Bläsing, Uwe, Victoria Arakelova & Matthias Weinreich (eds.). 2015. Studies on Iran and the Caucasus: In honour of Garnik Asatrian. Leiden: Brill.
This unique collection of essays by leading international scholars gives a profound introduction into the great diversity and richness of facets forming the study of one of earth’s most exciting areas, the Iranian and Caucasian lands. Each of the 37 contributions sheds light on a very special topic, the range of which comprises historical, cultural, ethnographical, religious, political and last but not least literary and linguistic issues, beginning from the late antiquity up to current times. Especially during the last decennia these two regions gained greater interest worldwide due to several developments in politics and culture. This fact grants the book, intended as a festschrift for Prof. Garnik Asatrian, a special relevance.
Table of Contents:
History and texts
I. Early Mediaeval Period
- Marco Bais: “Like a Flame Through the Reeds”: An Iranian Image in the Buzandaran Patmut‘iwnk‘
- Jost Gippert: “The “Bun-Turks” in Ancient Georgia”
- Dan Shapira: “On the Relative Value of Armenian Sources for the Khazar Studies: The Case of the Siege of Tbilisi”
- Giusto Traina: “Some Remarks on the Inscription of Maris, Casit filius (Classical-Oriental Notes, 9)”
II. Late Mediaeval Period
- Kaveh Farrokh: “The Military Campaigns of Shah Abbas I in Azerbaijan and the Caucasus (1603-1618)”
- Aldo Ferrari: “Persia and Persians in Raffi’s Xamsayi Melikʻutiwnnerə”
- Hirotake Maeda: “New Information on the History of the Caucasus in the Third Volume of Afzal al-tavarikh”
- Irène Natchkebia: “Unrealized Project: Rousseaus’ Plan of Franco-Persian Trade in the Context of the Indian Expedition (1807)”
- Roman Smbatian: “Nadir’s Religious Policy Towards Armenians”
Religion and Ethnography
- Victoria Arakelova: “The Song Unveiling the Hidden”
- Viacheslav A. Chirikba: “Between Christianity and Islam: Heathen Heritage in the Caucasus”
- Matteo Compareti: “Armenian Pre-Christian Divinities: Some Evidence from the History of Art and Archaeological Investigation”
- Peter Nicolaus: “The Taming of the Fairies”
- Antonio Panaino: “The Classification of Astral Bodies in the Framework of a Historical Survey of Iranian Traditions”
- Vahe S. Boyajian: “From Muscat to Sarhadd: Remarks on gwātī Healing Ritual within the Social Context”
Linguistics
- Uwe Bläsing: “Georgische Gewächse auf türkischer Erde: Ein Beitrag zur Phytonomie in Nordostanatolien”
- Johnny Cheung: “The Persian Verbal Suffixes -ān and -andeh (-andag)”
- Claudia A. Ciancaglini: “Allomorphic Variability in the Middle Persian Continuants of the Old Iranian suffix *-ka-“
- Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: “Vowel Length in Middle Persian Verbal Endings”
- Vladimir Livshits: “Some Khwarezmian Names”
- Ela Filippone: “Kurdish bažn, Persian bašn and Other Iranian Cognates”
- Adriano V. Rossi: “Once Again on Iranian *kund”
- James R. Russell: “A Note on Armenian hrmštk-el”
- Wolfgang Schulze: “Aspects of Udi-Iranian Language Contact”
- Martin Schwarz: “Armenian varkaparazi and Its Iranian Background”
- Donald Stilo: “The Poligenetic Origins of the Northern Talishi Language”
- Matthias Weinreich: “Not only in the Caucasus: Ethno-linguistic Diversity on the Roof of the World”
Ritual and Folklore
- Anna Krasnawolska: “Hedayat’s Nationalism and His Concepts of Folklore”
- Mikhail Pelevin: “Early Specimens of Pashto Folklore”
- Nagihan Haliloğlu: “Activist, Professional, Family Man: Masculinities in Marjane Satrapi’s Work”
- Khachik Gevorgian: “On the Interpretation of the Term “Futuwwa” in Persian Fotovvatnamehs“
Historico-Political Issues
- Çakır Ceyhan Suvari, Elif Kanca: “The Alevi Discourse in Turkey”
- Pascal Kluge: “Turkey’s Border with Armenia: Obstacle and Chance for Turkish Politics”
- Irina Morozova: “On the Causes of Socialism’s Deconstruction:
Conventional Debates and Popular Rhetoric in Contemporary
Kazakhstan and Mongolia” - Caspar ten Dam: “The Limitations of Military Psychology: Combat-stress and Violence-values among the Chechens and Albanians”
- Garry W. Trompf: “The Ararat Factor: Moral Basics in Western Political Theory from Isaac Newton to John Stuart Mill”
- Eberhard Werner: “Communication and the Oral-Aural Traditions of an East-Anatolian Ethnicity: What us Stories tell!”