This volume presents the proceedings of a conference organized in a manner that the papers should cover most areas of research in the field of Middle Iranian. Several contributions contain surveys, summaries, methodological notes or proposals for new research. In this respect the volume may serve as a partial guide to the present state of research. Special attention is paid to Middle Persian, particularly to Pahlavi. Several articles deal with or are devoted to Khotanese.

In Khwadāynāmag. The Middle Persian Book of Kings Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila analyses the lost sixth-century historiographical work of the Sasanians, its lost Arabic translations, and the sources of Firdawsī's Shāhnāme.

A masterfully researched and compelling history of Iran from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi revisits the work of Fath?ali Akhundzadeh and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, two Qajar-era intellectuals who founded modern Iranian nationalism. In their efforts to make sense of a difficult historical situation, these thinkers advanced an appealing ideology Zia-Ebrahimi calls "dislocative nationalism," in which pre-Islamic Iran is cast as a golden age, Islam is reinterpreted as an alien religion, and Arabs become implacable others. Dislodging Iran from its empirical reality and tying it to Europe and the Aryan race, this ideology remains the most politically potent form of identity in Iran. Akhundzadeh and Kermani's nationalist reading of Iranian history has been drilled into the minds of Iranians since its adoption by the Pahlavi state in the early twentieth century. Spread through mass schooling, historical narratives, and official statements of support, their ideological perspective has come to define Iranian culture and domestic and foreign policy. Zia-Ebrahimi follows the development of dislocative nationalism through a range of cultural and historical materials, and he captures its incorporation of European ideas about Iranian history, the Aryan race, and a primordial nation. His work emphasizes the agency of Iranian intellectuals in translating European ideas for Iranian audiences, impressing Western conceptions of race onto Iranian identity.

This handbook is a guide to Iran's complex history. The book emphasizes the large-scale continuities of Iranian history while also describing the important patterns of transformation that have characterized Iran's past.

This book presents a cultural history of modern Iran through the perspective of the city. Addressing the relationship between history, poetry and politics in Iran, the author demonstrates that the question of knowledge is crucial to an understanding of the political and existential dimensions of life in Iran today.

Foundational Considerations -- Dance/Movement-based Arts -- Media & Technology -- Music -- Poetry/Storytelling -- Theater -- Visual Arts

"Scholars and Humanists contains a series of letters exchanged between the Iranian scholar and statesman, S.H. Taqizadeh, and the German Iranist W.B. Henning, between 1937 and 1966. The letters contain a wealth of information important to the history of Iranian studies in the twentieth century, specifically in relation to Manichaean studies, and Old and Middle Persian philology. Also important is insight provided regarding the prominent figures involved in the study of ancient Iran. Furthermore, the letters demonstrate the contribution of Taqizadeh, who was also a senator and an ambassador, as a scholar who studied the development of calendars and Iranistics, and his attempt at promoting Iranian studies both in Iran and abroad. Henning's letters demonstrate his uncanny erudition in the various aspects of ancient Iranian studies and his personal views about his fellow scholars and others affiliated with the field of Iranian Studies." --Book Jacket.

This book contains the most detailed and comprehensive statement of Homa Katouzian's theory of arbitrary state and society in Iran, and its applications to Iranian history and politics, both modern and traditional. Every chapter is a study of its own specific topics while being firmly a part of the whole argument. The discussions include close comparisons with the history of Europe to demonstrate the diversities of the logic and sociology of Iranian history from their European counterparts. Being the first modern theory of Iranian history, it is highly regarded by Iranian historians and social scientists, especially as it has helped to resolve many of the anomalies resulting from the application of traditional theories.

Christian communities flourished during late antiquity in a Zoroastrian political system, known as the Iranian Empire, that integrated culturally and geographically disparate territories from Arabia to Afghanistan into its institutions and networks. Whereas previous studies have regarded Christians as marginal, insular, and often persecuted participants in this empire, Richard Payne demonstrates their integration into elite networks, adoption of Iranian political practices and imaginaries, and participation in imperial institutions. ÊThe rise of Christianity in Iran depended on the Zoroastrian theory and practice of hierarchical, differentiated inclusion, according to which Christians, Jews, and others occupied legitimate places in Iranian political culture in positions subordinate to the imperial religion. Christians, for their part, positioned themselves in a political culture not of their own making, with recourse to their own ideological and institutional resources, ranging from the writing of saintsÕ lives to the judicial arbitration of bishops. In placing the social history of East Syrian Christians at the center of the Iranian imperial story, A State of Mixture helps explain the endurance of a culturally diverse empire across four centuries. Ê