Avestan xratu-

The specific sense that the word xratu- possesses in the Gāthās has not received the attention it deserves. As this article will show, this specific sense points to the eschatological foundation of Zoroastrianism. Eschatological concerns did not first develop in the frame of an established “monotheistic” religion; rather, Zoroastrianism arose from those concerns. The xratu- has a strictly eschatological function in the Gāthās. The noun retains this semantic capacity not only in the Young Avestan but also in the Middle Persian Zoroastrian texts. Iranian languages share the noun with Vedic and (archaic) Greek, where it has the basic meaning of the mental capacity to achieve proposed goals, hence practical intelligence, resourcefulness, or efficacy. If this is in fact the general sense that xratu- has in Iranian, as will be briefly pointed out, the specifically eschatological meaning that it acquires in the Gāthās must indicate the type of religious discourse to which these compositions belong. The noun may, further, have developed its eschatological meaning before the time of the Gāthās and already become a technical term. In this case, it would be legitimate to ask whether there are traces in the Gāthās that point to the institutional background of the term. There do indeed seem to be such traces. The term seems to have been used in the technical sense of the mental power to attain the divine sphere in the daēva cult.     

A Zoroastrian Dispute in the Caliph’s Court: The Gizistag Abāliš in its Early Islamic Context

The Gizistag Abāli? is a ninth- or tenth-century Pahlavi text, recording a debate which took place at the court of al-Ma?mūn between a Zoroastrian priest and a heretical dualist. This article, the first in-depth study of this important work, examines the text in its broader Islamicate environment. It argues that the narrative itself is probably fictional, but reflects a real historical phenomenon, namely the interreligious debates which took place among Zoroastrians, Muslims, Christians, and Jews during the ?Abbasid period. It argues that the text is a unique Zoroastrian example of a literary genre that was common among Christians at the time, namely, “the monk in the emir’s majlis.” By comparing the Gizistag Abāli? to these Christian texts, it explores why Zoroastrians generally did not launch explicit polemics against Islam, comparable to those of other non-Muslim communities. It seems that Zoroastrian authors were more concerned with explaining their own doctrines than critiquing the beliefs of others. This is curious considering the large numbers of Zoroastrians who were converting to Islam at the time. Finally, the article proposes new ways of refining the way we read Pahlavi texts, by analyzing them alongside the literatures of other religious communities in the early Islamic empire.     

重读安菩墓

参互安菩墓志和两《唐书·安金藏传》所载,本文重新辨识了安菩一家的袄教信仰。文章认为,安金藏在为其父母举行的合葬仪中使用了犬视,并对袄教战神牡鹿和司水女神兼丰饶之神阿娜希塔致祭奉祀。其中,对前二者分别使用了现实中的动物,即犬和鹿,这就是《唐书·安金藏传》所载犬鹿相狎和原上旧无水,忽有涌泉自出的真实内容。这一葬仪不仅符合袄教教义,而且也与安菩定远将军的身份相符。安菩墓的特殊建制也体现了这一点。     

Persian Linguistics in the Twentieth Century

This article focuses on Persian linguistics with the emphasis on grammar and word formation in the twentieth century. After presenting a brief overview of the history of the study of grammar in Iran, I discuss the recent trends in linguistics from diachronic to synchronic aspects. In Persian diachronic linguistics, we will see that most works focus on the reading, and deciphering of the old texts. In synchronic studies, there are three main stages: 1) traditional linguistics, 2) structural linguistics, and 3) generative or formal linguistics. I show how each one of these stages affects Persian linguistics in the twentieth century. Finally, I conclude the article by looking at the current state of Persian linguistics and the future prospects for the field.     

摩尼教耶俱孚考——福建霞浦文書研究

《舊約·創世記》中的猶太人之祖雅各在希臘文《約瑟禱文》、科普特文《埃及人福音》、《九姓回鶻可汗碑》粟特文殘片、摩尼教中古波斯文祈禱文、伊朗語贊美詩中化身爲天使,在希臘文咒文與護身符中成爲人們祈求的天神,在敦煌摩尼教漢文文獻《下部讚》中被稱爲"頭首大將耶俱孚",在福建霞浦文書中則被稱爲"俱孚元帥"、"耶俱孚大將"或"俱孚聖尊",成爲護法天神之一。雅各從以色列人之祖逐步演化爲中國民間宗教護法的曲折過程,誠爲中西文化交流史引人入勝之一例。     

Vagises’ Virtuous Hand: An Unforeseen Note on Plutarch,Life of Crassus 18, 3

When Crassus met the Parthian ambassador Vagises on the eve of his disastrous expedition ending at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, Vagises mocked his boldness and showed the palm of his hand, on which, according to him, no hair would ever grow unless the Roman were to reach Mesopotamia, the heart of Parthian empire. This bizarre gesture and statement, usually assumed to be frivolous, can only be understood in the context of Zoroastrian sexual and cathartic ethics, which of course no Roman or Greek could understand. The source of this information therefore could not have been Plutarch, but rather someone conversant with Persian culture, from either Parthian or Armenian stock.     

Signs from Above: Towards a Comparative Symbology of Bird Imagery in Medieval Near Eastern Popular Prose

This article presents excerpts from two near-contemporary works of popular prose from the medieval Near East: the Persian Dārāb-nāmeh and the Arabic Sīrat Banī Hilāl. In each, birds or birdlike characters (the sīmorgh and the crow, respectively) that share in having had theriomorphic, mythic significance in regional pre-Islamic traditions dispense premonitory wisdom to Muslim characters. Comparing these passages, the article contends that the characterization of these birds brokers a pietistic shift in symbolism between the pre-Islamic and Islamic context, while still maintaining the birds’ mystical significance and sustaining the trope of birds as winged, heaven-sent messengers. This modified association between birds and divine ministry is not only prominent in these two texts, but also in the Qur?ān and varied bestiaries, poetry, and belletristic works that comprise these texts’ cultural network.     

The Lives and Afterlives of Vis and Rāmin

This article is a review of the afterlife, or Nachleben, of the romance Vis and Rāmin, one of the first representatives of its genre in New Persian literature. In addition to providing readers with an extensive bibliography of sources and research concerning the poem, it also analyzes these materials to put forward two basic arguments: one, that moral or religious antipathy to the poem’s contents may not have played as great a role in its fortunes as did aesthetic taste; and two, that V&R proved to be a more widely circulated and durable work than is commonly supposed, but on the level of fragments, not the entire text. In light of these arguments, it is proposed that studies structured around the comparison of fragments—themes, ideas, ethics, and motifs, rather than whole texts—may offer more purchase in constructing models of analysis that situate V&R, and Persian literature more broadly, within a literary oikumene in which it connects and interacts with neighboring traditions.     

Towards a Definition of the pre-Classical Phoenician Temple

ABSTRACT

Though our knowledge of Iron Age Phoenician cultic architecture is quite limited, the available data suggests that pre-Classical Phoenician temples followed a similar plan which displayed several unique architectural features. This plan originated from a long held, Bronze Age, Canaanite tradition which became especially prominent along the northern Levantine coast from the Middle Bronze Age II, appearing alongside other temple plans. This article aims to demonstrate that during the Iron Age and most of the Persian period, this temple plan became the predominant temple type in Phoenicia and its dependencies. It was only during the late Persian period, that a drastic change occurred, and this millennia-old plan was abandoned in favor of other temple types. Nevertheless, it appears that despite this seemingly radical change, the most notable feature of the traditional plan was preserved.     

The Phoenician City-states of Tyre and Sidon in Ancient Jewish Texts

Abstract

Interpreted against the historical situation in the Levant of the first millennium BCE, ancient Jewish texts reflect the historical situation of the time in which they were written. Based on this assumption, we propose in this article that ancient Jewish materials speak of the city-states of Tyre and Sidon in three divergent ways that reflect three distinct socio-historical situations. The first grouping, represented primarily by the books of Amos and Hosea, reflects the pre-Persian or late Persian historical situation. These books speak of Tyre as the dominant economic polity in the Levant, whereas an economically weaker Sidon receives little coverage, if any. The second large grouping, represented primarily by the DtrH, addresses the Persian-period historical situation. We propose the DtrH materials coincide with the Persian-period compositional date when placed against the historical situation of the mid-6th4th centuries BCE. The third category of ancient Jewish texts does not differentiate between the cities of Tyre and Sidon. Reflecting the post-Achaemenid period, when the city-states of Tyre and Sidon were no longer able to maintain their independent economic and political positions, these texts refer to Tyre and Sidon as the collective “Tyrians and Sidonians.”     

Iranian Studies in Turkey

Among other Middle Eastern countries, Iran and Turkey stand out as the two neighboring countries with many linguistic and cultural similarities. The question that comes to the fore is: to what extent do these two countries know each other? This article attempts to provide a picture of the state of Iranian Studies in Turkey with specific attention to three monographs originally written as PhD dissertations in various Turkish universities over the last three decades. Produced from within three different social science and humanities divisions, i.e. Political Science, Persian Literature and History, these are three of the very few scholarly monographs produced on Iran in Turkey. Based on a close reading of these studies, it seems possible to observe that they are mostly ill-balanced by methodological, ethnocentric as well as Turkish nationalist biases.     

Portraits in the Background of “Nothingness” Sheikh Jabber Burnt House, an Object of Persian Gulf War

War is a common heritage of Middle East, the experience of war was changed to a dramatic propaganda in Iran while the southern neighbor of Iran experienced it in another way: oblivion. In such a context, both states attempt to change the facts of the war, one to a process of sanctification and one to the portraits of nothingness. We, as archaeologists, were accidentally encountered with a heritage of Persian Gulf War during a contemporary archaeology project. Our curiosity made us to take a look at Jabber house, a forgotten building, a domestic architecture destroyed by a racket during the war. What was recorded in our frames was actually an artistic work, out of its original context. Our subjectivity as archaeologists made us to think about the other objects fossilized in museums, they are out of their painful context and structure, they are only beautiful, the portraits in the background of nothingness, in a burnt gallery. Persian Gulf War is treated in Kuwait as a negative heritage, what is discussed in this article as the main theme??a negative heritage lost its original context and meaning: Sheikh Jabber house.     

The Limits of Turkish–Iranian Cooperation, 1974–80

Why did Turkey and Iran fail to become close partners in the 1970s even though they had compelling reasons to do so? This article argues that mutual distrust between Turkish and Iranian leaders, domestic turmoil in the two countries, and diverging geostrategic priorities undermined Ankara and Tehran's efforts to deepen their relations. While the shah of Iran saw his country as the policeman of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, successive governments in Turkey continued to look west for their security. As economic and political turmoil engulfed the two countries, leading to a revolution in Iran in 1979 and a coup in Turkey in 1980, Iranian and Turkish leaders could not forge a lasting partnership.     

The Politics of Zoroastrian Philanthropy and the Case of Qasr-e Firuzeh

In Iran and India religious philanthropy has been a feature of Zoroastrian piety as well as providing the means by which both communities have prospered throughout their respective histories. In Iran an elaborate structure for the regulation of charitable donations was already in place during the Sasanian period and laid the foundation for the laws governing pious foundations, awqāf, after the Islamic conquest. The increased interaction between Iranian Zoroastrians and Parsis from the mid-nineteenth century onwards led to the expansion of the Tehran Zoroastrian community and the rise of a wealthy merchant class which in turn enabled philanthropic activity to flourish. This development will be discussed here with reference to a particular vaqf, that of the first ārāmgāh or Zoroastrian cemetery to be established in Tehran in the early twentieth century. The case of Qasr-e Firuzeh spans three successive governments in Iran and gives an insight into the management of a charitable endowment within different political contexts.     

Beyond Orientalism: When Marceline Desbordes-Valmore carried Saʿdi’s Roses to France

This article follows a thread of translation and intertextual dialogue, taking us from the thirteenth-century Persian poet Sa?di to the nineteenth-century French poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. It reads Desbordes-Valmore’s poem ‘Les roses de Saadi’ (1860) with the two passages from Sa?di’s Golestān from which it was inspired, shedding new light on the poem’s metapoetic subtext. The original Persian text is compared to two French translations that were circulating at the time when Desbordes-Valmore was writing. This analysis of the Golestān’s reception forms the basis for the argument that Desbordes-Valmore recast in secular terms Sa?di’s discourse on poetic language, emphasizing the continuity, rather than difference, between her concerns and Sa?di’s. The case of Desbordes-Valmore thus reveals a forgotten facet of nineteenth-century French engagements with Middle Eastern culture: one of identification and literary influence, which existed alongside the processes of “othering” for which the period is better known.     

The Cure of Elf-Shooting in the North-West of Ireland

In this article the study of literary and oral versions of ‘The Tree Demon’ (ATU 1168B) relates to the broader issue of the oral versus written transmission of folktales, which was raised in the late nineteenth century and is still relevant today. It examines three literary versions in compilations from the Middle Ages: a Hebrew version from the tenth century and two Muslim versions from the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries in Persian and Arabic. These are compared with three oral variants from Burma and Cambodia. The development of the ‘Tree Demon’ tale type as a test case is demonstrated through an analysis of the versions' different religious, cultural, and social functions, which reflect their different channels of transmission and historical settings.