Shii News – Academic Items
1. News from Invisible East
We have made significant improvements to the Invisible East Digital Corpus (IEDC). Alongside a sixth release of documents, and Persian language functionality, tagging has been introduced to the site, which significantly enhances the value of the IEDC as a research tool. We have had a busy term featuring schools outreach, teaching on a six-week lecture series for Oxford Lifelong Learning, as well as presenting at conferences.
We have published three new Documents of the Month, including two on the Bamiyan Papers which are digitised in the IEDC: a Judeo-Persian letter and a fragment of a treatise dealing with pre-Islamic festivals.
The Islamicate East series
Three books in The Islamicate East series are now listed on the EUP website and will be arriving in bookstores soon. Use NEW30 for a discount of 30% from the listed price:
- In print from 31 December 2025: The Warehouse of Bamiyan. Economic Life in Medieval Afghanistan by Arezou Azad, with a contribution by Pejman Firoozbakhsh (former Invisible East Postdoc);
- Expected January 2026: Persian World Histories in the Mongol Era. The Transmission and Reception of Rashid al-Din’s Jami al-Tawarikh, edited by Tomoko Masuya, Osamu Otsuka and Masatomo Kawamoto; and
- Expected January 2026: The Rise and Fall of the Barmakids: Stories from a Forgotten Persian Manuscript, translated and annotated by Pejman Firoozbakhsh and Arezou Azad.
The hybrid series Rethinking History: Returning Archives and Documents resumes in January. Registration is essential. Join us for:
- Wednesday 14 January 2026, 5PM UK time: ‘Documents from Turbulent Times: Studying Middle Persian Collections from the Late Sasanian and Early Islamic Periods—Opportunities and Challenges’, with Nima Asefi, Universität Hamburg.
- Wednesday, 11 February 2026, 5PM UK Time: ‘Archaeology as National Archive: Hertzfeld’s History of Iran’, with Jennifer Jenkins, University of Toronto.
- Wednesday, 11 March 2026, 4PM UK Time: ‘Documenting Space: Waqf-Namehs, Architecture, and the Social Function of Qajar Madrasas’, with Maryam Heydarkhani, University of Oxford.
- December 27, 2025
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