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The reign of the strongest

Coloru, Omar. 2022. Il regno del piú forte: La lunga contesa per l’Impero di Alessandro Magno (IV-III sec. A.C.). Roma: Salerno editrice.

Babilonia, giugno 323 a.C. La morte di Alessandro Magno getta lo scompiglio tra i Macedoni: chi dovrà succedere al trono di uno dei piú vasti imperi della storia se i due eredi legittimi sono un figlio che deve ancora nascere e un fratellastro affetto da un ritardo mentale? Si diffonde addirittura la voce che in punto di morte il sovrano abbia detto che lascerà il suo regno al migliore dei suoi generali. La competizione per l’eredità di Alessandro innesca una lotta di potere senza esclusione di colpi aprendo di fatto l’età dei Diadochi, i Successori di Alessandro che dopo decenni di conflitti daranno vita ai regni ellenistici. L’autore esplora le dinamiche in gioco in questo periodo mostrando come lo scenario geopolitico emerso dalle guerre sia stato plasmato dall’interazione dei fattori di forza e debolezza. Quello dei Diadochi è infatti un mondo precario in cui il potere va continuamente confermato, gli equilibri delle forze e i ruoli sociali si ribaltano in modo improvviso trasformando i forti in deboli e viceversa. Tra signori della guerra, avventurieri e regine combattive, l’età dei Diadochi cambierà per sempre il corso della storia nel Mediterraneo.

Table of contents:

Introduzione

I. Al migliore

1. Il migliore è il piú forte

2. La declinazione della forza

II. I deboli

1. Il problema della successione

2. Filippo Arrideo

3. Alessandro IV

4. Eracle

5. Le donne di Alessandro dopo Alessandro

5.1. Le principesse iraniche: Barsine, Parisatide, Rossane e Statira

5.2. Principesse e regine macedoni: Cinnane, Cleopatra, Euridice, Olimpiade e Tessalonice

6. Eumene di Cardia, un condottiero forte in una posizione debole

6.1. Da segretario a governatore

6.2. Il duello

6.3. Verso est

6.4. La fine

III. Violenza e terrore

1. Il potere della violenza

2. Crimini in famiglia

3. Crudeltà

4. Rex tremendae maiestatis

Conclusioni

Bibliografia

Cartine

Genealogie

Indici

Indice dei nomi

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Studies inspired by Agnes Korn

Suleymanov, Murad & Dorian Pastor (eds.). 2022. Tous les chemins menent a Paris: Studies inspired by Agnes Korn. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

This volume is a collection of nine papers by various authors focussing on issues of etymology, historical language contact, morphology and syntax, typological modelling, and folk practices in the Caucasus–Iran–Central Asia area and its immediate vicinity. The volume is a humble token of appreciation offered by the authors to Dr Agnes Korn to honour her continuing support for young researchers during her time in Paris and to highlight her wide array of research interests.

For the table of contents, see here.

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Studies of Bactrian Legal Documents

Sheikh, Hossein. 2023. Studies of Bactrian legal documents (Ancient Iran Series 15). Brill.

Studies of Bactrian Legal Documents deals with legal texts written in Bactrian, an eastern Middle Iranian language, between the 4th and 8th centuries CE. The work aims to give insight in the Bactrian legal formulary as well as its historical context. In order to achieve that, the author carefully examines the terms and phrases in the legal documents and clarifies their function. Then he explores the historical background of expressions and wordings. To this end, he uses documents from other regions of the Near East spanning from Egypt to Turkestan.

From the book’s website
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Sasanian Archaeology

Simpson, St John. 2022. Sasanian archaeology: Settlements, environment and material culture. Oxford: Archaeopress.

The Sasanian empire was one of the great powers of Late Antiquity, and for four centuries ruled the vast region stretching from Syria and the Caucasus to Central Asia. Classical, Armenian, Jewish and Arab written sources throw light on its history, and studies of its rock reliefs, stuccoes, silver, silks, coins and glyptic have created a picture of a rich courtly culture with a strong Iranian character. However, the everyday material culture is much less understood, as is the economy which sustained and supported the Sasanian empire and underpinned its consistent military superiority over its western rivals. This collection of essays looks at these aspects and offers an approach based almost entirely on archaeological and scientific research, much presented here for the first time. This book is divided into three parts which in turn examine evidence for Sasanian sites, settlements and landscapes, their complex agricultural resources, and their crafts and industries. Each section is preceded by an essay setting out the wider research questions and current state of knowledge. The book begins and ends with a general introduction and conclusion setting out why this new approach is necessary, and how it helps change our perceptions of the complexity and power of the Sasanian empire.

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Zoroastrians in Early Islamic History

Magnusson, Andrew D. 2023. Zoroastrians in early Islamic history: Accommodation and memory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Examines debates about the inclusion or exclusion of Zoroastrians in Islamic society circa 600-1000 C.E.

  • Makes a significant contribution to the literature on interfaith relations in Islamic history
  • Demonstrates the role of advocacy in shaping early Islamic policy
  • Argues against the assumption that Zoroastrians were People of the Book
  • Engages theories of accommodation and of memory, from North America, the Middle East and Europe
  • Utilises archival material from Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States

The second Muslim caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, once reportedly exclaimed, ‘I do not know how to treat Zoroastrians!’ He and other Muslims encountered Zoroastrians during the conquest of Arabia but struggled to formulate a consistent policy toward the adherents of a religion that was neither biblical nor polytheistic. Some Muslims saw Zoroastrians as pagans and sought to limit interaction with them. Others found ways to incorporate them within the empire of Islamic law. Andrew D. Magnusson describes the struggle between advocates of inclusion and exclusion, the ultimate accommodation of Zoroastrians, and the reasons that Muslim historians have subsequently buried the memory of this relationship.

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The World of Alexander in Perspective

Rollinger, Robert & Julian Degen (eds.). 2022. The world of Alexander in perspective: Contextualizing Arrian (Classica et Orientalia 30). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

This volume is a collection of papers that have been given at an international conference in December 2019 in Bregenz, Austria. They focus on Arrian of Nicomedia’s Anabasis Alexandrou which is our main source for the life and reign of Alexander the Great. So far, scholarship has paid only little attention to the Anabasis as literary cosmos of its own right. The various contributions critically evaluate the still extant general opinion, that Arrian deserves a distinguished status as the main source on the Macedonian conqueror since he allegedly closely followed his sources. But the first accounts of the participants in Alexander’s famous expedition have only survived as fragments and thus their literary production is more or less shrouded in mystery. Hence, the tension between Arrian’s literary creativity, propinquity to his sources, his relationship to his role-model Xenophon merits serious examination when assessing the value of his work as a historical source.

The volume is the first attempt to contextualize the work of Arrian against various backdrops. This includes the reign of Alexander, the Classical and contemporary literary trends, the Second Sophistic as intellectual framework, the until yet neglected idea of “empire” as well as echoes and stimuli from the Achaemenid and Hellenistic period. The various contributions create a more complex image of Arrian as an author, his literary production and his idea of the Macedonian conqueror that helps us to gain a better understanding of this complex text and Alexander the Great as its protagonist.

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The End of Empires

Gehler, Michael, Robert Rollinger & Philipp Strobl (eds.). The End of Empires. Wiesbaden: Springer.

The articles of this comprehensive edited volume offer a multidisciplinary, global and comparative approach to the history of empires. They analyze their ends over a long spectrum of humankind’s history, ranging from Ancient History through Modern Times. As the main guiding question, every author of this volume scrutinizes the reasons for the decline, the erosion, and the implosion of individual empires.

All contributions locate and highlight different factors that triggered or at least supported the ending or the implosion of empires. This overall question makes all the contributions to this volume comparable and allows to detect similarities, differences as well as inconsistencies of historical processes.

Several contributions tackle with the problems of the end of ancient Iranian empires:

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Books

Looking at Persians

Stuttard, David (Ed.). 2023. Looking at Persians. London: Bloomsbury.

Aeschylus’ Persians is unique in being the only extant Greek tragedy on an historical subject: Greece’s victory in 480 BC over the great Persian King, Xerxes, eight years before the play was written and first performed in 472 BC. Looking at Persians examines how Aeschylus responded to such a turning point in Athenian history and how his audience may have reacted to his play. As well as considering the play’s relationship with earlier lost tragedies and discussing its central themes, including war, nature and the value of human life, the volume considers how Persians may have been staged in fifth-century Athens and how it has been performed today.

The twelve essays presented here are written by prominent international academics and offer insightful analyses of the play from the perspectives of performance, history and society. Intended for readers ranging from school students and undergraduates to teachers and those interested in drama (including practitioners), this volume also includes an accurate, accessible and performance-friendly English translation of Persians by David Stuttard.

Table of Contents
Foreword

Introduction – Persians in Context (David Stuttard, Goodenough College, UK)

  1. Persians on Stage (Paul Cartledge, University of Cambridge, UK)
  2. Athens and Persia, 472 BCE (Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Cardiff University, UK)
  3. Persians’ First Audience (Robert Garland, Colgate University, USA)
  4. Imperial Stirrings in Aeschylus’ Persians (Sophie Mills, University of North Carolina at Asheville, USA)
  5. Homeric Echoes on the Battlefield of Persians (Laura Swift, The Open University, UK)
  6. Individual and Collective in Persians (Michael Carroll, University of St Andrews, UK)
  7. Land, Sea and Freedom: The Force of Nature in Aeschylus’ Persians (Rush Rehm, Stanford University, USA)
  8. The Persians Love Their Children Too: Common Humanity in Persians (Alan Sommerstein, University of Nottingham, UK)
  9. Atossa (Hanna Roisman, Colby College, Maine, USA)
  10. Theatrical Ghosts in Persians and Elsewhere (Anna Uhlig, University of California, USA)
  11. Words and Pictures (Carmel McCallum-Barry, formerly of University College, Ireland)
  12. National Theatre Wales, The Persians (2010) (Mike Pearson, University of Aberystwyth, UK)

Aeschylus Persians, translated by David Stuttard (Goodenough College, UK)

Notes
Bibliography
Index

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Books

The Kushnameh

Hemmat, Kaveh L. & Hee Soo Lee (eds.). 2022. The Kushnameh: The Persian Epic of Kush the Tusked. Oakland: University of California Press.

The first English translation of a strange and unusual Persian epic, this action-packed tale of an evil, monstrous king explores questions of nature and nurture and brings the global middle ages to life.

The great Persian epic known as the Kushnameh follows the entangled lives of Kush the Tusked––a monstrous antihero with tusks and ears like an elephant, descended from the evil emperor Zahhak––and Abtin, the exiled grandson of the last true Persian emperor. Abandoned at birth in the forests of China and raised by Abtin, Kush grows into a powerful and devious warrior. Kush and his foes scheme and wage war across a global stage reaching from Spain and Africa to China and Korea. Between epic battles and magnificent feasts are disturbing, sometimes realistic portrayals of abuse and oppression and philosophical speculation about nature and nurture and the origins of civilization.

A fantastical adventure story stretching across the known world and a literary classic of unparalleled richness, this important work of medieval Persian literature is a valuable source for understanding the history of racism and constructions of race and the flows of lore and legend from the Central Asian Silk Road and the Sahara to the sea routes of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. The Kushnameh is a treasure trove of Islamic and pre-Islamic Persian cultural history and a striking contemporary document of the “global middle ages,” now available to English-speaking readers for the first time.

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Books

Persia and Its Kings

Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko (trans.). 2023. Al-Maqrīzī’s al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar Vol. V, Section 4: Persia and Its Kings, Part II (Bibliotheca Maqriziana, 9). Leiden: Brill.

Al-Maqrīzī’s (d. 845/1442) last work, al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar, was completed a year before his death. This volume, edited by Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, covers the history of pre-Islamic Iran during the Sasanian period and the conquest. Al-Maqrīzī’s work shows how Arab historians integrated Iran into world history and how they harmonised various currents of historiography (Middle Persian historiography, Islamic sacred history, Greek and Latin historiography).

This part harmonises the versions of Miskawayh’s Tağārib, al-Ṭabarī’s Taʾrīḫ, and several other sources, producing a fluent narrative of Iran from the early 3rd century until 651. It also includes the complete text of ʿAhd Ardašīr, here translated for the first time into English.