Contributions a l'histoire et la geographic historique de l'empire sassanide.

• Author: Oktor, Skjaervo Prods
• Position: Book review

Contributions a l'histoire et la geographic historique de l'empire sassanide. Edited by RIKA GYSELEN. Res Orientale. vol. 16. Bures-sur-Yvette: GROUPE POUR L'ETUDL DE LA CIVILISATION DU MOYEN-ORIENT, 2004. Pp. 190, illus. [Distributed by Peeters Press, Louvain]

This beautifully produced and extremely useful volume, with seven plates in color of Sasanian gold coinage, contains an avani-propos by Philip Huyse and five contributions to the topic of the title: Carlo Cereti, "Middle Persian Geographic Literature: the Case of the Bundahisn"; Philippe Gignoux, "Aspects de la vie administrative et sociale en Iran du 7eme siecle"; Rika Gyselen, "New Evidence for Sasanian Numismatics: the Collection of Ahmad Saeedi": Christelle Jullien. "Contribution des Actes des Martyrs perses a la geographie historique et a l'administration de ('empire sassanide"; and Florence Jullien, "'Parcours a travers l 'Histoire d 'lso 'sabran, martyr sous Khosrau II." There are four indexes: place names, general index, personal names, and administrative titles.

The volume continues the publication of sources for the history of the Sasanian empire recently initiated by Rika Gyselen and to which several volumes in the series Res Orientates and the Cahiers of the Studia Iranica, both of which she edits, have been dedicated (p. 8 with n. 8).

Cereti outlines the setting of the Pahlavi geographical literature, emphasizing its final composition in the ninth-tenth centuries, more or less contemporary with the early "Arabo-Islamic" geographies. It is based on a long (oral) tradition centered around the Avestan texts and its commentaries, but may also have drawn on the so-called "memorials of the provinces" (ayadgariha i sahriha) mentioned in the Bundahisn, a Zoroastrian encyclopedic compilation, from which Cereti studies in detail chapters IX, XI. and XIa. (1) Moreover, this information agrees on the whole well with what we learn from inscriptions on rock, coins, and seals. The geography of the Bundahisn still relies heavily on Avestan ideas, with a division of the world into seven continents, as opposed to non-religious texts, which have a fourfold division, agreeing with the administrative divisions known from seals. Nevertheless, the information in the Bundahisn has sometimes been updated compared to the religious tradition, as seen, for instance, in the list of lands in chapter XXXI compared with that in Videvdad 1.

Cereti usefully compares in table form geographical names in Bundahisn with lists found in the Avesta, concluding that the geographical information in the Pahlavi text has been "adapted to historical realia of Sasanian times" (p. 27). An appendix contains the Pahlavi text of the chapters discussed with critical apparatus and translation.

Philippe Gignoux reports some results from the study of the close to three hundred seventh-century Pahlavi economic documents on parchment in the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley. (2) The documents are written in a ductus much more cursive than that seen in the Zoroastrian manuscripts and are therefore quite hard to read. The documents are dated between years 30 and 40 of an unidentified era, which may be that of Yazdegerd III (632-651), the last Sasanian king, and so correspond to the period 662-72, that is, just after the Arab conquest of Iran, but a few are dated earlier or later. In one document (written in regular literary Pahlavi ductus, differently from the other documents), a King Ohrmazd is mentioned, presumably Ohrmazd V (631-632). The parchments may come from the archive of a certain Daden-winddd, who is frequently mentioned at the beginning of several of these documents.

Gignoux discusses the following titles in the documents. The darig, so far unknown (pp. 38-40), but known from Persian dari "superintendent of public granaries." is quite frequent and may have had the more general meaning of "person in charge, manager" (tenancier, gerant, regisseur). The ostanddr ["provincial governor" Gignoux gives no translation] is now also well known from seals (pp. 40-41). The naxwar, also attested on a seal (spelled [Less than ]nswb' I>) and in Syriac (spelled [Less than ]nkw'r>, with a derivative [Less than...