Yusef Bina
Abstract
Examining the types of anti-utopias and criticizing them is one of the important topics in the political thought of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. In Shahnameh, the anti-utopia is formed when the Iranian utopia is not formed and there is no Iranian ideal prince to rule over the people. "Absolute corrupt ...
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Examining the types of anti-utopias and criticizing them is one of the important topics in the political thought of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. In Shahnameh, the anti-utopia is formed when the Iranian utopia is not formed and there is no Iranian ideal prince to rule over the people. "Absolute corrupt monarchy of the foreign king", "pseudo-democracy" political system and "Mazdaki communal society" are the types of anti-utopia in Shahnameh and according to Ferdowsi, the formation of these systems will only result in the destruction of the country and the destruction of the people. Also, in some stories of Shahnameh, Ferdowsi has spoken about people who live in utopia but do not adhere to its principles and have anti-utopian ethics. Finally, by examining Ferdowsi's critiques of various anti-utopias in Shahnameh, we can identify some of the political crises of his time and draw aspects of his utopia and the best way of governing for Iran. At the same time, criticizing and denying anti-utopias can be a kind of critique of the well-known alternatives to the government crisis in Ferdowsi's time.
mahmoud rezaei dasht arzhaneh
Abstract
The guilt of Fereydun, one of the greatest Pishdadi kings, is mentioned in Mainyō-ī Khard and the Pahlavi narrative alongside Jamshid and Keykavus, although there is no indication of his guilt in the Shahnameh. In this essay, after criticizing the previous views on this matter, two hypotheses about ...
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The guilt of Fereydun, one of the greatest Pishdadi kings, is mentioned in Mainyō-ī Khard and the Pahlavi narrative alongside Jamshid and Keykavus, although there is no indication of his guilt in the Shahnameh. In this essay, after criticizing the previous views on this matter, two hypotheses about Fereydun's sin have been proposed: one is considering that the Vedic counterpart of Zahhak, Vishurupa, a three-headed, three-faced and six-eyed dragon, in the Mahabharata, is a devout and religious Brahman who continuously recites the Vedas with one head, and Indra, fearing that he might take his place among the gods, kills him and because of this sin, loses the dominion of the sky and his strength decreases, it could be that Fereydon's sin is also connected with killing Zahhak; who is also a worshiper in disguise of Mardas and also vowed and sacrificed to Anahita and Wayo, still has signs of his Brahminism and religion in the Shahnameh. On the other hand, considering that Indra's other sin, is the seduction of Ilya/Ahlia, a Brahmin woman named Gautmahnam, and as a result of this sin, Indra loses all his beauty and it is transferred to two Nasitiyas, it is not unlikely that Feridun's other sin was kidnapping two Brahmin women. A matter that has been elegantly depicted following the fundamental Post- Zoroastrian transformations.
Mohammadjafar Yahaghi
Abstract
No revolutionary movement in Iranian Late Antiquity has attracted as much attention as the fascinating and enigmatic Mazdakite uprising of the late fifth century. The scholarly consensus about these has it that 1) they engaged in ibāḥat al-nisā, sharing of wives; 2) advocated the sharing of property ...
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No revolutionary movement in Iranian Late Antiquity has attracted as much attention as the fascinating and enigmatic Mazdakite uprising of the late fifth century. The scholarly consensus about these has it that 1) they engaged in ibāḥat al-nisā, sharing of wives; 2) advocated the sharing of property and 3) that their past time was wine imbibing and merrymaking. I shall argue here that, as Shaki correctly suspected but did not pursue the topic, the description of the Mazdakite in our primary sources (the Letter of Tansar, Ibn Qutayba, Ṭabarī, Dīnkard, Shahrestānī), actually follows the praxis of the ʿayyārs, chivalrous men and women who practiced celibacy, lived together in communes of men and women, usually in underground cities, and drank wine as part of their sacral ritual. The detractors of the Mazdakites heaped on these accusations that distorted their realities, realities that on a populist level, and in times of crisis of the late fifth century might have in fact devolved into a distortion of the praxis of genuine Mithraists as well. That they continued, appropriate to their praxis, in the form of Khurramdīn movements is also part of their story. That they were launched as collaborators of the Parthian Mehrānids (notice the name), against the Parthian Kārenids who were suffocating the young Kavād during the last decade of the fifth century is also part of their fascinating history.
Abstract
About most of the propre names of Firdowsi’s Shahnama one can find numerous information in previous literature, especially in Namenbücher and entries of encyclopaedias. We know the origin of many of these names, but we do not always know, or previous scholars have not shown with precision, ...
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About most of the propre names of Firdowsi’s Shahnama one can find numerous information in previous literature, especially in Namenbücher and entries of encyclopaedias. We know the origin of many of these names, but we do not always know, or previous scholars have not shown with precision, in what way and through which changes these names reached the Arabic and Persian texts, in our cases Shahnama. Garsīvaz and Afrās(i)yāb are among these names. Although their origin in the Avesta is known, it is not known why they occur in these forms in the Shahnama and/or some other Farsi, Pahlavi and Arabic texts. In this paper, the author tries to collect and analyze the different forms of these two names in Pahlavi, Farsi, and Arabic texts and investigate the causes of their phonetic changes to finally find out why the names Garsīvaz and Afrās(i)yāb reached the Shahnama in these to not totally natural forms.
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