Arash Zeini

Tag: Late Antiquity

  • Professionals of Writing in Late Antiquity

    Professionals of Writing in Late Antiquity

    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.

    Professionals_of_Writing_ProgrammeDownload
    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.

  • 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

  • Book Award

    I am delighted and honoured to be the recipient of the inaugural AIS Book Prize for Ancient Iranian Studies for my book, Zoroastrian Scholasticism in Late Antiquity: The Pahlavi version of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti. The prize was announced at the 13th Biennial Iranian Studies Conference, which took place in Salamanca, Spain. As I have said before, I am grateful to the Edinburgh University Press for their support, Prof. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, the series editor, for giving this book a home early on, and to all publishing staff for putting up with my XeLaTeX shenanigans so patiently. I look forward to my forthcoming projects with the EUP.

    با کمال خوشحالی به اطلاع دوستان میرسانم که کتابم، با عنوان “اسکولاستیک زرتشتی در دوره پساباستان”، در سیزدهمین کنفرانس دوسالانه‌ی ایران شناسی در سالامانکای اسپانیا موفق به دریافت اولین «جایزه کتاب AIS برای مطالعات ایران باستان» گردید. از حمایتهای انتشارات دانشگاه ادینبورگ و ویراستار محترم، پروفسور لوید لولین جونز برای پذیریش زودهنگام کتاب و دیگر همکاران انتشارات به‌سبب تحمل شیطنتهای XeLaTeX من قدردانی می کنم و مشتاقانه منتظر پروژه های بعدی خود با EUP هستم.

  • Zoroastrian Scholasticism

    The paperback of my book is here! You can order a copy from the Edinburgh University Press. I am grateful to the series editor, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, for giving this book a home and to the editors at the EUP for guiding me through the publication process.

    I list the reviews of my book here, and wrote for the EUP a blog about the content of the book and my approach which you can read here.

    Now, I get ready for my next book.

  • New review

    The Abstracta Iranica website has published a new review of my book. This one is by Benedikt Peschl:
    Peschl, Benedikt. 2021. Arash Zeini. Zoroastrian scholasticism in Late Antiquity. The Pahlavi version of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti. Abstracta Iranica 42-43 (5).
    The paperback will be out in May 2022.

    Part II contains the newly established text of the Pahlavi YH (in transcription) together with an English translation. The text-critical edition (in transliteration) and apparatus are included in an appendix. This edition of the Pahlavi YH must be considered the new reference point for any future work involving the text.

    From the review, par. 4

    Since the discussions refer to a wide range of related passages in the wider realm of Pahlavi literature, the book will be essential to consult not only for those working on other parts of the Zand, but also those engaged with Pahlavi literature in general.

    From the review, par. 5

  • Reception of Islam in Iran

    Crone, Patricia. 2016. The Iranian reception of Islam: The non-traditionalist strands (Islamic History and Civilization 130). Collected Studies in Three Volumes. Vol. 2 edited by Hanna Siurua. Leiden; Boston: Brill.

    (more…)

  • Sasanian royalist ideology

    Sasanian royalist ideology and Zoroastrian millennialism

    Lecture by François de Blois, University College London, at the Ancient India and Iran Trust, Cambridge, Friday 06March, 5.30pm.

    (more…)

  • A hoard from the time of Yazdgard III in Kirmān

    coinAn important article by Heidemann, Riederer and Weber on a hoard of coins from the final years of the empire. I personally find the dipinti on the coins very interesting. Heidemann’s discussion of the hoard, his conclusions and Dieter Weber’s decipherment of the graffito are fascinating:

    Heidemann, Stefan, Hosef Riederer and Dieter Weber. 2014. A hoard from the time of Yazdgard III in Kirmān. Iran 52. 79–124.

    The analysis of a hoard from the time of the collapse of the Sasanian Empire offers new insights into the administrative situation within the realm of Yazdgard III during his presence in Kirmān. Interpreting die chains using old or newly engraved dies with the then anachronistic name of the previous shāhānshāh Khusrō II, and finding an unlikely variety of mint abbreviations and dates within one workshop, allows us to infer the processing of huge amounts of silver in an unregulated way, compared with the orderly mint administration before the battle of al-Qādisiyya. A rigorous numismatic conclusion makes the change to a centralised minting in Kirmān likely where coins, rather than the dies, were sent to the districts. The key dates of the hoard coincide with the battle of Nihāvand 642 and the beginning of the invasion of Kirmān. Many of the coins bear dipinti with legible Pahlavī inscriptions, highlighting a cultural way of marking coins at the end of the Sasanian Empire.

    Read the article here.

  • Inside and out

    Dijkstra, Jitse & Greg Fisher (eds.). 2014. Inside and Out: Interactions between Rome and the peoples on the Arabian and Egyptian frontiers in late antiquity (Late Antique History and Religion 8). Leuven: Peeters Publishers.
    In recent years, exciting new discoveries of inscriptions and archaeological remains on the Arabian Peninsula have led to a re-evaluation of the peoples on the Arabian frontier, which through their extensive contacts with Rome and Persia are now seen as dynamic participants in the Late Antique world. The present volume contributes to this recent trend by focusing on the contrast between the ‘outside’ sources on the peoples of the frontier – the Roman view – and the ‘inside’ sources, that is, the precious material produced by the Arabs themselves, and by approaching these sources within an anthropological framework of how peripheral peoples face larger powers. For the first time, the situation on the Arabian frontier is also compared with that on the southern Egyptian frontier, where similar sources have been found of peoples such as the Blemmyes and Noubades. Thus, the volume offers a richly-documented examination of the frontier interactions in these two vibrant and critically-important areas of the Late Antique East.
     For more information, see the publisher’s website.

  • Mani at the court of the Persian kings

    Gardner, Iain, Jason BeDuhn & Paul Dilley. 2014. Mani at the court of the Persian kings. Leiden: Brill.

    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.

  • The rise of Christianity in Iran

    Payne, Richard. 2014. The Rise of Christianity in Iran. News and Notes 223. 2–7.

    Read the article here.

  • The reinvention of Iran

    Payne, Richard. 2014. The reinvention of Iran: The Sasanian Empire and the Huns. In Michael Maas (ed.), The Cambridge companion to the age of Attila, 282–299. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Find the article here.

  • Two reviews

    Brody, Robert . 2014. Review of Shai Secunda: The Iranian Talmud. University of Pennsylvania Press. Zion 79(3). 435–437.

    See also here for another review of Shai’s book.

    Mokhtarian, Jason. 2014. Review of Shai Secunda & Steven Fine (eds.): Shoshannat Yaakov, Jewish and Iranian studies in honor of Yaakov Elman. Zion 79(3). 438–442.

  • Women in the Hērbedestān

    Strauch Schick, Shana. 2014. Women in the Hērbedestān: A re-examination of the Bavli’s Beruriah narratives in light of Middle Persian literature. Zion 79(3). 407–424.

    The Babylonian Talmud contains a number of dicta which unambiguously exclude women from the study of Torah. Yet the narratives concerning Beruriah, supposedly the daughter of R. Hanina b. Teradyon and wife of R. Meir, suggest otherwise. She is depicted as having received formal instruction at the same level as rabbinic sages. Yet, these traditions appear only in the Babylonian Talmud, a few centuries after she would have lived, and contain a number of common literary motifs. This and other factors indicate the constructed nature of these stories, as David Goodblatt and Tal Ilan have noted. While it is possible to explain the local function of these narratives on literary and didactic grounds, given the Babylonian Talmud’s general stance regarding women and Torah study, the figure of a woman well-versed in Torah learning is indeed surprising.
    This paper proposes that the appearance of the character of Beruriah is best understood within the Middle Persian milieu when the late Talmudic narratives arose. It is clear from Zoroastrian texts that religious study was a possibility open to men and women and that both were equally viable candidates to leave their home in order to engage in religious training at the Hērbedestān. A passage from Mādayān ī Hazār Dādestān, for example, depicts women who are well versed in jurisprudence and shares other significant parallels with the Beruriah narratives. By turning to relevant Middle Persian sources it thus becomes clear that the idea of the scholarly woman was not simply a literary motif called into existence, but was in fact a real possibility that Jews of Babylonia had to confront—a novel phenomenon unknown (or perhaps suppressed) in earlier Palestinian sources. Within a larger culture in which women participated in religious scholarly pursuits, the exclusion of women from Torah study and the community of scholars was addressed by the creation of Beruriah. Although the existence of a woman of Beruriah’s erudition within an elite rabbinic family could now be presented as a plausible historical persona, her existence served as a cautionary tale to justify the importance of keeping Torah study exclusively male.