'God First and Last'. Religious Traditions and Music of the Yaresan of Guran Volume 1: Religious Traditions by Philip G. Kreyenbroek
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Philip G. Kreyenbroek, Yiannis Kanakis
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'God First and Last'. Religious Traditions and Music of the Yaresan of Guran Volume 1: Religious Traditions by Philip G. Kreyenbroek
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Harrassowitz Verlag
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9783447199926
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Göttinger Orientforschungen, III. Reihe: Iranica. Neue Folge
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1
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CHF 36.20
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Religiöse Schriften, Gebete, Gesangbücher, relig. Meditationen
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English
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203
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Wasserzeichen/DRM
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PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
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PDF
The Yaresan or Ahl-e Haqq are a relatively large minority group whose religion originates in the border regions between Iran and Iraq. As members of traditional Yaresan communities are becoming more visible in the West, both as diaspora groups and in academia, there is an increasing demand for reliable information about their background. Academic interest is also growing. Recent scholarly publications, however, tend to assume a fundamental knowledge of the Yaresan tradition, which is not easy to glean from existing sources. This is made more complicated by the very real differences between the European world view and that of traditional Yarsanism. For that reason and because music plays an unusually prominent role in Yaresan observance, it was decided to combine the authors' work on religious traditions and music respectively in two volumes. In doing so the religious realities of the traditional Yaresan of the Guran region is communicated by quoting extensively from interviews with community members. The first volume also offers a survey of other religious traditions that are thought to have been influential in shaping modern Yarsanism.
Cover
1
Abbreviations
8
Preface
10
Acknowledgements
12
Terminology and Transcription
14
Introduction
16
General
16
History of the Study
17
The Gurani Tradition
20
Aspects of the Y?ri World-view
21
Aims and methods
22
The hymns in book form: collections of texts
22
Chapter One: the Religious Background
24
The Indo-Iranian Religion: some relevant aspects
24
Zoroastrianism in Western Iran
28
Roman Mithraism and the ancient Western Iranian religion
31
Hellenistic cults
32
Gnostic Movements of late Antiquity, Manichaeism
33
Christianity
33
Islam
34
Yezidism
40
Alevism
44
Chapter Two: The Y?res?n Community and its SocialOrganisation
46
Languages
46
Geography
48
‘Caste’, ritual functions, social institutions
51
Chapter Three: Mythical and Factual History
58
Mythical History
58
Factual History
73
Chapter Four: The Religious Universe
88
Aspects of the Y?ri Worldview
88
Divine and Great Beings
100
The Dowres
107
Eschatology
111
Chapter Five: Ritual and Observance
112
Music
112
The Jam
112
The Nazr
116
The Niy?z or Shokr?ne
118
Sar Sepordan
118
Feasts and Fasts
124
Funerary observances
128
Other observances
129
Y?ri Observances and Twelver Shi’ite influences
130
Chapter Six: Religious Narratives and Sacred Texts
132
Texts and storylines
132
The Form of the Kal?ms
133
Texts and Performance
134
Texts and Religious Knowledge
136
Collections of Kal?ms
138
The Perdiwari Kal?ms
140
The role of the kal?ms in religious life
145
APPENDIX 1: Extracts from the ‘Exegesis’ of Sayyed Wali
148
[On Creation]
148
[The History of Religions]
150
[The Dowres]
151
APPENDIX 2: Views from Iraqi communities
156
Interview with Sayyed Khalil ?gh?b?b K?ka’i, Iraqi Kurdistan
156
Beliefs of the Perdiwari Community, near Halabja
160
APPENDIX 3: Another View of Y?ri. Sayyed Khalil?linezh?d from Sahne
164
APPENDIX 4: Authoritative Muslim Comments on Y?ri
183
APPENDIX 5: Kal?ms in recent compilations
185
Bibliography
188
Index
196
