Date: 26 November 2024 Time: 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm Venue: SOAS, Phillips Building Room: Djam Lecture Theatre Event type: Film screening followed by Q&A with the director & reception
“Derbent: What Persia Left Behind” is a comprehensive documentary that explores the unique history and archaeology of this UNESCO World Heritage Site. The documentary features exclusive footage shot in Derbent just before the Russo-Ukrainian war, along with interviews with renowned scholars who illuminate the rich yet often overlooked history of the fortifications. Funded by the Persian Heritage Foundation and the Soudavar Memorial Foundation, the film also highlights the critical condition of the Middle Persian (Pahlavi) inscriptions found in the region, the northernmost of their kind in the world. (More Information: Derbent Online.)
With Peter Groves & John Haldon 12 November 2024, at 5pm & on Zoom Levine Auditorium, Trinity College, University of Oxford
The transitions of the title are those in the life and intellectual development of one of the leading historians of late antiquity and Byzantium. Averil Cameron recounts her working-class origins in North Staffordshire and how she came to read Classics at Oxford and start her research at Glasgow University before moving to London and teaching at King’s College London. Later she was the head of Keble College Oxford at a time of change in the University and its colleges. She played a leading role in projects and organisations even as the flow of books and articles continued, in an array of publications that have been fundamental in shaping the disciplines of late antiquity and Byzantine studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The 2nd Berkeley Workshop on Middle Persian Documents and Sealings
This is the second workshop in a series that began in Spring 2023 with the idea of bringing together scholars around the world who were actively working on, or interested in working on Middle Persian documents and sealings. The workshop is organised by Adam Benkato (UC Berkeley) and Arash Zeini (University of Oxford).
To attend the workshop, which takes place on Zoom, register here. The programme is below.
This lecture offers an exploration of the complex history of the Zoroastrian community in Ahvaz, a city in the province of Khuzestan in Iran. Because of economic hardship and agricultural decline in Yazd, Zoroastrians started migrating there in the early 20th century. Earlier censuses from the 19th century, such as those by Hataria in 1854 and Houtum-Schindler in 1882, record no Zoroastrian presence in Ahvaz. The earliest mention of Zoroastrians in the city appears in the 1963 census, which was prepared for the National Zoroastrian Congress held in Kerman that same year. The Zoroastrian community in Ahvaz has so far found little, if any scholarly attention due to the dearth of documentation. However, as a result of new archival evidence from the Pouladi Collection, unearthed by the speakers in 2016, new data has emerged that throws light on the reasons for the migration from Yazd to Ahvaz. The new documents provide evidence that Zoroastrian settlements were established in the 1920s along the Karun River through the agricultural enterprise, the Mazdyasnān Company. This lecture examines how the Zoroastrian community of Ahvaz flourished in their new home, contributing to the prosperity of the region, but later, despite its successes, gradually declined. This development raises critical questions regarding the preservation of minority heritage in Iran.
‘A Spark of the Glimmer of the Original Light’: A Workshop on the Dēnkard as Literature, Theology, and Scholasticism 17-18 Oct, Wolfson College University of Oxford
Professor Samra Azarnouche (L’École Pratique des Hautes Études – Paris Sciences & Lettres) and Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina will be co-convening a workshop on the Dēnkard. Co-sponsored by EPHE, Paris and AMES, University of Oxford, this two-day Workshop on literature, theology, and scholasticism of the Zoroastrian community in the 9th century CE, is to be held on Thursday and Friday, 17–18 October 2024 in the Buttery at Wolfson College.
The Dēnkard, the towering achievement of Zoroastrian scholasticism in Late Antiquity and compiled in the 9th century CE, serves as a comprehensive compendium of Zoroastrian beliefs, practices, and doctrines. In its nine books, the Dēnkard, at 169,000 words, covers a staggering range of topics, including cosmology, ethics, rituals, jurisprudence, and the history of Zoroastrianism and its textual transmission. The work addresses various theological questions, offering explanations for the nature of good and evil, the existence of the spiritual world, and the role of humanity in the cosmic struggle between Ohrmazd, the god of light and order, and Ahrimen, the principle of darkness and chaos. Through its challenging rhetorical structures and hermeneutical interpretations, the Dēnkard provides unique insight into the dualistic Zoroastrian world-view and its influence on ancient and medieval Iranian society. As a crucial source of Zoroastrian thought and tradition, the Dēnkard not only informs contemporary practitioners but also scholars and researchers interested in the history of religion, Iranian studies, and comparative theology. Its significance lies in its preservation of Zoroastrian theology and its role in shaping the religious and cultural landscape of the pre-Islamic Iranian world.
The Workshop will be conducted based on pre-circulated papers which will explore the nature and character of a particular book of the Dēnkard, structural and intertextual connections between different books, and the broader questions of transmission and historical context. The workshop will feature a variety of distinguished scholars from the UK, continental Europe, and North America working on Zoroastrianism in Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period.
