Category: Books

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Sasanian Elements in Byzantine, Caucasian and Islamic Art and Culture

Asutay-Effenberger, Neslihan & Falko Daim (eds.). 2019. Sasanidische Spuren in der byzantinischen, kaukasischen und islamischen Kunst und Kultur | Sasanian Elements in Byzantine, Caucasian and Islamic Art and Culture (Römisch Germanisches Zentralmuseum 15). Bonn: Verlag Schnell & Steiner.

The Sasanian Empire (224-651 AD) spreads over areas of today’s Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Caucasus regions were also under its political influence. Many elements of Sasanian art and culture can be found in neighboring countries and cultures, such as Byzantium or the Christian Caucasus, and continued to live after the Sasanian fall in the Islamic dominions that developed on their former territory. To examine the continuing role and the survival of Sasanian art after the fall of the last Persian Empire, an international conference was held in September 2017 at the Roman-Germanic Central Museum in Mainz. The contributions of scholars from different disciplines are published in this volume.

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Art of Sogdian immigrants

Xu, Jin. 2019. The funerary couch of An Jia and the art of Sogdian immigrants in sixth-century China. Burlington Magazine, No. 1399 – Vol 161. 820–829.

Detail of decorative screen of the funerary couch of An Jia, Detail of decorative screen of the funerary couch of An Jia showing the portrait of a couple on the left side panel. © Burlington Magazine

The tomb of An Jia, leader of a Sogdian immigrant community in sixth-century Xi’an, northern China, contained a remarkable stone couch. Its form is Chinese but its decoration imitates gilt silverware imported by Sogdian merchants from Sasanian Persia, reflecting An Jia’s dual cultural identity.

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Sasanian Persia and the Tabarestan Archive

Gyselen, Rika (ed.). 2019. Sasanian Persia and the Tabarestan Archive (Res Orientales 27). Bures sur Yvette: Groupe d’Etude de la Civilisation du Moyen-Orient.

  • James Howard-Johnston: «World War in Eurasia at the End of Antiquity»
  • Nils Purwins: «The Noble Ones of Eranshahr: Rank Titles and a Comparison with the Imperium Romanum».

The Tabarestan Archive (8th century)

  • Dieter Weber: «Pahlavi Legal Documents from Tabarestan. Two Claims and a Re-evaluation of Crop Yields: A Philological Study of Tab. 21, 22 and 24»
  • Maria Macuch: «Pahlavi Legal Documents from Tabarestan. Two Claims and a Re-evaluation of Crop Yields: The Juristic Context of Tab. 21, 22 and 24»
  • Rika Gyselen: «Les bulles de l’Archive du Tabarestan: quelques aspects matériels des scellements».

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Taxing Achaemenid Arachosia: Evidence from Persepolis

King, Rhyne. 2019. Taxing Achaemenid Arachosia: Evidence from Persepolis. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 78(2): 185-199.

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Silk Roads

Whitfield, Susan (ed.). 2019. Silk roads: Peoples, cultures, landscapes. California: University of California Press.

The Silk Roads continue to capture the imagination of the public, and, in 2014, a section of the land routes was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Yet there was no single “Silk Road.” Instead, a complex network of trade routes spanned Afro-Eurasia’s mountains, plains, deserts, and seas. From silk to spices, religion to dance, traffic in goods and ideas was crucial to the development of civilizations through rich cultural interactions and economic activity.
Centered around the dramatic landscapes of the Silk Roads, this beautiful volume honors the great diversity of medieval Afro-Eurasian cultures. Each section—from steppe to desert to ocean—includes maps, a historical and archaeological overview and thematic essays by leading historians worldwide, as well as sidebars showcasing objects that exemplify the art, archaeology and architecture of the Silk Roads.


Source: Silk Roads by Susan Whitfield – Hardcover – University of California Press

The author of numerous books and articles on the Silk Roads and China, including Life Along the Silk Road and Silk, Slaves, and Stupas, Susan Whitfield is a scholar, curator, writer, lecturer, and traveler of the Silk Roads.

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Arab-Sasanian Numismatics and History during the Early Islamic Period in Iran and Iraq

Malek, Hodge Mehdi. 2019. Arab-Sasanian Numismatics and History during the Early Islamic Period in Iran and Iraq: The Johnson Collection of Arab-Sasanian Coins (Royal Numismatic Society Special Publication 55). 2 vols. London: Royal Numismatic Society.

This is the first major work to attempt a comprehensive survey of the Arab-Sasanian silver coinage since Walker’s 1941 Catalogue of the British Museum collection. It includes the latest research on the subject, both historical (chapters 1 to 4) and numismatic (chapter 5 to 15). All the coins (over 1,600), both silver drachms and copperfulus, in the Johnson collection are illustrated on the excellent plates. Where thJohnson collection does not have a specimen of an important coin an example is illustrated from another source, making this a truly important work

The extensive chapters on the persons named on the coins, the mints, and the Pahlavi, Arabic and Sogdian legends, make this an invaluable historical source. Other chapters discuss the copper issues with theirvaried designs, the eras and dates used, metrology, coins struck in the east in Sīstān and further north by the Hephthalites, and counter marks, as well as the designs found on the silver drachms. All Pahlavi and Arabic legends (mints, persons named, religious and other marginal legends, dates) are written out as theyappear on the coins in extensive tables. This makes it possible for a beginner in the series to read thesesometimes difficult legends.

See here the Table of Contents of the two volumes.

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Books

The Deccan Sultanates

Flatt, Emma. 2019. The courts of the Deccan Sultanates: Living well in the Persian cosmopolis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

In the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, courtliness was crucial to the political and cultural life of the Deccan. Divided between six states competing for territory, resources and skills, the medieval and early modern Deccan was a region of striking ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity. People used multifaceted trans-regional networks – mercantile, kinship, friendship and intellectual – to move across the Persian-speaking world and to find employment at the Deccan courts. This movement, Emma J. Flatt argues, was facilitated by the existence of a shared courtly disposition. Engagement in courtly skills such as letter-writing, perfume-making, astrological divination, performing magic, sword-fighting and wrestling thus became a route to both worldly success and ethical refinement. Using a diverse range of treatises, chronicles, poetry and letters, Flatt unpicks the ways this challenged networks of acceptable behaviour and knowledge in the Indo-Islamicate courtly world – and challenges the idea of perpetual hostility between Islam and Hinduism in Indian history.

Source: The Courts of the Deccan Sultanates | Cambridge University Press

Emma J. Flatt is Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

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Books

The Scythians

Cunliffe, Barry. 2019. The Scythians: Nomad warriors of the steppe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brilliant horsemen and great fighters, the Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south – the Chinese, the Persians and the Greeks – and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe.
Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different – both communities benefiting from trading with each other. This led to the development of a brilliant art style, often depicting scenes from Scythian mythology and everyday life. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian life: their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, from the graves of kings on the Pontic steppe, with their elaborate gold work and vividly coloured fabrics, to the frozen tombs of the Altai mountains, where all the organic material – wooden carvings, carpets, saddles and even tattooed human bodies – is amazingly well preserved.

Source: The Scythians – Barry Cunliffe – Oxford University Press

Barry Cunliffe is Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology, University of Oxford.

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Books

Studies on Pre-Islamic Iran and on Historical Linguistics

Lurje, Pavel (Ed.). 2019. Proceedings of the 8th European Conference of Iranian Studies. Held on 14–19 Sep. 2015 at the State Hermitage Museum and Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences, in St Petersburg. Vol. 1: Studies on Pre-Islamic Iran and on Historical Linguistics. St. Petersburg: The State Hermitage Publishers.

The volume incorporates articles presented by the participants of the Eighth European Conference of Iranian Studies (in St Petersburg 14–19 September 2015) which werefocused on Pre-Islamic Iran and on historical linguistics. The collected papers mirrorthe wide scope of Iranian studies of the present day: from business documents of Tumshuqin Xinjiangto those of the Syrian wars of the early Sasanians, from the etymology ofthe place-name Sudakto the pottery assemblages of Sistan of the Achaemenian period.The volume is addressedto Iranologists and specialists in neighbouring fields.

Table of Contents
  • Agustí ALEMANY: “Alans and Sogdians in the Crimea: on nomads, traders and Namengeschichten”
  • Pooriya ALIMORADI: “Zand-i Wahman Yašt: the New Persian version”
  • Pavel BASHARIN: “Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto‑Iranian language contacts with Proto-North Caucasian”
  • Julian BOGDANI and Luca COLLIVA: “Activities of the Italian archaeological mission in Iraqi Kurdistan: a preliminary report”
  • CHING Chao-jung: “The four cardinal directions in Tumshuqese”
  • Emily J. COTTRELL, Micah T. ROSS: “Persian astrology: Dorotheus and Zoroaster, according to the medieval Arabic sources (8th – 11th century)”
  • Iris COLDITZ: “Women without guardianship”
  • Matteo COMPARETI: “The ‘eight divinities’ in Khotanese paintings: local deities or Sogdian importation”
  • Maryam DARA: “The comparison between the subjects and written patterns of Urartian and Old Persian royal inscriptions”
  • Matteo DE CHIARA: “Describing Pashto verbal morphology”
  • Bruno GENITO: “Building no 3 in Dahāne-ye Gholāmān, Eastern Iran (Sistan): an Achaemenid religious puzzle”
  • Sebastian HEINE: “Anmerkungen zur historischen Phonologie und Lexik des Kurdischen (Kurmanji)”
  • Camilla INSOM: “Reshaping sacred landscape: notes on Sufi cult in Sangaw village shrines”
  • Thomas JÜGEL: “The development of the object marker in Middle Persian”
  • Nargis J. KHOJAEVA: “Again to the question of localization of Avestan Airiianəm-Vaējō”
  • Mateusz M. KŁAGISZ: “Middle Persian Yōšt ī Fr(i)yān as Proppʼs folk-tale”
  • Jiulio MARESCA: “The pottery from Dahane-ye Gholaman (Sistan): the state of art”
  • Jafar MEHR KIAN, Vito MESSINA: “The sanctuary and cemetery of Shami: research of the Iranian-Italian joint expedition in Khuzistan at Kal-e Chendar”
  • S. Fatemeh MUSAVI: “Pahlavi and Sanskrit interpretations of Gāϑā 31, an analysis”
  • OGIHARA Hirotoshi: “Tumshuqese imperfect and its related forms”
  • Filip PALUNČIĆ: “Ossetic historical phonology and North-Eastern Iranian anthroponomastics from the North Pontic region 1st – 5th c. CE”
  • Gabriele PUSCHNIGG: “Functional variation in pottery repertoires from the Parthian and Sasanian period”
  • Chiara RIMINUCCI: “Parokṣakámá hi devàh „denn die Götter lieben das Mysteriöse“. Zur Komposition des Bahrām-Yašt”
  • Ehsan SHAVAREBI: “Sasanians, Arsacids, Aramaeans: Ibn al-Kalbī’s account of Ardashīr’s Western campaign”
  • Fahimeh TASALLI BAKHSH: “Speech representation in Yashts; a narratological approach”
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Books

The administrative geography of the Sassanian Empire

Rika Gyselen, La géographie administrative de l’empire sassanide: les té́moignages épigraphiques en moyen-perse, Res Orientals, XXV (Bures-sur-Yvette: Groupe pour l’étude de la civilisation du Moyen-Orient, 2019).

Since the publication of the Géographie administrative de l’empire sassanide. Les témoignages sigillographiques in 1989, new administrative and official seals, two coin types and an inscription on silverware have appeared. This book contains all the epigraphic attestations in Middle-Persian on the territorial administration in the Sasanian Empire in the form of a catalogue raisonné with the names of regional kingdoms, provinces, regions and kust, as well as the names of administrations and administrators.

See the Table of Contents.