ABSTRACT A mint was active in the city of Tabriz from the Ilkhanid era up until 1294 AH. Many silver Qirans were minted there between 1265 and 1294 AH during the Naser al-Din Shah era (1264–1313 AH). The present research aims to answer two questions concerning the Tabriz mint: firstly, what was the percentage silver purity of the coins minted in Tabriz, and how did it vary over time and secondly, how does the percentage silver purity of the coins minted in Tabriz, an important city in terms of the economy, compare to coins minted in other important cities such as Mashhad, Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz? In order to answer these two questions, elemental analysis was performed on 28 coins belonging to the Naser al-Din Shah era using PIXE. The average silver purity percentage was determined to be 90.05% between 1265–1274 AH, 86.23% between 1275–1283 AH and 82.10% between 1288-1294 AH. The average across the whole period under study was 86.96%. This compares to a silver purity percentage of Qirans minted in other cities at this time of 84% in Mashhad, 90% in Tehran, 84% in Isfahan and 90% in Shiraz.

ABSTRACT Zaraθuštra is known as the author of Gāθās and the founder of the ancient Iranian religion. However, his historicity, time and homeland have been matters of controversy amongst scholars throughout the ages. It is argued that the socio-cultural and archeological evidence in conjunction with available texts enables us to delimit the relatively large time span estimated for the time of the Old Avestan texts from linguistic analysis, which contextualises the Gāθās in the period of Indo-Iranian acculturation of southern Central Asia in the second quarter of the second millennium BCE. Furthermore, the evident social crisis in the Gāθās is seen as a likely reflection of the encroachment of Rig Vedic Proto-Indo-Aryan Andronovo nomads into southern Central Asia and the probable ideological motive for the Old Avestan innovations. In particular, it is argued that the peaceful sedentary lifestyle that the Gāθās envision became the impetus to attract indigenous Greater Iranians and ushered the Iranian acculturation of Greater Iran, leading to the formation of an ancient Iranian Identity, later disseminated into the Iranian plateau.

ABSTRACT Persian windmills are usually referred to as the earliest windmills in the history of technology. These windmills, well-known for their vertical axle design, are distributed over the Irano-Afghan borderland. This multidisciplinary investigation on windmills and their millstones from eastern Iran shows that there are various types of Persian windmills, despite their similar features. Four clusters of windmills exist in different regions of eastern Iran, distinctive in their construction, mechanical system, and types of their millstones. Three groups from the semi-highland of eastern Iran used natural rocks for their millstone, whereas the fourth group in the lowland applied artificial millstones made by a complex pyrotechnolgy. Functional windmills have been present only in the semi-highland but have not been reported from the lowland since the beginning of the last century. This article sheds light on technical details and the history of this earliest known type of windmill and helps their restoration process by providing an appropriate typology.

ABSTRACT Around two decades ago, following on from attempts to redress the long-standing neglect of the lives and contributions of women in antiquity, archaeologists and historians around the world started to reframe their treatments of past societies to incorporate children in larger-scale social, economic, political and religious processes. While scholars of the ancient Near East were much slower to follow, there is now a growing library of research available on children, particularly for Mesopotamia and the biblical world. Children and childhood in Elam, however, are still faring poorly as subjects of inquiry, despite the varied sources from which we can learn about them. This article's raison d’être is to review these sources, which fall into the three broad categories “textual”, “iconographic” and “archaeological”, and reflect on what they can tell us about Elamite children. By the conclusion it becomes clear that Elamite society tended to marginalise younger individuals, who had not yet attained full membership in the group. Their appearance in a fairly restricted range of contexts in art and texts and their differential treatment in death resonates with the results of studies of children in other areas of the Near East.

ABSTRACT This paper concerns Sasanian to Early Islamic period transport containers, usually lined with bitumen, known as Torpedo jars. Widely distributed throughout the western Indian Ocean, with outliers as far west as Egypt and to the east in Indonesia, they are an important marker of maritime exchange. Their area of production is thought to be central/southern Iraq or southwestern Iran, the latter in keeping with proposed bitumen sources in the region of Ilam/Khuzestan. Here thirteen Torpedo jar samples from Siraf (southern Iran), belonging to two class categories defined by form and macroscopic fabric, were analysed. The technology of manufacture and potential source areas were examined in thin section by polarising, digital and scanning electron microscopy. These same techniques were used to examine the bitumen layer, providing insight into the vessel lining process. Analysis generally validated the distinction between the two classes; fabric variation within the classes identified eight petro-fabrics, suggestive of at least five workshops. These results point to regionally related workshops for each class category, exploiting distinct clay resources, rather than two single production sites. Suitable clay resources are widely available throughout central/southern Iraq and southwestern Iran, including Ilam/Khuzestan.

ABSTRACT Shahnameh-ye Davari, dating to 1272 (1856) is one of the last Shahnamehs, copied and illustrated in the traditional style. It is kept at the Reza Abbasi Museum in Tehran under accession number 599. It is a sumptuously decorated manuscript on a par with courtly productions and has sixty-eight illustrations, yet it is not a commissioned work. It was created by Mohammad ibn Vesal (1822–1865), with the pen name Davari, a poet/calligrapher/illustrator/illuminator of little or no means and perhaps as an ode to a dying art. This article attempts to introduce the manuscript, placing it within the context of the artistic history of Qajar Iran (1789–1925).

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the discussions of the genesis of the print media in Iran by analysing the first official weekly gazette published for ten years in the country. It first, examines the present scholarship on Vaqaye‘-e Ettefaqiyeh, which disregards the official Qajar gazette as a mouthpiece of the government, portrays it as only one of the administrative reforms of Amir Kabir, or considers it a precursor to more noteworthy print media of the turn of the twentieth century. Then, building upon and expanding such scholarship, this article demonstrates that as the only form of print media in Iran, the Qajar gazette firstly, contributed to the popularisation of reading in Iran, and secondly, introduced Iranians, both those who bought and read it as well as those who heard it read aloud in public spaces, to the current proceedings of the Qajar court, historical developments outside Iran, and most importantly, modern technological and democratic developments in Europe and the New World.

ABSTRACT Tureng Tepe is a major site in the archaeology of Iran, but despite having been excavated by two different foreign archaeological missions, crucial periods in its history remain underreported. This is especially the case for the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age layers at the site, which have not been comprehensively published in English. The present investigation focuses on the Frederick and Susanne Wulsin excavation archive and collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and shows that despite a rudimentary approach to excavation, the Wulsins' excavation records contain valuable information on the material culture and chronology of the site. Indeed, when viewed in combination with the published information available from the later French excavations directed by Jean Deshayes, the Wulsin excavations help place Tureng Tepe in its local and regional context. This article presents the results of the primary excavations conducted by the Wulsins in 1931, anchoring their Mound C sequence in a relative and absolute chronological framework using parallels to the Deshayes materials, and assesses the utility of the Wulsin collection for future research.

ABSTRACT Tekkiyeh Moʿaven al-Molk in Kermanshah is a space for commemoration of the Battle of Karbala and is accordingly decorated with large narrative panels conceived in underglaze (haft rangi) tiles, depicting various episodes of the event. Amongst these is a large panel, covering a whole wall, depicting a number of dervishes in an architectural setting resembling one of the spaces of the Tekkiyeh. The imagery on the face of it has no relevance to the events of Karbala and seems to be outside the programme of decoration of the Tekkiyeh. This paper attempt to decipher the iconography of the representation, in order to come up with a rational for its inclusion within the programme of the decoration of the space which is concerned entirely with the Battle of Karbala.