Voices from Zoroastrian Iran: Oral Texts and Testimony (Vol. I: Urban Centres and Vol. 2: Urban and Rural Centres: Yazd and Outlying Villages)
- Submitting institution
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School of Oriental and African Studies
- Unit of assessment
- 31 - Theology and Religious Studies
- Output identifier
- 25290
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- Wiesbaden
- Brief description of type
- Harrasowitz Verlag
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- December
- Year
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Voices from Zoroastrian Iran, Oral Texts and Testimony presents the remaining Zoroastrian communities in five cities and multiple villages in Iran. The scope of the project was extensive. It involved managing a small team and visiting to monitor and conduct interviews as and when a visa was granted. The recordings were transcribed and translated and ran to over 250 files. The large amount of data to be written up and evaluated fell into two categories. The first dealt with the major urban centres and the second with the rural communities of a provincial town and its outlying villages.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Volume I (2018) – ISBN 9783447111294 https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/Voices_from_Zoroastrian_Iran/title_5757.ahtml
Volume II (2020) – ISBN 9783447114783 https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/Voices_from_Zoroastrian_Iran:_Oral_texts_and_testimony/title_6714.ahtml
These volumes are the result of an oral studies research project that maps the remaining Zoroastrian communities in Iran and explores what has happened to their religious lives and social structures since the Revolution of 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic.
Interviews in Volume 1 are with Zoroastrians from the urban centres of Tehrān, Kermān, Ahvāz, Shirāz and Esfahān. Participants refer to community leaders, historical figures, local events, teachers and religious texts that have shaped their views and understanding of the religion. A chapter in the book is devoted to a survey of the main Iranian Zoroastrian religious observances as well as some popular customs. The interviews for this book span a period of living memory that reflects both pre- and post-revolutionary Iran. Volume II covers the city of Yazd and surrounding villages where Zoroastrians continue to live. As in Volume I, interviews included in this book cover a range of topics including views about the religion, what it has been to like to live as a member of a religious minority in Iran since the Revolution of 1979, and accounts of religious education, festivals, and ceremonies surrounding rites of passage. Elderly residents in the villages are a rich source of memories from earlier times, before younger people left the rural areas for the cities and emigration abroad became commonplace. A general overview of the Zoroastrian religion and society, together with an account of devotional life, is contained in Chapters 1–3 in Volume I and pertains to both volumes.
The full, unedited interviews have been made available online in digitised format in the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at SOAS (https://www.elararchive.org/dk0460/).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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