Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Old Persian

  • Persian Mazdaism in Cappadocia

    Persian Mazdaism in Cappadocia

    Fattori, Marco & Marco F. Ferrari. 2025. Zeus Pharnauas and Persian Mazdaism in Cappadocia. Iran 1–16.

    This article deals with the spread of Iranian religion in the western regions of the Achaemenid Empire by means of a combined analysis of historical and linguistic data. The core of the discussion is about the word Φαρνάουας, which appears as an epithet of Zeus in a Greek inscription from Roman Cappadocia. After showing, on linguistic grounds, that this epithet must have originated in the empire heartland during the Achaemenid period, some reflections are offered on the way by which Persian religious elements ended up in Cappadocia. In the framework of a survey of the traces of Iranian religion in Achaemenid and post-Achaemenid Cappadocia, another interesting point of contact between Cappadocia and the local cultic reality of Persia is pointed out – the female theonym *R̥tāna fravr̥tiš “Frauuaṣ̌i of the Righteous”, both attested in the Cappadocian calendar and the Elamite administrative documents from Persepolis.

  • Studia Persica 23

    Studia Persica 23

    Afshin-Vafaie, Mohammad & Pejman Firoozbakhsh (eds.). 2024. Studia Persica in memory of Dr. Mahmoud Afshar Yazdi, volume 23. Tehran: Dr. Mahmoud Afshar Endowment Foundation.

    The volume contains several interesting papers on different aspects of Iranian Studies. Here is the table of contents:

    • S. ALIYARI BABOLGHANI: Old Persian <θ> /θ₁, θ₂/: Phonetic Value(s) and Phonological Development(s) into Middle Persian
    • D. DURAND-GUÉDY: The State of the Rum Saljuqs as Reflected in the Honorific Titles (alqāb) of its Servants: Edition and Commentary of the khiṭāb Section of Ms. Marʿashī 11136 (Qiṣṣa-yi salāṭīn)
    • A. A. KHOSRAVI: Pahlavi Inscriptions in the Name of Yazdgird III on Silk Textiles Found in China
    • D. STILO: The Category of Stative in Three Iranian Languages
    • A. A. TONOYAN & V. S. VOSKANIAN: Caucasian Persian (Tati): History of Study, Current State and Perspectives
    • S. AYDENLOO: A Reconsideration of the Infinitive čaftan and its Use in the Shahnameh
    • A. ARGHAVAN: Saʿdī’s Tomb and the Oldest Representations of the Čahāršanba-sūrī Festival in Shahnameh Manuscripts
    • I. AFSHAR: Bookbinding
    • M. AFSHIN-VAFAIE: Dodarz madōz: Concerning One of Ḫusraw Anōširwān’s Dicta
    • M. OMIDSALAR: Nibelungenlied as a Folk Epic and the Shahnameh as a Literary Epic
    • B. IMANI: Anwār al-Rawḍat wa Asrār al-Bayḍat: Similes of Sayf al-Dīn Isparanganī’s Lost Work, Rawḍat al-Quds wa Bayḍat al-Uns
    • H. BORJIAN: Persian Lexemes in the 14th-Century Rasulid Hexoglot
    • J. BASHARI: The Compendia of Asʿad b. Aḥmad Kātib, a Shirazi Sufi from the 15th Century CE
    • A. R. BAHARLOO & K. MOTAGHEDI: The Šikl-i Šāh Relief at Tanga-yi Band-i Burīda: The Last Qajar Rock-carving from the Time of Naser-al-Din Shah
    • S. SAJJADI: Zaryāb, the Creative Cultural Architect
    • Y. SAADAT: The Origin of the Philosophical Senses of Middle Persian Words ǰahišn and ǰadag and the Arabic Word ʿaraḍ
    • M. R. SHAFI’I KADKANI: Qazvin’s Public and Private Libraries from the beginning to the 13th Century CE
    • E. SHEYKH-OL-HOKAMAEE & P. AKBARI: The Mosque of the Šayḫ al-Islām Madrasa in Qazvin and its Endowment Document, dated 1903
    • A. A. SADEGHI: On Muṣāḥib’s Persian Encyclopedia
    • A. SAFARI AGH-GHALEH: The Background of the Wāq Figure in Iranian Art and its Relationship to the Wāq-Wāq and Zaqqūm Trees
    • A. TABIBZADEH: Šammarān or Hāmāwarān? A Toponym in Iranian Mythical and Historical Sources
    • M. ABDEAMIN & B. ABOUTORABIAN: Tehran Arg Mosque, Also Known as Masǧid-i Mādar-i Fatḥʿalī-Šāh
    • M. EMADI HAERI: Three Ascetic Verses from the 11th Century CE: Newly-found Verses by Abū al-Muẓaffar Tirmadī and Ḫwāǧa Imām-i Zāhid
    • P. FIROOZBAKHSH: The Persian Translation of al-Fātiḥa Attributed to Salmān-i Fārsī
    • A. R. QAEMMAQAMI & V. IDGAH TORGHABEHI: The Word, bīmār: A Study of its Etymology and Pronunciation
    • M. MOHAMMADI: On the Fahlavi Origin of the Wīs u Rāmīn
    • D. MONCHI-ZADEH: Die Fabelwesen (Persian translation by A. R. QAEMMAQAMI)
    • R. MOUSAVI TABARI: An Investigation of Two Persian Words: low and lāw
  • Iran and the Caucasus 29 (2)

    Iran and the Caucasus 29 (2)

    Volume 29, issue 2, of Iran and the Caucasus has now been published. While all articles relate to the focus of BiblioIranica, two stand particularly out:

    This article is open access.

    Ever since its preliminary publication, Xerxes’ “Daiva” inscription (XPh) has been seen as an important and unique witness to early Achaemenid Mazdean orthopraxy and cultic propaganda. It is an essential document that captures a major reform in Achaemenid-Zoroastrian cult patterns and its relationship to cognate cults. This royal inscription describes a liturgical reform or, at least, the enforcement of such a reform, targeting and condemning the cult of the daivā—a designation describing competing deities. The key to decoding this reform hinges upon an obscure expression that appears thrice in the document—normalized as a-r-t-a-c-a : b-r-z-m-n-i-y—the meaning of which is yet to be fully understood. In this article, I revisit and analyze the various approaches previously taken to interpreting this remarkable syntagm and provide a methodological approach and a broader and more comprehensive translation which is presented in a more holistic comparative context—including onomastic, epigraphic and archeological data.

    Abstract

    There is no unified Yezidi source that would give a complete understanding of sins and retribution in this tradition. The article is an attempt to identify a number of sins and the expected retributions for them, based on the analysis of the text A’lī Šērē Xwadē Āxiratēdā—“ ‘Ali, the Lion of God in the Hereafter”. The text, which can be attributed to the apologetic genre, tells about ‘Ali’s journey to the afterlife and the opportunity he was given to see the punishments of sinners, in order to pass on this information to people in the “world of light”, i.e. the material world.

    Abstract
  • Recent publications by Maria Carmela Benvenuto

    Recent publications by Maria Carmela Benvenuto

    We would like to bring a number of recent publications by Maria Carmela Benvenuto and her collaborators to the attention of our readers. Her publications are listed on her departmental page, but also on her academia account.

  • The ezāfe-like construction in Old Iranian

    Gentile, Simone. 2024. The ezāfe-like construction in Old Iranian: A reassessment. Ricerche Linguistiche 1.

    This paper addresses the origins of the (proto-)ezāfe in Old Iranian, challenging traditional analyses that have classified the ‘ezāfe’-like structures in Avestan and Old Persian as adjectival formations. This hypothesis is primarily based on the case agreement between the relative pronoun and the head noun. This paper presents
    an alternative interpretation, proposing that these constructions should be viewed as relative clauses (RCs) with omitted copulas. From this perspective, the omission of the copula triggers the so-called attractio relativi, a phenomenon observed in various Indo-European languages, thus challenging prior claims. The idea that
    RCs may have served as precursors to the Persian ezāfe and potentially contributed to the formation of definite articles in some Middle Eastern Iranian languages remains compelling. However, in earlier stages, these structures are best understood as reduced RCs, lacking an explicit copula.

    Abstract

  • New remarks on §70 of the Bisotun Inscription

    Fattori, Marco. 2024. New epigraphic and exegetical remarks on paragraph 70 of the Bisotun inscription, Old Persian version (DB/OP IV ll. 88–92). Ricerche Linguistiche 1. 105–133.

    The preprint of the article is available from the author’s Academia page.

    This paper aims to provide a new edition of paragraph 70 of the Old Persian version of the Bisotun inscription (DB/OP IV ll. 88-92). Although this badly preserved passage received an enormous scholarly attention, only a few researchers could directly examine the inscription, and their editions differ significantly from one another. In absence of good published photographs, it is currently impossible to critically evaluate the reliability of these editions and propose new readings based on a first-hand inspection of the stone. To overcome this inconvenience, this article includes a full photographic documentation of the passage and a detailed discussion of each reading. Since this new examination of the inscription resulted in the improvement of several readings, the edition is followed by a commentary where a possible interpretation of the newly read words is offered.

    Abstract

  • The Old Persian Inscriptions

    Schmitt, Rüdiger. 2023. Die altpersischen Inschriften der Achaimeniden: Editio minor mit deutscher Übersetzung. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

    In this book may be found a complete edition and German translation of the Old Persian texts of the mostly trilingual cuneiform inscriptions of the Persian kings from the Achaemenid dynasty. Only the minor corpora of vase inscriptions and those on seals and weights are passed over, because they are of only narrow historical meaning. The edition presents the transliterated and the transcribed texts in two columns next to each other and beneath them succinct annotations and the translation respectively, which tries to render the original wording as literally as possible. The book starts with a list of all the Achaemenid cuneiform inscriptions (also those written not in Old Persian script and language), that describes the texts in outline and includes the literature relevant for constituting and translating the texts in question.

  • Miscellanea Epigraphica Susiana

    Fattori, Marco. 2023. Miscellanea Epigraphica Susiana. Textual Observations on some Achaemenid Inscriptions from Susa. Arta 2023.003.

    This article presents some new philological observations on three Achaemenid texts from Susa (DSe, DSi, A2Se) based on a new inspection of the inscriptions. These include the edition of previously unpublished fragments and the attribution of previously misplaced fragments to the texts under examination. For each inscription, a brief epigraphic, philological and linguistic commentary is provided.

  • Servant or Slave

    Sheikh, Hossein. 2023. Servant or slave: The Old Persian words Bandaka, Marika and Daha and their cognates in Middle Iranian languages. In: Jeannine Bischoff, Stephan Conermann and Marion Gymnich (eds.), Naming, defining, phrasing strong asymmetrical dependencies: A textual approach, 55-67. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.

    In this paper, I will briefly examine the concept of superiority/inferiority in the Achaemenid administrative system in particular and in the ancient Iranian world in general. In doing so, I will focus on the word bandaka, its meanings and its nuance in Iranian languages in the context of ancient Near Eastern culture, as this word plays a very important role in the definition of terminology related to slavery and associated terms in the Iranian world. In addition, I will discuss two additional words related to this topic that shed more light on the concept of superiority/inferiority in Ancient Iranian societies. Our main sources for this study are inscriptions, letters and contracts from a variety of Western and Central Asian cultures. In this study, I chose three Middle Iranian languages, Sogdian, Pahlavi, and Bactrian, because the geography in which these languages were spoken was a part of the Achaemenid Empire.

  • A Portuguese edition of the Behistun Inscription (Old Persian text)

    Treuk Medeiros de Araujo, Matheus. 2023. A inscrição de Behistun (c. 520 a.C.): tradução do texto Persa Antigo para o Português, introdução crítica e comentários. Revista de História 182, 1-35.

    The monumental Achaemenid inscription at mount Behistun (Bisitun), in the Iranian province of Kermanshah (western Iran), reports the official version of Darius’ accession to power in Ancient Persia. Written in three languages and scripts (Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian), this invaluable historical document was vital to the decipherment of the cuneiform script in the 19th century. It also enabled the reconstruction of the Achaemenid Empire’s history, previously known to us mainly through the accounts of Greek and biblical sources. Due to the importance and uniqueness of the Behistun Inscription, we propose the translation of the Old Persian text directly to the Portuguese language, providing wider access to the document for specialized and non-specialized audiences. Historical commentaries approaching the most important debates associated with the inscription also follow the text.