This imposing two-volume collection, weighing in at more than 1,000 pages, offers us the Forschungsstand—state-of-the-art overview—of Iranistik, the (ill-defined) field of Iranian studies in the broadest sense of the term. It does so comprehensively, covering pre-Islamic times as much as the Islamic period. Its contents show how far the study of Iran and what we now call the Persianate world has progressed since the publication of the Cambridge History of Iran (1968‒91). The wide range of topics discussed by established, mostly German, scholars as well as a number of talented younger ones, indeed reminds one of the vastness of the Iranian universe, and reflects how in recent decades its study has proliferated well beyond history, language and literature. This handbook naturally covers these traditional fields, in addition to such categories as geography, religion and folklore, but it also addresses music, art and architecture, numismatics and material culture, film and the media, in Iran and Afghanistan, as well as in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Far from just listing the most relevant publications in the individual disciplines, a number of authors blend empiricism and theory to discuss, reflect on and, occasionally, problematize the nature and justification of commonly accepted disciplinary boundaries and categories of periodization, prevailing angles of inquiry, and gaps in the literature. Each essay follows the template of A, general overview, methods, sources; B, discussion of important research; and C, bibliography.
The fact that four years lapsed between the publication of the two volumes suggests the complexity of the task the editor faced. In the introduction to Volume 1, Paul explains how in 2009 he started with fifteen authors and one projected volume of 300‒350 pages titled “Einführung in die Iranistik,” “Introduction to Iranian Studies,” which was supposed to appear in 2011. Time and volume wrought havoc on that idea. The project quickly mushroomed and, as Paul explains, overwhelmed by accruing topics and perspectives, he ended up overseeing the publication of a second volume containing another fifty-eight essays. In the complex and sprawling work that resulted he turned a handicap into a virtue by having most rubrics discussed in the first volume return in the second one, with greater elaboration, highlighting different aspects and regions, or approaching topics from different perspectives.
Listing all ninety-odd essays let alone discussing their content and merits would far exceed the scope of this review—as well as the expertise of the present reviewer. I will therefore mention virtually all yet concentrate on some of the more important and revelatory ones with a focus on those closest to my own areas of interest and expertise.
History appropriately comes first. The first essay, on pre-Islamic Iran, written by J. Wiesehöfer, is followed by an impressive overview of Iran’s history since the Arab invasion by C. Werner. Werner poses the important question of the virtues of Iran v. the Persianate world, and discusses the logic of the ingrained dynastic periodization, as well as the importance of studying regional entities, Khorasan, Fars, etc. He also draws attention to the great strides made in the historiography of periods such as the Seljuqs, the Mongols and the Safavids in the new millennium.
F. Schwarz follows with an essay on the history of Central Asia since the fourteenth century, in which he points to changes in methodology since the fall of the Soviet Union leading to a veering away from a top-down approach and a greater focus on the interaction between Russian authorities and local actors and agents. He also draws attention to persistent gaps in the literature, such as the economic interests that drove Russian intervention and expansion, and studies of religious intellectual history.
Afghanistan as an independent political entity since the nineteenth century receives competent coverage by C. Noelle-Karimi with a good entry on geography, traditionally a German forte, and politics, which, like the one on economic issues, shows how quickly handbooks like this become outdated. S. Najmabadi discusses the origins of the anthropological study of Iran with the creation of the Anthropology Museum in Tehran. Referring to the heyday of the study of nomads in the 1960s and 1970s, beginning with F. Barth’s groundbreaking study, Nomads of South Persia, she also highlights the difficulties western scholars have encountered doing fieldwork since the Islamic Revolution.
Legal issues, in the pre-Islamic era and the period 1501‒1925, are covered, respectively by M. Macuch and I. Schneider, and, for the period from 1925 to the present by N. Yassari and L.-M. Moller.
Religion is next. Zoroastrianism is competently discussed by P. Kreyenbroek, who, like C. Reck in her essay on Manicheism, points out the great new developments in both fields in the new millennium. Islam from the Safavids onward receives intelligent treatment by R. Brunner, while minority religions such as Buddhism, Christianity and Baha’ism are discussed by M. Hutter. The Yazidis are included as well, with a brief overview by K. Omarkhali.
The section on languages ranges from Old Persian, addressed by R. Schmitt, Middle Persian, treated by D. Durkin-Meistenernst, and New Persian, discussed by L. Paul. All three are truly primers on their topics. It is astonishing to learn that the grammar of modern Persian written by the recently deceased Gilbert Lazard, dating from 1957 and available in English since 1992, and the same author’s essay about the development of the New Persian language published in the Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4, have to date not been superseded. The volume contains shorter essays on New West Iranian languages, such as Kurdish and Baluchi, and New East Iranian, Ossetian and Pamir dialects, among others.
Literature, too, receives ample attention, with a learned essay on Iranian literature in pre-Islamic times by M. Macuch, who includes Manichean, Christian and Buddhist and Khotanese literature as well as epigraphic documents from the Parthian period and in Sogdian in her discussion. R. Würsch discusses new Persian literature; and U. Marzolph offers a brief overview of Iranian folklore studies.
Manuscripts, another topic on which great progress has been made in recent decades, are represented with essays by A. Cantera on Avestan manuscripts, by I. Colditz on the Iranian Manichean-Tufan texts, highlighting the effort and accomplishments of the Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in the research on Turfan; and by N.-S. Sajjadi on Persian-Islamic tradition, with an informative discussion about production techniques, utensils, paper and bindings, and drawing attention to recent initiatives, such as the creation of several Persian-language journals and the activities of the Shahnama manuscript project.
Volume 1 closes with archeology, art and architecture. B. Helwing offers a discussion on Iranian archeology until the second millennium BCE, from the Early Neolithic via the Chalcolithic period to the early urban formation in the Early Bronze period, or from c. 8600 to c. 2100 BCE. T. Stöllner continues the story until the first millennium BCE; and F. Knauss presents a thorough overview of the state of our knowledge about art and architecture between the Achaemenid, the Parthian and the Sasanian periods, 550 BCE‒650 CE, lamenting the enduring difficulty of establishing a chronological sequence for the artifacts from much of that period. S. Babaie addresses the topic for the Islamic period; C.-P. Haase singles out the art of the book for separate treatment; and M. Muller discusses ceramics and metal.
Volume 2 offers yet more gems, many of them on topics and themes that are rarely highlighted—and in some case have never been presented—in such a concentrated fashion. As said, a number of entries in this volume overlap with those in the first volume, being further elaborations on previous entries, or expanding on these by addressing different aspects.
The volume opens with an essay by E. Orthmann on a theme that is currently the subject of much new research, the history of premodern Indo-Iranian relations. R. Kauz next addresses Iranian‒Chinese relations, a topic we know even less about. The history of Tajikistan in Soviet times by T. Loy continues the historical part. A. Fischer-Tahir, discussing Kurdish history, points out how Kurdish history-writing, much of it in Arabic, Persian or Turkish, tends to be seen as part of Arab, Iranian or Turkish history folded into the history of their respective empires, and how the historical absence of a sovereign Kurdish nation state has complicated Kurdish history-writing, turning it into a heavily politicized quest for identity largely pursued by amateurs and enthusiasts rather than by professional historians. A real gem is the essay by S. Shtyrkov on Ossetia and the Ossetians, the Iranic people of the South Caucasus, today divided between Georgia and occupied by Russia.
C. Werner in this volume returns with a valuable piece on sources and their function and role as tools of the historical trade. His contribution is complemented by a brief essay by T. Trausch about the evolution of Perso-Islamic historiography.
Numismatics, an up-and-coming auxiliary field of great promise, receives comprehensive treatment. M. Alram, N. Schindel and F. Sinai discuss pre-Islamic coinage, and S. Heidemann covers the entire history of coinage and its importance in the Iranian world for the Islamic period, until the Qajars, with an informative overview that includes little-known dynasties such as the Saka and the Indo-Parthians, suggesting how much work remains to be done in this field.
Calendar systems are discussed by J. Elbers, whose essay is followed by two solid pieces on gender in pre-Islamic Iran and Islamic Iran. From there the volume takes a less conventional turn by discussing everyday life, Alltagskultur (B. Devos), focusing on food and dress, the security apparatus of the Islamic Republic (W. Posch), new media and the internet in Iran (M. Michaelsen), Iranian film (N. Tornesello) and, even more unusually, bioethics (S. Naef).
At this point the volume turns to Afghanistan, with essays on the research done on the country’s post-1978 history (K. Mielke), and its ethnographic makeup (C. Schetter). It next returns to Tajikistan, this time to discuss the country’s history since independence (J. Daǧyeli), with attention to the civil war, gender issues and migratory patterns, among other topics. The Kurds, too, return, with informative essays about the Kurdish region of Iraq (A. Fischer-Tahir), and the Kurds of Turkey and Syria (G. Gürbey and C. Yildirim). H. Kreutzmann discusses the latest research on Iranian communities in the Pamir, the so-called Mountain Tajiks. The section somewhat incongruously closes with a rather technical overview of the importance for Iranian studies of digital humanities by J. Elbers and M. Kinzler, who explain the virtues and advantages of its methods for linguistics and geographical studies.
The next section addresses law and legal issues. The essay on Islamic law in Iran until 1500, written by B. Jokish, points out that modern research increasingly identifies a continuity between Zoroastrian-Sasanian models and patterns found in the Islamic period, as reflected, for instance, in waqf and temporary marriage. The contribution on the trajectory of the Afghan legal system from 1920 onward, cowritten by N. Yassari and L.-M. Moller, serves as another primer, in the absence of substantive literature on the topic.
Religion returns with a fine overview by J. Paul, who complements Brunner’s account in Volume 1 by discussing the period 632‒1500 in an essay that is as concise as it is brilliant in the way it lays out the Sunni schools as they manifested themselves in Iran. The author also ponders the ever murky question of the stages of Iran’s conversion to Islam, from its initial acquaintance with the faith and the proliferation of branches to the consolidation under the Mongols, after they themselves had converted. Sufism, adumbrated in Paul’s account, gets fuller treatment in an overview by S. Raei, who traces little-known Shi‘i orders such as the Khaksar and the Zahabiya, and Sunni ones such as the Qadiriya and the Naqshbandis, all the way to the present. The heterodox movements of the Ahl-e Haqq of the Kurdish Alavis next receive outstanding treatment by, respectively, P. Kreyenbroek and K. Kehl-Bodrogi.
Language and linguistics follow with two essays on Old and Middle Persian Onomastica by R. Schmitt and Kurdish linguistics by G. Haig. The section on literature opens with a fine essay on the Iranian press by M. Riazi. Next is a brief but valuable overview of theater in Iran by A. Heller. The next sixty pages are dedicated to literature. Here the essays on modern Persophone literature in Afghanistan by C. Noelle-Karimi, on Tajik literature by T. Loy, and especially the overviews of Pashtu literature by S. Heine and modern writings in Baluchi, most of them published in Quetta, written by S. Badalkhan and C. Jahani, stand out for sheer novelty. The pieces on the Pamir by G. van den Berg, and on the Ossetians by P. Ognibene are equally revelatory.
Manuscripts return in Volume 2. A relatively new field of inquiry in Iranian studies, with great interdisciplinary potential as part of the new Silk Road studies, codicology deservedly receives ample attention. J. Ferrer-Losilla discusses the Zoroastrian-Middle Persian manuscript tradition; C. Reck deals with the Buddhist-Sogdian sources; F. Dragoni addresses the Khotanese-Buddhist ones; and C. Barbati offers a good overview of the achievements of current research on the Middle Iranian-Christian tradition. Illustrative of the flight the study of Asian manuscripts has taken with the discovery of a large number of Soghdian manuscripts. and the contribution of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, is the fact that almost the entire bibliography of the latter refers to studies published in the new millennium.
Art also gets its due in this volume. G. Fock discusses the flourishing field of modern Iranian art, devoting separate sections to the little-known modern traditions of sculpture and calligraphy, architecture, and photography, respectively. B. Borkop Restle and C. Mühlemann address textiles, silks and carpets; and R. Neumann offers an overview of the history of Iranian lacquer. Islamic glass between the Achaemenids and the Qajars is covered by J. Kröger.
Philosophy receives ample attention in the next section, with a discussion of pre-Islamic times by G. König and an essay on the Islamic period by N. Sinai, who poses the question of how to approach and define “Iranian” philosophy once we reject Corbin’s concept of Sophia perennis as well as the hoary notion that al-Ghazali singlehandedly killed the philosophical tradition in Sunni Islam. Philosophy in the last two centuries, a topic on which the secondary literature remains scarce and uneven, receives illuminating treatment by R. Seidel.
S. Brentjes offers a rich essay on the sciences, another field that has made great strides in the last few decades. She discusses the great progress that has been made in cartography and draws attention to the newly emerging field of occult sciences.
Volume 2 closes with music. This section contains an essay by A. E. Lucas on developments in Iranian music from the Mongols to the present-day attempts by the Islamic Republic to preserve and revive traditional music forms while containing and controlling the modern western-dominated music scene. The last two contributions are by A. Jung, on the music of Central Asia, and by M. Greve on music in the culture dominated by western Iranian languages, Kurdish, Zazaki and Gurani.
The Handbuch der Iranistik is an absolute treasure trove of information, after the incomparable Encyclopaedia Iranica the most complete and comprehensive overview of the totality of Iranian and Persianate history and culture, its usefulness enhanced by way of an extensive multifaceted index. Not the least of its virtues is that it showcases the enormously important contribution our German and Germanophone colleagues continue to make to the field of Iranian studies, both in their original research and by way of using a wide range of secondary material in languages beyond the hegemonic English. That many of the essays included in these two volumes could not have been written even twenty-five years ago testifies to the proliferation of the field. The four-year lapse between the two volumes, finally, reminds one how fast fields change. The next iteration of a collective work of this scope and magnitude is likely to be published online, enabling ad infinitum updating.
