Volume 97, Issue 2

This article discusses eventual Qurʾānic allusions to Zoroastrian texts by using the example of zamharīr (Q 76:13). In the early tafsīr and ḥadīth -literature the term is most commonly understood as a piercing cold, which has frequently been interpreted as a punishment in hell. This idea, it is argued, has significant parallels to the concept of cold as a punishment in hell or to the absence of cold as a characteristic of paradise in the Avestan and Middle-Persian literature. In addition, Christian and Jewish texts that emphasize a similar idea and have not been discussed in research so far are brought into consideration. The article thus aims to contribute to the inclusion of Zoroastrian texts in locating the genesis of the Qurʾān – or early Islamic exegesis – in the “epistemic space ” of late antiquity.

The mural paintings discovered in the Caliphal Palace of the ʿAbbāsid city of Samarra constitute a rare example of figural decoration in an urban Islamic palace as well as one of the most important testimonies to Medieval mural paintings that have come down to us from the region. However, as with the rest of the Samarra finds, these paintings suffered significant damage and were published several years after their excavation ( Herzfeld , E., Die Malereien von Samarra , Berlin 1927). Although valuable in many respects, this publication presents a breach of methodology, as it does not attend to either the archaeological or architectural contexts. It also contains several information gaps and inaccuracies. One of the main issues not properly addressed is the exact location of the paintings within the building. Researching various archival and museum collections and taking into account studies on the interpretation of the palace layout, this analysis has shown that the location of the paintings is much more complex than indicated in the publication; these were found in both private areas of the complex and in a few public ones too. This is confirmed by some medieval texts, which provide important information for the study of this material.

Ibn al-Fāriḍ (gest. 632/1235), einer der bedeutendsten Dichter des Sufismus, entwickelt in seinem großen Lehrgedicht „Die Ordnung des Weges“ ( Naẓm as-sulūk ) eine mystische Ästhetik, indem er beschreibt, wie der Mensch die göttliche Schönheit ( ǧamāl ) erkennen kann, die sich in der irdischen Schönheit ( ḥusn ) manifestiert. Beide arabischen Begriffe haben in seinen Versen keine moralische Konnotation, worin er sich von anderen Sufis unterscheidet. Es ist ein Prozess der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung, an dem Geist ( rūḥ ) und Seele ( nafs ), sowie alle Sinnesorgane beteiligt sind. In diesem Prozess nehmen die Sinne die irdische Schönheit wahr und melden sie der Seele. Diese gibt die Botschaft an den Geist weiter, der allein imstande ist, die göttliche Essenz in der Materie zu erkennen. Am Ende des mystischen Weges, den Ibn al-Fāriḍ aus eigener Erfahrung schildert, hat er selbst die Stufe der kosmischen Einheit erreicht. Dort ist jede Trennung in Mikrokosmos und Makrokosmos aufgehoben. Im Mikrokosmos, im Menschen, fallen alle körperlichen Funktionen zusammen, sind austauschbar. Auf der Ebene des Makrokosmos sind die irdische Schönheit und die göttliche Schönheit eins geworden.

Maqām al-Nabī Mūsā, situated just off the route connecting Jerusalem to Jericho and to Amman further to the east, was a meeting place for thousands of pilgrims that gathered around the shrine during the mawsim (festival). Sultans, clerks, muftis, and wealthy families, who sought the saint’s blessing, put efforts into building facilities for those pilgrims. The earliest products of those donations, still identifiable on the ground, are the mausoleum built by the order of Sultan Baybars (r. 1260–1277) in the early days of the Mamluk era and the manāra (minaret) and the riwāq (open arcade) added by the order of Sultan al-Ashraf Qāytbāy (r. 1468–1496) toward the end of that era. Both building phases bear the imprint of local masons who were active in building Mamluk Jerusalem. Those masons developed their own regional style that differed from that of their counterparts in major Mamluk centers like Damascus and Cairo. A concomitant theme in this article is thus regional styles in architecture.

Minhāj al-sunna al-nabawiyya fī naqḍ kalām al-shīʿa al-qadariyya is Ibn Taymiyyaʼs (d. 728/1328) famed voluminous response to Minhāj al-karāma fī maʿrifat al-imāma , a significantly shorter treatise by his Imāmī contemporary, al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 726/1325). Focusing on parts of Minhāj al-sunna in which Ibn Taymiyyaʼs perception of Imāmī Shīʿism comes to the fore, this article sets out to evaluate to what extent his criticism of this manifestation of Islam was founded. Despite the obvious polemical nature of this work, I argue that the juxtaposition of Ibn Taymiyyaʼs portrayal of Imāmī Shīʿism in Minhāj al-sunna with both the information in Imāmī Shīʿī sources until his time and current academic research on Shīʿism reveals that he had a comprehensive acquaintance with a variety of Shīʿī tenets and historical developments. This observation is particularly interesting and important in view of al-Ḥillīʼs alleged dismissive reaction to Ibn Taymiyyaʼs counterwork and the general contemptuous attitude toward Minhāj al-sunna in Imāmī scholarly circles.

This essay examines the history of the term Türkmen in western Asia, and asks how its significance changed with the spread of Ottoman and Safavid power in the early modern era. Although it always maintained its core connotation of uncouth tribes, the meaning of the term became more complex (and at times conflicting) after the Mongol period, a dynamic which this paper highlights by comparing it to the Oghūz identity. Poets and court historians developed novel ways of deploying both terms to explain the political dominance of Turkish speakers in the region. When Türkmen gained new import as a political label during the Aq Quyūnlū period, it came to have two contradictory connotations: tribal rebellion and the state-building aspirations of the Anatolian Türkmen dynasties. Both were marginalized by the subsequent establishment of Ottoman and Safavid power in the 16th century. However, the term continued to be widely used to describe Turkish-speaking tribes in the region, and manuscripts from the Caucasus version of the Köroğlu epic tradition show how it came to represent an autonomous tribal alternative to the new imperial status quo of the 17th century.

It is well known that the pre-Islamic “national history” of Iran (i. e., the indigenous secular historical tradition, transmitted orally over many centuries) knows nothing at all, or as good as nothing, about the dynasties and empires of the Medes, Achaemenids, Seleucids, and Parthians (ca. 700 BCE–226 CE). It is first with the Sasanians (226‒651 CE) that Iran’s “national history” evinces more detailed knowledge. Instead of reports on the historical Medes and Achaemenid dynasties, accounts of mythical and legendary dynasties, the Pīšdādians and Kayānians, are found. In this essay, an attempt will be made to explain this “gap” in the pre-Islamic historical tradition, this “strange historical (or national) amnesiaˮ (Ehsan Yarshater ) in the cultural memory of the Iranians, with the help of a theory on the structure and modality of oral tradition, based on field research, by the Belgian historian and anthropologist Jan Vansina . The structure in question concerns a tripartite perception of the past: a wealth of information about antiquity (traditions of origin or creation and reports on culture heroes) – plenty of information, too, on the recent and most recent times – and lying between them, a “gap” in the accounts. Vansina described this phenomenon as the “hourglass effect.” This is exactly the narrative structure of Iranian national history; it is evident that the Achaemenids and the other pre-Christian dynasties fall into the “gap” described by Vansina . The same phenomenon can also be detected on the level of Sasanian history. We find there a plethora of information on the founder of the dynasty, Ardašīr (reigned 226‒241 CE); meanwhile, very few details are known of the kings following Ardašīr, and it is only as of Kavād I (reigned 488‒496 and 499‒531 CE) that we have outstanding historical information.