Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: History

  • Festschrift in Honor of Elton L. Daniel

    Festschrift in Honor of Elton L. Daniel

    Ashtiany, Mohsen, Marisa McCrone & Mahnaz Moazami (eds.). 2025. Studies in Iranian history and culture: In honor of Elton L. Daniel (Iran Studies 27). Leiden: Brill.

    This Festschrift volume presents eleven essays on Iran in honor of Professor Elton L. Daniel, an eminent scholar of Iranian studies and former Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopaedia Iranica, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. The diversity and wide range of topics and eras critically explored in this volume highlight the remarkable breadth of the honoree’s scholarship and research interests on the history and culture of Iran.

    From the summary with minor modifications.

  • WZO’s Annual Seminar 2025

    Three lectures as part of the World Zoroastrian Organisation’s annual seminar.

    • Alexandra Buhler: Relations between Zoroastrians in India & Iran during the late Qajar period
    • Khodadad Rezakhani: The Heart of the Empire: Ctesiphon & DilĒrānšahr in the Sasanian World
    • Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis: Royal Splendour: the art of the Sasanian kings
    WZO Seminar 2025Download
  • Greek Citizenship under Arsacid Rule

    Greek Citizenship under Arsacid Rule

    Nabel, Jake. 2025. The verb empoliteuō and Greek citizenship under Arsacid rule. Classical Journal 120(3). 249–276.

    The primary translation for the ancient Greek verb ἐμπολιτεύω in several dictionaries is “to be a citizen, have civil rights.” That definition is untenable. The connotations of ἐμπολιτεύω for citizen status are usually indeterminate, but where they are clear, the verb has the opposite meaning and refers to non-citizens rather than citizens. This sense is crucial to the study of Greek citizenship in the Arsacid empire, because ἐμπολιτεύω appears twice in a key passage from Josephus on Greco-Babylonian relations in the poleis of Arsacid Mesopotamia. The verb’s dictionary definition has led some historians to the conclusion that non-Greeks were citizens of these poleis. Along with local evidence in Akkadian, a review of ἐμπολιτεύω‘s appearances in literature and epigraphy suggests the opposite.

    Abstract
  • The Great King’s Word under AhuraMazdā’s Protection

    The Great King’s Word under AhuraMazdā’s Protection

    Aliyari Babolghani, Salman. 2024. The Great King’s word under AhuraMazdā’s protection: Trilingual Achaemenid royal inscriptions of Susa I (Dariosh Studies III/1) (Ancient Iranian Series 17). Leiden: Brill.
    This volume presents part of the author’s research on the Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions recovered in the ruins of the Achaemenid palaces in Susa, conducted within the framework of the DARIOSH-Louvre Project. It offers a new study of several fragmentary inscriptions in Old Persian, Achaemenid Elamite, and Achaemenid Babylonian, currently designated as DSe, DSt, DSb, DSl, DSa, DSk, DSi, DSp, D²Sb, DSj, A²Se, DSs, ‘Inc. Sb’, and others. The book provides a new edition of each inscription based on both published and unpublished fragments. Additionally, it introduces some new lexicons and cuneiform signs in the Old Persian language and script.

    Table of Contents (PDF)

    Part 1: Some Fragments of a Foundation Stone Table Inscription

    1 AhuraMazdā Protected the Great King’s “Written Word” 

    Fresh Old Persian Lexicon in Newly Discovered Fragments of DSe 

    Part 2: Terracotta Brick Inscriptions

    2 “AhuraMazdā Belongs to Me” 

    Inscriptions DSa, DSb, DSk, DSl, and DSae 

    Part 3: Some Threshold Inscriptions

    3 “I Did All Superior” 

    4 A Marvelous Palace Built by a Righteous King 

    DSj Inscription 

    Appendix 1: Persian Translations of the Inscriptions

    Appendix 2: Revised List of Old Persian Logograms 

  • Middle Persian Documents

    Benfey, Thomas. 2025. Middle Persian documents and the making of the Islamic fiscal system: Problems and prospects. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 87(3). 395–420.

    This article charts a new course for the study of the Middle Persian documents from early Islamic Iran, which takes their early Islamic context into account more fully than has hitherto been done. This approach and its potential fruits for the study of early Islamic history are illustrated through an in-depth treatment of four seventh-century documents from the Qom region (previously edited and discussed by Dieter Weber), each of which contains a fiscal term that is apparently otherwise unattested in the documentary corpus. I show that the existing interpretations of these documents anachronistically project the fiscal terminology and structures of a later time into early Islamic Iran, and that these documents, considered in aggregate, suggest a certain course of development for the Islamic fiscal system in the post-Sasanian territories in the decades following the initial conquests: from broad and relatively unspecific impositions to more targeted exactions, based on increasingly detailed assessments.

    Abstract
  • The Capture of Jerusalem

    The Capture of Jerusalem

    Anthony, Sean W. & Stephen J. Shoemaker. 2024. The capture of Jerusalem by the Persians in 614 CE by Strategius of Mar Saba (Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Near East 5). Chicago: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures.

    In 614 CE, the armies of Sasanid Persia shocked the Eastern Roman Empire when they besieged and captured Jerusalem, taking a large swath of its population into captivity along with the city’s patriarch and the famed relic of the True Cross. This astounding Persian victory over Christian Jerusalem was a key episode in the last war between Rome and Persia in 602–628 CE and occurred at the high tide of Persian advances into the Roman territories in Asia Minor, the Levant, and Egypt. Among those taken captive was a certain Strategius, a monk of Mar Saba, who subsequently took it upon himself to compose a homily recounting the events leading up to the Persian siege of the Holy City and its aftermath.

    Strategius presents his pious and harrowing account as that of an eyewitness to many of the events he recounts. For events he did not himself witness, he purports to rely on contemporary informants who did, making his treatise a source with few parallels in late antiquity. Although Strategius’s original account in Greek is lost, it survives via later translations into Georgian and Christian Arabic, two languages that attained prominence in the monasteries of Palestine during the Islamic period. This volume provides, for the first time, a complete side-by-side English translation of both the Georgian and the Arabic recensions.

  • The Medieval Persian Gulf

    The Medieval Persian Gulf

    Ulrich, Brian. 2023. The Medieval Persian Gulf. Leeds: Arc-Humanities.

    The Persian Gulf today is home to multiple cosmopolitan urban hubs of globalization. This did not start with the discovery of oil. This book tells of the Gulf from the rise of Islam until the coming of the Portuguese, when port cities such as Siraf, Sohar, and Hormuz were entrepots for trading pearls, horses, spices, and other products across much of Asia and eastern Africa. Indeed, products traded there became a key part of the material culture of medieval Islamic civilization, and the Gulf region itself was a crucial membrane between the Middle East and the world of the broader Indian Ocean. The book also highlights the long-term presence of communities of South Asian and African ancestry, as well as patterns of religious change among Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Muslims that belie the image of a region long polarized between Arabs and Persians and Sunnis and Shi’ites.

  • The King’s Road

    On the occasion of the book’s paperback edition, which has just been published:

    Wen, Xin. 2023. The king’s road: Diplomacy and the remaking of the Silk Road. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    The King’s Road offers a new interpretation of the history of the Silk Road, emphasizing its importance as a diplomatic route, rather than a commercial one. Tracing the arduous journeys of diplomatic envoys, Xin Wen presents a rich social history of long-distance travel that played out in deserts, post stations, palaces, and polo fields. The book tells the story of the everyday lives of diplomatic travelers on the Silk Road—what they ate and drank, the gifts they carried, and the animals that accompanied them—and how they navigated a complex web of geographic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. It also describes the risks and dangers envoys faced along the way—from financial catastrophe to robbery and murder.

    Overview

  • Locating al-Qadisiyyah

    Deadman, W.M. et al. 2024. Locating al-Qadisiyyah: Mapping Iraq’s most famous early Islamic conquest site. Antiquity, FirstView, 1–8.

    The Darb Zubaydah (DZ) is a Hajj pilgrimage road stretching from Kufa in Iraq to Mecca in Saudi Arabia (Al-Rashid Reference Al-Rashid1977; Peterson Reference Petersen1994). As part of the ‘Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa’ project (EAMENA), a remote sensing survey of the Iraqi section of this tentative World Heritage Site was carried out. Two previously unlocated DZ waystations, al-Qadisiyyah and al-’Udhayb, were identified during this survey (Figure 1). These historic sites are best known from texts describing one of the most famous battles of the early Islamic conquests.

    Introduction

  • Derbent: What Persia Left Behind

    Date: 26 November 2024
    Time: 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm
    Venue: SOAS, Phillips Building
    Room: Djam Lecture Theatre
    Event type: Film screening followed by Q&A with the director & reception

    “Derbent: What Persia Left Behind” is a comprehensive documentary that explores the unique history and archaeology of this UNESCO World Heritage Site. The documentary features exclusive footage shot in Derbent just before the Russo-Ukrainian war, along with interviews with renowned scholars who illuminate the rich yet often overlooked history of the fortifications. Funded by the Persian Heritage Foundation and the Soudavar Memorial Foundation, the film also highlights the critical condition of the Middle Persian (Pahlavi) inscriptions found in the region, the northernmost of their kind in the world. (More Information: Derbent Online.)