Categories
Articles

Der Zoroastrismus als iranische Religion

Stausberg, Michael. 2011. Der Zoroastrismus als iranische Religion und die Semantik von ‚Iran’ in der zoroastrischen Religionsgeschichte. Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 63(4). 331–331.

Read the article here or here.

Zoroastrianism, one of the three recognized religious minorities in the Islamic Republic, can claim a specific linkage with Iran since the Avestan Vendidād and its other primary religious documents were written in Iranian languages and its history has for the most part unfolded in Iran (in a larger geographical sense). The term Aryan is used in inscriptions by the Achaemenian king Darius I as a way to gloss the name of the deity Ahura Mazdā (the ‘God of the Aryans’). In the Sasanian period, Iran became the name of the empire. Zoroastrian literature written under Islamic rule, reaffirms the idea of a unity between kingship and (Zoroastrian) religion, but transposes its realization into the eschatological future. After centuries of decline and discrimination, twentieth-century modernization entailed the prospect of societal reintegration for Zoroastrians; an unachieved hope under the Pahlavis, this prospect has become even more remote under the political conditions imposed by the Islamic Republic, where Zoroastrians now use the vocabulary of martyrdom to express their commitment to their homeland.

Categories
Books

Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians

Herman, Geoffrey (ed.). 2014. Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians: Religious dynamics in a Sasanian context (Judaism in Context 17). Gorgias Press.

For the table of contents and more info, see here.

Categories
Events

Secrecy and canonisation

Bahari Lecture Series: “Sasanian Iran in the Context of Late Antiquity”

20 May (Week 4)
Arash Zeini (University of St Andrews):
Secrecy and canonisation in Sasanian Iran: A scholastic reading of the Zand

Tuesday at 5pm
Ioannou Centre for Classical & Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles’, Oxford (OCLA)

Categories
Events

Bahari lecture series

Sasanian Iran in the Context of Late Antiquity

Tuesdays of Weeks 2–9 of Trinity Term 2014 at 5pm
Ioannou Centre for Classical & Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles’

The lectures are convened by Professor Touraj Daryaee and Professor Edmund Herzig and organised by the Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity (OCLA). The full programme is here.

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Events

Identity, independence & interdependence

A Workshop in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
Monday 26 May 2014, 10 am to 5 pm
Sydney Smith Lecture Theatre, Doorway 1, Old Medical School

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones will talk about The rhetoric of empire in ancient Iran: ‘Better together’.

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Events

Public lecture III

03_J2_YH353. The return of the Avesta

It has been argued that the adoption of the Zoroastrian religious world view by the Sasanians was instrumental in maintaining the nobility’s loyalty to the goals of the empire. Most arguments in favour of this view, however, derive from examinations of source material dating from the early Islamic era. This lecture will revisit the pertinent arguments and further discuss previously unexplored textual material.

Speaker: Arash Zeini
Where: University of St Andrews, School of Classics, Swallowgate, S11.
When: 14 May 2014, 17:30

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Events

The Sasanian Empire as a garden

The Sasanian Empire as a garden: The limits of Iranshahr

Speaker: Touraj Daryaee (University of California, Irvine)
Where: The British Institute of Persian Studies, London
When: 22 May 2014

Poster at the BIPS.

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Events

Public lecture II

02_Ardashir_investiture2. The Sasanian Empire and religious authority: The case of Zoroastrianism

As one of the major political and economic powers in the region, the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE) elevated Zoroastrianism to the dominant religious and cultural force within its polity, bringing to the foreground the question of the interaction between religion and sovereignty in the Sasanian era. By providing an historical overview this lecture highlights the dynamics between political and religious authority during the Sasanian era.

Speaker: Arash Zeini
Where: University of St Andrews, School of Classics, Swallowgate, S11.
When: 07 May 2014, 17:30

Categories
Events

Xerxes’ cabinet of curiosities

Xerxes’ cabinet of curiosities: Exotic animals and royal authority in Achaemenid Iran

Speaker: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (University of Edinburgh)
Where: The British Institute of Persian Studies, London
When: 18 June 2014

Poster at the BIPS.

Categories
Articles

Zoroastrian exegetical parables

A thorough examination of the structure of one of the parables in the ŠGW. Sam’s comparison with examples from the Rabbinic literature is illuminating.

Thrope, Samuel. 2013. Zoroastrian exegetical parables in the Škand Gumānīg Wizār. Iran and the Caucasus 17. 253-274.

Read the article here. Abstract:

The parable has received little attention as a form in Zoroastrian Pahlavi literature. Taking a first step to correct this deficit, this article examines an extended parable that appears in the Škand Gumānīg Wizār, the ninth century theological and political treatise. The parable likens Ohramzd’s conflict with Ahriman and his creation of the world to a gardener’s attempt to keep hungry vermin from his garden by means of a trap. Borrowing tools developed in the study of rabbinic exegetical parables and poetics, the article argues that the garden parable not only aims to make a theological point as part of its immediate context in the Škand Gumānīg Wizār, but also it itself is an interpretation of the Zoroastrian account of creation. The article shows how the parable reinterprets inconsistencies and contradictions in that cosmogony, relating to the account of creation just as rabbinic parables relate to the gaps in canonical, biblical narratives.