Full and Partial Scholarships

For Postgraduate Studies

The Soudavar Memorial Foundation’s scholarships are highly competitive and awarded on merit to students who possess outstanding academic credentials and demonstrate exceptional leadership potential. We take great pride in their achievements past and present as they continue to enrich our understanding and knowledge of the Iranian World at prestigious institutions across the globe.

Full Scholarships

Nadia Bargneyssi

Nadia Bargneyssi was awarded a scholarship for a PhD at the University of Göttingen in 2004. Her thesis, Abbasid Administrative Terminology in Iran, aims to produce a Lexicon of Abbasid Chancellery and administrative terminology with particular reference to Iran and with comprehensive references to the sources, supervised by Professor Philip G. Kreyenbroek, Professor and Director of Iranian Studies.

Yusef Saadat

Yusef Saadat completed his PhD in 2022. He was awarded scholarships from 2014 to 2020 for his doctorate at the Free University of Berlin to complete his thesis, How to Read Middle Persian through a Lexicographical Approach: Re-reading some Selected Sections of Dēnkard 6.

Abstract:

This thesis proposes a lexicographical approach to reading Pahlavi texts; this will provide a robust and reliable tool to solve some long-standing problems, make the editions and translations more precise and improve the quality of our understanding of the language. Some selected sections of Dēnkard 6 are scrutinized as a case study to show that it is necessary to return to the philological and lexicographical approaches to reading and translating the Pahlavi texts.

Several layers of definitions and sub-definitions of each lemma in the lexica of a language like New Persian, especially in the eyes of a lexicographer, may remind a Middle Persian scholar of the necessity of a similar prospect semantic diversity of each headword for a classical language like Middle Persian. The same must be expected in a Lexicon for Middle Persian as a language which, like Persian, was used as the scholastic language of different religions and the official language in vast areas for several centuries. However, this complicated situation is usually neglected in the editions and translations of Middle Persian texts, and for understanding them, many scholars almost solely rely on the extant dictionaries, which provide limited semantic aspects of each word that led to many inaccurate and careless results in some published translations of the texts.

This thesis used every effort to gather and study almost all the evidence of many words (sometimes more than 100 evidences for each word), the meaning of which may seem to many scholars pretty known. Then we tried to distinguish the sub-definitions of these words in different contexts. Finally, the evidences and meanings that fit best in the context have been chosen. The cross-checking of most of the manuscripts’ evidences made this task possible. As such, the definition of many words and translation of several passages in Dēnkard 6 and  Dēnkard 3 were changed in this thesis.

Partial Scholarships

Bahram Assadian

A partial scholarship was awarded to Bahram Assadian, for work on his PhD in the Department of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. His thesis, entitled Displacing Numbers: On the Metaphysics of Mathematical Structuralism, investigates the nature and identity of numbers and other mathematical objects while also  resuscitating Persian and especially Avicenna’s ‘discoveries on the logic of necessity’.

Thus the central aim of Bahram Assadian’s doctoral thesis is “to scrutinise some of the most philosophically interesting challenges that emerge out of this conception of natural numbers.”

“Is mathematics about distinctively mathematical entities such as the natural numbers, or is it about the ‘structures’ or ‘forms’ of such entities? This project has been centred on what is known as mathematical structuralism – the thesis that argues for the latter claim.”

By dealing with the philosophical challenges of numbers, this research also resuscitates Persian and especially Avicenna’s ‘discoveries on the logic of necessity’. Through its contribution to the philosophy of mathematics as understood by Ibn-e Sina (Avicenna), it sheds light on unduly neglected aspects of the Avicennian conception of the subject matter of mathematics and explains his account of mathematical objects and theories in structuralist settings.

These issues are discussed in six chapters which conclude “by outlining some of the applications of this alternative view to arithmetical platonism.”

Jaimee Comstock-Skipp

Jaimee Comstock-Skipp was awarded a partial scholarship towards her Masters  degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, starting autumn 2014.  She completed a second MA program in spring 2015 in a special program on Mongol through Safavid Persian book arts under Sussan Babaie. She received highest marks, obtaining a ‘Distinction’ on her MA dissertation entitled, Heroes of Legend, Heroes of History: Militant Manuscripts of the Shaybanid Uzbeks in Transoxiana. This June, with funds from the British Institute of Persian Studies, she spent the entire month in Iran touring the region and its museums and monuments.

In August, Jaimee departed for Tajikistan to carry out research funded by the Fulbright Program. This will be her fifth sojourn in Tajikistan where she will reside for a year in Dushanbe and Panjikent,. Intrigued by the cultural, artistic, and literary connections across the Persian eocumene with regards to the Shahnama epic, a text that straddles Iran and Turan, along with history and legend, her project will investigate Tajik heritage and cultural identity in relation to the Shahnama and other poetic works, hoping to uncover how Tajiks make sense of their heritage through their own interpretations of the tales and material culture in their museums.

Moujan Matin

Moujan Matin completed her PhD thesis  in November 2016 under the supervision of Professors Oliver Watson, Michael Tite, and Mark Pollard. The title of her thesis is

REVISITING THE ORIGINS OF ISLAMIC GLAZED POTTERY:

A TECHNOLOGICAL EXAMINATION OF 8TH-10TH CENTURY AD CERAMICS FROM ISLAMIC LANDS

Abstract: 

The beginnings of Islamic ceramics have long been attributed to the opaque white glazed wares made in Iraq in the 9th century in response to the imported Chinese porcelain and stoneware. These Islamic glazes were known to have been opacified by tin-oxide and much work has been undertaken to characterise their development and spread. However, little has been done to explain the origins of this technology and its invention in Iraq.

This thesis takes a new approach to investigating the beginnings of Islamic glazed pottery. It examines the technical aspects of early Islamic glazed wares from the 7th to 10th century AD from the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia. A significant number of sherds from Fustat, Aqaba, Al-Mina, Raqqa, Samarra, Basra, Kish, Susa, Nishapur, Merv and Samarqand were sampled and analysed using a scanning electron microscope equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). Particular focus was placed on the opaque yellow glazes from the Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia (7th-9th century) and the opaque white glazes from Mesopotamia and Central Asia (9th -10th century). The analyses showed that the opaque yellow glazes and the opaque white glazes were respectively the result of lead-tin-oxide particles in high lead glazes, and tin-oxide particles in lead-alkali and alkali-lead glazes. Using experimental replication, it was found that at temperatures around 900°C, and in the presence of alkalis and alkaline earths, lead-tin-oxide particles convert to tin-oxide and that the colour of the glaze changes from yellow to white. It was therefore argued that the opaque yellow glazed wares of the 7th/8th-century Eastern Mediterranean represent a precursor to the opaque white glazed wares that flourished in Iraq in the 9th century. The results have helped change the way the beginnings of Islamic ceramics are viewed: origins in the 7th/8th century AD rather than the 9th century AD, first developed in Egypt or the Levant rather than Iraq, and indigenous rather than Chinese-inspired. The eastward spread of Islamic glazed wares to Iraq in the 9th century follows the move of the Islamic capital from Damascus, Syria, to Baghdad, Iraq, and the further spread of this technology east and west can now be traced.

Adeela Qureishi

A one year grant was awarded to Adeela Qureishi for the completion of her thesis on the Mughal Qamaragah (hunting enclosures) as represented in Iran. Her book The Hunts as Metaphor in Mughal Painting was published in 2022 as an Artibus Asiae monograph (suppl 56) by the Museum Rietberg in Zurich.

Arash Zeini

Arash Zeini was awarded a scholarship for his first year at SOAS as a PhD student in 2008-09. His thesis, entitled The Pahlavi Version of the Yasna Haptanghāiti, was completed in 2013 and supervised by Professor Almut Hintze, the Zartoshty Brothers Professor of Zoroastrianism.