Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Iranian Studies

  • Emamzadeh Yahya

    Emamzadeh Yahya

    The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of an Iranian Shrine

    امامزاده یحیی ورامین‌: نمایشگاهی آنلاین از زیارتگاهی ایرانی

    This project website was brought to our attention by its curator, Keelan Overton. While it falls outside the scope of our work, we present it here for its innovative approach and valuable contributions to the field. We encourage you to explore the bilingual website to discover its diverse range of content. ~AZ

    The Emamzadeh Yahya shrine complex is simultaneously the sacred tomb of Emamzadeh Yahya (d. 869–70), a destination for ziyarat (pious visitation), an architectural monument of the Ilkhanid period (1256–1353), the main community center and cemetery of the Kohneh Gel neighborhood, a cultural heritage site, and the source of luster tiles displayed in around fifty museums worldwide. In this exhibition, which is also an exhibition catalog and an academic edited volume, we trace the complex’s many looks, functions, users, and stories over seven hundred years. Through our detailed study of one site, we offer a general exploration of Persian art and Iranian culture from the medieval period to the present.

    We invite you to explore the exhibition’s Six Thematic Galleries and read the Introduction by curator Keelan Overton.

    EYV poster, with QR code, March 2025Download
  • Indo-Iranian Journal

    Indo-Iranian Journal

    Indo-Iranian Journal volume 68, issue 1 (Feb 2025) has been published. Three articles are more closely related to our work:

    Fattori, Marco. 2025. Old Persian mav‑ and the evolution of the inchoative suffix in Iranian. Indo-Iranian Journal 68(1). 1–14.

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2025. Further Old Khotanese texts in ‘Metre B’. Indo-Iranian Journal 68(1). 15–33.

    Gethin, Rupert. 2025. Playing with formulas. Indo-Iranian Journal 68(1). 35–56.

  • On Middle Persian Documents

    The 2nd Berkeley Workshop on Middle Persian Documents and Sealings

    This is the second workshop in a series that began in Spring 2023 with the idea of bringing together scholars around the world who were actively working on, or interested in working on Middle Persian documents and sealings. The workshop is organised by Adam Benkato (UC Berkeley) and Arash Zeini (University of Oxford).

    To attend the workshop, which takes place on Zoom, register here. The programme is below.

    Berkeley Workshop 2024Download

  • Societies, Politics and Cultures of the Iranian World

    Societies, Politics and Cultures of the Iranian World (2024–2025), a monthly multidisciplinary research seminar hosted by the Centre de recherche sur le monde iranien (CeRMI), presents recent research on Iran and the Iranian world from antiquity to the present day. This seminar series is organised by Samra Azarnouche and Justine Landau.

    The programme of the series:

    Séminaire CeRMI 2024-2025Download

  • Studia Iranica 51

    Volume 51 of Studia Iranica, dated 2022, is now available with two issues.

    Of particular interest to this blog is Olivia Ramble’s article on Kerdīr’s bun-xānag and Funding Foundations in Sasanian Iran.

    Issue 1

    • The Caspian Language of Tonekābon; BORJIAN, Habib
    • Pashto Preverbs, I: Indo-Iranian *ā; DE CHIARA, Matteo
    • About ‘Paper’ in Russian, Pahl. pambag, Rus. bumaga; OGNIBENE, Paolo
    • Plague in Sistan, 1905-1906; FLOOR, Willem

    Issue 2

    • Kerdīr’s bun-xānag and Funding Foundations in Sasanian Iran; RAMBLE, Olivia
    • Les mots français dans le premier Safarnāme de Nāṣer ad-din Shāh (1873); LENEPVEU-HOTZ, Agnès
    • Pashto Preverbs, II: Indo-Iranian Heritage; DE CHIARA, Matteo
    • From Hurmuz to Aleppo: Observations on the Journey of Alessandro Piccolomini, 1586; TRENTACOSTE, Davide
    In memoriam
    • Christophe Balaÿ (1949-2022); HOURCADE, Bernard
    • Bert G. Fragner (1941-2021); SCHWARZ, Florian
    • Florence Hellot-Bellier (1943-2021); HOURCADE, Bernard

  • The Image of the Iranian World in the Roman Poetry of the Republican and Augustan Ages

    Babnis, Tomasz. 2022. The Image of the Iranian World in the Roman Poetry of the Republican and Augustan Ages. Cracow: Księgarnia Akademicka.

    The present book is dedicated to the image of the Iranian world emerging from the extant Roman poetry written in the Republican and Augustan Ages. The scope of the source material stretches thus from the comedies of Plautus to the Ovidian exile poetry, covering over 200 years of the great development of Latin literature. My aim is to investigate which motifs were referred to by Roman poets, which patterns could be noticed in those texts, which elements were mentioned most often, what relations can be observed between these references and historical, geographical, social or religious realities, and finally, what the function of these references is within the scope of entire poems or parts of texts extracted from the works of a greater size. I am also interested in the “genealogy” of these motifs: their origin and way of exploitation by the poets of subsequent periods. I aim at examining how consistent the overall image created from references scattered throughout the works of various authors was and how it changed in the course of time.

  • Studi Iranici Ravennati

    Panaino, Antonio, Andrea Piras and Paolo Ognibene (eds). 2023. Studi iranici ravennati IV (Indo-iranica et orientalia, Lazur 25). Milan: Mimesis.

    This volume collects a number of scientific articles dealing with history, linguistics, philology, archaeology, ethnology and anthropology of the ancient and modern Iranian peoples.

    From the website

  • Iranian Studies from Ravenna, vol. 4

    Ognibene, Paolo, Antonio Panaino & Andrea Piras. 2023. Studi Iranici Ravennati IV. Milano; Udine: Mimesis.

    The forth volume of the Studi Iranici Ravennati, a collection of research papers on Iranian studies edited by the scholars of Iranian Studies at the University of Bologna in Ravenna.

    (more…)

  • Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum, Paris-Berlin-Wien

    Schindel, Nikolaus. 2022. Khusro I. (Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum, Paris-Berlin-Wien 4). 2 vols. Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.

    The fourth volume of the series Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum, Paris-Berlin-Wien, covers the period of Khusro I (531–579). His long reign is generally considered the high point of Sasanian history. So far, numismatic research has only covered his coinage in overviews, but no detailed treatment has been compiled. Similarly, the number of coins properly published did not do justice to the importance of Khusro I’s coinage. For the first time, a detailed numismatic analysis based on a representative collection of material can be presented. While the numismatic documentation is still far from complete, some developments now become visible for the first time. One focus is on the mint abbreviations, because analysis of these gives access to important new information for Sasanian administrative and regional history. The observation of numismatic parameters is of particular importance in this respect, and while style no longer offers relevant clues, some other topics, such as the patterns of minting, do; as a result, the important and productive mint signature WH can be firmly located in the region Khuzistan. The value of Sasanian coinage for the reconstruction of political history is also evaluated. One chapter is dedicated to material analysis. The catalogue covers about 880 coins from the collections in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, as well as about 1200 additional coins. This is the most substantial documentation of the coinage of Khusro I compiled so far. The typology, legends and additional marks are documented and discussed in detail, with the text and catalogue divided into two separate volumes.

  • Towards a Manifesto for Middle Iranian Philology

    Zeini, Arash. 2023. Towards a manifesto for Middle Iranian philology. Berkeley Working Papers in Middle Iranian Philology 0. 1–12.

    The purpose of this manifesto is to raise broad questions about philological inquiry as a background to the purpose of this occasional journal. It reflects both on general questions of philology (Section 2) and delves into an example from the Middle Persian translations (Zand) of the Avesta in which can be seen a clash between the traditional approach in that field and the type of inquiry that I advocate here (Section 3).