SINOIRAN · Sino-Iranica: Investigating Relations Between Medieval China and Sasanian Iran
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-07-01 → 2024-06-30
- EU contribution
- €171,473
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Sino-Iranica: Investigating Relations Between Medieval China and Sasanian Iran
SINOIRAN was primarily focused on providing a readable guide to relations between West and East Asia in the first millennium. Although these connections were arguably important in world history, no comprehensive study had been undertaken since Berthold Laufer’s Sino-Iranica in 1919. The absence of such a comprehensive monograph, especially in a European language, has been a problem, since scholars and general readers interested in the topic of Sino-Iranian relations have had to rely on assorted studies and outdated translations. Iranologists have long been aware that Classical Chinese sources have much to say about Parthia and Sasanian Iran, as well as the early Arab caliphates, but few read Chinese. Further, there has been much written about Iran in modern Chinese and Japanese scholarship, much of which has not been recognized in Western scholarship due to the language barrier. SINOIRAN produced an open-access monograph, titled Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian Relations in Late Antiquity: China and the Parthians, Sasanians, and Arabs in the First Millennium, that offers an authoritative guide to the history of West and East Asia during the formative centuries of the first millennium. SINOIRAN offers a valuable study that steps away from a focus on cultures more familiar to the West (e.g., Byzantium), and discusses the enduring and significant connections and historical relations between two civilizations that occupied and shaped large parts of Eurasia. Further, the project details what otherwise underappreciated Chinese sources can offer the historical record, such as those from the Buddhist and Daoist canons. SINOIRAN will highlight the value of researching transcultural histories with a focus away from Europe and what historically have been Western interests. The project has demonstrated that global history can be read and reconstructed based on non-European sources.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
An investigation of Sino-Iranian connections from the third to tenth centuries, with a particular focus on political, religious and material exchanges between China and Sassanian Iran. The aim will be to build a bridge between modern Sinology and Iranology and to further build our understanding of the history of Sino-Iranian relations in close coordination with Iranologists in Italy and Europe. The project will aim to highlight Sino-Iranian relations as having been significantly more important than is normally recognized, and to provide new knowledge that will be useful to both Sinology and Iranology. This two-year project will excavate primary and archaeological sources in Chinese while documenting modern scholarship on Sino-Iranian relations, especially in Modern Chinese and Japanese. The project will make great use of the digitized and searchable corpus of classical Chinese, and reevaluate the roles of Iranian religions in medieval China. The findings and data from this study will be digested and presented as a single monograph. The proposed project will be actively interdisciplinary. It will involve the research, a Canadian Sinologist trained in Japan and the Netherlands, being hosted by Iranologists in Italy. Such an arrangement will allow for gainful two-way exchanges of knowledge and skills.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA · BolognaCoordinatorItaly
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union