Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Sasanian

  • Iran, Volume 62, Issue 2 (2024)

    The table of contents of the latest issue (62/2) of the journal Iran:

    • Abbas Moghaddam & Elnaz Rashidian: Visiting Tol-e Tahmachi, a Fifth Millennium BCE Settlement in the Persian Gulf Littoral, Southwest Iran
    • Sheler Amelirad & Behroz Khanmohamadi: Typological Study of Metal Pins in Northwestern Iran Based on the Bayazid Abad (Bayazi Awa) Archaeological Assemblage
    • Mostafa Dehpahlavan & Zahra Alinezhad: The Cylinder Seals of Qareh Tepe in Sagzabad, Iron Age II and III
    • Mohsen Javeri & Majid Montazer Zohouri: Vigol and Harāskān Fire Temple: Archaeological Evidence About the Veneration of Fire in the Center of the Iranian Plateau During the Sasanian Period
    • Shahram Jalilian & Touraj Daryaee: The Image of the Sasanian King in the Perso-Arabic Historical Tradition
    • Esmaeil Sangari, Zohreh Noori, Amirhossein Moghaddas, Aliakbar Abbasi & Reza Dehghani: The Iconography of Dancers and Their Garments on Sasanid Silver Vessels (Case Study: Four Silver Vessels with Different Features)
    • Michael Shenkar: The So-Called “Fravašis” and the “Heaven and Hell” Paintings, and the Cult of Nana in Panjikent
    • Moujan Matin: A Medieval Stonepaste Ceramic Production Site in Moshkin Tepe, Iran: Ceramics, Wasters, and Manufacturing Equipment
    • Philip Henning Grobien: The Origins and Intentions of the Anglo-Persian Agreement 1919: A Reassessment

  • Land and Power in the Sasanian Empire

    A workshop organised by Tommy Benfey (Tübingen) and Richard Payne (Chicago).

    Middle Persian ostracon dealing with bread rations from Chāl Ṭarkhān-Eshqābād, photograph courtesy of ISAC Museum, Chicago
    Friday, October 25, 2024
    Land and Power in the Sasanian EmpireDownload

    The workshop is co-sponsored by the University of Chicago and the University of Tübingen.


  • 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.

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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.

    Website Summary

  • Iran, Volume 62, Issue 1 (2024)

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

  • 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.

  • Varia Manichaica

    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 Benkato: A Fragment of an Iranian Manichaean ‘Oral Tradition’
    • Fernando Bermejo-Rubio: Mani as a paradigm of the Manichaean Church in the Cologne Mani Codex
    • Şehnaz Biçer and Betül Özbay: The Lotus illustration in a Manichaean manuscript
    • Iris Colditz: Strategies for success. Manichaeism under the early Sasanians
    • Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: An update of Boyce’s Catalogue of Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian 
    • Eduard Iricinschi: How Do Wisdom, Law, and Revelation a Religion Make? Appropriation and Displacement in the ‘Chapters of the Wisdom of My Lord Mani’
    • Samuel N.C. Lieu: A catalogue of the Uygur Manichaean texts 
    • Enrico Morano: Uygur in the Manichaean Sogdian texts in Manichaean script from the Berlin Turfan Collection 
    • Nicholas Sims-Williams: The “seven adversities” in a Manichaean Sogdian hymn
    • Michel Tardieu: La métaphore de l’auberge
    • Peter Zieme: “Worte für die Seele”. Altuigurische manichäische Fragmente with an appendix by Yutaka Yoshida

  • 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

  • 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.