Auch Gedanken fallen manchmal unreif vom Baum.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Iran and the West
Call for Papers for a conference at the University of Warwick: Iran and the West: Converging Perspectives 1-3 July 2015
Forgotten origins of modern humanities
From the book’s webpage: ‘The humanities today face a crisis of relevance, if not of meaning and purpose. Understanding their common origins—and what they still share—has never been more urgent’. Turner, James. 2014. Philology: The forgotten origins of the modern humanities. Princeton University Press. Many today do not recognize the word, but “philology” was for centuries…
The early Islamic world
This very interesting volume has an article by Jairus Banaji On the Identity of Shahrālānyōzān in the Greek and Middle Persian Papyri from Egypt: Schubert, Alexander & Petra Sijpesteijn (eds.). 2014. Documents and the history of the early Islamic world. Leiden: Brill. Historians have long lamented the lack of contemporary documentary sources for the Islamic middle ages…
Biographical notices
BL’s Asian and African studies blog has a nice piece on George Percy Churchill’s biographical notices of Persian statesmen and notables.
Middle Persian and Parthian hymns in the Turfan Collection
Durkin-Meisterernst, Desmond (ed.). 2014. Miscellaneous hymns: Middle Persian and Parthian hymns in the Turfan Collection (Berliner Turfantexte 31). Brepols Publishers. This is an edition of a large number of fragments of Middle Persian and Parthian Manichaean hymns in the Berlin Turfan Collection. M. Boyce in the register of her 1960 Catalogue of the Iranian Manuscripts in…
Review: Sasanian coins
Heidemann, Stefan. 2013. Review of Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, M. Elahé Askari & Elizabeth J. Pendleton: Sasanian Coins: A sylloge of the Sasanian coins in the National Museum of Iran (Muzeh Melli Iran), vol. 1 & 2. London: Royal Numismatic Society in assoc. with the British Institute of Persian Studies. JOSA 45. 117–123. Read the review here.