The Renaissance of Shi'i Islam

The renaissance of Shi’i Islam began in the 9th/15th century when the Ismailis experienced the Anjudan revival and Twelver Shi’i traditions were also renewed. This renaissance gained further strength when the Safavids succeeded in establishing a state in the early decades of the 10th/16th century, making Ithna’ashari Shi’i Islam their official religion. The chapters in this open access book represent the most recent scholarship on the intellectual and spiritual life of the age and discuss what prepared the ground for its appearance as well as its achievements. Although the political and artistic developments of the Safavid era of the 10th-12th/16th-18th centuries have been extensively studied, the complexities of the different groups, movements and strands of thought in the renaissance of Shi’i Islam still remain largely unexplored. The major themes that characterised the Shi’i renaissance are explored, including: popular reactions to messianic movements; the development of legal theories and concepts; the investigation of theological and philosophical problems, above all by the ‘School of Isfahan’; Shi’i-Sufi interactions and intra-Shi'i relations; the collection of Shi’i hadith and its application in Shi’i exegesis; and the interplay between political considerations and religious beliefs. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Institute of Ismaili Studies

The Renaissance of Shi'i Islam

The renaissance of Shi’i Islam began in the 9th/15th century when the Ismailis experienced the Anjudan revival and Twelver Shi’i traditions were also renewed. This renaissance gained further strength when the Safavids succeeded in establishing a state in the early decades of the 10th/16th century, making Ithna’ashari Shi’i Islam their official religion. The chapters in this open access book represent the most recent scholarship on the intellectual and spiritual life of the age and discuss what prepared the ground for its appearance as well as its achievements. Although the political and artistic developments of the Safavid era of the 10th-12th/16th-18th centuries have been extensively studied, the complexities of the different groups, movements and strands of thought in the renaissance of Shi’i Islam still remain largely unexplored. The major themes that characterised the Shi’i renaissance are explored, including: popular reactions to messianic movements; the development of legal theories and concepts; the investigation of theological and philosophical problems, above all by the ‘School of Isfahan’; Shi’i-Sufi interactions and intra-Shi'i relations; the collection of Shi’i hadith and its application in Shi’i exegesis; and the interplay between political considerations and religious beliefs. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Institute of Ismaili Studies

Zoroastrianism in Armenia

Near Eastern Languages and Civilization

Zoroastrianism in Armenia.

From the time of the conquest of Assyria and Urartu by the Medes to the fall of the Sasanian Empire to the Muslim Arabs some thirteen centuries later, Armenian culture developed under the religious, political and linguistic influence of various Iranian empires. For most of this period the dominant religion of the Iranians was Zoroastrianism, and there exists abundant evidence to show that this religion was practised also by the Armenians from the time of the Achaemenians. The religion waned in Armenia following the conversion of the Armenian Arsacid king Tiridates III to Christianity early in the fourth century, and most information on the earlier faith must be culled from hostile Armenian Christian texts of the fifth century and later. Like the Zoroastrians of Iran, the ancient Armenians believed in a supreme God, Ahura Mazda (Arm. Aramazd), the Creator of all that is good, who is assisted by supernatural beings of His own creation, by good men and by His good creatures against the separate, uncreated Evil Spirit (Av. Angra Mainyu, Arm. Arhmn, Haramani) and its demonic hosts and destructive assaults. Armenian texts contain names, theological terms and references to rituals and usages, most often loan-words from Middle Iranian, which enable us to reconstruct a picture of pre-Christian Armenian religious life and thought similar to that provided by Zoroastrian sources in Iran. Non-Zoroastrian customs and divinities from ancient Urartu, Asia Minor and the Semitic world may also be found in Armenia, but frequently such elements were also incorporated into Iranian Zoroastrianism. It is argued that the prevailing view of Armenian religion before Christianity as merely syncretistic is therefore inaccurate, and that the Armenians practised a form of Zoroastrianism that differed from that of Pars or other Iranian lands, only in as much as the various national Churches of Christianity today maintain divers local traditions. The Armenians opposed the iconoclastic and other reforms instituted by Ardesir I and his successors; and the Armenian Zoroastrians, isolated from the great mass of their co-religionists, suffered further setbacks with the conversion of their countrymen to Christianity. Yet the ancient religion survived in folk custom, in certain celebrations of the Armenian Church, and through the sect of the Children of the Sun, down to recent times

Architectural sensibility in eighteenth-century Istanbul

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture and Planning, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (p. 309-336).The definitive return of the Ottoman court to the capital city Istanbul in 1703 ushered in nearly a century of extraordinary building activity and urban change, in the process of which a new architectural idiom was defined. This dissertation examines the parameters of Ottoman architectural sensibility in the eighteenth century, starting at this pivotal moment and ending with the first European commissions in the 1790s. It draws principally on contemporary court poetry, and a wide array of Ottoman and European literary and visual sources, and architectural evidence. It departs from current interpretations, which view European influence as the chief impetus of architectural change in this period. Instead, I contend that this was a time when social transformations in the making since the late sixteenth century were enacted in the city's fabric through the tastes, aspirations, and recreational practices of the urban society. The continuous dynamic between these manifestations and the state s efforts to reassert its visible presence in the capital was central to the formation of a new urban and architectural landscape. This is highlighted in the first part, which explores the development of the suburban waterfront, the spatial and structural transformations of residences, the formal evolution of private gardens, the proliferation and unprecedented magnificence of public fountains, and the phenomenal expansion of public spaces. The second part focuses on the role of urban sensibilities in shaping a broader cultural horizon of expectations. Through an investigation of the age-old relation between garden and poetry in this period, I show that garden and poetic canon followed a parallel trajectory of "urbanization," symptomatic of a changing environment that accommodated a diverse range of social milieus and sensibilities. Drawing on the flourishing genre of rhymed architectural chronograms, I argue that this hybrid constellation of sensibilities informed the architectural vocabulary of eighteenth-century Istanbul. In Ottoman perception, beauty was measured against the sensuous pleasures derived from the visual and sensory experience of architecture. Brilliance, ornamental virtuosity, mimesis, and novelty, constituted the main parameters of appreciation. They mirrored a flamboyant and immensely hybrid visual idiom, tuned to the sensibilities of a broad and diverse public.by Shirine Hamadeh.Ph.D