Early Islamic Iran

by Herzig, Edmund; Stewart, Sarah

• ISBN13: 9781780760612
• ISBN10: 1780760612
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-12-15
• Publisher: Bloomsbury

Summary

How did Iran remain distinctively Iranian in the centuries which followed the Arab Conquest? How did it retain its cultural distinctiveness after the displacement of Zoroastrianism ? state religion of the Persian empire ? by Islam? This latest volume in The Idea of Iran series traces that critical moment in Iranian history which followed the transformation of ancient traditions during the country¿s conversion and initial Islamic period. Distinguished contributors (who include the late Oleg Grabar, Roy Mottahedeh, Alan Williams and Saïd Amir Arjomand) discuss, from a variety of literary, artistic, religious and cultural perspectives, the years around the end of the first millennium CE, when the political strength of the 'Abbasid Caliphate was on the wane, and when the eastern lands of the Islamic empire began to be take on a fresh 'Persianate¿ or 'Perso?Islamic¿ character. One of the paradoxes of this era is that the establishment throughout the eastern Islamic territories of new Turkish dynasties coincided with the genesis and spread, into Central and South Asia, of vibrant new Persian language and literatures. Exploring the nature of this paradox, separate chapters engage with ideas of kingship, authority and identity and their fascinating expression through the written word, architecture and the visual arts.

Author Biography

Edmund Herzig is Soudavar Professor of Persian Studies and a Fellow of Wadham College, University of Oxford. He is the author of The Armenians: A Handbook and Iran and the World in the Safavid Age (I.B.Tauris).

Sarah Stewart is Lecturer in Zoroastrianism in the Department of the Study of Religions and Deputy Director of the London Middle East Institute at SOAS, University of London. She is co-editor, with Vesta Curtis, of Birth of the Persian Empire, Age of the Parthians, The Sasanian Era and The Rise of Islam, all published by I.B.Tauris.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Acknowledgements	p. ix
Foreword	p. 1
The Samanids: The first Islamic Dynasty of Central Asia	p. 3
The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful: The survival of Ancient Iranian Ethical Concepts in Persian Popular Narratives of the Islamic Period	p. 16
Arts of Iran in Late Antiquity	p. 30
Sindbadnama: A Zurvanite Cosmogonic Legend?	p. 42
Early Persian Historians and the Heritage of Pre-Islamic Iran	p. 59
Advice Literature in Tenth and Early Eleventh-Century Iran and Early Persian Prose Writing	p. 76
The Expression of Power in the Art and Architecture of Early Islamic Iran	p. 102
The Lofty Castle of Qabus b. Voshmgir	p. 120
Authority and Identity in the Pahlavi Books	p. 139
The Idea of Iran in the Buyid Dominions	p. 153
List of Abbreviations	p. 61
Bibliography	p. 162
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