Categories : Field-specific (academic)

"The Adventures of Shāh Esmāʿil" published on 01 Nov 2018 by Brill.

In any analysis of Bahrain’s political structure, it is fundamental to understand the relationship between the Usili, Akhbaris, and authority. This analysis includes an assessment of the implications of the differences between the Usili and Akhbaris, thus shedding light on the dynamic interaction between these players in local and external structures and clarifying the effect of ideology and identity on the ties of authority with Shi’a. Usuli and Akhbaris principles have incontrovertible implications for the political perceptions of Shi’a groups and elites with regard to their dealings with the government in Bahrain. These religious perceptions form part of the political equation involved in ensuring the convergence of authority with the Shi’a community. This paper considers how differences between the Usuli and Akhbaris have shaped the relation between authority and Shi’a in Bahrain.

(2020). An Early Decree of Nādir Shāh Concerning the vaqf of Ardabil. Iranian Studies: Vol. 53, No. 5-6, pp. 963-979.

Until the 1960s, little was known inside or outside Iran about the tribes living in the country. The anthropological research of Erika Friedl is now renowned for presenting comprehensive data collected over a 50-year period from her time among the Boir Ahmad tribal people living in the Zagros Mountains of Iran. In this new book, Friedl turns her attention to the subject of religion, which she had only touched upon in her previous work. About ninety percent of people in Iran and nearly everybody in Boir Ahmad are Muslims of the Twelver Shia group. However, studies of tribal people’s religiosity, beliefs and rituals are scarce, and many researchers have discounted their views and experience, regarding the tribes as only “nominally religious” because their practices do not fit in with the mainstream practices and ideas in Iran. Religion and Daily Life in the Mountains of Iran corrects this view and provides a hallmark study of tribal people’s religiosity. Demonstrating the great diversity of their philosophical and religious ideas, the book reveals the ways in which the tribes choose and express their religion, define their communities and understand their world. From conversations about God and his relationships with people, to observations on ageing and death, and research into the tribe’s use of spells, amulets and sacrifices, to their beliefs about saints, health and well-being, the book is an original ethnographic exploration of religion and daily life.

There is a long and rich history of opinion centred on female prayer leadership in Islam that has occupied the minds of theologians and jurists alike. It includes outright prohibition, dislike, permissibility under certain conditions and, although rarely, unrestricted sanction, or even endorsement.This book discusses debates drawn from scholars of the formative period of Islam who engaged with the issue of female prayer leadership. Simonetta Calderini critically analyses their arguments, puts them into their historical context, and, for the first time, tracks down how they have informed current views on female imama (prayer leadership). In presenting the variety of opinions discussed in the past by Sunni and Shi’i scholars, and some of the Sufis among them, the book uncovers how they are, at present, being used selectively, depending on modern agendas and biases. It also reviews the roles and types of authority of current women imams in diverse contexts spanning from Asia, Africa and Europe to America. The research offers readers the opportunity to gain nuancedanswers to the question of female imama today that may lead to informed discussions and to change, if not necessarily in practices then at the very least in attitudes.This ground-breaking book interrogates the cases of women who are reported to have led prayer in the past. It then analyses the voices of current women imams, many of whom engage with those women of the past to validate their own roles in the present and so pave the way for the future.

(2020). Scientific Knowledge and Religious Milieu in Qajar Iran: Negotiating Muslim and European Renaissance Medicine in the Subtleties of Healing. Iran. Ahead of Print.

<section class="abstract"><h2 class="abstractTitle text-title my-1" id="d70e2">Abstract</h2><p>This article examines a short Persian work on the occult sciences of illusionism and conjuring (<em>sīmiyā</em>, <em>rīmiyā</em>) by the renowned late Timurid-era polymath Ḥusayn Vāʿiẓ Kāshifī (d. 910/1504–1505), titled <em>Asrār-i qāsimī</em>, which came to serve as the core of a greatly expanded interpolation, composed during the high Safavid period, that covered the remaining occult sciences of talismanic lettrism (<em>līmiyā</em>), astral magic (<em>hīmiyā</em>), and alchemy (<em>kīmiyā</em>). Although Kāshifī himself was not a Shiʿi, he was adopted by Safavid Shiʿi culture on account of his imamophilism, Sufism, and esotericism that transcended confessional boundaries. His <em>Asrār-i qāsimī</em> was by his own account inspired by the early ninth/fifteenth-century Sufi master, Persian poet, and occultist Qāsim-i Anvār. The bulk of the interpolation is devoted to the talismanic arts and is supposedly based on a work called <em>Ḥall al-mushkilāt</em>. The anonymous interpolator, whose identity has long been a mystery (as scholars assumed incorrectly that Kāshifī was the author of the interpolation, which retained the title <em>Asrār-i qāsimī</em>), appears to have been Jalāl al-Dīn Munajjim (d. 1028/1619), the court astrologer of the Safavid shah ʿAbbās <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">I</span> (r. 995–1038/1587–1629). He describes in detail the talismans fashioned for various purposes, often for well-known political figures, by such eminent Shiʿi religious scholars and Sufis as Shaykh Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad ʿĀmilī (d. 1030/1621), who allegedly based many of his operations on those of the legendary Indian master known as Ṭumṭum-i Hindī. Kāshifī’s <em>Asrār-i qāsimī</em> offers a fascinating glimpse into the arcane and secretive arts of illusionism and conjuring, while the Safavid interpolation of his work provides a rarely documented perspective on the exercise of political power in Iran and demonstrates the great esteem in which the occult sciences were held at the highest levels of Safavid society.</p></section>

<section class="abstract"><h2 class="abstractTitle text-title my-1" id="d178e2">Abstract</h2><p>This article examines how a text attributed to the renowned Central Asian Sufi figure Aḥmad Yasavī came to be found within a manuscript produced within the Ismāʿīlī Shīʿī community of the Shughnān district of the Badakhshān region of Central Asia. The adoption of this text into an Ismāʿīlī codex suggests an exchange between two disparate Islamic religious traditions in Central Asia between which there has hitherto been little evidence of contact. Previous scholarship on Ismāʿīlī-Sufi relations has focused predominately on the literary and intellectual engagement between these traditions, while the history of persecution experienced by the Ismāʿīlīs at the hands of Sunnī Muslims has largely overshadowed discussions of the social relationship between the Ismāʿīlīs and other Muslim communities in Central Asia. I demonstrate that this textual exchange provides evidence for a previously unstudied social engagement between Ismāʿīlī and Sunnī communities in Central Asia that was facilitated by the rise of the Khanate of Khoqand in the 18th century. The mountainous territory of Shughnān, where the manuscript under consideration originated, has been typically represented in scholarship as isolated prior to the onset of colonial interest in the region in the late 19th century. Building upon recent research on the impact of early modern globalization on Central Asia, I demonstrate that even this remote region was significantly affected by the intensification of globalizing processes in the century preceding the Russian conquest. Accordingly, I take this textual exchange as a starting point for a broader re-evaluation of the Ismāʿīlī-Sufi relationship in Central Asia and of the social ‘connectivity’ of the Ismāʿīlīs and the Badakhshān region within early modern Eurasia.</p></section>