Iranian Library

One of the main aims of the Yarshater Center shall be the establishment of a bilingual repository of Iranian literary traditions, which in a standardized form will introduce canonical Old and Middle Iranian as well as new Persian texts to a learned and informed audience. The choice of corpora and languages to be included in the Iranian Library are reflected below.

 

  • Old Iranian texts, such as a new bilingual edition of the Old Persian epigraphic corpus, as well as Old and Younger Avestan texts, which shall be carefully assessed in view of the ongoing work of the Avestan Digital Archive to establish a new textual basis.
  • Middle Iranian texts, including Middle Persian and Parthian inscriptions; Middle Persian Zoroastrian texts (Book Pahlavi); and select Manichaean, Bactrian, Sogdian and Khotanese textual traditions. Editions shall encompass the text in transliteration/transcription and English translation as well as the possible inclusion of manuscripts as a digital resource.
  • Early New Persian texts that either exhibit affinities with the intellectual world of pre-Islamic Iran, or are representative of the classical Persian canon.