Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Study of Religions

  • Religion in the Achaemenid Persian Empire

    Edelman, Diana, Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley &  Philippe Guillaume (eds.). 2016. Religion in the Achaemenid Persian Empire (Orientalische Religionen in der Antike 17). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

    The Achaemenid Persian imperial rulers have long been held to have exercised a policy of religious tolerance within their widespread provinces and among their dependencies. The fourteen articles in this volume explore aspects of the dynamic interaction between the imperial and the local levels that impacted primarily on local religious practices. Some of the articles deal with emerging forms of Judaism under Achaemenid hegemony, others with Achaemenid religion, royal ideology, and political policy toward religion. Others discuss aspects of Phoenician religion and changes to Egyptian religious practice while another addresses the presence of mixed religious practices in Phrygia, as indicated by seal imagery. Together, they indicate that tolerance was part of political expediency rather than a universal policy derived from religious conviction.

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  • Itineraries on the edges of Iran

    Pellò, Stefano (ed.). 2016. Borders: Itineraries on the edges of Iran (Eurasiatica 5). Edizioni Ca’ Foscari.

    This collection of essays, which is presented here as the fifth issue of a recently reborn project significantly called Eurasiatica, was first imagined as a Venetian safīna (or better safiné), proudly invoking the truly cosmopolitan world of connections of a faded Adriatic koine extending to the Bosphorus. It now stands as the first volume of this new Eurasiatica entirely devoted to the vast territories of Iranian culture, which we aim at understanding in the widest sense possible – extending without interruption over the layered spaces of Ērān ud Anērān, to play with a sometimes abused Middle Persian expression – and of course including what is now usually called in English the ‘Persianate’, in an open chronological perspective.

    This fascinating volume is available as a PDF from the above link.

  • Vermin and poison in Zoroastrian thought

    Lincoln, Bruce. 2015. Toward a more materialistic ethics: Vermin and poison in Zoroastrian thought. Studia Iranica 44(1). 83–98.

    Absent from the Older Avesta, vermin and poison first appear in a few verses of the Younger Avesta, whose authors misinterpreted Yasna 34.5c (where they mistook adjectival xrafstra- for a substantive) and Yasna 49.11c (whose ‘evil foods’ [akāiš xvarəθāiš] they took to be poison [viša-]). The Pahlavi texts take the argument further, developing a narrative in which these creatures and substances become prime weapons of Ahriman in his assault on Ohrmazd’s Good Creation. Speculation along these lines introduced novel understandings of evil as a lethal substance, rather than a destructive disposition or spirit, moving questions of morality from metaphysics to physics.

  • Zoroastrianism in the Levant

    Abouzayd, Shafiq (ed.). 2014. Zoroastrianism in the Levant: Proceedings of conferences held in 2010 & 2012. ARAM 26(1).

    Table of contents:

    Patricia Crone: “Pre-existence in Iran: “Zoroastrians, ex-Christians Mu‘tazilites, and Jews on the human acquisition of bodies”

    Oktor Skjærvø & Yaakov Elman: “Concepts of pollution in late Sasanian Iran. Does pollution need stairs, and dose it fill space?”

    Maria Macuch: “The case against Mār Abā, the Catholicos, in the light of Sasanian law”

    Sara Kuehn: “The dragon fighter: The influence of Zoroastrian ideas on Judaeo-Christian and Islamic iconography”

    Geoffrey Herman: “Like a slave before his master: A Persian gesture of deference in Sasanian, Jewish, and Christian sources”

    Michał Gawlikowski: “Zoroastrian echoes in the Mithraeum at Hawarte, Syria”

    Vicente Dobroruka: “Zoroastrian apocalyptic and Hellenistic political propaganda”

    Dan D.Y. Shapira: “Pahlavi Fire, Bundahishn 18”

    Matteo Compareti: “The representation of Zoroastrian divinities in late Sasanian art and their description according to Avestan literature”

    Bahman Moradian: “The day of Mihr, the month of Mihr and the ceremony of Mihrized in Yazd”

    Ezio Albrile: “Hypnotica Iranica: Zoroastrian ecstasy in the West”

    Andrew D. Magnusson: “On the origins of the prophet Muhammad’s charter to the family of Salman Al-Farisi”

    Predrag Bukovec: “The soul’s judgement in Mandaeism: Iranian influences on Mandaean afterlife”

    Daphna Arbel: “On human’s elevation, hubris, and fall from glory. Traditions of Yima/Jamshid and Enochmetatron – an indirect cultural dialogue?”

    Vicente Dobroruka: “The order of metals in Daniel 2 and in Persian apocalyptic”

    Myriam Wissa: “Pre-Islamic topos in Dhu’l-Nūn Al-Misrī’s teaching: A re-assessment of the Egyptian roots of the knowledge of the name of god and their interaction with Zoroastrianism in the Achaemenid period ”

    David H. Sick: “The choice of Xerxes: A Zoroastrian interpretation of Herodotus 7.12-18”

  • Forgotten religions in the Middle East

    We rarely introduce non academic books. The following volume, however, is too close to our interests to be ignored:

    Russell, Gerard. 2015. Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms. Simon & Schuster UK.

    Despite its reputation for religious intolerance, the Middle East has long sheltered many distinctive and strange faiths: one regards the Greek prophets as incarnations of God, another reveres Lucifer in the form of a peacock, and yet another believes that their followers are reincarnated beings who have existed in various forms for thousands of years. These religions represent the last vestiges of the magnificent civilizations in ancient history: Persia, Babylon, Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. Their followers have learned how to survive foreign attacks and the perils of assimilation. But today, with the Middle East in turmoil, they face greater challenges than ever before.
    For more on the book, see its website. William Dalrymple has reviewed it for the Guardian.

  • SOAS: Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion 2016

    Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mani.jpg

    The 2016 Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion will be delivered by Iain Gardner, University of Sydney.  The lectures are:

    1. Mani’s Background and Early Life: Who was He and What did He Think He was Doing?
    2. Mani’s Career as the ‘Apostle of Jesus Christ’: His Missions and the Community he Founded
    3. Mani’s Death: Inter-Religious Conflict in Early Sasanian Iran and the Memory of the Apostle

    For more information, see  Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion: SOAS.

  • Incense in the Zoroastrian Rituals

    A pilgrim lays offerings of candles and incense at the Zoroastrian mountain shrine at Chak Chak (Pir-e Sabz), during the annual pilgrimage, Yazd, Iran, 16th June 1994. Photo © Kaveh Kazemi
    A pilgrim lays offerings of candles and incense at the Zoroastrian mountain shrine at Chak Chak (Pir-e Sabz), during the annual pilgrimage, Yazd, Iran, 16th June 1994. Photo © Kaveh Kazemi

    Workshop: Trade Going Up in Smoke? Contact and Exchange in Incense Practices — The Southern Levant as Case Study

    Käte-Hamburger-Kolleg “Dynamics in the History of Religions Betwenn Asia and Europe”

    14-15 June 2016, Bochum, Germany

    Götz König (Berlin): “The Use of Incense in the Zoroastrian Rituals and its Eschatological Meaning”

    Rüdiger Schmitt (Münster): “Incense Practice in the Family and Household Religion of the Levant in the Iron Age”

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  • Les origines du dualisme mazdéen

    Kellens, Jean. 2015. Les origines du dualisme mazdéen. In Jourdan Fabienne  & Anca Vasiliu (eds.), Dualismes: Doctrines religieuses et traditions philosophiques (χώρα Hors-série/2015), 21–29.

    The discussions about the origin of mazdean dualism are concentrated upon the interpretation of the Gathic stanza Y30.3 which opposes two mental powers called mainiiu and usually translated by «spirit». The divergence of the understandings led to a controversy on the nature of this dualistic opposition : is it philosophical, cosmic or religious? Do these various distinctions remain relevant now we know that this stanza is not a piece of a sermon, but of a liturgical recitative?

  • The concept of Iran

    Sasanian SilkThe Concept of Iran in Zoroastrian and Other Traditions

    Professor François de Blois (AHRC Research Fellow, UCL)

    Date: 21 April 2016Time: 6:00 PM
    Finishes: 21 April 2016Time: 8:00 PM
    Venue: Russell Square: College Buildings
    Room: Khalili Lecture Theatre

    Series: Dastur Dr Sohrab Hormasji Kutar Memorial Lecture Series

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  • Iranian Reception of Islam

    Crone, Patricia. 2016. The Iranian reception of Islam: The non-traditionalist strands (Islamic History and Civilization 130). Collected Studies in Three Volumes. Vol. 2 edited by Hanna Siurua. Leiden; Boston: Brill.

    Patricia Crone’s Collected Studies in Three Volumes brings together a number of her published, unpublished, and revised writings on Near Eastern and Islamic history, arranged around three distinct but interconnected themes. Volume 2, The Iranian Reception of Islam: The Non-Traditionalist Strands, examines the reception of pre-Islamic legacies in Islam, above all that of the Iranians. Volume 1, The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters, pursues the reconstruction of the religious environment in which Islam arose and develops an intertextual approach to studying the Qurʾānic religious milieu. Volume 3, Islam, the Ancient Near East and Varieties of Godlessness, places the rise of Islam in the context of the ancient Near East and investigates sceptical and subversive ideas in the Islamic world.

    ToC:

    • 1. Kavād’s heresy and Mazdak’s revolt
    • 2. Zoroastrian communism
    • 3. Khurramīs
    • 4. Muqannaʿ
    • 5. Abū Tammām on the Mubayyiḍa
    • 6. The Muqannaʿ narrative in the Tārīkhnāma: Part I, Introduction, edition and translation
    • 7. The Muqannaʿ narrative in the Tārīkhnāma: Part II, Commentary and analysis
    • 8. Al-Jāḥiẓ on aṣḥāb al-jahālāt and the Jahmiyya
    • 9. Buddhism as ancient Iranian paganism
    • 10. A new text on Ismailism at the Samanid court
    • 11. What was al-Fārābī’s ‘imamic’ constitution?
    • 12. Al-Fārābī’s imperfect constitutions
    • 13. Pre-existence in Iran: Zoroastrians, ex-Christian Muʿtazilites, and Jews on the human acquisition of bodies
    • List of Patricia Crone’s publications

    Patricia Crone (1945-2015), Ph.D. (1974), School of Oriental and African Studies, was Professor Emerita at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Her numerous publications include Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987); Pre-Industrial Societies (1989); Medieval Islamic Political Thought (2004); and The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran (2012).

    Hanna Siurua (BA, School of Oriental and African Studies; MA, University of Sussex) is a professional editor based in Chicago. She specialises in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies and has edited numerous books and articles in these as well as other fields.