Arezou Azad

Arezou Azad is a historian of the premodern Islamicate East (Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia), specialising in the period from the rise of Islam in the seventh century to the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century. She is a member of the Centre de recherche sur le monde iranien and holds the Chair in the Arts and Heritage of Afghanistan at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales in Paris. She also directs the Invisible East programme.

She received her DPhil from the University of Oxford Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. She subsequently co-directed the Balkh Art and Cultural Heritage Project (2011–2015), funded by the Leverhulme Trust. From 2013 to 2019, she was a lecturer in medieval history at the University of Birmingham. Born and raised in Germany, she worked as a UN peacekeeper in the Balkans, Timor-Leste, and other regions before pursuing an academic career.

The project

Title: Persian Manuscripts and the Art and Heritage of Afghanistan

"The project involves manuscript research at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in preparation for a planned ERC project (2027–2032) on medieval technical manuals as sources for historical research. The aim is to reshape the field by incorporating non-elite social groups into historiography and reassessing the chronology of the professionalisation of technical expertise in the wider medieval Iranian world. The research is also expected to result in several publications.

A longstanding working relationship with the Bibliothèque nationale de France dates back to 2006, when she was completing her doctoral research on the medieval history of the wider Iranian world, including Afghanistan and Central Asia. One of her principal sources was a manuscript of the medieval Persian text The Merits of Balkh, preserved at the library and formerly owned by Jules Mazarin. This research led to three books: Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan (Oxford, 2013); an English translation of The Merits of Balkh (Edinburgh, 2021); and a revised Persian edition based on all four extant manuscripts (Tehran, 2022).

As Principal Investigator of the Invisible East programme at the University of Oxford, she has been working on economic and legal documents from the medieval Islamicate East. Her forthcoming publication is The Warehouse of Bamiyan: Economic Life in Medieval Afghanistan (31 December 2025)."

Hosting institution: Centre de la recherche sur le monde iranien (CeRMI)

Selective Bibliography

• Sacred Landscape of Medieval Afghanistan (Oxford, 2013), 
• Fadāʾil-i Balkh or the Merits of Balkh: Annotated translation with commentary and introduction of the oldest surviving history of Balkh in Afghanistan (Edinburgh, 2020), 
• The Warehouse of Bamiyan: Economic Life in Medieval Afghanistan (Edinburgh, 2025)  
• The Rise and Fall of the Barmakids: Stories from a Forgotten Persian Manuscript (Edinburgh, 2026).