Testicles in a Box: An Iranian Tale Goes Biblical

13. Januar 2025, von AAI Webmaster

Foto: Ardashīr and His Dastur, folio from the Great Mongol Shāhnāma. Iran, c. 1330. © Dallas Museum of Art/Brad Flowers / Creative Commons CC0 1.0

Die Iranistik lädt zu einem Vortrag ein von:

Prof. Julia Rubanovich (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) 

Testicles in a Box: An Iranian Tale Goes Biblical

The talk explores an intriguing transformation of the tale about the Sasanian king Ardashīr, the daughter of the Parthian king Ardavān, and Ardashīr’s loyal vizier as it transitions from Firdausī’s Shāh-nāma (“Book of Kings”) into a biblical narrative poem, the Bereshīt-nāma (“Book of Genesis”), by the fourteenth-century Judeo-Persian poet Shāhīn. By focusing on Shāhīn’s rendition of Genesis 24, which relates the story commonly known as The Betrothal of Isaac or The Wooing of Rebekah, the talk highlights his patterns of selection, adoption, and adaptation of Jewish postbiblical and Persian literary material. The resulting narrative is both captivating and richly layered, illustrating Shāhīn’s ability to bridge cultural and religious traditions and breathe new life into the biblical tale for an Iranian Jewish – and potentially also Muslim – audience. While Shāhīn may be considered a second-tier Persian poet, he emerges as a first-rate storyteller and an exceptional popularizer of the Hebrew Bible in the Judeo-Iranian milieu.

Montag, den 13. Januar 2025

um 16:00 Uhr im Asien-Afrika-Institut, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1,

Flügelbau Ost, 1. Stock, Raum 122

Bei Fragen zu der Veranstaltung können Sie sich an Prof. Dr. Farridnejad wenden.

Plakat