Institute for Iranian Studies

12/10/2026

Our Caucasus studies group is organising another informal discussion meetup. Details below - please do share to any potentially interested colleagues!

07/10/2026

New publication by the IFI's Shamil Shikhaliev and Paolo Sartori! This is a new, complete description of the manuscripts of the mosque of Karabudakhkent in Daghestan.

The mosque has one of the largest private manuscript collections today in the region, extending from the 18th to mid-20th centuries. It includes 302 codices and 280 documents in Arabic and Turkic, which shed light on the history of Islamic knowledge production in the North Caucasus across the Russian Imperial and Soviet periods.

Find out more at:
https://brill.com/display/title/75995

06/10/2026

Forthcoming lecture! The End of the "Silk Road" by Philip Slavin -

Although a 2022 Nature study established the Central Asian origins of the Black Death, research on the demographic, economic, and social consequences of plague in the fourteenth century remains overwhelmingly Eurocentric. This lecture addresses this gap by examining the role of biological and ecological crises in the demographic, urban, and socio-economic transformation of Chinggisid Central Asia. The talk identifies various biological and ecological crises in the textual, archaeological and bioarchaeological records across Central Asia, from the Volga to western Xinjiang. It argues that biological and ecological factors played a central role in the demographic decline, de-urbanisation, and nomadisation of fourteenth-century Central Asia, demonstrating that these processes began several decades before Tamerlane’s campaigns and cannot be explained by military destruction alone.

13th October 13:13-15:10 Central European Time
Central European University, Quellenstrass 51, 1100 Wien
Or join online by (Zoom): https://bit.ly/4zcCJ1X

23/09/2026

17/09/2026

Forthcoming book! By Naïra Sahakyan and the IFI's Shamil Shikhaliev, this book shows the turbulence of 1917 Dagestan via the work of Muslim intellectual ʿAlī al-Ghumuqī, containing both scholarship on and translations of his works:

https://www.lockwoodpress.com/product-page/witness-to-upheaval-the-1917-revolution-in-dagestan

02/09/2026

Talk next Wednesday! Yoichi Isahaya will talk about Irinjin, pro-Christian father in law of Ilkhan Öljeitü (r. 1304–16), and how in his time governing Anatolia famine and climatic crisis were drawn into discourses of legitimacy and political stability.

Find out more and register for online access:
https://www.oeaw.ac.at/ifi/veranstaltungen/event-details/divine-wrath-irinjin-d-1319-a-pro-christian-mongol-amid-climate-instability-in-anatolia

31/08/2026

We have a new blogpost on our Tigris to Talas blog! Lola Dodkhudoeva writes about the Manāqib al-Khulafāʾ (Virtues of the Caliphs), a Tajik-Persian manuscript arguing about politics, faith, and religious order through celebrating the four Rashidun caliphs.

You can read the post here:

by Lola Dodkhudoeva

21/08/2026

Our own Sara Mihramadi recently talked to BBC Persian about the effects of the Mongol invasions - what was the level of Mongol destruction, and how reliably do written texts at the time reflect the realities of the situation?

You can watch it here (in Persian) -

حمله‌ مغول به ایران چه بجا گذاشت؟ ویرانی و قتل‌ عامی که به چنگیزخان...

17/08/2026

Announcing a new initiative! Our new Material Histories@IFI group connects scholars of material culture and texts. We aim to bring archaeology, materiality, and rural and urban landscapes into conversation with epigraphy, numismatics and texts for new longue durée perspectives, focused on the long first millennium.

This collaborative platform will help exchange ideas and compare data across research projects. It will include internal and informal meetings, lab sessions, and occasional events with external collaborators and specialists invited to discuss different methods and explore potential synergies.

This forms part of a long-term strategy to develop innovative transdisciplinary research on material culture and history in Iran, Central Asia and Caucasia. By encouraging integrated and collaborative approaches, it will consolidate and expand our work with diverse research partners.

You can find out more here:

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/ifi/forschung/ag-kultur-und-sozialgeschichte-bis-zur-neuzeit-iran-und-persianate-worlds/material-histories

14/08/2026

Last week we had a range of contributions at the Fifteenth Biennial Iranian Studies Conference in Utrecht!

From the IFI, Robert Steele talked about Revisionism in the historiography of Pahlavi Iran and the revolution, arguing for the importance of pluralism of ideas in interpreting these past events: he also participated in a roundtable in honour of historian Houchang Chehabi. Ariane Sadjed talked about Judeo-Persian texts written by women, looking at memoirs and letters from early 20th century Iran, and Eirik Kvindesland discussed the choice of using Hebrew in the memoirs of Rafael Haim Hacohen, an Iranian Jew in 1890s Ottoman Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, in medieval studies, Stefan Kamola discussed views of Chinggis Khan seen through Ilkhanate astrological texts, and Sara Mirahmadi talked about how Vaṣṣāf’s 14th century work Bahārnāma uses a poetic voice to produce political and moral critiques through the genre of spring poetry.

Thanks to all who came along to our sessions and talks!