Oral Tradition among Religious Communities in the Iranian-Speaking World.
OMARKHALI, Kh. and KREYENBROEK, Ph.G. (special eds.), Oral Tradition among Religious Communities in the Iranian-Speaking World, Special issue of Oral Tradition, vol. 35, Number 2, Harvard University, Cambridge, 2022, pp. 183-468. E-ISSN 1542-4308. The contribution that various branches of “Oral Studies” could make to the study of non-Western scriptural religions is as yet largely unexplored. In the Iranian cultural sphere—where languages are spoken that belong to the Iranian branch of Indo-European, such as Persian and Kurdish—we find a number of religious traditions that were transmitted orally for a large part of their existence. First, there is Zoroastrianism, the dominant religion of the Iranian world before Islam, whose relatively well preserved sacred texts in the Avestan language originated over 2,000 years before an adequate script was developed in the early-first millennium CE. The texts, therefore, have been transmitted orally for a very long time. Cognate with Zoroastrianism are three religions that originate in the Kurdish-speaking lands. Until recently the Yezidi religion forbade the use of writing for religious purposes. The sacred texts of Yarsanism were mainly handed down orally until a few decades ago. Finally, certain Iranian-speaking groups of Alevis in Turkey have long cultivated much of their cultural and religious heritage without the use of writing. Whilst influences from Islam can be detected to varying degrees in these traditions, their prominent non-Islamic components show a surprising similarity. Furthermore, orality plays a key role in the traditions of the Khaksar Order of Islamic mystics in Iran. The shared cultural elements of certain Kurdish-speaking Muslim and Neo-Aramaic-speaking Christian communities are currently being researched. Philip Kreyenbroek, Special Editor Georg-August University Göttingen Khanna Omarkhali, Special Editor Free University of Berlin.. [1]
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