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Xerxes against Hellas

Funke, Peter, György Németh, András Patay-Horváth & Josef Wiesehöfer (eds.). Xerxes against Hellas: An Iconic Conflict from Different Perspectives (Oriens et Occidens 44). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

It is almost exactly 2500 years ago that the decisive clashes of the Persian Wars at Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataia took place. These battles were attributed world-historical significance in antiquity and, even more so, in the centuries that followed. Yet, the details of what happened, as well as their military-political and cultural impact and detailed evaluation, have been the subject of much controversial research, not least because of the difficult nature of the sources. The present volume is the outcome of a conference held in Budapest which celebrated the anniversary of Xerxes’ expedition against Hellas by discussing old and new questions related to the war and the history of its reception. It was jointly organised by the editors of the volume and attracted speakers from around the globe.

The volume brings together scholars of all branches of classical studies and related disciplines and is organised in two sections: (i) Graeco-Persian Wars, Diplomacy and Acculturation, (ii) Commemorating and remembering the war from antiquity to the present. 19 contributors from 10 different countries provide a good overview of ongoing studies in the field.

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Dabir (vol. 11)

Volume 11 of Dabir (2024) is now available both online and in print, featuring two issues:

Table of Contents:

  • David Gilinsky: A Newly Discovered Jewish Persian Poet
  • Mateusz M.P. Kłagisz: A Supplementary Contribution to Research on Turkish Köse, Iranian Kuse and Their Slavic Zoomorphic Counterparts
  • Esmaeil Matloubkari: wkl or hwkd: Reading the Legitimizing Title on the Sasanian King Walāsh Coin
  • Yusef Saadat: nihang and āhang: Two Administrative Terms in Middle Persian and Bactrian
  • Hossein Sheikh: One Hundred Thousand Greetings! The Opening Section of Early Judeo-Persian Letters
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Ash-Sharq

The two issues of volume 8 of Ash-Sharq are published and contain several interesting contributions. Below are listed the articles that deal with Iranian studies:

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The Capture of Jerusalem

Anthony, Sean W. & Stephen J. Shoemaker. 2024. The capture of Jerusalem by the Persians in 614 CE by Strategius of Mar Saba (Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Near East 5). Chicago: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures.

In 614 CE, the armies of Sasanid Persia shocked the Eastern Roman Empire when they besieged and captured Jerusalem, taking a large swath of its population into captivity along with the city’s patriarch and the famed relic of the True Cross. This astounding Persian victory over Christian Jerusalem was a key episode in the last war between Rome and Persia in 602–628 CE and occurred at the high tide of Persian advances into the Roman territories in Asia Minor, the Levant, and Egypt. Among those taken captive was a certain Strategius, a monk of Mar Saba, who subsequently took it upon himself to compose a homily recounting the events leading up to the Persian siege of the Holy City and its aftermath.

Strategius presents his pious and harrowing account as that of an eyewitness to many of the events he recounts. For events he did not himself witness, he purports to rely on contemporary informants who did, making his treatise a source with few parallels in late antiquity. Although Strategius’s original account in Greek is lost, it survives via later translations into Georgian and Christian Arabic, two languages that attained prominence in the monasteries of Palestine during the Islamic period. This volume provides, for the first time, a complete side-by-side English translation of both the Georgian and the Arabic recensions.

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Iran and the Caucasus 28 (4-5)

The issues 4-5 of volume 28 of Iran and the Caucasus are published and contain several interesting contributions. Below are listed the articles that deal with Iranian studies:

  • Marco Ferrario: Restricted Access Expanders of the Realm. Sacred Kingship and Empire in Early Achaemenid Central Asia
  • Matthias Weinreich: Restricted Access Out of the Mouth of Babes … (Ps. 8:2). Children as Mediums in Pahlavi Literature
  • Mariam Gvelesiani: Georgia and Sasanian Iran. Some Aspects of Royal Imagery in Early Christian Georgian Art and Literary Tradition
  • Saloumeh Gholami and Mehraban Pouladi: Linguistic Insights from a Bilingual Letter: The Malati Dialect of Zoroastrian Dari in Yazd Part I. Transcription, Translation, and Linguistic Structure

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Recent Studies on Persian-Greek Relations

Kühne, Sebastian. 2024. Kommunikation, Konsens und Konflikt: neuere Untersuchungen zu den persisch-griechischen Beziehungen (Oriens et occidens 43). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

Sebastian Kühne addresses selected aspects of the political interactions between the Greek city-states of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE and the Achaemenid Empire. He examines the relationships that developed between these two powers from a consistently Persian perspective. The study focuses on the mechanisms of diplomatic exchange between the Greek poleis and the Persian Great Kings and, building on this, the outcomes of these political interactions, which have gone down in history as the “King’s Peace” and the “Peace of Pelopidas.” Finally, the analysis highlights the tools available to the Achaemenid rulers to assert their interests vis-à-vis the Greek city-states. Through his analysis, the author revises older scholarly views that have dominated previous studies on Greek-Persian agreements and military conflicts, bringing to light new aspects regarding the diplomatic exchanges between Greece and the Achaemenid Empire.

For the table of contents see here.

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New Voices in Iranian Archaeology

Alizadeh, Karim & Megan Cifarelli (eds.). 2024. New voices in Iranian archaeology. Barnsley: Oxbow Books.

This volume highlights the excellent, wide-ranging work of a diverse collection of Iranian archaeologists, the new voices in Iranian archaeology. Archaeology in Iran has developed in lockstep with the discipline of archaeology itself, in part due to the colonial endeavors that provided impetus for Europeans to travel to distant lands and extract antiquities and other commodities. But centuries before western archaeologists broke ground on excavations in the lands that would in 1935 be called Iran, a deep and meaningful engagement with and reverence for the past was a thread running through Iranian culture since antiquity. For millennia, the residents and rulers of ancient Iranian lands have admired, interacted with, inscribed, invented stories about, and imitated the visible, often ruined, monuments of their ancestors that dotted the landscape

Description
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Parthica (vol. 25)

Volume 25 of the journal Parthica (2023) contains several contributions of relevance to Iranian Studies.

  • Ronald Wallenfels: On the reuse of personal seals in the Hellenistic Near East
  • Robert S. Wójcikowski, Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, Michał Marciak, Bartłomiej Szypuła: Memorials of the battle of Gaugamela in the Navkur Plain
  • Roberto Dan: Hellenistic/Artaxiad remains in the Van fortress? Some thoughts on trench A6 excavated by the American expedition (1938-1939)
  • Francesca Michetti: Antroponimi battriani sulla monetazione pre-kušānide: tre proposte di etimologia
  • Edward Dąbrowa: Arsacid crudelitas: some observations
  • Enrico Foietta: A new altar with an enthroned goddess from Hatra (Iraq)
  • Valentina Gallerani: Parthian and sasanian settlement patterns in the Qadis survey area (Qadisiyah, Iraq)
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Social Biographies of the Ancient World

The latest issue of Journal of Ancient History (volume 12, issue 2) is a special issue: Social Biographies of the Ancient World with Jason M. Silverman as guest editor. Below is the list of articles:

  • Jason M. Silverman, Alex Aissaoui, Rotem Avneri Meir, Jutta Jokiranta, Nina Nikki, Adrianne Spunaugle, Joanna Töyräänvuori, Caroline Wallis, Melanie Wasmuth: Social Biographies of the Ancient World. Studying Ahatabu, Jonathan, and Babatha through a Bourdieusian Approach: Towards a New Historiographical Habitus
  • Adrianne Spunaugle: Ancient Near Eastern Field Theory: Adapting Bourdieu for Social Biographies of the Ancient World
  • Jason M. Silverman, Joanna Töyräänvuori, Melanie Wasmuth: Ahatabu and her Stela (ÄM 7707): Funerary Habitus in Achaemenid Egypt
  • Rotem Avneri Meir, Jutta Jokiranta, Adrianne Spunaugle: Functional Differentiation in 1 Maccabees: Exploring Second Century BCE Judean Society Through the Character of Jonathan Apphus
  • Caroline Wallis, Alex Aissaoui, Nina Nikki: Falling Out with the In-Laws. Understanding the Babatha Archive with Pierre Bourdieu’s Field Theory and Theory of Practice.
  • Emanuel Pfoh: Ancient Individuals and Bourdieu in Context: A Historical Anthropological Response
  • Olga Zeveleva: A Sociological Response: Challenging the Modernity-centrism of Pierre Bourdieu’s Field Approach
  • Helen Dixon: A Levantine Archaeological Response: Thinking with Bourdieu though Limited Data and Explicit Assumptions
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The Medieval Persian Gulf

Ulrich, Brian. 2023. The Medieval Persian Gulf. Leeds: Arc-Humanities.

The Persian Gulf today is home to multiple cosmopolitan urban hubs of globalization. This did not start with the discovery of oil. This book tells of the Gulf from the rise of Islam until the coming of the Portuguese, when port cities such as Siraf, Sohar, and Hormuz were entrepots for trading pearls, horses, spices, and other products across much of Asia and eastern Africa. Indeed, products traded there became a key part of the material culture of medieval Islamic civilization, and the Gulf region itself was a crucial membrane between the Middle East and the world of the broader Indian Ocean. The book also highlights the long-term presence of communities of South Asian and African ancestry, as well as patterns of religious change among Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Muslims that belie the image of a region long polarized between Arabs and Persians and Sunnis and Shi’ites.