Tag: Iranian Studies

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Books

A manual for Iranian Studies

Paul, Ludwig (ed.). 2013. Handbuch der Iranistik. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag.
This manual for Iranian Studies  presents a comprehensive survey of status and trends of current research in the filed of Iranian Studies.  In 34 contributions, the most important disciplines of the field, namely history, literature, religion and language were examined by 33 authors on almost 500 pages. It comprised both the current state of Iran as well as  the Iranian cultural sphere in its geographic breadth and historical depth, from Anatolia to Central Asia and from the early history (7th millennium BC) Until today. The manual aims to provide a methodical presentation of research developments and tries to answer the questions such as: what research questions are fresh and interesting? why and in which research contexts they are important?
All contributions of the manual are divided into three sections A, B and C.  The section A guides the reader through fundamental and self-reflexive methodological considerations to approach the subject. The section B provides a research overview, and the section C gives an alphabetical bibliography on each subject.
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Books

Studies on Iran and the Caucasus

Bläsing, Uwe, Victoria Arakelova & Matthias Weinreich (eds.). 2015. Studies on Iran and the Caucasus: In honour of Garnik Asatrian. Leiden: Brill.

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:

History and texts
I. Early Mediaeval Period
  • 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)”
II. Late Mediaeval Period
  • 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”
Religion and Ethnography
  • 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”
Linguistics
  • 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”
Ritual and Folklore
  • 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“
Historico-Political Issues
  • 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!”
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Journal

The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi as World Literature

The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi as World Literature

Iranian Studies, volume 48, Number 3, May 2015. Special issue: “The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi as World Literature”

The special issue of the Journal of Iranian Studies, guest-edited by Franklin Lewis is dedicated to studies on Shahname within a  “world literature”  framework.

Iranian Studies is a peer reviewed journal of history, literature, culture and society, covering everywhere with a Persian or Iranian legacy, especially Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Caucasus and northern India.

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Journal

Iran Nameh: Volume 30, Number 2 (Summer 2015)

Irannameh-30-2Iran Nameh is a quarterly journal of Iranian Studies. A special issue, volume 30, Number 2 (Summer 2015), is  dedicated to Ehsan Yarshater
for his lifetime service to Iranian Studies.

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Articles

Seleukid Sacred Architecture, Royal Cult and the Transformation of Iranian Culture in the Middle Iranian Period

Matthew P. Canepa. 2014. Seleukid sacred architecture, royal cult and the transformation of Iranian culture in the Middle Iranian period. Iranian Studies 48(1). 1-27.

This article proposes a new approach to three of the most persistent problems in the study of Iranian art and religion from the coming of Alexander to the fall of the Sasanians: the development of Iranian sacred architecture, the legacy of the Achaemenids, and the development of the art and ritual of Iranian kingship after Alexander. Canepa explores the ways in which the Seleukids contributed basic and enduring elements of Iranian religious and royal culture that lasted throughout late antiquity. Beyond stressing simple continuities or breaks with the Babylonian, Achaemenid or Macedonian traditions, this article argues that the Seleukids selectively integrated a variety of cultural, architectural and religious traditions to forge what became the architectural vocabularies and religious expressions of the Middle Iranian era.

 

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Journal

Iranica Antiqua, Volume 50

Iranica Antiqua is one of the leading scholarly journals covering studies on the civilization of pre-Islamic Iran in its broadest sense. This annual publication, edited by the Department for Near Eastern Art and Archaeology at Gent University, Belgium, contains preliminary excavation reports, contributions on archaeological problems, studies on different aspects of history, institutions, religion, epigraphy, numismatics and history of art of ancient Iran, as well as on cultural exchanges and relations between Iran and its neighbours. 

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Events

The family tree of Iranian

Dr Agnes Korn (University of Frankfurt) will be addressing the Indo-European Seminar on the subject

The family tree of Iranian and its problems

 

At 4.30 pm on Wed. June 17, Room 1.11, Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Site Cambridge (CB3 9DA)
Tea will be served from 4.15

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Books

Greater Khorasan

Rante, Rocco (ed.). 2015. Greater Khorasan: History, Geography, Archaeology and Material Culture (Studies in the History and Culture of the Middle East 29). Walter de Gruyter.

The modern sense of “Greater Khorasan” today corresponds to a territory which not only comprises the region in the east of Iran but also, beyond Iranian frontiers, a part of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. In the past this entity was simply defined as Khorasan. In the Sassanid era Khorasan defined the “Eastern lands”. In the Islamic era this term was again taken up in the same sense it previously enjoyed. The Arab sources of the first centuries all mention the eastern regions under the same toponym, Khorasan. Khorasan was the gateway used by Alexander the Great to go into Bactria and India and, inversely, that through which the Seljuks and Mongols entered Iran. In a diachronic context Khorasan was a transit zone, a passage, a crossroads, which, above all in the medieval period, saw the creation of different commercial routes leading to the north, towards India, to the west and into China. In this framework, archaeological researches will be the guiding principle which will help us to take stock of a material culture which, as its history, is very diversified. They also offer valuable elements on commercial links between the principal towns of Khorasan. This book will provide the opportunity to better know the most recent elements of the principal constitutive sites of this geographical and political entity.

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Books

On orality and textuality

Rubanovich, Julia (ed.). 2015. Orality and textuality in the Iranian world: Patterns of interaction across the centuries (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 19). Brill.

The volume demonstrates the cultural centrality of the oral tradition for Iranian studies. It contains contributions from scholars from various areas of Iranian and comparative studies, among which are the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian tradition with its wide network of influences in late antique Mesopotamia, notably among the Jewish milieu; classical Persian literature in its manifold genres; medieval Persian history; oral history; folklore and more. The essays in this collection embrace both the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods, both verbal and visual media, as well as various language communities (Middle Persian, Persian, Tajik, Dari) and geographical spaces (Greater Iran in pre-Islamic and Islamic medieval periods; Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan of modern times). Taken as a whole, the essays reveal the unique blending of oral and literate poetics in the texts or visual artefacts each author focuses upon, conceptualizing their interrelationship and function.

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Books

Persian language, literature and culture

Talattof, Kamran. 2015. Persian language, literature and culture: New leaves, fresh looks. Routledge.

Critical approaches to the study of topics related to Persian literature and Iranian culture have evolved in recent decades. The essays included in this volume collectively demonstrate the most recent creative approaches to the study of the Persian language, literature, and culture, and the way these methodologies have progressed academic debate.

[…] In dealing with these seminal subjects, contributors acknowledge and contemplate the works of Ahmad Karimi Hakkak and other pioneering critics, analysing how these works have influenced the field of literary and cultural studies.