Archaeology

The seminar-style course will focus on the Mazdakite movement in late Sasanian Iran.

At least two exams focusing on the Iranian cultural area, preferably one on history and one on religion.

Preliminary bibliography, to be integrated in class: Yarshater, Ehsan. “Mazdakism.” In *The Cambridge History of Iran*, Vol. 3(2), edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 991–1024. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Yarshater, Ehsan. “Mazdak.” *Encyclopaedia Iranica*. Available online: https://iranicaonline.org/articles/mazdak (accessed September 2025). Crone, Patricia. “Kavād’s Heresy and Mazdak’s Revolt.” *Iran* 29 (1991): 21–42. Crone, Patricia. *Zoroastrian Communism: Mazdak’s Doctrine and Its Sources*. Copenhagen: Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies, 1994. Shapira, Dan D. Y. “On the Scriptural Sources of Mazdak’s Teachings.” In *Irano-Judaica III: Studies Relating to Jewish Contacts with Persian Culture throughout the Ages*, edited by Shaul Shaked and Amnon Netzer, 181–199. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1994. Daryaee, Touraj. *Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire*. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. Procopius. *History of the Wars, Books I–II (Persian War)*. Translated by H. B. Dewing. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914. Al-Ṭabarī. *The History of al-Ṭabarī, Volume V: The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen*. Translated by C. E. Bosworth. Albany: SUNY Press, 1999. Ferdowsi. *Shāhnāma: The Book of Kings*. Translated by Dick Davis. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007. Daryaee, Touraj. “Mazdak and Late Antique ‘Socialism’.” In *The Cambridge History of Socialism, Volume 1: From Antiquity to the End of the Nineteenth Century*, edited by Marcel van der Linden and Gregory Claeys, 93–114. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.

The single exam will consist of writing an in-depth essay complete with a bibliography, which will then be discussed during an oral exam.