Category: Events

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.

1. van Bladel, Kevin T. 2024. Written Middle Persian literature under the Sasanids (AOS Essay 16). New Haven: AOS.
2. Huyse, Philip. 2006. Iran, viii. Persian Literature (1) Pre-Islamic. In Encyclopædia Iranica, XIII/4, pp. 410-414.
3. 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.