Weber, Dieter. 2018. Three Pahlavi papyri revisited. Sasanika Papyrological Studies , No. 2.
Weber revisits three Pahlavi papyri from the period of Sasanian occupation of Egypt (619–628 CE).
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Author: Arash Zeini
In this issue of L’Histoire, entitled Les mondes d’Alix and dedicated to the graphic novel series Les voyages d’Alix, specialists of antique history explore various aspects relating to the world and time of the novels. The historian Giusto Traina writes on the Parthians.
Traina, Giusto. 2018. Les Parthes aux marges de l’empire. L’Histoire 6. 66–71.
The European Conference of Iranian Studies (ECIS) is one of Europe’s largest conferences in Iranian Studies. It is held every four years and organized by the Societas Iranologica Europaea (SIE).
The ninth edition of the conference will be hosted by the Institute of Iranian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, taking place from 09–13 September 2019.
The first call for papers has been issued. For more information, visit the conference website.
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Iran: A Modern History
Amanat, Abbas. 2018. Iran: A modern history. Yale University Press.
his history of modern Iran is not a survey in the conventional sense but an ambitious exploration of the story of a nation. It offers a revealing look at how events, people, and institutions are shaped by currents that sometimes reach back hundreds of years. The book covers the complex history of the diverse societies and economies of Iran against the background of dynastic changes, revolutions, civil wars, foreign occupation, and the rise of the Islamic Republic.
Abbas Amanat combines chronological and thematic approaches, exploring events with lasting implications for modern Iran and the world. Drawing on diverse historical scholarship and emphasizing the twentieth century, he addresses debates about Iran’s culture and politics. Political history is the driving narrative force, given impetus by Amanat’s decades of research and study. He layers the book with discussions of literature, music, and the arts; ideology and religion; economy and society; and cultural identity and heritage.
Abbas Amanat is professor of history and international studies at Yale University and director of the Yale Program in Iranian Studies at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. He lives in North Haven, CT.
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The Coherence of Yasna
Ahmadi, Amir. 2017. On the coherence of Yasna: A critical assessment of recent arguments. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 1-26.
DOI
In recent years a number of scholars have proposed more or less detailed schemas of the formation of the Zoroastrian ritual. These schemas offer accounts of the arrangement of the texts in the liturgy, the process of its formation, and even its function from an endogenous perspective. One way or another, they argue that the official Zoroastrian liturgy is an integrated ritual with a coherent text, and that the function of the ritual and the intention behind the arrangement of the texts can be determined by means of philological, literary and comparative analyses. The questions of formation and meaning of the Zoroastrian liturgy these scholars have placed on the agenda are important not only for the study of Zoroastrianism but also for the history of religions and ritual theory. I consider their accounts with respect to the texts they invoke and the methods they use, and show that their arguments suffer from fatal flaws.
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Avestan Textile Terms
Andrés-Toledo, Miguel Ángel. 2017. Sasanian exegesis of Avestan textile terms. In Gaspa, Salvatore, Cécile Michel & Marie-Louise Nosch (eds.), Textile terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD, 397–403. Lincoln, NE: Zea Books.
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Iranian Elements in Buddhist Astrology
Our last post for the year 2017, an article by Jeffrey Kotyk, is appropriately on Iranian elements in Buddhist astrology. We wish all our readers a happy new year:
Kotyk, Jeffrey. 2017. Iranian elements in Late-Tang Buddhist astrology. Asia Major 30(1), 25-58.
Overview of the history of Chinese Buddhist astrology with a special focus on Iranian elements in the Qiyao rangzai jue 七曜攘災決.
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Corpus Avesticum Berolinense
Today, the Institute of Iranian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, received the confirmation of funding for Corpus Avesticum Berolinense (CAB), a long-term project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for 12 years . The goal of CAB is to edit all Zoroastrian rituals preserved in the Avestan language. This is excellent news for the institute and the discipline. The BiblioIranica team congratulates Prof. Alberto Cantera for this achievement. It is more than well-deserved.
See the institute’s announcement for more information.
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Bulletin of the Asia Institute 27
Issue 27 of the Bulletin of the Asia Institute will be published this December. The information on this issue is not yet available on the journal’s website, but the content has been circulated, which we are publishing here.
Bulletin of the Asia Institute 27
December 2017
Articles
- Frantz Grenet, “More Zoroastrian Scenes on the Wirkak (Shi Jun) Sarcophagus”
- Yaakov Elman and Mahnaz Moazami, “PV 5.1–4 in the Context of Late Antique Intellectual History”
- Harry Falk, “The Ashes of the Buddha”
- Peter Skilling, “Śrāvakas, Buddhas, and the Buddha’s Father: Inscribed Artefacts in the U Thong National Museum”
- V. H. Sonowane, “Rock Paintings Depicting Stupas in Gujarat, India”
- Domenico Agostini and Shaul Shaked, “Sasanian Seals of Priests”
- Nicholas Sims-Williams, “A Bactrian Document of the Fifth Century c.e.”
- Salman Aliyari Babolghani, “Achaemenid Elamite dayāuš (~ Old Persian dahyāu̯-š)”
- Dieter Weber, “Accountancy of a Zoroastrian Craftsman in Early Islamic Times (662–664 CE)”
- Stefan Zimmer, “The Etymology of Avestan 2čiqra- ‘Descent, Progeny'”
- Zhang Zhan, “Kings of Khotan During the Tang Dynasty”
Reviews
- Lieu and Mikkelsen, eds. Between Rome and China (Albert E. Dien)
- Hansen. The Silk Road: A New History with Documents(Jenny Rose)
- Mair and Hickman, eds. Reconfiguring the Silk Road: (Jenny Rose)
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A Jewish Convert to Imāmī Šīʿism
Halft, Dennis. 2017. Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī: A twelfth/eighteenth-century Jewish convert to Imāmī Šīʿism and his critique of Ibn Ezra’s commentary on the four kingdoms (Daniel 2:31-45). In Miriam Lindgren Hjälm (ed.), Senses of scripture, treasures of tradition: The Bible in Arabic among Jews, Christians and Muslims (Biblia Arabica 5), 280–304. Leiden: Brill.
Abstract of the article:
This study explores the previously unstudied anti-Jewish Persian polemic Anbāʾ al-anbiyāʾ by the Jewish convert to Twelver Šīʿī Islam, Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī, the father of Ḥāǧǧī Bābā Qazvīnī Yazdī. It examines Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī’s discussion of a medieval Jewish controversy concerning the four-kingdom schema in the book of Daniel and Ibn Ezra’s interpretation of the dream-vision in favor of Islam as the fourth kingdom. The study shows that Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī, besides his reference to Muslim works in Persian, relied on different (partly printed) Jewish textual sources in the original Hebrew and Aramaic (Miqraʾot Gedolot, Neḇuʾat ha-yeled, Sefer haš-šorašim, Sefer Josippon), from which he quoted in his own Persian translation/adaptation. He thus made internal Jewish debates accessible to native Muslim scholars, such as Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, who borrowed from Anbāʾ al-anbiyāʾ. Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī was a cross-cultural intermediary and go-between who expanded the traditional range of Šīʿī polemical arguments against Judaism in pre-modern Iran.