Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

  • Studia Iranica (52/2)

    The new issue of Studia Iranica is out (volume 52, issue 2). Here is the table of contents:

    • En hommage à notre collègue et ami, cofondateur et premier codirecteur de Studia Iranica, membre du comité de rédaction, Philippe Gignoux 1er mars 1931, Solaize – 21 septembre 2023, Montmorillon
    • FATTORI, Marco: Avestan haēma and Middle Persian xēm ‘Character, Disposition’ On a Forgotten Line in the Iranian Xwaršēd Niyāyišn
    • GYSELEN, Rika: Aštād yazd-ayār, général du roi sassanide Husraw II Une trace sigillographique
    • NOURZAEI, Maryam: On Nominal and Pronominal Morphosyntax in Kholosi
    • DZITSTSOITY, Yuriy, FALILEYEV, Alexander: Ossetic qæbys / γæbes ‘Embrace’ and sæt / sætæ ‘Saliva’ Etymological Notes
    • RICHARD, Francis: Un témoignage inédit de la posterité de l’œuvre du peintre Behzād Collaboration ou émulation entre les peintres Qāsem-‘Ali et Behzād dans le Ketābḫāneh de Hérat
    • RYBÁR, Lukáš: Habsburg Intelligence on Safavid Persia. The Case of Michael Černović
    • GYSELEN, Rika: Philippe Gignoux (1931-2023)
    • Comptes rendus
  • Manichaeism: Encounters with Death

    Manichaeism: Encounters with Death

    Towers, Susanna. 2025. Manichaeism: Encounters with death. Studies in the material, spiritual and parabolic body (Studia Traditionis Theologiae 61). Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

    Born in Persian Mesopotamia in the year 232 CE, the self-proclaimed prophet Mani promulgated a dualist faith that rapidly spread throughout the Roman Empire, Central Asia and China. This monograph comprises a series of studies of the Manichaean conceptualization of death and the afterlife in the context of Manichaean soteriology, eschatology and anthropology. Material, documentary and liturgical evidence is analysed to enrich knowledge of Manichaean funeral ritual and mourning practice. The book explores the thematic symbolism of the corpse in Manichaean parabolic literature, offering fresh interpretations and exploring the influence of Buddhist teachings on the impermanence of the body, karma and metempsychosis.

    Summary
  • Amélie Kuhrt

    Amélie Kuhrt

    Briant, Pierre. 2025. Amélie Kuhrt. 23 September 1944 – 2 January 2023. Biographical memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy 22: 483-503.

    Amélie Kuhrt, eminent historian of the Ancient Near East, and more specifically renowned for her teaching at University College London, for actively contributing to organising the Achaemenid History Workshops and for her many leading publications on the Achaemenid Empire and Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylonia, died on 2 January 2023, after living for several years with Parkinson’s disease.

  • An Achaemenid Column Base from Farouq

    Shobairi, S.A. 2025. An Achaemenid column base from Farouq. ARTA 2025.003.

    This paper examines a column base from the Achaemenid period (ca. 550–330 BC), discovered in the village of Farouq, approximately 20 kilometers northeast of Persepolis, and provides a report and analysis of the issues surrounding this column base. Although its original location remains uncertain, similar examples have been documented at well-known Achaemenid sites in Fars. These parallels offer a basis for chronological analysis and may yield insights into the intended function of the column base.

  • Reflections on the Tapestry of Family and Household in Ancient Iran

    Reflections on the Tapestry of Family and Household in Ancient Iran

    Jahangirfar, Milad (ed.). 2025. Reflections on the Tapestry of Family and Household in Ancient Iran (Studia Persica 6). Bologna: Persiani Editore.

    This volume offers a collection of ten articles focusing on various aspects of family and household in ancient Iran (ca. the 2nd millennium BCE to ca. the end of the 7th century CE). This book deals with aspects of the family in pre-Islamic Iran that are less explored or require renewed attention. The contributions draw upon a range of sources, including Old Elamite documents, Middle Elamite terracotta figurines, Sogdian wall paintings, Old Persian inscriptions, Achaemenid administrative tablets, and passages from the Avesta and Middle Persian texts. The inclusion of references to Greek, Latin, and Armenian writings, and passages from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh enriches the discussion by bringing in alternative perspectives and accounts of relevant issues. Approaching the topic from a multidisciplinary perspective helps to create a more nuanced understanding of the role of family and household in ancient Iran.

    Contents
    – Introduction (Milad Jahangirfar)
    – Script and Witness as a Hereditary Vocation in the Old Elamite Period (Mohammad Amin Mirghaderi)
    – Household Religion in Context: Middle Elamite Terracotta Figurines and Their Judahite Counterparts (Francesco Del Bravo)
    – The Divine Couple Formed by Nana and Nabu/Tiš in Sogdian Art: A Powerful Amulet for the Protection of Children and Households (Matteo Compareti)
    – Some Reflections on the Concept of “Family” in the Gāthās (Mina Kambin)
    – “For the Increase of the House”: Children in Ancient Iran (Jenny Rose)
    – Some Remarks on the Family in pre-Islamic Iran according to the Ardā Wīrāz-nāmag (Mateusz M.P. Kłagisz)
    – Ancient Iranian Women at War: A Gender Role at Variance than the Greco-Roman Familial System? (Kaveh Farrokh)
    – Parthian Hostages in Rome: Keeping Alive Royal Family Members during the Parthian Kingdom (Berta González Saavedra and Juan Antonio Álvarez-Pedrosa Núñez)
    – The Institution of Zoroastrian Marriage xwēdōdah: Genesis and Typology (Pavel Basharin)
    – About the xwēdōdah Once Again (Katarzyna Maksymiuk and Joanna Szklarz)

  • Deciphering Arachosian Tribute at Persepolis

    Deciphering Arachosian Tribute at Persepolis

    Barnea, Gad. 2025. Deciphering Arachosian tribute at Persepolis: Orthopraxy and regulated gifts in the Achaemenid Empire. Religions 16(8): 965.

    Inscribed trays, plates, mortars, and pestles made of beautiful green chert bearing formulaic administrative textual formulae were found during excavations at the Persepolis Treasury in the 1930s. These implements and the enigmatic formulae inscribed upon them present scholars with a complex and unique challenge whose correct interpretation holds important implications for the study of Achaemenid history, imperial administration, and relations between ancient Arachosia (roughly modern-day Afghanistan) and the centers of power, as well as—as I argue in this article—for the symbiosis between administration and cult in antiquity. They continue to be hotly debated ever since their inauspicious initial publication by Bowman in 1970, yet they have thus far remained obscure. By comparing these finds with material and textual data from across the Achaemenid empire and early Parthian sources, this article offers a new comprehensive study of these objects. My analysis suggests that these objects are to be considered as a more systematized and tightly controlled Arachosian form of “informal taxation”—namely, regulated gifts—which are comparable to similar imperial donations found in the Treasury at Persepolis. Specifically, they take part in an “economy of fealty” demonstrating loyalty to king and empire through the adherence to the era’s Mazdean ritual orthopraxy.

  • Women in Cultic Functions in Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon

    Debourse, Céline. 2025. Women in Cultic Functions in Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon. In: Shawna Dolansky & Sarah Shectman (eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion, Gender, and Sexuality in the Ancient Near East, 147-157. London: Bloomsbury.

    This chapter explores the roles of women in cultic functions in Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon, focusing on cuneiform evidence from temple contexts. These sources reveal their increasing involvement in sacred rituals and temple administration. Through analysis of titles, the study highlights both continuity and innovation in female religious roles.

  • District Twelve

    District Twelve

    Ferrario, Marco. 2025. District Twelve. Northeastern Central Asia From Cyrus to Antiochos: Local Histories of a World Empire (Ancient Iran Series, 19). Leiden: Brill.

    This book offers, at the same time, an imperial history of a region (Northeastern Central Asia under the Achaemenids) and the regional history of an Empire (how the Persians adapted their strategies of governmentality to a geographically challenging, ethnically diverse, and politically impervious space). Bringing together evidence from literary texts, archaeology, and ethnohistory, it crafts a new narrative of Central Asian history in which local actors in and outside the imperial territory are given as much, if not (at times) more agency than the King of Kings and his satraps in heralding Central Asia’s first Age of Empires.

  • Hunara

    Hunara: Journal of Ancient Iranian Arts and History, published by Casa Editrice Persiani in Bologna, Italy, is a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal, publishing scholarly articles under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

    Here is the ToC of the latest issue (3/1):

    • Patryk Skupniewicz: The Scene of Bear Hunt on the Sasanian Silver Plate from the Wyvern Collection. On Segmented Image-Building in Sasanian Art
    • Hovhannes Khorikyan: Cyrus the Great in Armenian Sources and Armenia
    • Maia Kapanadze: Characteristics of Georgian-Iranian Relations during the Achaemenid Period
    • Iulon Gagoshidze; David Gagoshidze: Persian-Achaemenid Bell-Shaped Column Bases from the South Caucasus: New Evidence
    • Jeremy Goldberg: A Kurigalzu II Reading of VS 24.91 and Early Middle Elamite History
  • The Zurkhāneh

    The Zurkhāneh

    Rochard, Philippe. 2025. The Zurkhāneh and its milieu: A study of traditional athletics in Iran (Ilex Series). Boston: Harvard University Press.

    The athletes known in Iran as pahlavāns and the domed structure, the zurkhāneh, where they congregate to practice ritualized martial arts, physical culture, and spirituality, are usually presented as the cornerstone of traditional Iranian masculine identity. However, this idealization does not do justice to the complex history of Iranian society.
    Philippe Rochard, who has observed the zurkhāneh world for the past thirty years and actually lived in it for over four years, sets out to reveal through his own experience and a reconsideration of the extant historiography the various identities—real or imagined—of the zurkhāneh, its role within ancient and contemporary Iranian society, and the intimate mechanisms of the male societies that frequent it, as well as the moral and social values—real or simply proclaimed—that the athletes embody

    Summary