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scholars and general readers interested in the topic of Sino-Iranian relations have had to rely on assorted studies and outdated translations.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.
