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Sharing Wives and Drinking Wine: The Mazdakites, the Ayyārs, and the Mithraists
October 9, 2023 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Monday Majlis of the Centre for the Study of Islam, Exeter.
the 9thof October, 17:00-18:30 (UK time)
Parvaneh Pourshariati
Sharing Wives and Drinking Wine: The Mazdakites, the Ayyārs, and the Mithraists: Accusations & Realities
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AbstractNo revolutionary movement in Iranian Late Antiquity has attracted as much attention as the fascinating and enigmatic Mazdakite uprising of the late fifth century. The scholarly consensus about these has it that 1) they engaged inibāḥat al-nisā,sharing of wives; 2) advocated the sharing of property and 3) that their past time was wine imbibing and merrymaking. I shall argue here that, as Shaki correctly suspected but did not pursue the topic, the description of the Mazdakite in our primary sources (theLetter of Tansar, Ibn Qutayba, Ṭabarī, Dīnkard, Shahrestānī), actually follows the praxis of the ʿayyārs, chivalrous menandwomen who practiced celibacy, lived together in communes of men and women, usually in underground cities, and drank wine as part of their sacral ritual. They continued their activities into later centuries not only asKhurramdinsbut also as the ʿayyārprotagonists of theAbū Muslim Nāmeh’s in their Islamic garb.
BioParvaneh Pourshariati specializes in late antique and medieval history of Western Asia with an emphasis on the Iranian ecumene. She is currently at CUNY/New York City College of Technology which she joined in 2014 after 14 years at the Ohio State University/Columbus. She has also taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Massachusetts. Her major work,Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire, 2008, has been translated into Persian (5thprint), as well as Arabic. In 2021, the Persian translation of her book was listed amongst theTen Best International Candidates of the Book of Year Price,inTehran, Iran. During the past decade Parvaneh has been working on a number of projects in late antiquity (here 400-800 CE) on Mithraism andʿayyari;A Concise History of Iranfor the Cambridge University Press; a monograph on the context of the life of the Prophet Muhammad; and the sequel toDecline and Fall. Pourshariati has served as the President of theAssociation for the Study of Persianate Societies(2012-2014) and has been a visiting scholar at theInstitute for the Study of Ancient World/NYU,The Institute for Advanced Study/Princeton, and as a Lady Davis Fellow, atThe University of Jerusalem/Israel. A recipient of the Shaykh Muhammad al-Thani Fellowship as an Assistant Curator of Islamic Coins inThe American Numismatic Society, her work has been supported by theSocial Science Research Council,The American Association of University Women, PSC CUNY multiple times, and thrice by Iran Heritage Foundation/Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University, among others. She convenes the Circle for Late Antique and Medieval Studies at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY
In the spirit of the label ‘Majlis’ and also to make the talks even more interesting, speakers present the topic discussed as embedded in their own journey. You can watch the previous Majlises here, but the Q&A is not recorded in order to keep the discussion free. Please attend to enjoy the talks and the discussions.
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