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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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Books

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.
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Articles Books

The steppe world and the rise of the Huns

de la Vaissière, Etienne. 2014. The steppe world and the rise of the Huns. In Michael Maas (ed.), The Cambridge companion to the age of Attila, 175–192.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This book examines the age of Attila, roughly the fifth century CE, an era in which western Eurasia experienced significant geopolitical and cultural changes. The Roman Empire collapsed in western Europe, replaced by new ‘barbarian’ kingdoms, but it continued in Christian Byzantine guise in the eastern Mediterranean. New states and peoples changed the face of northern Europe, while in Iran, the Sasanian Empire developed new theories of power and government. At the same time, the great Eurasian steppe became a permanent presence in the European world. This book treats Attila, the notorious king of the Huns, as both an agent of change and a symbol of the wreck of the old world order.

For more information on the book, see the publisher’s website.

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Iran in World History

Foltz, Richard. 2016. Iran in world history. (New Oxford World History). New York: Oxford University Press.
One of the world’s most ancient and enduring civilizations, Iran has long played a central role in human events and continues to do so today. This book traces the spread of Iranian culture among diverse populations ranging from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, and along the Silk Roads as far as China, from prehistoric times up to the present day. From paradise gardens and Persian carpets to the mystical poetry of Rumi and Hafez, Iran’s contributions have earned it a place among history’s greatest and most influential civilizations. Encompassing the fields of religion, literature and the arts, politics, and higher learning, this book provides a holistic history of this important culture.
Continue reading “Iran in World History”
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Paintings of afrāsyāb

Details of a copy of mural called The Ambassordors’ Painting, found in the hall of the ruin of an aristocratic house in Afrasiab, commissioned by the king of Samarkand, Varkhuman (ca. 650)

Compareti, Matteo. 2015. Samarkand the center of the world: proposals for the indentification of the afrasyab paintings. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers.

 In antiquity Samarkand was the capital of the Persian province of Sogdiana. Its language, culture, and “Zoroastrian” religion closely approximated those of the Persians. Following its conquest by Alexander, its strategic position and fertile soil made Sogdiana a coveted prize for Late Antique invaders of Central Asia. Around 660 CE — at the dawn of Arab invasion — local king Varkhuman promoted the execution of a unique painted program in one of his private rooms. Each wall was dedicated to a specific population: the north wall, the Chinese; the west, the Sogdians themselves; the east, the Indians and possibly the Turks. The south wall is probably the continuation of the scene on the west wall. In Chinese written sources, some support for this concept of the “division of the world” can be found. Accidentally discovered during Soviet times, the room was named “Hall of the Ambassadors” due to the representations of different peoples. However, many aspects of its painted program remain obscure. This study offers new ideas for better identifications of the rituals celebrated by the people on the different walls during precise moments of the year.
About the Author:
Matteo Compareti (PhD 2005) is adjunct assistant professor in Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of California-Berkeley.