Categories
Events

Calendars in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

ERC Project ‘Calendars in Antiquity and the Middle Ages’, Workshop 7

Al-Biruni and his world

15 February 2016

Calendars in Antiquity and the Middle Ages’

Source: ERC Project ‘Calendars in Antiquity and the Middle Ages’, Workshop 7

Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, who flourished at the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th century CE, was a famous Central Asian astronomer, mathematician and polymath. His book known in English as “The Chronology of Ancient Nations” is probably the most important book ever on the history of calendars and technical and historical chronology. In our workshop we will be examining different aspects of this work, and also of his great astronomical compendium “al-Qanun al-Mas’udi”.

Continue reading “Calendars in Antiquity and the Middle Ages”

Categories
Events

Networks: Connecting the Middle East through Time, Space and Cyberspace

Image: josullivan.59 via Flickr | ‘World Airline Routes’

BRISMES Annual Conference 2016 Networks: Connecting the Middle East through Time, Space and Cyberspace

BRISMES Annual Conference 2016 will take place at the University of Wales Trinity St David, Lampeter Campus, on 13 – 15 July.

The Middle East and North Africa as a region is intimately connected both regionally and to the wider world. This is true historically, where the region has long acted as a crossroads of trade, culture and ideas, as well as in more contemporary contexts – when Arab protest movements inspired similar actions around the world, and migration within and from the region is having a global impact. It is no coincidence that the Middle East is at the forefront of innovative developments in social media and other networks of communication.

Papers and panels on historical or contemporary issues are welcome as part of sub-themes such as this one:
•Networks within religion: religious communities (ancient and modern), interfaith connections, religious authority and evolving theological interpretations.
Categories
Books

Cultural, Religious and Social aspects of Vaqf in Iran

Werner, Christoph. 2015. VAQF en Iran aspects culturels, religieux et sociaux. (Cahiers de Studia Iranica 56). Paris; Leuven: Peeters.
This volume contains the text of the five Ehsan and Latifeh Yarshater Distinguished Lectures on Iranian Studies, organized by the Unité Mixte de Recherche 7528 “Mondes iranien et indien”, and delivered in 2012 at the Collège de France in Paris.
It analyses cultural and social – as well as religious, economic, political and material aspects of endowments in Iran from the 14th century up to the present time. The five chapters cover various periods and are arranged chronologically along major themes: The institution of vaqf in early modern and contemporary Iran; Mystical endowments and religious endowments in fourteenth and fifteenth century Azerbaijan; Mashhad and its illumination vaqfs; Robes of honour conferred by Imam Reza; and Philanthropy, public education and nationalism in vaqf foundations of the Pahlavi period.
Table of Contents:
I. L’institution du vaqf en Iran
  • Vers une définition de l’institution du vaqf en Iran
  • Administration du vaqf et indépendance de l’institution
  • Le vaqf comme institution vivante
  • Vaqf et bonyād : un imbroglio idéologique
  • Manuels juridiques et vaqf : questions et réponses

II. Mouvements mystiques et fondations pieuses : les Kujujī et les Ṣafavides au 14e siècle

  • Les cheikhs Kujujī
  • L’histoire de Tabrīz et du nord-ouest de l’Iran au 14e siècle
  • La Kujujī Vaqfīye de 782h.q./1380
  • Le fondateur comme notable urbain dans les chroniques
  • Le fondateur poète
  • Le fondateur comme cheikh et mystique

III. Ville de lumière : Machhad et ses fondations d’illumination
Fondations d’illumination à Machhad selon le «Paradis des
histoires»

  • Le sanctuaire de l’Imam Reżā – origine, développement et administration
  • Le catalogue de Seyyed Hamadānī, «s̱ār al-rażavīye»
  • Les objectifs des fondations de l’Āstān-e Qods
  • L’administration des fondations d’illumination à l’époque qajare
  • Fondations d’illumination et introduction de l’éclairage électrique

IV. Robes d’honneur conférées par l’Imam Reżā

  • Robes d’honneur – la tradition des ḫelʿat
  • Pīškeš et ḫelʿat
  • Une collection des décrets émis par l’Āstān-e Qods
  • L’Āstān-e Qods-e Rażavī comme état semi-indépendant
    Conclusion

V. Mécénat, instruction publique et nationalisme : Le vaqf à l’époque Pahlavi

  • Législation et l’administration des owqāf à l’époque Pahlavi
  • Les Fondations Malek
  • Les Fondations Doktor Maḥmūd Afšār
  • La Fondation Moqaddam à Téhéran et autres fondations hybrides
    de l’époque Pahlavi

English summaries: Vaqf in Iran Cultural, Religious and Social aspects
Introduction
I. The institution of vaqf in Iran
II. Mystical movements and pious foundations: the Kujujī and the
Ṣafavids in the 14th century
III. City of light: Mashhad and its illumination vaqfs
IV. Robes of honour conferred by Iman Reżā
V. Philanthropy, education and nationalism: vaqf in Pahlavi Iran

About the Author:

Christoph Werner is Professor of Iranian Studies at Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) was established at the Philipps-University of Marburg.

Categories
Articles

Olive cultivation in the heart of the Persian Achaemenid Empire

Djamali, Morteza, Matthew D. Jones, Jérémy Migliore, Silvia Balatti, Marianela Fader, Daniel Contreras, Sébastien Gondet, Zahra Hosseini, Hamid Lahijani, Abdolmajid Naderi, Lyudmila S. Shumilovskikh, Margareta Tengberg & Lloyd Weeks. 2015. Olive cultivation in the heart of the Persian Achaemenid Empire: New insights into agricultural practices and environmental changes reflected in a late Holocene pollen record from Lake Parishan, SW Iran. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany (August 2015), 1–15.

This is an Online First Article and has not been assigned to an issue of the journal.

Ancient Persia witnessed one of its most prosperous cultural and socio-economic periods between 550 bc and ad 651, with the successive domination of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian and Sassanian Empires. During this period agricultural activities increased on the Iranian plateau, as demonstrated by a remarkable arboricultural expansion. However, available data are not very informative about the spatial organization of agricultural practices. The possible links between climate conditions and agricultural activities during this millennium of continuous imperial domination are also unclear, due to the lack of parallel human-independent palaeoclimatic proxies. This study presents a new late Holocene pollen-based vegetation record from Lake Parishan, SW Iran. This record provides invaluable information regarding anthropogenic activities before, during and after the empires and sheds light on (i) spatial patterning in agricultural activities and (ii) possible climate impacts on agro-sylvo-pastoral practices during this period. Results of this study indicate that arboriculture was the most prominent form of agricultural activity in SW Iran especially during the Achaemenid, Seleucid and Parthian periods. Contrary to the information provided by some Greco-Roman written sources, the record from Lake Parishan shows that olive cultivation was practiced during Achaemenid and Seleucid times, when olive cultivation was significant, at least in this basin located close to the capital area of the Achaemenid Empire. In addition, pollen from aquatic vegetation suggests that the period of the latter centuries of the first millennium bc was characterized by a higher lake level, which might have favoured cultural and socio-economic prosperity.

A PDF of the paper is available here.

Categories
Books

Turks and Iranians: Interactions in Language and History

Csató, Éva, Lars Johanson, András Róna-Tas & Bo Utas (eds.). 2016. Turks and Iranians: Interactions in language and history (Turcologica 105). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

The contributions by an international group of leading scholars discuss the historical and cultural relations of old and modern Turkic and Iranian languages. A main topic is how contacts of spoken and written languages from pre-Islamic times until various periods of the Islamic era have influenced the emergence and development of Iranian and Turkic varieties. The purpose is to contribute to a better understanding of the interrelations between cultural-historical contacts and linguistic processes, and to stress the necessity of cooperation between experts of Turkic and Iranian studies.

-See the Table of the Contents here

Categories
Books

Iranian Studies in Honour of Éva M. Jeremiás

Szántó, Iván (ed.). 2015. From Aṣl to Zā’id: Essays in honour of Éva M. Jeremiás (Acta et Studia XIII). Pilis-csaba: The Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies.
Cove­ring a wide range of subjects within the general field of Iranian studies, this collec­tion of essays consists of contri­bu­tions by twenty scho­lars. Most arti­cles concen­t­rate on Persian lingu­istics.
A number of further essays discuss Persian lite­ra­ture, histo­rio­graphy; reli­gion, science ; and art. The volume contains nume­rous illu­s­t­ra­tions, mostly in colour, and it includes a compre­hen­sive biblio­graphy of Éva M. Jere­miás up to 2015.
Table of Contents:
  • C. EDMUND BOSWORTH: The poet ‘Asjadī and early Ghaznavid history
  • MÁRIA GÓSY: Similarities and differences in the early acquisition of grammar by Persian and Hungarian children
  • ELA FILIPPONE: The so-called Old Persian ‘potential construction’ (being Text production strategies and translation strategies in the Achaemenid documentation, III)
  • BERT G. FRAGNER: Orientalismus in Abenteuererzählungen aus der frühen Sowjetunion
  • CARINA JAHANI: Complex predicates and the issue of transitivity: The case of Southern Balochi
  • ANNA KRASNOWOLSKA: The Sarmatian myth and Poland’s nineteenth-century Orientalism
  • PAUL LUFT: Authenticity and identity of Qājār poetry on stone and paper
  • MARIA MACUCH: Precision orientated legal language in the Sasanian law of inheritance
  • ÁGNES NÉMETH: How do young Iranians speak?
  • PAOLA ORSATTI: Spoken features in classical Persian texts: subordinate conditional clauses without a conjunction
  • ANTONIO CLEMENTE DOMENICO PANAINO: Jesus’ trimorphisms and tetramorphisms in the meeting with the Magi
  • ADRIANO V. ROSSI: Diglossia in Persian
  • CHRISTINE VAN RUYMBEKE: Sir William Jones and the Anwār-i Suhaylī. Containing a fortuitous but nevertheless essential note on the Orient Pearls
  • ‘ALI ASHRAF SADEGHI: Rare forms of personal endings in some Classical Persian texts
  • NICHOLAS AND URSULA SIMS-WILLIAMS: Rustam and his zīn-i palang
  • IVÁN SZÁNTÓ: Bahāʼ al-Dīn al-‘Amilī and the visual arts
  • KATALIN TORMA: Georgius Gentius and the early reception of the Gulistān in Hungary
  • ZIVA VESEL: Les figures astrologiques dans les traités persans
  • SIBYLLE WENTKER: A visit of the Shah. Vienna and the false Rūznāma of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shah

About the Editor:

Iván Szántó (PhD 2009) is a scholar of Art History with special focus on Iranian Art and staff member of  The Institute of Iranian studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW).

Categories
Journal

New issue of Electrum

The latest issue of Electrum features a number of articles relevant to Iranian Studies. 

Electrum, Volume 22 (2015).
Table of Contents:
  • Frank L Holt, Alexander the Great at Bactra: A Burning Question, 9–15.
  • Laurianne Martinez-Sève, Ai Khanoum and Greek Domination in Central Asia, 17–46.
  • Pierre Leriche, La découverte de l’Ancienne Termez, métropole de la Bactriane du Nord, 47–85.
  • Antonio Panaino, Ὁμόγλωττοι παρὰ μικρον?,  87–106.
  • Touraj Daryaee, Soodabeh Malekzadeh, King Huviška, Yima, and the Bird: Observations on a Paradisiacal State, 107–114.
  • Carlo Lippolis, Niccolo Manassero, Storehouses and Storage Practices in Old Nisa (Turkmenistan), 115–142.
  • Vito Messina, Mehr Kian, Lasser-scanner Survey at Kong-e Yār ‘Alīvand. Research of the Iranian-Italian Joint Expedition in Kūzestān, 143–154.
  • Alain Chenevier, Crépuscule de l’Empire parthe – Les dernières drachmes, 155–158.
  • The Syriac Book of the Laws of the Countries, Eusebius’ Preparation for the Gospel, and the Clementine Recognitions: Early Witnesses for Christianity in Central Asia?, 159–171.
  • Omar Coloru, I Am Your Father! Dynasties and Dynastic Legitimacy on Pre-Islamic Coinage between Iran and Northwest India, 173–199.
  • Fabrizio Sinisi, The Deities on the Kushano-Sasanian Coins, 201–225.
  • Nikolaus Schindel, Sakastan in the Fourth and Fifth Century AD. Some Historical Remarks Based on the Numismatic Evidence, 227–248.
  • Paul J. Kosmin, Review: Paul J. Kosmin, The Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA–London 2014, pp. 423, b/w ill., 9 maps, ISBN 978-0-674-72882-0 (Edward Dąbrowa).

 

Electrum has been published since 1997 by the Department of Ancient History at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow as a collection of papers and monographs. In 2010 it starts as journal with one issue per year.
 
Categories
Journal

New issue of the Silk Road

The latest issue of The Silk Road features a number of articles relevant to Iranian Studies. The full journal and individual articles can be accessed online:

The Silk Road, vol. 13, 2015.

Categories
Books

Selected Features of Bactrian Grammar

Gholami, Saloumeh. 2014. Selected Features of Bactrian Grammar (Gottinger Orientforschungen, III. Reihe: Iranica 12). Harrassowitz Verlag.

Bactrian, the only Iranian language written in the Greek alphabet, was spoken in ancient Bactria in northern Afghanistan. It is an intermediary Middle Iranian language, possessing the characters of both Eastern and Western Iranian groups, and thus playing a very important role in the dialectology of Iranian Languages.
Saloumeh Gholami’s study deals with various relatively unknown phonological, morphological and syntactical features of Bactrian and includes the following topics: historical phonology of Bactrian; the syntactical position of different kinds of nouns and their relationship in a sentence; the different types of pronouns and their syntactical properties; the function and syntactical position of prepositions and postpositions; adverbs and their formation; proximate and remote deixis adverbs as well as their different syntactic positions; various kinds of conjunctions and their functions; selected aspects of the verb; word order in clauses with transitive or intransitive verbs, and an investigation of double object constructions; as well as the different types of compounds.

For more information see the ToC of this volume.

Categories
Books

Mani’s Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg Hymns

Shokri-Foumeshi 2015Shokri-Foumeshi, Mohammad. 2015. Mani’s Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg Hymns. Edition, Reconstruction and Commentary with a Codicological and Textological Approach Based on Manichaean Turfan Fragments in the Berlin Collection. (Religions and Denominations 155). Qom: The University of Religions and Denominations.
This doctoral thesis with the title “Mani’s Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg Hymns: Edition, Reconstruction and Commentary with a Codicological and Textological Approach Based on Manichaean Turfan Fragments in the Berlin Collection” deals with the fragments of Mani’s Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg hymns (The hymn of the Gospel) discovered in the Turfan Oasis in the early 20th century, preserved in the Berlin Turfan Collection. 25 fragments have been studied in this work. Some of these fragments have already been published by other scholars, but only the work presented here aims at finalizing the work begun by others, as I was able to identify new fragments and with their help, was able to complete the fragments available. The combination of the new fragment M5439 with the previously published M17, the former completing the latter, proved to be one of the most important examples for my research on the Middle Persian version of Mani’s Gospel. I was able to reconstruct and conclusively join two of the already published fragments of the Ewangelyōnīg hymns with the help of two new fragments. I have also attempted in the scope of this work, to present an identification of several other fragments that were probably part of Mani’s Gospel. To accomplish this, I have analyzed all the Gnostic-Christian and Iranian sources in depth, and contrasted them with the Manichaean documents, both Iranian and non-Iranian. Thus I was able to present new suggestions and was likewise able to prove or disprove prior assumptions made by others about Mani’s Gospel. To ensure a deeper understanding of the Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg hymns, I have added a few explanatory chapters and paragraphs to this dissertation that mainly deal with the inner and outer structure of the Gospel and serve, as I hope, in establishing a comprehensive relation between the Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg hymns. Further research on the Manichaean sources, e.g. the Greek version of the Gospel and the Coptic Synaxeis on the one hand, and the Greek anti-Manichaean sources and accounts by Muslim writers on the other hand, served to deepen our understanding of the content of the Gospel greatly. By incorporating a study of these sources into this dissertation, I was able to close some of those gaps that impeded our understanding of the Gospel. Some important questions pertaining to the alphabetic structure of the chapters of the Gospel and the abecedarian order of the Parthian (Ewangelyōnīg) hymns, I was able to answer in this work. For some hapax legomena I was able to present a reasonable etymology in this dissertation. This doctoral thesis was not only designed to enlarge our understanding of the Turfan texts by presenting the new texts and reconstructions, moreover the new proposed codicological and textological approaches applied to the texts may serve to facilitate or at least simplify further research in this field.
For more information read the author’s introduction to this volume.
A PDF of this Volume is free accesable for download here.
Table of Contents:

Chapter One. Introduction

  • Aim
  • Material and Content of the Living Gospel and Ewangelyōnīg
  • Hymns
  • Outline of the Study
  • History of Prior Research

Chapter Two. Mani and his Gospel

  • The Living Gospel and Manichaeism
  • Position of the Gospel among the Canonical Writings
  • Names and Epithets
  • Composition Date
  • Chapter Order of the Living Gospel

Chapter Three. Living Gospel and Doubtful Fragments

  • Mani and the New Testament
  • Sayings of Jesus in Tatian’s Διà τεσσάρων and the Nag Hammadi
  • Codices
  • Double-edged Sword: Similarities and Differences
  • Possible Quotations of the Living Gospel in other Sources: An
  • Overview
  • The Paraclete as a Main Point of Issue in the Living Gospel
  • Not Near but not Far: Jesus’ Sayings and Acts
  • Citations of the Living Gospel: Some Tentative Suggestions

Chapter Four. Manichaean Turfan Texts of the Living Gospel

  • Overview and General Concepts
  • Turfan Fragments of the Living Gospel: Critical Middle Persian
  • Text and its Alternating Sogdian Version
  • Text I: M 17
  • Text II: M 172/I/
  • Text III: M 644
  • Text IV: A Newly Recognized Small Fragment: M 5439 [= T II D67]
  • Text V: An as yet Unpublished Manuscript Page in Sogdian Script
  • Return to the Verso Side of M 644
  • Unified Middle Persian Text of the Living Gospel
  • Commentary
  • Content of the Living Gospel According to an Unpublished Parthian Manuscript page

Chapter Five. Living Gospel Based on the Non-Iranian Manichaean Codices: Structure and Content

  • Greek Version
  • First Fragment: CMC 65, 23-68, 5
  • Second Fragment: CMC 68, 5-69, 8
  • Third Fragment: CMC 69, 9-70, 10
  • A Textological Commentary
  • Coptic Synaxeis
  • Chapter Titles
  • Plain Text
  • First Discourse (logos)
  • Other Discourses

Chapter Six. The Gospel in the Non-Manichaean Heritage

  • Accounts of the Greek Anti-Manichaean Writings
  • Arabic and Classical New Persian Testimonia
  • Testimonies
  • Commentary

Chapter Seven. Ewangelyōnīg Hymns

  • General Observations
  • Abecedarian System in the Parthian Hymns
  • Texts
  • Text I
  • Text II
  • Text III
  • Text IV
Chapter Eight. Miscellaneous Scraps: Living Gospel and Ewangelyōnīg Hymns
  • Fragment I
  • Fragment II
  • Fragment III
  • Fragment IV
  • Fragment V
Chapter Nine. Content of the Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg Hymns: An Overview
  • Living Gospel
  • Ewangelyōnīg Hymns
  • Living Gospel in Context of the ‘Hymns of the Gospel’
  • Chapter Ten. Glossary of Turfan Texts in this Work
  • Middle Persian and Parthian
  • Sogdian

Chapter Eleven. Conclusion

Mohammd Shokri-Foumeshi (PhD 2014) is a scholar of Manichaean as well as Middle Iranian studies and a lecturer at the The University of Religions and Denominations, Qom (Iran).