Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Islam

  • Ancient Iran and Islamic Identity

    Mozaffari, Ali. 2014. Forming national identity in Iran: The idea of homeland derived from ancient Persian and Islamic imaginations of place. London: I.B. Tauris.

    Modern Iran is a country with two significant but competing discourses of national identity, one stemming from ancient pre-Islamic customs and mythology, the other from Islamic Shi’i practices and beliefs. At one time co-existing and often mutually reinforcing, in more modern times they have been appropriated by intellectuals and the state who have drawn upon their narratives and traditions to support and authenticate their ideologies. The result has been an often-confused notion of identity in Iran. In this essential work, Ali Mozaffari explores the complex processes involved in the formation of Iranian national identity. He lays particular stress upon the importance of place, for it is through the concept of place that collective national identity and ideas of homeland are expressed and disseminated. The author reveals the ways in which homeland is conceived both through designated permanent sites and ritual performance, illustrating his arguments through an analysis of the ancient Achaemenid capital of Persepolis and the Shi’i rituals of Moharram.

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  • The comprehensive history of Iran

    Mousavi-Bojnourdi, Kazem (General Editor). 2015. The comprehensive history of Iran. 20. Vols. Tehran: The Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia.

    The Comprehensive History of Iran, a multi-volume survey of Iranian history in Persian language is published by The Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia (CGIE). The twenty volumes cover the history and historical geography, politic, culture and arts of the greater Iran, including all territories inhabited by or staying under the cultural influence of peoples of Iranian descent , from prehistoric times up to the Qajar dynasty. Many aspects of the religious, philosophical, economic, scientific, and artistic elements in Iranian civilization are studied in this series.

    For more information, see the official website and the list of the contributors and the detailed Table of Contents (all in Persian).

    The series consists of 20 volumes: (more…)

  • The Sanskrit, Syriac and Persian sources in the comprehensive book of Rhazes

    Kahl, Oliver. 2015. The Sanskrit, Syriac and Persian sources in the comprehensive book of Rhazes. Brill.

    This work offers a critical analysis of the Sanskrit, Syriac and Persian sources in Rhazes’ (d. 925 CE) Comprehensive Book (or al-Kitāb al-Ḥāwī), a hugely famous and highly unusual medico-pharmaceutical encyclopedia originally written in Arabic. All text material appears in full Arabic with English translations throughout, whilst the traceable Indian fragments are represented here, for the first time, in both the original Sanskrit and corresponding English translations. The philological core of the book is framed by a detailed introductory study on the transmission of Indian, Syrian and Iranian medicine and pharmacy to the Arabs, and by extensive bilingual glossaries of relevant Arabic and Sanskrit terms as well as Latin botanical identifications.

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  • Women, Islam, and Abbasid identity

    El Cheikh, Nadia Maria. 2015. Women, Islam, and Abbasid identity.
    Harvard University Press.

    When the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad dynasty in 750 CE, an important element in legitimizing their new-won authority involved defining themselves in the eyes of their Islamic subjects. Nadia Maria El Cheikh shows that ideas about women were central to the process by which the Abbasid Caliphate, which ushered in Islam’s Golden Age, achieved self-definition.

  • The chronology of early Islam

    Wright Lecture Series

    The Chronology of Early Islam

    Prof. François de Blois

    The calendar and the system of timekeeping in Central Arabia at the beginning of Islamic history are discussed extensively in Arabic religious and scientific literature. My paper is an attempt, on the one hand, to confront these data with contemporaneous epigraphic and historic material and, on the other, to assess the arithmetical and astronomical plausibility of the data. This in turn sheds light on the problem of the chronology of early Islam and the reliability or otherwise of the sīra and maghāzī literature.

  • Digital humanities and text re-use

    The concept of text re-use in early Islamic historiography was first brought to my attention by François de Blois, whose courses were always so much more than just an introduction to a language such as Middle Persian. Recently, it has been Sarah Savant, who has drawn attention to text re-use and its application in the study of early Islamic literature. And now there is this very exciting Hackathon taking place in Göttingen in July 2015:

    Digital Humanities Hackathon on Text Re-Use

    ‘Don’t leave your data problems at home!’

    The Göttingen Centre for Digital Humanities will host a Hackathon targeted at students and researchers with a humanities background who wish to improve their computer skills by working with their own data-set. Rather than teaching everything there is to know about algorithms, the Hackathon will assist participants with their specific data-related problem, so that they can take away the knowledge needed to tackle the issue(s) at hand. The focus of this Hackathon is automatic text re-use detection and aims at engaging participants in intensive collaboration. Participants will be introduced to technologies representing the state of the art in the field and shown the potential of text re-use detection. Participants will also be able to equip themselves with the necessary knowledge to make sense of the output generated by algorithms detecting text re-use, and will gain an understanding of which algorithms best fit certain types of textual data. Finally, participants will be introduced to some text re-use visualisations.

  • Lecture: Zoroastrian apocalyptic texts

    Zoroastrian apocalyptic texts as a historical source of early Islamic Iran

    A lecture by Domenico Agostini

    Date: 28 April 2015
    Location: Iran Forum, University of Tel Aviv

  • Workshop: Iran and Islam

    Iran and Islam: Early Encounters. Formation of Islam 
and Transformation of Iranian Religious Traditions

    12 March 2015 09:00–13 March 2015 18:00, Workshop Room: FNO 02/ 40-46

    Contact: Kianoosh Rezania

    For more information, see the workshop schedule

    Additional Information:
    There is no doubt that the contact of Islam with other religions in the very homeland of Islam as well as in the conquered lands played a significant role in its formation. In contrast, the evolving Islam must have challenged the existing religions, transformed them or stimulated them to do so. A great dynamic of renovation and repositioning of religious traditions can be expected in the first centuries of Islam. Therefore, a more in-depth study of this vibrant dynamic of mutual exchange between Islamic and especially Iranian religious traditions is a desideratum which our symposium intends to address.

    This workshop will be held in English.

  • Islamic cultures, Islamic contexts

    Sadeghi, Behnam, Asad Ahmed, Adam Silverstein & Robert Hoyland (eds.) 2014. Islamic cultures, Islamic contexts: Essays in honor of Professor Patricia Crone. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

    This volume brings together articles on various aspects of the intellectual and social histories of Islamicate societies and of the traditions and contexts that contributed to their formation and evolution. Written by leading scholars who span three generations and
    who cover such diverse fields as Late Antique Studies, Islamic Studies, Classics, and Jewish Studies, the volume is a testament to the breadth and to the sustained, deep impact of the corpus of the honoree, Professor Patricia Crone.

    For more information, see the publisher’s website.

  • Arabic documents from early Islamic Khurasan

    Khan, Geoffrey. 2014. Arabic documents from early Islamic Khurasan (Einstein Lectures in Islamic Studies 3). Berlin.