Xenophon’s Anabasis has engaged and entertained readers from antiquity to the present day. Through his telling of the story of Cyrus the Younger’s attempt on the Persian throne and its aftermath, Xenophon integrates many of the prominent themes and concerns in his writings, including leadership, panhellenism, Sparta and apologia.
Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, Brennan offers a fresh reading of the text which originates in a broad-ranging consideration of Xenophon’s aims in writing the book some thirty years after the event. The central argument brings the presence of Socrates into relief and demonstrates how the author, representing himself in the story as a model pupil of the philosopher, perpetuates Socratic teachings and values through ‘Xenophon’s’ leadership. Ultimately, Anabasis is revealed to be a ‘Socratic history’, a narrative rooted in a historical event or period and in which the author embeds a reflection of the philosopher and his values.
Volume 23 of the journal Parthica (2021) contains several contributions of relevance to Iranian Studies.
Ricordo di Antonio Invernizzi
Emad Matin: L’iconografia del mušḫuššu nel I millennio a.c.
Marco Ferrario: The golden bowl : material culture and empire in Achaemenid Bactria
Soheila Hadipour Moradi: A brief overview of Luristan in the Hellenistic period
Achim Lichtenberger, Mkrtich H. Zardaryan & Torben Schreiber: The wall decoration of a plastered building in Artaxata-Artashat in the Ararat plain of Armenia
Ashwini Lakshminarayanan: Dynamic encounters : use of a Hellenistic motif in the story of Aṅgulimāla in Gandhāran art.
Jacopo Bruno: Preliminary report on the Parthian-period pottery from the Italian-Turkmen excavations at Old Nisa, Turkmenistan (2007-2015, 2019)
Giulia Forgione: Clay-based sculptures : analysis of technical aspects and typologies
This contribution revisits the problems regarding the interpretation of one interesting text from Achaemenid Bactria, A9, and proposes a tentative reading and translation which varies from the one offered by the first editors (Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked). The said text records a transaction between a certain Bagavant and his wife Vartan (wrtn).
The Journal of Persianate Studies is a peer-reviewed publication of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies.
The vol. 14 of the journal contains a group of contributions from the study of Zoroastrianism together with other articles.
Table of contents:
Front matter
Carlo Giovanni Cereti: Introduction: Religious Diversity in Late Antique and Early Medieval Iran
Carlo Giovanni Cereti, Mehdi Mousavi Nia, and Mohammad Reza Neʿmati: Ray and Pahlaw in the Context of Sasanian Iran
Mojtaba Doroodi and Farrokh Hajiani: A Clarification of the Terms Dakhma and Astodān on the Basis of Literary Records and Archeological Research in Fars Province
Amin Shayeste Doust and Carlo Giovanni Cereti: The Purpose and Practice of Divorce in Sasanian and Post-Sasanian Texts
Antonio Clemente Panaino: Ohrmazd’s Divine Mercy and the End of the World between Apocatastasis and Apocalypse
Domenico Agostini: Some Observations on Ahriman and his Miscreation in the Bundahišn
Massimiliano Vassalli: How to Develop a Fabula: The Case of DēnkardVII
Paolo Ognibene: Restricted Access Linguistic and Religious Continuity in Outer Iran
Gianfilippo Terribili: Restricted Access Visitation and Awakening: Cross-Cultural and Functional Parallelisms between the Zoroastrian Srōš and Christian St. Sergius
Andrea Piras: Apocalyptic Imagery and Royal Propaganda in Khosrow II’s Letter to the Byzantine Emperor Maurice
Saïd Amir Arjomand: Manichæism as a World Religion of Salvation and Its Influence on Islam
Michael Vahidirad and Marjan Borhani: Restricted Access The Agricultural Economics of the Allied Occupation of Iran in the Second World War
Baghdād: From its Beginnings to the 14th Century offers an exhaustive handbook that covers all possible themes connected to the history of this urban complex in Iraq, from its origins rooted in late antique Mesopotamia up to the aftermath of the Mongol invasion in 1258. Against the common perception of a city founded 762 in a vacuum, which, after experiencing a heyday in a mythical “golden age” under the early ʿAbbāsids, entered since 900 a long period of decline that ended with a complete collapse by savage people from the East in 1258, the volume emphasizes the continuity of Baghdād’s urban life, and shows how it was marked by its destiny as caliphal seat and cultural hub.
Fig. 1. Map of principal halts on the route between Bushehr and Shiraz, showing Persepolis and Pasargadae (courtesy Dr. Andrea Squitieri, Munich).
In recent years the Achaemenid sites in the Borazjan area have attracted a great deal of attention and their identification with Elamite Tamukkan/Greek Taocê has been widely accepted. Aside from the architectural interest of these sites, however, their location along what later became an important route linking the Persian Gulf and the Iranian plateau is significant. Whether travelling between the Persian Gulf coast and Shiraz, or the earlier Achaemenid capitals (Pasargadae and Persepolis), Borazjan represents the first stage for travellers moving along this route. This study examines some of the logistical aspects of travel between Borazjan and the highlands, as well as the climatic extremes experienced by travellers during much of the year. The difficulties of traversing the route are illustrated with selections from 19th and early 20th century travellers accounts. The advantages of commencing or ending the journey at Shif, as opposed to Bushehr, are discussed with reference to numerous examples. The importance of mules as pack animals along the route is emphasized. Finally, the implications of the evidence marshaled for the burgeoning field of sensory studies are underscored.
This is a brief presentation of the mid-seventeenth-century illuminated Judeo-Persian copy of Nizāmī’s Khosrow and Shīrīn from the collection of the Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem. The Khamsa of Nizāmī Ganjavi (d. 1209) is one of the most famous medieval Persian love stories and one of the most admired poetical works ever written in the Persian language. Khosrow and Shīrīn (composed 1175/6-1191) is the second book in the Quinary and recounts the tragic love story of the Sasanian king Khosrow II Parviz and the Armenian princess Shīrīn. Nizāmī’s poetry, in addition to other works of Persian classical masters, was regarded by the Jews of Iran as an integral part of their literary and cultural heritage. Over the years these renowned poetical works were largely transliterated into Judeo-Persian and copies of the texts can be found in various public and private collections. The manuscript in question and other illuminated Judeo-Persian manuscripts clearly testify to their owners and patrons’ awareness of long-established Persian artistic tradition and cultural conventions, representing Jewish-Persian encounter in text and image.
Booth, Phil & Mary Whitby (eds.). 2022. Mélanges: James Howard-Johnston (Travaux et mémoires 26). Paris: Association des Amis du centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance.
Apart from a brief stint as a Junior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, in 1968-9, James Howard-Johnston spent his entire academic career at Oxford University. After a period as Junior Research Lecturer at Christ Church from 1966-71, he was then University Lecturer in Byzantine Studies and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College until his retirement almost forty years later in 2009. In the mid-2000s he served briefly as interim president of Corpus. From 1972 to 1987 he was also passionately involved in local politics, serving as an Oxford City Councillor and Oxfordshire County Councillor. His retirement from politics was accompanied by a stream of publications that has continued to the present day.
Throughout his career, James cultivated a number of interests, for example, the political and military history of Byzantium, the Eurasian steppe, and the Sassanid empire; Byzantine historiography; medieval law and commerce; and, perhaps most importantly, the history of warfare, and in particular the “world crisis” that dramatically and permanently reorganized the Middle East during the seventh century. Readers of James’s bibliography through 2022, which we include at the beginning of this volume, will perceive the simultaneous cultivation of all these interests, but also a growing preoccupation with the seventh century, which intensified from the 1990s onward and culminated in two masterpieces of scholarship produced during his retirement-or, as James would put it in his typical self-deprecating style, his “defuncation.” The first, Witnesses to a world crisis, represents the distillation of many years of deep reflection on the various sources of seventh-century political history, as well as a profound reflection on the rise of Islam and the Arab conquests. The second (of which Witnesses is in many ways the prequel), The Last Great War of Antiquity, is now the first comprehensive history of the final conflict between the Roman and Iranian empires, a great subject of which James has long been the acknowledged master.
Some related contributions to the Iranian Studies in this volume:
Ainslie, Roger, Mohammad Arman Ershadi & Davit Naskidashvili: Qalʿeh Kharabeh in northern Iran: a Sasanian military tent city for ten thousand mounted soldiers?
Booth, Phil: Egypt under the Sasanians (619–29): “stability, continuity, and tolerance”?
Greenwood, Tim: Adontz, Armenia and Iran in late antiquity.
Gyselen, Rika: La géographie administrative de l’Empire sassanide: ce que le Šahrestānīha-ye Ērānšahr ne dit pas.
McLynn, Neil: Ammianus Marcellinus and the making of Persian strategy.
Taylor, David G. K.: The Syriac version of Strategios’ History of the Persian conquest of Jerusalem.
Vevaina, Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw: The Coals Which Were His Guardians…’: The Hermeneutics of Heraclius’ Persian Campaign and a Faint Trace of the ‘Last Great War’ in Zoroastrian Literature.
Wiesehöfer, Josef: Alfred von Gutschmid, Theodor Nöldeke and the beginnings of the Sasanian Empire.
Zychowicz-Coghill, Edward: The Byzantinist of Isfahan: Ḥamza ibn al-Ḥasan on Greek and Roman history.
The work of the Polish-Slovenian Iranian scholar Marijan Molé (1924-1963) has had a profound influence on the religious sciences that can be observed to this day. In barely fifteen years (1948-1963), he was able to give unprecedented impetus to Iranian studies, thanks to the meticulous study of corpora ranging from the Avesta and Middle Persian Zoroastrian literature to treatises on Islamic mysticism, including Persian epics and mythical gestures. Too soon interrupted, the vast project that he had begun during his years of study in Krakow and which he pursued in Paris and Tehran had as its main axis the uncovering of a unitary system that would underpin the evolution of a religious doctrine over the long term, an “Iranian continuity”.
The recent discovery of his Nachlass (IRHT and BULAC, Paris) provides us with the opportunity to take stock of his legacy and to try to highlight the originality of his approach and his contribution to the history of ideas and to the intellectual debate on the religions of Iran, by identifying both the achievements and the dead ends, the innovations and the extensions.
The present volume gathers the contributions on Zoroastrianism and Islamic mysticism, presented at the international study day entitled “Between Mazdeism and Islam”, dedicated to the work of Marijan Molé, which was held on 24 June 2016 in Paris.
Table of Contents
Chronologie de la vie de Marijan Molé (1924-1963)
Bibliographie de Marijan Molé
Gianroberto Scarcia: “Souvenir de Marijan Molé”
Anna Krasnowolska: “Marijan Molé’s Early Works and his Study of Persian Epics
Jean Kellens: “1956-1964: Le printemps des études gâthiques”
Philippe Swennen: “Marijan Molé à l’aube du nouveau comparatisme indo-iranien”
