The History of the Armenian priest Łewond is an important source for the history of early Islamic rule and the only contemporary chronicle of second/eighth-century caliphal rule in Armenia. This volume presents a diplomatic edition and new English translation of Łewond’s text, which describes events that took place during the century and a half following the Prophet Muḥammad’s death in AH 11/632 CE. The authors address Łewond’s account as a work of caliphal history, written in Armenian, from within the Caliphate. As such, this book provides a critical reading of the Caliphate from one of its most significant provinces. Reading notes clarify many aspects of the period covered to make the text understandable to students and specialists alike. Extensive commentary elucidates Łewond’s narrative objectives and situates his History in a broader Near Eastern historiographical context by bringing the text into new conversations with a constellation of Arabic, Greek, and Syriac works that cover the same period. The book thus stresses the multiplicity of voices operating in the Caliphate in this pivotal period of Near Eastern history.
Dining with the Sultan offers a pan-Islamic reach, spanning the 8th through 19th centuries and including some 200 works of art representing a rich variety of mediums. Across its 400 pages, and through an abundance of color plates and new scholarship, the publication introduces audiences to Islamic art and culture with objects of undisputed quality and appeal. Viewed through the universal lens of fine dining, this transformative selection of materials emphasizes our shared humanity rather than our singular histories.
This special issue of Slavery & Abolition presents six studies on the history of slavery in the greater Mediterranean basin, the Near East and the Iranian world during the second half of the first millennium CE. The articles cover a large area that stretches from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to Bactria in the east, an area that was at that time largely controlled by East and West Roman emperors, Sasanian shahs and, later, Muslim caliphs. Despite the widely varying nature of the various historical environments brought together in this special issue, they combine to tell a common story.
Zoroastrianism was the religion of the ancient Persian kings and following the Arab conquest, it remained the religion of a significant portion of the population in Iran and parts of Central Asia. This book investigates the most important polemical treatise in the Zoroastrian tradition, the Škand Gumānīg-Wizār (“The Doubt-Dispelling Disquisition”), which was written by the theologian and philosopher Mardānfarrox son of Ohrmazddād. The text was composed in the ninth or tenth centuries in a language known as Middle Persian.
A sophisticated work of rationalist theology, the Škand Gumānīg-Wizār systematically critiques several rival religions of the late antique and early medieval Middle East, including Islam. The critique of Islam found in chapters 11 and 12 is the only sustained, systematic polemic against Islam in premodern Zoroastrian literature, one that attacks monotheism by focusing on the problem of evil. The text is of fundamental importance for understanding Iran’s transformation from a predominantly Zoroastrian society to a predominantly Muslim one during the Early Middle Ages.
This is the first book devoted to the Islamic sections of the Škand Gumānīg-Wizār. It provides a new translation and commentary of these important sections along with introductory chapters that explore Zoroastrians’ relationship with other religions in Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period; Mardānfarrox’s intellectual milieu (especially the influence of Islamic theology and interreligious debates); and the history of Zoroastrian polemics against Islam.
Documents open up another an approach complementary to the overwhelming richness of literary tradition as preserved in manuscripts. This volume combines studies on Greek, Sogdian and Arabic documents (letters, legal agreements, and amulets) with studies on Arabic and Judeo-Arabic manuscripts (poetry, science and divination).
From the website
Following article in the volume is of particular interest to scholars of Sogdian:
The Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies provides a comprehensive survey on science in the Islamic world from the 8th to the 19th century.
Across six sections, a group of subject experts discuss and analyze scientific practices across a wide range of Islamicate societies. The authors take into consideration several contexts in which science was practiced, ranging from intellectual traditions and persuasions to institutions, such as courts, schools, hospitals, and observatories, to the materiality of scientific practices, including the arts and craftsmanship. Chapters also devote attention to scientific practices of minority communities in Muslim majority societies, and Muslim minority groups in societies outside the Islamicate world, thereby allowing readers to better understand the opportunities and constraints of scientific practices under varying local conditions.
Through replacing Islam with Islamicate societies, the book opens up ways to explain similarities and differences between diverse societies ruled by Muslim dynasties. This handbook will be an invaluable resource for both established academics and students looking for an introduction to the field. It will appeal to those involved in the study of the history of science, the history of ideas, intellectual history, social or cultural history, Islamic studies, Middle East and African studies including history, and studies of Muslim communities in Europe and South and East Asia.
The work of the Polish-Slovenian Iranian scholar Marijan Molé (1924-1963) has had a profound influence on the religious sciences that can be observed to this day. In barely fifteen years (1948-1963), he was able to give unprecedented impetus to Iranian studies, thanks to the meticulous study of corpora ranging from the Avesta and Middle Persian Zoroastrian literature to treatises on Islamic mysticism, including Persian epics and mythical gestures. Too soon interrupted, the vast project that he had begun during his years of study in Krakow and which he pursued in Paris and Tehran had as its main axis the uncovering of a unitary system that would underpin the evolution of a religious doctrine over the long term, an “Iranian continuity”.
The recent discovery of his Nachlass (IRHT and BULAC, Paris) provides us with the opportunity to take stock of his legacy and to try to highlight the originality of his approach and his contribution to the history of ideas and to the intellectual debate on the religions of Iran, by identifying both the achievements and the dead ends, the innovations and the extensions.
The present volume gathers the contributions on Zoroastrianism and Islamic mysticism, presented at the international study day entitled “Between Mazdeism and Islam”, dedicated to the work of Marijan Molé, which was held on 24 June 2016 in Paris.
Table of Contents
Chronologie de la vie de Marijan Molé (1924-1963)
Bibliographie de Marijan Molé
Gianroberto Scarcia: “Souvenir de Marijan Molé”
Anna Krasnowolska: “Marijan Molé’s Early Works and his Study of Persian Epics
Jean Kellens: “1956-1964: Le printemps des études gâthiques”
Philippe Swennen: “Marijan Molé à l’aube du nouveau comparatisme indo-iranien”
Panaino, Antonio. 2021. Gayōmart e Adamo. Simmetrie e Asimmetrie tra Zoroastrismo e mondo islamo-giudaico-cristiano. In Carlo Saccone (ed.), Adamo, il secondo Adamo, il nuovo Adamo (Quaderni di studi indo-mediterranei). Milano: Mimesis Edizioni.
The frequent and direct association between Gayōmart and Adam, well attested within the Arabo-Islamic literary tradition, hides a number of embarrassing ethnic and cultural problems emerging from the taboo of the incest and directly connected with the impending desire to accommodate the origin of humanity, as inevitably generated by a couple of siblings, within a moral covered scheme, and in spite of the totally different sexual ethics of the Mazdean tradition. In the framework of this operation, the comparison with the Zoroastrian customs, which emphasized the habit of the next-of-kin marriage, presented a serious problem of moral nature. Then, the necessary accommodation of the origin of humanity was given a special solution, in which the story of J̌im e J̌imāg or of Mašyā e Mašyāne had no particular weight, and were practically covered, while an isolated Gayōmart, devoid of any emphasis for the union with his own mother, was identified with Adam.
This article discusses eventual Qurʾānic allusions to Zoroastrian texts by using the example of zamharīr (Q 76:13). In the early tafsīr and ḥadīth-literature the term is most commonly understood as a piercing cold, which has frequently been interpreted as a punishment in hell. This idea, it is argued, has significant parallels to the concept of cold as a punishment in hell or to the absence of cold as a characteristic of paradise in the Avestan and Middle-Persian literature. In addition, Christian and Jewish texts that emphasize a similar idea and have not been discussed in research so far are brought into consideration. The article thus aims to contribute to the inclusion of Zoroastrian texts in locating the genesis of the Qurʾān – or early Islamic exegesis – in the “epistemic space ” of late antiquity.
