Dr.

Florian Schwarz

Director

Phone
+43 1 51581-6510

E-Mail
florian.schwarz(at)oeaw.ac.at

ORCID 0000-0001-6292-8160

Biography

Studies of Iranian and Islamic Studies at the Universities of Tübingen and Cologne. PhD 1999, University of Tübingen. 1996-1998 researcher at the Research Center for Islamic Numismatics, University of Tübingen. 1999-2005 Wissenschaftlicher Assistent, Department of Oriental and Islamic Studies at the University of Bochum. 2005-2009 Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Washington, Seattle. Since January 2010 Director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Since 2011 (Honorarprofessor) at the University of Vienna. 2015 elected Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Member of the editorial boards of Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik and Iranische Onomastik (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press) and Handbook of Oriental Studies - Near and Middle East (Brill) and of the Scientific Advisory Boards of Der Islam (de Gruyter) and Rivista degli Studi Orientali (Sapienza University of Rome).

 

Detailed Biography

Main Areas of Research

  • History of Iran and Central Asia in the Islamic period
  • Manuscript cultures
  • Material culture of Iran and Central Asia (numismatics and monetary history, archives, epigraphy)
  • Historical geography, landscape history, urban history of medieval and early modern Iran and Central Asia
  • Intellectual communities and networks

Selected Publications

  • „The Manghit Khanate of Bukhara“, forthcoming in Robert Rollinger, Hilmar Klinkott, Kai Ruffing and Florian Posselt (eds.), Empires through the Ages: Short-term Empires – Rule or Exception?, Heidelberg: Springer 2026.
  • “The Oxus Region from the Sasanian to the Early Islamic Period: Dynamics of a Borderland ca. 4th to 10th cc.”, Julian Degen / Robert Rollinger (eds.), Contextualizing Imperial Borderlands (9th C. BC - 9th C. AD, and Beyond), forthcomingWiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2026, 203-212.
  • „Als die Loren ihr Banner auf dem Berg hissten. Die Durchsetzung des iranischen Zentralstaats in Lorestan, 1924-1927,“ in: Michael Kasper, Robert Rollinger, Andreas Rudigier, Kai Ruffing (eds.), "Gesetzlose" in den Bergen und die vertikalen Grenzen der Herrschaft (Montafoner Gipfeltreffen ; 6), Wien: Böhlau 2025, 319-339.
  • “The Sāmānid File: Embedding Genealogy in 16th-Century Bukhara”, in Jo-Ann Gross, Daniel Beben (ed.), Genealogical History of the Persianate World, London: I.B. Tauris 2025, 123-148.
  • Central Asia Through the Centuries: Society, Culture, Texts, ed. Marianne Kamp, Florian Schwarz, Tashkent: Akademnashr 2025, ISBN 978-9910-685-60-6
  • “Arabische Kultur in Iran und Zentralasien, 1250-1800”, in Andreas Kaplony (ed.), Geschichte der Arabischen Welt, 6th edition, München: C.H. Beck, 2024, 434-443.
  • “Remembering Bahā’ al-Dīn Naqshband in 16th- and 17th-century Bukhara”, in Memory and Commemoration in Islamic Central Asia, ed. Gabrielle van den Berg and Elena Paskaleva, Leiden: Brill 2023, 40-49. DOI: 10.1163/9789004540996_004.
  • Rocco Rante / Florian Schwarz / Luigi Tronca: The Oasis of Bukhara, vol. 2, Leiden: Brill 2022. ISBN 978-90-04-51349-5. DOI: 10.1163/9789004513662_004.
  • “Land Behind Bukhara: Materials for a Landscape History of the Oasis of Bukhara in the Long First Millennium”, in: Rocco Rante / Florian Schwarz / Luigi Tronca: The Oasis of Bukhara, vol. 2, Leiden: Brill 2022, 60-144.
  •  “Safavids and Ozbeks”, in: Charles Melville (ed.): Safavid Persia in the Age of Empires (The Idea of Iran, vol.10), London: I.B. Tauris 2021, 357-374. ISBN 9780755633777.
  • “Negotiating Revolution: The Bukharan Dragoman Mir Haydar Mirbadalev and the Kolesov campaign in 1918”, in: Dilorom Alimova, Florian Schwarz (eds.), Explorations in the Medieval and Modern History of Central Asia: Societies, Cultures, Texts, Tashkent: Akademnashr 2019, 210-220. ISBN 9789943592926.
  • “The Arab reception of Jāmī in the 16th and 17th centuries: al-Fawāˀid al-ḍiyāˀiyya and al-Durra al-fākhira”, in: Thibaud d’Hubert und Alexandre Papas (eds.): Abdurrahman Jami: A worldwide literature, Leiden: Brill 2019, 177-195. DOI: 10.1163/9789004386600_007.
  • Explorations in the Medieval and Modern History of Central Asia: Societies, Cultures, Texts, eds. Dilorom Alimova / Florian Schwarz, Tashkent: Akademnashr 2019. ISBN 9789943592926.
  • Wine culture in Iran and beyond, hrsg. von Florian Schwarz, Bert Fragner & Ralph Kauz, Wien: Verlag der ÖAW 2014.
  • Politische Krise und kulturelle Transformation im mongolenzeitlichen Iran, in: Sigrid Jalkotzy-Deger, Arnold Suppan (Hrsg.), Krise und Transformation, Wien 2012, 168-179.
  • Contested grounds: Ambiguities and disputes over the legal and fiscal status of land in the Manghit emirate of Bukhara, in: Central Asian Survey, 29, 2010, pp. 33-42.
  • Writing in the margins of empires: The Husaynabadi family of scholiasts in the Ottoman-Safavid borderlands. In: Buchkultur im Nahen Osten des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. Heinzelmann, T./ Sievert H. Bern u.a.: Peter Lang, 2010, pp. 151-198.
  • An endowment deed of 1547 (953 h.) for a Kubrawi khanaqah in Samarkand. In: Lorenz Korn, Eva Orthmann and Florian Schwarz (eds.). Die Grenzen der Welt. Arabica et Iranica ad honorem Heinz Gaube. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2008, pp.189-210.
  • Bargeldstiftungen im Chanat von Chiwa, 1840-1922, Der Islam 80 (2003), pp. 79-93.
  • Sylloge Numorum Arabicorum Tübingen. XIVc Hurasan III: Balh und die Landschaften am oberen Oxus, Tübingen, Berlin: Wasmuth, 2002.
  • Unser Weg schließt tausend Wege ein: Derwische und Gesellschaft im islamischen Mittelasien im 16. Jahrhundert, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2000.
  • Bukhara and its hinterland in the 16th century in the light of the Juybari Codex, in: Attilio Petruccioli (ed.). Bukhara : The Myth and the Architecture. Cambridge MA: The Agha Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the MIT, 2000, pp. 79-92.
  • Sylloge Numorum Arabicorum Tübingen. Bd. XIVd Hurasan IV: Gazna / Kabul, Tübingen, Berlin: Wasmuth, 1995 (Islamic and South Asian Book Award of the American Numismatic Society, 1995).