YEREVAN TO HOST SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON TALISHI STUDIES
Tert.am
09.11.11
The second international conference on Talishi Studies will be held
in Yerevan between November 11-12.
The discussion is a sequential gathering in the series of academic
events organized by the international journal Iran and the Caucasus
(BRILL, Leiden-Boston, Editor-in-chief Prof. Dr. Garnik Asatrian). The
co-organizers are the Modus Vivendi center (Yerevan, president Ara
Papyan), the Caucasian Center for Iranian Studies (Yerevan), the
International Society for Turkic, Iranian and Caucasian Studies,
and the Armenian Association for Academic Partnership and Support,
(ARMACAD, President Khachik Gevorgyan). The sponsor of the event is
the Hyksos foundation (president: Hrach Gabrielyan).
In his opening speech, Professor Garnik Asatryan (YSU) will address
the contemporary problems of Talishi Studies. Other keynote speakers
include Professor A Granmayeh (Great Britain; “The language and culture
of Talish. How to save them?”), and a prominent historian and writer,
Kave Farrokh (Canada; “The process of de-Iranization of the Caucasian
Azerbaijan”). Professor Vardan Vosaknyan from the YSU Department of
Iranian Studies will make a special presentation of a new Talishi
alphabet based on Avestan scripts.
The conference will also bring together scholars from Russia, Iran,
Georgia, the Netherlands, Great Britain, USA and Canada. It has
already boosted a great interest among Iranian studies experts and
received the most positive feedbacks from the Talishi intellectual
elites of deferent countries.
The first international conference on Talishi Studies was held in
Armenia’s resort town of Tsakhkadzor in May 2005. The organizers were
the Yerevan State University’s (YSU) Department of Iranian Studies,
and the Caucasian Center for Iranian Studies.
Talishi are an Iranian people indigenous to a region shared between
Azerbaijan and Iran which spans the South Caucasus and the southwestern
shore of the Caspian Sea. They speak the Talishi language, one of the
Northwestern Iranian languages. It is spoken in the northern regions
of the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and the southern parts of
the Republic of Azerbaijan. Northern Talishi (the part in the Republic
of Azerbaijan) was historically known as Talish-i Gushtasbi. In Iran
there is a Talesh County in Gilan.
Anthropologically they belong to the Caspian type of the European race.