فهرست مطالب pedram jam

As Shahpour II (379-309 AD) came to power, the Roman-Sasanian conflicts entered a new phase. The policy of Shahpour II during this period was to gain access to the rich cities of Syria. To achieve his goal, he tried to enter Syria three times after capturing the city of Nisibis in the north of Mesopotamia in the 340s AD, but he failed and retreated each time. In 359 AD, at the suggestion of Antonius, he decided to advance directly towards Syria by crossing the Euphrates River, but he failed again.The purpose of this study is to answer the basic question of why Shahpour II was defeated in the war in 359 AD despite choosing a new war tactic, namely direct attack on Syria. It seems that the secret letter of Procopius, who secretly informed the Roman generals about Shahpour's war plan, played a key role in this failure.Following the Romans' knowledge of Shahpour's decision to invade Syria, various measures were taken to counter Shahpour’s corps. With this strategy, they succeeded in preventing the advance of his troops into Syria. Therefore, based on the written sources of ancient Romans, archaeological evidence, and evaluation of the geographical location of the region, the role of Procopius in this defeat was investigated with a historical approach and a descriptive-analytical method in this study.

Up until the present era and the propagation of the New Iranian Calendar (1925), along with the Hijri lunar calendar and the Jalali calendar, a variety of the Yazdgerdi calendar (taqwim-e fors) was also popular among the peoples of the southern regions of the Caspian Sea. Despite and contrary to the historical evidence, in the last half-century, some local writers have claimed distinct and independent calendars for these regions. They have labeled these alleged calendars as Deylami/ Galeshi/ Gilani and Tabari/ Mazandarani calendars. Also, calendar eras have been fabricated for them and it has been claimed that these calendars have leap years and that their new year festival (Nowruz) falls always on a fixed day around the middle of the summer season. This article examines these alleged calendars and the pretensions that surround them. For this purpose, it studies the history of the calendars of these areas from the earliest times to the present day. It also studies the background of the assumption of an independent calendar in Mazandaran in the nineteenth century and traces back the history of the emergence of these alleged calendars in the present era. This article demonstrates that these alleged calendars are all the same Yazdgerdi calendar (taqwim-e fors), knowingly or recklessly manipulated and posed as genuine independent calendars.

One of the common misconceptions in the historical research of the last two centuries is that the southern part of the Caspian Sea in the Zoroastrian tradition has been the refuge of Diwan and Drujan. This idea is rooted in some historical events such as the domination of the Aryans over the indigenous people and conflict between the Zoroastrian religion and the indigenous religion of the region. The present study investigates the formation and evolution of this image,  examines the causes of this image and measures its validity The research shows that in Zoroastrian texts, Gilan and Mazandaran are not considered the place of the court, but the refuge of the ancient religion and Iranians. Negative views about these areas are a new phenomenon in Iranian studies and have no basis in the Zoroastrian tradition.

Sasanians’ converting to Zoroastrianism and their relations with Zoroastrian clerics have been important issues of the history studies on the Sasanians. In the past one and a half century, a number of scholars, referring to a report on Sasan by Tabari, the eponymous ancestor of the Sasanians, have assumed religious office such as mobed, hērbed, or the guardian of the fire temple for him, and have taken it as evidence for the Sasanians’ presumed priestly lineage. Some have even considered the success of the Sasanians in overcoming the Arsacid Empire as an outcome of their new religious tendency. In addition, Agathias’s report on Ardashir I, the founder of the Sasanian dynasty, has also been used by some scholars as another piece of evidence to suppose a clerical rank for him. Reexamining Tabari’s report and evaluating it in the context of the Zoroastrian legal system, this study demonstrates that Sasan’s office in Anahit’s fire temple was not a priestly one, and Agathias’s report on Ardashir has nothing to do with priestly ranks. To the contrary, these reports, when considered together with all other evidence, confirm Sasanians’ connection with the local nobility of Fars region.

‘Qalʿa-ye dokhtar’ (Maiden Castle) is a name given to some castles in Iran and adjacent countries. As for the reasons behind the naming, there are two main arguments. Conceiving those castles as impregnable ones, an older argument builds a connection between the virginity of girls and alleged invulnerability of those castles. In a totally different direction, a modern argument interprets ‘dokhtar’ as a title of Anahita, the river-goddess of ancient Iran, and considers qalʿa-ye dokhtars as vestiges of pre-Islamic temples of that goddess. Due to a contemporary tendency to project pre-Islamic themes on historical monuments, this latter view has gained vast popularity among Iranians and has influenced the identification of some Zoroastrian and Muslim shrines as once-upon-a-time Anahita temples. This paper assesses the validity of these two views, and arguments in favor of a new theory. It demonstrates that such naming is the product of fantasies of common people nurtured by folk stories featuring some popular motifs of ‘maiden(s) in the castle’. An endeavor to outline types of folk tales associated with those castles is undertaken in this paper.

Tabari Nowruz’ (Tabari New Year’s Day) is concurrent with Ābrīzān festival, according to what has been mentioned in some lithographical editions of šarḥ-e bīst bāb (Commentary on Twenty Chapters) of Mollā Moẓaffar Gonābādī, in the description of the festival. Such a matter can also be seen in a Zoroastrian manuscript copied in 1718 A.D. (1130 Hijri.). While Abrīzān festival used to be held on the summer solstice up to the first half of 17th century, the notion of a ‘Tabari New Year’s Day’, fixed in early summertime, has led to the assumption of existence of local calendars with fixed years and intercalary days in southern littoral regions of Caspian Sea. This article evaluates the textual authenticity of ‘Tabari Nowruz’ in šarḥ-e bīst bāb and studies the calendrical place of New Year’s Day and epagomenae in the local southern littoral regions of Caspian Sea. It also assesses the modern developments in interpreting this local calendar.

This paper studies two ancient seasonal festivals which were celebrated on summer and winter solstices. Because of misconceptions regarding Sasanian calendar, these two festivals, known as Ābrīzgān and Āḍarjašn, have remained unnoticed in modern researches. A sound interpretation of the Old Iranian calendar as described by Biruni would uncover the true character of these festivals. This paper demonstrates that these two old festivals, probably like a few other seasonal festivals, go back to very old times, and the custom of celebrating these festivals predates the time of month-naming in Old Iranian calendar. Customs associated with these two festivals in Sasanian Era and the mechanism for celebrating these seasonal festivals in vague year of the Sasanian calendar are also studied here. According to this research, these two festivals have been main reasons behind the naming of the first month of summer and the last month of autumn in Old Iranian calendar. This paper explains the reasons for creation of both non-seasonal alternatives of these two festivals and the festivals which were celebrated with the coincidence of the names of the day and the month. Later developments in these two festivals after the fall of Sasanian dynasty, both before and after the introduction of Jalali calendar in 11th century is the last of object the paper.

This study takes under close scrutiny the Old Iranian word āzāta, and traces back its evolution from the old period of Iranian languages through Middle-Western Iranian and up to the advent of New Persian. By producing and analyzing relevant sources from old (Avestan) and middle (Parthian and Middle Persian) Iranian languages, it aims to reconstruct the semantic evolution and expansion of this word. This study claims that āzād, meaning “free” and “unrestricted” – the meanings which usually overshadow other senses of the word, and lead to misinterpretations regarding āzādān’s (a group of Parthian and Persian nobility) origins in the Sassanid era – is in fact a secondary semantic development which has its roots in an old Iranian tradition according to which bandagān (clients), for certain reasons and under certain circumstances, were allowed to be integrated into their overlords family.