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.

Categories
Articles

Monotheism the Zoroastrian way

Hintze, Almut. 2014. Monotheism the Zoroastrian Way. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 24(2). 225–249.

Read the article here. Abstract:

This article examines seemingly monotheistic, polytheistic and dualistic features of Zoroastrianism from the point of view of the Zoroastrian creation myth. Exploring the personality of the principal deity, Ahura Mazdā, the origin of the spiritual and material worlds and the worship of the Yazatas, it is argued that Zoroastrianism has its own particular form of monotheism.

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Events

Communication in the Achaemenid Empire

The second international Summer School on Communication in the Achaemenid Empire: Achaemenid Elamite, Bisotun and the Persepolis Archive will be taking place at the Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia on 12–21 May 2014.

1. 4 days on Bisotun (1 day repetition of grammar, 3 days reading)
2. 4 days Persepolis Fortification Archive and Achaemenid culture
Every day 15–18 by Wouter Henkelman

3. 3 days Old Persian Inscription of Bisotun
13–15 by M. Jaafari-Dehaghi

Application deadline is May 5, 2014. For more Information please contact: Dr Jaafari-Dehaghi.

Categories
Online resources

Digitised copy of Shahnameh

A digitised copy of a Shahnameh dated 614 H./1217 and held at the Italian National Library in Florence is now available online.

Access the digitised version here, or read more about the manuscript here.

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Events

Public lecture I

Persepolis1. Mythical kings, empire and multiculturalism: The case of the Achaemenids

The Achaemenids (550–330 BCE) ruled over a vast and multicultural empire, encompassing numerous indigenous and conquered traditions. How did these various groups co-exist in the administration of the empire and influence Achaemenid ideals of kingship? This lecture will explore relevant Zoroastrian topoi and examine their afterlife in the Achaemenid era.

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

Categories
Books

The new Muslims of post-conquest Iran

Savant, Sarah Bowen. 2013. The new Muslims of post-conquest Iran: tradition, memory and conversion (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract:

How do converts to a religion come to feel an attachment to it? The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran answers this important question for Iran by focusing on the role of memory and its revision and erasure in the ninth to eleventh centuries. During this period, the descendants of the Persian imperial, religious and historiographical traditions not only wrote themselves into starkly different early Arabic and Islamic accounts of the past but also systematically suppressed much knowledge about pre-Islamic history. The result was both a new ‘Persian’ ethnic identity and the pairing of Islam with other loyalties and affiliations, including family, locale and sect. This pioneering study examines revisions to memory in a wide range of cases, from Iran’s imperial and administrative heritage to the Prophet Muhammad’s stalwart Persian companion, Salman al-Farisi, and to memory of Iranian scholars, soldiers and rulers in the mid-seventh century.

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Books

King and court

Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. 2013. King and court in ancient Persia 559 to 331 BCE. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Abstract:

The first Persian Empire (559-331 BCE) was the biggest land empire the world had seen, and seated at the heart of its vast dominions, in the south of modern-day Iran, was the person of the Great King. Immortalized in Greek literature as despotic tyrants, a new vision of Persian monarchy is emerging from Iranian, and other, sources (literary, visual, and archaeological), which show the Kings in a very different light. Inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and their heirs present an image of Persian rulers as liberators, peace-makers, valiant warriors, righteous god-fearing judges, and law-makers.

Around them the Kings established lavish and sophisticated courts, the centres of political decision-making and cultural achievements in which the image of monarchy was endorsed and advanced by an almost theatrical display of grandeur and power.

This book explores the representation of Persian monarchy and the court of the Achaemenid Great Kings from the point of view of the ancient Iranians themselves and through the sometimes distorted prism of Classical authors.

Categories
Books

Empire, authority, and autonomy

Dusinberre, Elspeth. 2013. Empire, authority, and autonomy in Achaemenid Anatolia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract:

The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BCE) was a vast and complex sociopolitical structure that encompassed much of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan and included two dozen distinct peoples who spoke different languages, worshipped different deities, lived in different environments and had widely differing social customs. This book offers a radical new approach to understanding the Achaemenid Persian Empire and imperialism more generally. Through a wide array of textual, visual and archaeological material, Elspeth R. M. Dusinberre shows how the rulers of the empire constructed a system flexible enough to provide for the needs of different peoples within the confines of a single imperial authority and highlights the variability in response. This book examines the dynamic tensions between authority and autonomy across the empire, providing a valuable new way of considering imperial structure and development.

Categories
Articles

La terminologie normative

Azarnouche, Samra. 2013. La terminologie normative de l’enseignement zoroastrien. Studia Iranica 42(2). 163–194.

The abstract and the article are available here.

Since orality holds a prominent role in the religious culture of Zoroastrianism, we are not surprised to find direct allusions to this means of transmission within the textual corpus itself (liturgical and theological texts). Unfortunately not much is known about the teaching methods that teachers employed to train their disciples in priesthood. The sole exception lies in a few recurring expressions — around ten — that the Zoroastrian literature in Middle Persian/Pahlavi has handed down to us. Among this normative terminology that primarily relates to the mnemonic learning of sacred texts (hymns and prayers of the Avesta), four technical terms will be discussed here: ōšmurišn, dranjišn, warm kardan and xwastan. As this semantic analysis will show, these terms describe various stages of recalling the chapters of a prayer, recitation and memorization practices, and finally the achievement of a uniform recitation.

Categories
Events

Procopius’ Persian tales

Procopius’ Persian Tales: entertainment, history or morality fable?

Geoffrey Greatrex (Ottawa) will consider the opening chapters of the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea’s Persian Wars, in which he introduces his theme, the wars fought between the Romans and Sasanian Persians in the sixth century A.D. He recounts a series of intriguing stories about the Persian court and Persian history in the fifth and early sixth centuries. The puzzle remains as to how seriously these tales should be taken…

Date & time: 25 April 2014; 17:30
Location: AIIT, Cambridge