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Summary Persian and Arabo-Persian texts frequently referred to Silla as a highlighted toponym. Obviously, descriptions used for Silla in Persian texts cannot be comparable with other toponyms. Ajayeb-al-Makhlughat is the name of a manuscript which deals with marvellous lands, islands, seas, animals, birds, people or customs etc. in Persian literature. Qazvini’s versions have no designs/paintings on toponyms. Haji Mohammad Nasir Khansari published the lithographical version of the manuscript in Tehran in 1283 Hegira (1904 AD) for the first time. His copyist and graphic designer was Abas-Ali Tafreshi. He, in the lithographical version, described the lands and islands of South and Southeast Asia (India to Silla) along with paintings. Most of the people of those islands appeared naked, were uncivilized and had a strange lifestyle. As an exceptional case, Silla is described very positively, civilized, attractive and charming. This paper focuses on the significant difference between Silla and the others, based on the paintings. Nevertheless, this painting is very different from the unpublished painting from Kush-nama, the most important book on Iran’s connection with Silla. The first painting of the people of Silla dates back to a unique manuscript of this book copied by Muhammad ibn Saeed ibn Abdullah. Herat School of Art, by extending towards Shiraz School, has formed the structure of this unique painting from the eighth century AH. However, the painting of the Kush-nama version is not very far from the time of writing of the original text; but the book Ajayeb-al-Makhlughat (AJ) is dedicated to 865 AH and the painting to 1904 AD. At this time, Western art (Europe) had a great impact on Iran.

A note on sasanian-buddhist object of Gyeongju National Museum Although Korean and late Sasanian texts are silent about mutual relations, archaeological evidences provide a different perspective. This paper deals with an object known at Gyeongju National Museum of the Republic of Korea. The loop was discovered in Bunhwangsa Buddhist Temple in Geun-jik (Gyeongju) region in 2001. Gyeongju’s loop includes a round form made of clay, with a pearly chain (running) in the border and two birds (ducks most probably) appearing in the center of the motif while they are trying to hold a stalk of a herb. Many scholarly works have been published about it and interpreted it as the ‘tree of life.’The author believes that this herb (as distinct from a plant) is a sacred lotus. In fact, the birds try to hold it in their beaks. So, an expert creator of the object used known Sasanian artistic elements on the one hand and combined them with a famous Buddhist element on the other hand. It ispossible the creator attempted to immortalize his work with this sacred lotus: in a Buddhist temple, only such an element was allowed to be introduced.

An Indic Text on Earth Science: Sasanian to Post-Sasanian Period

is a well-known name in eastern texts which is translated as “Parthian,” who were on the other end of the Silk Road, the gateway where different cultures met with each other. The Sogdians who were famous traders of the Silk Road played an important role between eastern and western Asia (Vaissiere: 2005, 97). They brought Iranian cultural heritage to China and its surrounding regions. In the Sasanian period (224 - 651 AD) is another important period for cultural relations between Iran and China. Various Sasanian cultural artifacts, such musical instruments, glassware, inscriptions and painting are found in China (An: 2010, 1).The influence of Sasanian heritage is confirmed by scholarly work and research in Japan (Nara) and Silla (Korea) (Akbarzadeh: 2013, 226). Medieval Muslim scholars have also provided important information on the Silk Road, the trade networks and religious relations between Iran and China (Daryaee: 2010, 404). There are different and unique data to be found in the reports of these Medieval Persian authors which are less studied or noticed. It is important to note that some of these reports are comparable with pre-Islamic texts.

El Kush-nameh, uno de los textos islámicos más famosos, que trata de las relaciones históricas entre Irán y Silla, fue escrito por el gran erudito iraní Iran-Shan ibn Abal-khayr en el año 501-04 de la Hégira (1108-11 AD). Referencias al Kush-nameh y al Kush se conocen a partir otros escritos islámicos. El Kush-nameh menciona Frwm, que está ubicada en el norte (oeste) de Irán, como un topónimo chino. El término deriva del parto frwm y generalmente se expresa como hrwm en persa medio. Farvaneh, la designación de la ciudad construidda para el Kush en el Kush-nameh, puede ser reconocida como una modificación del persa medio Brwmlfrwm (Roma/Bizancio), que aparece aquí como Farvaneh, y no Forunneh, debido a razones métricas. The Kush-nameh, one of the most famous Islamic epic texts, dealing with the historical relations between Iran and Silla, was written by the great Iranian scholar Iran-Shan ibn Abal-khayr in 501-04 Hegira (1108-11 AD). References to the Kush-nameh and to Kush are known from other Islamic writings. The Kush-nameh mentions Frwm, which is located to the north (west) of Iran, as a Chinese toponym. The term derives from Parthian frwm and is generally rendered hrwm in Middle Persian. Farvaneh, the designation of the city built for Kush in the Kush-nameh, may be recognized as a modification of a Middle Persian Þrwmlfrwm (Rome/Byzantium), which is rendered here as Farvaneh, and not Foruneh, owing to metric reasons.

Cultural heritage is a real-world application which has attracted attentions from pattern recognition community in recent years. Ancient coins classification is a branch of the application in which high similarity between coins classes as well as high variability within each class make it a challenging pattern recognition problem. In this paper, a method is proposed for addressing this problem. For this purpose, after preprocessing coins images, discrete cosine transform is applied in order to extract most discriminative features so as to be used as inputs of a support vector machine classifier. A database containing 570 images related to both sides of Sasanian coins is used in the conducted experiments. The effect of different number of DCT coefficients in classification rate of the proposed method is studied. Moreover, the performance of the proposed method is compared with Fourier-based and wavelet-based classification. The obtained results suggest that the proposed method outperformed the two other methods with a classification rate of 86.2%.