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Non-Iranian historical lands in Pahlavi literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2019

Domenico Agostini
Domenico Agostini*
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

Although Zoroastrian Pahlavi literature preserves few geographical and ethnographic descriptions of non-Iranian historical regions, the popular book Ayādgār ī Jāmāspīg devotes several chapters to an extensive account of the landscape, social customs and religious practices of India, China, Arabia, Barbary, Ceylon (or the region of Slavs), Mazandarān and Turkestan. These descriptions share many similarities with the accounts of Muslim geographers between the ninth and twelfth centuries ce, though they also contain many Late Sasanian elements. In providing an English translation of these passages, this article aims to identify the inhabitants of these regions as well as to provide a more precise chronology of the chapters. It argues that Zoroastrian authors in the first centuries of the Islamic era, taking as a model the new Islamic science of geography, wrote or reworked these chapters with the intention of redefining and mapping the new world around them.

Keywords

Pahlavi literatureZoroastrianismSasanian IranGeographyEthnographyEarly Islam
Type
Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 82 , Issue 3 , October 2019 , pp. 453 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London 2019

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Footnotes

I would like to dedicate this work to Professor Shaul Shaked on the occasion of his eighty-sixth birthday. I am also indebted to Professor Frantz Grenet for his insightful suggestions.

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