2015 is the year of ARMACAD's friend and fellow Professor Uwe Bläsing's 60th anniversary. We wholeheartedly congratulate him on this occasion and present the content of the "Iran and the Caucasus" volume 19 fully dedicated to this joyeful event. Before the content dear readers of ARMACAD have a chance to read the Editorial Preface about Uwe by Professor Garnik Asatrian.
Uwe Bläsing – 60
Editorial Preface
As Iran and the Caucasus is dedicating its 19th volume to the 60th birthday of Professor Dr. Uwe Bläsing, one of the pillars of the journal, I thought a word of gratitude and a short encomium is in order. Uwe has actively participated in the promotion of Iran and the Caucasus for years and, in large part because of his dedication, the journal has become one of the most recognised scholarly publications today, a leading academic periodical in Oriental Studies in the world. He has worked tirelessly for it, he fought for it, he cherished it. The present volume of our journal includes papers written mostly by friends, colleagues and admirers of Uwe Bläsing.
Uwe’s commitment to Iran and the Caucasus is a microcosm of his work. He is well known for his scholarship in many language families, and his wisdom and knowledge are recognised as well. As linguistics and etymology are his forte, and as these disciplines are focus areas of the journal, I can say with some confidence that Iran and the Caucasus and Uwe have already become fused together.
Uwe is a man of the utmost intellectual integrity, a model of consistency, and a winsome writer. He is kind, gentle, and resolute, a stalwart of a man; his will and spirit are strong; his mind is active. He is a very devoted friend, after all!
While Professor Bläsing’s works are too numerous to mention and his erudition is not matched, I would like to reveal that there is an artistic side to him as well. His work is his passion. He has found a creative outlet in the study of a number of “extralinguistic” areas―botany, cuisine, geology, etc. His incorporation of these endaeavors into his overall scholarly interests shows the mind of a great intellectual at work.
More than most, Professor Bläsing understands that there is beauty and value in learning, and communicating that learning to others. He wants people to grow intellectually, and finds inspired and memorable ways to illustrate his positions. For learning’s sake alone, we all would do well to study him and see a scholar operating as a surgeon, one that examines and dissects his discipline in a precise manner, extracting and evaluating the data and conveying it in a manner available for us to comprehend. His works give us insight and ability to absorb not only the subject, but also the wisdom of a highly trained and motivated academician.
On an emotional level, my friendship with Uwe has lasted for several decades. My first personal encounter with him was very symbolic―we spend almost a whole day in a Yezidi village near Yerevan, in the house of the Yezidi leader Azize Amar (Tamoyan). It was a day of never-ending revelry, when Uwe’s unique nature revealed to me. I found a man of a very sharp German mind, a real bearer of the true European academism and simultaneously a man with a big and warm Oriental heart. I found a Friend, a brother-in-arms… Philosophically, we are unified. The way we see the world and understand society is similar. We understand the importance and significance in promotion of traditional values and rigorous academic study.
Uwe has blessed those who are around him, particularly myself. He has been caring to me, my friends and my students. He has been gracious to many of us associated with Iran and the Caucasus. He has dedicated not only his professional career, but also his life to the advancement and improvement of culture. The world is a better place and I am a better person because of Uwe, Professor Dr. Uwe Bläsing.
Garnik Asatrian
Iran and the Caucasus
Volume 19, Issue 1, 2015
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Garnik Asatrian – Editorial Preface: Uwe Bläsing – 60 . . . . . 1
Stefan Georg – Uwe Bläsing, the Scholar . . . . . . . . . 3
Articles
HISTORY, CULTURE
Götz König – Zur Frage ‘ewiger’ Feuer im Avesta und in der
zoroastrischen Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
LINGUISTICS
Peter Zieme – Von altuigurischen Duftstoffen und Heilmitteln . . 69
Marek Stachowski – Turkic Pronouns against a Uralic Background 79
Alexander Vovin – Eskimo Loanwords in Northern Tungusic . . . 87
HISTORICO-POLITICAL ISSUES
George Bournoutian – The Iran-Turkey-Armenia Borders as Depicted in Various Maps . . . . 97
Book Reviews
Matthias Weinreich, Yazyk i migraciya: Puštuny v pakistanskom
vysokogor'e [Language and Migration: Pashto Speakers in the
High Mountains of Pakistan], Yerevan Oriental Series, 4, Yerevan:
“Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies”, 2014, 179 pp. (review by
Mikhail Pelevin) . . . . . . . . . 109
Ali Asghar Seyed-Gohrab (ed.), Metaphor and Imagery in Persian
Poetry, Leiden-Boston: “Brill”, 2012, 281 pp. (review by Arpine
Arushanian) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Ali M. Ansari, Iran: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: “Oxford
University Press”, 2014, 120 pp. (review by Philip O. Hopkins) . . 115