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Books

Middle Persian and Parthian hymns in the Turfan Collection

Durkin-Meisterernst, Desmond (ed.). 2014. Miscellaneous hymns: Middle Persian and Parthian hymns in the Turfan Collection (Berliner Turfantexte 31). Brepols Publishers.

This is an edition of a large number of fragments of Middle Persian and Parthian Manichaean hymns in the Berlin Turfan Collection.  M. Boyce in the register of her 1960 Catalogue of the Iranian Manuscripts in Manichaean script in the German Turfan Collection identified fragments of hymns ‘to the Third Messenger’ (group 44); ‘Parthian hymns written in couplets, unclassified’ (group 58) and ‘Hymns, unclassified, including poems’ (group 81). Though some of these fragments have been published in the meantime and others are very small, this yields more than 250 previously unpublished fragments, many of considerable size. The fragments are presented in diplomatic edition together with a transcription and translation into English. Since most of the hymns are abecedarian they are presented as far as possible in strophic form. An extensive introduction, notes, a complete glossary and facsimiles of joined fragments accompany the edition.

For more information, see the publisher’s website.

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Reviews

Review: Sasanian coins

Heidemann, Stefan. 2013. Review of  Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, M. Elahé Askari & Elizabeth J. Pendleton: Sasanian Coins: A sylloge of the Sasanian coins in the National Museum of Iran (Muzeh Melli Iran), vol. 1 & 2. London: Royal Numismatic Society in assoc. with the British Institute of Persian Studies. JOSA 45. 117–123.

Read the review here.

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Online resources

Middle East Medievalists

Middle East Medievalists is an international professional association of scholars interested in the study of the medieval Islamic world’. The association’s website and online journal, Al-`Usur al-Wusta, are hosted by the Islamic History Commons.

MEM also have a page on Facebook.

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Journal

انتشار اولین شماره «بساتین»

بساتین، نشريه‌اي علمي ـ تخصّصي در موضوع نسخه‌هاي خطي اسلامي است، اين نشريه در زمينه مطالعاتِ کتاب ‌شناختی، مباحث نسخه ‌شناسی، تاريخ علم مسلمانان، کتابخانه‌هاي تراثي، مجموعه‌داري کتب خطي و اسناد کهن، ترجيحاً با محوريّت ميراث مکتوب کهن شيعه و معرّفي آثار فرهيختگان مسلمان، به صورت دو فصلنامه، به سه زبان فارسي، عربي و انگليسي، منتشر مي‌گردد و قلمرو فعاليتِ آن نيز شامل تمامي حوزه‌هاي متنوّع کتاب‌ شناختي آثار تراثي، نسخه شناسی (دانش کوديکولوژی)، تصحیح متون کهن، فهرست نویسی نسخ خطي و اسناد کهن، در قالب و ساختاري پژوهشي است.

برای اطلاعات بیشتر به این پیوند رجوع کنید!

Categories
Articles

Elamite monumentality and architectural scale

Potts, Daniel. 2014. Elamite monumentality and architectural scale: Lessons from Susa and Choga Zanbil. In J.F. Osborne (ed.), Approaching monumentality in archaeology, 23–38. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.

Read the article here.

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Books

Extraction and control

Michael Kozuh, Wouter F. M. Henkelman, Charles E. Jones & Christopher Woods (eds.). 2014. Extraction & control: Studies in honor of Matthew W. Stolper (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 68). Chicago: The Oriental Institute.

Matthew Wolfgang Stolper began working for the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary in 1978 and became full professor in the Oriental Institute 1987, focusing on Neo-Babylonian and Middle Elamite. Matt has worked tirelessly to raise the necessary funding, to assemble a team of scholars, to promote the importance of the Persepolis Fortification Archive to academic and popular audiences, and most significantly, to concisely, passionately, and convincingly place the Persepolis Archives in their Achaemenid, ancient Near Eastern, and modern geo-political contexts. The twenty-six papers from Stolper’s colleagues, friends, and students show the breadth of his interests.

Download the book here.

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Books

Rayy: Origins and the Mongol invasion

Rante, Rocco. 2014. Rayy: from its origins to the Mongol invasion. Leiden, Boston: Brill.

This book offers a new history of the ancient city of Rayy. Based on the results of the latest excavations on the Citadel and the Shahrestan (the political and administrative nucleus of the city in all periods), the study of historical and geographical texts and on surveys carried out between 2005 and 2007 by the author and the Iranian archaeologist, Ghadir Afround, the complete occupation sequence of the city, from its foundation in the Iron Age and the Parthian reconstructions (2nd to 1st centuries BC), up to the Mongol invasions and rapid depopulation in the 13th century CE, comes to light.

For more information, see here.

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Articles Journal

The archaeology of Sasanian politics

The proceedings of the workshop The Archaeology of Sasanian Politics, organized by Richard Payne and Mehrnoush Soroush at ISAW, have now been published:

Payne, Richard & Mehrnoush Soroush (eds.). 2014. The archaeology of Sasanian politics. Journal of Ancient History 2(2).

For this issue of the journal, see here. Richard’s introductory notes to the volume are available as a free PDF. Karim Alizadeh’s Borderland projects of Sasanian Empire: Intersection of domestic and foreign policies can be found here.

Categories
Articles

Guriania, Γουράνιοι and the Gūrān

Potts, Daniel. 2014. Guriania, Γουράνιοι and the Gūrān. In Salvatore Gaspa, Alessandro Greco, Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, Simonetta Ponchia & Robert Rollinger (eds.), From source to history: Studies on the Ancient Near Eastern worlds and beyond dedicated to Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi on the occasion of his 65th birthday on June 23, 2014 (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 412), 561–571. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag.

Find the article here.

Categories
Online resources

Persian grammar guide

The San Diego State University (SDSU) has created an on-line grammar guide for Persian. ‘You can click through the Alphabet to learn the names and sounds of each letter in the Persian alphabet, then try your hand at spelling some of the basic words introduced throughout the project’.

The guide is available here.