The Middle Persian corpus is rich and diverse, encompassing a wide range of texts, from legal documents on temporary marriage to polemics against other religions, reports on afterlife journeys, and even accounts of kings blowing their own trumpets. Among Middle Iranian languages, Middle Persian is the most extensively attested and longest-surviving, thus forming an important gateway to the history of Iranian religions, especially Manicheism and Zoroastrianism, in the first millennium A.D.
In this course, you will be introduced to Middle Persian grammar and script. You will be thus prepared to engage critically with dictionaries and editions of Middle Persian texts as well as its secondary literature. Middle Persian II will train you to work with primary sources.
The course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Completing the weekly exercises is required to acquire four credit points.
- Kursleiter/in: Kianoosh Rezania