The second issue of Iran Nameh, New Series, Volume 1, Number 2 (Summer 2016), a memorial volume in honour of Professor Amnon Netzer (1934-2008), the Iranian-Jewish historian and researcher of Iranian Jewry and Judeo-Persian Literature is published. The volume comprises bilingual Persian and English contributions on different aspects of Judeo-Persian Literature and Iranian Jewry.
This volume presents a collection of 32 articles contributed by historians, numismatists and scholar of Ancient Near East history and historiography in celebration of Josef Wiesehöfer 65th birthday.
International conference to be held at the department of “Langues et religions du monde indo-iranien ancien” at the University of Liege. This conference is organized by Philippe Swennen, Céline Redard and Hamid Moein and will take place on June 9th and 10th.
Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest living religions, which can be traced back at least to the sixth century BC. In its thousand-year history, Zoroastrianism has experienced profound and sometimes radical changes, however its ethical characteristic nature has less changed. The contribution of Zoroastrianism to the religious history of humanity is fundamental: from the ethical dualism to the conception of the history of salvation, and the eschatology, the resurrection of the body and the individual judgment etc. Based on a deep understanding of the sources of today’s scholarship on Zoroastrainism, of which the author is one of the most important and well-known characters, the book traces the history of Zoroastrisnism from the begining up to modern time. Furthermore the book presents a comprehensive account of Zoroastrian thought and rituals as well an uptodate discussion on the condition of contemporary Zoroastrianism, in particular among the Pārsis.
Harry Falks “Kushan Histories“ discusses new research concerning the Kushan dynasty and is based on a Symposium held from December 5-7th, 2013 in Berlin.
The first part of the book introduces the literary sources. After naming the primary sources and translations a wide range of texts presented chronologically gives an overview of the Kushan history in its totality.
In the second part of “Kushan Histories” five papers deal with different religious, military and cultural aspects of the Kushan dynasty: How were the expansion of Buddhism and the dynasty linked to each other and which role did Zoroastrianism play among the Kushans? How can new geographical perspectives prove the former existence of a military camp of the Kushans north of the Bactra oasis? Which historical data regarding Kanishka’s conquest of India can be drawn from a Bactrian inscription and what did the female deity Nana mean to the Kushans?
Corpus Avesticum III: “Phonetics and Phonology in Avestan and Beyond”
Paris, 25-26. April. 2016
The third meeting of the European research network Corpus Avesticum to be held in Paris, 25-26 April. 2016. Researchers from France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the UK will meet to discuss various projects in preparation of a new edition of the Avesta and the special topic of this meeting.
This meeting is dedicated to the research questions mainly regarding to the “Phonetics and Phonology in Avestan and Beyond”.
Briefing: Current state of Avestological project of the members of the Network
Salome Gholami: “Newly found Avestan manuscripts from Yazd”
Martin Kümmel: “Avestan syllable structure: a look from Middle Iranian”
Götz Keydana: “Evidence for foot structure in Early Vedic”
Paul Widmer: “Phonological domains in Avestan”
Chiara Riminucci-Heine: “Av. saoka- und av. hu-xšn aora- : zwei altiranische Wortstudien”
Almut Hintze: “Proto-Indo-European *h₁u es- ‘to be good’ and Avestan vahma-“
Michiel de Vaan: “On the orthography and phonology of <h>”
Alberto Cantera & Jaime Martínez Porro: “On the treatment of n before front vowels”
Benedikt Peschl: “The transmission of anaptyxis before the endings -biš and -biio in Avestan”
26. April 2016
Armin Hoenen: “La statistique des déviations du Yasna”
Tim Aufderheide: “Zoroastrian phoneticians? Reconstructing the phonetic knowledge underlying the transmission of the Avesta”
Shervin Farridnejad: “Scribal Schools and Dialectal Characteristics in the Transmission of the Avesta”
Miguel Ángel Andrés Toledo: “Avestan and Pahlavi Paleography
in the oldest Pahlavi Widewdad Manuscripts”
Salome Gholami: “Dialectal phonological variations in the colophons”
The Project of Corpus Avesticum (CoAv) is a pan-European Co-operation that aims at making the Zoroastrian Texts, called the Avesta accessible in a new Edition. The current one stems from 1896 and is erroneous with regard to many crucial aspects, the most important of which is the amalgamation of the liturgical and exegetical text witnesses.
See also the previous posts on the First and Second Meeting of Corpus Avesticum.
The Turfanforschung (Turfan Studies) at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities offers in 2016 a summer school providing an introduction to the field of Turfan Studies, which deals with the many languages and scripts used along the Silk Road as well as the histories and cultures of those who used them. The summer school will center around the two main languages of Turfan research. Sogdian, a middle Iranian language, was widely used as a lingua franca in Central Asia since the 1st c. A.C. Old Turkic was the language of Turkic nomads which had a strong influence on the Silk Road since the middle of the 6th c. After the migration of the Uyghurs it was also used as the main language in the Turfan area under Uyghur rule until 14th c.
The courses in this summer school will be given by the staff of the Turfanforschung and the Katalogisierung der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland (Arbeitsstelle Berlin): A. Benkato, D. Durkin-Meisterernst, Y. Kasai, S.- Ch. Raschmann, C. Reck, A. Yakup. There will also be guest lectures by I. Colditz, M. Peyrot and L. Sander.
Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jägerstraße 22-23,
10117 Berlin
Topics: 1. Scripts
Sogdian script
Uyghur script
Turkic Runic
Nestorian script
Manichaean script
Brāhmī script
2. Language: Old Turkic
language course with reading
lecture for linguistics
3. Language: Sogdian
language course with reading
lecture for linguistics
4. Language: Tocharian
5. Turfan studies
history of the Turfan expeditions
Central Asian book culture
history
religions
research history
Because a minimum number of participants are required for the summer school to take place, we ask for a binding registration by 20th May 2016 at rabuske@bbaw.de or in writing at: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften AV Turfanforschung, Jägerstraße 22-23, D-10117, Berlin.
The third Yašt (“hymn”) in the collection of the 21 (22) YAv Yašts is dedicated to (the deity, prayer and the divine correspondence of the fire) Aša Vahišta “Best Order”. The text formulates an (eschatologically significant) ritual context and a magical (= medical) charm. Due to the ritual and medical importance of Yt 3, various translations into Middle and New Persian can be found. They provide insights into the interpretation of the text by the later Zoroastrians.
Ardwahišt Yašt is the third in the series of Avestan hymns addressed to individual divinities. It is devoted to one of the greatest of the Zoroastrian Aməša Spəntas, Aša Vahišta. The Ardwahišt Yašt is itself accordingly recited in rituals to cure the sick.
Götz König is a scholar of Zoroastrianism and a philologist working on ancient and Middle Iranian languages. He is currently a deputy professor at the Institute of Iranian Studies, Free University of Berlin, Germany. He has made important contributions to the study of Old, Middle and New Iranian Zoroastrian literature. His two monographs, “Die Erzählung von Tahmuras und Gamšid” (Wiesbaden 2008) and “Geschlechtsmoral und Gleichgeschlechtlichkeit im Zoroastrismus” (Wiesbaden 2010), have to be highlighted. They convey an impression of his refined philological technique which is at the service of a history of Iranian culture.
In Arthur Upham Pope and A New Survey of Persian Art, fourteen scholars explore the legacy of Arthur Upham Pope (1881–1969) by tracing the formation of Persian art scholarship and connoisseurship during the twentieth century. Widely considered as a self-made scholar, curator, and entrepreneur, Pope was credited for establishing the basis of what we now categorize broadly as Persian art. His unrivalled professional achievement, together with his personal charisma, influenced the way in which many scholars and collectors worldwide came to understand the art, architecture and material culture of the Persian world. This ultimately resulted in the establishment of the aesthetic criteria for assessing the importance of cultural remains from modern-day Iran.
With contributions by Lindsay Allen, Sheila S. Blair, Jonathan M. Bloom, Talinn Grigor, Robert Hillenbrand, Yuka Kadoi, Sumru Belger Krody, Judith A. Lerner, Kimberly Masteller, Cornelia Montgomery, Bernard O’Kane, Keelan Overton, Laura Weinstein, and Donald Whitcomb.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Yuka Kadoi : “Arthur Upham Pope and A New Survey of Persian Art”
I. POPE, ACKERMAN, AND THEIR PEERS
Robert Hillenbrand: “The Scramble for Persian Art: Pope and His Rivals”
Talinn Grigor : “Gendered Politics of Persian Art: Pope and His Partner”
II. ARTHUR UPHAM POPE: LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS
Jonathan M. Bloom : “Arthur Upham Pope: His Life and Times”
Donald Whitcomb : “Archaeology in Iran and the Experience of Arthur Upham Pope”
Bernard O’Kane : “Arthur Upham Pope and the Study of Persian Islamic Architecture”
III. CURATORS, COLLECTORS, AND ART DEALERS: POPE AND PRE-ISLAMIC PERSIAN ART
Lindsay Allen: “‘The Greatest Enterprise’: Arthur Upham Pope, Persepolis and Achaemenid Antiquities”
IV. CURATORS, COLLECTORS, AND ART DEALERS: POPE AND ISLAMIC PERSIAN ART
Yuka Kadoi: “The Rise of Persian Art Connoisseurship: Arthur Upham Pope and Early Twentieth-Century Chicago”
Kimberly Masteller: “Arthur Upham Pope and Collecting Persian Art for Kansas City”
Sumru Belger Krody: “Equivocal Position as Expert or Dealer! The Long and Contentious Relationship of George Hewitt Myers and Arthur Upham Pope”
Laura Weinstein: “My Dear Holmes: Arthur Upham Pope and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston”
Keelan Overton: “Filming, Photographing and Purveying in ‘the New Iran’: the Legacy of Stephen H. Nyman, ca. 1937–42”
V. ARTHUR UPHAM POPE: HIS LEGACY
Sheila S. Blair: ” Surveying Persian Art in Light of A Survey of Persian Art”
Cornelia Montgomery: “Arthur Upham Pope: A Personal Memoir”
Yuka Kadoi, Ph.D. (2005), University of Edinburgh is a scholar of Islamic art and Persian art historiography. She has written and edited numerous books and articles, including Islamic Chinoiserie (2009); The Shaping of Persian Art (2013); and Jades from Eastern Lands (forthcoming).
Patricia Crone’s Collected Studies in Three Volumes brings together a number of her published, unpublished, and revised writings on Near Eastern and Islamic history, arranged around three distinct but interconnected themes. Volume 2, The Iranian Reception of Islam: The Non-Traditionalist Strands, examines the reception of pre-Islamic legacies in Islam, above all that of the Iranians. Volume 1, The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters, pursues the reconstruction of the religious environment in which Islam arose and develops an intertextual approach to studying the Qurʾānic religious milieu. Volume 3, Islam, the Ancient Near East and Varieties of Godlessness, places the rise of Islam in the context of the ancient Near East and investigates sceptical and subversive ideas in the Islamic world.
ToC:
1. Kavād’s heresy and Mazdak’s revolt
2. Zoroastrian communism
3. Khurramīs
4. Muqannaʿ
5. Abū Tammām on the Mubayyiḍa
6. The Muqannaʿ narrative in the Tārīkhnāma: Part I, Introduction, edition and translation
7. The Muqannaʿ narrative in the Tārīkhnāma: Part II, Commentary and analysis
8. Al-Jāḥiẓ on aṣḥāb al-jahālāt and the Jahmiyya
9. Buddhism as ancient Iranian paganism
10. A new text on Ismailism at the Samanid court
11. What was al-Fārābī’s ‘imamic’ constitution?
12. Al-Fārābī’s imperfect constitutions
13. Pre-existence in Iran: Zoroastrians, ex-Christian Muʿtazilites, and Jews on the human acquisition of bodies
List of Patricia Crone’s publications
Patricia Crone (1945-2015), Ph.D. (1974), School of Oriental and African Studies, was Professor Emerita at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Her numerous publications include Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987); Pre-Industrial Societies (1989); Medieval Islamic Political Thought (2004); and The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran (2012).
Hanna Siurua (BA, School of Oriental and African Studies; MA, University of Sussex) is a professional editor based in Chicago. She specialises in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies and has edited numerous books and articles in these as well as other fields.