Table of Contents

PART I: TRADITIONS AND INNOVATIONS IN EARLY ISLAMIC PERSIA The Arts in and of Iran in Late Antiquity (the late Oleg Grabar, Princeton University) 2. The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful: The Survival of Ancient Iranian Ethical Concepts in Persian Popular Narratives of the Islamic Period (Ulrich Marzolph, University of Göttingen) 3. The Samanids: the First Islamic Dynasty of Central Asia (Luke Treadwell, University of Oxford) 4. Sandbad-name: A Zurvanite Cosmogonic Legend? (Mohsen Zakeri, University of Frankfurt) PART II: THE LAST OF THE PERSIAN DYNASTIES 5. The Expression of Power in the Art and Architecture of Early Islamic Iran (Jonathan Bloom, Boston College) 6. Advice Literature in Tenth and Early Eleventh-Century Iran and Early Persian Prose Writing (Louise Marlowe , Wellesley College) 7. The Lofty Castle of Qabus b. Vushmgir (Melanie Michalidis, University of California, Davis) 8. The Idea of Iran in Buyid Dominions (Roy Parvis Mottahedeh, Harvard University) 9. Early Persian Historians and the Heritage of Pre-Islamic Iran (Andrew Peacock, British Institute at Ankara) 10. Authority and Identity in the Pahlavi Books (Alan Williams, University of Manchester)

Promotional Information

How did Iran remain distinctively Iranian in the centuries which followed the Arab Conquest? How did it retain its cultural distinctiveness after the displacement of Zoroastrianism - state religion of the Persian empire - by Islam? This title traces that critical moment in Iranian history.

About the Author

Edmund Herzig is Soudavar Professor of Persian Studies and a Fellow of Wadham College, University of Oxford. He is the author of The Armenians: A Handbook and Iran and the World in the Safavid Age (I.B.Tauris). Sarah Stewart is Lecturer in Zoroastrianism in the Department of the Study of Religions and Deputy Director of the London Middle East Institute at SOAS, University of London. She is co-editor, with Vesta Curtis, of Birth of the Persian Empire, Age of the Parthians, The Sasanian Era and The Rise of Islam, all published by I.B.Tauris.