review of Reclaiming the Faravahar: Zoroastrian Survival in Contemporary Tehran , NavidFozi, Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2014, (original) (raw)
Related papers
Reclaiming the Faravahar: Zoroastrian Survival in Contemporary Tehran (Leiden University Press 2014)
Reclaiming the Faravahar is the first ethnographic study of contemporary Zoroastrians in Tehran. Examining hundreds of ritual performances, Navid Fozi shows how Zoroastrians define their identity and values in an area long marked by conflict between the Shi‘a and Sunnis. He focuses on two main concerns for Zoroastrians: continuity with the past as evidenced by their claim to be the most authentic Iranians, as well as their attempts to stand apart from the dominant Shi‘a. Fozi also provides a look at the challenges Zoroastrians have faced over the centuries while exploring how today’s members are working to remain relevant in a tumultuous regional and global context.
(2021) "Zoroastrian Law and the Spread of Islam in Iranian Society" (BSOAS)
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2021
This article explores three important Zoroastrian legal texts from the ʿAbbasid period, consisting of questions and answers to high-ranking priests. The texts contain a wellspring of information about the social history of Zoroastrianism under Islamic rule, especially the formative encounter between Zoroastrians and Muslims. These include matters such as conversion, apostasy, sexual relations with outsiders, inheritance, commerce , and the economic status of priests. The article argues that the elite clergy responsible for writing these texts used law to refashion the Zoroastrian community from the rulers of Iran, as they had been in Late Antiquity, into one of a variety of dhimmī groups living under Islamic rule. It also argues that, far from being brittle or inflexible, the priests responded to the challenges of the day with creativity and pragmatism. On both counts, there are strong parallels between the experiences of Zoroastrians and those of Christians and Jews, who also turned to law as an instrument for rethinking their place in the new Islamic cosmos. Finally, the article makes a methodological point, namely to show the importance of integrating Pahlavi sources into wider histories of Iran and the Middle East during the early Islamic period.
2020
Voices from Zoroastrian Iran is the result of an oral studies research project that maps the remaining Zoroastrian communities in Iran. Volume II covers the city of Yazd and surrounding villages where Zoroastrians continue to live. Most of the interviews recorded from this region are in Zoroastrian Dari and can be found at the SOAS ELAR website. As in Volume I, interviews included in this book cover a range of topics including views about the religion, what it has been to like to live as a member of a religious minority in Iran since the Revolution of 1979, and accounts of religious education, festivals, and ceremonies surrounding rites of passage. Elderly residents in the villages are a rich source of memories from earlier times, before younger people left the rural areas for the cities and emigration abroad became commonplace. These have been illuminated by colourful descriptions of village life in the 1960’s contained in Mary Boyce’s Notebooks (held at the Ancient India and Iran Trust, Cambridge). Her portrayal of shrines and fire temples, the gardens, flowers, trees, fruit and vegetables that were grown, and the way in which the land was farmed and water distribution was managed informs the interview summaries contained in Appendices A, and B. These shorter interviews were conducted in the form of a verbal questionnaire and give a more general insight into what is left of Zoroastrian village life today. A demographic survey of the Zoroastrian population of the Yazd Mahalleh, as well as maps of this area drawn in 2007 are included. A general overview of the Zoroastrian religion and society, together with an account of devotional life, is contained in Chapters 1–3 in Volume I and pertains to both books. The full, unedited interviews have been made available online in digitised format in the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at SOAS (https://www.elararchive.org/dk0460/).
DABIR Vol. 1, No.1, 2015 (Digital Archive of Brief notes & Iran Review)
The Digital Archive of Brief notes & Iran Review (DABIR) is an open access, peer-reviewed, both ptint and online journal published by the Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture at the University of California, Irvine. DABIR aims to quickly and efficiently publish articles, brief notes and reviews relating to the pre-modern world in contact with Iran and Persianate cultures. The journal accepts submissions on art history, archaeology, history, linguistics, literature, manuscript studies, numismatics, philology and religion, from Jaxartes to the Mediterranean and from the Sumerian period through to the Safavid era (3500 BCE-1500 CE). Work dealing with later periods can be considered on request. All issues of DABIR are here online available: http://sites.uci.edu/dabirjournal/