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Books

The Afterlife of Avestan Manuscripts

Gholami, Saloumeh. 2023. The afterlife of Avestan manuscripts: Colophons and marginal notes. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

The book is also available as open access e-book.

This study investigates the role of paratext in Zoroastrian scribal tradition, with a focus on the Avesta manuscripts. It examines how paratexts, such as colophons and marginal notes, contribute to organizing and interpreting the content of these manuscripts. These elements not only structure the knowledge but also reflect the roles and activities of individuals involved in the manuscript’s lifecycle, from creation to reception. Additionally, the study explores how paratexts facilitate access to the main text, acting as a bridge that documents the history of each manuscript, its actors, and interaction with society. The analysis includes a diverse range of colophons and marginal notes, examining their structure, content, and relationship to their respective manuscripts.

Short summary
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Articles

The Xorde Avesta and the structuring of time

König, G. 2024. The Xorde Avesta and the structuring of time. Berkeley Working Papers in Middle Iranian Philology 2(4). 1–21.

The Xorde Avesta is considered a collection of shorter Zoroastrian liturgies. Until recently, neither the architecture of the manuscripts in which the Xorde Avesta was handed down was analyzed in detail, nor was the relationship between manuscript and practice adequately described. This article develops the thesis that the representation of the Xorde Avesta in manuscripts and liturgical practice can be understood from the point of a ritual structuring of circular units of time.

Abstract
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Articles

Notes on the Xorde Avesta V

König, Götz. 2023. Notizen zum Xorde Avesta V: Das Avesta-Pahlavi Ms. T12 betrachtet im Rahmen der historischen Veränderungen des Xorde Avesta. Berkeley Working Papers in Middle Iranian Philology 1(2). 1–32.

Das „Xorde Avesta“ ist eine (in Handschriften und Drucken überlieferte) Sammlung von (größtenteils) kürzeren liturgischen Texten in avestischer Sprache (sowie in persischen und in indischen Sprachen) auf der Grundlage einer sie charakterisierenden, allgemein verbindlichen Struktur folgt. Diese Struktur zeigt typische Variationsmuster gemäß Klasse, Zeit und Ort der Handschrift. Im Rahmen von allgemeiner Struktur und partikularem Muster finden sich wiederum individuelle Differenzen in Material und in dessen Anordnung, die dafür verantwortlich sind, daß Xorde Avesta Handschriften fast immer Unikate sind (und vermutlich darum auch niemals im Rahmen der Hypothese der ‘Stammhandschriften’ diskutiert wurden). Die Hs. T12 aus der Mitte des 16. Jh. gehört zu jenen Handschriften des Xorde Avesta, die für unsere Rekonstruktion der Geschichte einer bestimmten Handschriftenklasse eine herausragende Position besitzen. Sie bildet zudem eine Schnittstelle von frühem iranischen Xorde Avesta (in Pahlavi) und der indischen Tradition, in die die Handschrift (wieder?) eingeführt wird.

Abstract
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Books

From Samarqand to Toledo

Kaplony, Andreas & Matt Malczycki (eds.). 2022. From Samarqand to Toledo: Greek, Sogdian and Arabic documents and manuscripts from the Islamicate world and beyond (Islamic History and Civilization 201). Leiden: Brill.

Documents open up another an approach complementary to the overwhelming richness of literary tradition as preserved in manuscripts. This volume combines studies on Greek, Sogdian and Arabic documents (letters, legal agreements, and amulets) with studies on Arabic and Judeo-Arabic manuscripts (poetry, science and divination).

From the website

Following article in the volume is of particular interest to scholars of Sogdian:

Huseini, Said Reza. 2022. Thinking in Arabic, writing in Sogdian: Arabic-Sogdian diplomatic relations in the early eighth century. In Andreas Kaplony & Matt Malczycki (eds.), From Samarqand to Toledo: Greek, Sogdian and Arabic documents and manuscripts from the Islamicate world and beyond (Islamic History and Civilization 201), 67–87. Leiden: Brill.

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Books

Estudios Iranios y Turanios (Vol. 4)

Estudios Iranios y Turanios, Vol. 4, 2020.Estudios Iranios y Turanios, Vol. 4, 2020. has now been published. The whole issue is dedicated to the Avestan and Middle Persian Studies.

  • Alberto Cantera: “A brief note on the possibilities and limitations involved in reconstructing the historical performances of the Avestan liturgies: the case of the Dō-Hōmāst”
  • Saloumeh Gholami: “The collection of Avestan manuscripts of the Ataš Varahrām in Yazd”
  • Jean Kellens: “Pourquoi comprenons-nous si mal les Gâthâs? Keynote lecture au 9e colloque de la Societas Iranologica Europaea”
  • Götz König: “Notizen zum Xorde Avesta IV: Zur Textkomposition und -tradition des Ātaš Niyāyišn und zu dessen ritueller Performanz als Kurze Liturgie”
  • Éric Pirart: “Pour de nouveaux fragments avestiques: la généalogie de Zaraϑuštra”
  • Kianoosh Rezania: “A Suggestion for the Transliteration of Middle Persian Texts in Zoroastrian Middle Persian: Digital Corpus and Dictionary (MPCD): A Three Layered Transliteration System”
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Books

Among Digitized Manuscripts

Lit, L. W. Cornelius van. 2019. Among digitized manuscripts. Philology, codicology, paleography in a digital world (Handbuch Der Orientalistik 137). Leiden: Brill.

Working with manuscripts has become a digital affair. But, are there downsides to digital photos? And how can you take advantage of the incredible computing power you have literally at your fingertips? Cornelis van Lit explains in detail what happens when manuscript studies meets digital humanities. In Among Digitized Manuscripts you will learn why it is important to include a note on the photo quality in your codicological description, how to draw, collect, and publish glyphs of paleographic interest, what standards (such as TEI and IIIF) to abide by when transcribing a text, how to write custom software for image recognition, and much more. The leading principle is that learning a little about computers will already be of great benefit.

Brill | Among Digitized Manuscripts

This book is open access, and you can download it from https://t.co/sOq9jDCkiW?amp=1. Some more information is available from the author’s website. The author has also tweeted about this book, which I unrolled here.

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Articles Journal

Studies in Early Medieval Iranian Religious Manuscript Traditions

Barbati, Chiara & Olga Chunakova (eds.). 2018. Studies in early medieval Iranian religious manuscript traditions other than Islamic. Written Monuments of the Orient 2(8). Institute of Oriental Manuscripts: Russian Academy of Sciences.

This edited volume is part of the English version of the biannually published journal Written Monuments of the Orient, issued at Institute of Oriental Manuscripts: Russian Academy of Sciences.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Chiara Barbati 3

Enrico Morano. Some Сodicological Remarks on the Сorpus of the Berlin Turfan Manichaean Sogdian Manuscripts in Manichaean Script: among Books, Glossaries, Letters, Booklets, Bilingual and Trilingual Texts, Normal, Bold and Cursive Script — 11

Olga Chunakova. Middle Iranian Manichaean Manuscripts. Interpretation and Identification — 39

Christiane Reck. Short Survey on Sogdian Manuscriptology — 51

Christiane Reck and Adam Benkato. ‘Like a Virgin’: A Sogdian Recipe for Restoring Virginity and the Sanskrit Background of Sogdian Medicine — 67

Chiara Barbati. On the Numbering of Quires in the Christian Sogdian and Syriac Manuscript Fragments in the Turfan Collection (Berlin) and the Krotkov Collection (St. Petersburg) — 92
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Books

A Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts

Péri, Benedek. 2018. Catalogue of the Persian manuscripts in the library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Islamic Manuscripts and Books 16). Leiden: Brill.

The Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was established in 1826. Its collection of Persian manuscripts is the most comprehensive set of its kind in Hungary. The volumes were produced in four major cultural centres of the Persianate world, the Ottoman Empire, Iran, Central Asia and India during a span of time that extends from the 14th to the 19th century. Collected mainly by enthusiastic private collectors and acknowledged scholars the manuscripts have preserved several unique texts or otherwise interesting copies of well-known works. Though the bulk of the collection has been part of Library holdings for almost a century, the present volume is the first one to describe these manuscripts in a detailed and systematic way.

Benedek Péri is the head of the Department of Turkic Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Specialized in the history of classical Persianate literary traditions, he has widely published on various aspects of Persian, Chaghatay and Ottoman literature.

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Events

Persian Manuscripts in Balkans and Central Europe

<AryanicCMS:tags:77>Persian Manuscripts in Balkans and Central Europe

Center for Iran, Balkans and Central European Studies

Bulgarian National Library “St, Cyril and Methodius’’

Sofia University ‘’St. Kliment Ohridski’’

23-24 February 2017

Center for Iran, Balkans and Central European Studies in partnership with the Cyril and Methodius National Library of Bulgaria, the “St. Kliment Ohridski” Sofia University, and Allameh Tabataba’i University are going to convene the international conference on “Persian Manuscripts in the Balkans and Central Europe”. The conference will be held in Sofia, with the contributions of scholars and researchers from 16 countries, expert in codicology. Scope of the topics to be discussed in this conference includes: Persian manuscripts; Persian documents; manuscripts about Iran in other languages; documents about Iran in other languages; and exploring Eastern manuscripts. Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU) will publish the approved papers. Along with the conference, a workshop on “Codicology” will also be held.

Conference Program

  • Akbar Irani “Mirase Maktub, Twenty-three years in the revival of Iranian culture and Civilization”
  • Shervin Farridnejad: “Zoroastrian Manuscripts in Classical New Persian. The Manuscripts of Ṣad Dar in Central European Libraries: A Work in Progress
  • Davood Esparham: Advantages and disadvantages of different methods of editing manuscripts
  • Mohammad Hassan Hassanzadeh Niri: Catalogues of Persian Manuscripts in Turkey
  • Iván Szántó: A Kashmiri Manuscript of the Shahname of Ferdowsi in Budapest”
  • Shiva Mihan: An unidentified Timurid Manuscript: the Musibat-nama of ‘Attar Nishapuri from Prince Baysunghur’s library”
  • Zahra Parsapour: “Ghanun Al- Adab a treasure from Asia minor”
  • Dariush Zolfaghari: “The importance of rhetoric in edition of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh
  • Maryam Mavadda: Âdâb Al-Nesvân , Verses In Writing Of The ¼ Aqayed Al-Nesâ’,
  • Zohre Allahyari Dastjerdi: “Tradition of making collection and anthology in Persian language by focus on index of manuscript”
  • Nigar Gozalova/Akram Bagirov: “On Bahman-Mirza’s Azerbaijani Collection”
  • Fariba Jabbari: “Maqazi Al-Nabi Verse narrative of the life of Prophet”
  • Katerina Venedikova: Persian texts and Persian elements in manuscripts and epigraphic monuments from the Ottoman times”
  • Alireza Hoseini: “Parvardeie khial, a Manuscript from Mahmood Mirza Qajar
  • Mahmood Heidari: “Omdatol Bolaqa va Eddatol Fosaha, A manuscript from Rashid aldin Vatvat”
  • Elham Malekzadeh: “The geography of the Caucasus, Almanak, survivor from the era of the Naseraldin  King of Qajar
  • Yashar Abdolselamoghlu: Story of occupation of Bulgaria by Ottomans- Edris Bitlisi
  •  Namir Karahalilovic: “An Overview of the Persian Manuscript Collections in Bosnia-Herzegovina”
  • Nermin Hodzic: “A Copy of the “Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya” from Gazi Husrev-Beg Library in Sarajevo”
  • Ahmed Zildzic: “Two Copies of the Bahjat al-Tawarikh in the Balkans”
  • Saeid Abedpour: “Tradition of Masnavi-khani in Bosnia-Herzegovina”
  • Sabaheta Gačanin,: “Poetic Manuscripts of Islamic Canon as Cultural Memory
  • Miklos Sarkozy: “Persian Manuscripts in the Oriental Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
  • Mojdeh Mohammadi: Persian Manuscript in Hungarian Academy of Science”
  • Saeed Safari: “The introduction to Persian manuscripts in the Central Library of the University of Belgrade”
  • Tatjana Pai -Vukic: Persian Manuscripts in Croatian Collections”
  • Stoyanka Kenderova: “Persian book in the library of Osman Pazvantoglu in Vidin / 1837”
  • Nematollah Iranzadeh: “A manuscript from Vahid Tabrizi in Bulgarian National Library
  • Ivo Panov: “Diwan-e Hafez Manuscripts in National Library”
  • Elisaveta Mousakova: The Illumination of Manuscript Catalogues
  • Nona Petkova: “Accepting and Respecting the Traditions of Others – Examples of Coexistence
  • Morteza Nouraei: “The Evaluation of Iranian studies through Ottoman Turkish Documents preserved in the National Library of Sofia- Bulgaria”
  • Anka Stoilova: The work with manuscript fragments before their cataloguing”
  • Hatije Berber: “Presentation of textbooks for teaching Persian language in  Ryushdiye schools”
  • Sheyda Rahimi: “An Overview of the Persian Manuscript Catalogue in Bulgarian National Library”
Categories
Events

Workshop: Avestan manuscripts

The Institute of Iranian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, invites you to a small workshop introducing

A new collection of Avestan manuscripts from Iran (Pouladi Collection)

 

  • Saloumeh Gholami/Mehraban Pouladi: „Vorstellung der Pouladi-Sammlung“
  • Jaime Martínez Porro: „The ms. 4162 of the Pouladi Collection: Is it the oldest liturgical Vīdēvdād manuscript?“

Time & Location

09.02.2017 | 18:00

Fabeckstr. 23-25
Seminarraum 2.2058