SOAS Shapoorji Pallonji Institute of Zoroastrian Studies and Department of Religions and Philosophies (SOAS) in collaboration with the World Zoroastrian Organisation
Kutar Memorial Lecture Series
Sogdian fire-worship: between Zoroastrianism and Buddhism
Professor Pavel Lurje
St Petersburg
Thursday, 1 May 2025, 6pm
Location: Khalili Lecture Theatre SOAS Main Building Russell Square London, WC1H 0XG
This is a public lecture. However, registration is essential for both in-person and online attendance. Please visit this link to register.
In this lecture, Prof. Lurje will attempt to summarise what we know of fire worship in Sogdiana (the land in present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) which was inhabited by eastern Iranian people. These groups, being active traders on the Eurasian tracks, developed a sophisticated culture in the pre-Islamic period. The images on mural paintings and other media, archaeological discoveries, and the few references in the written texts show that worship in front of a fire was a significant part of the ritual practices of Sogdians. However, some ritual features that relate to the kindling of fire can be questioned. In some cases, the fire rituals depicted or described have a direct link to Zoroastrian practices spanning from Sasanian Iran to the present day. In many other cases, however, they have an unmistakable relation to the Buddhist incense burning known in Gandharan, Serindian and Chinese contexts of the first millennium CE. These later instances, however, could be a heritage of the worship practices of the pre-Buddhist population of the Indo-Iranian frontier region.
A while ago, I introduced two memoirs—one by Peter Brown and the other by Averil Cameron. Reflecting on the past and the origins of our discipline is as important as reading about the trajectories of our respected colleagues and teachers. We now have two volumes reflecting ‘lost’ social and academic histories that also relate to our discipline.
The tale of a legendary scholar, an unsolved murder, and the mysterious documents that may connect them
In early 1991, Ioan Culianu was on the precipice of a brilliant academic career. Culianu had fled his native Romania and established himself as a widely admired scholar at just forty-one years of age. He was teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School where he was seen as the heir apparent to his mentor, Mircea Eliade, a fellow Romanian expatriate and the founding father of the field of religious studies, who had died a few years earlier.
But then Culianu began to receive threatening messages. As his fears grew, he asked a colleague to hold onto some papers for safekeeping. A week later, Culianu was in a Divinity School men’s room when someone fired a bullet into the back of his head, killing him instantly. The case was never solved, though the prevailing theory is that Culianu was targeted by the Romanian secret police as a result of critical articles he wrote after the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
What was in those mysterious papers? And what connection might they have to Culianu’s death? The papers eventually passed into the hands of Bruce Lincoln, and their story is at the heart of this book. The documents were English translations of articles that Eliade had written in the 1930s, some of which voiced Eliade’s support for the Iron Guard, Romania’s virulently anti-Semitic mystical fascist movement. Culianu had sought to publish some of these articles but encountered fierce resistance from Eliade’s widow.
In this book, author Bruce Lincoln explores what the articles reveal about Eliade’s past, his subsequent efforts to conceal that past, his complex relations with Culianu, and the possible motives for Culianu’s shocking murder.
„Semitische Wissenschaften“ – Der Ausdruck geht zurück auf den Althistoriker Helmut Berve, der damit 1934 unzweideutig den Stellenwert der Fächer Ägyptologie und Altorientalistik in einer Diktion, die den Ungeist nationalsozialistischer Weltanschauung widerspiegelt, relativieren wollte, Herausgeber und Beiträger dieses Sammelbandes beleuchten die Entstehung und Wirkungsgeschichte des Begriffs kritisch. Die Auffassung von „semitischer“ Wissenschaft ist vielschichtig: Zum einen geht sie zurück auf eine lange Tradition zunächst sprachwissenschaftlicher und schließlich auch völkisch-rassenkundlicher Forschungsdiskurse, deren Ursprünge sich bereits in das 18. Jahrhundert zurückverfolgen lassen. Weiterhin offenbart sich in dem Ausdruck eine Zuschreibung an solche Wissenschaftler, die im Rahmen nationalsozialistischer Weltanschauung als „semitisch“, also jüdisch eingestuft wurden. Die „semitischen Wissenschaften“ bilden somit einen Gegenbegriff zu dem völkischen ‚arischen‘ Wissenschaftsverständnis Berves. Darin enthalten ist nicht nur eine Ablehnung oder Kritik des bis dahin in den Altertumswissenschaften gepflegten Positivismus, sondern auch eine Absage an eine „rationale“ Auseinandersetzung mit der Vergangenheit. Der Sammelband geht zurück auf einen vom 26. bis 28. November 2021 von Göttingen aus ‚digital gehosteten‘ Workshop von Vertretern unterschiedlichster Disziplinen, vorrangig – aber nicht ausschließlich – der altorientalischen Fächer und der Geschichtswissenschaft.
The 5ᵗʰ Zoroastrianism Summer School Zoroastrianism in a Global World offers a unique opportunity to explore one of the world’s oldest religions as it continues to shape lives in India, Iran and the U.K. Over the course of this programme, you will explore the rich traditions, rituals and contemporary dynamics of Zoroastrian communities, gaining valuable insights into their culture and heritage.
Who Can Apply: Current Undergraduate and Postgraduate students, as well as graduates.
Fees: No tuition fees; a £80 registration fee applies for successful applicants.
Bursaries: Funding of up to £800 is available to assist with travel and accommodation costs.
Dates: 30ᵗʰ June – 4ᵗʰ July 2025.
Location: SOAS University of London.
Deadline: 11.59 pm, 12ᵗʰ March 2025.
Spaces are limited, so don’t miss this opportunity to broaden your horizons and gain a deeper understanding of a living tradition. To find out how to apply, please visit our website.
Co-organised by the SOAS Shapoorji Pallonji Institute of Zoroastrian Studies and the Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture of the University of Irvine, California, this summer school is a great opportunity for those students who take an interest in anthropology, art history, archaeology, philosophy, religions, language, cultures and history. It provides an opportunity to meet other students passionate about Zoroastrianism and to network with leading academics in the field.
Orientalia Antiqua et Novais a new pluridisciplinary, independent academic journal devoted to the Orient in a broad sense, encompassing a wide geographical area of investigation, substantially coextensive to the empire of Alexander the Great at its height or, later on, to the regions which at one point or another in history have found themselves included in the spheres of civilisation of either Islam or Byzantium. Its ambition is to propose a different look – made in particular of appropriate distancing and understanding vis-à-vis the perceptions and identities of local actors – at both the ancient and modern history of the Middle East and Central Asia including, but not limited to, archaeology, art history, religion, philosophy and literature, and at the current regional developments in international relations, culture and society. One volume of the journal is published annually (the first annual volume of the review is expected to be published in 2024). All contributions are subject to peer-review.
Mysticism, Comparative Religion, and Christian Relations with Other Faiths:
R.C. Zaehner (1913-1974) on Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Islam
Convenors: Fitzroy Morrissey (Pembroke), Msgr. Michael Nazir-Ali (St Edmund Hall), Anthony O’Mahony (Blackfriars)
This seminar series marks the 50th anniversary of the death of R.C. Zaehner (1913-1974), Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics and Fellow of All Souls (1952-1974), British agent in Tehran, Catholic convert, and a prolific and controversial writer on mystical experience, comparative religion, and the Christian encounter with other faiths. This series will explore Zaehner’s work and its legacy. Lectures will take place (unless indicated) on Thursdays at 4pm in Lecture Room 1 of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. They will also be streamed online.
In 614 CE, the armies of Sasanid Persia shocked the Eastern Roman Empire when they besieged and captured Jerusalem, taking a large swath of its population into captivity along with the city’s patriarch and the famed relic of the True Cross. This astounding Persian victory over Christian Jerusalem was a key episode in the last war between Rome and Persia in 602–628 CE and occurred at the high tide of Persian advances into the Roman territories in Asia Minor, the Levant, and Egypt. Among those taken captive was a certain Strategius, a monk of Mar Saba, who subsequently took it upon himself to compose a homily recounting the events leading up to the Persian siege of the Holy City and its aftermath.
Strategius presents his pious and harrowing account as that of an eyewitness to many of the events he recounts. For events he did not himself witness, he purports to rely on contemporary informants who did, making his treatise a source with few parallels in late antiquity. Although Strategius’s original account in Greek is lost, it survives via later translations into Georgian and Christian Arabic, two languages that attained prominence in the monasteries of Palestine during the Islamic period. This volume provides, for the first time, a complete side-by-side English translation of both the Georgian and the Arabic recensions.
This volume highlights the excellent, wide-ranging work of a diverse collection of Iranian archaeologists, the new voices in Iranian archaeology. Archaeology in Iran has developed in lockstep with the discipline of archaeology itself, in part due to the colonial endeavors that provided impetus for Europeans to travel to distant lands and extract antiquities and other commodities. But centuries before western archaeologists broke ground on excavations in the lands that would in 1935 be called Iran, a deep and meaningful engagement with and reverence for the past was a thread running through Iranian culture since antiquity. For millennia, the residents and rulers of ancient Iranian lands have admired, interacted with, inscribed, invented stories about, and imitated the visible, often ruined, monuments of their ancestors that dotted the landscape
For over 400 years, the Sasanian Empire was one of late antiquity’s most powerful empires. Zoroastrian religious specialists came up with a system to order its complex society. By looking at numerous primary sources, this volume reconstructs that process in the context of Sasanian social and economic history and examines its afterlife in Zoroastrian texts.
This book examines the Zoroastrian community in the late Qajar and early Pahlavi period beyond the borders of Iran to trace this Parsi-Persian relationship. A major theme is the increase in philanthropy directed to the Zoroastrians of Iran by the Parsis and the involvement of the British in encouraging Parsi feelings of patriotism towards Iran. The book shows that not only were Parsis affected by events taking place in Iran, they also contributed to the broader change in attitudes towards Zoroastrians in that country.
Description
Buhler’s book will be launched at an event in SOAS. For more information, see this link.
