IRANIAN COMPLEXITIES: A STUDY IN ACHAEMENID, AVESTAN, AND SASANIAN CONTROVERSIES

IRANIAN COMPLEXITIES: A STUDY IN ACHAEMENID, AVESTAN, AND SASANIAN CONTROVERSIES PDF Author: Abolala Soudavar
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1387826085
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
The monotheistic ideology that Darius imposed on the nascent Achaemenid state resulted in a religious revolution with far reaching effects, as it reverberated on two different levels. At the top level, the imposition of an omnipotent abstract god, Ahura Mazda, created a sharp reaction that led to the general massacre of the opposition termed as Magophonia by Herodotus. Several centuries of doctrinal development led to Zoroastrianism, a religion marked by the art of compromise and virulent rhetoric. While the Zoroastrian influence on Abrahamic religions has mainly been investigated in respect to borrowed concepts such as Paradise or Day of Judgment, its influence on the art of compromise and rhetoric has been neglected. So has been the influence of its underground opposition, organized as brotherhood. The underground opposition affected early Christianity, while the Iranian clergy influenced the Judaic priesthood. Together, they ended up affecting Islam

Proceedings of the First European Conference of Iranian Studies: Old and Middle Iranian studies

Proceedings of the First European Conference of Iranian Studies: Old and Middle Iranian studies PDF Author: Gherardo Gnoli
Publisher: ISIAO
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : de
Pages : 384

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Book Description


Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity

Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Jaś Elsner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108473075
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
Explores the problems for studying art and religion in Eurasia arising from ancestral, colonial and post-colonial biases in historiography.

Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire

Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire PDF Author: Parvaneh Pourshariati
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786729814
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
I.B.Tauris in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation It proposes a convincing contemporary answer answer to an ages-old mystery and conundrum: why, in the seventh century CE, did the seemingly powerful and secure Sasanian empire of Persia succumb so quickly and disastrously to the all-conquering Arab armies of Islam? Offering an impressive appraisal of the Sasanians' nemesis at the hands of the Arab forces which scythed all before them, the author suggests a bold solution to the enigma. On the face of it, the collapse of the Sasanians - given their strength and imperial power in the earlier part of the century - looks startling and inexplicable. But Professor Pourshariati explains their fall in terms of an earlier corrosion and decline, and as a result of their own internal weaknesses. The decentralised dynastic system of the Sasanian empire, whose backbone was a Sasanian-Parthian alliance, contained the seeds of its own destruction. This confederacy soon became unstable, and its degeneration sealed the fate of a doomed dynasty.

Religion in the Achaemenid Persian Empire

Religion in the Achaemenid Persian Empire PDF Author: Diana Vikander Edelman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783161539602
Category : Achaemenid dynasty
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Achaemenid Persian imperial rulers have long been held to have exercised a policy of religious tolerance within their widespread provinces and among their dependencies. The fourteen articles in this volume explore aspects of the dynamic interaction between the imperial and the local levels that impacted primarily on local religious practices. Some of the articles deal with emerging forms of Judaism under Achaemenid hegemony, others with Achaemenid religion, royal ideology, and political policy toward religion. Others discuss aspects of Phoenician religion and changes to Egyptian religious practice while another addresses the presence of mixed religious practices in Phrygia, as indicated by seal imagery. Together, they indicate that tolerance was part of political expediency rather than a universal policy derived from religious conviction. Contributors: Damien Agut-Labordere, James Anderson, Mark Christian, Philip R. Davies, Diana Edelman, Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, Christian Frevel, Philippe Guillaume, Lowell Handy, Russel Hobson, Deniz Kaptan, Jared Krebsbach, Yannick Muller, Katharina Pyschny, Jason M. Silverman

Art of the Persian Courts

Art of the Persian Courts PDF Author: Abolala Soudavar
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
Overview of Iranian and Persian manuscript painting, manuscript illumination, calligraphy and drawing, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century

Witches, Whores, and Sorcerers

Witches, Whores, and Sorcerers PDF Author: S. K. Mendoza Forrest
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292742495
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Early Iranians believed evil had to have a source outside of God, which led to the concept of an entity as powerful and utterly evil as God is potent and good. These two forces, good and evil, which have always vied for superiority, needed helpers in this struggle. According to the Zoroastrians, every entity had to take sides, from the cosmic level to the microcosmic self. One of the results of this battle was that certain humans were thought to side with evil. Who were these allies of that great Evil Spirit? Women were inordinately singled out. Male healers were forbidden to deal with female health disorders because of the fear of the polluting power of feminine blood. Female healers, midwives, and shamans were among those who were accused of collaborating with the Evil Spirit, because they healed women. Men who worked to prepare the dead were also suspected of secret evil. Evil even showed up as animals such as frogs, snakes, and bugs of all sorts, which scuttled to the command of their wicked masters. This first comprehensive study of the concept of evil in early Iran uncovers details of the Iranian struggle against witchcraft, sorcery, and other "evils," beginning with their earliest texts.

Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire

Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire PDF Author: Paul J. Kosmin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674989619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
Under Seleucid rule, time no longer restarted with each new monarch. Instead, progressively numbered years, identical to the system we use today, became the measure of historical duration. Paul Kosmin shows how this invention of a new kind of time—and resistance to it—transformed the way we organize our thoughts about the past, present, and future.

The Persian Revival

The Persian Revival PDF Author: Talinn Grigor
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271089709
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
One of the most heated scholarly controversies of the early twentieth century, the Orient-or-Rome debate turned on whether art historians should trace the origin of all Western—and especially Gothic—architecture to Roman ingenuity or to the Indo-Germanic Geist. Focusing on the discourses around this debate, Talinn Grigor considers the Persian Revival movement in light of imperial strategies of power and identity in British India and in Qajar-Pahlavi Iran. The Persian Revival examines Europe’s discovery of ancient Iran, first in literature and then in art history. Tracing Western visual discourse about ancient Iran from 1699 on, Grigor parses the invention and use of a revivalist architectural style from the Afsharid and Zand successors to the Safavid throne and the rise of the Parsi industrialists as cosmopolitan subjects of British India. Drawing on a wide range of Persian revival narratives bound to architectural history, Grigor foregrounds the complexities and magnitude of artistic appropriations of Western art history in order to grapple with colonial ambivalence and imperial aspirations. She argues that while Western imperialism was instrumental in shaping high art as mercantile-bourgeois ethos, it was also a project that destabilized the hegemony of a Eurocentric historiography of taste. An important reconsideration of the Persian Revival, this book will be of vital interest to art and architectural historians and intellectual historians, particularly those working in the areas of international modernism, Iranian studies, and historiography.

Decoding Old Masters

Decoding Old Masters PDF Author: Abolala Soudavar
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
ISBN: 9781845116583
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this work, Abolala Soudavar examines seven paintings by some of the great masters of the 15th century and demonstrates how we can better understand the state of international relations and the political rivalries of the time by decoding the figures, their postures and gestures, the background scenes, the compositions and much else in these paintings. This is a period of geopolitical turmoil, with the Muslim Turkish assault on Europe causing distress within the Christian World. Yet it is also a time of courtly opulence and Shakespearean drama, with murders and vendettas, wars and crusades, intrigue and treachery dominating contemporary life. -- Dust Jacket.