Testimonial by Svitlana Oliynyk

I've studied the history of Iran extensively during my undergraduate and postgraduate studies, but I've mostly focused on medieval and modern times. Recently, however, I've become quite interested in the history of Iran's pre-Islamic past, and I was particularly fascinated by the history of Zoroastrianism in Iran and in Central Asia.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to discover this Middle Persian course online - perhaps it was one of the very few if not the only academic Pahlavi course available to students right now. Perhaps, one of the perks of the otherwise unlucky pandemic was the ability to study online from anywhere in the world. 

This course has definitely exceeded all of my expectations. It is very well structured, taught, and supervised; the materials we've been given were perfectly tailored for students to learn as much as possible during the given period of time. We've made great progress when it comes to reading actual historic sources and improving our knowledge of Middle Persian grammar and vocabulary. The course has also been designed to allow students to study vocabulary in a specific historic context, which is very useful for historians or linguists. Additionally, we've had a chance to familiarise ourselves with different types of Middle Persian script and practice reading it, which can be challenging to learn on its own. Ruben, our language instructor, has been extremely helpful and he made sure no questions were left unanswered. Moreover, we were sent various articles on Sasanian and Zoroastrian history during the course, which gave us additional background knowledge. I would absolutely recommend this course to anyone interested in the history of Iran or the ancient Near East!