The workshop is co-sponsored by the University of Chicago and the University of Tübingen.
Hyland, John O. & Khodadad Rezakhani (eds.). 2024. Brill’s companion to war in the ancient Iranian empires (Brill’s Companions to Classical Studies: Warfare in the Ancient Mediterranean World 9). Leiden: Brill.
Brill’s Companion to War in the Ancient Iranian Empires examines military structures and methods from the Elamite period through the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Arsacid, and Sasanian empires. War played a critical role in Iranian state formation and dynastic transitions, imperial ideologies and administration, and relations with neighbouring states and peoples from Central Asia to the Mediterranean. Twenty chapters by leading experts offer fresh approaches to the study of ancient Iranian armies, strategy, diplomacy, and battlefield methods, and contextualise famous conflicts with Greek and Roman opponents.
Table of Contents
Kotyk, Jeffrey. 2024. Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian relations in Late Antiquity: China and the Parthians, Sasanians, and Arabs in the first millennium (Crossroads – History of Interactions across the Silk Routes 8). Leiden: Brill.
What type of exchanges occurred between West and East Asia in the first millennium CE? What sort of connections existed between Persia and China? What did the Chinese know of early Islam?
Website Summary
This study offers an overview of the cultural, diplomatic, commercial, and religious relationships that flourished between Iran and China, building on the pioneering work of Berthold Laufer’s Sino-Iranica (1919) while utilizing a diverse array of Classical Chinese sources to tell the story of Sino-Iran in a fresh light to highlight the significance of transcultural networks across Asia in late antiquity.
The table of contents of the latest issue (62/1) of the journal Iran:
Colburn, Henry P., Betty Hensellek & Judith A. Lerner (eds.). 2023. In Search of Cultural Identities in West and Central Asia: A Festschrift for Prudence Oliver Harper (Inner and Central Asian Art and Archaeology 3). Turnhout: Brepols.
How do we reconstruct ancient societies’ cultural and visual identities? Prudence Oliver Harper has dedicated her scholarly and curatorial career to piecing together the material culture of communities across ancient Western Asia, Iran, and Central Asia. A number of her colleagues – art historians, archaeologists, philologists, and conservators – have contributed essays to this volume to reflect Harper’s range of contributions throughout her six-decade career. Many of the essays focus on ancient metalwork, Harper’s major expertise, while others on glyptics, ivory, or glass, three of her other interests. The essays aim to make sense of this region’s diverse cultural identities, many of which are the results of cross-cultural exchange. Some authors have employed iconographical or socio-historical approaches; others have complementarily opened new facets of cultural identities through technical and scientific analyses, collection history, and provenance research.
Morano, Enrico & Samuel N. C. Lieu (eds.). 2024. Varia Manichaica (Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum. Analecta Manichaica 3). Turnhout: Brepols.
This volume brings together the works of some of the best known and most established scholars in Gnostic and Manichaean studies, Iranologists and art historians. It contains two important and indispensable catalogues of Turfan texts and also studies covering topics such as cosmogony, hymnology and manuscript illumination. A number of Turfan texts in Sogdian and Uygur are published here for the first time.
Table of Contents
Blair, Sheila, Jonathan M. Bloom & Sandra Williams (eds.). 2024. Iranian art from the Sasanians to the Islamic Republic. Essays in honour of Linda Komaroff (Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Introduces Iranian art from classical to contemporary media, showing how art can be a source for history and politics
- Takes a broad view of the Persianate world
- Opens a traditional field in new directions
- Presents a combination of senior scholars and younger voices, and includes perspectives from Asia, Europe and the USA
- Combines views from the academy, the museum and the laboratory, ranging from the practical to the theoretical
Gyselen, Rika (ed.). 2024. Administrations et préposés d’époque sassanide. Nouvelles données à la mémoire de Philippe Gignoux (Cahiers de Studica Iranica 66). Paris: Association pour l’Avancement des études iraniennes.
This volume brings together studies based on primary sources, often unpublished, which highlight important aspects of the administration of the Sasanian Empire. Some complete our knowledge on the territorial establishment of the various administrations and of the mints, others deal with the actors of these institutions such as the magi and the scribes. The sources used are mainly seals and seal impressions on clay bullae.
Summary
Forsén, Björn & Antti Lampinen (eds.). 2024. Oriental Mirages: Stereotypes and Identity Creation in the Ancient World (Oriens et Occidens 42). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Edward Said, in his seminal book Orientalism, perceived clear links between the ancient Greek and Roman stereotypes of the East and the prejudiced European nineteenth-century picture of the Muslim world, which was considered exotic, backward, uncivilised, degenerate, and dangerous, in contrast with the Western societies that were seen as developed, rational, flexible, and, above all, superior. However, the reality is much more complex – shaped by both the imperialist perceptions of defeated enemies embraced by all Middle Eastern empires going back at least to the Assyrians, and the intermixed admiration and jealousy of the old ‘Eastern’ traditions of learning. Part of the Greek and Roman stereotypes of the East are rooted in the interaction with eastern imperial ideals, being taken over and further developed to strengthen common Hellenic and Roman identities. Due to the subsequent free borrowing of these stereotypes and their application to different societies, the Orient has always been a moving ‘(n)everwhere’ with each culture constructing their own Oriental mirages.
Miri, Negin & Cyrus Nasrollahzadeh. 2023. Another bulla of Weh-Šāpur, Ērān- Spāhbed of Kust-i-Nēmrōz from the Treasury of Mostazafan Foundation’s Cultural Institution of Museums in Tehran. ISIMU 26: 145-155.
This paper introduces a newly-found Sasanian bulla that has two seal impressions, the major of which belongs to Wēh-šāpur, military chief or Ērān-spāhbed of kust-ī-nēmrōz or the south-southeast side of the Sasanian Empire during the reign of Ḵosrow I (539-579 AD). Since 2001 a number of spāhbed bullae have been identified and published. These significant objects confirmed the validity of historical narrations regarding quadripartition of military organization of the Sasanian Empire recorded in late and post-Sasanian literary sources. This sealing is part of a bullae collection kept in the treasury of Mostazafan Foundation’s Cultural Institution of Museums in Tehran and offers the fifth example of spāhbed Wēh-šābuhr seal impression so far known and published.