Download or read book The Messiah of Shiraz written by Denis MacEoin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009 with total page 781 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based throughout on original Persian and Arabic sources, most in manuscript, this is an exhaustive overview of Babi history and doctrine. Alongside Amanat's "Resurrection and Renewal," this distillation of a lifetime's work on the movement brings Babi studies into the twentieth century.
Download or read book Proceedings of the Third Annual International Conference on Shi i Studies written by Regina Rowland and published by ICAS Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Annual International Conference on Shi‘i Studies is organised by the Research and Publications Department of The Islamic College, London. The conference aims to provide a broad platform for scholars working in the field of Shi‘i Studies to present their latest research and to explore diverse opinions on Shi‘i thought, practice, and heritage. This book comprises a selection of papers from the third conference held on 6–7 May 2017.
Download or read book The Baha i Faith in Africa written by Anthony Lee and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-10-28 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1952, there were probably fewer than 200 Baha'is in all of Africa. Today the Baha'i community claims one million followers on the continent. Yet, the Baha'i presence in Africa has been all but ignored in academic studies up to now. This is the first monograph that addresses the establishment of this New Religious Movement in Africa. Discovering an African presence at the genesis of the religon in Iran, this study seeks to explain why the movement found an appeal in colonial Africa during the 1950s and early 1960. It also explores how the Baha'i faith was influenced and Africanized by its new converts. Finally, the book seeks to make sense of the diverse and contradictory American, Iranian, British, and African elements that established a new religion in Africa.
Download or read book Unity in Diversity written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the mechanisms of change and adaptation in Islam, regarded as a living organism, and how do they work? How did these mechanisms preserve the integrity of Muslim civilization through the innumerable hazards, divisions and devastations of time? From the perspective of history and intellectual history, this book focuses on a significant, though still largely under studied, aspect of this immense issue, namely, the role of mystical and messianic ferment in the construction and re-construction of religious authority in Islam. Sixteen scholars address this topic with a variety of approaches, providing a fresh outlook on the trends underlying the evolution of Muslim societies and, in particular, the emergence and consolidation of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Empires. Contributors include: Abbas Amanat, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Paul Ballanfat, Shahzad Bashir, Ilker Evrim Binbaş, Daniel De Smet, Devin DeWeese, Armin Eschraghi, Omid Ghaemmaghami, Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Todd Lawson, Pierre Lory, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Orkhan Mir-Kasimov, A. Azfar Moin, William F. Tucker.
Download or read book Encounters with the Hidden Imam in Early and Pre Modern Twelver Sh Islam written by Omid Ghaemmaghami and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Twelver Shīʿī Islam is a history of attempts to deal with the abrupt loss of the Imam. In Encounters with the Hidden Imam in Early and Pre- Modern Twelver Shīʿī Islam, Omid Ghaemmaghami demonstrates that in the early years of what came to be known as the Greater Occultation, Shīʿī authorities maintained that all contact with the Imam had been sundered, forcing him to remain incommunicado until his (re)appearance . This position, however, proved untenable to maintain. Almost a century after the start of the Greater Occultation, prominent scholars began to concede the possibility that some Shīʿa can meet the Hidden Imam. Accounts of encounters with the Imam from the Greater Occultation soon began to appear, adumbrating their exponential growth in later centuries.
Download or read book The Bab and the Babi Community of Iran written by Fereydun Vahman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-11-05 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1844, a young merchant from Shiraz called Sayyid ‘Ali-Muhammad declared himself the ‘gate’ (the Bab) to the Truth and, shortly afterwards, the initiator of a new prophetic cycle. His messianic call attracted a significant following across Iran and Iraq. Regarded as a threat by state and religious authorities, the Babis were subject to intense persecution and the Bab himself was executed in 1850. In this volume, leading scholars of Islam, Baha’i studies and Iranian history come together to examine the life and legacy of the Bab, from his childhood to the founding of the Baha’i faith and beyond. Among other subjects, they cover the Bab’s writings, his Qur’an commentaries, the societal conditions that underlay the Babi upheavals, the works of Babi martyr Tahirih Qurratu’l-‘Ayn, and Orientalist Edward Granville Browne’s encounters with Babi and Baha’i texts.
Download or read book Jewish Identities in Iran written by Mehrdad Amanat and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-04-30 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nineteenth century was a time of significant global socioeconomic change, and Persian Jews, like other Iranians, were deeply affected by its challenges. For minority faith groups living in nineteenth-century Iran, religious conversion to Islam - both voluntary and involuntary - was the primary means of social integration and assimilation. However, why was it that some Persian Jews, who had for centuries resisted the relative security of Islam, instead embraced the Baha'i Faith - which was subject to harsher persecution that Judaism? Baha'ism emerged from the messianic Babi movement in the mid-nineteenth century and attracted large numbers of mostly Muslim converts, and its ecumenical message appealed to many Iranian Jews. Many converts adopted fluid, multiple religious identities, revealing an alternative to the widely accepted notion of religious experience as an oppressive, rigidly dogmatic and consistently divisive social force. Mehrdad Amanat explores the conversion experiences of Jewish families during this time. Many converted sporadically to Islam, although not always voluntarily. The most notorious case of forced mass-conversion in modern times occurred in Mashhad in 1839 when, in response to an organized attack, the entire Jewish community converted to Shi'i Islam. A contrast is offered by a Tehran Jewish family of court physicians who nominally converted to Islam and yet continued to openly observe Jewish rituals while also remaining intellectually sympathetic to Baha'ism. Many petty merchants and pedlars, in a position to benefit from Iran's expanding market, migrated from ancient communities to thriving trade centres which proved fertile grounds for the spread of new ideas and, often, conversion to Christianity or Baha'ism. This is an important scholarly contribution which also provides a fascinating insight into the personal experiences of Jewish families living in nineteenth-century Iran.
Download or read book Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam written by Todd Lawson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of the several works on the rise and development of the Babi movement, especially those dealing with the life and work of its founder, Sayyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi, few deal directly with the compelling and complex web of mysticism, theology and philosophy found in his earliest compositions. This book examines the Islamic roots of the Babi religion, (and by extension the later Baha’i faith which developed out of it), through the Qur’anic commentaries of the Bab and sheds light on its relationship to the wider religious milieu and its profound debt to esoteric Islam, especially Shi'ism. Todd Lawson places the two earliest writings of the Bab within the diverse contexts necessary to understand them, in order to explain why these writings made sense to and inspired his followers. He delves into the history of the tafsir (Qur’an commentary) genre of Islamic scholarship, situates these early writings in the Akhbari, Sufi and most importantly Shaykhi traditions of Islam. In the process, he identifies both the continuities and discontinuities between these works and earlier works of Shi’i tafsir, helping us appreciate significant elements of the Bab’s thought and claims. Filling an important gap in the existing literature on the Babi movement, this book will be of greatest interest to students and scholars of Qur'an commentary, Mysticism, Shi'ism, the modern history of Iran and messianism.
Download or read book Beyond Religion and the Secular written by Wayne Hudson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-11-17 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deploying a distinctive disaggregative approach to the study of 'religion', this volume shows that spiritual movements with extensive counterfactual beliefs have been much more creative than one might expect. Specifically, Wayne Hudson explores the creativity of six spiritual movements: the Bahá'ís, a Persian movement; Soka Gakkai, a Japanese movement; Ananda Marga and the Brahma Kumaris, two reformed Hindu movements; and two controversial American churches, The Church Universal and Triumphant and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most of these movements have counterintuitive features that have led Western scholars making Enlightenment assumptions to dismiss them as irrational and/or inconsequential. However, this book reveals that these movements have responded to modernity in ways that are creative and practical, resulting in a wide range of social, educational and cultural initiatives. Building on research surrounding the ways in which spiritual movements engage in cultural productions, this book takes the international research in a new direction by exploring the utopian intentionality such cultural productions reveal.
Download or read book The Conceptualization of Guardianship in Iranian Intellectual History 1800 1989 written by Leila Chamankhah and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of the concept of wilāya and its developments among Shīʿī scholars from the eighteenth to twentieth century. Leila Chamankhah addresses a number of issues by delving into the conceptualizations of wilāya through the examination and interpretation of key texts. She focuses on the influence of ibn ʿArabī’s mysticism, with regard to the conception of wilāya, on his Shīʿa successors and expositors in later centuries. She also discusses the development and transformation of the conception of wilāya over two hundred years, from the esoteric school of Shaykhīsm to the politicization of wilāya in the theory of wilāyat al-faqīh.
Download or read book John the Baptist in History and Theology written by Joel Marcus and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2018-11-16 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis that challenges the conventional Christian hierarchy of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth While the Christian tradition has subordinated John the Baptist to Jesus of Nazareth, John himself would likely have disagreed with that ranking. In this eye-opening new book, John the Baptist in History and Theology, Joel Marcus makes a powerful case that John saw himself, not Jesus, as the proclaimer and initiator of the kingdom of God and his own ministry as the center of God's saving action in history. Although the Fourth Gospel has the Baptist saying, "He must increase, but I must decrease," Marcus contends that this and other biblical and extrabiblical evidence reveal a continuing competition between the two men that early Christians sought to muffle. Like Jesus, John was an apocalyptic prophet who looked forward to the imminent end of the world and the establishment of God's rule on earth. Originally a member of the Dead Sea Sect, an apocalyptic community within Judaism, John broke with the group over his growing conviction that he himself was Elijah, the end-time prophet who would inaugurate God's kingdom on earth. Through his ministry of baptism, he ushered all who came to him—Jews and non-Jews alike—into this dawning new age. Jesus began his career as a follower of the Baptist, but, like other successor figures in religious history, he parted ways from his predecessor as he became convinced of his own centrality in God's purposes. Meanwhile John's mass following and apocalyptic message became political threats to Herod Antipas, who had John executed to abort any revolutionary movement. Based on close critical-historical readings of early texts—including the accounts of John in the Gospels and in Josephus's Antiquities—as well as parallels from later religious movements, John the Baptist in History and Theology situates the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism and compares him to other apocalyptic thinkers from ancient and modern times. It concludes with thoughtful reflections on how its revisionist interpretations might be incorporated into the Christian faith.
Download or read book The World of the Bah Faith written by Robert H. Stockman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The World of the Bahá’í Faith is an outstanding guide to the Bahá’í Faith and its culture in all its geographical and historical diversity. Written by a distinguished team of international contributors, this volume explores the origin of this religion and contains substantial thematic articles on the living experience of the global Bahá’í community. The volume is organised into six distinct sections: Leadership and Authoritative Texts Theology Humanity Society The Contemporary Bahá’í Community History and Spread of the Bahá’í Community These sections cover such themes as the afterlife, artistic expression, Bahá’í institutions, devotional life, diversity, economics, education, the environment and sustainability, family life, gender, human nature, interfaith relations, international governance, law, marriage, peace, persecution, philosophy, race, science and religion, scripture, spirituality, and work. The development of the Bahá’í Faith is outlined in ten regional articles. This volume provides an authoritative and accessible source of information on all topics important to the Bahá’í Faith. The World of the Bahá’í Faith will be essential reading to students and scholars studying world religions and comparative religion. It will also be of interest to those in related fields such as sociology, political science, anthropology, and ethics.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions written by Adam J. Silverstein and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions includes authoritative yet accessible studies on a wide variety of topics dealing comparatively with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as with the interactions between the adherents of these religions throughout history. The comparativestudy of the Abrahamic Religions has been undertaken for many centuries. More often than not, these studies reflected a polemical rather than an ecumenical approach to the topic. Since the nineteenth century, the comparative study of the Abrahamic Religions has not been pursued either intensively orsystematically, and it is only recently that the comparative study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has received more serious attention. This volume contributes to the emergence and development of the comparative study of the Abrahamic religions, a discipline which is now in its formative stages.This Handbook includes both critical and supportive perspectives on the very concept of the Abrahamic religions and discussions on the role of the figure of Abraham in these religions. It features 32 essays, by the foremost scholars in the field, on the historical interactions between Abrahamiccommunities; on Holy Scriptures and their interpretation; on conceptions of religious history; on various topics and strands of religious thought, such as monotheism and mysticism; on rituals of prayer, purity, and sainthood, on love in the three religions and on fundamentalism. The volume concludeswith three epilogues written by three influential figures in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities, to provide a broader perspective on the comparative study of the Abrahamic religions. This ground-breaking work introduces readers to the challenges and rewards of studying these threereligions together.
Download or read book The King A Novel written by Kader Abdolah and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hypnotic page-turner about the grinding gears of historical change and ruthless palace intrigue in Persia, c. 1848. The King, young Shah Naser, takes to the throne of Persia at a turning point of history: he inherits an enchanted medieval world of harems, eunuchs, and treasures as well as a palace of secret doors, sudden deaths, and hidden agendas. Within the court is danger enough: outside all manner of change threatens—industrialization, colonization. Russia and England conspire to open the King’s empire; his mother and his vizier take opposing sides. The poor King—almost an exact contemporary of Queen Victoria—is trapped. He likes some aspects of modernity (electricity, photography) but can’t embrace democracy. He must be a sovereign: he must keep his throne. The King cannot face change and he cannot escape it. With this gleaming and seemingly simple story, breathlessly paced and beautifully told, Kader Abdolah, the acclaimed Iranian émigré novelist, speaks of deeper truths. A novel which has many timely things to say about eras of change and upheaval, The King is an unforgettable book.
Download or read book State Religion and Revolution in Iran 1796 to the Present written by B. Moazami and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two basic assumptions have shaped understanding of recent Iranian history. One is that Shi'ism is an integral part of Iran's religious and cultural landscape. The other is that the ulama (religious scholars) have always played a crucial role. This book challenges these assumptions and constructs a new synthesis of the history of state and religion in Iran from 1796 to the present while challenging existing theories of large-scale political transformation. Arguing that the 1979 revolution has not ended, Behrooz Moazami relates political and religious transformations in Iran to the larger instability of the Middle East region and concludes that turmoil will continue until a new regional configuration evolves.
Download or read book The Jewish Expositor and Friend of Israel written by and published by . This book was released on 1825 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Outcaste RLE Iran D written by Laurence D Loeb and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-04 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a unique investigation of contemporary Jewish life in a Muslim country and the first ethnography of the Persian-Jewish diaspora, giving the reader a deep appreciation of this relatively unknown culture. The author describes in detail traditional Jewish life in the provincial city of Shiraz and the challenges of coexistence with a Muslim majority.
