On these pages, you can find a variety of content produced by our research team. We update these pages on a regular basis.
New Publications in The Islamicate East Series
31 March 2026
Thomas Benfey, Middle Persian Documents and the Making of the Islamic Fiscal System: Problems and Prospects
17 February 2025
Thomas Benfey, Windādag's Orders: Ten Unpublished Middle Persian Ostraca from Chāl Ṭarkhān-ʿEshqābād (2024)
01 November 2024
Pejman Firoozbakhsh, Manuscript of a Persian Qaṣīda from about the Year 400/1007 (2024)
01 November 2024
Arezou Azad, Interpreting Economies in Khurasan in the 11th-13th Century CE through Documentary Sources (2024)
25 October 2024
Zhan Zhang, Two Judaeo-Persian Letters from Eighth-Century Khotan (BAI 31, 2022-23)
03 October 2023
The Conceptualization of Religion and Incipient Secularity in Late Sasanian Iran (Thomas Benfey)
31 July 2023
Thomas Benfey discusses the conceptualizations of "religion" of Burzōy and Paul the Persian in his new paper
The Historian of Islam at work. Essays in honor of Hugh N. Kennedy
27 November 2022
Edited by Maaike van Berkel and Letizia Osti
"No One Can Give You Protection". The Reversal of Protection in a Persian Decree Dated 562/1167.
09 March 2022
Arezou Azad & Pejman Firoozbakhsh, Acts of Protection, Annales islamologiques 54 (2020)
Arezou Azad et al, Translation of The Merits of Balkh (2021)
09 March 2022
Pejman Firoozbakhsh, Persian Settlement Contract from 473/1080 (2022)
08 March 2022
The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, Hugh Kennedy (2022)
01 January 2022
Document of the Month series editors: Arezou Azad, Edward Shawe-Taylor, Nadia Vidro
The online series, Document of the Month, presents some of the most interesting and revealing medieval documents from the desks of Invisible East researchers and their colleagues worldwide.
Document of the Month 6/26: Timurid Epistolary Collections
30 June 2026
Document of the Month 5/26: Trade Letters from the Indian Ocean
26 May 2026
Document of the Month 4/26: A Summons Letter to Tax Collectors
30 April 2026
Document of the Month 3/26: A Mystical Homily
30 March 2026
Document of the Month 2/26: A Letter of Safe Passage
23 February 2026
Document of the Month 1/26: A Commercial Letter from Mount Mugh
27 January 2026
Document of the Month 12/25: A Judeo-Persian Letter from Bamiyan
15 December 2025
Document of the Month 11/25: The Festival of Sada
18 November 2025
Document of the Month 10/25: A Qajar Endowment Deed
21 October 2025
Document of the Month 9/25: An Early "Joseph and Zulaykha"
17 September 2025
Document of the Month 8/25: Template Funerary Inscriptions
20 August 2025
Document of the Month 7/25: Invisible East Qur'ans
02 July 2025
Document of the Month 6/25: "She Smells with a Fragrant Nose"
16 June 2025
Document of the Month 5/25: A Versatile Amulet
16 May 2025
Document of the Month 4/25: A Judeo-Arabic Bible Commentary
24 April 2025
Document of the Month 3/25: A Female Farmer with a Strong Voice
06 March 2025
Document of the Month 2/25: A Land Sale Deed in Old Uyghur
26 February 2025
Document of the Month 1/25: An Early Calligraphic Signature
22 January 2025
Document of the Month 12/24: A Lost Arabic Papyrus
18 December 2024
Document of the Month 11/24: A Hidden Threat
08 November 2024
Blog co-editors: Arezou Azad & Nadia Vidro
Interreligious Dialogue in Medieval Bamiyan
06 February 2023
Arash Zeini discusses the panegyric poem dedicated to Siman-Tov ben Abī Nasr ben Dāniyāl
Rural Administration, Society and Economy in the Bamiyan Area - Part 2
15 November 2022
Rural Administration, Society and Economy in the Bamiyan Area - Part 1
11 November 2022
A blog by the PI of the Invisible East programme, Dr Arezou Azad, on rural administration in the wider Bamiyan area in the 12th and early 13th centuries CE, based on an analysis of barāt documents (receipts) in the "Bamiyan Papers."
Introduction to the Study of Persian documents (in Persian)
08 August 2022
مقدمهای بر مطالعات مجموعههای اسناد فارسی
Inquiry into Measurements
26 July 2022
Inquiry into Measurements: The Term Juft as a Surface Area Unit
Varieties of Middle Persian Part 2
21 June 2022
A new blog by Tommy Benfey
From University to School Classroom
24 May 2022
Learning with children about the "Invisible East," and sharing the (his)stories that documents can tell us
Guest Blog by Berkeley's Adam Benkato: Mapping the Mount Mugh Letters and early 8th-century Sogdiana
15 March 2022
Mapping the Mount Mugh Letters and early 8th-century Sogdiana
Guest Blog by Princeton's Ofir Haim: A Jewish Real-estate Tycoon in Bamiyan?
02 February 2022
A Jewish Real-estate Tycoon in Bamiyan?
Future Philology and Philology's future
27 September 2021
Background to our recent conference
A panegyric poem (in Persian)
03 August 2021
قصیدهای فارسی در مدح یکی از متموّلان یهودی بامیان از سالهای اولیۀ قرن پنجم
Varieties of Middle Persian I: The Manichaean, Book Pahlavi and Inscriptional Scripts
02 July 2021
The first in a series of blogs about Middle Persian, by Thomas Benfey.
Invisible East wins DH Resource Award
30 April 2026
The Invisible East Digital Corpus has won the DH Resource award in the DH Awards 2025!
A blog on Arezou Azad's latest title: The Rise and Fall of the Barmakids
09 April 2026
A blog on Arezou Azad's translation of the Akhbār-i Barmakiyān with Pejman Firoozbakhsh
A blog on Arezou Azad's latest book: The Warehouse of Bamiyan
25 November 2025
In Our Time guest appearance
13 March 2025
Mateen Arghandehpour a guest on In Our Time
'A Night with Buddha' event
08 March 2025
Nabi Saqee invited to speak in Stockholm
The Islamicate East series welcomes new editor
12 February 2025
Teresa Bernheimer
Invisible East Launches film, Striking Gold
18 September 2024
The incredible story of the discovery of the Firuzkuh Papers
Ed Shawe-Taylor awarded Margaret B. Ševčenko Prize
24 April 2024
The Reza Hosseini Memorial Lecture Series
29 February 2024
On the Past and Present of the Middle East.
The Islamicate East series
01 August 2023
The Invisible East programme launches its new series published with EUP
