19.05.2025
Revisiting China and Iran in the First Millennium CE: The Significance of Sino-Iranian Relations.

„Revisiting China and Iran in the First Millennium CE: The Significance of Sino-Iranian Relations.“

May 19, 2025 18:00 pm c.t.

University of Bonn, Main Building, (HS XVI), Am Hof 1, 53113 Bonn

Dr. Jeffrey Kotyk

„Revisiting China and Iran in the First Millennium CE: The Significance of Sino-Iranian Relations.“

Since the publication of Sino-Iranica by Berthold Laufer (1874–1934) in 1919, research on the relationship between Iran and China in late antiquity has been largely overlooked in favor of China’s connections with India and Central Asia. The field of the “Silk Road Studies” has not given Parthia and Sasanian Iran much attention. Similarly, Iranology and early Islamic Studies have generally not critically consulted contemporary Chinese sources. This talk will first highlight the importance of Iran to the evolution of Chinese civilization (religious, material, scientific, and social cultures). We will then examine the value of Chinese historical accounts of West Asia in the formative seventh century, pointing out that the records offer a notable but sometimes challenging interpretation of the events that lead to the downfall of the Sasanian state and the rise of the Arabs. It will be argued that Chinese sources are indispensable witnesses for reconstructing some parts of late-antique history.

Jeffrey Kotyk (PhD, Leiden University, 2017) has researched the relationship between China and the wider world in late antiquity with a particular focus on the eastward transmission of sciences (astronomy, astrology, medicine, and metallurgy) to East Asia. His research has also covered Buddhist Studies and Japanese history. His recent survey, “Astrology and Astral Magic in Tantric Japan” appears in the The Oxford Handbook of Tantric Studies (2024). He is presently participating in the Dept. III Working Group “Visualization and Material Cultures of the Heavens in Eurasia and North Africa (4000 BCE–1700 CE)”, where he is contributing to the database and authoring a book on cosmology in premodern East Asia. He is the author of Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian Relations in Late Antiquity: China and the Parthians, Sasanians, and Arabs in the First Millennium (Brill, 2024), a comprehensive study on the historical relations between West and East Asia. He has published studies in journals such as T’oung Pao, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, and Asia Major. He has held grants and scholarships from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Sheng Yen Education Foundation, Robert H. N. Ho Foundation, and Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai. In the past, he has translated academic publications from Chinese and Japanese into English. He also has translated Classical Buddhist Chinese texts.

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