to Southeast Asia, and between London and Beijing, this book shows how Persian gained, maintained, and finally surrendered its status to imperial and vernacular competitors. Fourteen essays trace Persian’s interactions with Bengali, Chinese, Turkic, Punjabi, and other languages to identify the forces that extended “Persographia,” the domain of written Persian. Spanning the ages of expansion and contraction, The Persianate World offers a critical survey of both the supports and constraints of one of history’s key languages of global exchange.


  • Middle Persian and Parthian hymns in the Turfan Collection

    Leurini, Claudia. 2017. Hymns in honour of the hierarchy and community, installation hymns and hymns in honour of Church leaders and Patrons. Middle Persian and Parthian hymns in the Turfan Collection. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

    This volume presents texts in the Iranian languages, Middle Persian and Parthian, preserved in the Berlin Turfan Collection. These hymns are predominantly in Middle Persian. They were identified by M. Boyce in the registers of her Catalogue of the Iranian Manuscripts in Manichaean Scripts in the German Turfan Collection as “Hymns in Honour of the Hierarchy” and “Installation Hymns, Hymns in Honour of Church Leaders and Patrons”. Few of the fragments have been published, and mainly in editions dating back to the time of their discovery. New and updated readings, transliterations, translations into English, notes and commentaries are provided here for all the fragments identified by Boyce. The Introduction provides a description of the main features of the hymns to the Manichaean elect hierarchy, to the local hierarchies, and to the hierarchies of the Hearers, as well as of the installation hymns, and those in honour of high clerics and lay patrons. Reflections are provided on the use of cryptography in the Manichaean texts in Manichaean script, and about the learning habits inside scriptoria in Manichaean monasteries in Central Asia, the existence of which has long been suspected. The volume contains a complete glossary and bibliography, as well as facsimiles of joined fragments.

    Source: Hymns in Honour of the Hierarchy and Community, Installation Hymns and Hymns in Honour of Church Leaders and Patrons

  • Irano-Judaica VII

    Rubanovich, Julia & Geoffrey Herman (eds.). 2019. Irano-Judaica VII: Studies Relating to Jewish Contacts with Persian Culture throughout the Ages. Vol. VII. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East.
    The volume includes twenty-three papers, arranged in five thematic parts, which reflect the variety of subjects the volume encompasses. Part One deals with the topics of law, ritual and eschatology in Zoroastrianism and Judaism. Part Two is devoted to the textual patterns and transmission in Avestan and Middle Persian sources. Jewish-Iranian historical and literary interrelations through the centuries, including the literary perception of Jews in Persian literature and Iranian folklore, are the focus of Part Three. The articles in Part Four highlight specific patterns of permutations that Jewish, Zoroastrian, Manichaean, and Christian motifs, themes and concepts undergo while migrating from one religious and social milieu to another. The fifth and the last section of the volume is devoted to Judaeo-Persian language and literature: a Hebrew text and early Judaeo-Persian translation of a large portion of the seventh chapter of Jeremiah are presented and analyzed for the first time; the Jewish reception of a Persian classical text is discussed, and the literary legacy of two medieval Judaeo-Persian poets, Shāhīn and ʿImrānī, is further investigated.
    Table of Contents
    Part One: Law, Ritual and Eschatology in Zoroastrianism and Judaism
    • Almut Hintze: “Defeating Death: Eschatology in Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity”
    • Maria Macuch: “A Pahlavi Legal Term in Jesubōxt’s Corpus Iuris”
    • Benjamin Jokisch: “Cultural Intertwinedness and the Problem of Proving Reception. A Case Study on Late Antique Foundations: ruwānagān, heqdēsh, piae causae, and waqf“
    • Yaakov Elman: “Samuel’s Scythe-handle: Sasanian Mortgage Law in the Bavli”
    • David Brodsky: “‘Thought Is Akin to Action’: The Importance of Thought in Zoroastrianism and the Development of a Babylonian
      Rabbinic Motif”

    Part Two: Textual Patterns and Transmission in Avestan and Middle Persian Sources

    • Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: “Observations on the Form of Avestan Texts in the Context of Neighboring Traditions”
    • Mihaela Timuș: “Les raisonnements taxinomiques dans le Dēnkard 3″
    • Dieter Weber: “Christlich-jüdische Spuren in Pahlavi-Dokumenten des 7. Jhs. n. Chr.”
    • Yaakov Elman: “The Hērbedestān in the Hērbedestān: Priestly Teaching from the Avesta to the Zand”

    Part Three: Jewish-Iranian Historical and Literary
    Interrelations through the Centuries

    • Domenico Agostini: “Luhrāsp and the Destruction of Jerusalem: A Note on Jewish-Iranian Syncretism”
    • Geoffrey Herman: “Back to Bustanay: The History of a Legend”
    • Julia Rubanovich: “On Representations of Jews in Medieval Persian Epic Poetry”
    • Orly R. Rahimiyan: “The Image of the Jew in Iranian Folklore”

    Part Four: Texts and Motifs: Between Interaction and Polemics
    Reuven Kiperwasser “ʻThree Partners in a Personʼ: The Metamorphoses of a Tradition and the History of an Idea”

    • Yishai Kiel: “The Usurpation of Solomon’s Throne by Ashmedai (b.Giṭ. 68a-b): A Talmudic Story in Its Iranian and Christian Contexts”
    • Sergey Minov: “Jews and Christians in Late Sasanian Nisibis:
      The Evidence of the Life of Mār Yāreth the Alexandrian“
    • Samuel Thrope: “Therefore He Himself is the Demon, Lord of Hell: On Manichaean and Zoroastrian Anti-Judaism”

    Part Five: Judaeo-Persian Language and Literature

    • Gilbert Lazard: “La dialectologie du persan préclassique à la lumière des nouvelles données judéo-persanes”
    • Shaul Shaked: “A Fragment of the Book of Jeremiah in Early Judaeo-Persian”
    • Vera B. Moreen: “Reflections on a Judaeo-Persian Manuscript of Rūmī’s Mathnavī“
    • Nahid Pirnazar: “Observations on the Epic Legacy in Judaeo-Persian Poetry”
    • Vera B. Moreen: “Shāhīn’s Interpretation of Shira and Haʾazinu“

    Hebrew Section

    • Alex Tal: “Between Jews and Gentiles in Talmudic Babylonia: Reading between the Lines”

  • Āmul/Āmū(ye): die nordöstlichste Münzstätte des Sasanidenreiches im 5. Jahrhundert n. Chr.

    Shavarebi, Ehsan. 2019. Āmul/Āmū(ye): die nordöstlichste Münzstätte des Sasanidenreiches im 5. Jahrhundert n. Chr. in: M. Stermitz (Hrsg.), Sammlungen und Sammler: Tagungsband zum 8. Österreichischen Numismatikertag [Kärntner Museumsschriften 86], Klagenfurt am Wörthersee: Landesmuseum für Kärnten, 2019, S. 173-179.

    Bei den sowjetischen archäologischen Ausgrabungen von Marw kamen zum ersten Mal etliche Bronzemünzen des sasanidischen Königs Pērōz (457–484) zum Vorschein, auf deren Rückseite die Münzstättensigle AMW belegt ist. S. D. Loginov und A. B. Nikitin identifizierten diese Sigle mit der Provinzhauptstadt Āmol in Tabaristān. Die erste sichere Münzen vom Münzamt Āmol in Tabaristān sind jedoch während der ersten Regierung des Kawād I. (488–496) mit der Signatur AM geprägt. Laut historischen Quellen war Tabaristān seit dem Anfang der Sasanidenzeit bis zum Ende der Regierung des Pērōz ein fast unabhängiges Fürstentum unter der lokalen Herrscherfamilie der Gušnaspiden, die von Kawād gestürzt wurde. Die unter Pērōz mit der Münzstättensignatur AMW geprägte Bronzemünzen sind eigentlich bisher nur in Marw gefunden und daher kann man diese Münzstätte nicht in Tabaristān, sondern in einem gleichnamigen Ort in Zentralasien, östlich von Marw, lokalisieren. Aber warum prägte Pērōz Bronzemünzen in diesem Ort und wieso hatte diese Münzstätte nach der Regierung des Pērōz keine Aktivität mehr?

  • Cosmology, Law, and Elites in Late Antiquity

    Scheunchen, Tobias. 2019. Cosmology, law, and elites in late antiquity: Marriage and slavery in Zoroastrianism, Eastern Christianity, and Islam (Arbeitsmaterialien zum Orient 32). Baden-Baden: Ergon Verlag.

    Can elites use cosmological imagery to sanction marital and slavery practices for their political aspirations? Can interactions between Late Antique legal systems be thought beyond “borrowings?” This work studies legal writings from the Zoroastrian, East Syrian, and Islamic traditions arguing that Late Antique matrimonial and slavery practices were significantly informed by cosmological imagery and repeatedly brought in line with the elites’ political aspirations. It suggests that these legal traditions should be thought in a shared epistemic framework to account for the changes and meaningfulness of legal concepts and institutions and cannot simply be reduced to a narrative of borrowings. Instead, this book shows that interactions between Late Antique legal systems were more complex and characterized by patterns of negotiation and competition mirroring the various entanglements of the Late Antique citizen’s life.

  • An Ascetic Miscellany

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas (ed.). 2017. An ascetic miscellany: The Christian Sogdian manuscript E28. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

    The Christian Sogdian manuscripts in Syriac script which were found at a Central Asian outpost of the “Church of the East”, the monastery at Bulayïq in the Turfan oasis, and are now preserved in the Berlin Turfan collection, include a large number of fragments in a distinctive handwriting which have been catalogued under the designation “E28”. Through his choice of texts to translate or to copy the scribe demonstrates his interest in the practice and traditions of monasticism, originating with St Anthony and the other “Desert Fathers”, the solitaries and monks of the Egyptian desert, and transplanted to Mesopotamia and Iran, according to legend, by Mār Awgen (Eugenius). In addition to works whose Syriac sources have been identified, such as passages from the spiritual writings of Šemʿon d-Ṭaibuteh, Isaac of Nineveh and Dādišoʿ Qaṭrāyā, as well as from the life of Mār Awgen, “E28” contains a number of unidentified texts, also no doubt translated from Syriac, many of which deal with aspects of the ascetic life. This volume contains an edition and translation of all the texts, most of them previously unpublished, together with a commentary, glossary and 35 plates. An appendix contains critical editions of some of the parallel Syriac passages.

  • Between Highlands and Lowlands

    Wicks, Yasmina. 2019. Between highlands and lowlands. The Ram Hormuz Plain in the neo-Elamite and early Achaemenid periods, and comments on five burials from the Fort Mound at Tal-i Ghazir. Arta 2019.002.


    The plain of Ram Hormuz was a strategically important area of southwest Iran connecting the Susiana lowlands with the Zagros highlands, and undoubtedly a critical zone of Elamite and Iranian interaction in the centuries leading up to the emergence of the Persian Empire. Its archaeological remains must therefore be regarded as a vital key to our comprehension of the processes of acculturation that gave rise to the Elamo Persian culture of the early Achaemenid period. While the plain has been extensively surveyed, its only excavated site remains Tal-i Ghazir where just two seasons of excavation were conducted in 1948/49 by Donald E. McCown under the auspices of the Oriental Institute. McCown worked in three separate mounds— Mounds A and B, and the so-called Fort Mound—but he never published his results. Almost half a century later, Elizabeth Carter (1994) published a series of burials in the Fort Mound from his field notes, and another two decades later, Abbas Alizadeh (2014) published the complete records of the Tal-i Ghazir excavations. The purpose of this paper is to outline the evidence for the Neo-Elamite (ca. 1000 525 BCE) and Achaemenid periods (ca. 525-330 BCE) collected during the surveys across the Ram Hormuz plain and the excavations at Tal-i Ghazir, with special attention to the burials in the Fort Mound.

  • From Liturgy to Pharmacology

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2019. From liturgy to pharmacology. Christian Sogdian texts from the Turfan Collection. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

    Containing a variety of texts ranging from liturgy to pharmacology via hagiography, calendars and ascetical works by Isaac of Nineveh, this volume completes the publication of all known Christian Sogdian texts.

    This volume completes the publication of the Christian Sogdian texts of the Berlin Turfan Collection begun by F. W. K. Müller in 1907. Several Syriac texts are also included, in particular a series of liturgical texts in Syriac with Sogdian rubrics (edited in collaboration with J. F. Coakley).

    The texts edited here are mostly short but extremely varied and interesting. The Syriac liturgical fragments are some of the earliest surviving witnesses to the liturgy of the “Church of the East”, though the Sogdian rubrics which accompany them show that those who performed them were not native speakers of Syriac. Other texts connected with the liturgy include a Sogdian version of the Gloria in excelsis and a text explaining how to calculate the date of Easter or Lent. Hagiographical texts include fragments of the martyrdoms of St George and of Cyriacus and Julitta as well as part of the so-called “Six Books” on the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. Two pharmacological fragments (edited in collaboration with Dieter Maue) show familiarity with Indian medicine, while a “prayer-amulet” belongs rather to a Syriac tradition. Finally, a chapter contributed by Adrian Pirtea contains the re-edition of a well-preserved folio identified by him as a Sogdian version of a work by Isaac of Nineveh.

  • The Historiography of Alexander the Great

    Nawotka, Krzysztof, Robert Rollinger, Josef Wiesehöfer & Agnieszka Wojciechowska (eds.). 2019. The Historiography of Alexander the Great (Classica et Orientalia 20). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.


    This volume tries to tackle the most serious problem facing modern Alexander the Great studies: that of inadequate sources. Its principal interest is in surviving ancient continuous accounts (Diodorus, Curtius Rufus, Plutarch, Arrian, and Justin), which are at least three hundred years younger than Alexander and in many ways one-sided in their Greek bias, often promoting the view of Alexander within the narrow bounds of a Western conqueror. The papers in this volume deconstruct these accounts and search for sources used by their authors, principally in narrative of eye-witnesses and other authors of the first generation after Alexander, including his court historian Callisthenes and his companions Onesicritus, Aristobulus, and Ptolemy. They search for fragments of ancient literary works known from papyri and for shadowy accounts created on the Persian side like the “mercenaries’ source”. Some papers look into propaganda patterns of the age of Alexander and their connections with clichés of Egyptian literature. Some investigate a parallel tradition on the last will of Alexander, enshrined in I Maccabees, and best known from the Alexander Romance. Finally, papers in this volume examine post-classical rendition of Alexander: Jewish from the Talmud to Josippon and Byzantine, composed of separate textual traditions of various ancient authors, with Plutarch taking pride of place.

  • Not the Queen Šābuhrduxtag but the Goddess Anāhitā

    Goddess Anāhitā at the investiture of Narseh (c. 293-303), Naqš-e Rostam, Fārs, Iran

    Tanabe, Katsumi. 2018. Not the Queen Šābuhrduxtag but the goddess Anāhitā: Identification of the female figure in the investiture scene of Narseh at Naqsh-i Rustam. Japan Society for Hellnistic-Islam Archaeological Studies 25. 9–26.

    The rock-cut relief depicting the investiture scene of the Sasanian King of Kings, Narseh (293-302) at Naqsh-i Rustam in southern Iran has been investigated by many scholars since the beginning of the twentieth century CE . As regards the iconography of this relief, one of a few problems that have not yet gained scholarly consensus is the identification of the female figure depicted on the viewer’s rightmost side of the relief.

    Currently there are two major hypotheses as regards the identification. One of them is to identify the female figure as the Zoroastrian goddess of water, Anāhitā (Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā). The other is to identify it as the queen of Narseh, Šābuhrduxtag (Shāpuhrdukhtak).