New issue of INDIRAN – Spring 2012

A new issue of  the Ancient India and Iran Trust’s newsletter, INDIRAN, is now available.

This issue includes interviews with one of the Trust’s newly appointed Trustees and long time supporter of the AIIT, Professor Sam Lieu and our previous Pakistan Visiting Fellowship recipient, Dr Zakirullah Jan.  There is an excellent piece on Whitley Stokes, by Dr Elizabeth Boyle and Dr Paul Russell, who gave our final Friday lecture before Christmas and a review of two fascinating new books on FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat, by the Chairs of our Friends of the Trust, Bill Martin and Sandra Mason. Also in this issue, we remember the late Dr Gregory Possehl, former Trustee, distinguished archaeologist and expert on the rise of the Indus civilisation.

Download a digital version of INDIRAN SPRING 2012 from:

http://www.indiran.org/news.htm

New issue of INDIRAN

A new issue of  the Ancient India and Iran Trust’s newsletter, INDIRAN, is now available.

This issue includes an account by Bi Bo, visiting scholar from Renmin University of China, Beijing, of her work on Sogdian  manuscripts from Khotan, Xinjiang. Ian Proudfoot, Australian National University, describes exciting finds of unique Malay printed books. Deborah Sutton, University of Lancaster, examines the Hindu temple in terms of political and cultural encounter during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The newsletter also includes reports of a joint presentation by Annabel Gallop and Venetia Porter which accompanied their travelling exhibition ‘Lasting impressions: the world of Islamic seals’, Frantz Grenet’s Bailey memorial lecture ‘The rediscovery of the court culture of the Qarakhanids’, and events held in Cambridge to celebrate 1000 years of Firdawsi’s epic poem the Shahnama.

Download a digital version of INDIRAN from: http://www.indiran.org/Indiranapril2011.pdf

Frantz Grenet (Paris) on the Qarakhanids – Friday 10th December

The Trust is hosting this coming Friday’s lecture (10th December), by Professor Frantz Grenet (Paris – excavator of Afrasiab) at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

The event starts at 5pm. There will be a reception to follow.

The talk is entitled:

The rediscovery of the court culture of the Qarakhanids (11th-early 13th centuries): recent results of the French-Uzbek Archaeological Mission at Afrasiab (Samarkand)

The Qarakhanids, the first Muslim Turkish dynasty, who ruled Transoxiana or part of it from 999 to 1212 AD, have not, until now, enjoyed a great reputation as patrons of the arts. This picture is now changing dramatically, mainly because of the recent discovery by the French-Uzbek Archaeological Mission at Samarkand  of a cycle of mural paintings in a royal pavilion dating from the end of that period.