| Booklet of Common Zoroastrian Rituals and Practices
There is a significant amount of research on the Zoroastrian religion, its scriptures and history, but there are limited sources within academia or the community on religious and cultural practices that are conducted at home by laypeople. Practices such as āchuṃ mīcuṃ, Haft-Sin table, and cūlā nūṃ varas are under threat due to an ageing population, migration, and lack of accessible information. Gen Z and Beyond: A Survey for Every Generation, a survey on the global Zoroastrian community found that: 1) 55.2% of 18-45-year-olds wanted to learn more about Zoroastrian rituals and their meanings; 2) 41.4% of 18-45-year-olds wanted to learn more about Parsi / Irani culture and cultural traditions e.g. sari wearing or cookery classes / ses rituals; 3) 31.9% of 18-45-year-olds wanted to learn more about Iranian culture and heritage e.g. setting the Haft-Sin table.
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| A Special Issue of the academic journal Religiographies dedicated to Zoroastrian Esotericism has just been published open access and is available here. Edited by Dr Mariano Errichiello (SOAS), Prof Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina (Oxford) and Prof Daniel J. Sheffield (Princeton), this Special Issue presents case studies that explore how followers and enthusiasts of Zoroastrianism understand, experience and make sense of the esoteric, from antiquity to modern times. |
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The Institute is pleased to share that the video recordings of The Idea of Iran Symposium are now available via the SOAS SPIZS YouTube page. |
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| PhD candidate Hamta Mousavi (pictured) presented her research at the ERĀN Forum, held in Lille, France. Hamta investigates the architectural components of Sasanian Zoroastrian fire temples with a focus on their astrological significance. |
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© Babak Sedighi, 2008.The rock relief and trilingual inscriptions of King Darius at Bisotun in the Kermanshah Province of Iran. |
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| On 9 October 2024 at 5:00 p.m. UK, the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies, University of Toronto, and the Invisible East Programme, the University of Oxford, present From the Gavbara to Khurshid: The Pahlavi Archive of Tabarestan and the First Century of Islam in Iran by Khodadad Rezakhani. Click here to register on Zoom.
The University of Tuscia (Viterbo) will hold the Tenth International Conference on Iranian Linguistics (ICIL) between 13 and 15 of January 2025. For the programme and more information, follow this link.
The International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East will take place 2-7 June, 2025 in Lyon. To learn more, and to submit a paper for the conference before the deadline in October, follow this link. |
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| The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) & ParZor launched a ‘first-of-its-kind course on Culture and Heritage Studies’ focused on the culture, heritage and contributions of a micro-minority community. To apply for the course, use this link.
The recorded lectures from the Second Achaemenid Workshop, “The Achaemenid Persian Empire and Imperial Transformations in the Ancient Near East”, hosted at the University of Innsbruck and co-sponsored by the Pourdavoud Institute in Obergurgl, Austria on July 3–7, 2023, are now available online. Watch here.
The Iranian History Initiative (IHI) at the London School of Economics was established in 2024 to promote the study of modern Iranian history at LSE. To learn more about the venture and to find out about their upcoming events, follow this link.
Yuhan S.-D. Vevaina, Bahari Associate Professor of Sasanian Studies at the University of Oxford, is the recipient of the Book Award in Ancient Iranian Studies 2024 of the Association for Iranian Studies. The award recognises the contribution of Prof. Vevaina to Ancient Iranian Studies through his recent publications on Zoroastrian hermeneutics.
In 2014, a lidded silver vessel dating back to 990 AD was unearthed in a field in Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. Drawing upon Sasanian iconography, this archaeological finding contains silver proceeding from Iran. To learn more, read the article published in the Guardian.
Brill recently launched the book series Non-Mainstream Religion in the Middle East, edited by Khanna Omarkhali and Philip Kreyenbroek. It covers non-orthodox, professing Muslim traditions, those whose status as Islamic groups is questioned, and those minorities who live in Islamic societies, such as Zoroastrians in Iran. Click here to learn more.
On 2 September, Dr Domenico Agostini, a philologist of Middle Persian and expert of Zoroastrian apocalyptic literature, joined the Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale as a tenured Associate Professor. |
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Administrations et préposés d’époque sassanide, by Rika Gyselen
This volume brings together studies based on primary sources, often unpublished, which highlight important aspects of the administration of the Sasanian Empire. Some focus on the territorial establishment of various administrations and mints, others deal with the actors of these institutions such as the magi and the scribes. Read more here. |
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| Iranian Art from the Sasanians to the Islamic Republic, edited by Sheila S. Blair, Jonathan M. Bloom, Sandra Williams
This volume in honor of Linda Komaroff introduces Iranian art from classical to contemporary media, showing how art can be a source for history and politics. The essays present a combination of senior scholars and younger voices, with perspectives from Asia, Europe and the USA. Read more here. |
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| Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum, Analecta Manichaica, by Varia Manichaica
This volume collects the works of scholars in Gnostic and Manichaean studies, Iranologists and art historians. It contains two important catalogues of Turfan texts, studies on cosmogony, hymnology and manuscript illumination, and a number of Turfan texts that are published for the first time. Read more here. |
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| The Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University invites applications for postdoctoral research associates or more senior researchers in the relevant fields of Iran and the Persian Gulf in the 19th – 21st century. Scholars of all academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences are invited to apply by November 29, 2024, 11:59pm EST. For further details, click here.
Max Weber fellowships are being offered for the 2025-2026 intake, for historical and social sciences. Applicants may apply from anywhere in the world and the deadline for submission is the 18th of October. For more information, click here.
The University of Vienna announced two research positions within the ERC-funded Synergy Project MANTRAMS (Mantras in Religion, Media, and Society in Global Southern Asia) to explore the materiality of mantras, including their inscriptional, visual, embodied, and digital forms. For detailed job descriptions and application instructions, please send me an email: borayin.larios@univie.ac.at. |
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| The SOAS Shapoorji Pallonji Institute of Zoroastrian Studies was launched in June 2018 thanks to the generous donation from a Parsi benefactor, Mr Shapoor Pallonji Mistry, in the name of his father, Mr Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry.
The SSPIZS Annual Report for the academic year 2022-23 is now available to view on our website. It covers all of the activities from the institute, including events, research and teaching. Find out more.
Visit our website to find out more about the Institute. |
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