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Dieses Modul bündelt unterschiedliche Kurse zur Religionsgeschichte des alten Irans. Schwerpunkt ist dabei die Zeit von den Achämeniden bis zu den ersten Jahrhunderten unter islamischer Herrschaft. Studierende können sich aus dem Fundus an Veranstaltungen zu diesem Thema drei Wahlpflichtkurse auswählen. In einem der Kurse muss eine Hausarbeit verfasst werden. Die folgenden Veranstaltungen beziehen sich auf das Sommersemester 2025. In allen darauffolgenden Semestern werden jedoch ebenfalls Kurse angeboten, die für dieses Modul geöffnet sind. Teil 1: Religions in the Sasanian Empire: Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Judaism (Seminar), Sommersemester 2025, Universitätsstr. 90a, Raum 3.06, Mi 14-16 The Sasanian Empire was one of the greatest world powers in history. It stretched from 220 to 651 AD, and spatially from present-day Kyrgyzstan in the north-east to the Arabian Peninsula in the south-west, and from the eastern border of present-day Pakistan in the south-east to Georgia in the north-west. Not only Zoroastrianism, the ancient Iranian religion, was at home in this geographically broad and long-lasting empire, but also religions that were not formed in the Iranian cultural area, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism. In addition, there is an extremely successful religion, namely Manichaeism, which spread as a world religion during this period. The course deals with the interplay between three of these religions: Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Judaism. It discusses the acculturation processes of the non-Iranian religions in the Sasanian Empire, religious contacts and their effects on the respective religions. In the course, both secondary literature and primary sources in translation will be presented for discussion. Attendance, active participation in the discussions, the study of the literature provided for the sessions, and their presentation in the course are compulsory in order to acquire the corresponding credit points. Teil 2: Manichaeism in Eastern Sasanian Empire (Seminar), Sommersemester 2025 , Universitätsstr. 90a, Raum 1.11, Di 10-12 Manichaeism was a world religion that spread from the Sasanian Empire (3rd century), where Mani lived, across the eastern borders of the Sasanian Empire and into China in the 7th century. The Iranian-speaking Sogdians, whose homeland (Sogdiana) is in modern-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, played a fundamental role in the spread of this religious message, as Sogdian became the common language along the Silk Roads, and most Sogdians were Manichaeans. The course aims to describe the spread of Manichaeism in the eastern provinces of the Sasanian Empire (mainly Sogdiana and Bactria) and the role of Manichaean transmission in the spread of knowledge from west to east. The class will be taught in English. Teil 3 What Time is It? Greek, Iranian, and Arabic traditions (Seminar), Sommersemester 2025, Universitätsstr. 90a, Raum 0.13, Di 16-18 Time is mysterious, but it is also something universal and common to all humanity; it has been discussed throughout history and across the world, and it is discussed in religious, philosophical, and scientific literatures. Time is something that multiple methodological perspectives can approach and can understand it in different ways. Our contemporary disciplinary distinctions are recent, though, and ancient perspectives do not always fit neatly into “religious” or “philosophical” categories. For this course, we will examine primary sources by some of the most important and influential thinkers in human history, but we will not always be able to categorize their writings as strictly religious or philosophical. So, our focus is twofold: our primary focus will be ancient authors and their views on time, and our secondary focus will be on the methodological and disciplinary distinctions between philosophy and religion. For this, we will look at ancient Greek theories of time. We begin with the very influential Aristotle, and look at how his theory of time was incorporated into the work of Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism, and Simplicius, one of the last pagan Neoplatonists. From Greece, we transition to Iran and look at the cosmological function of a god of time, polemically described by an Armenian Christian, then we see how Zoroastrian theologians describe time’s cosmological importance. Next we look at three Zoroastrian philosophical texts, Dēnkard III, the Škand-Gumānīg Wizār, and the Ulamā-yi Islām, and see how Zoroastrian philosophers adapt and respond to Greek ideas. Finally, we transition into the Islamic world, looking at two heretics, who were surprising close to Zoroastrian ideas, and the most important Islamic philosopher : Ibn Sīnā, who creatively reconstructed the Aristotelian theory of time into a version that influenced all Islamic as well as European philosophy. The seminar is aimed at MA and advanced BA students. Attendance, active participation in the discussions, the study of the literature provided for the sessions, and their presentation in the course are compulsory in order to acquire the corresponding credit points. |
