.png){kind=logo}
- P-ISSN 1976-3735
- E-ISSN 3091-8685
- P-ISSN1976-3735
- E-ISSN3091-8685
Article Detail
Home > Article Detail
[Research Article] Seeing Silla through Besila in The Kushnameh: On Literary Interventions in the Historiography of Transcultural Silla
The Journal of Northeast Asian History / The Journal of Northeast Asian History, (P)1976-3735; (E)3091-8685
2025, v.22 no.1, pp.45-75
https://doi.org/10.23037/jnah.2025.22.1.002
(Freie Universität Berlin)
LEE,
J.
(2025). [Research Article] Seeing Silla through Besila in The Kushnameh: On Literary Interventions in the Historiography of Transcultural Silla. , 22(1), 45-75, https://doi.org/10.23037/jnah.2025.22.1.002
- Downloaded
- Viewed
Abstract
This article reconsiders the study of Silla’s interregional history with the Persian world, a field largely framed through archaeological finds from Gyeongju. While such approaches have been crucial for situating Silla within broad Silk Road networks, they often rely on an ambiguous category of “Sasanian Persian” and perpetuate the cognitive distance implicit in the enduring geographical label of seoyeok (lit. “western region”). As an additional avenue, this article turns to The Kushnameh, a twelfth-century Persian epic that contains extensive textual references to Besila—possibly a distant recollection of the long-vanished Korean kingdom, refracted through the imagined grandeur of the Sasanian Empire. Read not for factual verification but as a site where memory, imagination, and archival potential converge, The Kushnameh challenges positivist certainties in ancient Korean historiography and opens the field to interdisciplinary and multiperspective approaches that invite us to see the Persianate world beyond the lingering perception of the “other.”
- keywords
- Kushnameh, Silla-Persia Studies, Transcultural memory, Positivist historiography, New Historicism, Ḥakim Iranshāh ibn Abū’l-Khayr
- Received
- 2025-09-15
- Revised
- 2025-11-05
- Accepted
- 2025-11-25
- Published
- 2025-12-31
Other articles from this issue
- [Research Article] Norm and Deviance: Some Considerations on Eroticism in Ancient Korea
- [Research Article] Seeing Silla through Besila in The Kushnameh: On Literary Interventions in the Historiography of Transcultural Silla
- [Research Article] Pointed Cusped Arch: Islamic Architectural Element of the Goryeo Dynasty
- [Research Article] Vietnam-China Trade Relations under French Colonial Administration in Late Nineteenth-Century Vietnam
- [Research Article] Toward a Full History of Coal Mining: Korean Miners in the Japanese Coal Industry, 1910s–1930s
- [Research Article] A Regional Contextualization of the Transition to the Post–Cold War Era in East Asia
- [Book Review] Book Review of The Routledge Handbook of Early Modern Korea
- [Book Review] Beyond Japanese Frames: Reading Yuko Takahashi’s Korean Nuclear Diaspora
- [Book Review] Book Review of The Crafting of the Postwar Peace Treaty with Japan, 1945-1951
- [Conference Proceeding] Decolonization as a “Nonevent”?: The Liberation of Korea and Its Impact on Japan
- [Conference Proceeding] Between the Collapse of the Japanese Empire and Normalization with South Korea
- [Conference Proceeding] Formal Decolonization and Informal Reconnection: Korean and Japanese Christian Intellectuals in the Post-colonial Era
- [Conference Proceeding] Decolonization on the Waterfront: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the End of Empire
- [Conference Proceeding] The Crisis of the Divided Economy and the Creation of a National Economy: Korea in the late 1940s
- [Conference Proceeding] 1945: The Soviet Army’s Rule over North Korea and the Coming of Kim Il-sung
- [Conference Proceeding] Soviet Occupation Policies in North Korea, East Germany, and Austria: Similarities and Differences
- [Conference Proceeding] Braiding Two Revolutions: Yan’an Group and Manchurian Koreans in the Chinese Revolution and the North Korean Revolutions, 1945–1950
- [Conference Proceeding] Victims of Victory: Power and Strategy in Postwar East Asia
- [Conference Proceeding] Why Do Differences in Historical Perception Arise?: The Influence of Strong Mobilization in a Weak Empire
- [Conference Proceeding] The Dilemma of Acknowledging Victimhood and the Alienation from One’s Own Memory
- more
Recommanded Articles
This website recommended the use the Chrome browser for journal website.