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.
‘Parzor is delighted to announce its long awaited TISS-Parzor Online Academic Programme on Culture & Heritage Studies’. As part of this programme, you can ‘learn, gain credits, explore exciting issues of environment and sociology, craft, art, literature, theatre, cuisine as well as business and philanthropy’.
For admissions and programme details, visit the TISS Website.
Adam Benkato and I have finally launched our journal, Berkeley Working Papers in Middle Iranian Philology, where we intend to publish short and longer articles or research reports on the philology and epigraphy of the Middle Iranian languages (Middle Persian, Parthian, Bactrian, Sogdian, Chorasmian, Khotanese).
We start the Working Papers with issue 0, Towards a Manifesto for Middle Iranian Philology. As the title suggests, this issue of the journal serves as a manifesto where I show a possible direction for the journal by discussing Nietzsche’s views on philology.
We warmly invite our colleagues to contribute to the journal.
There is a documentary of 27 minutes on Zoroastrian/Parsi attempts of finding love through community events. The clip I posted previously is part of this radio documentary. You need to be registered and signed in to be able to listen to the documentary.
Last week, I taught about Anquetil-Duperron, William Jones, the discovery of language similarity and the beginnings of IE Studies. Disciplines such as Iranian Studies or #Indology, as we know them today, would not have been possible without those efforts and contributions. I also made it a point to at least briefly discuss “genesis amnesia” and the critical examination of Oriental Studies offered by @tavak in
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Another photo essay by Behrad Mistry, again from last year and over at the Ajam Media Collective.
The Zoroastrian New Year coincides with the Spring Equinox. It marks not only the beginning of the calendar, but the renewal of life in its perennial struggle with death. This annual milestone is an occasion for celebration, and involves a series of ritual arrangements and acts.
Source: Ritual Matter(s): Nowruz Ceremonies of the Zoroastrian New Year in Tehran – Ajam Media Collective
A commented photo essay from last year by Behrad Mistry over at the Ajam Media Collective.
The following is a photo essay by Behrad Nafissi Mistry. Born into the caste of Zoroastrian priests, Behrad is half Indian Parsi, half Iranian and is currently training to also serve as a priest. Behrad is a photo-journalist at Amordad Zoroastrian News Agency and Humans of Tehran. He holds a B.A. in English Literature and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Shahid Beheshti University. This series will focus on Tehran’s Zoroastrian community and their practices before, during, and after Nowruz.
Source: Zoroastrian Nowruz in Tehran: Celebrating the “Big Five” – Ajam Media Collective
Peter Adamson has a short article, entitled Arabic translators did far more than just preserve Greek philosophy, over at Aeon on the impact of the Arabic translations of Greek philosophy. You can even listen to the article being read by someone at curio.io!
Abadan:Retold is an innovative, multi-media social history project invented and managed by Rasmus Christian Elling, an Associate Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
A crucial part of the project is an online portal (www.abadan.wiki) with multiple functions.
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Bibliographia Iranica would like to invite publishers, colleagues and our readers to send us information about upcoming publications that are relevant to our field of interest. Please use the ‘Contact‘ page to send us the bibliographic information. Your submission will be reviewed by the team and published in due course.
Contributed bibliographic posts will be marked as such with the name of the contributor.
Please share this call widely on social media.
Congratulations to Hamidreza Ghelichkhani, who curated and annotated this delightful anthology in collaboration with Kambiz GhaneaBassiri.
This anthology invites audiences to interact with select works of Iranian masters of calligraphy from the tenth to the twentieth century. These works were carefully chosen to represent the artistic canon that has shaped the world of calligraphy in contemporary Iran. Their influence has in many cases exceeded the national boundaries of modern Iran, and the earlier works helped spread Persianate culture throughout West Asia in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era.
An interesting ZDF documentary about racist ideologies in Germany. 35 minutes into the documentary Josef Wiesehöfer is interviewed about the term ‘Arier’ followed by interviews with people in Abyaneh, presumably because they are believed to be Zoroastrians! The journey to Iran ends with a few shots at Naqš-e Rostam.
Unfortunately, the video is no longer available on YouTube.
As was planned, I have now moved this blog to a new location at Bibliographia Iranica. While purpose and scope remain largely the same, the new blog will be maintained by Sajad Amiri, Shervin Farridnejad, Yazdan Safaee and myself (Arash Zeini). I hope that we will be able to post more frequently on the new blog. On Facebook, the posts will be available on a dedicated page called Bibliographia Iranica. A Twitter account and Google+ page are forthcoming. Please do send us information about events and publications that you would like to see on the blog.
Thank you very much to all friends and colleagues who liked the idea of this bibliographic blog, encouraging me to widen its scope. And many thanks to Sajad, Shervin and Yazdan for agreeing to collaborate on the new site.
Etienne de la Vaissière has kindly shared this map of the Zerafshan valley in the 7th century on academia.edu. He states:
Map drawn for my Histoire des marchands sogdiens, Paris: Collège de France, 2002, map 5. Please feel free to modify and adapt it to your needs: the layers can be modified in Illustrator. Although I have drawn it I claim no copyright, but would welcome that you mention the source.