A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies
20 May (Week 4)
Arash Zeini (University of St Andrews):
Secrecy and canonisation in Sasanian Iran: A scholastic reading of the Zand
Tuesday at 5pm
Ioannou Centre for Classical & Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles’, Oxford (OCLA)
Tuesdays of Weeks 2–9 of Trinity Term 2014 at 5pm
Ioannou Centre for Classical & Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles’
The lectures are convened by Professor Touraj Daryaee and Professor Edmund Herzig and organised by the Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity (OCLA). The full programme is here.
The Sasanian Empire as a garden: The limits of Iranshahr
Speaker: Touraj Daryaee (University of California, Irvine)
Where: The British Institute of Persian Studies, London
When: 22 May 2014
Poster at the BIPS.
2. The Sasanian Empire and religious authority: The case of Zoroastrianism
As one of the major political and economic powers in the region, the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE) elevated Zoroastrianism to the dominant religious and cultural force within its polity, bringing to the foreground the question of the interaction between religion and sovereignty in the Sasanian era. By providing an historical overview this lecture highlights the dynamics between political and religious authority during the Sasanian era.
Speaker: Arash Zeini
Where: University of St Andrews, School of Classics, Swallowgate, S11.
When: 07 May 2014, 17:30
Rezakhani, Khodadad & Michael Morony. 2014. Markets for land, labour and capital in late antique Iraq, AD 200-700. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 57. 231–261.
Read the article here. Abstract:
Lack of direct evidence on the functioning of factor markets in Sasanian/Late Antique Iraq makes it difficult to present a clear picture of the production side of economy during this period. However, relying on the Talmudic evidence, as well as what is men-tioned in the Mādayān ī Hezār Dādestān (MHD), this article aims to provide an idea of factor markets during the Sasanian period, as well as demonstrating the areas where further evidence and research could render better results and allow us to understand the economy of this region in more depth.
A workshop taking place on 21–22 February 2014 at King’s College London.
Visit the workshop website. The programme is available here.
The workshop ‘Patterns of Argumentation in Late Antique and Early Islamic Interreligious Debates’ brings together a group of experts on late antique and early Islamic religious texts to reflect on this type of literature. We will discuss how religious ideas in the Eastern Mediterranean world (6th-8th c. CE) were shaped by the challenges of rival religious groups, and especially what patterns of argumentation were employed within the genre of religious disputation in order to formulate answers to critical questions from inside and outside the community.
Pourshariati, Parvaneh. 2013. Introduction: Further engaging the paradigm of Late Antiquity. Journal of Persianate Studies 6. 1–14.
In her excellent introduction to the latest volume of Journal of Persianate Studies, a special issue, Pourshariati discusses the problem of periodisation in the study of Iranian history. Read the article here.