Sino-Iranica: Investigating Relations Between Medieval China and Sasanian Iran

Project Information

SINOIRAN

Grant agreement ID: 101018750

DOI

10.3030/101018750

Project closed

EC signature date 13 April 2021

Start date 1 July 2022

End date 30 June 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 171 473,28

EU contribution

€ 171 473,28

Coordinated by

ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SINOIRAN (Sino-Iranica: Investigating Relations Between Medieval China and Sasanian Iran)

Reporting period: 2022-07-01 to 2024-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

SINOIRAN was primarily focused on providing a readable guide to relations between West and East Asia in the first millennium. Although these connections were arguably important in world history, no comprehensive study had been undertaken since Berthold Laufer’s Sino-Iranica in 1919. The absence of such a comprehensive monograph, especially in a European language, has been a problem, since scholars and general readers interested in the topic of Sino-Iranian relations have had to rely on assorted studies and outdated translations. Iranologists have long been aware that Classical Chinese sources have much to say about Parthia and Sasanian Iran, as well as the early Arab caliphates, but few read Chinese. Further, there has been much written about Iran in modern Chinese and Japanese scholarship, much of which has not been recognized in Western scholarship due to the language barrier. SINOIRAN produced an open-access monograph, titled Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian Relations in Late Antiquity: China and the Parthians, Sasanians, and Arabs in the First Millennium, that offers an authoritative guide to the history of West and East Asia during the formative centuries of the first millennium. SINOIRAN offers a valuable study that steps away from a focus on cultures more familiar to the West (e.g. Byzantium), and discusses the enduring and significant connections and historical relations between two civilizations that occupied and shaped large parts of Eurasia. Further, the project details what otherwise underappreciated Chinese sources can offer the historical record, such as those from the Buddhist and Daoist canons. SINOIRAN will highlight the value of researching transcultural histories with a focus away from Europe and what historically have been Western interests. The project has demonstrated that global history can be read and reconstructed based on non-European sources.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project started with the researcher, Dr. Jeffrey Kotyk, communicating with Prof. Antonio Panaino, on a general outline of the project monograph. Panaino introduced the essentials of Iranian philology for the period in question, such as dictionaries and grammars for Middle Persian (Pahlavi) and Sogdian. Shortly into the project, the website was launched (https://www.sinoiran.it/). The project generated a large bibliography. Kotyk then proceeded to translate excerpts of the primary sources from Chinese that would be used in the monograph while comprehensively reading the relevant secondary literature. Research was undertaken to identify all relevant data about Sino-Iranian connections in not only formal histories, but also the Buddhist and Daoist canons. This collation of data led to a substantial foundation of material for the monograph. SINOIRAN sought to bring the voices of scholars writing in Chinese and Japan to Western Iranology, thus it was necessary to find books and articles in those languages, as well as to examine relevant museum specimens. The researcher, Kotyk, took four specific trips to carry out these tasks. Kotyk also had a number of opportunities, primarily at conferences, to formally present research stemming from the project. The most prominent include the University of Bologna (20 October 2022), Yale University (5 March 2023), Tel Aviv University (12 June 2023), University of Hong Kong (10 August 2023), Goethe-University (21 August 2023), Harvard University (14 October 2023), Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal (27 May 2024), and Bochum University (22 June, 2024). Toward the end of the project, on the 20th and 21st of May, 2024, a conference was convened at the Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna, in Ravenna, Italy, with the topic “The Power of the Planets: The Social History of Astral Sciences Between East and West.” The aim of this conference was to bring together scholars to discuss how planets were treated in social contexts historically, particularly with a focus on intercultural exchanges. The focus was on how technological and knowledge transmissions occurred in different cultural contexts, a point quite pertinent to Sino-Iran. We discussed the methodologies used to evaluate and study such connections in different scenarios, especially technical sciences in a multipolar ancient and medieval world. The conference was comprised of eleven speakers from various countries and fields. The project monograph was finalized and sent to Brill on 23 May, 2024, and subsequently published on 15 August of the same year.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project monograph, Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian Relations in Late Antiquity: China and the Parthians, Sasanians, and Arabs in the First Millennium, was published as an open-access title (https://brill.com/display/title/69884) making it available to a global audience at no cost to readers. This study will provide a readable and authoritative guide to the history between West and East Asia, with due reference to underappreciated sources that have largely gone unnoticed as a result of Sinologists not paying so much attention to them in the past. In particular, the monograph shows that historical Chinese sources can and ought to be used in the reconstruction of Iranian and even early Islamic history, especially when they differ from those Greek, Arabic, and Latin sources that are often accepted uncritically by historians. The Chinese accounts of the late Sasanian royals, for example, must be considered as they differ substantially from what Western historians have studied. Similarly, the account of what appears to be early Islam in Chinese sources from the seventh to ninth centuries is also intriguing and adds additional material that secular scholars of early Islam can consider. The book also demonstrates the utility of using Classical Chinese texts and other resources (e.g. archaeological evidence, inscriptions, materia medica data, etc.) for global history in late antiquity. This is important because all too often Chinese sources are left unread or ignored altogether, largely due to a lack of critical scholarship and the absence of knowledge of Classical Chinese. It is clear from SINOIRAN that the role of China in transcultural history, especially that of the formative seventh century, also must be recognized. This is a step away from Eurocentric perspectives on history. We can reframe the narrative away from what historically has been of interest to the West and more toward the geopolitical reality of late antiquity, in which case, again, China cannot be ignored.

Book Cover for Project Monograph