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War in the Ancient Iranian Empires

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

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Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian Relations in Late Antiquity

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?
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.

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Journal

Iran, Volume 62, Issue 1 (2024)

The table of contents of the latest issue (62/1) of the journal Iran:

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Books

In Search of Cultural Identities in West and Central Asia

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.

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Books

Varia Manichaica

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

  • Sergio Basso: “Manichaean fragments related to the ‘Barlaam and Ioasaph saga’”
  • Adam BenkatoA Fragment of an Iranian Manichaean ‘Oral Tradition’
  • Fernando Bermejo-RubioMani as a paradigm of the Manichaean Church in the Cologne Mani Codex
  • Şehnaz Biçer and Betül ÖzbayThe Lotus illustration in a Manichaean manuscript
  • Iris Colditz: Strategies for success. Manichaeism under the early Sasanians
  • Desmond Durkin-MeisterernstAn update of Boyce’s Catalogue of Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian 
  • Eduard IricinschiHow Do Wisdom, Law, and Revelation a Religion Make? Appropriation and Displacement in the ‘Chapters of the Wisdom of My Lord Mani’
  • Samuel N.C. LieuA catalogue of the Uygur Manichaean texts 
  • Enrico MoranoUygur in the Manichaean Sogdian texts in Manichaean script from the Berlin Turfan Collection 
  • Nicholas Sims-WilliamsThe “seven adversities” in a Manichaean Sogdian hymn
  • Michel TardieuLa métaphore de l’auberge
  • Peter Zieme: “Worte für die Seele”. Altuigurische manichäische Fragmente with an appendix by Yutaka Yoshida
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Books

Iranian Art

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
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Books

Sasanian Administrations and Officials

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.

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Stereotypes and Identity Creation in the Ancient World

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.

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Articles

Another bulla of Weh-Šāpur

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.

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Books

Studies in Silk Road Archaeology

Xia, Nai. 2024. Studies in Silk Road Archaeology. Wiesbaden: Springer.

This book is a collection of Nai Xia’s quintessential works on Silk Road studies. A key resource in the field of Silk Road Archaeology, it features in-depth content, a broad range of material, careful textual research, and meticulous analysis. With thorough investigations of foreign coinage, silk textiles, and artifacts with foreign styles excavated in different parts of China, it explores the exchange between ancient China and Central Asia, Western Asia, and Europe. In particular, this book provides detailed descriptions of the economic and cultural ties between ancient China, Pre-Islamic Arabia, the Sasanian Empire, and the Byzantine Empire. The research propounds innovative theories on the history and evolution of East-West transportation routes, i.e., the overland Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road. Based on the study of ancient relics and excavated artifacts, it points out that cultural exchange along the Silk Road was never unilateral, but instead, mutual influence and cooperation were obvious. Since ancient times, countries along the Silk Road have had a tradition of amicable foreign relations and the promotion of common interests. The book is intended for academics, scholars and researchers.