Saturday night is Yalda: the longest night of the year. The forces of Ahriman are at their peak. From tomorrow, the Sun God starts to triumph – and we all start getting longer days. I’ve written about Yalda before – but this year, I wanted to focus on its very earliest origins. In Babylonian times, …
Professor Dick Davis spoke at SOAS recently – on the women in the Shahnameh. He’s counted fifty (that’s 50!) named women in the Shahnameh – as well as all the unnamed mothers, daughters and slavegirls. He specially noticed the huge differences between the women in the first and second halves of the book. In the …
I’ve been reading Roger Bulliet’s fascinating book on agriculture and trade in early Islamic Iran. Bulliet suggests that the Muslim Arabs didn’t only bring Islam to Iran – but also the money and will to dig qanats and build villages to house workers to grow cotton as a cash crop. Khurasan, and the central plateau …
Recently, I introduced the BL digitised manuscript of Mantiq al Tayr (conference of the birds): mainly by praising both the manuscript in the Met, and a very cute cartoon film of the story. If you didnt watch the cartoon first time round, please dont miss it now! Coming back to the BL manuscript, though, the …
The current SOAS exhibition on Zoroastrianism has lots of great things – the video of the Yasna ceremony is especially interesting. But this week I want to pick out a very small reproduction of a very large mosaic: of three Parthian “wise men” or Magi. Here’s an image of the whole thing, in Ravenna – …
Silk found in various Viking ship burials has been long been known to be Persian – and thought to represent looting from English and Irish churches and monasteries. Recent research, however, has suggested that it probably represents an extended trade network carrying goods from Persia all the way to the Vikings. Vedeler suggests this largely …
Ashura is next week – on 14 November 2013. In Iran, Ashura is commonly commemorated with black for ash and red for blood, as shown in these photos from 2012. Of course, Ashura is all about Hossein. But I think one of the biggest heroes at the battle of Karbala was Abul Fazl – and …
According to Zoroastrian mythology, Lake Hamun was the keeper of Zoroaster’s seed. When the world’s end is at hand, three maidens will enter the lake, and afterwards will give birth to the Saoshyants who will then be the “final saviors” of mankind. Right now, the lake is best known for surrounding the legendary Mount Khwaju: …
The British Library is busy digitising their Persian manuscripts (with help from IHF), and are starting to show off the results. Maybe I should confess that my favourite Mantiq al-Tayr manuscript is the one in the Metropolitan Museum. This was finished in 1487; with more illlustrations added by Shah Abbas in the early seventeenth century, …
The British Library continues to digitise its manuscripts – the latest is an illustrated 14th century Khamsah (Add.18113), containing three of the five poems from the Khamsah of Khvaju Kirmani (1290-1349?). Khvaju drew extensively on traditional Iranian folklore and this manuscript contains the story of Humay and Humayun, the Kamālnāmah (‘Book of Perfection’) and the …