Auch Gedanken fallen manchmal unreif vom Baum.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Yarshater Lectures at SOAS
‘In the rays of light of imperial favour’: The visual arts of early fifteenth-century Timurid Herat. Four lectures by Professor David J. Roxburgh of the Department of History of Art and Architecture and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Islamic Art History, Harvard University: 15 January Timurid Herat: The City as a Setting for Art and Literature 16 January The Timurid-Ming
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
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,
Imagining Xerxes
Bridges, Emma. 2014. Imagining Xerxes: Ancient perspectives on a Persian king. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Imagining Xerxes is a transhistorical analysis that explores the richness and variety of Xerxes’ afterlives within the ancient literary tradition. It examines the earliest representations of the king, in Aeschylus’ tragic play Persians and Herodotus’ historiographical account of the Persian Wars,
Textiles and elite tastes
Canepa, Matthew. 2014. Textiles and elite tastes between the Mediterranean, Iran and Asia at the end of antiquity. In Marie-Louise Nosch, Zhao Feng & Lotika Varadarajan (eds.), Global textile encounters (Ancient Textiles Series 20), 1–14. Oxford and Havertown, PA: Oxbow Books. Read the article here.
Religious trends in late ancient and early Islamic Iran
The latest issue of the journal Iranian Studies 48(1), dated 2015 and entitled Religious trends in late ancient and early Islamic Iran, is a treasure trove of highly recommended articles. This special issue has been edited by Jason Mokhtarian & David Bennett. Read the editors’ introduction here.