Abstract:

This volume, containing the proceedings of a conference held in July 2022 in Istanbul, addresses and refines the concept of ‘institutional landscapes’ as they were created in Iran by the Achaemenid and Sassanian empires (with an excursus into the Ilkhanid period). It describes large-scale transformations of the physical landscape in terms of hydrological infrastructure, roads, large-scale plantations and settlement structures.

It addresses specific nodes in the administrative network and associated forms of control such as estates, fortresses and fire temples. It wides the scope of the concept of institutional landscapes to manifestations of authority in the form of monumental architecture but also in that of agents of the crown roaming the countryside. The conference and the present volume are the fruits of the DFG-funded Iranian Highlands program (SPP 2176); they bear witness to the enduring and productive cooperation between Iranian and non-Iranian scholars of ancient Iran.

This book is the fourth volume of a series published by the German-Iranian research cooperation “The Iranian Highlands: Resiliences and Integration in Premodern Societies”. The goal of the research project is to shine a new light on communities and societies that populated the Iranian highlands and their more or less successful strategies to cope with the many vagaries, the constant changes and risks of their natural and humanly shaped environments.

Contents

Introduction
Stefan Hauser, Wouter F.M. Henkelman & Giuseppe Labisi

I) Construing the Institutional Landscape

How archaeological landscape reflects institutional landscape: Pasargadae and its surrounding territory as case study
Sébastien Gondet & Kourosh Mohammadkhani

Institutional landscape in the Achaemenid Northeast
Wu Xin

The arrival of an empire: Features of a ruled landscape in North-Khorasan
Judith Thomalsky & Mohammad Javad Jafari

Transformation of settlement structures and irrigation systems in the eastern Achaemenid hinterlands: The case of the Murghab alluvial fan
Nazarij Buławka

The impact of the Sasanian irrigation system on the geographical divisions and institutional waterscape in Esfahān
Jaleh Kamalizad

The Sasanian institutional landscape in Borazjan as seen through water management
Zohreh Zehbari, Nasrollah Ebrahimi & Mehrdad Parsaei Borazjani

II) Nodes in the network

A) Estates and endowments

Dastgerd andar framud kardan: A diachronic study of dastgerd and related settlement models between the Sasanian and early Islamic periods
Giuseppe Labisi

Ilkhanid ways to appropriate, capitalise and develop the lands under their control: Approaches to government, land tenure and taxation
Birgitt Hoffmann

B) Religious institutions: fire temples

The manifold roles of Sasanian fire temples and mows within the institutional landscape of the Sasanian Empire
Negin Miri

Sasanian fire temples of Khorasan: Institutional infrastructure across a sacred landscape
Meysam Labbaf-Khaniki

Institutions, location, and architecture: Transformation of landscape and its meaning through the construction of chahartaq structures in ancient Iran
Sarvenaz Parsa

C) Military control and administration

Sasanian fortresses of Fars in context
Ahmad Ali Asadi & Giuseppe Labisi

Nodes in the imperial network: “Fortified places” in the Achaemenid institutional landscape
Rhyne King

III) The manifestation of authority

The inception of the institutional landscape of Persepolis
Pierfrancesco Callieri & Emad Matin

King’s land: The institutional landscape of Ardašīr-xwarrah and Bīšāpūr
Anahita Mittertrainer

The Immortal under the plane tree: The lance-bearers of Achaemenid Pārsa as agents of institutional continuity
Wouter F.M. Henkelman