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Zoroastrian theories on earthquakes

Azarnouche, Samra. 2024. Tectonique des mythes. Croyances et théories zoroastriennes sur le tremblement de terre. Revue de l’histoire des religions 241(2). 275–297.

Anselm Kiefer, Le Croissant fertile, 2010

While the earthquake is primarily a cosmogonic act provoked by the intrusion of Evil into Ohrmazd’s world, the Zoroastrian accounts describing the phenomenon also bear witness to a striking confluence of myth, mechanistic theories and biological analogies. The tradition conveyed by the texts (Bundahišn 21e, Dēnkard III.93 and Dādestān ī Dēnīg 69) attributes the earthquake sometimes to the demon Čišmag and his atmospheric acolytes, sometimes to the sorcerer Frāsyāb, two figures who also have in common that they are associated with drought. Some episodes featuring them also include a mysterious appearance by Spandarmad, the Earth goddess. These elements indicate that the Zoroastrian aetiology of earthquakes was far more narratively complex than the texts handed down to us give us to understand.

Abstract

The above article is part of an issue dedicated to earthquakes:

Azarnouche, Samra, Muriel Debié & Vassa Kontouma (eds.). 2024. Quand la terre tremble: apprivoiser le choc des séismes dans les temps anciens. Revue de l’histoire des religions 241(2).

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Eschatologia Iranica I:

Rezania, Kianoosh. 2024. Eschatologia Iranica I: From Zoroastrian cosmos to Abbasid Madīnat al-Salām: A journey through utopia and heterotopia. Religions 15(10).

The history of imperial dynasties in West Asia is replete with examples of remarkable urban foundations. Two notable instances are the Sasanian Ardašīr-xwarrah and the Abbasid Madīnat al-Salām, which can be classified as cosmic cities or heterotopias. This article examines the utopian foundations of these heterotopias. To this end, it analyzes four religious and imperial spaces: the representation of the earth and sky in the Zoroastrian cosmography, Yima’s Vara according to the Avestan texts, Ardašīr-xwarrah, and finally, Madīnat al-Salām. This investigation aims to ascertain the extent to which the spatial characteristics of each of these spaces have been utilized in the production of the subsequent architectural forms. Similarly, it examines the development of the cosmological and eschatological paradise in relation to the Achaemenian and Sasanian royal gardens. The theoretical framework of this study is based on Michael Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, which has been further developed by Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space. The conceptual metaphor theory offers a cognitive linguistic foundation for elucidating the projections of utopias and heterotopias onto one another. To this end, the article focuses on the conceptual metaphor GOD IS A KING.

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Lost Turfan Fragments

Benkato, Adam. 2024. Lost Turfan fragments from the Nachlass of W.B. Henning. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, FirstView. 1–17.

During the Second World War, a number of manuscript fragments in Iranian languages from the Berlin Turfan collections were lost. Photographs of these fragments preserved in the Nachlass of Walter B. Henning bring to light their contents and fill gaps in the record of Turfan texts. These photographs are published here for the first time, together with a description of the fragments and their contents.

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Zoroastrian Esotericism

Zoroastrian Esotericism is a special issue of Religiographies, vol. 3, no. 1, edited by Mariano Errichiello, Daniel J. Sheffield, and Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina.

Table of contents

Editorial

New Perspectives on the Study of Esotericism and Zoroastrianism
Mariano Errichiello, SOAS University of London
Francesco Piraino, Giorgio Cini Foundation / Harvard Divinity School
Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, University of Oxford
[PDF] 1-6

Articles

The Mazdean Esoteric Dimension between Ritual and Theology
Antonio Panaino, University of Bologna
[PDF] 7-26

Exploring Zoroastrianism and Esotericism in the Context of Global Religious History
Moritz Maurer, Institut für Religionswissenschaft, Universität Heidelberg
[PDF] 27-43

Continue reading “Zoroastrian Esotericism”
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Domestic Slaves in Zoroastrianism

Foroutan, Kiyan. 2024. On the question of domestic slaves in late medieval and early modern Zoroastrianism. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, FirstView. 1–25.

This article collects and analyses passages about male and female domestic slaves in the Persian Rivāyats. The Rivāyats consist of correspondence between Iranian and Indian Zoroastrians (Parsis) from the late fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries ce. In these letters, Parsis sought the opinions of Iranian Zoroastrians on various doctrinal and ritual issues. The passages in question cover a range of subjects, including the issue of converting household slaves to Zoroastrianism, their participation in domestic religious ceremonies, the exposure of their dead bodies in the towers of silence, and marrying female slaves. These references to slaves challenge the conventional narrative that pre-modern Zoroastrians were oppressed, marginalized, and poor communities. This narrative has overshadowed these pieces of evidence and has caused them not to be studied seriously. This paper seeks to go beyond this traditional reconstruction by examining these texts based on their context. The passages reflect the actual socio-religious issues of Zoroastrians, especially Parsis, and demonstrate their participation in the slave-owning milieu of late medieval and early modern Gujarat and Iran rather than mere anachronistic elements or rhetorical tools reflecting a scholastic treatment of a defunct legal question.

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Contributions to Iranian Etymology II

Fattori, Marco. 2024. Contributions to Iranian Etymology II: Three Iranian Loanwords in Armenian and a Note on OIr. *abigna- ‘helper’. Iran and the Caucasus 28 (3), 289-300.

In this article the possible Iranian etymology of three hitherto unexplained Old Armenian words is discussed: Arm. aptak ‘slap, blow’ < Ir. *apitāka-, to be compared with Man.Parth. and MP abdāg ‘assailant’; Arm. žapawēn ‘hem, border’ compound of Parth. *žī(h), equivalent of NP zeh ‘string, hem, decoration’ + Arm. apawēn ‘cover, shelter, refuge’; Arm. xawsim ‘to speak’ from a metathetic form of MIr. *wā̆xs-, inchoative formation from the root *vac- ‘to speak’. Finally, Szemerényi’s convincing explanation of Arm. awgnem ‘to help’ and zawravign ‘aid, helper, defender’ as related to an OIr. noun *abigna- ‘helper’ attested in several anthroponyms (e.g. OP Bagābigna-) is reaffirmed and substantiated since it remained mostly unnoticed in the subsequent literature.

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Religious Conversion

Vol. 15, no. 2 of the open access journal Entangled Religions is a special issue dedicated to the question of Religious Conversion in a Religiously Plural World.

Religious conversion is a phenomenon that has intrigued scholars, theologians, and sociologists for centuries. As the conscious choice of a particular form of religion over another, it is eminently a form of religious contact. Religious conversion may be approached psychologically, sociologically, and conceptually. The contributions of this special issue show all three approaches and cover a wide array of geographical, social, and religious contexts.

Benedikt Römer has an article on Neo-Zoroastrianism, titled Reversion, Revival, Resistance: Framing Iranian Neo-Zoroastrian Religiosities

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Another bulla of Weh-Šāpur

Miri, Negin & Cyrus Nasrollahzadeh. 2023. Another bulla of Weh-Šāpur, Ērān- Spāhbed of Kust-i-Nēmrōz from the Treasury of Mostazafan Foundation’s Cultural Institution of Museums in Tehran. ISIMU 26: 145-155.

This paper introduces a newly-found Sasanian bulla that has two seal impressions, the major of which belongs to Wēh-šāpur, military chief or Ērān-spāhbed of kust-ī-nēmrōz or the south-southeast side of the Sasanian Empire during the reign of Ḵosrow I (539-579 AD). Since 2001 a number of spāhbed bullae have been identified and published. These significant objects confirmed the validity of historical narrations regarding quadripartition of military organization of the Sasanian Empire recorded in late and post-Sasanian literary sources. This sealing is part of a bullae collection kept in the treasury of Mostazafan Foundation’s Cultural Institution of Museums in Tehran and offers the fifth example of spāhbed Wēh-šābuhr seal impression so far known and published.

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The Kushan Pantheon and the Significance of the Kushan Goddess Nana

Cribb, Joe, Aman Ur Rahman & Pankaj Tandon. 2023. The Kushan pantheon and the significance of the Kushan goddess Nana, in the light of new numismatic evidence of iconography and identity. Journal Asiatique 311(2). 247–266.

Numismatic evidence has played a large role in the study of Kushan religion. The earliest assessments recognised the Iranian nature of Kushan religion, but later focus on elements of naming and iconography from other culture particularly Greece and India have obscured this early analysis. Recently found inscriptions and coins allow a reassessment re-establishing a clearer view of the nature of Kushan religion and its expression in coin designs, contemporary art and architecture. The opportunity presented by the discovery of new numismatic imagery of the goddess Nana allows a reappraisal of her place in the pantheon and a review of the current perspectives on Kushan religion.

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Painting Materials in the Sasanian City of Ardaxšīr Khwarrah

Amadori, Maria Letizia, Valeria Mengacci Pierfrancesco Callieri, Alireza Askari Chaverdi, Matteo Bartolucci, Negar Eftekhari, Alessia Andreotti and Parviz Holakooei. 2024. Integrated investigations of painting materials in the Sasanian city of Ardaxšīr Khwarrah, near Firuzabad (Southern Iran). Heritage 7, 1202-1220.

Ancient Ardaxšīr Khwarrah, today known as Shahr-e Gur, situated near the modern town of Firuzabad in Fars, Iran, holds historical significance as the inaugural capital city of the Sasanian Empire. During archaeological excavations conducted in 2005 by an Iranian–German team directed by Mas‘oud Azarnoush and Dietrich Huff, a mud-brick complex was uncovered, revealing a remarkably well-preserved stretch of wall painting and a polychrome painted floor. The discovery prompted the hypothesis of a potential funerary context dating back to the Sasanian period. Both the wall painting and painted floor have suffered extensive deterioration attributed to the environmental conditions of the archaeological site, which was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2020. To address the urgent need for preservation and further understanding of the site’s artistic and structural elements, an emergency diagnostic project was initiated. Non-invasive investigations were carried out on the wall and floor by optical digital microscopy and portable energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence. Additionally, representative minute samples underwent analysis through various techniques, including micro-X-ray fluorescence, polarised light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, micro-Raman spectroscopy, micro-Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and pyrolysis coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The palette of the floor and mural paintings were identified to contain red and yellow ochres, lead-based pigments, carbon black and bone white. The unexpected presence of Egyptian blue mixed with green earth was recognised in the green hues of the wall painting. The detection of protein material in both the wall painting and polychrome floor indicates the use of “a secco” technique, thereby shedding light on the artistic practices employed in Ardaxšīr Khwarrah.