Tag: History

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شاه و نخبگان در شاهنشاهی هخامنشی

به کوشش ووتر ف. م. هنکلمن. ۱۴۰۰. شاه و نخبگان در شاهنشاهی هخامنشی: گزیده مقالاتی در باب بایگانی باروی هخامنشی . ترجمه از یزدان صفایی و حمیدرضا نیک‌روش. تهران: موزه ملی ایران.

Henkelman, W.F.M. (ed.). 2021. King and Elite in the Achaemenid Empire: Selected Studies based on the Persepolis Fortification Archive (Treasures of Ancient Iran 1). Translated by Yazdan Safaee & Hamidreza Nikravesh. Tehran: National Museum of Iran.

کتاب شاه و نخبگان در شاهنشاهی هخامنشی مقالاتی را شامل می‌شود که موضوع آنها بر شبکه روابط میان شاه و گروه نخبگان اطراف او تمرکز دارد. این مقالات عمدتاً ماحصل تحقیق بر روی متون بایگانی باروی تخت‌جمشید هستند، یعنی یکی از مهم‌ترین منابع برای شناخت تاریخ هخامنشیان. مقالات مذکور در اصل به انگلیسی منتشر شده بودند و ترجمه فارسی آنها در این کتاب با هدف انتشار بخشی از نتایج پروژه بایگانی باروی تخت‌جمشید در دسترس قرار گرفته است. از این روی کتاب فوق‌الذکر مجموعه‌ای از مقالات محققان پیشتازی است که در این پروژه مشغول به تحقیق هستند: آنالیزا آتزونی، مارک گریسون، ووتر هنکلمن و متیو استولپر.

کتاب حاضر مجلد نخست از مجموعه‌ای است به نام گنج‌آمار ایران باستان: منابع و مطالعات فرهنگ و تاریخ آغازین ایران که به همت موزه ملی ایران منتشر می‌شود که هدف آن انتشار ترجمه‌هایی فارسی از تحقیقات جدید در مورد ایران باستان است.

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Orodes II

Olbrycht, Marek. 2021. Orodes II. In Encyclopædia Iranica Online, edited by Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.

ORODES II (r. 58/57-37 BCE), king of Parthia, son of Phraates III (r. 70-57 BCE), and father of Phraates IV (q.v.). During his reign, the empire of the Arsacids (q.v.) reached the zenith of its power and scored significant victories against Rome.

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Books

The Last Great War of Antiquity

Howard-Johnston, James. 2021. The last great war of antiquity. Oxford University Press.

The last and longest war of classical antiquity was fought in the early seventh century. It was ideologically charged and fought along the full length of the Persian-Roman frontier, drawing in all the available resources and great powers of the steppe world. The conflict raged on an unprecedented scale, and its end brought the classical phase of history to a close. Despite all this, it has left a conspicuous gap in the history of warfare. This book aims to finally fill that gap.
The war opened in summer 603 when Persian armies launched co-ordinated attacks across the Roman frontier. Twenty-five years later the fighting stopped after the final, forlorn counteroffensive thrusts of the Emperor Heraclius into the Persians’ Mesopotamian heartland. James Howard-Johnston pieces together the scattered and fragmentary evidence of this period to form a coherent story of the dramatic events, as well as an introduction to key players-Turks, Arabs, and Avars, as well as Persians and Romans- and a tour of the vast lands over which the fighting took place. The decisions and actions of individuals-particularly Heraclius, a general of rare talent-and the various immaterial factors affecting morale take centre stage, yet due attention is also given to the underlying structures in both belligerent empires and to the Middle East under Persian occupation in the 620s. The result is a solidly founded, critical history of a conflict of immense significance in the final episode of classical history.

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Persia (552 BCE-758 CE). Primary Sources, Old and New

Gyselen, Rika (ed.). 2020. Persia (552 BCE-758 CE). Primary Sources, Old and New (Res Orientales 28). Bures-sur-Yvette: Groupe pour l’Étude de la Civilisation du Moyen-Orient (GECMO).

The articles in this volume present, comment on and interpret primary sources from different eras: Achaemenid, Sasanian and post-Sasanian. While most of these sources were discovered in the 21st century, a few were already known. Recent Iranian surveys and excavations have uncovered: (1) new Sasanian sites in the region of Sar Mashad in the Pars, (2) Sasanian administrative bullae on Tappe Barnakoon, west of Isfahan, (3) a clay sealing with the impression of a royal seal of Peroz in Taxt-e Soleiman. New data for Sasanian numismatics come from unpublished coins in the Johnson collection. Three documents from the “Tabarestan Archive”, published in recent years, have been re-read and interpreted in the context of Zoroastrian law. Also, sources known from much longer have been the subject of new “readings”. They highlight that the message these inscriptions and royal objects convey is strongly conditioned by the type of ‘public’ to which it is addressed.

Table of Contents

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Books

Materials for a History of the Persian Narrative Tradition

Orsatti, Paola. 2019. Materials for a History of the Persian Narrative Tradition. Two Characters: Farhād and Turandot. Venezia: Ca’ Foscari.

This book gathers together two essays. The first deals with the origins of the character of Farhād, the unlucky lover of Shīrīn, who – in the Persian narrative tradition – digs a route through Mount Bīsutūn and accomplishes other admirable works. The essay suggests that Farhād, as we know him from long narrative poems, historical chronicles, and reports by geographers and travelers, is the issue of a conflation between the legendary character of the Master of Mount Bīsutūn and a historical personage, Farrahān, the general-in-chief of the Sasanid king Khusraw II Parvīz’s army (r. 590-628 EC), as this figure was re-elaborated in a number of later legends. 

The second essay identifies a character named ‘Būrān-dukht’ as the prototype from which Turandot, the heroine of the tale well-known in Europe from Puccini’s opera (1926), springs. Two historical personages, both called Būrān or Būrān-dukht, are relevant in this line of development: the first is the daughter of the Sasanid king Khusraw II Parvīz (r. 580-628 CE), who was queen of Persia for a short period (630-631 CE); the other is the daughter of Ḥasan b. Sahl, wife of Caliph al-Maʾmūn (813-833 CE).

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Books

Women and Monarchy in Ancient Iran

Carney, Elizabeth Donnelly & Sabine Müller (eds.). 2021. The Routledge Companion to Women and Monarchy in the Ancient Mediterranean World. London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Portrait of Shapur III’s Wife. ca. 383-388 C.E. Onyx. BnF – Bibliothèque nationale de France (20.A.1)

This volume offers the first comprehensive look at the role of women in the monarchies of the ancient Mediterranean. It consistently addresses certain issues across all dynasties: title; role in succession; the situation of mothers, wives, and daughters of kings; regnant and co-regnant women; role in cult and in dynastic image; and examines a sampling of the careers of individual women while placing them within broader contexts. Written by an international group of experts, this collection is based on the assumption that women played a fundamental role in ancient monarchy, that they were part of, not apart from it, and that it is necessary to understand their role to understand ancient monarchies. This is a crucial resource for anyone interested in the role of women in antiquity.

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Journal

Elite responses to the rise of Achaemenid Persia

Medenieks, Selga (ed.). 2018. Elite responses to the rise of Achaemenid Persia. Special issue of Hermathena 204 & 205.

This issue of Hermathena was published in December 2020 and currently has no website. The digital version of the journal will soon be available on JSTOR. Until such time, orders and inquiries can be directed to: hermathena@tcd.ie. ~AZ

Table of Contents

HERMATHENA (2018) 204-205

Elite responses to the rise of Achaemenid Persia
Edited by Dr Selga Medenieks
(Department of Classics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)

Acknowledgements
Selga Medenieks 5

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Jews and Syriac Christians

Butts, Aaron Michael & Simcha Gross (eds.). 2020. Jews and Syriac Christians: Intersections across the first millennium (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 180). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Der vorliegende Band enthält sechzehn Studien, die ein breites Spektrum an Themen untersuchen – von Fragen zum
Ursprung bis zur Entwicklung kommunaler Grenzen, von zwischenmenschlichen Interaktionen bis zu gemeinsamen
historischen Bedingungen, die Juden und syrische Christen im ersten Jahrtausend n. Chr. betraf.

Mohr Siebeck

The publisher offers links to a flyer and a table of contents. ~AZ

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Societies at War

Ruffing, Kai, Kerstin Dross-Krüpe, Sebastian Fink & Robert Rollinger (Eds.). 2020. Societies at war: Proceedings of the 10th symposium of the Melammu project held in Kassel September 26-28 2016 & Proceedings of the 8th symposium of the Melammu project held in Kiel November 11-15 2014 (MELAMMU, 10). Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

War and war-related issues have attracted an increasing attention within current historical and archaeological research, not least in response to recent global political events. Another reason for this growing interest is probably a general trend towards Modern Military History that has drawn academic attention to war-related issues through all cultures and epochs, going beyond Clausewitz’s argument of war as a continuation of politics by other means. The present vol-ume is committed to this broad approach by examining and comparing phenomena related to ancient warfare from the perspective of Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Classical Studies. Due to unforeseeable circumstances, which prevented the organizers from editing their own proceedings, some papers of the 8th Symposium of the Melammu Project, held at Kiel on the subject “Iranian Worlds”, have been added to this volume in their own section.

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Rome and Persia at War

Edwell, Peter. 2020. Rome and Persia at War: Imperial Competition and Contact, 193-363 CE. New York and London: Routledge.

This book focuses on conflict, diplomacy and religion as factors in the relationship between Rome and Sasanian Persia in the third and fourth centuries AD. During this period, military conflict between Rome and Sasanian Persia was at a level and depth not seen mostly during the Parthian period. At the same time, contact between the two empires increased markedly and contributed in part to an increased level of conflict. Edwell examines both war and peace – diplomacy, trade and religious contact – as the means through which these two powers competed, and by which they sought to gain, maintain and develop control of territories and peoples who were the source of dispute between the two empires. The volume also analyses internal factors in both empires that influenced conflict and competition between them, while the roles of regional powers such as the Armenians, Palmyrenes and Arabs in conflict and contact between the two “super powers” receive special attention. Using a broad array of sources, this book gives special attention to the numismatic evidence as it has tended to be overshadowed in modern studies by the literary and epigraphic sources.

This is the first monograph in English to undertake an in-depth and critical analysis of competition and contact between Rome and the early Sasanians in the Near East in the third and fourth centuries AD using literary, archaeological, numismatic and epigraphic evidence, and one which includes the complete range of mechanisms by which the two powers competed. It is an invaluable study for anyone working on Rome, Persia and the wider Near East in Late Antiquity.

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