PIHANS – serie

Zagros Studies contains nine articles on the archaeology and history of the Zagros Region in Iraq. Five of these are expanded versions of papers that were delivered at a conference celebrating the 75th anniversary of The Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) in December 2014. The other articles present results of the NINO archaeological project on the Rania Plain, and new investigations on the Shemshara Hills and other sites on the plain, which are threatened by Lake Dokan; a spectacular terracotta “tower” is published here for the first time.

This volume sees the publication of fifty-six early Old Babylonian letters from ca. 1880 BCE. They were found by legendary Iraqi archaeologist Taha Baqir in 1941 at the site of Tell ed-Der, ancient Sippar-Amnanum, in central Iraq. The letters are written in an early dialect of Akkadian and are part of the archives of an ancient firm. This firm consisted of a number of families engaged in local agriculture, the manufacturing of textiles, crediting, and international trade. As such it was part of the same larger trade networks as those already known from the contemporary Old Assyrian archives found in central Turkey. The firm strived to have good relations with local Amorite rulers, such as Sumu-la-El, the first king of Babylon, and they used their own trading agents to represent them in far-away cities such as Mari. For these reasons, the letters are also an important source for Babylonia’s political and socio-economic history.

In studies of the Assyrian merchant community established at Kültepe (KARUM Kanesh, level 2) in Anatolia in the early second millennium B.C., the texts with their associated cylinder and stamp sealings found there have traditionally been investigated separately. This book specifically seeks to integrate glyptic and textual studies in a way helpful both to scholars of Old Assyrian and to those with an interest in seals and sealing in the ancient Near East. The combined study of texts and sealings illuminates commercial and socio-legal activity in fresh ways, whilst the stylistic analyses sharpens chronological arguments and throws light on the community's foreign contacts. The book consists of two parts. The first analyses the sealing practices (in general and per type of record, with a special chapter on witnesses) and the seals, their ownership, manufacture, styles, iconography and inscriptions. Special chapters deal with the archives of the KARUM (with a list of their locations) and with the dating of texts and seals (with a list of the eponyms). Part two is a catalogue of 677 seals. It consists of tables offering, in a condensed form, essential data from the text envelopes on which the seals have been impressed, and of drawings of each of them. Extensive indices, of names, eponyms, seal owners/users, seal inscriptions, texts and seals complete this well-documented volume.

The volume Monuments, patrons, contexts presents the proceedings of a symposium held on June 27, 2008, at the Netherlands Institute in Turkey in honour of the historian Machiel Kiel. Best known for his often pioneering work on the Ottoman Balkans, the scope of the contributions by friends and colleagues is as wide as the honouree’s lifework: Heath Lowry discovers a hitherto unknown sultanic mosque from around 1400 in the course of his fieldwork in Greece. Grigor Boykov finds already vanished monuments on the basis of textual sources. Mariya Kiprovska, similarly looking at monuments, brings to light a curious case of what appears to be a “gazi-turned-saint”. Aziz Nazmi Shakir-Tash ventures through the Ottoman Rhodopes, an old stonecutter’s notebook in hand, and wonders about the earliest Ottoman monuments there. Suraiya Faroqhi accompanies the 17th-century scholar Abdurrahman Hibri on the hajj from his native Edirne and reviews his observations on architecture and politics. Hedda Reindl-Kiel turns our attention to the 18th-century reconstruction of Muslim infrastructure after the Venetian conquest of the Morea on one hand, to the patronage of a palace eunuch on the other. The topic of infrastructure, now from a Bulgarian perspective, is also addressed by Stephen Lewis. İlknur Kolay looks at building materials and discerns a change in terminology in the 17th century. Kemal Kutgün Eyüpgiller covers new ground with a study on 18th century military architecture along the Bosporus. Maximilian Hartmuth and Zeynep Ahunbay deal with the restoration and preservation of Ottoman monuments in Bosnia, with one writing about the 1890s, the other about the reconstruction of a historic mosque lost in the 1990s war. The research articles are followed by the thus far most complete bibliography of Kiel’s work.

This eminently readable book is the first extensive monograph dealing with the early history of the diplomatic relations between the Ottoman Empire and the Netherlands based on Western as well as Turkish sources and secondary literature. Its aim is to present a balanced bilateral account of both the Turkish and the Dutch viewpoint. The statesmanship of the Ottoman admiral and grand vizier Khalil Pasha, who took the diplomatic initiative in 1610 is studied in detail as is the diplomatic activity of Cornelis Haga, the first Dutch ambassador to the Porte. Their successful negotiations led to the grant of capitulations by the Sultan Ahmed I in 1612. This document formed the basis of 400 years of political and economic relations of the Netherlands with Turkey. An edition of the text and an integral translation are also given.