The Saidi-Sirjani Book Award

The Saidi-Sirjani Book Award is granted biennially by the Association for Iranian Studies on behalf of the Persian Heritage Foundation. Established in 1995, the purpose of the Award is to recognize and promote scholarship in the field of Iranian studies, as well as to honor the memory of Ali-Akbar Saidi-Sirjani (1931-1994), the noted Iranian historian, literary critic, and author, in appreciation for his scholarship, his courage, and his indefatigable struggle for freedom of expression. Website Nominations are now open.

2024 Award Committee

  • Ali Gheissari (Chair)
  • Tourag Atabaki
  • Ali Banuazizi
  • Rudi Matthee
  • Farzaneh Milani

 

The Saidi-Sirjani Book Award is granted biennially by the Association for Iranian Studies on behalf of the Persian Heritage Foundation. Established in 1995, the purpose of the Award is to recognize and promote scholarship in the field of Iranian studies, as well as to honor the memory of Ali-Akbar Saidi-Sirjani (1931-1994), the noted Iranian historian, literary critic, and author, in appreciation for his scholarship, his courage, and his indefatigable struggle for freedom of expression.

Works qualifying for the prize will consist of (a) original studies or syntheses in the field of Iranian Studies; (b) critical editions of significant texts in Iranian Studies; and (c) translations from an Iranian language, accompanied by scholarly annotations and extensive research. The Award is primarily intended to be given to books published in English.

Works on the pre-Islamic periods, works of fiction and poetry, and edited collections are excluded. To be considered for the Award, works should be of monograph length and published by a recognized publishing house.


Mailing address and contact details:


Joseph D. Cooper Sr.
Persian Heritage Foundation
8050 N. Palm Ave. Suite 300
Fresno, CA 93711

info@persianheritagefoundation.org
Joe Cooper joe@persianheritagefoundation.org
+1 (559) 285 0202

 

2022 Winner

Co-Awardees Talinn Grigor (The Persian Revival: The Imperialism of the Copy in Iranian and Parsi Architecture, Penn State University Press, 2021 ) and Mikiya Koyagi (Iran in Motion: Mobility, Space, and the Trans-Iranian Railway, Stanford University Press, 2021)

2020 Winner

Dominic Brookshaw (Associate Professor of Persian Literature, and Senior Research
Fellow in Persian at Wadham College, Oxford University), Hafiz and His Contemporaries - Poetry, Performance and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Iran. London: I.B. Tauris / Bloomsbury, 2019.

2020 Awards

Books for the 2020 Award should have been published during January 2018 through to December 2019. The award will be announced at the 2020 AIS Biennial Conference ceremony.

2018 Awards

The winner of 2016 Saidi-Sirjani Book award is Thomas O. Flynn, for the publication of The Western Christian Presence in the Russias and Qājār Persia, c. 1760-c. 1870 (published by Brill, 2017). https://brill.com/abstract/title/11450

Honourable Mention Saidi-Sirjani Award to İlker Evrim Binbaş, Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn 'Alī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters (Cambridge University Press, 2017). http://admin.cambridge.org/academic/subjects/history/middle-east-history/intellectual-networks-timurid-iran-sharaf-al-din-ali-yazdi-and-islamicate-republic-letters and Denis Hermann, Le Shaykhisme à la période qajare. Histoire sociale et doctrinale d’une école chiite (Turnhout, Brepols, 2017). http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503531519-1

2016 Award

The winner of 2016 Saidi-Sirjani Book award is Denise Aigle for her work The Mongol Empire between Myth and Reality: Studies in Anthropological History, Brill (Iran Studies), 394 pp., 2014
Honourable Mention Saidi-Sirjani Award to Saghi Gazerani for her work The Sistani Cycle of Epics and Iran’s National History: On the Margins of Historiography, Brill (Studies in Persian Cultural History), 260pp., publication 2015 (copyright 2016). 

2014 Award

  • The 2014 Saidi-Sirjani Book Award was awarded jointly to Justine Landau for her book, De rythme et de raison: Lecture croisée de deux traités de poétique persans du XIIIe siècle (Of Rhythm and Reason: A Comparative Reading of Two Thirteenth-Century Persian Treatises on Poetics) (published jointly by the Sorbonne Nouvelle and the French Institute for Iranian Studies, in 2013), and to Sarah Bowen Savant for her book, The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion (published by Cambridge University Press, also in 2013).

2012 Award

  • Joint Recipient: Barbara Brend, Muhammad Juki's Shahnamah of Firdausi (Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland; London: Philip Wilson, 2010).
  • Joint Recipients: David Durand-Guedy , Iranian Elites and Turkish Rulers: A History of Isfahan in the Saljuq Period (Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge, 2010).

2010 Award

  • First Prize: Fakhreddin Azimi, The Quest for Democracy in Iran: A Century of Struggle against Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 2008).
  • Honorable Mention: Michele Bernardini, Mémoire et propagande à l’époque timouride (Paris: Association pour l’avancement des études iranniennes, 2008).
  • Honorable mention: Yuka Kadoi, Islamic Chinoiserie: The Art of Mongol Iran. Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).

2008 Award

  • First Prize: Nasrollah Pourjavady, Zaban-e hal: dar erfan adabiyat-e parsi (Tehran, 1385sh/2006)
  • Honorable Mention: Beatrice Forbes Manz, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran. 2007
  • Honorable mention: Nicholas Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan, Letter and Buddhist Texts. 2007

2006 Award

  • First Prize:Rudi MattheeThe Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500-1900, 2005.
  • Honorable Mentions:
    David J. RoxburghThe Persian Album 1400-1600: From Dispersal to Collection, 2005.
    Étienne de la VaissièreHistoire des marchands sogdiens, 2nd ed., Bibliothèque de l’Institut des hautes études chinoises XXXII, 2004 (Transl. by James Ward, Sogdian Traders: A history, Handbuch der Orientalistik VIII:Central Asia, 10: Sogdian traders, Leiden and Boston, 2005)

2004 Award

  • First Prize:Maria E. SubtelnyLe monde est un jardin: Aspects d l’histoire culturelle de l’Iran medieval, 2002.
  • Honorable Mentions:
    Kathryn BabayanMystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran, 2002.
    Franklin D. LewisRumi: Past and Present, East and West, 2000.

1997 Award

  • First Prize:Badr-ol Zaman GharibFarhang-e Soghd-Farsi-Englisi [Sogdian Dictionary], 1995.
  • Honorable Mention: Ahmad Karimi-HakkakRecasting Persian Poetry: Scenarios of Poetic Modernity in Iran, 1995.

1996 Award

  • First Prize: Djalal Khaleghi Motlagh, Critical edition of Shahnameh, 1988-. 
  • Honorable Mentions:
    C. E. BosworthHistory of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz, 1994. 
    Farhad DaftaryThe Assassin Legends: Myths of Isma’ilis, 1994.