Legends, Tales, and Fables in the Art of Sogdiana
Author: Boris Ilʹich Marshak
Publisher:
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 208
ISBN-13:
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The Legend of Mar Qardagh
Author: Joel Walker
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2006-04-24
Total Pages: 366
ISBN-13: 0520932196
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis pioneering study uses an early seventh-century Christian martyr legend to elucidate the culture and society of late antique Iraq. Translated from Syriac into English here for the first time, the legend of Mar Qardagh introduces a hero of epic proportions whose characteristics confound simple classification. During the several stages of his career, Mar Qardagh hunts like a Persian King, argues like a Greek philosopher, and renounces his Zoroastrian family to live with monks high in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. Drawing on both literary and artistic sources, Joel Walker explores the convergence of these diverse themes in the Christian culture of the Sasanian Empire (224-642). Taking the Qardagh legend as its foundation, his study guides readers through the rich and complex world of late antique Iraq.
Malakut and Other Stories
Author: Bahrām Ṣādiqī
Publisher: Ibex Publishers
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 293
ISBN-13: 1588140849
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA man who does not recognise his own face, an aristocrat who keeps his amputated limbs in jars on the shelf, an infant that commits suicide, a cat that is secretly writing a novel, a rooster that rebels against fate -- those are some of the characters that make Bahram Sadeqi's stories intriguing, incomparable and inimitable. Sadeqi is an original story-teller who depicts familiar facts and mundane realities in such a way that shocks us to the core and makes us call everything into question. With a subtle irony reminiscent of Poe, Kafka and Marquez, he engages us in an intricate quest to explore the meaning of life, death and the cosmos. Considering the slight body of work Sadeqi left behind after his untimely death, one cannot help but be struck by the impact his work has had on Persian literature nevertheless. Sadeqi consistently transgressed established literary ideologies with an easy confidence, pioneering an entirely new style of literature and presenting his own unique perspective on the human condition. His presence in contemporary Persian prose fiction was like that of a lone meteorite: appearing in a blinding flash, instantly yet fleetingly illuminating its surroundings, then abruptly fading into the darkness, leaving only a completely original, overwhelming and fantastic trail, the remainder of something singularly magnificent that we cannot hope to ever see repeated. Ever since he first published his stories in literary journals as a young writer, Sadeqi's works have been widely reprinted, finding vast audiences among each new generation of Iranians. This collection contains some of Sadeqi's best short stories, as well as Malakut, his magnum opus, a novella that took everyone by surprise in the 1960s, still fascinating readers and critics alike.
Transcending Patterns
Author: Mariachiara Gasparini
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 2019-11-30
Total Pages: 281
ISBN-13: 0824881702
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Transcending Patterns: Silk Road Cultural and Artistic Interactions through Central Asian Textiles, Mariachiara Gasparini investigates the origin and effects of a textile-mediated visual culture that developed at the heart of the Silk Road between the seventh and fourteenth centuries. Through the analysis of the Turfan Textile Collection in the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin and more than a thousand textiles held in collections worldwide, Gasparini discloses and reconstructs the rich cultural entanglements along the Silk Road, between the coming of Islam and the rise of the Mongol Empire, from the Tarim to Mediterranean Basin. Exploring in detail the iconographic transfer between different agents and different media from Central Asian caves to South Italian churches, the author depicts and describes the movement and exchange of portable objects such as sculpture, wall painting, and silk fragments across the Asian continent and across the ages. Gasparini’s history offers critical perspectives that extend far beyond an outmoded notion of “Silk Road studies.” Her cross-media work shows readers how certain material cultures are connected not only by the physical routes they take but also because of the meanings and interpretations these objects engage in various places. Transcending Patterns is at once art history, material and visual cultural history, Asian studies, conservatory studies, and linguistics.
Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road
Author: William E. Mierse
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2022-12-01
Total Pages: 496
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKArtifacts from the Ancient Silk Road explores the interconnectivity of the Eurasian continent from 4000 BCE to 1000 CE. It focuses on the role played by Central Asia through which passed the major trade routes, the Silk Roads. Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road covers life along the Silk Road over 5000 years as it can be understood by considering objects. In this first object-based study to consider all of the peoples involved on the Silk Roads, objects provide the vehicles for explorations of different aspects of life for the various peoples of the Silk Roads, including the sedentary peoples who established urban life on the Silk Roads, the steppe nomads who regularly interacted with the settled peoples, and the peoples at either end of the Silk Roads who drove certain kinds of economic exchanges. The book looks at Central Asia as an international zone during ancient times when multiple religious, political, and technological ideas found acceptance in the region and allows for a better understanding of how some ideas and forms developed in Central Asia while others passed through or were modified.
Les périples de Kalila et Dimna: Quand les fables voyagent dans la littérature et les arts du monde islamique
Author: Eloïse Brac de la Perrière
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2022-01-31
Total Pages: 434
ISBN-13: 9004498141
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book marks a major contribution to the study of Arabic illustrated manuscripts of Kalīla wa-Dimna and its Persian and Ottoman versions. The studies gathered in this volume showcase a wide diversity of approaches crossing textual investigation, codicological and iconographic study, and laboratory analysis. Ce livre constitue une contribution majeure à l'étude des manuscrits arabes illustrés de Kalīla wa-Dimna et de ses versions persane et ottomane. Les articles rassemblés dans ce volume montrent une grande diversité d'approches, croisant investigation textuelle, étude codicologique et iconographique et analyses physico-chimiques.
Transformations of Late Antiquity
Author: Manolis Papoutsakis
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-12-05
Total Pages: 572
ISBN-13: 1351878085
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book focuses on a simple dynamic: the taking in hand of a heritage, the variety of changes induced within it, and the handing on of that legacy to new generations. Our contributors suggest, from different standpoints, that this dynamic represented the essence of 'late antiquity'. As Roman society, and the societies by which it was immediately bounded, continued to develop, through to the late sixth and early seventh centuries, the interplay between what needed to be treasured and what needed to be explored became increasingly self-conscious, versatile, and enriched. By the time formerly alien peoples had established their 'post-classical' polities, and Islam began to stir in the East, the novelties were more clearly seen, if not always welcomed; and one witnesses a stronger will to maintain the momentum of change, of a forward reach. At the same time, those in a position to play now the role of heirs were well able to appreciate how suited to their needs the 'Roman' past might be, but how, by taking it up in their turn, they were more securely defined and yet more creatively advantaged. 'Transformation' is a notion apposite to essays in honour of Peter Brown. 'The transformation of the classical heritage' is a theme to which he has devoted, and continues to devote, much energy. All the essays here in some way explore this notion of transformation; the late antique ability to turn the past to new uses, and to set its wealth of principle and insight to work in new settings. To begin, there is the very notion of what it meant to be 'Roman', and how that notion changed. Subsequent chapters suggest ways in which fundamental characteristics of Roman society were given new form, not least under the impact of a Christian polity. Augustine, naturally, finds his place; and here the emphasis is on the unfettered stance that he took in the face of more broadly held convictions - on miracles, for example, and the errors of the pagan past. The discussion then moves on to
Khwadāynāmag The Middle Persian Book of Kings
Author: Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2018-04-17
Total Pages: 294
ISBN-13: 9004277641
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 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 History of the Tajiks
Author: Richard Foltz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2023-06-15
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 0755649672
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this comprehensive and up to date history, from prehistoric proto-Indo-Iranian times to the post-Soviet period, Richard Foltz traces the complex linguistic, cultural and political history of the Tajiks, a Persian-speaking Iranian ethnic group from the modern-day Central Asian states of Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan. In eight chapters, the author explores the revitalisation of Persian culture under the Samanid Empire in the Tajik heartlands of historical Khorasan and Transoxiana; analyses the evolution of the politics of Tajik identity; and traces the history of the ethnic Tajik diaspora today. This revised edition includes a new chapter on the Tajiks' situation in Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan since 2018, covering notably the effects of the Taliban's return to power in August 2021 and the COVID pandemic in all three countries, as well as border clashes with Kyrgyzstan.
Witnesses to a World Crisis
Author: James Howard-Johnston
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2010-06-10
Total Pages: 576
ISBN-13: 0191576085
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJames Howard-Johnston provides a sweeping and highly readable account of probably the most dramatic single episode in world history - the emergence of a new religion (Islam), the destruction of two established great powers (Roman and Iranian), and the creation of a new world empire by the Arabs, all in the space of not much more than a generation (610-52 AD). Warfare looms large, especially where operations can be followed in some detail, as in Iraq 636-40, in Egypt 641-2 and in the long-drawn out battle for the Mediterranean (649-98). As the first history of the formative phase of Islam to be grounded in the important non-Islamic as well as Islamic sources Witnesses to a World Crisis is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand Islam as a religion and political force, the modern Middle East, and the jihadist impulse, which is as evident today as it was in the seventh century.
