Tag: Sasanian

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Articles

Locating al-Qadisiyyah

Deadman, W.M. et al. 2024. Locating al-Qadisiyyah: Mapping Iraq’s most famous early Islamic conquest site. Antiquity, FirstView, 1–8.

The Darb Zubaydah (DZ) is a Hajj pilgrimage road stretching from Kufa in Iraq to Mecca in Saudi Arabia (Al-Rashid Reference Al-Rashid1977; Peterson Reference Petersen1994). As part of the ‘Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa’ project (EAMENA), a remote sensing survey of the Iraqi section of this tentative World Heritage Site was carried out. Two previously unlocated DZ waystations, al-Qadisiyyah and al-’Udhayb, were identified during this survey (Figure 1). These historic sites are best known from texts describing one of the most famous battles of the early Islamic conquests.

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Events

Derbent: What Persia Left Behind

Date: 26 November 2024
Time: 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm
Venue: SOAS, Phillips Building
Room: Djam Lecture Theatre
Event type: Film screening followed by Q&A with the director & reception

“Derbent: What Persia Left Behind” is a comprehensive documentary that explores the unique history and archaeology of this UNESCO World Heritage Site. The documentary features exclusive footage shot in Derbent just before the Russo-Ukrainian war, along with interviews with renowned scholars who illuminate the rich yet often overlooked history of the fortifications. Funded by the Persian Heritage Foundation and the Soudavar Memorial Foundation, the film also highlights the critical condition of the Middle Persian (Pahlavi) inscriptions found in the region, the northernmost of their kind in the world. (More Information: Derbent Online.)

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Journal

Iran, Volume 62, Issue 2 (2024)

The table of contents of the latest issue (62/2) of the journal Iran:

  • Abbas Moghaddam & Elnaz Rashidian: Visiting Tol-e Tahmachi, a Fifth Millennium BCE Settlement in the Persian Gulf Littoral, Southwest Iran
  • Sheler Amelirad & Behroz Khanmohamadi: Typological Study of Metal Pins in Northwestern Iran Based on the Bayazid Abad (Bayazi Awa) Archaeological Assemblage
  • Mostafa Dehpahlavan & Zahra Alinezhad: The Cylinder Seals of Qareh Tepe in Sagzabad, Iron Age II and III
  • Mohsen Javeri & Majid Montazer Zohouri: Vigol and Harāskān Fire Temple: Archaeological Evidence About the Veneration of Fire in the Center of the Iranian Plateau During the Sasanian Period
  • Shahram Jalilian & Touraj Daryaee: The Image of the Sasanian King in the Perso-Arabic Historical Tradition
  • Esmaeil Sangari, Zohreh Noori, Amirhossein Moghaddas, Aliakbar Abbasi & Reza Dehghani: The Iconography of Dancers and Their Garments on Sasanid Silver Vessels (Case Study: Four Silver Vessels with Different Features)
  • Michael Shenkar: The So-Called “Fravašis” and the “Heaven and Hell” Paintings, and the Cult of Nana in Panjikent
  • Moujan Matin: A Medieval Stonepaste Ceramic Production Site in Moshkin Tepe, Iran: Ceramics, Wasters, and Manufacturing Equipment
  • Philip Henning Grobien: The Origins and Intentions of the Anglo-Persian Agreement 1919: A Reassessment
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Events

Land and Power in the Sasanian Empire

A workshop organised by Tommy Benfey (Tübingen) and Richard Payne (Chicago).

Middle Persian ostracon dealing with bread rations from Chāl Ṭarkhān-Eshqābād, photograph courtesy of ISAC Museum, Chicago
Friday, October 25, 2024
Land and Power in the Sasanian EmpireDownload

The workshop is co-sponsored by the University of Chicago and the University of Tübingen.


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Books

War in the Ancient Iranian Empires

Hyland, John O. & Khodadad Rezakhani (eds.). 2024. Brill’s companion to war in the ancient Iranian empires (Brill’s Companions to Classical Studies: Warfare in the Ancient Mediterranean World 9). Leiden: Brill.

Brill’s Companion to War in the Ancient Iranian Empires examines military structures and methods from the Elamite period through the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Arsacid, and Sasanian empires. War played a critical role in Iranian state formation and dynastic transitions, imperial ideologies and administration, and relations with neighbouring states and peoples from Central Asia to the Mediterranean. Twenty chapters by leading experts offer fresh approaches to the study of ancient Iranian armies, strategy, diplomacy, and battlefield methods, and contextualise famous conflicts with Greek and Roman opponents.

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Continue reading “War in the Ancient Iranian Empires”
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Books

Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian Relations in Late Antiquity

Kotyk, Jeffrey. 2024. Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian relations in Late Antiquity: China and the Parthians, Sasanians, and Arabs in the first millennium (Crossroads – History of Interactions across the Silk Routes 8). Leiden: Brill.

What type of exchanges occurred between West and East Asia in the first millennium CE? What sort of connections existed between Persia and China? What did the Chinese know of early Islam?
This study offers an overview of the cultural, diplomatic, commercial, and religious relationships that flourished between Iran and China, building on the pioneering work of Berthold Laufer’s Sino-Iranica (1919) while utilizing a diverse array of Classical Chinese sources to tell the story of Sino-Iran in a fresh light to highlight the significance of transcultural networks across Asia in late antiquity.

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Journal

Iran, Volume 62, Issue 1 (2024)

The table of contents of the latest issue (62/1) of the journal Iran:

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Books

In Search of Cultural Identities in West and Central Asia

Colburn, Henry P., Betty Hensellek & Judith A. Lerner (eds.). 2023. In Search of Cultural Identities in West and Central Asia: A Festschrift for Prudence Oliver Harper (Inner and Central Asian Art and Archaeology 3). Turnhout: Brepols.

How do we reconstruct ancient societies’ cultural and visual identities? Prudence Oliver Harper has dedicated her scholarly and curatorial career to piecing together the material culture of communities across ancient Western Asia, Iran, and Central Asia. A number of her colleagues – art historians, archaeologists, philologists, and conservators – have contributed essays to this volume to reflect Harper’s range of contributions throughout her six-decade career. Many of the essays focus on ancient metalwork, Harper’s major expertise, while others on glyptics, ivory, or glass, three of her other interests. The essays aim to make sense of this region’s diverse cultural identities, many of which are the results of cross-cultural exchange. Some authors have employed iconographical or socio-historical approaches; others have complementarily opened new facets of cultural identities through technical and scientific analyses, collection history, and provenance research.

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Books

Varia Manichaica

Morano, Enrico & Samuel N. C. Lieu (eds.). 2024. Varia Manichaica (Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum. Analecta Manichaica 3). Turnhout: Brepols.

This volume brings together the works of some of the best known and most established scholars in Gnostic and Manichaean studies, Iranologists and art historians. It contains two important and indispensable catalogues of Turfan texts and also studies covering topics such as cosmogony, hymnology and manuscript illumination. A number of Turfan texts in Sogdian and Uygur are published here for the first time.

Table of Contents

  • Sergio Basso: “Manichaean fragments related to the ‘Barlaam and Ioasaph saga’”
  • Adam Benkato: A Fragment of an Iranian Manichaean ‘Oral Tradition’
  • Fernando Bermejo-Rubio: Mani as a paradigm of the Manichaean Church in the Cologne Mani Codex
  • Şehnaz Biçer and Betül Özbay: The Lotus illustration in a Manichaean manuscript
  • Iris Colditz: Strategies for success. Manichaeism under the early Sasanians
  • Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: An update of Boyce’s Catalogue of Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian 
  • Eduard Iricinschi: How Do Wisdom, Law, and Revelation a Religion Make? Appropriation and Displacement in the ‘Chapters of the Wisdom of My Lord Mani’
  • Samuel N.C. Lieu: A catalogue of the Uygur Manichaean texts 
  • Enrico Morano: Uygur in the Manichaean Sogdian texts in Manichaean script from the Berlin Turfan Collection 
  • Nicholas Sims-Williams: The “seven adversities” in a Manichaean Sogdian hymn
  • Michel Tardieu: La métaphore de l’auberge
  • Peter Zieme: “Worte für die Seele”. Altuigurische manichäische Fragmente with an appendix by Yutaka Yoshida
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Books

Iranian Art

Blair, Sheila, Jonathan M. Bloom & Sandra Williams (eds.). 2024. Iranian art from the Sasanians to the Islamic Republic. Essays in honour of Linda Komaroff (Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Introduces Iranian art from classical to contemporary media, showing how art can be a source for history and politics

  • Takes a broad view of the Persianate world
  • Opens a traditional field in new directions
  • Presents a combination of senior scholars and younger voices, and includes perspectives from Asia, Europe and the USA
  • Combines views from the academy, the museum and the laboratory, ranging from the practical to the theoretical