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Ergativity in Old and Middle Iranian languages

Jügel, Thomas. 2015. Die Entwicklung der Ergativkonstruktion im Alt- und Mitteliranischen. Eine korpusbasierte Untersuchung zu Kasus, Kongruenz und Satzbau (Iranica 21). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

Ergativity is a grammatical phenomenon that has been discussed controversially in linguistics in general and in the Iranian Studies in particular. The scientific debate is characterized by a lack of consideration of the Old and Middle Iranian data. In many cases, the selected examples, which their position in the respective language system is  still unclear, are associated with theory-driven assumptions about a hypothetical model of development, which is to be plausible, but not verifiable.

The present study provides a solution through the complete analyzing of the Avestan , Old Persian, Bactrian and Parthian documents as well as an extensive study of Middle Persian evidences (approximately 12,500 Middle Persian cases). In addition to the relevant ergativity aspects such case, congruence, word order,  and reflexivity both the development of syntactic structures (e.g. relative clauses) as well as the verbal and nominal system (e.g. the temporal aspect system or the function of enclitic personal pronouns) are discussed .

Results are illustrated with relevant evidences  (over 1,400 examples alone in the main part), whose validity is constantly checked and  based critically on detailed philological discussion. The material part also serves as a vademecum, which can be used in parallel with the reading of the main part, as well as a separate reference book that systematically illustrates the history of the object in ergative languages.

The volume presents the most exhaustive investigation on ergativity in within the Old and Middle Iranian languages.

The detaild Table of Content of this book and the English Summery are availabe.

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Herodotus: Histories, Books 1-4

Herodotus: Histories, Books 1-4 (Herodoti Historiae: Libri I-IV), Edited by N. G. Wilson, 2015, Oxford Classical Texts.

New edition of 1902 original text, last revised in 1927
Accompanied by extensive commentary volume, Herodotea
New to this edition

Features extensively revised apparatus criticus
Incorporates new findings and research, including the readings of over 80 papyri and two medieval manuscripts
In this new edition of Herodotus’ Histories, Nigel Wilson has revised the original Oxford Classical Text by the Danish scholar C. Hude, published in 1906 and last revised in 1927. As well as incorporating much of the valuable work on the text that has been conducted since the original edition, in particular that of J. Enoch Powell and Paul Maas, Wilson has taken into account new readings from over 80 papyri. In addition, clarity in the apparatus criticus has been improved by the collation of two previously neglected medieval manuscripts, which belong to the so-called Roman family.

A number of passages remain puzzling, and Wilson proposes new solutions and provides plausible emendations wherever possible. This new edition is accompanied by a commentary, Herodotea, written by the editor, in which he explains many of the editorial decisions he made while revising this key classical text.

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Arabs before Islam

Fisher, Greg (ed.). 2015. Arabs and empires before Islam. Oxford University Press.

Arabs and Empires before Islam collates nearly 250 translated extracts from an extensive array of ancient sources which, from a variety of different perspectives, illuminate the history of the Arabs before the emergence of Islam. Drawn from a broad period between the eighth century BC and the Middle Ages, the sources include texts written in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Persian, and Arabic, inscriptions in a variety of languages and alphabets, and discussions of archaeological sites from across the Near East. More than 20 international experts from the fields of archaeology, classics and ancient history, linguistics and philology, epigraphy, and art history, provide detailed commentary and analysis on this diverse selection of material.

About the author: Greg Fisher is Associate Professor in the College of the Humanities and the Department of History at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

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Ethnicity in the ancient world

McInerney, Jeremy (ed.). 2014. A companion to ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean. Wiley-Blackwell.

A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean presents a comprehensive collection of essays contributed by Classical Studies scholars that explore questions relating to ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean world.

  • Covers topics of ethnicity in civilizations ranging from ancient Egypt and Israel, to Greece and Rome, and into Late Antiquity
  • Features cutting-edge research on ethnicity relating to Philistine, Etruscan, and Phoenician identities
  • Reveals the explicit relationships between ancient and modern ethnicities
  • Introduces an interpretation of ethnicity as an active component of social identity
  • Represents a fundamental questioning of formally accepted and fixed categories in the field

This volume contains an article by Jennifer Gates-Foster  entitled Achaemenids, royal power, and Persian ethnicity.

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Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in Ancient Iran

Mokhtarian, Jason Sion. 2015. Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in Ancient Iran. Berkeley. University of California Press.

Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests examines the impact of the Persian Sasanian context on the Babylonian Talmud, perhaps the most important corpus in the Jewish sacred canon. What impact did the Persian Zoroastrian Empire, as both a real historical force and an imaginary interlocutor, have on rabbinic identity and authority as expressed in the Talmud? Drawing from the field of comparative religion, Jason Sion Mokhtarian addresses this question by bringing into mutual fruition Talmudic studies and ancient Iranology, two historically distinct disciplines. Whereas most research on the Talmud assumes that the rabbis were an insular group isolated from the cultural horizon outside their academies, this book contextualizes the rabbis and the Talmud within a broader sociocultural orbit by drawing from a wide range of sources from Sasanian Iran, including Middle Persian Zoroastrian literature, archaeological data such as seals and inscriptions, and the Aramaic magical bowl spells. Mokhtarian also includes a detailed examination of the Talmud’s dozens of texts that portray three Persian “others”: the Persians, the Sasanian kings, and the Zoroastrian priests. This book skillfully engages and demonstrates the rich penetration of Persian imperial society and culture on the jews

TOC:

-List of Abbreviations
-Note on Translations, Transcriptions, and Manuscripts
-Acknowledgments
-Introduction
-1. The Sources and Methods of Talmudic and Iranian Studies
-2. Comparing Sasanian Religions
-3. Rabbinic Portrayals of Persians as Others
-4. Rabbis and Sasanian Kings in Dialogue
-5. Rabbis and Zoroastrian Priests in Judicial Settings
-6. Rabbis, Sorcerers, and Priests
-Conclusion: Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests in Sasanian Iran
-Notes
-Bibliography
-Index

 

Jason Sion Mokhtarian is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.

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Samarkand and Soghd During the Abbasid Period: Political and Social History

Karev, Yuri. 2015. Samarqand et le Sughd à l’époque ‘abbasside: Histoire politique et sociale. (Cahiers de Studia Iranica 55). Paris. Peeters.

During the Abbasid period (750-820), the vast territories beyond the Amu Darya river (the Mawara’annahr), conquered by the Umayyad generals in the first half of the eighth century, entered definitively into the cultural sphere of Islam. The comparative analysis of medieval Arabic, Persian, and Chinese sources, supplemented by materials from unpublished manuscripts, as well as the latest results yielded by archaeological excavations at Samarkand, have made it possible to establish a fine-grained chronology of this turning point in the history of Central Asia. Examined in this new light are complex and irreversible processes that resulted in a changed political and religious fabric, transformations of the Sogdian and Muslim elite, and the evolution of the state’s system of controlling territories on its borders, within a context of confrontations and diplomatic relations between the caliphate, the Tang empire in China, and the Turks.

For more information, see the Table of Contents of this volume.

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A Short Chronicle on the End of the Sasanian Empire and Early Islam

ssssal-Ka’bi, Nasir. 2015. A Short Chronicle on the End of the Sasanian Empire and Early Islam. New Jersey: Gorgias Press.

The Short Chronicle is probably part of a Church History that is no longer extant, and it was written by an Ecclesiastic living in the north of Mesopotamia and belonging to the Church of the East. It is an eyewitness report on a crucial historical period, the mid-7th century that witnessed the demise of two contending world empires, the Sasanian and the Byzantine, and their replacement by Islam, thus signaling the end of Late Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The Chronicle may be the earliest Syriac document which relies heavily on official Sasanian sources, including Khwaday-namag, when it discusses secular history, and on church histories when dealing with ecclesiastical matters. It may also be the oldest Syriac chronicle which deals with the advent of Mu?ammad and the ensuing Arab conquest, and which mentions Arab cities for the first time ever, including Mosul, Kufa, and Basra.

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Articles Books

Daēuuas vertreibende Worte

Cantera, Alberto. 2015. Daēuuas vertreibende Worte: Die Läuterungsrituale in V9–12. In Philippe Swennen (ed.), Démons iraniens: actes du colloque international organisé à la Université de Liège les 5 et 6 février 2009 à l’occasion des 65 ans de Jean Kellens, 77–96. Liège: Presses Universitaires de Liège.

Many Avestan texts are considered to have a great protective capacity against the daēuuas, especially the names of the Amәѕa Spәta, their Yašts and the Staota Yesniia (above all the Ahuna Vairiia). They are combined in different forms to provide bāǰ „prayers that accompany the ritual action“ and keep the daēuuas away from the ritual. Most ritual actions are accompanied by three bāǰ: one opening, one closing and one accompanying bāǰ. The use of such bāǰ is especially frequent in the purification rituals. V10 and 11 are examined under this perspective and it is concluded that V10 presents probably the alternative accompa­nying bāǰ for a baršnum-ceremony and V11 for a purification ritual for different elements.

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From Babylonian to Old Persian Cuneiform

Bergerhausen, Johannes. 2014. Digitale Keilschrift | Digital cuneiform. Mainz: Schmidt.
For three millennia, cuneiform was the dominant writing system in the ancient eastern world. More than half a million cuneiform tablets are still in existence. They are stored in museums and collections, some of them have never been translated.  Ever since the rediscovery of these ancient cultures in the 19th century, the pictographic characters of the world’s oldest script have fascinated researchers and fans alike. Today, the shapes seem surprisingly modern and thrill not just archaeologists and scholars, but typographers, textile designers and tattooists, too.This book presents a typographical journey through time in book form – a key to the ancient cultures or the earliest form of type hype with 544 pages with all known cuneiform characters from Mesopotamian to Babylonian to Ancient Persian, with numerals and punctuation, type tables and background information as well as access to the digital cuneiform font.

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Vandidād-e Jahānbaxši

ms. 4161
Fol. 2r, Vidēvdād manuscript ms. 4161 (Vandidad-e Jahānbaxši), Tehran University © Avestan Digital Archive

Cantera, A., & Mazdapour, K. (Eds). (2015). The Liturgical Widēwdād manuscript ms. 4161 (Vandidad-e Jahānbaxši). Salamanca; Tehran: Sociedad de Estudios Iranios y Turanios.

The ms. 4161 belonged to the Jahānbaxši family and was purchased by the Avestan Digital Archive in 2012. Since then it is hosted in the Central Library of the Tehran University as a long-term loan. It contains the longest version of the Yasna ceremony, which consists of the Yasna with the Wisperad and Widēwdād intercalations together with instructions in Middle Persian for the right performance of the ritual. An exclusive feature of this manuscript is that it includes on the margin and written by a second hand the description of the contents of the Widēwdād that appear in the eighth book of the Dēnkard.
We have chosen this manuscript for the first volume of the series because of its importance for the Avestan textual criticism. Most of the known Avestan manuscripts produced in Iran were written by members of the learned family of Marzbān Frēdōn or were copied from manuscripts produced within this family. Ms. 4161 does not belong to this group, although it was written only some years after the oldest preserved manuscripts of the Marzbān family. It is closer to a very famous manuscript hosted in the Cama Oriental Institute, the ms. 4020 (Mf2), and other manuscripts discovered recently. But, whereas Mf2 is an Indian copy of an Iranian original sent to India, ms. 4161 is the only manuscript of this group that was still produced in Iran and is therefore not affected by the influence of the Indian environment.
The book contains one English preface written in English by Katayoun Mazdapour and two introductions: one in Persian, by Katayoun Mazdāpour and one in English by Alberto Cantera. In these introductions, it is dealt with different aspects of the history of the manuscript and its position among other Avestan manuscripts of the same class. The main section of the book is the high-quality colour facsimile of the 268 folios of the manuscript with indexing in the margins.