About the Editor:
Tag: History
Ideology, Power and Religious Change in Antiquity, 3000 BC – AD 600 (IPRCA)
International Summer School organized by Graduate School of Humanities Göttingen (GSGG)
20 – 24 July 2015, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Archäologisches Institut und Sammlung der Gipsabgüsse)
In the modern world, political as well as religious leaders make use of ideological messages to legitimize and advertise their power. Especially during periods of transformation and change, it is important for leaders to demonstrate their strengths and capacities in order to unify their subjects. By presenting themselves as the right men in the right place they could win their subjects’ loyalty and thus legitimize and safeguard their own positions. This practice is however not a modern invention, it is rooted in ancient traditions and habits.
The summer school focuses on ideological messages communicated by leaders in the ancient world (Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome, c. 3000 BC – AD 600) during periods of religious change (periods characterized by the rise, expansion or dominance of new religions, specific religious factions, sects or cults that caused changes in or threatened existing social, religious and/or power structures). Which messages were communicated by central and local authorities as well as specific religious authorities in these epochs? What do these messages tell us about the nature of power exercised by leaders?
The pre-arranged sessions to discusse the different subjects and questions are:
- Session 1 Ancient Mesopotamia
- Session 2 Ancient Anatolia, Levant and Iran
- Session 3 Classical Greece and the Hellenistic World
- Session 4 Roman Republic and Empire
- Session 5 The Byzantine Empire
A manual for Iranian Studies
Studies on Iran and the Caucasus
This unique collection of essays by leading international scholars gives a profound introduction into the great diversity and richness of facets forming the study of one of earth’s most exciting areas, the Iranian and Caucasian lands. Each of the 37 contributions sheds light on a very special topic, the range of which comprises historical, cultural, ethnographical, religious, political and last but not least literary and linguistic issues, beginning from the late antiquity up to current times. Especially during the last decennia these two regions gained greater interest worldwide due to several developments in politics and culture. This fact grants the book, intended as a festschrift for Prof. Garnik Asatrian, a special relevance.
Table of Contents:
- Marco Bais: “Like a Flame Through the Reeds”: An Iranian Image in the Buzandaran Patmut‘iwnk‘
- Jost Gippert: “The “Bun-Turks” in Ancient Georgia”
- Dan Shapira: “On the Relative Value of Armenian Sources for the Khazar Studies: The Case of the Siege of Tbilisi”
- Giusto Traina: “Some Remarks on the Inscription of Maris, Casit filius (Classical-Oriental Notes, 9)”
- Kaveh Farrokh: “The Military Campaigns of Shah Abbas I in Azerbaijan and the Caucasus (1603-1618)”
- Aldo Ferrari: “Persia and Persians in Raffi’s Xamsayi Melikʻutiwnnerə”
- Hirotake Maeda: “New Information on the History of the Caucasus in the Third Volume of Afzal al-tavarikh”
- Irène Natchkebia: “Unrealized Project: Rousseaus’ Plan of Franco-Persian Trade in the Context of the Indian Expedition (1807)”
- Roman Smbatian: “Nadir’s Religious Policy Towards Armenians”
- Victoria Arakelova: “The Song Unveiling the Hidden”
- Viacheslav A. Chirikba: “Between Christianity and Islam: Heathen Heritage in the Caucasus”
- Matteo Compareti: “Armenian Pre-Christian Divinities: Some Evidence from the History of Art and Archaeological Investigation”
- Peter Nicolaus: “The Taming of the Fairies”
- Antonio Panaino: “The Classification of Astral Bodies in the Framework of a Historical Survey of Iranian Traditions”
- Vahe S. Boyajian: “From Muscat to Sarhadd: Remarks on gwātī Healing Ritual within the Social Context”
- Uwe Bläsing: “Georgische Gewächse auf türkischer Erde: Ein Beitrag zur Phytonomie in Nordostanatolien”
- Johnny Cheung: “The Persian Verbal Suffixes -ān and -andeh (-andag)”
- Claudia A. Ciancaglini: “Allomorphic Variability in the Middle Persian Continuants of the Old Iranian suffix *-ka-“
- Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: “Vowel Length in Middle Persian Verbal Endings”
- Vladimir Livshits: “Some Khwarezmian Names”
- Ela Filippone: “Kurdish bažn, Persian bašn and Other Iranian Cognates”
- Adriano V. Rossi: “Once Again on Iranian *kund”
- James R. Russell: “A Note on Armenian hrmštk-el”
- Wolfgang Schulze: “Aspects of Udi-Iranian Language Contact”
- Martin Schwarz: “Armenian varkaparazi and Its Iranian Background”
- Donald Stilo: “The Poligenetic Origins of the Northern Talishi Language”
- Matthias Weinreich: “Not only in the Caucasus: Ethno-linguistic Diversity on the Roof of the World”
- Anna Krasnawolska: “Hedayat’s Nationalism and His Concepts of Folklore”
- Mikhail Pelevin: “Early Specimens of Pashto Folklore”
- Nagihan Haliloğlu: “Activist, Professional, Family Man: Masculinities in Marjane Satrapi’s Work”
- Khachik Gevorgian: “On the Interpretation of the Term “Futuwwa” in Persian Fotovvatnamehs“
- Çakır Ceyhan Suvari, Elif Kanca: “The Alevi Discourse in Turkey”
- Pascal Kluge: “Turkey’s Border with Armenia: Obstacle and Chance for Turkish Politics”
- Irina Morozova: “On the Causes of Socialism’s Deconstruction:
Conventional Debates and Popular Rhetoric in Contemporary
Kazakhstan and Mongolia” - Caspar ten Dam: “The Limitations of Military Psychology: Combat-stress and Violence-values among the Chechens and Albanians”
- Garry W. Trompf: “The Ararat Factor: Moral Basics in Western Political Theory from Isaac Newton to John Stuart Mill”
- Eberhard Werner: “Communication and the Oral-Aural Traditions of an East-Anatolian Ethnicity: What us Stories tell!”
The Ladies of Veh Ardashir
Simpson, St.John. 2013. The Ladies of Veh Ardashir. Palazzo Madama, studi e notizie, 3(2): 10-15.
A short article exploring the evidence provided by a selection of the Sasanian “small finds” excavated at Veh Ardashir by the Centro Scavi di Torino. This research is part of the author’s core research on Sasanian and early medieval portable material culture and a detailed publication of all of these finds from this excavation is in preparation.
Jullien, Christelle (ed). 2015. Husraw Ier: Reconstruction d’un règne. Sources et documents (Cahiers de Studia Iranica 53). Paris. Peeters.
The reign of Husraw I Anosirwan / Chosroes (531-579), the most remarkable one during the Sasanian dynasty, was pivotal in the history of Iran. During that period, far-reaching projects to restructure the state affected all strata of society, royal power was strengthened and the country experienced significant cultural development. No major scientific gathering was devoted to this subject, and here are published the proceedings of a symposium organized in Paris. Its aim was to bring together international scholars from various fields who work on often difficult-to-access or hitherto unpublished source material in several languages. The resulting interactions and intersecting perspectives help to piece together many facets of that reign, thus providing a rich contribution to the history of the East in the 6th century.
For more information, see the Table of Contents of this volume.
Anti-sasanian movements
Sárközy, Miklós. 2015. Anti-sasanian movements in 6th century Persia – the case of Wistaxm and Windoē. In Csabai Zoltán, Szabó Ernő, Vilmos László & Vitári-Wéber Adrienn (eds.), Európé égisze alatt: Ünnepi tanulmányok Fekete Mária hatvanötödik születésnapjára kollégáitól, barátaitól és tanítványaitól Pécs, 281–296.
Xerxes: A Persian life
Stoneman, Richard. 2015. Xerxes: A Persian life. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Xerxes, Great King of the Persian Empire from 486–465 B.C., has gone down in history as an angry tyrant full of insane ambition. The stand of Leonidas and the 300 against his army at Thermopylae is a byword for courage, while the failure of Xerxes’ expedition has overshadowed all the other achievements of his twenty-two-year reign.In this lively and comprehensive new biography, Richard Stoneman shows how Xerxes, despite sympathetic treatment by the contemporary Greek writers Aeschylus and Herodotus, had his reputation destroyed by later Greek writers and by the propaganda of Alexander the Great. Stoneman draws on the latest research in Achaemenid studies and archaeology to present the ruler from the Persian perspective. This illuminating volume does not whitewash Xerxes’ failings but sets against them such triumphs as the architectural splendor of Persepolis and a consideration of Xerxes’ religious commitments. What emerges is a nuanced portrait of a man who ruled a vast and multicultural empire which the Greek communities of the West saw as the antithesis of their own values.
About the author:
Richard Stoneman is Honorary Visiting Professor, University of Exeter, and the author of numerous books. He lives in Devon, UK.
A concise history of the Achaemenid Empire
Waters, Matthew W. 2014. Ancient Persia: A concise history of the Achaemenid Empire, 550-330 BCE. New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
The Achaemenid Persian Empire, at its greatest territorial extent under Darius I (r. 522–486 BCE), held sway over territory stretching from the Indus River Valley to southeastern Europe and from the western Himalayas to northeast Africa. In this book, Matt Waters gives a detailed historical overview of the Achaemenid period while considering the manifold interpretive problems historians face in constructing and understanding its history. This book offers a Persian perspective even when relying on Greek textual sources and archaeological evidence. Waters situates the story of the Achaemenid Persians in the context of their predecessors in the mid-first millennium BCE and through their successors after the Macedonian conquest, constructing a compelling narrative of how the empire retained its vitality for more than two hundred years (c. 550–330 BCE) and left a massive imprint on Middle Eastern as well as Greek and European history.
For more information, see here the Preface to this volume and the ToC.
About the author:
Matt Waters is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.