Arash Zeini

Author: Arash Zeini

  • The epic of Farāmarz

    The new issue, vol. 24, of the Bulletin of the Asia Institute (BAI) has been published. As of this post, the journal’s website has not been updated to reflect the content of vol. 24, and the issue contains too many articles and reviews of interest to individually list them here.

    Michael Shenkar has made a PDF of his article available here:

    Shenkar, Michael. 2014. The epic of Farāmarz in the Panjikent paintings. Bulletin of the Asia Institute 24. 67–84.

    Update:

    The following content list has been posted by Carol Bromberg:

    Bulletin of the Asia Institute 24 (December 2014)

    David Stronach, Solomon at Pasargadae: Some New Perspectives

     Domenico Agostini, Encountering a Beautiful Maiden: On the Zoroastrian dēn in Comparison with Dante’s Beatrice

     Yishai Kiel, Gazing through Transparent Objects in Pahlavi and Rabbinic Literature: A Comparative Analysis

     Dieter Weber, Villages and Estates in the Documents from the Pahlavi Archive: The Geographical Background

     Michael Shenkar, The Epic of Farāmarz in the Panjikent Paintings  (2 color plates)

     Étienne de la Vaissière, Silk, Buddhism and Early Khotanese Chronology: A Note on the Prophecy of the Li Country

     Harry Falk, Libation Trays from Gandhara

     Phyllis Granoff, Maitreya and the Yūpa: Some Gandharan Reliefs

     David Frendo, Sovereignty, Control, and Co-existence in Byzantine-Iranian Relations: An Overview

     Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, The Prophet’s Seal: A Contextualized Look at the Crystal Sealstone of Mani (216–276 c.e.) in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (2 color plates)

    Reviews

    Prods Oktor Skjærvø, Gnosis and Deliverance: Werner Sundermann’s “Speech of the Living Soul”

    Azarnouche, ed. and trans. Husraw ī Kawādān-ē ud Rēdag-ē: Khosrow fils de Kawād et un page (Jenny Rose)

    Agostini. Ayādgār ī Jāmāspīg: Un texte eschatologique zoroastrien (Daniel Sheffield)

    Jullien, ed. Eastern Christianity: A Crossroads of Cultures (David Frendo)

  • Avestan research 1991–2014

    The first part of a survey by Almut Hintze on Avestan research from 1991 to 2014:

    Hintze, Almut. 2014. Avestan research 1991–2014. Part 1: Sources and phonology. Kratylos 59. 1–52.

    For more information and a PDF, see here.

  • Iran and the West

    Call for Papers for a conference at the University of Warwick:

    Iran and the West: Converging Perspectives

    1-3 July 2015

    (more…)

  • Forgotten origins of modern humanities

    From the book’s webpage: ‘The humanities today face a crisis of relevance, if not of meaning and purpose. Understanding their common origins—and what they still share—has never been more urgent’.

    Turner, James. 2014. Philology: The forgotten origins of the modern humanities. Princeton University Press.

    Many today do not recognize the word, but “philology” was for centuries nearly synonymous with humanistic intellectual life, encompassing not only the study of Greek and Roman literature and the Bible but also all other studies of language and literature, as well as religion, history, culture, art, archaeology, and more. In short, philology was the queen of the human sciences. How did it become little more than an archaic word? In Philology, the first history of Western humanistic learning as a connected whole ever published in English, James Turner tells the fascinating, forgotten story of how the study of languages and texts led to the modern humanities and the modern university.

    For more information, see here.

  • The early Islamic world

    This very interesting volume has an article by Jairus Banaji On the Identity of Shahrālānyōzān in the Greek and Middle Persian Papyri from Egypt:

    Schubert, Alexander & Petra Sijpesteijn (eds.). 2014. Documents and the history of the early Islamic world. Leiden: Brill.

    Historians have long lamented the lack of contemporary documentary sources for the Islamic middle ages and the inhibiting effect this has had on our understanding of this critically important period. Although the field is richly served by surviving evidence, much of it is hard to locate, difficult to access, and philologically intractable. Presenting a mixture of historical studies and new editions of Greek, Arabic and Coptic material from the seventh to the fifteenth century C.E. from Egypt and Palestine, Documents and the History of the Early Islamic World explores the untapped wealth of documentary sources available in collections around the world and shows how this exciting material can be used for historical analysis.

    For more information, see here.

  • Biographical notices

    BL’s Asian and African studies blog has a nice piece on George Percy Churchill’s biographical notices of Persian statesmen and notables.

  • Middle Persian and Parthian hymns in the Turfan Collection

    Durkin-Meisterernst, Desmond (ed.). 2014. Miscellaneous hymns: Middle Persian and Parthian hymns in the Turfan Collection (Berliner Turfantexte 31). Brepols Publishers.

    This is an edition of a large number of fragments of Middle Persian and Parthian Manichaean hymns in the Berlin Turfan Collection.  M. Boyce in the register of her 1960 Catalogue of the Iranian Manuscripts in Manichaean script in the German Turfan Collection identified fragments of hymns ‘to the Third Messenger’ (group 44); ‘Parthian hymns written in couplets, unclassified’ (group 58) and ‘Hymns, unclassified, including poems’ (group 81). Though some of these fragments have been published in the meantime and others are very small, this yields more than 250 previously unpublished fragments, many of considerable size. The fragments are presented in diplomatic edition together with a transcription and translation into English. Since most of the hymns are abecedarian they are presented as far as possible in strophic form. An extensive introduction, notes, a complete glossary and facsimiles of joined fragments accompany the edition.

    For more information, see the publisher’s website.

  • Review: Sasanian coins

    Heidemann, Stefan. 2013. Review of  Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, M. Elahé Askari & Elizabeth J. Pendleton: Sasanian Coins: A sylloge of the Sasanian coins in the National Museum of Iran (Muzeh Melli Iran), vol. 1 & 2. London: Royal Numismatic Society in assoc. with the British Institute of Persian Studies. JOSA 45. 117–123.

    Read the review here.

  • Middle East Medievalists

    ‘Middle East Medievalists is an international professional association of scholars interested in the study of the medieval Islamic world’. The association’s website and online journal, Al-`Usur al-Wusta, are hosted by the Islamic History Commons.

    MEM also have a page on Facebook.

  • انتشار اولین شماره «بساتین»

    بساتین، نشريه‌اي علمي ـ تخصّصي در موضوع نسخه‌هاي خطي اسلامي است، اين نشريه در زمينه مطالعاتِ کتاب ‌شناختی، مباحث نسخه ‌شناسی، تاريخ علم مسلمانان، کتابخانه‌هاي تراثي، مجموعه‌داري کتب خطي و اسناد کهن، ترجيحاً با محوريّت ميراث مکتوب کهن شيعه و معرّفي آثار فرهيختگان مسلمان، به صورت دو فصلنامه، به سه زبان فارسي، عربي و انگليسي، منتشر مي‌گردد و قلمرو فعاليتِ آن نيز شامل تمامي حوزه‌هاي متنوّع کتاب‌ شناختي آثار تراثي، نسخه شناسی (دانش کوديکولوژی)، تصحیح متون کهن، فهرست نویسی نسخ خطي و اسناد کهن، در قالب و ساختاري پژوهشي است.

    برای اطلاعات بیشتر به این پیوند رجوع کنید!

  • Elamite monumentality and architectural scale

    Potts, Daniel. 2014. Elamite monumentality and architectural scale: Lessons from Susa and Choga Zanbil. In J.F. Osborne (ed.), Approaching monumentality in archaeology, 23–38. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.

    Read the article here.

  • Extraction and control

    Michael Kozuh, Wouter F. M. Henkelman, Charles E. Jones & Christopher Woods (eds.). 2014. Extraction & control: Studies in honor of Matthew W. Stolper (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 68). Chicago: The Oriental Institute.

    Matthew Wolfgang Stolper began working for the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary in 1978 and became full professor in the Oriental Institute 1987, focusing on Neo-Babylonian and Middle Elamite. Matt has worked tirelessly to raise the necessary funding, to assemble a team of scholars, to promote the importance of the Persepolis Fortification Archive to academic and popular audiences, and most significantly, to concisely, passionately, and convincingly place the Persepolis Archives in their Achaemenid, ancient Near Eastern, and modern geo-political contexts. The twenty-six papers from Stolper’s colleagues, friends, and students show the breadth of his interests.

    Download the book here.

  • Rayy: Origins and the Mongol invasion

    Rante, Rocco. 2014. Rayy: from its origins to the Mongol invasion. Leiden, Boston: Brill.

    This book offers a new history of the ancient city of Rayy. Based on the results of the latest excavations on the Citadel and the Shahrestan (the political and administrative nucleus of the city in all periods), the study of historical and geographical texts and on surveys carried out between 2005 and 2007 by the author and the Iranian archaeologist, Ghadir Afround, the complete occupation sequence of the city, from its foundation in the Iron Age and the Parthian reconstructions (2nd to 1st centuries BC), up to the Mongol invasions and rapid depopulation in the 13th century CE, comes to light.

    For more information, see here.

  • The archaeology of Sasanian politics

    The proceedings of the workshop The Archaeology of Sasanian Politics, organized by Richard Payne and Mehrnoush Soroush at ISAW, have now been published:

    Payne, Richard & Mehrnoush Soroush (eds.). 2014. The archaeology of Sasanian politics. Journal of Ancient History 2(2).

    For this issue of the journal, see here. Richard’s introductory notes to the volume are available as a free PDF. Karim Alizadeh’s Borderland projects of Sasanian Empire: Intersection of domestic and foreign policies can be found here.

  • Guriania, Γουράνιοι and the Gūrān

    Potts, Daniel. 2014. Guriania, Γουράνιοι and the Gūrān. In Salvatore Gaspa, Alessandro Greco, Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, Simonetta Ponchia & Robert Rollinger (eds.), From source to history: Studies on the Ancient Near Eastern worlds and beyond dedicated to Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi on the occasion of his 65th birthday on June 23, 2014 (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 412), 561–571. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag.

    Find the article here.