Seeing the Light: Zoroastrians in the Islamic World
External venue
The project “Arcs of Time: Zoroastrian Philosophical Anthropology’ (AOT) has two goals: the first is to critically analyze how Zoroastrian thinkers theorized human psychophysical composition and its relation to human history, and the second is to integrate scholars working on Zoroastrian Middle Persian literature and scholars working on Arabic literature, since these Zoroastrians writing in Middle Persian were contemporaries with many well-known authors writing in Arabic. The “Seeing the Light” workshop is designed to achieve the second goal. Participants are invited to explore the manifold ways Zoroastrians intersect with the wider Islamic world. This includes the critical inheritance of Greek and Avestan thought; the ways the Sasanian state was remembered by Zoroastrians and Muslims, Persians and Arabs; and also the ways local communities interacted apart from the central seats of power. We hope to foster dialogue on the historical setting, the philosophical issues, the concrete debates, and the sociopolitical structures beneath the texts.
