Auch Gedanken fallen manchmal unreif vom Baum.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The Covenant that Binds
I have two articles in the newly published Festschrift for Dieter Weber, a volume I edited with Maria Macuch. In the first article, I investigate the collocation bun ud bar, known primarily from Zoroastrian legal texts, and show how the Zand’s insertion of it in Pahlavi Yasna 37.1 (Yasna Haptaŋhāiti) ultimately connects to the idea […]
Deciphering the Illegible
Deciphering the Illegible, a Festschrift in honour of Dieter Weber, has now been published, celebrating his profound and life-long contributions to the study of Middle Persian documents. Macuch, Maria & Arash Zeini (eds.). 2024. Deciphering the illegible: Festschrift in honour of Dieter Weber (Iranica 33). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. On Monday, 21 October 2024, Maria and […]
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 […]
‘Aliss at the Fire’
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 […]
Book Pahlavi typeface
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 […]
Past Imperfect 9.12.24
Lovely to find out about ‘Stolen Fragments’ by Roberta Mazza, and that Emily Wilson now has a substack. In its first post, Wilson examines four translations of the Odyssey’s opening. Years ago, I read a Guardian article doing something similar and found Wilson’s translation the most convincing.