Continuity in Iranian Identity: Resilience of a Cultural Heritage (Iranian Studies) PDF
Preview Continuity in Iranian Identity: Resilience of a Cultural Heritage (Iranian Studies)
Continuity in Iranian Identity Despite changes in sovereignty and in religious thought, certain aspects of Iranian culture and identity have persisted since antiquity. Drawing on anexplorationofhistory,religionandliteraturetodefineIraniancultural identity and link the Persian past with more recent cultural and political phenomena,thisbookexaminesthehistoryofIranfromitsancientroots to the Islamic period, paying particular attention to pre-Islamic Persian religions and their influence upon later Muslim practices and precepts in Iran. Accessible English translations of the pre-Islamic Andarz (Advice) liter- ature and of the Adab (Counsel) genre of the Islamic era illustrate the convergenceofreligionandliteratureinIraniancultureandhowthemostly religiousAdabtextswereverymuchinfluencedandshapedbytheAndarz sources.Withinthecontextofthishistoricalmaterial,andinparticularthe pre-Islamicreligiousmaterial,theauthorhighlightsitsliteraryandethical implicationsonpost-IslamicIranianidentity. Exploringthelinkbetweenaconsistentpre-IslamicIranianidentityanda uniquepost-Islamicone,thisbookwillbeofinteresttostudentsofIranian studies, Middle Eastern studies and Religious studies, as well as anyone wishingtolearnmoreaboutPersianhistoryandculture. FereshtehDavaran teachesPersianlanguagecoursesintheSanFrancisco Bay area, most recently at the University of California, Berkeley, and at DeAnzaandDiabloValleyColleges.Shehastranslatedthreeclassicworks ofEnglishliteratureintoPersianandhaspublishedmanyliteraryreviewsin bothlanguages. IranianStudies Editedby:HomaKatouzian,UniversityofOxfordand MohamadTavakoli,UniversityofToronto Since 1967 the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) has been a leading learned society for the advancement of new approaches in the study of Iranian society, history, culture and literature. The new ISIS IranianStudiesseriespublishedbyRoutledgewillprovideavenueforthe publicationoforiginalandinnovativescholarlyworksinallareasofIranian andPersianateStudies. JournalisminIran Frommissiontoprofession HosseinShahidi SadeqHedayat Hisworkandhiswondrousworld HomaKatouzian Iraninthe21stCentury Politics,economicsandconfrontation HomaKatouzianandHosseinShahidi Media,CultureandSocietyinIran LivingwithglobalizationandtheIslamicstate MehdiSemati ModernPersianLiteratureinAfghanistan Anomalousvisionsofhistoryandform WaliAhmadi ThePoliticsofIranianCinema FilmandsocietyintheIslamicrepublic SaeedZeydabadi-Nejad ContinuityinIranianIdentity Resilienceofaculturalheritage FereshtehDavaran Continuity in Iranian Identity Resilience of a cultural heritage Fereshteh Davaran Firstpublished2010 byRoutledge 2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada byRoutledge 270MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016 RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup, aninformabusiness This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. ©2010FereshtehDavaran Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedor reproducedorutilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical, orothermeans,nowknownorhereafterinvented,including photocopyingandrecording,orinanyinformationstorageor retrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublishers. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Davaran,Fereshteh. ContinuityinIranianidentity:resilienceofaculturalheritage/ FereshtehDavaran. p.cm.–(Iranianstudies;7) Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. 1.Iran–Civilization.2.Nationalcharacteristics,Iranian.3.Culture diffusion–Iran–History.4.Iran–History.5.Iran–Religion. 6.Islam–Iran–History.7.Iran–Intellectuallife.8.Pahlavi literature–Historyandcriticism.9.Religiousliterature, Persian–Historyandcriticism. 10.Islamicliterature–Iran–Historyandcriticism.I.Title. DS266.D382010 955–dc22 2009029915 ISBN 0-203-88630-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10:0-415-48104-X(hbk) ISBN10:0-203-88630-5(ebk) ISBN13:978-0-415-48104-5(hbk) ISBN13:978-0-203-88630-4(ebk) ForArdavan: As our mother used to say, when Imam Ali was asked which isbettertohave,abrotherorafriend,hereplied,“Abrother whoisalsoafriend.” TomysonHamidandmynephewsBobak,AshkonandArdi, andtoalltheirsignificantothers: Youarethefutureofourincreasinglysmallclan. Contents Acknowledgements viii Preface x Introduction 1 1 OldIranians 7 2 MiddleIranians 30 3 Iranianreligions 64 4 MiddlePersianliterature:Andarz 99 5 IranianpersistenceintheIslamicera 136 6 Islamic-eraPersianliterature:Adab 170 Conclusion 220 Notes 223 Bibliography 255 Index 267 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the members of my PhD dissertation committee in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley,ProfessorsWaliAhmadi,MartinSchwartzandGaryHolland,for their careful readings and expert advice. I especially appreciate the quick and generous responses of my committee chair, Professor Ahmadi, not only through the last few years, but also particularly during his sabbatical year of 2004–5. Professors Hamid Algar and Mohammed Este’alami, ProfessorEmeritusDavidStronach,andthelateProfessorMohammedJafar Mahdjoub also were great teachers when I was their student; Professor Homayoun Katouzian deserves my gratitude as well for his helpful role in finding a publisher for this book. I also would like to thank Jasmin Shahbandi,MaryMarsellaandJonahHolmes,myfellowstudents,forread- ing and commenting on my work. My family and friends were supportive andvery,verypatient.Finally,IextendmydeepestthankstoLauraSteele, myfriendandeditor,withoutwhosetechnicalskillsandvastknowledgeof relatedsubjectsthisworkwouldnothavereacheditsfruition.Anyerrorsin factorjudgmentremainmyown. All translations are mine unless stated otherwise. For those English translationsbyothersthatarenotinthepublicdomain,Ihavemadeevery efforttosecurepermissiontocitethemextensively.Inonlytwocases–thatis, thoseofR.Levy’s1951translationof‘Unsural-Ma‘ali’sMirrorforPrincesand ofG.M.Wickens’1964translationofNasiral-DinTusi’sTheNasireanEthics– wasIunabletocontactthecurrentrightsholdersdespitemybestefforts, and I cite those texts below in good faith. I thank Durham University for permissiontociteF.R.C.Bagley’s1964translationofGhazaliTusi’sBookof CounselforKings;BibliothecaPersicaPressforpermissiontociteS.Shaked’s 1979 translation of A. Emetan’s Wisdom of the Sasanian Sages: D¯enkard VI; the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters for permission to cite A.V. Williams’ 1990 translation of The Pahlavi Rivayat Accompanying the Dadestan-i Denig; and Taylor & Francis Books UK for permission to cite H.Darke’s1978translationofNizamal-MulkTusi’sTheBookofGovernment; or,RulesforKings. Acknowledgements ix Throughout this book, I use the standard Library of Congress translit- erations of Persian and Arabic into Latin script; one may find slightly differenttransliterationsofthesamewordselsewhere,aswiththesurname ofthelateProfessorAhmadTafazzuli,frequentlyrenderedasTafazzoliby others. Whenever authors have published in English, I follow their own transliterations of their names. I also normalize the spellings of proper nouns and other foreign words in direct quotations in order to avoid confusion. For some words that go through changes in different stages of Iranian history, alternative forms are at times mentioned in parentheses, andsubsequentlyonlyoneformisused.
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