Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • Summer Course in Zoroastrian Studies

    The University of Bergen (Norway) and the Shapoorji Pallonji Institute of Zoroastrian Studies at SOAS, are jointly offering international students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the study of Zoroastrianism in modern and contemporary Iran.

    The course will take place in Rome, starting 20 June 2022, and the deadline for applications is 27 March 2022. The instructors are Prof. Michael Stausberg (Univ. of Bergen), Dr Sarah Stewart (SOAS) and Dr Jenny Rose (Claremont University). You can find more information by visitng the summer school’s website.

  • Iran, Volume 60, Issue 1 (2022)

    The table of contents of the latest issue (60/1) of the journal Iran:

    • Marta Ameri: Who Holds the Keys? Identifying Female Administrators at Shahr-i Sokhta
    • Soheila Hadipour Moradi & Bita Sodaei: Two Bronze Coins of Alexander Balas Recently Discovered in Luristan (Iran)
    • Bertille Lyonnet: New Insights into Sogdiana during the Classical Period (from the end of the 4th c. BCE to the 3rd c. CE)
    • Ruben S. Nikoghosyan: Where Did the Battle Between Wištāsp and Arǰāsp Take Place?
    • Andrea Squitieri: The Sasanian Cemetery of Gird-i Bazar in the Peshdar Plain (Iraqi Kurdistan)
    • Atri Hatef Naiemi: The Ilkhanid City of Sultaniyya: Some Remarks on the Citadel and the Outer City
    • Soli Shahvar: “Abbas Mirza’s Invitation to Europeans to Settle in Nineteenth-Century Iranian Azerbaijan: Reasons, Causes and Motives”
    • Ladislav Charouz: Naser al-Din Shah’s 1873 Visit to the World’s Fair in Vienna

  • The Intersection of Gods and Kings in Achaemenid Iran

    Tuplin, Christopher. 2022. The intersection of gods and kings in Achaemenid Iran. In: Eleni Pachoumi (ed.), Conceptualising divine unions in the Greek and Near Eastern worlds, 45-73. Leiden & Boston: Brill.

    From the introduction of the chapter:

    I start with two premises. First, among conceptions of divinity those around royal divinity have a strong claim to interest. Second, there is no evidence that the Achaemenid king was categorized or worshipped as a god in the imperial heartland. The (rather few) Greek sources that directly suggested this were wrong. (The ones that spoke of an isotheos king or skated round the issue in other ways are, of course, another matter.) But our business here is with intersections between king and divinity other than simple identification of the king as a god or attribution of his success to the help of a god. Is Achaemenid royal exceptionalism due not just to divine favour but to an inherent divine quality? There has been a growing tendency to perceive mitigations of the king’s human status, even in the heartland. I have discussed these matters in an earlier essay (Tuplin 2017). Here I elaborate on some material that appears more briefly there. I do so in three sections: (1) A tale of two statues. (2) Royal rhetoric in the heartland religious environment. (3) Image, light and daimōn: royal divine aura in Greek texts.

  • Pottery Making and Communities During the 5th Millennium BCE in Fars

    Miki, Takehiro. 2022. Pottery making and communities during the 5th millennium BCE in Fars province, Southwestern Iran. Oxford: Archaeopress.

    This book explores pottery making and communities during the Bakun period (c. 5000 – 4000 BCE) in the Kur River Basin, Fars province, southwestern Iran, through the analysis of ceramic materials collected at Tall-e Jari A, Tall-e Gap, and Tall-e Bakun A & B. Firstly, it reconsiders the stratigraphy and radiocarbon dates of the four sites by reviewing the descriptions of excavation trenches, then presents a new chronological relationship between the sites. The book sets out diachronic changes in the the Bakun pottery quantitatively, namely the increase of black-on-buff ware and the gradual shift of vessel forms. It also presents analyses of pottery-making techniques, painting skills, petrography, and geochemistry and clarifies minor changes in the chaînes opératoires and major changes in painting skill. Finally, the book discusses the organisation of pottery production from a relational perspective. It concludes that the more fixed community of pottery making imposed longer apprenticeship periods and that social inequality also increased.

  • The Elamite Version of XPl?

    Delshad, Soheil. 2022. An unpublished stone fragment in Achaemenid Elamite: The Elamite version of XPl? Arta 2022.001.

    Description, edition, and identification of an inscribed grey limestone tablet in the reserves of the Persepolis Museum. The author argues that the fragment’s text belongs to the Elamite version of XPl. In addition, some problems of the Elamite version of DNb are discussed.

  • A History of Alexander the Great in World Culture

    Stoneman, Richard (ed.). 2022. A history of Alexander the Great in world culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Alexander III of Macedon (356-323 BC) has for over 2000 years been one of the best recognized names from antiquity. He set about creating his own legend in his lifetime, and subsequent writers and political actors developed it. He acquired the surname ‘Great’ by the Roman period, and the Alexander Romance transmitted his legendary biography to every language of medieval Europe and the Middle East. As well as an adventurer who sought the secret of immortality and discussed the purpose of life with the naked sages of India, he became a model for military achievement as well as a religious prophet bringing Christianity (in the Crusades) and Islam (in the Qur’an and beyond) to the regions he conquered. This innovative and fascinating volume explores these and many other facets of his reception in various cultures around the world, right up to the present and his role in gay activism.

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  • The Arsacids

    Payravi Conference on Ancient Iranian History IV: Contextualizing Iranian History: The Arsacids (ca. 250 BC – 224 AD)

    Poster © Kourosh Beigpour

    Payravi Conference on Ancient Iranian History IV: “Contextualizing Iranian History: The Arsacids” organized by Touraj Daryaee, Matthew Canepa, and Robert Rollinger, will take place Feb. 28-March 2, 2022 and focus on the archaeology, history, numismatics, and religions of the Arsacid Empire. The event will be held in-person at the University of California, Irvine’s Jordan Center for Persian Studies with several options to participate remotely, either through the livestream on the UCI Jordan Center for Persian Studies & Culture‘s FB page or through the webinar: https://bit.ly/UCIPayravi2022

    Conference Program

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  • The Image of the Zoroastrian God Srōsh

    Grenet, Frantz & Michele Minardi. 2021. The image of the Zoroastrian god Srōsh: New elements. Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 27, 154-173.

    Sogdian ossuary from Samarkand, ca. 7th century AD photo: F. Grenet

    This paper presents new and decisive evidence relative to the identification of one of the colossal depictions of deities discovered by the Karakalpak-Australian Expedition (KAE) at Akchakhan-kala with the Avestan yazata Sraosha. Besides the therianthropic Sraošāvarez, the explicit Zoroastrian symbol that decorates the tunic of this god, new iconographic details are seen. One is the sraošō.caranā, which is a whip, “the instrument of Srōsh”, held in the hands of one of these “bird-priests” instead of the customary barsom. The symbols are presented and discussed in their historical context.

  • Narrating power and authority in late antique and medieval hagiography

    Dabiri, Ghazzal (ed.). 2021. Narrating power and authority in late antique and medieval hagiography across East and West. Turnhout: Brepols.

    This collection of essays explores the multifaceted representation of power and authority in a variety of late antique and medieval hagiographical narratives (Lives, Martyr Acts, oneiric and miraculous accounts). The narratives under analysis, written in some of the major languages of the Islamicate world and the Christian East and Christian West — Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Greek, Latin, Middle Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Persian — prominently feature a diverse range of historical and fictional figures from a wide cross-section of society — from female lay saints in Italy and Zoroastrians in Sasanian and Islamic Iran to apostles and bishops and emperors and caliphs. Each chapter investigates how power and authority were narrated from above (courts/saints) and below (saints/laity) and, by extension, navigated in various communities. As each chapter delves into the specific literary and social scene of a particular time, place, or hagiographer, the volume as a whole offers a broad view; it brings to the fore important shared literary and social historical aspects such as the possible itineraries of popular narratives and motifs across Eurasia and commonly held notions in the religio-political thought worlds of hagiographers and their communities. Through close readings and varied analyses, this collection contributes to the burgeoning interest in reading hagiography as literature while it offers new perspectives on the social and religious history of late antique and medieval communities.

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  • Bulletin of the Asia Institute, 30

    Volume 30 (2020-21) of the Bulletin of the Asia Institute has been published.

    Table of Contents

    • M. Rahim Shayegan: “The Cameo of Warahrān II and the Kušano-Sasanians”
    • Frantz Grenet: “From Babylon to Sasanian Iran and Sogdiana: Rituals of Royal Humiliation and the Substitute King”
    • Dieter Weber: “Studies in Some Documents from the ‘Pahlavi Archive’ (3)”
    • Nicholas Sims-Williams: “The Bactrian Inscription of Jaghori: A Preliminary Reading”
    • Nicholas Sims-Williams: “Two Sogdian Dice-Divination Texts”
    • Richard Salomon, Quentin Devers, and Tashi Ldawa: “Kharoṣṭhī and Brāhmī Inscriptions from Ladakh”
    • Harry Falk: “Revision of Kharoṣṭhī Inscriptions in the Light of New Material”
    • Anca Dan, Frantz Grenet: “Alexander the Great in the Hephthalite Empire: ‘Bactrian’ Vases, The Jewish Alexander Romance, and the Invention of Paradise”