Tag: Historiography

  • Two Memoirs

    I am reposting this from Bibliographia Iranica.

    Iranian Studies, the subject matter of this bibliographic blog, is not an easily defined field. It seems to me that we often mean the study of Zoroastrianism or ancient Iran, when we post about Iranian Studies. But even if we limit the scope of our work to what we might intellectually call the study of pre-Islamic Iran—due to the historical break in the transmission of Iranian religions—a workable definition still eludes us, as a vast number of pre-Islamic Iranian texts and concepts are only known to us through their Islamic garb. It becomes even more complex to define the field of our activities when we include neighbouring fields. I am painfully aware that it becomes still more complicated, if we consider publications that fall slightly outside of the academic genre. However, my approach was from the start a pragmatic one, as I wanted to be able to continue our work for as long as we could and without too much pressure. I know that we often miss publications by our colleagues from neighbouring disciplines; so, here I want to address one shortcoming that is close to my own interests and heart: two memoirs by eminent scholars of the other late antiquity (bold and provocative claim). One by the well-known Peter Brown (Princeton University), whom I have not had the pleasure to meet, and one by the equally well-known and wonderful Averil Cameron (University of Oxford), whom I have.

    Brown, Peter. 2023. Journeys of the mind: A life in history. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the “neglected half-millennium” now known as late antiquity was in fact crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age. As he and other scholars opened up the history of the classical world in its last centuries to the wider world of Eurasia and northern Africa, they discovered previously overlooked areas of religious and cultural creativity as well as foundational institution-building. A respect for diversity and outreach to the non-European world, relatively recent concerns in other fields, have been a matter of course for decades among the leading scholars of late antiquity.

    Overview

    Cameron, Averil. 2024. Transitions: A historian’s memoir (Studi e Testi Tardoantichi 25). Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

    The transitions of the title are those in the life and intellectual development of one of the leading historians of late antiquity and Byzantium. Averil Cameron recounts her working-class origins in North Staffordshire and how she came to read Classics at Oxford and start her research at Glasgow University before moving to London and teaching at King’s College London. Later she was the head of Keble College Oxford at a time of change in the University and its colleges. She played a leading role in projects and organisations even as the flow of books and articles continued, in an array of publications that have been fundamental in shaping the disciplines of late antiquity and Byzantine studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

    Summary
  • Darius in the shadow of Alexander

    Jane Marie Todd’s translation of Briant’s 2003 Darius dans l’ombre d’Alexandre has just been published:

    Briant, Pierre. 2015. Darius in the Shadow of Alexander. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    The last of Cyrus the Great’s dynastic inheritors and the legendary enemy of Alexander the Great, Darius III ruled over a Persian Empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Indus River. Yet, despite being the most powerful king of his time, Darius remains an obscure figure. […] While Darius seems doomed to be a footnote in the chronicle of Alexander’s conquests, in one respect it is Darius who has the last laugh. For after Darius’s defeat in 331 BCE, Alexander is described by historians as becoming ever more like his vanquished opponent: a Darius-like sybarite prone to unmanly excess.

    Jan P. Stronk, University of Amsterdam, reviewed the original for the Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR). Other reviews include:

    • Brosius, M.2006. Review of Pierre Briant: Darius dans l’ombre d’Alexandre. Gnomon 78(5). 426–430.
    • Stoneman, R. 2006. Darius III and Alexander: Darius dans l’ombre d’Alexandre by P. Briant. The Classical Review 56(2). 415–417.
    • معماران کاشی، مهرداد. ۱۳۸۴. نقد و بررسی کتاب: داریوش در سایه اسکندر. بخارا ۴۶. ۳۵۸–۳۶۴.
  • Early Islamic Balkh

    Early Islamic Balkh: History, landscape and material culture
    16th–17th January 2015, Wolfson College, Oxford
    The Balkh Art and Cultural Heritage Project (2011-2015) has been investigating the early Islamic history and archaeology of the city of Balkh, in Northern Afghanistan. Synonymous with ancient Bactra, the “Mother of Cities” continued to flourish after the coming of Islam, becoming one of the  most important urban centres of the eastern Islamic world, at the junction of India, China and Transoxiana. This conference presents the interdisciplinary research of the Project’s international collaborative team, and hosts a discussion of the state of research on Balkh in the 7th-12th centuries C.E.
    For more information, see here.
  • Historiography in late antique Iran

    Daryaee, Touraj. 2013. Historiography in late antique Iran. In Ali Ansari (ed.), Perceptions of Iran: History, myths and nationalism from medieval Persia to the Islamic Republic, 65–76. London: I.B. Tauris.

    Read the article here.

  • Perceptions of Iran

    Ansari, Ali (ed.). 2013. Perceptions of Iran: History, myths and nationalism from medieval Persia to the Islamic Republic. London: I.B. Tauris.
    For the book, see here. Abstract:
    From the Sasanian to the Safavid Empire, and from Qajar Iran to the current Islamic Republic, the history of Iran is one which has been colored by a rich tradition of myths and narratives and shaped by its wealth of philosophers, cultural theorists and political thinkers. Perceptions of Iran dissects the construction of Iranian identity, to reveal how nationalism has been continually re-formulated and how self-perceptions have been carried by Iran’s literary past, in particular the mystical love poetry of Rumi, Sa’adi and Hafez. It traces a long history of encounters with the Western world and tracks Iranian thought from Herodotus’ representation of Cyrus to the Constitutional Movement of the early twentieth century. This book ties together the diverse threads of Iranian intellectual activity that have underpinned social and political movements, spanning Kermani’s writing on ancient Persian history and liberal nationalism, through to the strident anti-Westernism of figures such as Sayed Jamal Al-Afghani and Ayatollah Khomeini.