Halfmann, Jakob. 2023. Lād “law”: A Bactrian loanword in the Nuristani languages. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 86(3). 505–510.
This article proposes a new etymology for the Nuristani word family of Katë lod ~ lot, Nuristani Kalasha lād, etc. It is argued that these are best understood as early borrowings from Bactrian λαδο “law”.
Porter, James I. 2024. Foucault, Kant, and antiquity. Representations 165(1). 120–143.
Michel Foucault’s return to classical antiquity at the end of his career coincides with a turn away from institutional critique and a return to Kant. This is no coincidence. Foucault’s Introduction to Kant’s “Anthropology” (1961) completely anticipates his approach to ancient subject formations, which reflects Kant’s theory of the liberal, self-enterprising, and enlightened subject as this is outlined in Foucault’s “What Is Enlightenment?” (1984) and elsewhere. Foucault’s final studies surface isolated, private, and autonomous subjects who are at once premodern, proto-Christian, and uncannily modern. Fashioned by ascetic and aesthetic models of self-care, they testify to “a genealogy of the modern subject.”
This article is also available from the author’s academia page.
The latest issue of Indiran, the newsletter of the Ancient India & Iran Trust, is now online.
Established in 1978, the Ancient India & Iran Trust occupies a unique position as an independent charity concerned with the study of early South Asia, Iran and Central Asia, promoting both scholarly research and popular interest in the area.
From About Us
An archive of past issues of Indiran, is available here.
We wish all readers of BiblioIranica a happy new year. May you experience joy and happiness in 2024. And if you do, consider yourself lucky and privileged!
In 2023, our social media activities entered an age of confusion and darkness when Twitter/X and Jetpack decided that collaboration wasn’t part of their cosmic alignment. As if that was not enough, Jetpack started to charge for the ‘sharing’ feature. The one thing social media are supposed to foster, ended: collaboration. No hard feelings. I expected a social media meltdown, which is why we have always maintained the website as the main source. We anticipate a reduction in traffic to BiblioIranica in 2024, but hope that our readers will subscribe to our e-mail service and visit the site even if we no longer post on Twitter/X. We need your love and support.
Let us look at some statistics for 2023:
This post is by me, Arash. I would like to think that I am speaking on behalf of my friends Shervin and Yazdan, without whose support we would have not made it this far.
Fattori, Marco. 2022. A scribal school of forgers in “Hamadān”. Rivista degli Studi Orientali XCV(3). 27–44.
In this article it is argued that the Old Persian inscriptions labelled AmH, AsH, D2Ha, D2Hb, A2Hc and A1I are all modern forgeries, whose production was inspired by the discovery of the genuine inscription DHa, published in 1926. First, an overview of the known information concerning the alleged finding of these objects is offered, pointing out that all the previous attempts to provide a historically plausible reconstruction of their original location and function are unconvincing or selfcontradictory. Subsequently, it is shown that all these inscriptions share some palaeographic features which are otherwise unattested in the corpus of authentic Old Persian inscriptions. Instead, these features only appear in some modern manuals available to the public in the years when these objects were reportedly found, which constitutes crucial evidence against their authenticity.
The original publication can be accessed via this DOI.
Two books that have been published in 2023 and will be of interest to the readers of our site:
Popa, Catalin-Stefan. 2023. The making of Syriac Jerusalem: Representations of the Holy City in Syriac literature of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Routledge Studies in the Early Christian World). London and New York: Routledge.
This book discusses hagiographic, historiographical, hymnological, and theological sources that contributed to the formation of the sacred picture of the physical as well as metaphysical Jerusalem in the literature of two Eastern Christian denominations, East and West Syrians.
Popa, Catalin-Stefan (ed.). 2023. Soul and body diseases, remedies and healing in Middle Eastern religious cultures and traditions (Studies on the Children of Abraham 10) Leiden: Brill.
Aiming to develop a less studied literary genre, this book provides a well-rounded picture of spiritual and physical diseases and their remedies as they were ingrained in the imagination and practices of Middle Eastern Abrahamic cultures, with a special emphasis of Christian communities (Greeks/Byzantines, Syrians, Armenians, Georgians, Ethiopians). The volume traces traditions dealing with the onset of a disease in the body and soul, the search for remedy, the maintenance of healing, and the engagement of these processes with faith—either through their affirmation in the public sphere or remaining within the personal framework, as in monastic traditions. A recurring presence in religious literature and the history of the intellectual world, the confrontation between disease and healing may well still be current for our modern understanding of the paths to seeking and maintaining the health of one’s body and soul, without excluding the factor of faith as a core principle.
Asefi, Nima. 2023. A new Middle Persian document from Hastijan belonging to the Farroxzād family. Berkeley Working Papers in Middle Iranian Philology 1(3), 1–14.
This study publishes a first edition of a newly-discovered Middle Persian document located in a private collection but stemming from the area of Hastijan, Iran. It is related to the ‘Pahlavi Archive’, the majority of which is held in the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley, and the contents concern the family of a certain Farroxzād, mentioned in several other documents in the archive.
Abstract
Farridnejad, Shervin & Touraj Daryaee (eds.). 2023. Sasanian studies: Late antique Iranian world | Sasanidische Studien: Spätantike iranische Welt. Vol. 2. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
Sasanian Studies: Late Antique Iranian World is a refereed journal that publishes papers on any aspect of the Sasanian Empire and ist neighboring late antiquity civilizations. The journal welcomes essays on archaeology, art history, epigraphy, history, numismatics, religion and any other disciplines which focuse on the Sasanian world. This annual publication focuses especially on recent discoveries in the field, historiographical studies, as well as editions and translations of texts and inscriptions. We aim to facilitate dialogue and contact among scholars of Sasanian Studies around the world. The journal will publish papers mainly in English, but also in German, French, Italian and may also consider Persian and Arabic.
The full table of contents is available from the website.
Volume 51 of Studia Iranica, dated 2022, is now available with two issues.
Of particular interest to this blog is Olivia Ramble’s article on Kerdīr’s bun-xānag and Funding Foundations in Sasanian Iran.
Komaroff, Linda (ed.). 2023. Dining with the Sultan: The fine art of feasting. Los Angeles: DelMonico Books.
Dining with the Sultan offers a pan-Islamic reach, spanning the 8th through 19th centuries and including some 200 works of art representing a rich variety of mediums. Across its 400 pages, and through an abundance of color plates and new scholarship, the publication introduces audiences to Islamic art and culture with objects of undisputed quality and appeal. Viewed through the universal lens of fine dining, this transformative selection of materials emphasizes our shared humanity rather than our singular histories.