In this volume, Kioumars Ghereghlou presents an edition, with preface and indexes, of a previously unpublished sixteenth-century Persian chronicle. Written by Qāsim Beg Ḥayātī, a court scribe to Shah Ṭahmāsp (r. 1524–76), it covers Safavid history beginning with the early part of the fourteenth century and closing with an account of Shah Ismāʿīl’s (r. 1501–24) rise to power and military campaigns in Iran.
Dedicated to the Safavid princess Mihīn Begum (d. 1562), whom Ghereghlou credits as Ḥayātī’s coauthor, the chronicle is composed of two parts. Part one deals with the predynastic phase of Safavid history and ends with an account of Shaykh Ṣafī’s life and career. Part two tells the story of the Ṣafaviyya Sufi order, from the ascension of Shaykh Ṣadr al-Dīn Mūsā b. Shaykh Ṣafi (d. 1377) to the early years of Shah Ismāʿīl’s reign. Punctuating this account are two “tailpieces” (tadhʾīl), one on the history of the Safavid shrine in Ardabīl in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the other on the shrine’s superintendents who held this post in the early part of the sixteenth century.
This edition makes available for the first time a chronicle that had long been thought lost. Rich in new details about the Ṣafaviyya Sufi order (ṭarīqa) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it is an important historical source for scholars interested in this period of Persian history.

A Chronicle of the Early Safavids and the Reign of Shah Ismāʿīl (907–930/1501–1524) (American Oriental Series)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

American Oriental Society

A Grammar of the Phoenician Language (American Oriental)

Reference

Harris, Zellig

Foreign Language Study & Reference

For every word form of the Rgveda, this concordance provides its frequency and the text of all padas in which it occurs. The concordance was devised as a tool for studying Rgvedic metrical phenomena and Rgvedic formulas, but it can also be used for investigating syntax and the semantics of the Rgveda. It is based on the electronic text of the Rgveda prepared by Gary B. Holland and Barend A. van Nooten.

A Rgvedic Word Concordance (Publication / Middle American Research Institute) 2 Volume Set

Lubotsky, Alexander

The discipline of Sinology, as it has been developed in the West, is rooted in philology. Despite the variety of new scholarly fashions and approaches to the study of premodern China that have arisen during the past half-century, the careful examination of texts remains fundamental for all serious Sinological work. In this we are beholden to those European, and latterly, American, scholars who, over several generations, painstakingly established the standards for such work. But no comprehensive history of the field has heretofore been published in a Western language. Now Professor Honey offers just such a history of Sinology, spanning its beginnings in the first efforts of seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries to the growing disciplinary fragmentation of the field in the second half of the twentieth century. Honey gives his most thorough attention to the major figures of French, German, Dutch, British, and American Sinology from approximately 1800 to 1980, with extensive discussion of their most significant works and individual techniques. This is a book of special importance for every student of China who cares about the history of the field.

Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology (American Oriental Series #86)

Biographies & Memoirs

Honey, David B.

Arts & Literature

This present text represents a significant improvement over the two previously published texts of Vrttivarttika. The novelty of the present edition, aside from correcting many errors found in its predecessors, lies in a careful comparison of the two previous editions, and their collation with still another manuscript, from the Houghton Library at Harvard University, Indic no. 1268. This volume includes commentary, transliterated Sanskrit text and notes.

The Vrttivarttika or Commentary on the Functions of Words of Appaya Diksita (American Oriental)

Edwin Gerow

Appayya Diksita

H. V. Nagaraja Rao

Ritual and Politics in Ancient Mesopotamia (American Oriental)

History

Barbara N. Porter

Ancient Civilizations

This monograph seeks to understand the cultural context and function of wordplay as employed by ancient Mesopotamian dream interpreters and other divinatory experts. The author then aims to use this context to explain the presence of punning in Akkadian literary and epistolary accounts of enigmatic dreams. Noegel also examines the later appearance of Egyptian oneirocritic punning and explores the possibility that it represents intellectual exchange between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Building upon these observations, he then argues that Israelite, and possibly Ugaritic, literary reports of enigmatic dreams similarly reflect the punning hermeneutic and therefore also may share a mantic context, as well as possible Mesopotamian influence. Finally, Noegel traces punning oneirocritic strategy into other cultures and later times and texts, including early Greek and Talmudic literature. 
 Noegel's investigation provides insights into a variety of subjects including the social context of divination and the production of literary texts, the role of writing and script in the divinatory process, the impact of Mesopotamian intellectual thought, the authorship of certain biblical pericopes, the relationship of oneiromancy to prophecy, and the function of ancient Near Eastern literary devices. In so doing, he draws attention to broader theoretical concerns that confront the study of the ancient world.

Nocturnal Ciphers: The Allusive Language of Dreams in the Ancient Near East (American Oriental)

Noegel, Scott

Vedic Ideals of Sovereignty and the Poetics of Power (American Oriental)

Proferes, Theodore

Rebellions and Peripheries in the Cuneiform World (American Oriental)

Seth Richardson

Mathematical Cuneiform Texts (American Oriental)

Sachs, Abraham

Neugebauer, O.

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the American Oriental Society publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by American Oriental Society