Arash Zeini

Category: Publications

  • Imagining Xerxes

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    Arash Zeini
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    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

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    Arash Zeini
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    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

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    Arash Zeini
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    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.

  • The big and beautiful women of Asia

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    Arash Zeini
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    A slightly older but important article by Llewellyn-Jones dealing with the imagery of Achaemenid period seals and gemstones: Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. 2010. The big and beautiful women of Asia: Ethnic conceptions of ideal beauty in Achaemenid period seals and gemstones. In Hales, Shelley & Tamar Hodos (eds.), Material culture and social identities in the ancient world.…

  • Sociedad de Estudios Iranios y Turanios

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    Arash Zeini
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    Alberto Cantera and his team have launched a new journal, entitled Sociedad de Estudios Iranios y Turanios, with the aim to promote the study of Iran and Central Asia in Spain. The first volume has already been published and is available from academia.edu. A dedicated website is under construction. The original announcement:

  • Parthians, Greek culture, and beyond

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    Arash Zeini
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    Olbrycht, Mark Jan. 2014. Parthians, Greek culture, and beyond. In Twardowska, Kamilla, Maciej Salamon, Sławomir Sprawski, Michał Stachura & Stanisław Turlej (eds.), Within the circle of ancient ideas and virtues. Studies in honour of Professor Maria Dzielska, 129–142. Kraków. The Greeks living east of the Euphrates beParthians, Greek Culture, and Beyond, in: Within the Circle of…

  • Inside and out

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    Arash Zeini
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    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…

  • Tirazziš or Šīrāz

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    Arash Zeini
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    For this blog, 2014 comes to an end with a little write up by Henkelman on the great city of ŠĪrāz. The blog will resume on 05 January 2015, publishing Adam Benkato’s much anticipated second part on Sogdian. And I have some plans for this blog, which I hope to realise in 2015 with the…

  • The genealogy of Artabanos II

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    Arash Zeini
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    The last day of 2014 is busier than most other days on this blog: Olbrycht, Marek Jan. 2014. The genealogy of Artabanos II (AD 8/9–39/40), King of Parthia. Miscellanea Anthropologica et Sociologica 15(3). 92–97. One of the most controversial issues in the Parthian history of the early 1st century AD is the lineage of Artabanos…

  • Religious transformation between East and West

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    Arash Zeini
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    Herman, Geoffrey. 2014. Religious transformation between East and West: Hanukkah in the Babylonian Talmud and Zoroastrianism. In Wick, Peter & Volker Rabens (eds.), Religions and trade: Religious formation, transformation and cross-cultural exchange between East and West, 261–281. Leiden: Brill. When religious traditions travel they tend to adapt to their new surroundings. Like new products seeking…

  • Mani at the court of the Persian kings

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    Arash Zeini
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    Gardner, Iain, Jason BeDuhn & Paul Dilley. 2014. Mani at the court of the Persian kings. Leiden: Brill. In Mani at the Court of the Persian Kings the authors explore evidence arising from their project to edit the Chester Beatty Kephalaia codex. This new text presents Mani at the heart of Sasanian Iran in dialogue…

  • Islamic cultures, Islamic contexts

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    Arash Zeini
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    Sadeghi, Behnam, Asad Ahmed, Adam Silverstein & Robert Hoyland (eds.) 2014. Islamic cultures, Islamic contexts: Essays in honor of Professor Patricia Crone. Leiden/Boston: Brill. This volume brings together articles on various aspects of the intellectual and social histories of Islamicate societies and of the traditions and contexts that contributed to their formation and evolution. Written…

  • Repetitions of the Ahuna Vairiia

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    Arash Zeini
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    Cantera, Alberto. 2014. Repetitions of the Ahuna Vairiia and animal sacrifice in the Zoroastrian long liturgy. Estudios Iranios y Turanios 1. 25–29. The Ahuna Vairiia prayer is never repeated three times in extant Avestan texts and also the Pahlavi literature excludes this number of repetitions. This is because three repetitions of the Ahuna Vairiia is…

  • Scribal practices in the Turfan Christian community

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    Arash Zeini
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    Dickens, Mark. 2013. Scribal practices in the Turfan Christian community. Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 13. 3–28. A PDF of this article is available here.

  • Arabic documents from early Islamic Khurasan

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    Arash Zeini
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    Khan, Geoffrey. 2014. Arabic documents from early Islamic Khurasan (Einstein Lectures in Islamic Studies 3). Berlin.