Tag: Iranian Religions

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The legacy, life and work of Geo Widengren

Larsson, Göran (ed.). 2021. The legacy, life and work of Geo Widengren and the study of the history of religions after World War II. Brill.

Professor Geo Widengren (1907–1996), holder of the chair in History of Religions and Psychology of Religions at Uppsala University between 1940 and 1973, is one of Sweden’s best-known scholars in the field of religious studies. His involvement in the start of the IAHR and publications on topics such as the phenomenology of religions, Iranian studies and Middle Eastern Religions make Widengren one of the founding fathers of the History of Religions as an academic discipline. This volume pays tribute to Widengren’s academic achievements and critically discusses his work in light of the latest academic findings and research.

Three chapters of this volume are specifically dedicated to the works and legacy of Geo Widengren regarding the Iranian Cultures, Languages and Religions:

  • Anders Hultgård: “Geo Widengren and the Study of Iranian Religion”
  • Albert de Jong: “The Eclipse of Geo Widengren in the Study of Iranian Religions”
  • Mihaela Timuş: “King and Saviour”: Geo Widengren’s Early Contributions (1938–1955) to the History of Iranian Religions

See here the table of contents of this volume.

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Mani and His Religion

Taqizadeh, Seyyed Hasan. Mani e la sua religione. Translated by Simone Cristoforetti and Andrea Piras, Mimesis, 2020.

Mani and his Religion contains the text of two lectures that the well-known statesman and scholar Hasan Taqizadeh (1878-1970) gave at the Iranological Society of Tehran on 15 December 1949 and 1 February 1951, published in 1956. In addition to its importance in reconstructing the history of Manichaeism, the work testifies to the indefatigable cultural activity that Taqizadeh was able to carry out, despite his leading official positions in the politics and diplomatic representation of his country, Iran. His great courage and intellectual honesty led Taqizadeh to investigate an area – the dualistic religion of the heretic Mani – considered more than disreputable in Iran at the time, in the conviction that Mani and Manichaeism had represented one of the most important cultural phenomena in the history of late Iran and beyond. The translation proposed here is accompanied by a historical background of the author and a bibliographical update on the themes of the text.

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Haran Gauaita

Burtea, Bogdan. 2020. Haran Gauaita. Ein Text zur Geschichte der Mandäer: Edition, Übersetzung, Kommentar (Mandäistische Forschungen 7). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Die Mandäer, Nachkommen einer gnostischen Religionsgemeinschaft, kennen einen besonderen Text, Haran Gauaita. Dieser Text enthält anders als die übrige mandäische Literatur, die grundsätzlich religiöser Natur ist, Informationen, die sich trotz Mythologisierung für die kaum bekannte frühere Geschichte des Mandäismus verwerten lassen.

Die von Bogdan Burtea vorgelegte Erstedition von Haran Gauaita basiert auf vier Handschriften, zwei aus der Bodleian Library Oxford sowie zwei bisher unbekannte aus der Privatbibliothek eines mandäischen Priesters. Der edierte Text wird aufgrund der Tatsache, dass die mandäische Schrift wenig bekannt ist, in Transliteration wiedergegeben. Um dem Leser auch den Originaltext zugänglich zu machen, werden die zwei unbekannten mandäischen Handschriften als Reproduktion im Anhang dargestellt. Die Übersetzung gibt den Sinn des mandäischen Textes möglichst originalgetreu wieder. Der Kommentar leistet neben der Behandlung grammatikalischer Probleme einen Beitrag zur Beschreibung und Auslegung von historischen Angaben sowie von Orts- und Personennamen. So werden z.B. Termini wie Haran oder naṣuraia (Naṣoräer) ausführlich besprochen. Eine Wortliste lexikalisch noch nicht erschlossener mandäischer Formen, eine Bibliographie sowie ein Register der Fachtermini runden diese Arbeit ab.

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Zaraθuštrōtǝma: Zoroastrian and Iranian Studies in Honour of Philip Kreyenbroek

Farridnejad, Shervin (ed.). 2020. Zaraθuštrōtǝma: Zoroastrian and Iranian studies in honour of Philip G. Kreyenbroek (Ancient Iran Series 10). Irvine: Jordan Center for Persian Studies.

This Festschrift is a collection of articles dedicated to one of the most distinguished scholars of Iranian Studies and a most prolific teacher of Zoroastrian and Kurdish literatures and religions, Philip G. Kreyenbroek. The volume consists of thirteen contributions, brings together some of the best-known experts in their fields to reflect the love and admiration of his students, colleagues and friends and are representative of some of his wide-ranging scholarly interests, including Zoroastrian literature and rituals as well as Iranian philology and mythology.

Continue reading “Zaraθuštrōtǝma: Zoroastrian and Iranian Studies in Honour of Philip Kreyenbroek”
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Iranian Religions: Zoroastrianism, Yezidis and Bahaism

Hutter, Manfred. 2019. Iranische Religionen: Zoroastrismus, Yezidentum, Bahāʾītum. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Das Studienbuch ist aus Erfahrungen des Unterrichts zu den im Untertitel genannten Religionen erwachsen, wobei der methodische Zugang religionshistorisch (bis zur Gegenwart) und religionsvergleichend ist. Daher werden die drei Religionen der Zoroastrier, Yeziden und Baha’i in einer weitgehend parallelen Struktur beschrieben, um so das gemeinsame “iranische Erbe” sichtbar zu machen, ohne die jeweiligen Eigenheiten der drei Religionen zu nivellieren oder zu harmonisieren. Behandelt werden (bei jeder der drei Religionen) u.a. identitätsstiftende Faktoren für die Religion und die Religion als identitätsmarker, ferner “klassische” Themen zu Welt- und Menschenbild inklusive ethische Herausforderungen sowie das weite Feld der (rituellen) Praxis. Genauso kommen jeweils Organisationsstrukturen sowie die einbettung der Religion in den gesellschaftlichen und religionspolitischen Diskurs im iranischen Raum im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert sowie die Verbreitung im deutschsprachigen Raum seit zwei bis drei Generationen zur Sprache. Kap. 6 geht auch auf die Religionspolitik der Islamischen Republik Iran ein.

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Studies in Early Medieval Iranian Religious Manuscript Traditions

Barbati, Chiara & Olga Chunakova (eds.). 2018. Studies in early medieval Iranian religious manuscript traditions other than Islamic. Written Monuments of the Orient 2(8). Institute of Oriental Manuscripts: Russian Academy of Sciences.

This edited volume is part of the English version of the biannually published journal Written Monuments of the Orient, issued at Institute of Oriental Manuscripts: Russian Academy of Sciences.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Chiara Barbati — 3

Enrico Morano. Some Сodicological Remarks on the Сorpus of the Berlin Turfan Manichaean Sogdian Manuscripts in Manichaean Script: among Books, Glossaries, Letters, Booklets, Bilingual and Trilingual Texts, Normal, Bold and Cursive Script — 11

Olga Chunakova. Middle Iranian Manichaean Manuscripts. Interpretation and Identification — 39

Christiane Reck. Short Survey on Sogdian Manuscriptology — 51

Christiane Reck and Adam Benkato. ‘Like a Virgin’: A Sogdian Recipe for Restoring Virginity and the Sanskrit Background of Sogdian Medicine — 67

Chiara Barbati. On the Numbering of Quires in the Christian Sogdian and Syriac Manuscript Fragments in the Turfan Collection (Berlin) and the Krotkov Collection (St. Petersburg) — 92
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A Thousand Judgements: Festschrift for Maria Macuch

Hintze, Almut, Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst & Claudius Naumann (eds.). 2019. A thousand judgements: Festschrift for Maria Macuch. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

This volume in honour of Maria Macuch brings together twenty-six articles by friends and colleagues to celebrate the academic work of the foremost living expert of Sasanian law. The subjects covered here include Iranian linguistics and philology, Judeo-Persian, Zoroastrian law and religion, Manichaeism, and the Babylonian Talmud. They reflect the breadth of the work of Maria Macuch. The volume includes studies of important Iranian legal, grammatical and religious terms and titles, of the intercultural engagement between Zoroastrians, Manichaeans and Jews, and editions and studies of texts and text fragments in Pahlavi, Sogdian, Khotanese and Judeo-Persian languages. The book will be of special interest to legal, cultural and religious historians as well as to philologists and linguists.

Table of Contents (PDF)

  • Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo: “Ritual Competence and Liability of Minors in Ancient Zoroastrianism. On Avestan dahmō.kərəta– and š́iiaoϑnāuuarəz-“
  • Samra Azarnouche: “Les fonctions religieuses et la loi zoroastrienne: le cas du hērbed“
  • David Buyaner: “Zur Haar- und Nagelpflege im Zoroastrismus. Beiträge zur Erklärung mittelpersischer Rechts- und Religionsterminologie. III.”
  • Alberto Cantera: “About the Epithet pauruuaniia- of the Zoroastrian Sacred Girdle (Y 9.26)”
  • Iris Colditz: “Eine vergessene zoroastrische Märtyrerin?”
  • Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: “Manichaean Book Quires”
  • Yaakov Elman †: “The Torah of Temporary Marriage. A Study in Cultural History”
  • Ela Filippone: “On Old Persian tačara- and its Elusive Meaning”
  • Philippe Gignoux: “Les ‹ Mémoires › dans l’archive pehlevie de Berkeley/Berlin”
  • Jost Gippert: “Onomastica Irano-Iberica. II. The Name of a Zoroastrian “Bishop””
  • Rika Gyselen: “Les données de géographie administrative sassanide
  • dans le Šahrestānīhā-ī Ērānšahr : une réévaluation”
  • Almut Hintze: “Maria Macuch and Iranian Studies”
  • Tal Ilan and Reuven Kiperwasser: “Virginity and Water: Between the Babylonian Talmud and Iranian Myth”
  • Éva M. Jeremiás: “The Technical Term tarkīb “Compound” in the Indigenous Persian “Scientific” Literature”
  • Judith Josephson: “Aristotle’s Theory of the Elements and Zoroastrian Dualism”
  • Yishai Kiel and Prods Oktor Skjærvø: “Normative and Theological Dissent in Early Zoroastrian Law: Pahlavi Nīrangestān 23″
  • Götz König: “Die Pahlavi-Literatur des 9./10. Jahrhunderts und ihre frühe Kodex Überlieferung (I)”
  • Manfred Lorenz † : “Ignatius Pietraszewski – ein polnischer Iranist in Berlin”
  • Mauro Maggi: “Annotations on the Book of Zambasta, V: Indian Parallels to 2.139 and the Musk of Khotan”
  • Enrico Morano und Christiane Reck: “Vom ersten bis zum 30. Tag: Ein Blatt mit soghdischen prognostischen und medizinischen Kalendertexten”
  • Antonio Panaino: “Thе Liturgical Daēnā. Speculative Aspects of the Next-of-Kin Unions”
  • Adriano V. Rossi: “Iranian Words in čam°*”
  • Martin Schwartz and Alexis Manaster Ramer: “Some Interlinguistic Iranian Conundrums”
  • Nicholas Sims-Williams: “The Wisdom of Aḥiqar and the Wisdom of Ādurbād: A Manichaean Parallel”
  • Dieter Weber: “The Story of Windād-Burzmihr. A Zoroastrian Entrepreneur in Early Islamic Times”
  • Yutaka Yoshida: “Some New Interpretations of the Two Judeo-Persian Letters from Khotan”

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Religious change among the Safavids

Stickel, Farida. 2019. Zwischen Chiliasmus und Staatsraeson: Religiöser Wandel unter den Safaviden (Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten 70). Boston, MA: De Gruyter.

Die Arbeit geht dem religiösen Wandel in Iran unter den Safaviden nach. Dabei wird nicht die Verkündung der Schia als offizieller Religion 1501 in den Mittelpunkt gestellt. Vielmehr werden die Safaviden kontextualisiert, der religiöse Wandel selbst anhand beteiligter Akteure, Auswirkungen auf religiöse Institutionen und Legitimation von Herrschaft sowie der Übersetzung in Architektur und Performanz von Ritualen nachgezeichnet.

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Armenian Christians in Iran

Barry, James. 2019. Armenian Christians in Iran: Ethnicity, religion, and identity in the Islamic Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has promoted a Shi’a Islamic identity aimed at transcending ethnic and national boundaries. During the same period, Iran’s Armenian community, once a prominent Christian minority in Tehran, has declined by more than eighty percent. Although the Armenian community is recognised by the constitution and granted specific privileges under Iranian law, they do not share equal rights with their Shi’i Muslim compatriots. Drawing upon interviews conducted with members of the Armenian community and using sources in both Persian and Armenian languages, this book questions whether the Islamic Republic has failed or succeeded in fostering a cohesive identity which enables non-Muslims to feel a sense of belonging in this Islamic Republic. As state identities are also often key in exacerbating ethnic conflict, this book probes into the potential cleavage points for future social conflict in Iran.
  • Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Iranism, Islam and Armenian-ness in Iran
2. Education and the construction of Armenian Iran
3. Discrimination, status and response
4. Stereotyping and identity
5. Performing Armenian-ness in Tehran
6. Identity and emigration
Conclusion.

  • Autor

James Barry is an Associate Research Fellow in Anthropology at Deakin University, Victoria specialising in religious and ethnic minorities. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Monash University, Melbourne. His research focuses on the role of Islam in Iranian foreign policy and supports the work of the Chair of Islamic Studies. In addition to Iran, Barry has carried out fieldwork in Australia, Indonesia and the United States.

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The Religion and the Pantheon of the Sogdians

Shenkar, Michael. 2017. The Religion and the Pantheon of the Sogdians (5th–8th centuries CE) in Light of their Sociopolitical Structures. Journal Asiatique 305(2), 191-209.