Archive for February 25th, 2025
Shii News – Academic Items
1.Introduction to Early Classical Persian Prose: From Abu Mansūr’s Shahname to Kalīla wa Dimna
This course will explore Early Classical Persian literary, geographical, and historical texts, engage in discussions on key topics in Persian philology, and examine manuscript sources of selected works.
Application deadline: March 14th
Early application discount available!
Ferdowsi School of Persian Literature
Yerevan, Armenia
Website: www.ferdowsi.org
2. Mystical Landscapes in Medieval Persian Literature
Edited by Fatemeh Keshavarz, Ahmet T. Karamustafa
EUP, 2025
3. February 26, 12:00-1:00 pm
Near Eastern Studies and Digital Scholarship @IAS virtual event:
Opportunities and Challenges for Indexing a Polyglot Society: The Development of HIMME
Thomas A. Carlson (School of Historical Studies, IAS and Oklahoma State University).
More languages and literary traditions existed simultaneously in the medieval Middle East than any individual scholar can hope to master. Disciplinary norms have mandated that scholars focus on one or perhaps two languages, but the actual historical society was bewilderingly polyglot. Can digital methods provide an opportunity for overcoming our individual scholarly limitations? On the other hand, what dynamics of multilingual cultures challenge modern digital approaches themselves? This talk will open a conversation centered around the development of the Historical Index of the Medieval Middle East (HIMME: https://medievalmideast.org/)
Registration is required: https://bit.ly/HIMME
https://www.ias.edu/hs/islamic-world/events
https://www.ias.edu/digital-scholarship/events_ias
4. The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) is offering multiple grant opportunities in conjunction with its Eighteenth Annual Conference taking place in Washington, D.C. on November 1 – 3, 2025.
The ASMEA Research Grant Program seeks to support research on topics in Middle Eastern and African studies that deserve greater attention. Applicants may submit paper proposals on any topic as long as it constitutes new and original research and is relevant to the five qualifying topic areas:
- Minorities and Women
- Military History
- Governance and Economy
- Faith
- Iran
Grants of $2500 will be awarded. Successful research grant applicants are required to present their research at the Eighteenth Annual ASMEA Conference. The deadline to apply is April 30, 2025.
ASMEA is also offering Travel Grants of up to $750 which can be used towards the costs associated with attending the Annual ASMEA Conference in Washington, D.C. The deadline to apply is April 30, 2025.
In addition, we have issued our general Call for Papers and Panels.
Grant opportunities are open to members only. For information on how to become a member and full guidelines on each program, visit our website at www.asmeascholars.org.
Contact Information
Emily Lucas
Membership and Operations Director
Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA)
Contact Email
URL
https://www.asmeascholars.org/upcoming-conference
5. Le CeRMI a le plaisir de vous convier à la prochaine séance du séminaire “Sociétés, politiques et cultures du Monde iranien”, qui se tiendra le jeudi 13 mars 2025, 17h-19h, en salle 4.15 à l’INaLCO (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris XIII, 4eétage).
Nous sommes heureux d’accueillir M. Pavel Lurje (Musée de l’Ermitage; actuellement chercheur en résidence à l’Institut d’Études Avancées de Paris), pour une conférence intitulée: “Sogdian Documents from Mount Mugh: Historical, Archaeological, Administrative and Economic Geographies of Central Asia on the Eve of Islamization“.
Résumé:
In 1932-33, a set of 80 documents, mostly in Sogdian, but also in Chinese, Arabic and Old Turkic were discovered incidentally in the ruins of the castle on Mount Mugh, in the highlands of Tajikistan 150 km east of Samarkand. The documents, as it soon appeared, are dated to 722 CE (and few decades earlier), and were part of the archive of Dewashtich, the last ruler of Panjakent (the easternmost Sogdian city) and his retinue, who were defeated by Moslem forces and their allies in the mountains. Since the 1960s, the documents have all been made available in facsimile, photos and transliterations; and in the last decade, an updated English translation of the documents was published. Most of the placenames mentioned in the documents were ingeniously identified by the editors, and at a later stage, the tracks of the military expeditions mirrored in the texts could even be outlined. The bulk of the locations mentioned are situated to the east of Samarkand, especially around Panjakent and in the upper Zarafshan valley surrounding mount Mugh, but more distant places are also referred to.
At this time, we possess much better knowledge of the archaeological sites in the area (through survey and excavations), and of the linguistic features of Sogdian. Similar texts have been found elsewhere, and documents pertaining to another crucial moment in the history of Upper Zarafshan, the Russian conquest of 1860s and its aftermath, have been published. These new data have allowed scholars to reconsider the geography of the documents in a new light.
In this talk, the lecturer will present the preliminary results of his research project carried out as a Fellow at the Paris Institute of Advanced Studies. Several issues will be addressed: How was the power and administration in this area organized? What were the main products used, and how were they distributed? Which of the toponyms mentioned in the documents can be associated with known sites? And what was the oikumene known to the authors of these texts?
Orientations bibliographiques:
– Smirnova, O.I., 1963. La carte des régions du haut Zérafchân d’après les documents du Mt. Mugh, Труды двадцать пятого международного конгресса востоковедов. Москва, 9 – 16 августа 1960 г. II, 329–37.
– Ю. Якубов. Паргар в VII – VIII вв. н. э. Душанбе: Дониш, 1979.
– Frantz Grenet, Étienne de la Vaissière, 2002. “The last days of Panjikent”, Silk Road Art and Arcaheology 8, 155–96.
– Livshits, V.A., 2015. Sogdian epigraphy of Central Asia and Semirech’e. London: Corpus inscriptionum iranicarum.
– Begmatov, A., 2019. Sogdian Textual Materials from Central Asia: A Critical Re-Edition of the Documents from Mount Mugh, Unpublished PhD thesis, Kyoto.
– Исаков, А.И., Ю.Я. Якубов & Г.Р. Каримова, 2020. Верховья Долины Зарафшана (Археологическая карта Таджикистана). Душанбе: Дониш.
– Ҳоҷизодаи Мадрушкатӣ, А., 2021. Масчоҳ: Сад Санади Таърихӣ. Душанбе: Меҳроҷ-граф.
– Documentation on the inscription of monuments of Zarafshan-Karakum corridor of the Silk Road in the UNESCO World Heritage list, 2023. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1675/documents/
Pour rappel, vous retrouverez le programme 2024-2025 du séminaire mensuel de recherche “Sociétés, politiques et cultures du Monde iranien” sur le site du CeRMI :
Contact: justine.landau@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr
- February 25, 2025
- by Andrew Newman
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