Tag: Zoroastrianism

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Books

From Samarkand to Istanbul

Schiltz, Véronique (ed.). 2015. De Samarcande à Istanbul: étapes orientales. (Hommages à Pierre Chuvin 2). Paris: CNRS Éditions.
 Pierre Chuvin, the renomate scholar of hellenistic studies has devoted his academic life to the study of the Central Asian World in its most diverse aspects.
He founded and directed the French Institute for the Study of Central Asia (1993-1998), before taking the responsibility as the head of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies (2003-2008). Succeeding first collection of tributes dedicated to the world of Greek mythos to logos, this volume brings together contributions devoted to East Central Asian and Turkish studies. Their diversity is a reflection of the tireless curiosity, to whom they are dedicated. From Mausoleums of Samarkand to the Sublime Porte, from antiquity to modern times, from mythology to medicine, as well as the Poetry are very many aspects of a culture of extreme wealth, which are shown here.
Continue reading “From Samarkand to Istanbul”
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Articles

Rethinking Sasanian Iconoclasm

Shenkar, Michael. 2015. Rethinking Sasanian Iconoclasm. Journal of the American Oriental Society 135(3). 471–498.

This article presents a detailed reconsideration of the well-established and canonized theory of “Sasanian iconoclasm” postulated by Mary Boyce in 1975. The Sasanians did not develop any prohibition against anthropomorphic representations of the gods, and in the surviving Zoroastrian literature and inscriptions there is no evidence of either theological disputes over idols or of a deliberate eradication of them by the Persian kings. Sasanian cult was aniconic, but the historical and archaeological evidence clearly demonstrates that Sasanian visual culture was anything but iconoclastic. It seems that the Persian iconoclastic identity was constructed in the early Sasanian period as a response to the challenges posed by Christianity. By joining the common monotheistic discourse against idolatry, the Zoroastrian clergy adopted the conventions of the world in which they lived.
Attacks against “idols” and “idolatry” should be understood in the context of internal and external polemical discourse against beliefs deemed to be erroneous by the Zoroastrian priesthood.

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Articles

Adam & Eve in Zoroastrian and Manichaean Literature

Painting from Manafi al-Hayawan (The Useful Animals), depicting Adam and Eve. From Maragheh in Iran, 1294–99

Kiel, Yishai. 2015. Creation by Emission. Recreating Adam and Eve in the Babylonian Talmud in Light of Zoroastrian and Manichaean Literature. Journal of Jewish Studies 66(2). 295–316.

This study attempts to broaden the Judeo-Christian prism through which the rabbinic legends of Adam and Eve are frequently examined in scholarship, by offering a contextual and synoptic reading of Babylonian rabbinic traditions pertaining to the first human couple against the backdrop of the Zoroastrian and Manichaean creation myths. The findings demonstrate that, while some of the themes and motifs found in the Babylonian rabbinic tradition are continuous with the ancient Jewish and Christian heritage, others are absent from, or occupy a peripheral role in, ancient Jewish and Christian traditions and, at the same time, are reminiscent of Iranian mythology. The study posits that the syncretic tendencies that pervaded the Sasanian culture facilitated the incorporation of Zoroastrian and Manichaean themes into the Babylonian legends, which were in turn creatively repackaged and adapted to the rabbinic tradition and world-view.
The article is available for reading here.
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Books

Twelve Zoroastrian Treatises

Folio 4, codex K 29, written in Pahlavi with an interlinear translation in Persian. Photograph after Asmussen, 1968, p. 293. © Encyclopædia Iranica

Gheiby, Bijan. 2015. Twelve ancient treatises. Translation and Commentary. Bielefeld: Nemudar.

 The volume presents in 386 pages a collection of twelve Zoroastrian treatises together with their Persian translations and editorial explanations and commentaries. The edited texts are as follows:
  • Ayādgār ī Zarērān “Memorial of Zarēr”
  • Wizarišn ī čatrang  “Explanation of Chess”
  • Mādayān ī yōšt ī Friyān “The Book of Yōšt of the Friyān”
  • Māh ī Frawardīn rōz ī Hordād “The Sixth (Hōrdad) Day of the Mounth Frawardīn”
  • Abar Madan ī Wahrām ī Warzāwand “On the Coming of the Miraculous Wahrām”
  • Sūr saxwan “Banquet Speech”
  • Xweškārīh ī redagān “The Duty of Children”
  • Čim ī kustīg “Reasons for the Sacred Girdle”
  • Čim ī drōn “Reasons for the Sacred Portion”
  • Āfrīn ī [payγāmbar] Zardušt “A Blessing of Zarathustra”
  • Tohmag ošmārisn ī  Zardušt
  • Farox-nāma
About the Author:
Bijan Gheiby was born in Teheran in 1954. He studied media in Tehran and in Long Beach as well as Iranian Studies in Hamburg and Göttingen, where he received his doctorate. He is an independent researcher of Zoroastrianism and ancient Iranian Studies.

 

In Original:

غیبی، بیژن. ۲۰۱۵. دوازده متن باستانی. انتشارات نمودار: بیلفلد.

Ġeybi, Bižan. 2015. dawāzdah matn-e bāstāni. Nemudar: Bielefeld.

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Events

Sasanian law in its social context

The 2015 UCLA Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series will be delivered by Prof. Maria Macuch:

Sasanian law in its social context

November 9-18, 2015

Legal texts are among the more important sources for the reconstruction of the political and economic institutions, and cultural practices, of late antique Iran, as they considerably further our understanding of past social complexities that are decisively different than our own. This year’s Ehsan Yarshater Biennial Lectures shall provide a sweeping overview and detailed analysis of the principal fields of jurisprudence in Sasanian Iran (third to seventh centuries CE). The five lectures will be investigating the genesis of legal institutions that were instrumental in consolidating the social status of Sasanian élites, notably, the Zoroastrian clergy and the Iranian aristocracy.

As far as we know, the lectures are announced individually. The brochure for Prof. Macuch's lectures is available here: UCLA Yarshater Lectures 2015 Macuch

The Lectures:

    1. Legal Sources and Instruments of Law
      The opening lecture will provide an overview of the available legal material, dispersed in a great variety of sources, and discuss the many pitfalls Iranists encounter in reconstructing the Sasanian legal system.
    2. Kinship Ties and Fictive Alliances
      The second lecture examines questions pertaining to Family Law, in particular, the role of kinship ties that are of paramount importance in Sasanian jurisprudence. The lecture also elaborates on the significance of legal institutions within the context of marriage and succession.
    3. Property and Inheritance
      The third lecture explores the general concept of property, in particular,
      how it gave rise to complex categories crucial to preserving the possessions of affluent élites, while ensuring that proprietary rights were preserved from one generation to the next.
    4. Civil and Criminal Proceedings
      The fourth lecture reviews the judicial system, the foundation upon which the privileges of the élites were built, and the position of religious minorities, the Jews and Christians, within the framework of the judiciary.
    5. Sasanian Law and other Legal Systems
      The final lecture discusses the impact of Iranian law on other important legal systems of the Near East, be it Rabbinic and Nestorian-Christian, or be it Islamic and especially Shi’ite, law.
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Reviews

Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran

Zoroastrianism: modern Zoroastrian priest tending a temple fire. Image © Encyclopædia Britannica

Sheffield, Daniel. 2015. Review of Monica Ringer, Pious Citizens: Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2011). International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) 47(4). 833–835.

Pious Citizens trace ideas of “true” and “rational” religion in Western India and Iran between the years 1830 and 1940. Her story begins in the city of Bombay, where in the early 19th century traditional networks of Parsi authority were disrupted by the rise of merchant capital in the metropole and emigration away from older centers of communal hierarchy. This forms the backdrop for the beginning of the Zoroastrian reform movement, in which religious and social reform were linked.
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Books

Religion, History and Art of Ancient Iran

Farridnejad et al. Faszination Iran — Cover 2015Farridnejad, Shervin, Anke Joisten-Pruschke & Rika Gyselen (eds.). 2015. Faszination Iran. Beiträge zur Religion, Geschichte und Kunst des Alten Iran. Gedenkschrift für Klaus Schippmann. (Göttinger Orientforschungen. III. Reihe: Iranica, Neue Folge 13). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag.

This Memorial Volume is dedicated to one of the most prolific and renowned scholars in the field of Ancient Iranian Archaeology and History, the late Professor Klaus Schippmann (1924-2010), who held the chair of “Near Eastern Archaeology with special reference to Iran” at Georg-August University of Göttingen until his retirement in 1990.

The volume consists of eleven papers, written by some of the foremost scholars in the field of Iranian Studies as well as some of his lifetime friends and colleagues. The articles are essentially concerned with different aspects of Ancient Iranian Art, Archaeology, History, Numismatics and Religion, reflecting the scholarly interests of Klaus Schippmann. The volume is accompanied also by parts of his unpublished private diary (1959) from his Nachlass, reflecting his ideas, visions and memories of his excavations as well as one report of his last trip to his favourable archaeological site of taḫt-e soleymān (Iran), written by his personal tour leader. The book is illustrated by numerous plates.

This volume could be of interest for scholars and students of Ancient Iranian Art, Archaeology, History, Religion and other neighbour disciplines.

Table of Contents (PDF):
  • In Memoriam Klaus Schippmann
  • Anke Joisten-Pruschke: „Ich muss irgendwie sehen, dass es für mich einen Weg gibt Archäologie zu studieren“ – Klaus Schippmanns Tagebuch einer Reise in den Vorderen Orient (1959)
  • Oric Basirov: “Proselytisation” and “Exposure of the Dead”:
    Two Christian Calumnies Commonly raised against the Sasanians
  • Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis: “Observations on some coins of Persis”
  • Touraj Daryaee: “The Xwarrah and the Sēnmurv: Zoroastrian Iconography on Seventh Century Copper Coinage“
  • Shervin Farridnejad: “Das zoroastrische mār-nāme „Schlangenbuch“. Zur zoroastrischen Volksreligion und Ophiomantik”
  • Rika Gyselen: “Some Thoughts on Sasanian mgwh-Seals”
  • Bruno Jacobs: “Zur bildlichen Repräsentation iranischer Eliten
    im achämenidenzeitlichen Kleinasien”
  • Anke Joisten-Pruschke: “Feudalismus im Sasanidenreich?”
  • Wolfram Kleiss: “Hochterrassen – Zikkurati – Stufenpyramiden”
  • Karin Mosig-Walburg: “Herrscherpropaganda der Nachfolger Shapurs I. (Ohrmazd I. – Narse) – Ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von König und Adel im Sasanidenreich in der zweiten Hälfte des 3. Jh. n. Chr.”
  • Michael Shenkar: “Aspects of Iconography of Ahura Mazdā: Origins and Significance”
  • Dieter Weber: “Spätsasanidische Preislisten im frühislamischen Iran”
  • Hartmut Niemann: “Der Kreis schließt sich – Klaus Schippmanns letzte Reise zum ‘Takht’ “
Categories
Reviews

Review: The nativist prophets of early Islamic Iran

Dabiri, Ghazzal. 2015. Review essay: The nativist prophets of early Islamic Iran: Rural revolt and local Zoroastrianism. Journal of Persianate Studies 8. 115–121.

The bibliographic information for the book under review is:

Crone, Patricia. 2014. The nativist prophets of early Islamic Iran: Rural revolt and local Zoroastrianism. Cambridge University Press.

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Online resources

Study of religions, translation & Zoroastrianism

 

Directions in the Study of Religion: Daniel Sheffield.

Listen to Daniel Sheffield, Professor of History at the University of Washington, talk with Kristian Petersen about Translation & Zoroastrianism in Iran and South Asia.

Categories
Articles

Zoroastrian Embroidery

Parsi Zoroastrian Embroidery © UNESCO Parzor
Parsi Zoroastrian Embroidery © UNESCO Parzor

Cama, Shernaz. 2014. Parsi Embroidery: An Intercultural Amalgam. In Zhao Feng, Marie-Louise Nosch & Lotika Varadarajan (eds.), Global Textile Encounters, 263–274. (Ancient Textiles Series). Oxford: Oxbow Books.

From early history, textiles have woven together the tapestry of humanity. The Parsi Zoroastrians, now a tiny minority of under 65,000 individuals in India, have saved, in their cupboards and trunks, this proof of our world’s multicutural history. Cpmplex roots and routes lie behind what we call “Parsi Embroidery” today. The tradition grew  from Achaemenian Iran, travelled through the Silk Route into China and then came back with Indian and European influences, to its originators, the Parsi Zoroastrians of India.
Shernaz Cama is asociate professor at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University, India.