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Explores Saint Thecla and her story as preeminent models for medieval hagiographers across Eurasia and North Africa.
This collection of essays explores the multifaceted representation of power and authority in a variety of late antique and medieval hagiographical narratives (Lives, Martyr Acts, oneiric and miraculous accounts). The narratives under analysis, written in some of the major languages of the Islamicate world and the Christian East and Christian West - Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Greek, Latin, Middle Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Persian - prominently feature a diverse range of historical and fictional figures from a wide cross-section of society - from female lay saints in Italy and Zoroastrians in Sasanian and Islamic Iran to apostles and bishops and emperors and caliphs. Each chapter investig...
This collection of essays explores the multifaceted representation of power and authority in a variety of late antique and medieval hagiographical narratives (Lives, Martyr Acts, oneiric and miraculous accounts). The narratives under analysis, written in some of the major languages of the Islamicate world and the Christian East and Christian West - Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Greek, Latin, Middle Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Persian - prominently feature a diverse range of historical and fictional figures from a wide cross-section of society - from female lay saints in Italy and Zoroastrians in Sasanian and Islamic Iran to apostles and bishops and emperors and caliphs. Each chapter investig...
The dissertation traces the origins of the Persian historical epic, the Shahnamah, and the development of sub-genres of epic on the premise that historiography constitutes the common ground of all forms of Persian epic. It also treats the three types of epic heroes. The texts most pertinent to the discussion of the origins of epic and heroes are the Avesta, Bundahisn, Karnamag i Ardasir, ninth and tenth century Arabic histories, and the Tarikh-i Bal`ami. Through comparative textual analysis it is demonstrated that the recurring theme of legitimate rule runs through each of these texts and, thus, this study focuses on the stories of the first kings, Jamshid, and Ardashir. The way the stories ...
Religion of Love explores the life and work of the Persian Sufi poet and sage Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār. ʿAṭṭār changed the face of world literature, leaving his impact on all cultures that have valued Persian Sufi writings. Considered for the first time through the lens of religious studies, ʿAṭṭār's oeuvre offers much to contemporary readers. ʿAṭṭār's poems cast a light on the relationship between revelation and the intellect. They also encourage liberation from self-centeredness through the fiery path of love. Thus, Religion of Love considers one of Persian literature's greatest poets as more than just a poet, but as a thinker and a commentator on moral psychology, ethics, and the intellectual debates of his age, debates that shed light on today's religious complexities.
The comparative study of Persian historiography of the early modern Islamic empires, the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals, presenting in-depth case analyses alongside a wide array of primary sources to illustrate the extensive universe of literary-historical writing that Persian historiography can be found within.
Thecla was one of the most venerated saints in late antiquity. One of her followers created the Life of Thecla as an act of devotion in the fifth century, rewriting the popular Acts of Thecla and transforming it into the heroic saga of a saint. Replete with long speeches, dramatic flourishes, and literary flamboyance, the Life of Thecla gives modern readers insight into the ways a gender-bending apostolic saint could be reframed and reimagined for later audiences. This first modern English translation of the Life explores its relationship with the earlier Acts as well as its place in fifth-century concerns about miracles, healing, sainthood, and sexuality.
In an examination of the legendary biographies of Constantine I and Ardashir I A Memorial in the World argues that the two share a literary heritage and that both were created to serve a similar purpose.
Making environmental history accessible to scholars of the Middle East and the history of the region accessible to environmental historians, Water on Sand opens up new fields of scholarly inquiry.
This volume explores concepts of fiction in late antique hagiographical narrative in different cultural and literary traditions. It includes Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Persian and Arabic material. Whereas scholarship in these texts has traditionally focussed on historical questions, this book approaches imaginative narrative as an inherent element of the genre of hagiography that deserves to be studied in its own right. The chapters explore narrative complexities related to fiction, such as invention, authentication, intertextuality, imagination and fictionality. Together, they represent an innovative exploration of how these concepts relate to hagiographical discourses of truth and the religious notion of belief, while paying due attention to the various factors and contexts that impact readers’ responses.