Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Middle Iranian

  • Text, script and language in Bactria and Serindia

    Text, script and language in Bactria and Serindia

    Ching, Chao-jung & Michaël Peyrot (eds.). 2026. Text, script and language in Bactria and Serindia. Papers on cultural and linguistic interactions in pre-Islamic Central Asia (Beiträge zur Iranistik 55). Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

    This collective volume unites ten papers by international specialists in history, philology, linguistics, palaeography and archaeology, dealing with texts written in Bactrian, Khotanese, Tumshuqese, Tocharian, and Gāndhārī (Niya-Prakrit) from Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Northwest China, as well as with classical Chinese Buddhist scriptures and the newly discovered Almosi inscriptions of Tajikistan. With studies of the Kharoṣṭhī, Brāhmī, Graeco-Bactrian scripts and the “unknown Kushan script”, the book presents important advances in longstanding problems of Central Asian philology. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students working on cultural and linguistic interactions in Kushan and post-Kushan times.

    Table of Contents

    • Ching Chao-jung: Bactria and Tukharistan in Chinese Buddhist scriptures: A case study of three Vibhāṣā texts
    • Alessandro Del Tomba: A comparative study of the Mahāvaidehaghr̥ta in Sanskrit, Khotanese, and Tocharian B
    • Federico Dragoni: Was the Khotanese Brāhmī subscript hook borrowed from the Kharoṣṭhī anusvāra?
    • Pavel B. Lurje: The “Unknown script” of Bactria: Unpublished materials and fresh interpretations
    • Francesca Michetti: On the origin of Bactrian final –ο
    • Miyamoto Ryoichi: Notes on Wakhsh and Rām-sēt in the Bactrian documents
    • Ogihara Hirotoshi: A new look at ownership clauses in Tumshukese sale contracts
    • Michaël Peyrot: On the so-called “Fremdvokal” ä in Tocharian and Khotanese and its origins
    • Niels Schoubben: Gāndhārī light on Eastern Middle Iranian and vice versa: Three new examples
    • Nicholas Sims-Williams: The Bactrian inscription of Ayrtam: A minimal reading
  • The Frontier Pushes Back

    The Frontier Pushes Back

    Garosi, Eugenio. 2025. The frontier pushes back: From local languages to imperial substrate(s) in scribal practices in 8th-century Central Asia. Iranian Studies FirstView. 1–15.

    This article draws on documentary texts from multilingual archives of early Islamic Central Asia to illustrate connections between the Arabic and Middle Iranian scribal world. Here, I contend that some lesser-known evidence from Sogdia contributes new elements to current debates on the contact between Arabic and Middle Iranian scribal traditions and provides a measure of “intensity” of Arab rule in the region more generally. In particular, ostraca from various Transoxanian administrative centers provide documentary confirmation that a class of biliterate Arabic-Sogdian scribes was active in the local bureaucracy as early as the mid-8th century. When viewed in dialogue with archives from coeval Iran and Iraq, the Transoxanian evidence helps lead to a more nuanced understanding of the so-called “Pahlavi diplomatic substrate” model.

    Abstract

  • Mani’s Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg Hymns

    Shokri-Foumeshi, Mohammad (ed.). 2025. Mani’s Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg hymns. Edition, reconstruction and commentary with a codicological and textual approach based on Manichaean Turfan fragments in the Berlin Collection (Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum. Series Iranica 3). Turnhout: Brepols.

    This work deals with the manuscript fragments of Maniʼs Living Gospel and the Ewangeliōnīg Hymns of his followers in the eastern Manichaean churches. The author identifies new fragments and improves the previous reconstructions. In this context, he analyzes all the Manichaean and non-Manichaean documents. This book is designed to enlarge our understanding of the Turfan texts by presenting new texts and interpretations.

    Summary

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Acknowledgements
     
    CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
    1.1 Aim, Plan, and Strategy
    1.2 Material and Content of the Living Gospel and Ewangelyōnīg Hymns
    1.3 Outline of This Study
    1.4 History of Prior Research

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  • Deciphering the Illegible

    Macuch, Maria & Arash Zeini (eds.). 2024. Deciphering the illegible: Festschrift in honour of Dieter Weber (Iranica 33). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

    The commemorative publication Deciphering the Illegible is dedicated to Dieter Weber, one of the most important scholars in the field of Iranian Studies, who is best known for his work on deciphering original documents in the extremely ambiguous Pahlavi cursive script, which was long considered ‘illegible’. In addition to an appreciation of his research and a bibliography of his publications, the volume contains twenty-eight contributions by renowned experts, reflecting the broad spectrum of the dedicatee’s academic interests and research work. The articles cover a wide range of topics and offer many new insights and original perspectives on religious, linguistic and historical problems, including several editions of previously unpublished texts.

    Abstract

    Table of Contents

    • Dieter Weber — A Scholarly Profile
    • Publications of Dieter Weber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
    • Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo: Three Zoroastrian Manuscripts in Armenia
    • Thomas Benfey: Windādag’s Orders: Ten Unpublished Middle Persian Ostracafrom Chāl Ṭarkhān-ʿEshqābād
    • Adam Benkato: A Manichaean Remedy for Headaches
    • Alberto Cantera: The Passive Suffix -ī̆h̆– in Middle Persian
    • Carlo G. Cereti: From the Zamyād Yašt to the Seventh Book of the Dēnkard, Some Notes on Sistan and Zoroastrian Eschatology
    • Iris Colditz: How to Make Clarified Butter in Sogdian
    • Touraj Daryaee: The Owl in the Zoroastrian Tradition: Contribution to Iranian Bestiary I
    • Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: Hübschmann and the Middle Iranian Part on Armenian Loanwords
    • Shervin Farridnejad and Arash Zeini: “Who Will Protect the Cattle”? On Dogs and the Sin of Meat Consumption in Zoroastrianism
    • Ela Filippone: A Contribution to Pahlavi Lexicography: The Case of ⟨twk(‘)⟩ and ⟨twp(‘)⟩ in the Pahlavi Corpus and their Possible Cognates in Modern Iranian Languages
    • Philippe Gignoux †: Sur l’argenterie sassanide, relectures et nouveautés
    • Rika Gyselen: Le y final et le trait final en moyen-perse: le cas des sceaux des administrations territoriales
    • Almut Hintze: The Pahlavi Psalter in its Historical Context
    • Philip Huyse: Klimawandel und die spätantike Pest im sasanidischen Reich
    • Götz König: Notizen zur Überlieferung und zum Gebrauch der Yašts
    • Pavel B. Lurje and Boris Zheleznyakov: “Let Buyruq Sangun Live Long and be Divinely Blessed” Another Sogdian Dedicatory Inscription
    • Maria Macuch: Trading with Infidels: A Balancing Act in Zoroastrian Legal Reasoning
    • Mauro Maggi: Blowing out saṃsāra in Khotan.
    • Jaime Martínez Porro: A Brief Note on an Avestan Quotation in the Wizī̆rgerd ī̆ Dēnī̆g
    • Enrico Morano: Fragments from a Sogdian Cosmogonical Manuscript in Manichaean Script.
    • Antonio Panaino: The ‘starred’ Frawahr and the ‘Katasterization’ of Humanity
    • Anna-Grethe Rischel: Studies of ‘Watermarks of Technology’ from the Turfan Collection in Berlin
    • Adriano V. Rossi: Minima Iranica for Dieter
    • Nikolaus Schindel: Zur Bronzeprägung des Ohrmazd IV.
    • Martin Schwartz: Mnemonica Iranica
    • Nicholas Sims-Williams: Further Notes on Sogdians in Khotan
    • Yutaka Yoshida: Training of Scribes along the Silk Road: A Case from Manichaean Sogdian
    • Arash Zeini: The Covenant that Binds: Ownership of Life in Late Antique Zoroastrianism

  • Lost Turfan Fragments

    Benkato, Adam. 2024. Lost Turfan fragments from the Nachlass of W.B. Henning. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, FirstView. 1–17.

    During the Second World War, a number of manuscript fragments in Iranian languages from the Berlin Turfan collections were lost. Photographs of these fragments preserved in the Nachlass of Walter B. Henning bring to light their contents and fill gaps in the record of Turfan texts. These photographs are published here for the first time, together with a description of the fragments and their contents.

    Abstract

  • Studies in Iranian Philology

    Barbera, Gerardo, Matteo De Chiara, Alessandro Del Tomba, Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā, Federico Dragoni & Paola Orsatti (eds.). 2024. Siddham. Studies in Iranian philology in honour of Mauro Maggi. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag.

    This volume is a tribute to Mauro Maggi, celebrating his distinguished career and significant contributions in the fields of Iranian, Indo-Aryan, and Central Asian philology and linguistics. It features a diverse collection of papers presented by colleagues, former students, and friends, reflecting the broad spectrum of Mauro Maggi’s research interests. This collection not only honours Mauro Maggi’s extensive scholarly contributions but also serves as a valuable resource for researchers in Iranian, Indo-Aryan, and Central Asian studies. It will be of interest and value to scholars of Iranian philology and linguistics, as well as those in Indo-European linguistics, Central Asian philology, and Buddhist literature. Through this comprehensive tribute, the volume underscores the lasting impact of Mauro Maggi’s work and his enduring legacy in the field.

    Description
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  • Graffiti in Middle Iranian

    Cereti, Carlo G. 2023. Graffiti in Middle Iranian: Some Preliminary Notes. In Ondřej Škrabal, Leah Mascia, Ann Lauren Osthof & Malena Ratzke (eds.), Graffiti Scratched, Scrawled, Sprayed: Towards a Cross-Cultural Understanding (Studies in Manuscript Cultures 35), 327–354. De Gruyter.

    Graffito from Kal Jangal (after Henning 1977, Plate XXVII)

    This article aims to present a limited selection of Middle Iranian graffiti while proposing a definition of the term ‘graffito’ in the Iranian area. Middle Iranian languages were spoken over a vast region that stretches from Mesopotamia to Central Asia. Traditionally, scholars in our field consider the Middle Iranian period to cover the fourth century BCE to the end of the first millennium CE. The number of known written artefacts dating from this period has progressively increased and today we possess a sizeable epigraphic corpus, of which languages such as Middle Persian, Parthian and Sogdian take the lion’s share. Here the author presents a selection of written artefacts that, on material and linguistic grounds, seem to better fit the idea of ‘graffito’, and briefly focuses on a few drawings scratched into palace walls in ancient Persepolis. Furthermore, the article aims at contributing to the growing debate on graffiti across different traditions, while remaining well aware that the definition of ‘graffiti’ in the Iranian area is still an open question and requires further discussion to establish a shared classification.

    The entire volume is available online as Open Access.

  • The Syriac Script at Turfan

    Galatello, Martina. 2023. The Syriac Script at Turfan. First Soundings (Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik 90). Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

    This is the first book-length palaeographic study of about a thousand fragments in Syriac and Sogdian languages discovered between 1902 and 1914 in the Turfan area on the ancient Northern Silk Roads. This manuscript material, probably dating between the late 8th and 13th /14th centuries, is of utmost relevance for the history of an area that represents a crossroads region of various communities, languages and religions, not least the East Syriac Christian community. Palaeographic factors such as form, modulus, ductus, contrast, spaces between letters and ligatures have been examined. Particularly significant is a peculiar ligature of the letters ṣādē and nūn. One important observation that emerges from this research is the almost total absence of monumental script in favour of mostly cursive forms, most of them East Syriac cursive forms. These represent a valuable source for the study of the history of the East Syriac script due to the paucity of earlier and contemporary East Syriac manuscript evidence from the Middle East, at least before the twelfth century. Moreover, this research sheds light on scribal habits that are highly relevant for a better comprehension of the Sogdian and Syriac-speaking Christian communities, for the history of writing between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and for a greater understanding of the social context in which these and other communities in the same area read, wrote, and shared handwritten texts. This study is part of the FWF stand-alone project “Scribal Habits. A case study from Christian Medieval Central Asia” (PI Chiara Barbati) at the Institute of Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

    • The book is available for free through open access, and you can download it directly from the publisher’s website.

  • The Book of Zambasta

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2022. The Book of Zambasta. Metre and stress in Old Khotanese (Beiträge Zur Iranistik Band 49). Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

    Khotanese, a language belonging to the Iranian branch of Indo-European, which was spoken in the first millennium CE, has a rich literature including the Book of Zambasta, a poetic exposition of Mahāyāna Buddhism in 24 chapters. This poem makes use of three metres, whose nature has been a matter of controversy for more than a century. While its first editor, Ernst Leumann (1859–1931), regarded Khotanese metre as essentially quantitative (moraic) and derived it from a Proto-Indo-European metrical system supposedly reflected also in the Greek hexameter and the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, other scholars have understood it in very different ways: as a purely stress-based metre related to that of poetry in some other Iranian languages; as an adaptation of Indian metrics; or as representing a transitional stage from a quantitative to a stress-based system. The present work offers a closely-argued new analysis, demonstrating that the metre is indeed based on the quantitative (moraic) principle, but with an obligatory ictus in the cadences which leads to the systematic lightening of certain unstressed syllables. The results shed light on the equally controversial issue of Khotanese accentuation and many other aspects of the language and its history. The book includes the complete text of the poem with interlinear scansion. Additional fully searchable text-files available online make it possible for any reader to check the arguments and results.

    Table of Contents (ToC)

  • A Manichaean Prayer and Confession Book

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas, John S. Sheldon & Zsuzsanna Gulácsi. 2022. A Manichaean prayer and confession book. (Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum: Series Iranica 1). Turnhout: Brepols.

    The Manichaean Prayer and Confession Book is the best-preserved Manichaean book found in the Turfan area and the only one which survives in the form of a bound codex. It constitutes a precious treasure-trove of information on its three Iranian languages, on the Manichaean religion itself, and on Manichaean codicology and book-art. The surviving parts of this beautifully decorated miniature paper codex include Middle Persian and Parthian hymns and readings for the Bema festival, the high-point of the Manichaean liturgical calendar, followed by an elaborate confessional formula for the Elect in the Sogdian language. Until now this manuscript has been accessible for scholarship only from its 1937 edition in German by W. B. Henning, titled ‘Ein manichäisches Bet- und Beichtbuch’ (BBB). This new edition provides the first English translation by Nicholas Sims-Williams, the first codicological study by Zsuzsanna Gulacsi and an introduction by John S. Sheldon. It also includes the supplementary Sogdian texts which Henning added to his ‘BBB’. It incorporates magnificent colour photos, codicological diagrams, and digital reconstructions never seen before. This beautifully-produced volume appropriately inaugurates the Series Iranica of the Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum.