At the beginning of 2025, I was working on an article on the Middle Persian term frahang (‘education, culture’), examining it as a Sasanian concept. One of the objectives of the article was to investigate frahang in the light of Greek paideia.
There are quite a number of Greek sources that are relevant, but I was particularly interested in Plato’s reading of paideia and how he related it to the Persians, otherwise known as the Achaemenids. The two dialogues in which Plato brings in the Persians are Alcibiades I.122a (perhaps pseudo Plato) and Nomoi. Incidentally, if you are interested in paideia, Jaeger (1973), which originally appeared in three volumes between 1934 and 1947, is a good resource.
I came across a fascinating passage in Nomoi, which did not relate to my question but was highly illustrative of why philosophy and the philosophical question matter, irrespective of their age. Having seen the announcement of Angie Hobbs’s forthcoming book, Why Plato matters now, I now have reason to share that passage as an example of Plato’s continuing relevance:
A man’s exceptional wealth is no more reason for a state to confer specially exalted office on him than his ability to run, his good looks, or his physical strength, in the absence of some virtue—or even if he has some virtue, if it excludes self-control.
Plato, Nomoi III, 696b; Cooper’s (1997: 1385) translation
This is why I am so looking forward to reading Hobbs’s book, which brings me to the question of philosophy in the public discourse.
While strolling through a local bookshop yesterday, I came across Herald of a restless world, a biography of Henri Bergson by Emily Herring. I sat down and read a couple of pages in the shop, and had to get myself a copy. The description on the back cover calls the book ‘electrifying’, and that is spot on. I mention it here because Herring, as the subtitle suggests, introduces Bergson to the reader as the man who ‘brought philosophy to the people’.
Two excellent books, biographies of sorts, that highlight the relevance of philosophy beyond academia and within public discourse: one concerns a philosopher from antiquity, the other a modern thinker.
Bibliography
Cooper, John M. (ed.). 1997. Plato: Complete works. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.
Wie ich heute zufällig entdeckt habe, hat Fischer Taschenbuch einige Bücher von Thomas Mann neu aufgelegt. Meines Wissens sind es derzeit sieben an der Zahl.
Den Schrifttyp finde ich sehr schön, zum Umschlag habe ich keine Meinung. Die Buchhändlerin hingegen fand die Gestaltung des Umschlags nicht sehr gelungen. Geschmackssache. Der Buchrücken wiederum sieht sehr gut aus; da waren wir uns einig.
Dann lese ich, dass die Abbildung auf dem Umschlag KI-generiert ist. Da hat sich der Verlag einen Fehlgriff geleistet. Und das ist keine Frage des Geschmacks!
I had the pleasure of giving the closing remarks at the workshop Professionals of Writing in Late Antiquity, convened by Olivia Ramble, Yuhan S-D Vevaina, and Alessia Zubani on 13 June 2025 in Oxford. By way of summary, I share my remarks here. They have been edited for clarity, though, admittedly, they lack the charm of my witty delivery!
Professionals of Writing in Late Antiquity
First Bahari Workshop for Early Career Scholars
As we conclude our workshop on Professionals of Writing in Late Antiquity, it is my pleasure to reflect on the diverse and thought-provoking contributions we have heard over the past sessions. Spanning a wide chronological and geographical range, these seven papers have shed new light on the people behind the texts: those who wrote, inscribed, copied, translated, and transmitted knowledge across religious, cultural, geographical, and linguistic boundaries.
A couple of days ago, Philip Huyse took the time to congratulate Alessia and Olivia on the programme of the workshop. I happened to witness the exchange and would like to borrow his foresight. He wrote: ‘It promises to be a very exciting conference and I very much regret that I can no longer count myself among the “early career scholars” (I am more like an almost-end-of-career scholar).’ As we saw today, he was right. I must agree with both of Huyse’s sentiments and want to express my deep respect for Alessia and Olivia’s work in putting together this excellent programme and inviting such a distinguished group of scholars to discuss a matter of great interest.
There is another aspect here that deserves mentioning: the timing. This workshop has taken place at a most opportune moment in Iranian Studies. In 2024, Kevin van Bladel published a substantial essay entitled Written Middle Persian Literature under the Sasanids¹. Why do I mention this? First, because we historians love correspondences and intertextuality. I realised that Kevin begins his re-assessment of the written versus oral transmission with a quote from Huyse, who wrote in 2006:
Until the late Sasanian period, pre-Islamic Iran was mainly an oral society. As a result, Iranian “literature” was for a long time essentially of oral nature as far as composition, performance, and transmission are concerned. Many products of this oral type of literature (whether in verse or in prose) have thus not survived to the present day or were committed to writing only many centuries after their original composition.
Huyse (2006:410)²
Second, from conversations with colleagues, I know that Kevin’s paper has generated considerable debate. I would note here that his approach begins on uncertain footing. Kevin seeks to introduce something new without proposing a distinct methodology or a shift in perspective. This, therefore, is an ideal moment to return to a question that has been revisited time and again in Iranian Studies and neighbouring disciplines. However, this time, and perhaps for the first time, the inquiry is not approached from a theoretical angle, nor is it based on the transmission of the abestāg, or grounded in Pahlavi manuscripts or texts. Rather, it involves a complete shift in perspective, with the aim of considering the act of writing as a profession in its own right.
As Olivia rightly noted in her introductory remarks, by shifting our focus from the term ‘scribe’ to ‘professionals of writing’, we achieve a clearer distinction between priests, copyists, inscribers, and scribes. At the same time, we shed light on the political and socio-economic dimensions of these various professions, workshops, and educational paths. In my view, this workshop has taken the first and necessary steps towards a micro-historical approach to a research question that lies at the core of the debate on orality versus writing.
Across four panels and seven papers, we have encountered a remarkable range of writing professionals operating in vastly different historical, linguistic, and cultural contexts. From Palmyra to Constantinople, and from Pahlavi scribes to Byzantine epigraphers, these individuals and their practices have been brought vividly to life. I would like to offer a brief summary of the papers, so that we may reflect collectively on the significance of this shift in perspective; namely, that our examinations should not be limited to the term scribe.
We heard about bilingualism and the existence of dual or even multiple identities within Palmyra. We examined spaces of writing, which do not always resemble the scriptorium depicted in The Name of the Rose (a remark courtesy of David Taylor, whose nuanced engagement throughout the workshop was greatly appreciated). This raised the question of materiality and how it complicates and extends the category of ‘scribe’ beyond traditional limitations imposed by materiality. We saw that describing the position of the grammateus simply as a scribe obscures important nuances. Even teachers and tutors might represent professions of writing, masked by the broad use of the term scribe.
We reflected on writing, written cultures, and their hegemonic backgrounds, and how these factors shape the paths along which Middle Persian words and borrowings travelled between cultures.
We discussed the progression of careers from lower administrative roles (Middle Persian dārīg) to scribes and beyond, raising questions about value, status, and the dissemination of education during a period often referred to as the Two Centuries of Silence³.
We heard how hagiographers employed their authority as writers to shape religious belief. Professionals of writing in religious contexts, such as sainthood, could compose hagiographies, insert themselves into the narrative, or engage with the complex issue of attribution, which in itself opens up an entire universe of questions.
The study of Jacob of Edessa traced the intellectual profile of a seventh-century Syriac bishop deeply invested in orthographic precision. Here, we saw a reconstruction of scribal professionalism as both a religious and technical pursuit.
The examination of the complex relationship between Zoroastrian priests and scribes drew on legal, administrative, and religious texts, to show how these two roles sometimes overlapped but also stood in tension, particularly in their respective claims to authority. Importantly, the economic situation of the Zoroastrian priesthood in post-Sasanian times was addressed, an issue that may have had far-reaching, possibly devastating, consequences for the professions of writing within this religious community.
From a complementary Greek perspective, we surveyed the evolving roles of writing professionals from Egypt to Constantinople. Palaeographical and literary sources were integrated to highlight both continuity and transformation within Byzantine scribal traditions.
Together, these papers demonstrated the breadth and depth of current research on writing professionals, those agents who are often invisible in the texts but shaped the transmission of knowledge, authority, and identity in antiquity and late antiquity. I thank all the speakers for their careful scholarship and stimulating insights, and all of you for your attentive engagement.
Please join me in thanking Olivia and Alessia, who deserve a standing ovation for convening such an engaging workshop supported and guided throughout by Yuhan.
I hope you will agree that the First Bahari Workshop for Early Career Scholars has been a great success. Let this be the beginning of further conversations.
Zarrinkoub, Abdolhossein. 1957. Two centuries of silence: The story of the events and the historical situation of Iran in the first two centuries of Islam, from the Arab invasion to the rise of the Taherids. Tehran: Jāvīdān.
‘The Scallop’ is a sculpture installed on the beach at Aldeburgh, in Suffolk. It is by the local artist Maggi Hambling and dedicated to Benjamin Britten.
Onto it, are cut the words: ‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned’. When you read the words, you see behind each character the endless sky. Cut into every cell of my body are these words of love and pain:
با غم انگیزترین حالت تهران چه کنیم؟😢 دوست عزیز پایتخت نشین پیام من را از شهر … میخوانید فعلااینجا در امن و امان است. منزل ما در اوایل ورودی … از سمت تهران است، از آنجا تا منزل ما … دقیقه بیشتر راه نیست، بدون تعارف درخدمتم
On 31 May, a workshop took place at SOAS on Zoroastrianism, Esotericism and Race. Convened by Mariano Errichiello (SOAS) and Afshin Marashi (Oklahoma), this closed-door workshop aimed to explore ideas around esotericism in modernity, which remains an understudied topic within Zoroastrianism.
Six papers, arranged across three panels, addressed themes spanning the 19th to the 21st century in Iran, India and the diaspora. Modern-day gurus, eugenics, conversion, innovation, and priesthood were among the subjects discussed. The workshop concluded with a paper presenting an insider perspective, an innovative and welcome approach seeking to widen the scope of academic inquiry.
All papers engaged with fascinating topics, bearing various degrees of relevance to my own research on late antique Zoroastrianism. Although the workshop primarily focused on modernity, what emerged for me was a perspective on the religion in the longue durée. I have remained interested in esotericism in Zoroastrianism ever since I wrote The king in the mirror of the Zand: Secrecy in Sasanian Iran, which was my first engagement with the subject inspired by Shaked’s pioneering 1969 study, Esoteric Trends in Zoroastrianism.
I continue to explore esotericism in late antique Zoroastrianism, with a partial outcome discussed in a forthcoming article on frahang. Both the workshop and my own investigations suggest that a theoretical framework for what might constitute esotericism in Zoroastrianism, whether modern or ancient, remains a desideratum.
Reference
Shaked, Shaul. 1969. Esoteric trends in Zoroastrianism. In Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 3(7). 175-221.
Zeini, Arash. 2018. The king in the mirror of the Zand: Secrecy in Sasanian Iran. In Touraj Daryaee (ed.), Sasanian Iran in the context of late antiquity: The Bahari lecture series at the University of Oxford (Ancient Iran Series 6), 149–162. Jordan Center for Persian Studies.
In November 2023, shortly after Jon Fosse had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, I read A Shining, a 48-page story. I expected a contemplative experience, but found the repetitive language lifeless and without character. It tested my patience, and the religiosity on display felt crude, irrelevant and simplistic. The 48 pages turned out to be a very slow read, but that was just the beginning.
I had started noticing Fosse’s work before he was awarded the prestigious prize, mainly by reading reviews. Intrigued by commentary on Septology and its radical departure from the norms of punctuation, I put together a small collection and was eager to get started on his work. I began by reading A Shining. It left me stunned and dazed. I needed a pause and turned to other books. In September of this year, I felt I should read Aliss at the Fire, as I was keen to explore more of Fosse’s work. The 74-page length suggested I could finish it in a weekend. It took me nearly three, and I struggled through the book.
Compared to A Shining, Aliss at the Fire has something akin to a storyline. The former has a very simple story: a man drives aimlessly until his car gets stuck at the end of a forest road. He gets out, walks into the dark forest, is lost and has a vision. The latter tells the story of a family, and their pain and losses across generations. Their ‘old house’, the fjord, the darkness, the cold and the rain are as present as the characters, in what, as in A Shining, is a non-story. But do not let reviews tell you that the writing is meditative, reflective, or some other fancy way of storytelling. The writing is excessively repetitive and unimaginative. A passage should illustrate my point:
and as though he was carrying Asle to his baptism Kristoffer goes into the old house where they live and Brita stays standing and then Brita runs her hand through her hair so that it falls back from her forehead and her face is there like an empty sky and then Brita goes home into the old house, where she lives herself, into the old house where she has lived with him for years and years now, into her house, Brita goes into the house that became her own house, she thinks, she is going in to where she is, in her strange clothes and with her long thick black hair Brita is going into her house, into the old house that’s hers and his, she thinks, and so, if someone else has gone into her house, if someone else lives in the old house, then she herself probably can’t go in? if it’s not her house any more? and so can she go inside it?
Aliss at the Fire, p. 60
I understand that the writing aims at an effect, that it reflects the mood and that it can be analysed. At times it adds intensity and immediacy, allowing the reader to become part of the scene and the experience. But when executed mechanically over 74 pages, with themes repeated over and over again, it left me numb, angry and disillusioned. Fosse does not seem to develop stories he wants to tell. In a video on the Booker Prize website, Fosse says:
The writing itself is that which inspires me. I don’t get inspired by this or that outside of writing. When I’m writing, I concentrate completely, more or less, on what I’m working on. One page takes the next in a flow. If I get into that kind of flow, it writes itself more or less.
Fosse writes out the interior of his characters, hoping the reader will become involved and take part in their emotions. The devices he uses are not the common literary devices of narration, suspense, and omniscience. He wants us to be participants in the inner lives of his characters. Therefore, Fosse writes, if this were possible, not as an author, but acts as one of the characters—someone present at the scene, relating to the suffering. Fosse tries to grant the reader the power of insight and hallucinatory vision, just like each character in Aliss at the Fire witnesses the pain and story of the past inhabitants of the ‘old house’ in real visions. I feel the pain of the characters—the boredom, the ageing and the bleakness of their lives. But Fosse’s language is uninspired, uninspiring, dull and cold. I know what you are thinking: this is Fosse’s aim—mission accomplished. As admirable as this might be as a literary endeavour, it fails to capture my attention. If Aliss at the Fire were a book compiled from the diaries of a real-life Asle, Signe, Aliss, Brita, Kristoffer, and the other Asle, it might have been a great read. The author, or the storyteller, are, in my view, absent in Aliss at the Fire. I recognise that this might be Fosse’s definition of a literary author, but that is not enough to encourage me to read more of his work. I say this for a reason: an author is present in these books. Crude as it may feel, someone is compiling these stories, adding the symbolism of the shining light or the fire to the narrative, making connections, and taking us—or attempting to take us—towards an ending, which is my biggest issue with the book under review.
On the final page, one of the female characters—by this point I had given up identifying which one, but presumably it is Signe—seems to lie down to masturbate and sees some of the other characters in the ‘old house’. I am unsure whether she continues to masturbate while watching the others in a vision, or if she stops. The book ends a couple of paragraphs later:
and she looks at him and then she looks away from him into the emptiness and then she lays both her hands on her stomach and she folds her hands and I hear Signe say Dear Jesus, help me, you have to help me, you
Aliss at the Fire, p. 74
I will not try to analyse and understand the last page of the book. Suffice it to say that I find it in poor taste.
I understand why Fosse has been awarded various prizes, and why he is important to the literary scene. It is encouraging to see alternative manners of writing published and recognised. However, I perceive Fosse’s writing, insofar as I have read it, mostly as a kind of lazy writing, one where the author hopes that the reader might experience the same things as the characters, or maybe as the author!
Amir Mahdi Moslehi speaks to Khatt Chronicles about designing Iranian typefaces, including a font for Middle Persian, on which I had the pleasure of advising him.
If you listen to the conversation, I am happy to announce that we seem to be really close to an encoding of Pahlavi in Unicode, mostly due to the work of people like Roozbeh Pournader and Anshuman Pandey.
Susan Bernofsky’s (@translationista) biography of Robert Walser, ‘Clairvoyant of the Small’, is a true masterpiece. She has also translated Yoko Tawada’s Celan-based novel into English: ‘Paul Celan und der chinesische Engel’. Listen to her talk about her work.
I suggest German, not necessarily as a language of poetry, although it does well there too, but as a language of extraordinarily poetic prose. Yes. Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin are two general favourites, of course, and here a couple of epigraphs from Benjamin’s writings:
Bedenkt das Dunkel und die große Kälte In diesem Tale, das von Jammer schallt.
Bertolt Brecht, Die Dreigroschenoper
Mein Flügel ist zum Schwung bereit ich kehrte gern zurück denn blieb’ ich auch lebendige Zeit ich hätte wenig Glück.
Gershom Scholem, Gruß von Angelus
I’ve the 20 vol. of Kraus’s collected writings just because of this one:
… und den Geräuschen des Tages zu lauschen, als wären es die Akkorde der Ewigkeit.
-Karl Kraus-
And I submit the roughly 600 pages of Paul Celan‘s poetry as evidence for German as beautiful language for poetry. Here one example:
Wie sich die Zeit verzweigt, das weiß die Welt nicht mehr. Wo sie den Sommer geigt, vereist ein Meer.
Woraus die Herzen sind, weiß die Vergessenheit. In Truhe, Schrein und Spind wächst wahr die Zeit.
Sie wirkt ein schönes Wort von großer Kümmernis. An dem und jenem Ort ists dir gewiß.
آخرین بار در بوخوم دیدمش. با اینکه ناخوش بود، لطف کرد و اومد برای سخنرانیام. بعدش هم برای پروژه کتاب بعدیش پیشنهاد همکاری داد. حیف که دیگر فرصت گفتوگویی نخواهیم داشت. دانشمند قهاری بود و دانش زیادی داشت که خیلی زود با خودش برد. جایش خالی خواهد بود.
دو هفته پیش پسر همسایه اجازه گرفت و چند تا گیلاس از درخت ما چید. امروز برام گوجه آورد که از پارک کنده بود. قرار شد وقتی انجیرهای درخت ما رسیدند دوباره با نردبونش برگرده.
I love dogs and often meditate on this photo. Something in those eyes, in the captured moment that seems so human. This one is the embodiment of the rōnin, but not because this is a Japanese stray. It’s in the eyes, in that gaze. It encapsulates survival, suffering, pain, courage and compassion all at the same time. Daidō Moriyama is a master.
Mir scheint es, die Zeiten haben sich geändert. In ihrem Buch, ‘Im Dickicht der Zeichen’, beschreibt Aleida Assmann ihr Studium in den 60er Jahren:
1966 war das Jahr, in dem ich Abitur gemacht habe und mein Studium begann. Die Studienjahre in Heidelberg und Tübingen fielen in die bewegte Zeit der K-Gruppen und Vollversammlungen, der Marx-Lektüre in kleinen Gruppen sowie der Protestaktionen, Transparente und Demonstrationen auf Straßen und öffentlichen Plätzen. Man rebellierte gegen den Staat, den man als faschistisch erkannte, und demaskierte die braunen Biographien der Eltern und Professoren.
Yesterday, I chanced upon the English translation of Stefan Zweig’s memoirs, The World of Yesterday. Looking through the book, I found Shakespeare’s brilliant words in the epigraph: »Let’s withdraw, and meet the time as it seeks us.« Anyone familiar with Stefan Zweig’s decision to end his life together with his wife will read »let’s withdraw« with a sense of foreboding. However, the German original, at least in the recent printed editions that I know, quote this line from act 4, scene 3 of Cymbeline differently: »Begegnen wir der Zeit, wie sie uns sucht.« What a difference »let’s withdraw« makes here.
