The book of Ezra is a remarkable testament to a nation’s ability to survive and develop a distinctive identity under imperial rule. But Ezra is far more than a simple chronicle; it constitutes a new biblical model for political, religious, and social order in the Persian Empire.
In this new volume, Tamara Cohn Eskenazi illustrates how the book of Ezra envisions the radical transformation that followed reconstruction after the fall of Jerusalem and Judah. The extensive introduction highlights the book’s innovations, including its textualization of the tradition, as well as the unprecedented role of the people as chief protagonists. The translation and commentary incorporate evidence from ancient and contemporaneous primary sources from Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, and Persia, along with new archaeological studies of Judah. With great care and detail, Eskenazi demonstrates how the book of Ezra creates a blueprint for survival after destruction, shaping a new kind of society and forging a new communal identity.
The table of contents of the latest issue (61/1) of the journal Iran:
Ali Khayani & Kamal Aldin Niknami: More Early Bronze Age Seal Impressions from Chogha Maran, Western Central Zagros
Yasmina Wicks: Probing the Margins in Search of Elamite Children
Davide Salaris: The Equestrian Relief of Hung-e Azhdar: A Historical Memory for the Dynastic Lineages of Elymais
Esmaeil Sharahi, Hossein Sedighian & Meisam Nikzad: Excavation at Tahyaq – A Subterranean Rock-Cut Architecture Complex in Khomein, Markazi Province, Iran
Saeed Amirhajloo & Hossein Sedighian: Recent Archaeological Research in South Iran: Excavation at the Old City of Sirjan (The Site of Qal’eh Sang)
Marc Czarnuszewicz: Challenging Narratives of “Missionary” Ismaʿilism in Buyid Iran: Reconsidering the Sira of al-Muʾayyad fī al-Din al-Shirazi through Socio-economic Contextualisation
Denis Hermann & Fabrizio Speziale: Scientific Knowledge and Religious Milieu in Qajar Iran: Negotiating Muslim and European Renaissance Medicine in the Subtleties of Healing
Kioumars Ghereghlou: A Forgotten Money Heist: The 1746 Mission of Nadir Shah’s Chief Merchant in Russia Revisited
Among other interesting contributions offered to this volumes, a Tribute to Simo Parpola, are two individual papers that correspond to ancient Iranian history:
Edward Dąbrowa: The Babylonian Astronomical Diaries as a Source for the History of the Arsacids
Susa and Elam II: History, Language, Religion and Culture presents 16 contributions on various topics, all related to the history of Susa and Elam, both situated in the southwest of modern-day Iran. More specifically, the volume is the proceedings of an international conference held at the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) from 6 to 9 July 2015. There are four main sections (history, language, religion, and culture) containing articles by Belgian and internationally renowned researchers, as well as some young scholars, specialized in Susian and Elamite studies. The contributions cover various themes such as royal names, diplomatic history, Elamite weights, and socio-environmental history among others.
L’empire perse achéménide fascine les Grecs, qui le perçoivent de façon très déformée, et qui comprennent mal son fonctionnement. Au ve siècle avant J.-C, son observation alimente leur réflexion politique, parallèlement à la stasis, terme par lequel ils désignent les conflits internes de leurs cités. Dans ce double exercice, Hérodote, les Tragiques et les Sophistes pensent le politique, et ils préparent la naissance de la théorie politique au siècle suivant. Le débat sur la meilleure constitution en procède : Hérodote le projette sur les conjurés perses de 522 (III, 80-82). La crise qui éclate cette année-là dans l’empire perse tient à ce que la succession de Cyrus, mort en 530 avant J.-C., n’était pas réglée, bien qu’il ait désigné son fils Cambyse pour lui succéder. Ce dernier a probablement compromis lui-même ce processus, en faisant éliminer son frère Bardiya, en dévoyant à cette fin le rituel originellement babylonien du substitut royal, ignoré des Grecs en tant que tel, mais transformé par eux de façon totalement inconsciente sur le mode du dédoublement et de la ressemblance. L’instrument de cette machination, le mage Gaumāta, était devenu Bardiya, en vertu même du rituel, et il a prétendu régner à la place de Cambyse avant même sa mort, survenue selon toute apparence de façon accidentelle. Darius, probable cousin de Cambyse, a renversé le mage avec 6 conjurés, pour régner à son tour, en prétendant restaurer la légitimité dynastique. Le débat constitutionnel qui précède son avènement chez Hérodote est fondé sur une arithmétique élémentaire opposant constamment le petit nombre, réduit jusqu’au chiffre un, un effectif un peu plus important, mais qui demeure restreint, et le grand nombre. Cette distinction se retrouve entre la monarchie, pouvoir d’un seul, l’oligarchie, pouvoir d’une minorité, et la démocratie, pouvoir du grand nombre. Les Grecs l’appliquent au champ du politique, alors que le monde indien répartissait les fonctions duméziliennes selon le même critère. L’historiographie grecque des rois mèdes et perses est fondée sur une typologie d’inspiration tout aussi tri-fonctionnelle, qui réserve à chacun d’entre eux un rôle : roi fondateur et organisateur, roi guerrier, souverain lié à la Troisième Fonction. Cette typologie n’est pas un carcan rigide, et elle s’adapte à chacun des règnes, et à chacun des monarques.
Tašakorī, ʿAlī-ʾAkbar. 2020. tārīḫ-e ejtemāʿī-ye zartoštīyān-e yazd [Social History of Zoroastrians of Yazd]. 3 vols. Irvine: Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture at the University of California.
Ali Akbar Tashakori’s three-volume Social History of Zoroastrians of Yazd (in Persian) deals with the social history of the Yazdi Zoroastrians from the medieval to modern times. While the focus is primarily on the Yazdi community, the work also covers the wider history of Iranian Zoroastrians. The book examines the challenges faced by Zoroastrians in the medieval and early modern periods, as well as the beginning of the nineteenth century social and intellectual empowerment among Iranian Zoroastrians supported by the Parsis of India. It also highlights the growing political and economic influence of the community in the late Qajar and early Pahlavi era, as well as the remarkable role of the Pahlavis in elevating the status of Zoroastrians within Iranian society as a whole.
The first volume covers the lives of Zoroastrians of Yazd starting with the arrival of Islam in Iran, in 641 AD, until the formation of the Anǧoman-e Nāṣerī of Yazd in 1892 AD. This book discusses the treatment of Zoroastrians under the new Muslim rulers who regarded them as monotheists and “people-of-the-book”. It highlights two massive internal migrations to the Yazd region elevating its status as the center of Zoroastrianism. It also focuses on the formation of Anǧoman-e Akāber-Ṣāheb by Parsis and their efforts to abolish the Jazzieh tax and improve Zoroastrians’ lives.
The second volume covers the formation of Anǧoman-e Nāṣerī by Keykhosro Khān-Ṣāheb in 1892 AD until the beginning of Pahlavi dynasty in 1924 AD.
This third volume covers the period that starts with the rise of Reza Shah and the formation of a secular government, which relied heavily on the pre-Islamic image of Iran, something which had a direct influence on promoting the social status of Zoroastrians. This volume focuses on the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah and the modernization of Iran, two elements with a profound influence on the lives of Zoroastrians of the Yazd region.
A special issue of the Journal of Art Historiography: A Historiography of Persian Art: Past, Present and Future, No. 28, June 2023, guest edited by Yuka Kadoi and András Barati.
Table of Contents
Yuka Kadoi: ‘A Twenty-Year Retrospect on ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art’: Polarising Islamic art, consolidating Persian art’
Nile Green: ‘The rekhta of architecture: the development of ‘Islamic’ art history in Urdu, c.1800-1950’
Ebba Koch: ‘Discovering Mughal painting in Vienna by Josef Strzygowski and his circle: the historiography of the Millionenzimmer’
Henry P. Colburn: ‘A brief historiography of Parthian art, from Winckelmann to Rostovtzeff’
Iván Szántó: ‘West-östlich diplomacy and connoisseurship in the late Habsburg Empire: Baron Albert Eperjesy and his dispersed collection of Persian art’
Kassiani Kagouridi: ‘Musealisation and ethno-cultural stereotypes in Persian art: the case of Baluch carpets ca. 1870s – 1930s’
Tomasz Grusiecki (Boise State University), ‘Rethinking the so-called Polish carpets’
Dorothy Armstrong: ‘Persophilia and technocracy: carpets in the World of Islam Festival, 1976’
Jaimee K. Comstock-Skipp: ‘The ‘Iran’ Curtain: the historiography of Abu’l-Khairid (Shaybanid) arts of the book and the ‘Bukhara School’ during the Cold War’
Robert Hillenbrand: ‘Eric Schroeder: maverick polymath’
Andrea Luigi Corsi: ‘A matter of timing: the modern history of a ‘Sasanian’ silver plate from Rashy’
Johannes L. Kurz: ‘Dashi 大食 reconsidered’
Jens Kröger: ‘Kurt Erdmann (1901-1964)’
Jens Kröger: ‘Carl Johan Lamm (1902-1981)’
Joachim Gierlichs: ‘Ernst Cohn-Wiener (1882-1941) and his contribution on Islamic Art and Architecture in Central Asia’
In this paper, I will briefly examine the concept of superiority/inferiority in the Achaemenid administrative system in particular and in the ancient Iranian world in general. In doing so, I will focus on the word bandaka, its meanings and its nuance in Iranian languages in the context of ancient Near Eastern culture, as this word plays a very important role in the definition of terminology related to slavery and associated terms in the Iranian world. In addition, I will discuss two additional words related to this topic that shed more light on the concept of superiority/inferiority in Ancient Iranian societies. Our main sources for this study are inscriptions, letters and contracts from a variety of Western and Central Asian cultures. In this study, I chose three Middle Iranian languages, Sogdian, Pahlavi, and Bactrian, because the geography in which these languages were spoken was a part of the Achaemenid Empire.
Michał MARCIAK, Robert S. WÓJCIKOWSKI, Daniele MORANDI BONACOSSI & Marcin SOBIECH: The Battle of Gaugamela in the Navkur Plain in the Context of the Madedonian and Persian Art of Warfare
Meysam LABBAF-KHANIKI: The Sasanian Stuccoes of Notheastern Iran Khorasanian Imagery in Late Antiquity
Rika GYSELEN, Samra AZARNOUCHE & Mohammad-Ali AMIR-MOEZZI: Une ‘traduction’ moyen-perse du verset du Coran 5:8 sur un poids d’époque omeyyade
Maryam NOURZAEI & Thomas JÜGEL: The Distribution and Function of Person-Marking Clitics in Balochi Dialects from an Areal Perspective
Luxurious objects are celebrated for their exoticism, rarity and style, but also disparaged as indulgent, extravagant and corrupt. The ancient origins of these attitudes emerged at the boundary between the imperial Persian and democratic Athenian Greek worlds.
Luxury was at the centre of the royal Persian court and behaviours of ostentatious display rippled through the imperial provinces, whose elite classes emulated luxury objects in lesser materials. But luxury is contrastingly depicted through Athenian eyes – within the philosophical context of early democratic codes and the historical context of the Greco-Persian Wars, which suddenly and spectacularly brought eastern luxuries into the imagination of the Athenian populace for the first time. While Athenian writers rejected luxury as eastern, despotic and corrupt, the elite adopted Persian luxuries in imaginative ways to signal status, distinction and prestige.
Under the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great and its subsequent kingdoms, royal Achaemenid luxury culture would be adopted and displayed by the Macedonian and local elite across the Greek and Middle Eastern worlds: behaviours of ostentatious display were a means to seek advantage in the new Hellenistic world order.
Ultimately, this publication demonstrates how competing political spins woven around 2,500 years ago still continue to shape the modern perceptions of luxury today.
