Female Speaker: From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Male Speaker: Okay at this time I would like to ask you
to give us your attention and my good friend and colleague,
Dr. Peggy Pearlstein, the head
of the Hebraic section, has some words for you.
Dr. Peggy Pearlstein: Good morning, everyone.
I'm very happy that we had the opportunity
to meet each other Saturday night and yesterday.
And what a wonderful turnout it has been for this conference.
I am standing in for Dr. Mary-Jane Deeb, chief of the African
and Middle Eastern Division.
So, we're very happy to be co-sponsoring the Conference
on Iranian Jewry: From Past to Present, with the Joseph
and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewsish Studies
and the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute Center for Persian Studies
at the University of Maryland.
So we want to thank you for your support and all the work you've put
in to organizing the two-day conference at the University
and here at the Library of Congress.   In particular, Dr. Deeb says,
she'd like to thank Prof. Ahmad Karimi-Hakak, Dr. Houman Sarshar,
Prof. Chaim Lapin [spelled phonetically]
and Prof. Marsha Rozenblit.
And she also thanks me, Dr. Christopher Murphy,
head of the Near East section in the African and Middle Eastern Division,
and Mr. Hirod Dinivari [spelled phonetically], all who've worked
to make this program happen.
In addition to my substituting for Dr. Deeb,
Dr. Billington wanted very much to be here today,
but unfortunately he had other commitments.
And instead I'm happy to welcome Dr. Carolyn Brown,
director of the Office of Scholarly Programs in the Kluge Center.
And she has graciously accepted to make welcoming remarks
on behalf of the librarian.
Dr. Brown is a former dean at Howard University.
She came to the Library to head up outreach and cultural affairs
and as a former director of area studies.
Dr. Carolyn Brown.   [applause]
Dr. Carolyn Brown: Well good morning.
It gives me great pleasure to be here today.
Dr. Billington is one of those very, very rare vacations.
And it's so unusual for him to be away trying to rest a little bit.
But it's my pleasure to be here and to introduce this second day
of the conference , Iranian Jewry: From Past to Present, which promises
to be deeply illuminating
of an ancient very deeply intertwined history of Jewish
and Persian cultures, of Muslim and Jewish Iranians, a subject that,
I think, for many Americans, would be most unusual
and perhaps surprising to even know there was
such a long intertwined history to talk about.
Before we begin, I would ask you to please turn off any cell phones
or Blackberries or any kinds of things.
Not only will they disturb the program if they go off,
but sometimes the electronics can interfere with the recording.
I'll just say a brief word about my current office,
the Office of Scholarly Programs in the John W. Kluge Center.
We are tasked with promoting and supporting advanced research
in the collections of the Library and providing a venue
on Capitol Hill where members of the Congress have an avenue
for informal conversation.
The senior scholars, and we also provide fellowship support for some
of the most promising junior fellows.
We also do seminars and conferences and other kinds of things.
I would urge you to take, if you have students
who might be interested in some of the fellowship opportunities,
especially graduate students completing the doctorates,
or young faculty members, to take a look at the brochure on the table
in the back that says "The Kluge Center."
I want to say a few words about the Library's sponsorship here;
bureaucracies can be very confusing.
So we have two sections, the Hebraic section
and the Near-Eastern section, all part of the African
and Middle Eastern Division at the Library.
The Hebraic section has long been recognized as one
of the world's most foremost centers for the study of Hebrew materials.
It was founded in 1914 as the Semitic Division and began
with a gift from philanthropist Jacob Schiff in 1912
of nearly 10,00 books and pamphlets from the private collection
of Efraim Deinard, who is a bibliographer and bookseller.
And in the years that followed, the Library has developed
and expanded its Hebraic holdings, including research materials
in Hebrew and related languages.
Today this section houses works in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino,
Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Arabic, Syriac, Coptic and Amharic.
The section's primarly role is
to develop the non-Roman language collections in the Hebraic section.
But there are also materials in languages and other formats dealing
with Jews and Judaism across the Library.
The Near East section was established later, in 1945,
and has the responsibility of developing collections from
and about the Middle East.
The Near East sections works closely with other offices and divisions
within the Library to ensure
that we have a comprehensive collection in all formats.
To that end, there are approximately 60,000 volumes in Persian
and other languages used in Iran that are held in this section.
And then again through the Library there are materials,
whether it's films, photographs, sound recordings, legal materials
and of course the general collection.
Some of you may remember just in the last six months,
Hirad did a program on Iranian films.
So the African and Middle Eastern Division
in which these two sections sit was established in 1960
and to the Hebraic and Middle Eastern division was joined the
African collections.
Today that division covers 77 countries and regions
from Southern African to the Mahgreb,
from the Middle East to Central Asia.
And in addition to the collection's responsiblities,
probably all of you have or will shortly take advantage of the work
of reference and bibliographic specialists who help researchers
and present other programs such as this one.
If you don't know the division and you don't know this section,
you have a real treat in store for you.
I think I will dispense with the various thanks.
We have had several thanks, and you can see the various people
who have been involved here.
I'm sure all of you know how much work is involved in this kind
of conference on both sides.
But it's wonderful to have good partners.
There's nothing better than a partner to share some of the work.
I know you're going to have an exciting and stimulating day
and we hope there will be many occasions for you to return
for other kinds of programs, and many opportunities
for these same partnerships to come together in other productive ways.
Thank you very much.   [applause]
Chris Murphy: Good morning.   I'm Chris Murphy.
I'm the head of the Near East section in the African
and Middle Eastern Division and I'm the chair and moderator
of our first panel today.
However, before we go to the presentations
of our scholarly guests, there are a couple of administrative items
that needed to be taken care of.
First, all the presenters will find in front of that a release form
that we ask that they sign
because the proceedings here are being videotaped
and will be webcast simultaneously with a webcast of the other part
of the program from the University of Maryland
and they will all be linked.
So this will all be available through the University of Maryland
and through the Library of Congress homepages to the world.
So you're reaching a much larger audience
than what we have here today.
And we'll do it more or less in perpetuity, at least as long
as the building's standing here.
Another thing, because we are videotaping and will webcast,
while we encourage audience participation, all audience members
who make comments and ask questions need to know
that they will be videotaped and that it will be presented.
And the assumption is, is that if you speak up from the audience,
you are willing to be taped and to be broadcast.
With those two administrative items aside, we are still not quite ready
to begin the scholarly presentations.
Normally, the head of the section,
when the head of the section is a chair of a panel,
gets to speechify very briefly about his or her section.
In this case, I have a special treat for you.
I'm going to ask Mr. Ibrahim Pourhadi,
my colleague in the Near East section, who, for many,
many years has been the Iranian Area specialist.
And he will say a few brief words
about how this exceedingly important collection was developed
and must be remembered that it was developed mainly
through his efforts.   Mr. Pourhadi.
[applause]
Ibrahim Pourhadi: The head of the Hebraic section, Dr. Marwick,
had a few Jewish-Persian books.   He asked me what they were.
I said, "if you have just a few, why don't you have more?"
He said, "Well, how can we get more Jewish-Persian books?"
I said, "Let me see if I can find a book in Washington who has them."
But there was not any books in Washington
who sold Jewish-Persian book.   So he asked me to find out.
I said the best way is to go to Egypt, Iran and Afghanistan,
where I was told a large number of Jewish community are,
and published quite a few books.   So I made two trips to Afghanistan
and purchased considerable Jewish-Persian books.
As you know, Jews and Persian had a long history and one
of the Persian Kings married Esther.
Today her tomb is in Hamadan visiting a shrine,
Esther and Mordecai.
And also the tomb of the prophet Daniel is in Shusha,
the ancient Persian capital.
So I'm very happy to say that today we have really a large collection
of Jewish-Persian material
in the African Middle East Division Near-East section.
It covers almost from A to Z. We have mostly these Persian-Jewish
material came from Tehran from Afghanistan.
Those from Afghanistan are very interesting because the thing
that one of the forgotten Jews' tribe lived in Afghanistan
and that's why I went there and really got quite a large number
of Jewish publication that they were published there.
We have them.   So you're welcome to see and study
if you're interested in that material.
[applause]
Chris Murphy: Thank you, Mr. Pourhadi.
And I think it is only reasonable and correct that we again thank him
for the tremendous work that he's done over the past years.
[applause]
And now on to the actual work of the panel.
Each presenter will have about 25 minutes,
and then there will be a few minutes for questions.
We're starting a little late, so I beg of the panelists
that they keep to the time schedule.
Our first presenter will be Dr. Parvaneh Pourshariati She is a
specialist in late antique history of Iran
and early Medieval Middle East.
She is currently associate professor of Islamic and Iranian studies
in the department of Near Eastern languages and cultures
at the Ohio State University,
where she coordinates Islamic and Persian studies.
She is also an adjunct faculty member with the department
of history at Ohio State University.
She was born in Tehran, where she completed her primary
and secondary education, and received her B.A. in sociology
from New York University, her master's in philosophy
and Ph.D. degrees in history from Columbia.
Her research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council,
the American Association of University Women,
and the American Institute of Iranian Studies,
among others.Her dissertation, "Iranian Tradition in Tus
and the Arab Presence in Khurasan," won honorable mention
from the Foundation for Iranian Studies.
Professor Pourshariati serves as members Mondes Iraniens et Indiens,
CNRS Paris, the board of directors for the Association for the Study
of Persianite Societies and the review board of the "Bulletin
of Ancient Iranian History."
Besides her various articles, she is the author of "Decline and Fall
of the Sassanian Empire," "The Sassanian-Parthian Confederacy,"
and "The Arab Conquest of Iran,"
recently published by Torres in London.
Professor Pourshariati.   [applause]
Dr. Parvaneh Pourshariati: Good morning.
It rarely happens that I wake up this early, but for talking
in the Library of Congress, I didn't even sleep.
So thank you all for being here.
I have a very particular style of lecturing and I hope
that it fits the setup of the Library of Congress
and I hope it proves to be enjoyable to you.
So, before I begin my topic of today,
I would like to really give thanks.
And I know that this is going to take away from my time,
but I would like to do it anyway.
I would like to thank the organizers of the conference,
the Roshan Foundation, and most importantly Professor Ahmad
Karimi-Hakak and Professor Lapin of the Meyerhoff Center.
I would like to thank my dear friend and former classmate,
Dr. Houman Sarshar, with whom we goofed off
at Columbia quite a bit in yonder years.
Now look where we are, Houman?
Yes. I would like to thank the Library of Congress, of course,
and Christopher Murphy and Hirod Dinivari,
Professor [unintelligible] Dean, and Dean Harris should have been
at the top of the list for making all of this possible.
It is a distinct pleasure to be giving a talk at the beautiful
and historic Library of Congress.
My CB will be pleasantly surprised by it, not to mention the honor
that I have to be included among the luminaries, really,
of Irano-Judaic studies my colleagues here.
Have I covered it all?
Okay. I shall begin with a disclaimer.
I am an avid fan of Irano-Judaic studies, but by no stretch
of the imagination am I an expert in it.
I am, however, somewhat of an expert and specialist in late Sassanian
and post-conquest history of Iran, a period between 500 to 900 C.E.,
which I will like to define as Late Antiquity.
I also hate to read from papers and text when giving a talk,
so at one point I'm just going
to warn you I might just leave everything and just begin talking.
So having said that, the title of my talk today "Jewish Participation
in Overland Trade in Late Antique Iran: A Preliminary Analysis,"
gives an idea, therefore, of my various strengths
in ascending order, right?
But in order to deal with this topic,
I shall proceed in the following manner.
I will first talk about the Iranian topography.
Michael Moroni once said that anyone doing history must begin
by studying the environmental setting
of this history, less grandeurs occur.
Once I have dealt with this, I shall proceed with a brief analysis
of the trade routes through Iran, which, in the pre-Modern period,
in Iran as elsewhere, have been following more
or less the same itineraries from time immemorial.
And disruptions and minor changes notwithstanding?
The question I would like to ask, is: how can one travel in this part
of the discussion, how can one travel
through Iran considering its topography,
and how has this partly affected its human topography?
The roots of communication naturally dictated direction
of the trade routes as you will see.
As I shall also be talking about the potential but extremely likely role
of Iranian Jewry in this trade in Late Antiquity, I shall proceed
to chart as schematically as possible, because experts are here
to correct me, to add to what I have to say about Jewish-Iranian,
the presence of Iranian Jewry in various regions of Iran,
so that will be very, very schematic.
But I would like to chart the concentration, if you will,
of Iranian-Jewish habitation in the plateau.
Then, I hope to cover a millennium in 20 minutes and after that,
from the Parthian period in the third century
to the Abbasid Revolution in the middle of the 8th century.
So beginning with the topography of Iran, and I'm not going
to be reading these parts from the topography outline.
And for most of you what I have to say is very, very elementary.
And for most of you I hope it includes issues
that find significance if one considers it carefully.
As you know, Iran is a very mountainous country.
As you know there are a series of mountains that run from northwest
of the country all the way to the southeast
of the country, the Zagros Mountains.
Another series of mountains goes from, again,
on the south of the Caspian Sea and it continues,
and it joins eventually the Hindu Kush Mountains.
What this has meant for Iranian history is that you have a number,
a very limited number, if you will, of route of ingress and egress
within the Iranian plateau.
So that when you're coming from the western part,
and this will be significant
when I will briefly discuss the Arab conquest of Iran,
this is significant as far as that goes for instance.
When you're coming from the western part of the country,
if you can see there is one route that goes basically
from the immemorial sort of ancient, ancient city of what is now Basra,
used to be called Charas, if I'm pronouncing it right,
then came to be called Ubola [spelled phonetically].
And that route, if you will, that is the area that connects southern part
of Mesopotamia, what we call Sawart [spelled phonetically],
to the [unintelligible] area.
So now if you can see from, actually the roots are there on the map.
You see that from Basra you go to Bushehr, or you could go
to Apros[spelled phonetically] or you could go to Shiraz and so on
and so forth and then, you know, come down to the coast and follow
around the coast and go to the east.   So that is a southern route, right?
Now what is not really reflected on this route is the fact
that the southern route, from Apros you could go to Shiraz
and of course you could go also to Kerman, right,
and Seeson [spelled phonetically] and the area, I have to use this,
the area that you have here is a very, also again,
very mountainous area called the Kuhestan area, and from there you go
to Khorasan and there is a point of egress
from Khorasan and that is Mashhad.
Now all the conquests that have taken place, all the immigrations,
all the peaceful and aggressive sort of coming and going of populations
into Iranian territory has taken place, on the one hand
from the southern route, and on the other hand
from the northeastern route, right?
Now, however, from the west there is another route that is very,
very important and that is the route that is
where you have the beautiful Baghdad right now, right?
And Baghdad used to be, mind you, it also involved,
it really ultimately involves my thesis, the Shiite, Sunni,
early history of the whole thing also, but that is a long story.
Baghdad is very close to where Kufa used to be.
And from Baghdad, as you can see, and this is very important,
you can go to Kermanshah, Kermanshah which used to be, Hirod, hi,
Dinivari [spelled phonetically], Hirod,
very close to [unintelligible].
And from there you could go, as you can see, the route, bifurcates.
You could go through Hamadan and go, if you want to go,
you could go northeast, end
up in what ultimately became the great Khorasan highway,
and before was that was the infamous Silk Route.
You could go to the northeast,
or you could do something very, very interesting, also.
You could go from Kermanshah, right.
You could go to Azerbaijan right, or you could go to Armenia.
Or of course you could go also to Zanjan
or from there you could go to Azerbaijan.
Now mind you, there is another route in Iran that is very important
and that is a route that goes exactly, I keep forgetting
to use this, south of the Caspian Sea.
And if you look at it carefully you will see that it goes north to,
around a very, very important area, [unintelligible], around here.
And [unintelligible] have, follow a valley so to speak.
The route is not reflected there.
But then that route takes you to Anatolia or to the Black Sea,
if you will, which is not on the map here.
So an important point to keep in mind is
that from the coastal Caspian regions you could also go
to Armenia, okay.
So these are basically the routes that you have in Iran and I will get
in a point to what this has to do with the issues of trade.
Of course you know what this has to do with the issues of trade just
by looking at the map, because it connects.
It connects, right, it's a bridge.
It's a bridge that connects the Far East
to the Near East, quote unquote.
Now having done that, having given you an idea of that,
I would like to go-I would like to take you back
to the Parthian period, right?
Take you back to the Parathian period and look at the trade routes
that was established during the Parathian period.
We have evidence of it from the first century C.E.,
and that is what has become a misnomer
and has been called the Silk Route.
But the Silk Route actually is not one route.
The Silk Route is a multiplicity of routes.
The Silk Route did not carry only silk.
The Silk Route carried many, many other commodities.
It was established, incidentally, through royal patronage, right?
Royal patronage between two great empires of Antiquity.
The Parthians, the Iranian-Parthian Empire and the Han Dynasty,
which were almost contemporaneous together.
Now you look at the map, right.
You look at the map and you see that the Silk Route comes from,
basically China, goes to Sogdiana, right, which is the, Sogdiana,
the rivers are not reflected on the map here,
but Sogdiana is basically the area
between [unintelligible] and [unintelligible].
And then coming through, you know, Samarkand and Merv,
follows a direct route through southern Caspian Sea area and comes
to a very, very, very, very important point of contention,
if you will, between the two most important empires
that ruled Antiquity, be that whether you're talking
about the Romans, the Roman Empire and the Parthians, or,
subsequently between the Byzantine Empires and the Sassanid Empires.
Why was this route so important?
Because, as with all other trade entrepots, you collected taxes
on the trade routes, right?
So the Silk Route - one of the main and shortest ways to go
through the Silk Route was in this southern route,
but of course the Silk Route bifurcated, right,
ultimately joining an oceanic route,
and of course, you know, this is Yemen.
The aim of the whole thing was to get to, right, the Mediterranean,
to Europe, where all the beauties and commodities
of the Silk Route were, sort of, consumed.
And later on, incidentally, there is - there are routes that go
through northern Caspian Sea.
So I wish, if you will - and in the next map
that I will show you will actually contain that, but keep these routes
in mind, and I will get to this third part of my talk.
Chris, how am I doing on time?   I have about fifteen minutes, right?
Christopher Murphy: [inaudible] Parvaneh Pourshariati:
Okay, thank you.
Okay, so let's go to the second part.
Again, this is the Parthian Empire;
this is the extent of the Parthian Empire.
The Parthian Empire, as you know,
ruled from 200 B.C. to 200 C.E., right?
The major protagonist against the Roman Empire, it has been maligned,
it has been, you know, neglected, like all Iranian history,
including the history of Iranian Jewry, through the past 200 years.
But the map that I would actually
like to show you is the following one.
And this is a very, very schematic map, okay?
It's a very schematic map that I have, sort of, drawn, right?
It doesn't include all the regions that I have - all the routes
that I would have liked to show you on it.
But it includes what I suspect to be - and Vera is here,
and Vera, please - Vera is here?   Oh yes, Vera is here, of course.
See what happens when you don't sleep?
Vera will correct me, please.
Or, you know, if I'm mistaken on this.
The stars that you see on the map are the concentrations of regions
in which Iranian Jewry, right, have settled through the ages.
Now, as I understand it - and, again, this the -
there is a disclaimer: I am a novice, absolute novice
in Irano-Judaica; I am just a fan of it, right?
But as I understand it, it is extremely hard to document the date
at which these communities were actually established in Iran.
One thing that we know for certain is that it goes back at least
to the post-exilic period of Jewish history, right?
So around, you know, middle of the first millennium, B.C.,
during the Achaemenid Period.   And thereafter, right?
But of course there are myths of origins
of Iranian Jewish communities that trace themselves back, some of the,
to the lost - the ten lost tribes of Israel.
Am I correct so far, Vera?   Thank you.
Okay, so now, you look at the map, right, and you see that,
significantly, the major concentrations
of Iranian Jewish populations happen to be, right,
on the trade routes that went through Iran.
You start with, you know, with - well, you start - well,
let's start with Balkh, Bactria, ancient Bactria.
Here we go - Bactria.
You come to Merv, right, and - of course, to the north of it, right.
Samarkand and Bukhara.
You come to the ancient Hyrcania, right, or Gorgan,
in the southeast of Caspian Sea.
You come to the very, very, very, very, very important city of Ray.
You come to the incredibly important city of Hamadan,
as far as the Iranian Jewish population was concerned.
You come to Nahavand.
You come to - this is, I believe, if I'm not mistaken,
this is around - where are we now?   Yes, this is Ctesiphon, right?
Of course, Susa, Ilam is where was Ahwaz before, right?
You go to Shiraz.
And if I am not mistaken, Vera, I have not -
with my limited knowledge, I have not yet come
across major Jewish settlements -
important Jewish settlements in the Sistan area.
Okay. So, then - now, of course, it's not on the map.
It's not on the map, but you have to keep in mind
that we have a phenomenon, which I have yet to understand,
and I hope to understand later on when I do more research on it,
that in Azerbaijan we have a phenomenon called
"the mountain Jewry," right, which - well perhaps, Vera,
later on can give us some idea of that.
There was an ancient Jewish population in Armenia, right?
For a period of time in Armenia - you see what I have done?
I'm not reading, so I hope I can cover everything -
for a period of time in Armenia, we have actually Jews ruling in Armenia
for a very limited time period.
They were put in power by the Romans,
and again Vera can correct me on this.
And there is this mythology that - is it mythology or reality,
I have no idea yet - that sometime during the Sassanid period,
they were transplanted to where - to the Esfahan area.
Where is Esfahan here?   Oh, here, right.
Right? So, now - okay.
So I told you that I'm going to cover about a millennia, hmm?
Now, this is as far as I can tell you
about where the Jews populations are.
Now one thing that I would like to tell you, and you know, briefly,
briefly, very fast, is that starting
from the Parthian period, 200 B.C.E., right?
Parthians are an Iranian people.
They come in around 200 B.C.E. from northeast.
As they come, they establish capitals.
One capital is beyond - behind the mountains here;
now it's called Ashgabat.   Another capital is Gorgan.
Another very important is Ray.
They take over ancient cities such as Hamadan, and, you know,
they take over Media and what not.
And ultimately, right, ultimately they come and get the prize
of the Near East, right, so to speak, Mesopotamia, right?
And ultimately they cover the whole of Iran, right?
So now the question is when the Parthians came to Iran,
how extensive was the Jewish population in Iran?
My suspicion is, and this is a suspicion only, my suspicion is
that it was pretty substantial already, hmm?
Because we have, at the - or at least during the Parthian periods,
we have evidence of, as Professor Shaked can hopefully confirm this,
we have evidence of Parthians in Merv.
We have - for the Parthian period, we have evidence of -
I'm sorry, Iranian Jewry in Merv.
We have evidence of Iranian Jewry in Gorgan and so on and so forth.
And, of course, Hamadan and Susa and what-not:
They are very old communities.   Now, okay.
Chris, how am I doing?
Christopher Murphy: [inaudible] Parvaneh Pourshariati: That's it?
If I say I like you very much, can I get ten?
Christopher Murphy: [inaudible] Parvaneh Pourshariati: No?
Okay, now one thing that you all know, or I'm sure you all know,
the Parthian system of government, political system of government,
religious system of government was very de-centralized, right?
The Parthians allowed religious communities to do as they pleased,
so to speak, so that Parthian-Jewish relationships
for 400 years was very, very amicable, so much so that
when the Sassanids came in the early third century - from this area,
right, from this area of Persis - when the Sassanids came,
the Jewish population - the Iranian Jewish population apparently was not
very pleased with it.
Now, because I don't have time, okay, I'm going to jump
over the Sassanids by telling you my thesis in that in the book
that I think you should all go and get and read, right -
this is shameless self promotion here - because I explain it
in detail there, what you have during the Sassanid period -
the paradigm of Sassanid history is that the Sassanids came,
they destroyed the Parthians, they established a centralized system
of government and a centralized political system, a centralized
and dogmatic orthodox system,
and that's how they ruled, you know, Iran.
Now, there is something called - and I have just coined it -
as the "Shakedian" thesis, right, Professor Shaked's thesis, right?
Let's coin it, yeah?
Which talks about the fact that, well, you know, that's all nonsense,
especially as far as the religious history
of Sassanid Iran is concerned
because the Jewish population continued to be -
Iranian Jewry continued to basically, as the evidence
of yesterday's panels, brilliant panels, showed,
continued to live next to the Sassanids more or less amicably.
Now, we have - now, my thesis is the following.
And I give the thesis, and then I wrap it up, okay, Chris?
Christopher Murphy: [inaudible] Parvaneh Pourshariati: Okay.
My thesis is the following.
There was no such a thing, hmm, as a centralized Sassanid state,
be it politically or religious, in the religious sense.
Parthian dynasties continued to rule this area, right?
Parthian dynasties - from the Sassanid period of this area,
of this area of which is called the Pahlav lands or Parthian lands,
we have evidence - we continue to have evidence of trade.
I - you know, I cannot give it to you right now,
but we have evidence of trade in Gorgan.
We have coinage of, you know,
coinage of trade together with silk in Ray.
We have quite a bit of evidence that shows that, in fact,
the silk trade continued to go through Parthian lands.
The Sassanids were not happy with this, right,
because what basically happened was that the Parthians could therefore -
and the Letter of Tansar gives evidence of this -
Letter of Tansar being a letter that was of the late Sassanid period
but claims to be of early Sassanid period.
The Letter of Tansar says to the Parthians of this area,
that "You guys have become, you know, not very Sassanid-like
because you guys are engaging in trade, right,
and you're getting very rich."
So what happens in the sixth century, hmm,
in the sixth century what happens - in the later sixth century -
is that the Sassanids actually start building up their own trade -
their own silk producing factories in Khuzistan and in Shiraz area.
Now, come - I don't know whether I have gotten my thesis across to you
or not because I haven't read from my paper, but, come Arab conquest -
this is the thesis: Arabs come; they actually come and conquer
through the southern routes, right?
They make a pact with the Pahlav regions,
through the Parthian period, right?   And they leave them intact, hmm?
This continues to by the case through the Umayyad period.
So, those of you who are familiar with the work
of Etienne de la Vassiere know that when he discusses the period
of the Sassanid and the silk trade, he stops at the border
of the Sassanids and doesn't go in here.
But, anyway, so as far as the Arabs were concerned, this route,
right, did not function, right?
So all of - therefore the Jewish population - Iranian Jewry -
whatever was happening - and incidentally, we know that Khazars -
the Khazars, the Turkic populations of the Khazars who come there
around late Sassanid period, they -
ultimately they converted to Judaism.
They had connections.   They went through the Gorgan Sea.
They came to Gorgan.   They disembarked in Gorgan,
they continued their trade in Central Asia.
All of this was going on through the Umayyad period.
What the Abbasids did - yes, time up.
What the Abbasids did is actually attempted to open
up this trade route, right, to open up this trade route.
I have said so little of what I wanted to tell you, right?
They opened up this trade route, right,
so that when - I have to say this one.
When - during the Sassanid period - Chris,
just give me two more minutes - during the Sassanid period,
when Khosrau, one of the later Sassanid kings,
tried to reform the system that they had, this confederacy that they had,
there was one Parthian rebellion after another.
One of the more important one of them was the Parthian rebellion
that took place in the Gorgan area by the population
of Tabaristan, by Bahram Chobin.
Who supported Bahram Chobin in his rebellion against the Sassanids,
but Iranian Jewry, right?
And who got, actually, the stick for it,
when Bahram's rebellion was destroyed was Iranian Jewry of Ray.
There's a fascinating story of the whole situation in Ray.
Ultimately, the Abbasids come.   They establish the Khorasan route.
What you get after the Abbasid period is development
of the southern route as well as the northern route, right?
And what you get with the establishment of the -
of Baghdad as the capital of the Abbasids is growth of Esfahan
and the Jewish population of Esfahan and the connection
of the banking system of Iranian Jewries in Esfahan and in Ctesiphon.
So, long story short, my - I - long story short - one last sentence -
long story short, I think trade routes had a very significant role
to play in the Arab conquest, and I think the role of Iranian Jewry
in the history of trade from the Parthian period
through the Sassanid period, through the Arab conquest was extremely,
extremely significant, and if revisionist historiography -
I'm going - if revisionist historiography is right,
then you never know how strong the participation
of Iranian Jewry has been in the Arab conquest of Iran.
[applause]
Christopher Murphy: Okay, our next presenter is Maria Subtelny.
Maria is a Professor of Persian and Islamic Studies at the Department
of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
at the University of Toronto.
She received her Ph.D. from Harvard, and I think,
ever since then, has been at Toronto.
She is the author of a number of books, including a recent one
on Timur, and many, many articles.   Maria.
[applause]
Maria Subtelny: Thank you very much, Chris, for your introduction.
One of the most important topics in the history of Iran is the process
of its conversion to Islam after the Arab conquest
of the seventh and eighth centuries.
Yet, due to the lack of documentary evidence, and perhaps also
because of the sensitivity of the issue,
conversion has been little studied.
The few studies devoted to the topic have focused exclusively
on the Zoroastrian community that represented the majority
of Iranian populations of Iran and Central Asia.
But what of the other religious communities in greater Iran:
Manicheans, Buddhists, Christians, and Jews?
In point of fact, these continued to exist in various towns and regions
of greater Iran until well after the Muslim conquests.
The tenth century Arab geographer, Al-Muqaddasi, provides what appears
to be the first statement concerning the relative sizes
of the populations of Zoroastrians, Christians,
and Jews in early Islamic Iran.
"In the province of Fars," he writes, "there are more Zoroastrians
than Jews, while Christians are few.
In Jibal, western Iran, Jews are more numerous than Christians,
and there are many Zoroastrians.
And in Khuzistan," he says, "there are few Christians
and not many Jews or Zoroastrians."
To focus on the Jews, the stated topic of our conference,
they were probably the only minority that lived in practically every city
and town in Iran and Central Asia: Hamadan, Shiraz,
and Esfahan in western Iran; Harab [spelled phonetically],
Khaznin [spelled phonetically],
and Balkh in the eastern Iranian province of Korasan; Samarkand
and Bukhara in Transoxiana; to mention just the most noteworthy.
And of course many of these were along trade routes.
The existence of the Jewish community in Esfahan, for example,
is mentioned by such Muslim historical geographers as Yakut,
who referred to Esfahan and its surrounding region
as "Yahudea" [spelled phonetically], the origins of which he traced back
to the time of Nebuchadnezzar.
Under pressure from the growing Muslim majority, however,
the Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish communities
in Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia dwindled over time
until only vestiges remained.
To be sure, many were killed or forcibly converted during periods
of armed conflict or politically motivated persecution,
while others fled and created diasporic communities elsewhere,
but many accepted Islam for socio-economic reasons in order
to become full participants
in the Muslim societies in which they lived.
We also cannot discount the fact that many accepted Islam
out of religious conviction, often as a result
of Muslim missionary activity.
We know precious little about the life of the Jewish communities
of Medieval Iran before the sixteenth century.
And despite the best efforts of such scholars as Walter Fischel
and others, this period remains a black hole
in the history of eastern Jewry.   Moreover, while it is possibly,
thanks to the heuristic model assembled by Richard Bulliet,
to reconstruct the rate and degree of conversion in various regions
of the Islamic world, we know next to nothing
about the strategies employed by Muslim missionaries
in addressing specific religious communities.
Jamshid Choksey, who surveyed the patterns of conversion
and resistance among Zoroastrians in Iran in the ninth
and tenth centuries, opines that the intellectual persuasion had the most
lasting effect in the case of voluntary acceptance of Islam.
And he also suggests that popular preachers and Sufi missionaries,
operating on the oral level, played an important role
in presenting Islam as compatible in many respects
with Zoroastrian beliefs and rituals.
The Muslim attitude toward conversion is summed
up in the Koranic dictum, "[Arabic]:" "There is no compulsion
in religion," the locus classicus for discussions of the Islamic view
on interfaith relations, which was traditionally understood
as denying the feasibility of coercion in matters of religion
and as leaving the decision to convert
up to the volitional subject.
Acknowledging the truism that forced conversion played an insignificant
role in the spread of Islam, we may posit that the strategy employed
by Muslim missionaries and preachers was one of positive argument rather
than of confrontation or polemical engagement
that stressed shared truths and reinforced the religious beliefs
of the target audience, embedding them within an Islamic context.
Devon Duiz [spelled phonetically] has formulated one
of the most sophisticated approaches to date
for understanding the meaning of conversion
in a particular Islamicizing society in Central Asia,
by analyzing legendary and hagiographical conversion narratives
that integrated indigenous religious themes into Islamic paradigms.
The use of such narrative mechanisms to explain communal conversion
from a socio-historical perspective can also shed light on the means
by which conversion took place in Iran.
Arguably, the most dramatic, imaginative, and inspiring narrative
in Medieval Perso-Islamic religious culture that could have represented
such a mechanism, for the purposes of conversion, was the account
of the Prophet Mohammed's heavenly ascension or Mi'raj.
Unlike Koranic scripture,
the Islamic ascension narrative never assumed a canonical form.
It was related in a great number of versions that differed
from each other in subtle, yet significant ways.
This would have served the purposes of Muslim preachers
and missionaries well, as the narrative could be adapted to appeal
to different religious groups through the inclusion
of culturally specific narremes and religious motifs.
In this way, many elements drawn from the belief systems
of the various religious communities targeted
for conversion were appropriated into the narrative and tended
to remain standard features in later versions,
even as their original meaning became obscured.
This possible function of the Islamic ascension narrative
in the history of the spread of Islam and its use
by Muslim missionaries, popular preachers,
and Sufis in proselytizing among non-Muslims,
or to use the Islamic euphemism, in calling them to Islam,
has remained virtually unexplored.
It would be instructive to dwell briefly on the significance
of the account of Mohammed's ascension
in Islamic doctrinal belief, as it is sometimes dismissed,
even by modern Muslim intellectuals, as a mythological tail
or pious legend intended simply for popular entertainment.
It is, in fact, a theologoumenon
that from earliest times was considered a touchstone
of the faith.
Those who believed in Mohammed's bodily ascension
to the highest heaven were regarded
as having accepted his prophetic mission and place
in the religious history, whereas those who did not were considered
to have rejected Islam itself.
The chief doctrinal function of the ascension narrative was
to demonstrate Mohammed's confirmation by his Jewish
and Christian predecessors as the last prophet in an unbroken chain
of prophetic history
and to underscore the favored eschatological status
of the Muslim community.
Cast in the literary genre of apocalypse, or revelation,
the Islamic ascension narrative is properly speaking the apocalypse
of Mohammed.
Related in the first person by the Prophet himself in the form
of extended prophetic traditions transmitted
through such early Islamic authorities as Ibn Abbas,
Anas bin Malik, and others.
The inherent ambiguity and esoteric content of the apocalyptic genre,
with its journeys to other-worldly regions and encounters with angels
and other divine beings - here we have just one illustration
of such encounters - demanded a suspension of the rational
in the interest of spiritual transformation
through the uniquely personal experience of the Prophet of Islam.
The apocalyptic framework would not have been unfamiliar to adherents
of Judaism as the Islamic ascension narrative has a great affinity
with such Jewish apocalyptic texts as the Hebrew book of Enoch,
ascribed pseudopigraphically
to the second century Palestinian sage, Rabbi Ishmael.
The proselytizing tone
of the Islamic ascension narrative is established right
from the beginning in many versions of the account.
In one narreme, or narrative fragment, Mohammed is described
as hearing two, three, and even four voices calling to him as he travels
from Mecca toward the Temple in Jerusalem.
He does not pay any attention to him,
and the angel Gabriel later interprets them
as representing various religions.
Had Mohammed responded to any one of them,
his community would have become Jewish, Zoroastrian, Christian,
or even polytheist, as the case may be.
In another narreme, Mohammed is offered three drinks,
sometimes four, of water, wine, milk, and honey.
He invariably chooses milk, for which he is praised
by the angel Gabriel, who states that had he chosen any one
of the others, his community would have fallen into error.
It is possible to interpret these drinks symbolically
as representing various religions: Zoroastrianism represented by water,
regarded as a pure element in Zoroastrian thought
and hence a symbol of wisdom; Christianity being represented
by wine, the liturgical symbol of the transmuted body of Christ;
and Judaism being represented by honey,
often used as a symbol of knowledge.   As for milk, it appears frequently
in Medieval Islamic theosophical literature as a symbol of knowledge,
usually of the esoteric variety.
I would now like to focus on a narreme, or a small,
very small narrative fragment, that occurs at the very end
of some versions of the ascension narrative,
which I believe would have resonated with a Jewish audience,
to whom it appears to have been addressed.
Jews in the eastern Islamic world were, as a rule, Persian-speaking,
a fact borne out from the earliest period
of the development of new Persian language.
And most of these versions originate
from a Persianate [spelled phonetically] milieu.
The narreme in question concerns Mohammed's visit to a people
who live at the edge of the world.
Excuse me, I'm just going to pick up my [laughs] my pointer,
and I just wanted to show you: this is the - one of the many depictions
of the Mi'raj of the Prophet.   Here he is on his fabulous steed,
guided by the angel Gabriel and the other angels.
And here we have the seven heavenly spheres with the center
of the earth depicted here, the sphere of the first moon.
And this is probably a depiction of the cosmic mountain
which I am going to be talking about.
And the Jews probably live around here.
Okay? [laughs] [laughter] If we are [laughs] - if we are to depict it.
But this is, of course, in the realm of myth.
After passing through the seven heavenly spheres,
in each of which he is introduced to the Biblical and Islamic prophets
who inhabit that particular sphere - and I just want
to show you a depiction of Mohammed's meeting with Moses.
Mohammed, of course, is on the left here in the green,
and Moses depicted on the right.
After these meetings, Mohammed reaches the throne of God
in the highest heaven, where he is accorded a vision of God.
After tours of Paradise and Hell, he is transported by the angel Gabriel
to the edge of the world, where he visits a people who live
in the mythical cities of Jabalqa and Jabarsa.
When Mohammed inquires about their identity, Gabriel informs him
that they are some of the people of Moses.
These cities, traditionally situated on the eastern and western sides
of the cosmic mountain, known as Qaf, are described as being
of monumental proportions.
The houses of the Jews in these cities are described as all being
of the same height and, strangely enough, as located far
from their places of worship,
while their cemeteries are situated close by to their houses.
Mount Qaf - and this is one of, again, many depictions
of this cosmic mountain - and here you have the entrance to the first,
or the lowest heaven, which is situated -
where it is exactly the conjunction of the - these two mythical places.
The ancient Iranian mythological motif of the cosmic mountain
at the edge of the world was incorporated early
on into Medieval Islamic cosmology.
Known as Mount Qaf, it was described as an inaccessible place situated
at the point where the earth meets the first heavenly sphere
of the moon.
Believed to have been fashioned by God out of green emerald,
Mount Qaf was the abode of such fabulous creatures as the jinn
and the mythical bird, simurgh.
And since it contained the Tree of All Seeds and the Spring
of Eternal Life, it was reckoned to be the source of all plant
and animal life on earth.
After being introduced to the Jews who lived there,
Mohammed asks them a series of questions.
In response to the question,
why their houses are all the same height, they reply,
"Because among us there is neither envy nor pride."
In response to the question, why their places of worship are far
from their homes while their cemeteries are close by,
the Jews answer that it is so that by exerting themselves
to reach their places of worship, their reward will be greater and so
that they might be always mindful of death.
Assuring Mohammed that they perform their prayers, fast,
honor their parents and so on, they then ask Mohammed
for some words of advice.
Mohammed complies by saying, quote, "Fear God.
Do not be prideful, and obey the commandments," unquote.
The Jews accept Mohammed's words,
thereby expressing his belief in him as a Prophet.
That they also accept the religion of Islam is indicated
by the final comment made by Mohammed in one of the versions
of the tale: "They all accepted me.
They all expressed their belief in Islam.
May God, who is exalted, grant them all success in the performance
of good deeds and in obedience to the faith and practice of Islam.
May he deliver them from the torments of Hell
and grant them the reward of Paradise.
Amen, oh Lord of the Worlds."
The narreme about the Jews at the edge of the world is attested
in many variants and versions
of the Islamic ascension narrative ascribed pseudopigraphically
to Ibn Abbas.
In the Persian version that survives in a manuscript dating possibly
from the thirteenth century, Mohammed is described as visiting
"a righteous people," [Arabic],
who live in the cities of Jabalqa and Jabarsa.
And here is another depiction of the spheres.
Here is the sphere of the moon, and here is Mount Qaf again,
and the two cities are supposed to be located on either side.
Linked exegetically to the Koranic verse which goes, "Among the people
of Moses, [Arabic], there is a separate community, ummah,
who guide with truth and exercise justice thereby," unquote,
the motif of the righteous Jews who live at the edge
of the world is attested in Medieval Koran commentaries, Islamic legends
of the Prophet, and historical and cosmological works,
most of which appear to be of Persian provenance.
The earliest textual reference to the narreme about Mohammed's visit
to the mythic cities of Jabalqa and Jabarsa is found
in the general history of Al-Tabari, a ninth century -
ninth to tenth century Arab scholar of Iranian origin.
In his account of the creation,
Tabari states that God created the cities of Jabalqa and Jabarsa
in the east and west, and he identifies their inhabitants
as belonging to the remnant of the ancient peoples
of Adh [spelled phonetically] and Famoud [spelled phonetically],
who are mentioned in the Koran as having been believers
in the pre-Islamic prophets.
Tabari's description of the Prophet Mohammed's assessment
of these people as representing a remnant permits us to identify them
with the separate community
of Jewish proto-Muslims alluded to in the Koran.
The statement that is put into Mohammed's mouth goes as follows.
"Gabriel then took me to the inhabitants of these two cities.
I called on them to follow the religion of God and to worship him.
They agreed and repented," that is, converted.
"They are our brothers in the true religion.
Those of them who do good are together with those
of you," Muslims, "who do good.
And those among them who do evil are together
with those of you who do evil."
The narreme about the Jews who anticipate the coming
of the prophet Mohammed and accept Islam when he visits them
in their isolated dwelling place at the edge
of the world must have been introduced
into the Persianate cultural milieu during the historical process
of conversion in Iran, which,
according to Richard Bulliet's conversion curve,
began in the mid-eighth century
and peaked during the ninth and tenth century.
Citing Jewish sources, the Persian cosmogropher, Yakut,
identifies the inhabitants of the city of Jabarsa, which he locates
in the far east, with the descendants of Moses, [Arabic],
who were deposited there by God during the wars
of Saul or Nebuchadnezzar.
They lived by themselves in this unattainable place,
keeping the true faith that their co-religionists had allegedly
corrupted and even going so far as to kill those Jews
who tried to join them there.
Yakut calls them the remnant of the Muslims, [Arabic],
by which he means those Jewish proto-Muslims mentioned
in the Koran who, having recognized the prophecy of Mohammed's coming
in the Torah, separated themselves from the Rabbinites
and remained faithful in their belief in him.
Mount Qaf and its mythical cities were perhaps most closely associated
in the Perso-Islamic literary tradition with the Epic
of Alexander, whose wanderings to the ends of the earth in search
of the Spring of Eternal Life and his meeting there with an angel -
this is a depiction of one of these encounters -
caused him to be identified with the [Arabic] mentioned in the Koran.
The figure of Alexander was well known to the Jews of Medieval times
as he is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, in the madrassic literature,
and the Judeo-Hellenistic version
of the Alexander romance was even translated into Hebrew.
Often conflated with the Alexander romance was the legend of Bulukiya,
a Jewish figure whose apocalyptic journey takes him
across the seven seas to the ends of the earth,
where he visits the cosmic mountain and encounters angelic beings
who provide him with a glimpse of the world beyond.
What is important for our purposes is that the Jewish tale
of Bulukiya was refocused in the Islamic tradition in order
to illustrate the theological concept of tahrif, that is,
the notion that the original text of the Torah,
which contained the prophecy of the coming of Mohammed,
was corrupted in the hands of the Rabbinic Jews.
Bulukiya is described as an ancient Israelite,
sometimes as a Jewish king of Egypt, who gained foreknowledge
of the coming of Mohammed thanks to a book left behind be his father,
who had recognized the prophecy in the Torah
but concealed it from his son.
According to the version of the tale in the prophetic legends
of faalabi [spelled phonetically], Bulukiya was overcome by a desire
to find Mohammed, and he set out on a quest for him.
After crossing the seven seas, he reaches Mount Qaf at the edge
of the world, where he meets an angel
with the Hebrew theophoric name Haskia'il [spelled phonetically],
who is the custodian of the mountain.
Bulukiya wishes to know what lies beyond the mountain.
He sees a locked gate, which the angel opens for him,
beyond which he sees many marvels and fabulous creatures.
He asks the angels about Mohammed, but since Mohammed has not
yet made his appearance in history,
they respond that they have not seen him, and they ask Bulukiya
to convey their grieving to him should he meet up with him himself.
In short, the tale of the Jewish hero, Bulukiya,
which shares many features in common with the Epic
of Alexander would have been sufficiently well-known
to a Jewish audience for it to interpret Mohammed's journey
to the mythic cities of Mount Qaf of the edge of the world in terms
of the epic quests of both Alexander and Bulukiya and to see themselves
as the socially marginal, albeit righteous, children of Israel
who have been patiently waiting for the Prophet of Islam promised
to them in their own scripture.
In keeping with the strategy of positive argument,
the portrait of the Jews presented in the narreme is a flattering one.
And the responses they give to the questions posed
by Mohammed cast them in a favorable light.
Mohammed's line of questioning ultimately has its origins
in the philosophical questions posed by Alexander the Great
to the gymnosophists, or naked philosophers, of India in order
to test their philosophical knowledge.
In the Islamicized versions of the account, Alexander's role is assumed
by the Prophet Mohammed, while the gymnosophists become the Jews
who live at the edge of the world, who are ascetic, God-fearing,
strictly vegetarian, never quarrel among themselves.
[laughter] An ideal picture.
[laughs] [laughter] It will be recalled that in response
to Mohammed's question, why their houses are all the same height,
the Jews explained that this is because they possess neither envy,
[Arabic], nor pride, [Arabic].
These character traits, which in the popular mind were ascribed to Jews
in Medieval Islam, are in fact refuted
in the positive portrayal of them in the narreme.
The responses of the Jews to Mohammed echo those given
to Alexander by the naked philosophers
in the Medieval Hebrew translations of the Alexander romance.
Likewise, the motif of the cemeteries located close
to the Jews' houses is borrowed from the Alexander epic.
This is the same response.
This is how these naked philosophers live.
And the Jew's response
to the questions regarding this is the same or similar.
Most telling, from the point view of conversion strategy, is the advice,
or [Arabic], Mohammed gives the Jews in our narreme.
The term [Arabic] had a religio-ethical connotation
in Medieval Islam, denoting the good counsel a Muslim was morally obliged
to give a co-religionist regarding Islamic beliefs and practices.
By providing the Jews with such advice, Mohammed is, in effect,
already regarding them as Muslims.
What has never been remarked on before in the discussions
of this narreme is that Mohammed's words, at least I think,
represent an interpolation of the well-know with which the book
of Ecclesiastes ends: "Fear God, and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man."
With its characteristic themes of fear of God and obedience
to the commandments, [Arabic], rendered by the Persian word,
[Persian], Mohammed's advice could not
but have resonated with a Jewish audience.
In fact, it serves as a catalyst for their conversion to Islam.
To conclude, the highly dramatic account
of the Prophet Mohammed's ascension - heavenly ascension--
would have served as an effective means
of capturing the spiritual imagination of prospective converts
to Islam, far more effective than dogmatic disputation
and polemical engagement that challenged deeply held beliefs.
It is my contention that Muslim missionaries employing the
sophisticated strategy of positive argument,
utilized the ascension narrative as a vehicle
for addressing particular religious groups by manipulating it in ways
that stressed common beliefs and shared truths.
As I have tried to demonstrate, the narreme about the righteous people
who live at the edge of the world, illustrates the way
in which individual narrative fragments may have been inserted
into the narrative and used to address a Jewish audience in Iran
or Persianate Central Asia.
The apocalyptic nature of the narrative, with its emphasis
on visionary imagination and personal experience,
would have appealed to members of the Jewish community, who,
already familiar with the genre in their own religious tradition,
would have been led to believe that by accepting Islam,
they would not be abandoning their own beliefs and practices
but rather preserving them in an updated,
so to speak, Islamic format.   Thank you.
[applause]
Christopher Murphy: Our third presenter is Vera Moreen.
She received her B.A. from Princeton and her doctorate from Harvard.
She's been a Visiting Associate Professor at several colleges
and universities, including Swarthmore, Haverford College,
Franklin and Marshall, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Moreen's primary research interests include the cultural world
of Iranian Jewry.
She's written four books and co-edited four other volumes
on various aspects of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian relations
and was recently named Section Editor of the "Encyclopedia
of Jews in the Islamic World."
Her book, "Miniature Paintings in Judeo-Persian Manuscripts,"
was nominated for the National Jewish Book Award,
and her latest book, "In Queen Esther's Garden:
An Anthology of Judeo-Persian Literature,"
has garnered excellent reviews and accolades in scholarly journals.
Professor Moreen.   [applause]
Professor Moreen: Thank you.
I, too, of course want to start by proffering thanks
to the Meyerhoff Center, the Roshan Institute, which I hope will live
up to its name, it's wonderful name, and especially
to today's generous hosts at the Library of Congress.
I would like to talk to you about Judeo-Persian manuscripts,
as most of my work, in one way or another, centers around them,
and give you a little bit
of background before I show you samples of them.
The earliest traces of Judeo-Persian manuscripts, basically Farsi,
new Persian, written in the Hebrew alphabet, and I do not have the time
to describe what Judeo-Persian really is.
It's a rather complex language with interesting features.
Such manuscripts are to be found - the earliest inscriptions are
to be found on tombstones in Afghanistan
between the eighth and thirteenth century.
The majority of actual Persian -
Judeo-Persian manuscripts produced primarily in Iran
and Bukhara date considerably later, most having been produced
between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.
A small but important group of Judeo-Persian manuscripts
from the Cairo Geniza, roughly from the ninth and thirteenth centuries,
that Professor Shaked has done considerably work on,
suggest perhaps that the break in manuscript production
between the thirteenth and seventeenth century was probably due
to political vicissitudes after the Mongol invasion as well
as probably a scarcity of paper.
Judging by the quantity of surviving Judeo-Persian manuscripts,
and their number is far from insignificant,
they must have been produced in respectably large numbers.
Having recently completed a catalog of the Judeo-Persian manuscripts,
hosted at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York,
I took the opportunity to inventory Judeo-Persian manuscripts
in western library collections.
Their number is nearly 1200, and who knows how many more are -
can be found in Iran or in elsewhere.
Clearly, Iranian Jews were considerably literate.
Not surprisingly, the largest collection
of Judeo-Persian manuscripts these days are in Israel
at the Jerusalem National University Library
and at the Ben Sri Institute [spelled phonetically].
And, of course, these were acquired from immigrants who came to Israel.
The contents of Judeo-Persian manuscripts tend heavily towards
belles-lettres, especially towards poetry
with religious literature in clear second place.
This immediately tells you that Iranian Jews loved belles-lettres
as much as Iranian Muslims.
Medical texts and folk remedies are also well represented,
while historical, philosophical
and halahic [spelled phonetically] texts are relatively sparse.
The rather small number of illuminated manuscripts
that have surfaced thus far confirms
that Iranian Jews shared the aesthetic, not only the literary,
inclinations of their Muslim compatriots.
A full evaluation awaits the complete cataloging
of all collections, especially the one
at the Jewish National University Library in Jerusalem.
Closer statistical analysis
of contents will then reveal a more nuanced appreciation
of Iranian Jewry's intellectual parameters in pre-modern times.
As many of you know, and as my studies testify,
I have been advocating the closer studies of these texts
and their integration into the broader Iranian historical
and cultural context for quite a few years.
The small number of scholars willing to engage with these texts continues
to be a problem - a major problem in our field, unlike, for example,
the field of Judeo-Arabic studies.   The reasons for this are manifold,
and I don't really want to go into them.
Suffice it to mention one,
mainly one that my friend Daniel Sadik [spelled phonetically] has
repeatedly questioned me about: you know, why don't we have -
are there more, clearly historical texts among these
Judeo-Persian manuscripts?
While it is true that there aren't, just as in Jewish -
Jewish historiography in general is rather sparse,
Judeo-Persian manuscripts shed light - considerable light
on the intellectual and material culture of Iranian Jews.
So it is intellectual history that Judeo-Persian manuscripts contribute
to considerably, and therefore they are very worthwhile studying.
With this rather broad goal in mind of giving you all an impression
of what Judeo-Persian manuscripts are like, I would like to show you,
in the brief time at my disposal, a few colophons
from Judeo-Persian manuscripts at the Jewish Theological Seminary
and remark on what we can learn from them.
But before I do so, I'd like to make a few comments about the production
of Judeo-Persian manuscripts in Iran in general and some
of their more important features.
First of all, it is a valid question to ask:
why manuscripts production continued in the Muslim world in general,
and in Iran and among Iranian Jews in particular,
long after printing was introduced in the West,
even as late as into the twentieth century.
Without embarking on the history of printing in the Muslim world,
suffice it to mention that although block printing was introduced
in Iran at the end of the thirteenth century, movable print arrived only
in 1629, brought by Carmelite friars from Rome
with the first printing press.
In 1637, an Armenian press was established in New Julfa.
So printing in Iran remained sporadic until well
into the nineteenth century, when in 1855, a printing press was brought
by Muslim Mohammed Saleh Shirazi.
Even so, a great deal of printing remained lithographic.
Thus, it's not surprising
that manuscript production continued among Iranian Jews, as I said,
even into the early twentieth century.
In the Judeo - JTS collection there is a manuscript dated 1953,
I believe.
It's interesting that the first Judeo-Persian printed copy
of the Torah, which appeared in 1594,
appeared in Istanbul, not in Iran.
And it is also remarkable that when Judeo-Persian texts appeared
in print in more substantial numbers,
this also occurred outside Iran in Jerusalem,
issued by the printing press
of the Bukharan scholar Shimon Khokhom in the 1860s.
The second general point I want to make about these manuscripts,
especially about the JTS collection: It numbers about 195 manuscripts,
and these were acquired from the purchases
of Ian Adler [spelled phonetically].
He made two trips to Iran in 1896 and 1897, and then, eventually,
in 1922-23, he sold and donated his manuscripts to JTS.
The majority of these manuscripts,
some 66 out of the 195, are miscellanies.
Most Hebrew manuscripts collections, in fact, consist of miscellanies.
That, too, is a complex issue having to do with scarcity of paper
and resources most of all.
So miscellanies are essentially a variety of texts bound in one codex.
Although I refer to them as Judeo-Persian texts or manuscripts,
numerous individual items in these miscellanies are actually in Hebrew.
A great deal of the contents, perhaps about half - again,
a closer statistical analysis is warranted -
consist of original compositions by Iranian Jews.
The rest is made up of translations, mostly from Hebrew and Aramaic,
and copies in Hebrew script of Persian materials,
such as classical Persian poetry and medical texts.
Much material in these manuscripts, especially individual poems,
are copied over and over and repeated
and give you a very strong testament of what was popular -
culturally popular among Iranian Jews and a great indicator
of popular tastes and needs because some of these are medical remedies
and spells and texts that have practical application.
The physical appearance of Judeo-Persian manuscripts resembles
that of the surrounding majority culture.
Most are copied on locally produced,
Iranian paper of relatively low quality,
in a variety of light beiges known
as [foreign language], straw-colored.
Almost all - although almost a dozen manuscripts at JTS were copied
on Italian paper with fairly recognizable watermarks,
manuscripts from Bukhara were copied on thick, bluish, Russian paper
and have distinct watermarks, again, that can be recognized.
Evaluating provenance is crucial, of course,
in evaluating these manuscripts, and paper is one way to try to date them
when they don't have colophons.
The square, oriental script of the manuscript is of an average quality,
although at least one seventeenth century scribe,
by the name of Nahania Amshal [spelled phonetically] of Tabriz,
produced several works of exceptional calligraphic quality.
Many works were copied by owners for their own use and tend
to lack colophons, but some professional scribes are also
attested to.
Quite a few manuscripts at JTS were bound in lovely, tooled,
lettered bindings, and a number of them -
two or three have lovely Khazar, lacquered bindings.
So I will now turn to show you a few colophons and tell you
about specific manuscripts.
And, depending on the time, I may or may not go
through most of my examples.
First, I wanted to show you the two -
two of my favorite lacquered covers
at the JTS collection, from the Khazar period.
They actually were made into greeting cards by JTS.
The first example that I'm showing you is manuscript 1403,
which is essentially a religious miscellany.
It contains at least fourteen items,
and listen to the variety of these items.
The first item is a lithograph fragment of the Passover Haggadah;
then there's Hebrew poetry by Israel Najara, poet who died in 1625,
and it's essentially a Turkic - Turkish-Jewish poem;
a Judeo-Persian translation of Psalm 107; fragment of a story;
fragment from the Song of Songs;
fragment of a Judeo-Persian translation of the book
of Ecclesiastes; fragment of - from the book of -
Judeo-Persian translation of Proverbs;
fragment from a sixteenth century Judeo-Persian poet by the name
of Ibrani [spelled phonetically], his Musibat Nameh;
a Judeo-Persian translation of Asarah Harugei Malkuth,
a very important Rabbinic, theological text;
a Judeo-Persian translation of a poem by Ibn Gabirol, a Spanish poet
who died in 1058 - his Keter Malkhut is very popular
in Judeo-Persian manuscript; a Judeo-Persian translation
of the high holiday prayer,
Ur Nehale Tolket [spelled phonetically];
Judeo-Persian translations of Yom Kippur Musaf and Mincha;
Hebrew prayers for good fortune, mostly consisting of a combination
of Psalms; and an eighteenth century copy
of an original Judeo-Persian poet Ami - that goes be the name -
pseudonym of Amina [spelled phonetically];
and the last item are a few printed pages from a siddur printed
in Livorno, Italy, in 1864.
What are we to make of such hodge-podge?
Well, we have a colophon in this text, and I'm going to - you know,
for some of you it will be fairly easy to read this;
some of you can get some of it.   The colophon says
[Judeo-Persian],   so the colophon appears only
after one particular item, the poem of Ibn Gabirol.
The date, which is the second day after Shabbat, being Monday.
[Judeo-Persian], meaning the sixteenth.
[Judeo-Persian], you can see the hybrid form of the language,
using both Hebrew and Persian words.
In the year 5533, corresponding to 1773 of the Hebrew calendar.
Clearly a composite codex, tremendous variety,
it's got lots of different hands in it.
A family book, people putting things into it.
People probably taking things -- hoarding of religious texts.
A desire to know what the Hebrew prayers mean,
therefore Judeo-Persian translations.
Last night's concert was a lovely revelation for me
because when the singer sang "Yiri Bon",
they did it with the Judeo-Persian translation.
Now, absolutely every Judeo-Persian manuscript has at least one
or two copies of "Yiri Bon" in it, with the Judeo-Persian translation.
So, just as we now have prayer books with Hebrew and English,
Iranian Jews clearly wanted to know what they were saying.
So, to me this is a moving religious miscellany.
Each and every one of these items in the text is worthy of study
and finding out just how does it compare with ibn Gabirol's editions
of [Hebrew] or with particular renditions of other poems.
The classical Persian poems that are copied
in the Hadude [spelled phonetically] work with the classical canon.
This is one example.   I could say a lot more about it.
Let me move on to a, more or less, secular miscellany.
This is manuscript 1410.   Here we have Judeo-Persian poetry.
Sometimes it's not easy to identify whether this is original
Judeo-Persian poetry, or Judeo-Persian copy
of classical Persian poetry, unless we have something
in the computerized age a real index.
If we don't have clear indications that it's a Hebrew poem,
you don't really know the identity very clearly.
Anonymous quatrains, lots of Rubaiyat, are they original?
Hard to tell.
Hebrew poems, some by Judah Halevi, classical Spanish poems, [Persian],
Judeo-Persian translation of The Wisdom
of Mancira [spelled phonetically], a bilingual Judeo-Persian poem
by [Persian name], is and 18th century poet on Azharot,
which is a genre by itself on the 630 commandments.
One of the difficulties that I had as I worked
on cataloging a huge collection was,
how do you designate what category they belong to?
I call this secular, when, of course,
there are clearly religious items in here, such as the Azharot.
I went by the rule of thumb that if the content of a particular codex,
if the majority of it tended to be secular,
I lumped it as a Secular Miscellany.   Here again we have several hands
and we have two colophons after two items.
The first colophon is this one on 57th versal
[Persian]   5441, corresponding to 1681,
[Persian].   So, you can see that it's damaged.
[Persian].
All kinds of imprecations and blessings on whoever would read it.
I think I have -- no I don't have -- .
The second colophon is actually from 1708.
So here we have a first colophon from 1681, the second one from 1708.
This book is in the family with blank pages
and people are adding to it, favorites.
You know, a kind of album.   A kind of family anthology.
Again, different hands, different scribes, and only one scribe named
after the second colophon as Abraham de Bulonmir Adame
[spelled phonetically].   Who is he?
Well probably one of the owners of the manuscript.
The third colophon I'm showing you is from --
by the way, as you look at them, you can see the tremendous variety
of scripts and lack of education or, you know,
some of them are better than others.
1428 is actually a collection of tales
in midrashim [spelled phonetically], primarily about Abraham.
It is hard to tell what period it comes from.
My more or less educated guess is that it's 19th century,
which is what you can say about the bulk of these texts.
Again, the availability of paper makes it more likely
that a large number of these texts, though their content may be earlier,
the actual books are late.
The colophon is interesting because although the date is not there,
it expresses conventional messianic sentiments.
[Hebrew]
Whoever reads it should be inscribed into the book of good life.
[Hebrew]
You see the mixture of -- "galut" [spelled phonetically] is Hebrew,
"mashiac" [spelled phonetically] is Hebrew,
[Hebrew],   not properly spelled.
Then he quotes Malachi, "I will send the prophet Elijah
to you before coming to the awesome, fearful day."
So, conventional messianic expressions, but strong expressions,
especially if it's a 19th century codex.
The next colophon is very close to my heart,
as I did my doctoral dissertation on it.
It's number 1444.   It is a copy of
[Hebrew],   the book of forced converts.
The first Judeo-Persian chronicle known to us by Baba'i ibn Lutf,
and it deals with the sporadic persecution
of Iranian Jews between 1617 to 1662.
One of the nice things in this particular colophon is
that the paper is clearly Italian and there is a watermark
that identifies it as an 18th century piece of paper,
so Giogattia di Ferrari [spelled phonetically] 19,
you can look up the paper, which was exciting to me.
We don't have the name of the copyist,
but we have the name of the owner,   [Hebrew]
is Hebrew.   Whoever steals it should be cursed.
[Hebrew],   very colloquially spelled.
It's a very valued codex, because it's on good paper
and it is an important historical document
The next one -- and stop me -- five minutes?
Then, you know what?
I'm going to skip -- no, I want to --
This is a codex of tales and spells.
Lots of Judeo-Persian manuscripts contain very interesting spells,
probably of very ancient origins.
I have not studied this but they're interesting.
How to make somebody fall in love with you,
how to make somebody recover from this and that.
So they are what we call, more or less, practical kabbala.
This one, in addition to spells, has a variety of stories,
quasi-midrashic, more of rabbinic stories about Moses
and Solomon, righteous men and women.
Some of these come from   [Hebrew],
then also stories about Aristotle, Galen, famous merchants.
And, the most interesting thing about the colophon is
that it is the property of a woman,   [Hebrew]
of this book of tales as   [Hebrew]
and, again, the imprecations.
We know it's 19th century because [unintelligible] we have four books
that are owned by Tutti [spelled phonetically].
Now, Tutti, Persian for those of you that don't know it, means "parrot".
I don't know if this is a nickname
for such a person or is actually her name.
This second book that I am showing, 1452, is also owned by her
and consists entirely of Judeo-Persian transcriptions
of classical Persian poems, mostly by Sadit [spelled phonetically].
What's interesting is that the 19th century woman knows the poetry
of Sadit, wants to have it at hand,
and has it at hand in the Hebrew alphabet.
Her claim to fame is not that she's Tutti, but
[Persian],
so she's the daughter of a physician and therefore can afford books.
There are four such books that she owns in the JTS collection.
One of them -- we have no idea how many more she could have owned,
but the two others are a copy of   [Persian]
not, Jami's, but probably the one by Sholay [spelled phonetically],
and a copy of the Rashote [spelled phonetically], or sermons,
by a particular rabbi, Jacob bin rabbi Paltiel [spelled
phonetically], and this has a colophon of 1865.
So, we know that Tutti lived in the 19th century.
In 1865, she owned at least four, very fine books
and was an educated woman who could read the Hebrew alphabet.
The last example is important
because it's really a religious text in Talmud.
It's a miscellany of texts from the Pentateuch, and mishnayot,
lots of mishnayot, with accompanying G'marah, Talmud, and also texts
from midrashaba [spelled phonetically] pertaining
to shabuwot [spelled phonetically].
What is interesting here is to show you that up
on top at the title, you have   [Hebrew],
which is a transliteration in Persian letters of a Hebrew title,
going the other way around and showing you that, in fact,
it is not correct to assume that Jews stuck with Judeo-Persian
because they didn't know Persian or the Persian script,
but many of them, undoubtedly by the 19th century,
certainly knew the Persian script fluidly,
but held on to this traditional way of expressing themselves and,
probably for their own children, had to write it in the Persian alphabet.
Here the scribe gives the date of 1725
and gives a long -- you know, his name is
[Persian].   It's nice.
It's obviously over generations of owning the book, of family pride,
of going back, if not to the middle
of the first millennium, certainly considerably.
So these texts are just a very small sample and there's so much
that I can't tell you about now: the type of script,
the contents of each one of them, the repetitions.
Every one of these reveals an important facet
of the intellectual life of Iranian Jewry
in the pre-modern period in the Middle Ages.
Thank you.   [applause]
Unidentified Male Moderator: Okay, I would like to thank you all
for your patience in sitting so quietly.
Now we have a few moments, very few, for some questions
and Dr. Krivi Hakhak has something --
Dr. Hakhak: [inaudible] Unidentified Male Moderator:
There is a microphone coming around, too.
Dr. Hakhak: Thank you very much for these brilliant presentations.
I have two questions, one for Maria and one for you, Vera.
Maria, do you know of any other texts
where the liquids signify the religions?
Milk, honey, wine, and water, or any other --
well, wine has very clear association with Christianity,
but water and milk with Islam and -- no, it's milk with Islam,
water with Zoroastrianism, and honey with Judaism.
I hadn't heard that.
So you know of anywhere we can go to follow that lineup?
And to you, Vera, do you think, as a scholar --
clearly as an outsider to the field, I think it would be wonderful
to put digitalized versions of these texts online and to ask people
to transcribe them into Persian for those of us
who are unfortunately illiterate in the Hebrew script?
You know, I long to be able to read these texts
and even the mixed languages --
Vera Moreen: I can teach you the Hebrew alphabet
in an hour and you can read them.
[laughter] Dr. Hakhak: Well, just a quest
and see what we can do with that.   Maria Subtelny: Shall I answer?
Here? That's my own interpretation of the four drinks, however,
I did look for evidence of the representation of water
in Zoroastrianism and, for example, I found in Professor Shaked's
"Dualism in Transformation", that Ahura Mazda inspired Zoroaster
through the water of omniscience and said, "Put wisdom of omniscience
in Zoroaster's hand in the form of water and said 'drink'."
Zoroaster drank it, and mingled the wisdom of omniscience.
So, water is a pure element, one of the four elements that is pure
in Zoroastrian so I thought
that would be the most obvious symbol of Zoroastrian religion.
Honey, I think you find many references in the Bible.
You find references in Talmudic tales.
I worked on this one tale where there is a biblical proof text --
where, you know, do not eat honey because if you have a surfeit of it,
you will die -- and in Maimonides' interpretation
of this Talmudic tale associates honey with esoteric knowledge.
I just looked in several different sources to try to come
to this interpretation because you have
to wonder why this narrative fragment is included
at the beginning of ascension narratives.
And, as I say, invariably Mohammed chooses milk,
and milk is always a symbol of esoteric knowledge in Islam.
Ibn Adibi [spelled phonetically], for example, has a huge section
on -- Vera Moreen: But is it because of the Merage or --
Maria Subtelny: No, I don't think it's because of the Merage.
I think it's a symbol and it probably comes
from the cultural background, pastoral nomadic society
and so milk is sort of regarded as the pure element.
It's only my interpretation.
I don't think I have ever seen it anywhere else.
Vera Moreen: I didn't mean to make light of your question at all,
Professor Hakhak [spelled phonetically].
It would be wonderful to have them digitized,
but the problem is a little more complex than just reading them
in the Persian script, let's say, or transliterated
because there is considerable Hebrew vocabulary involved --
not in all texts.
Certainly not in the transposition of classical Persian texts,
but many of the texts have either glosses
or Hebrew words interspersed, especially religious text.
So, it works that if you're a scholar who knows Hebrew can go
to the Judeo-Persian a little more difficult from going
from Persian to the Judeo-Persian.   Not impossible, of course.
Everyone can learn the Hebrew or it can --
Dr. Hakhak: I think you could start a dialogue.
I have in my memory quite a number of classical Persian poems,
and so if I see them I might be able to identify.
It can get a conversation going.
Maria Subtelny: But wouldn't it be possible
to just leave the Hebrew words and Hebrew script in that?
Multiple Speakers: [inaudible] Chris Murphy: I think we need --
there's a gentleman in the back.
Male Speaker: I have two remarks to both Maria and Vera.
As to the color of the honey, while you were saying it's honey,
I was actually thinking about certain Arabic texts speak
about the need for the Jews
to wear a patch Assa [spelled phonetically] leaf, with the color
of Assa, honey-colored [unintelligible] patch.
So this was the first thing coming into my mind.
Maria Subtelny: Thank you, that's wonderful.
So it confirms the association.   Male Speaker 2: Possibly.
For Vera, Tutti- but the daughter of [Persian].
Tutti's a well known name of Iranian Jews.
The grandmother of my father is actually Tutti.
Now Hakim Ihasraili's [spelled phonetically] a famous court
physician in the times of Nassir Adeensha [spelled phonetically]
and was actually involved in a scandal in the passing away of one
of Nassir Adeensha's sons, so it's a well-know family from Khansar
and it's reasonable for her
to have all these manuscripts and -- Thank you.
Chris Murphy: You had something to say?
Female Speaker: Yeah, I have a question to Maria,
actually, or rather a comment.
In the Judeo-Persian tradition there is a text,
a Judeo-Persian transcription of a midrash called [Persian]
and that is [brief audio missing].
It's in my anthology and the debate is, does the Merage precede it
or is it inspired by the Merage or did it inspire the Merage,
but it's something that connects beautifully with your presentation
and the marginal Jews also comes, I think,
from Jewish legendary tradition of the Rechabites,
the people beyond the river Sambation, so you would want to look
at that in order to establish -- you know they're not proto-Muslims,
but they are the old Jews.
The ones who never lost the Torah and the copy that Ezra got.
This too you can find in the anthology.
Chris Murphy: Okay, with that, I'm afraid --
Maria Subtelny: I'm very familiar with your work on Moses' ascension,
because you may recall -- [inaudible] --
you wrote that article and so I had this in mind, as well.
And, yes, you have the Moses ascension.
I know this from a late Midrashic tale and I wonder
if it's not influenced by the Merage because the earliest evidence
that we have of some kind
of a connected narrative is from the 9th century.
It's from the biography of the prophet,
the seera [spelled phonetically] of the prophet in the ascension
of ibn Hashaa [spelled phonetically].
So, we don't have anything before the ninth century unless you kind
of take those cryptic Koranic references,
which really do not say anything.
So, I think there may have been [inaudible] the other way
because your article, as I recall, was Moses
and Mohammed's Light, is that right?
Yeah, where the same elements that come
up in the Islamic narrative are applied then to Moses,
and it's a wonderful -- we should really do something together
[break]
Chris Murphy: Ladies and gentlemen, if you could be so kind
to take your seats so we can go
on with the second session for today's conference.
The session is entitled "The Resources
for the Study of Iranian Jewry."
We will be talking about various available resources of scholarship.
Those available here at the Library of Congress, one of the hosts
of this wonderful conference,
and also other resources available to you.
Before introducing our first panelist,
I would like to take the time --
all due thanks have been given to all the cosponsors.
I want to make a particular mention of the students who have been
so wonderful in helping organize everything.
They have been behind the scenes and working really diligently
to make everything happen, so thank you very much, you guys.
[applause]
And, also, on a panel discussing the primary resources for the study
of Judeo-Iranica, I think that one person whose absence is very much
palpable here today is out late colleague, Professor Amnon Netzer,
who passed away recently.
It is a very sad thing that he can't be here with us today.
He has been one of the major figures of this field
and has worked diligently throughout his life to provide many of us
with many of the primary sources that we use to do our scholarship
and extend this field, so I would like his name
to be mentioned here today as I know that many
of you are thinking about him, as I am.
The first lecturer on today's panel, Iranian, Judaic,
and Hebraic Resources in the Collections at the Library
of Congress, is a presentation that will be given to you
by Doctor Peggy Pearlstein, the head of Hebraic section.
She's the head of the Hebraic section in the African
and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress.
Doctor Pearlstein holds a Ph.D. in American studies
from George Washington University.   She has written a lot in her career.
Namely, she's a contributor to the Encyclopedia Judaica, Jewish Women:
A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia,
Southern Jewish History, Avotaynu, the International Review
of Jewish Genealogy, and Judaica Librarianship.
These are only a few of her publications.
I'm very, very honored to introduce her here today so she can talk to us
about some of the collections here at the Library.
Thank you.
Doctor Peggy Pearlstein: Good morning.
Welcome to the Library if Congress.
Again, I want to thank Umahn [spelled phonetically]
and the University of Maryland for asking us to co-host this exciting
and ground-breaking conference on Iranian Jewry.
Here at the Library, I thank my colleagues in the Hebraic Section,
Sharon Horowitz, Rachel Becker,
Fenta Huntarunah [spelled phonetically],
and volunteer Hannah Stein [spelled phonetically] for their help
in making this a successful gathering and I owe a debt
of gratitude to my colleagues in the Acquisitions
and Bibliographic Access Directorate,
under the direction of Lenore Bell.
Head of the Israel and Judaica Section,
because they have spent many hours acquiring the materials,
Gayle Shirazi [spelled phonetically], in particular,
and creating cataloguing records for items on display.
The first Judeo-Persian books, those in Hebrew script,
really came to the Library beginning with the initial 1912 gift
to establish a Hebraic Section, and the gift was given
by philanthropist Jacob H. Schiff, as was mentioned earlier.
The two gifts and later two purchases made by the Library
between 1912 and 1929 resulted in a collection
of about 20,000 rare Hebrew books
and about 200 Hebrew manuscripts housed in the Hebraic Section.
They were procured by book seller
and bibliophile Ephraim Deinard [spelled phonetically],
who traveled on periodic acquisitions trips
to the Middle East and Europe.
In fact, he was caught there in the Middle East during World War One.
Since then, the Library continues to acquire materials dealing
with Iranian Jewry in all languages and formats.
A number of the Judeo-Persian books that Deinard acquired were printed
in Jerusalem at the end of the 19th
and the beginning of the 20th century.
Jews from Persia and from Bukhara, considered a cultural province
of Persian Jewry, immigrated to Jerusalem at this time and many
of the Bukharian Jews were well-off and were able
to acquire books published at that time.
Shimon Hakham was the preeminent editor and translator of a group
of books printed in Judeo-Persian in the holy city during this period.
On display in the back of the room is a small selection of items
from the Library's collections in Judeo-Persian, Persian,
and other languages and formats.
Due to the condition of some of the manuscripts and books,
as well as limited space, we haven't been able to show you
as much as we would have liked.
Some of the older material, I've scanned for you to view.
Also on display are two Katubot, at the back of the room.
The larger, very colorful illuminated Katubah appeared
on the conference brochure, from Machat [spelled phonetically],
and as you know in 1839 -- and this was talked about yesterday --
the Jewish community was forced to convert to Islam,
but it did so only formally, living secretly as Jews.
The 1889 Katubah that we have here, celebrates the wedding of the bride,
[Hebrew name] and the groom [Hebrew name]
and the community's commitment to Jewish continuity.
The Katubah is available online as part
of the marriage document collection at the National Library of Israel
and you're able to go there and see all of the Katubot that is
in the collection here at the Library of Congress.
The smaller, also very colorful Katubah is Kurdish and not Persian.
It is dated 1936.
It's from Jhar [spelled phonetically], the Iranian part
of Kurdistan, and Professor Shalom Sabar [spelled phonetically],
who is here, has told us that it's the first Katubah that he has seen
from the Jhar and therefore it's rare and significant.
And that appears in the back of the conference program.
What I am just going to show you are several images
from items in our collection.
Also, be aware that we still have a number of items in our collection,
and it certainly also primarily includes older material
that still doesn't have a call number, so to speak, so the only way
to know if we have it is check our manual card catalog
Here you can see a manuscript from Cochin, India, 18th century.
And what's interesting is that it's the Koran in Hebrew translation,
but you can see [unintelligible] are some Persian glosses.
The manuscript is described in detail by the late Myron Weinstein,
former head of the Hebraic Section in Studies
and Bibliography and Booklore.
And it's also described again in Tom Timberg, Editor, "Jews in India".
Myron Weinstein established that the scribe was David bin Isaac Cohen
[spelled phonetically], a native of Berlin, then residing in Cochin.
And here you can see a very similar manuscript to what Vera showed you
from the very large collection at the Jewish Theological Seminary
of America, and this is a collection in several different Persian scripts
of charms, spells, folk remedies, lots, prayers, et cetera.
At least part of the manuscript was copied
by Rakhamin bin Josef [spelled phonetically], and it was completed
after midnight on a Monday night sometime, 1720, 1721.
Vera and I had a long conversation yesterday at dinner
at the University of Maryland and I said that it was in terrible shape,
I couldn't let anyone see it, but this afternoon,
I'm going to let Vera see it because she's really the expert.
Here you can see again a number of items that were published
in Jerusalem the end of the 1890s, the beginning of the 20th century
when you had a corpus of Jews who had emigrated
and who were conversant in Judeo-Persian.
This also includes the Haggadah, in Judeo-Persian.
And I can tell, at the very bottom, where the date is written
that it came into the library and was part of the original collection
between 1912 and 1920 and was collected
by Ephraim Deinard when he traveled abroad.
Here again you can see early part of the 20th century.
Both the book plate, which you cannot see,
and the cataloging record, which you could see online,
identify this volume as from the original Deinard collection
and presented to the Library by Jacob H. Schiff.
This Machsor [spelled phonetically] contains text
for the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot,
and Hich Torah [spelled phonetically], and Passover.
And it's also an example of a translation into Judeo-Persian
by Simon Hachham [spelled phonetically].
This tiny little book contains a collection of texts
which includes the "Birkat Hamazon," the grace after meals.
Safir kabot Shabbat [spelled phonetically] includes selections
from the Zohar in Judeo-Persian.   They were recited on the Sabbath.
This is the sixth edition of this work, testifying to its popularity.
Although it was published in Jerusalem in 1945,
the volume was not cataloged until 1994, which is noted
on our online cataloging record.
A number of works, as I said, held by the Hebraic Section,
still remain unclassified and I'm sure that these include a number
of books in Judeo-Persian.
In this image you see a translation from Hebrew into Judeo-Persian
of the books of Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Psalm of Songs,
Roof Lamentations [spelled phonetically], and Ecclesiastes,
very likely attempting to convert Jews to Christianity.
Here again, an 1896 imprint, with a translation by Simon Hakham.
Here again, is another book from the original collection donated
by Schiff, and it's a targem [spelled phonetically] on the Book
of Ester, and at the very bottom you can see Library of Congress 1913.
This book, Mishlah Miknot [spelled phonetically],
is an 1873 Parisian imprint which contains appeals
from Jewish spokesmen of European communities such as Berlin, London,
Paris, Vienna, and Constantinople on behalf of the Jews of Persia.
Here you can see, not a history, necessarily,
Yihudeh Parass [spelled phonetically] of the Jews of Persia,
but it's a book on the social life and customs of Jewry
in Persia, published in 1959.
There are a number of pages of photos in the back
and musical notations for a few songs and a short list of words
and phrases in Judeo-Persian translated into Hebrew.
There are chapters on the holiday's, families, [Hebrew], love of Zion,
epics, and the relationship of Persian Jewry to the land of Israel.
And here you see a translation from Hebrew into Judeo-Persian of poems
by the medieval Hebrew poet ibn Gabirol.
And finally, I have here an image
of a Hebrew primer published in Tehran in the 1930s.
Perhaps your parents or you grandparents learned
to read Hebrew from just such a book.
Today, you here are the descendants of those who did learn
to read Hebrew in Tehran and other communities of Jews in Iran,
but you're also the future.
We turn to you, the scholars of Iranian Jewry, and to you,
the community of Iranian Jews, and we ask you to send your publications
to the Library of Congress, to notify us of other books, memoirs,
music, and additional materials by and about Iranian Jews
so that we can build our collections to best serve researchers.
And now I'd like to introduce you to Mister Hirad Dinavari,
Senior Reference Librarian in Niri Section
who will give you a broader view
of Iranian Jewish resources at the Library.
He'll show you how to search for materials on Iran and Iranian Jewry
in the Library's online catalog, including the items on display
and those that I have just shown to you.
Thank you.   [applause]
Hirad Dinavari: Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to the Library of Congress.
I'm Hirad Dinavari, Reference Librarian
for the Iranian Work Collections at the African Middle Eastern Division.
It is truly an honor to be speaking to you today on behalf
of the Iranian royal team of the Near East section.
I am deeply humbled and very proud to have been able to play a part
in the co-hosting of this ground-breaking conference
between the Library and the University of Maryland.
Today I will discuss and showcase the Near East Section's resources
and collections for the study of the various Jewish communities
of the larger Iranian world region, primarily looking at materials
in Persian, Kurdish, Tajik, and [Hebrew] Jewish,
and other contemporary, mainstream Persian English language collections
in print, audio-video, and photographic formats.
I will be showing you a Powerpoint presentation and explaining how
to search the Library's holdings online.
And, Peggy, thank you very much for that introduction.
Here comes -- okay.
The first thing that I would like to alert you
The Library, if you go to the following address, www.loc.gov ,
this is the main page that everyone can access from home and part
of the attempt of the Library has been to digitize things
and make it available so that people who are not physically
in Washington can have an idea of what it is that we have here.
From this page, you can click on the catalog up there to go
to the catalog, but first I would like to explain a little bit
about the format and the way the Library works.
You would technically be a researcher,
so under the Researcher tab, if you select,
we can see that the Library essentially houses its material
by two criteria, language and format.
The material that tends to be
in the General Collection are usually English
or western language material.
Then you have the Area Studies, African, Middle East, Asian,
European, Hispanic, which focus on international and foreign languages.
Then you have the Special Formats, which is the area down here,
and from those divisions today, Geography
and Maps has been very kind to bring some great maps for you and atlases
on Iran and Prints and Photos has brought the wonderful Trukaskanski
[spelled phonetically] album with great pictures from Jews
of Bahara [spelled phonetically], that are from the 19th century
from the tsarist period, or the Russian period, I must say.
This is essentially the way the Library organizes itself.
It doesn't do it based on political boundaries
or modern-day nation-states.
It's primarily academic and linguistic.
The African Middle East Division has three sections as Peggy alluded
and gave you a full background too.   The Hebraic is the oldest.
Under the near East section, we have the following staff members
for all our languages, and if you see,
I'm one member of the Iranian Team.
Mister Pruhadi [spelled phonetically] you met earlier.
He gave you a brief conversation and talk.
Chris Murphy is the Head, and Doctor Mary Jane Deeb [spelled
phonetically] is the Chief who is joining us here.
The collections themselves are best described
in this wonderful online illustrated guide, which breaks it
down by the subdivisions of the Near East Section.
You have the Middle East and Religion, the Arab World,
which is the largest collection,
since there's 22 Arab speaking nations, Armenia, Georgia,
Central Asia, the Iranian World, Turkey, and the Near East Heritage
in the United States and the Americas.
Under the Iranian World, essentially the bulk of the languages --
we get half a dozen languages from the Iranian world,
but the major ones are, of course, Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Tajik.
Those are the ones we get most material from and, therefore,
you'll see in the catalogue, as I'll show you,
how the divisions are made.
Also Central Asia is split between the Turkic and the Iranian World.
Azerbaijan, Turcoman, and Tajik, and Uzbek, we work closely
with our Turkic colleagues on Central Asia
because they're Persianate, but Turkish speaking.
You also have images here
of the beautiful Turkistansky [spelled phonetically] album
which is on display there from Central Asian Peoples and,
in a nutshell, that's the way the Library is laid out.
The other thing I wanted to go into are language families,
because they mentioned the Library breaks things down by language.
The Iranian World, if you look, as far as its language map,
or the Iranian language family, stretches from up here in the green,
Turkey, Syria, Iraq, in Kurdish, all the way up into the Pamir mountains
into the Pamiri languages.
The main languages are Kurdish, Persian, Balochi, Pashto, and Tajik,
Andeti [spelled phonetically],
and Persian are essentially dialects of Persian.
The other smaller languages, which are also important are Gilaki,
Mazandarani, Luri, Tati, and Ossetian, up in the Caucasus.
The map is important because Iranian languages are broken
down into two categories.
Again, to those of you who are academics here,
I apologize, you already know this.
But for many people, they're not familiar with this categorization.
I wanted to give you a little note
on what the Iranian language family is, sort of a chart.
There is a website called Ethnologue,
which you may be familiar with, which I really like.
It gives you the breakdown of languages.
Under the Indo-European, you have the Indo-Iranian,
which includes languages of India.   The Iranian branch is broken
down into two branches, eastern and western.
Under Eastern, you have Ossetian, and Pasto, really.
Those are the live ones today.   Ossetian is up in the Caucasus
and Pashto is all the way in Afghanistan.
They're opposite ends, geographically.
On the western side, you have a northwestern branch
and a southwestern branch.
Under northwestern, you have Balochi, the Caspian languages,
Gilaki, Mazanderani, and Kurdish -- that's northwestern -- and Talysh.
And under the southwestern, you have Luri, and Persian and Tati.
And, if you see here, the Judeo-Tat is the language spoken primarily
in the mountains of the Darban [spelled phonetically],
east Caucasus area, north of Azerbaijan,
going up into Dagistan -- not in Iran.
And these are ancient Iranians who had moved
up into the Caucasus a long time ago and are Jewish or Muslim.
Then, within the Persian dialects, the Bukharic is also Jewish
and also Dizi or Gizi, I'm not sure how to pronounce that.
Female Audience Member: [Inaudible] Hirad Dinavari:
Gidi [spelled phonetically]?
There you go -- is the Judeo-Persian that is spoken by Iranians and,
if you see here, alternative names are Bukharic or Western Farsi.
So it says 60,000 in Israel.
Of course, there are people in Iran who speak it as well.
So these are the break-downs of dialects of Persian, so the Tajiks,
or Eastern Farsi, which is referred to as Dadi by Afghans.
Or Western Farsi, as it's referred to in Iran as Farsi, or the language
of the Hazarahs [spelled phonetically]
and Afghanistan [Persian], these are all names
for the same language, Persian, essentially.
So this one thing I wanted to highlight,
but not all Iranian Jewish communities speak Persian.
The Jews of Kurdistan are not Persian speakers.
They know Kurdish.
They're bilingual in Kurdish, but they actually speak Neo-Aramaic.
And I put up here the Neo-Aramaic website as well,
because I think it's important
to see how the various Jewish communities,
in what languages they converse.
The Neo-Aramaic breakdown is pretty interesting.
The Assyrian Christians
and the Kaldian [spelled phonetically] Christians also speak
dialects of Neo-Aramaic.
Under Aramaic, you have an eastern branch
and there is a western branch.
Western branch is down there, and eastern branch is up there.
Under the northeastern, you have the Assyrians,
but the ones that are saying Israel next
to it are the various Aramaic Jewish dialects that are spoken in,
if you see, Sapfiss [spelled phonetically],
Sanandaj [spelled phonetically], different parts --
and it's also referred to as Kurdit [spelled phonetically] in Hebrew.
That's spoken by, essentially many Kurdish,
because the various dialects are different.
Also, there is another on here.
I'm not going to attempt to pronounce these,
but again it tells you -- maybe Shalom Sabar can give me a hand?
-- but there is several of these dialects.
Also, there is a Jewish Babylonian Aramaic,
and everyone who studies Iranian Jewry knows
that when you go back far enough, Iranian Jewry and Iraqi Jews have,
essentially, a common origin.   They came out of Babylonia.
So, going back to the maps, I showed you the general linguistic map.
Again, there's eastern branch and western branch.
Then I'm going to go to a map that is even more detailed
and this actually shows you the Jewish-Persian dialects.
This map is not of the Kurdish area, it's just the map
of the Persian-speaking dialects.
Up here you have Judeo-Tut, up in the mountains of Dagistan,
and as you come down, anything with a hyphenated J,
that's Judeo Horasaan [spelled phonetically]
or Honsari [spelled phonetically],
Judeo Gopaigani [spelled phonetically], Judeo-Bukharic,
up there, Judeo-Carmani [spelled phonetically], Dizi again --
correct me -- Gidi, okay, Gidi is the language spoken
in Mashete [spelled phonetically].
I assume that the Herati speak the same dialect.
You have Judeo-Bugnordi [spelled phonetically],
and all the various Jewish dialects that are there.
What makes these important is that they have preserved the medieval,
or the old form of Persian, which today modern Persian has wiped out.
So, if you want to understand the old Persian dialects
that no longer exist,
it has survived among the Persian Jewish communities
that have maintained these old usages, and [Farsi], as we say,
Farsi, that are no longer there.   I got this map off of the internet.
You can have a larger version of it -- if this cooperates with me --
yeah, it's a more clear and a larger map here
that you can see things more clearly,
so I'm going to now move onto the next thing.
Also I got a map from a wonderful atlas that we have in the Geography
and Maps section -- it's a French atlas --
of the three recognized religions of Iran.
Most of the maps that showed religion, they did it by population,
and the Muslim population is so much larger than any minority
that the minorities didn't even show up.
This one is of the three recognized religious minorities.
And, if you see, the Jews are the blue color.
Tehran, which is the large circle, had a huge population.
Shiraz, Esfahan.
Carmancha [spelled phonetically], Hammadon [spelled phonetically],
and then Mashat [spelled phonetically],
Kermon [spelled phonetically], are the places where you still see,
and this is a fairly recent map,
a significant amount of Jewish population.
You see a lot of yellow for the Zoroastrians
and the red is the Christian areas whether they be Armenian,
or Assyrian, or other.   Finally, we go back to the catalog.
The important thing for using L.C. catalog,
which many of Iranians are not happy about and don't really
like is the transliteration system.   It's not that difficult.
It's based on old dictionaries and it can easily be worked.
You can use it and be able to work with it.
I first want to take you to our Romanization chart.
There needs to be a system
to transliterate non-Roman script languages so that the staff
and people who work in libraries
who don't read these languages can figure out what this is.
And so for that reason, libraries have had transliteration systems
that they use and these are the transliteration systems
for languages.
If you see up there, Aramaic, Arabic, Armenian,
Ottoman Turkish, Persian, Pashto.
The Kurdish one was recently changed because it's something that is sort
of a new field and it's crucial because, like Persian,
Kurdish is written in different scripts.
The Kurds of Iran and Iraq write it in Arabic script.
The Kurds of Azerbaijan and Armenia write it in Cyrillic script,
and the Kurds of Turkey and Syria write it in Latin script.
The Persian and Azerbaijani, I'm hoping, at some point are going
to mold themselves and show the various scripts
in which Persian is written in.
Hopefully, a column at some point will be added at some point
for Tajik, Cyrillic, and for Heber for Judeo-Persian.
But as of now, those who want to search Persian records,
they need to learn this system and the way it works,
but the most important thing to say for those of you who know Persian,
no letter E, no letter O, is used and this is a wonderful little PDF
that you can print and it would be a guide and show you how to search,
and there are examples to tell you how to do so.
So now I'm going to go to the actual catalog,
and let me also move on from this page.
What I did is I put together a list of subject headings
that will be useful for searching on, essentially,
Iranian Jewry on our catalog.   If you do a basic search,
I recommend that you start with a subject browse.
And if you start with "Jews Iran," it gives you wonderful headings
that under it -- I mean, books are categorized and cataloged.
"Jews Iran" is the general category.   It gives you 14.
Jews Iran history, it gives you 12 titles.
If you click on them, for example "Esther's Children,"
first one prominent shows up and if you click on "Esther's Children,"
the first one, it gives you the record of the book,
then it gives you subject headings, and these are the subject headings
for this book, so under each one of these subject headings,
if you search, you will find more additional materials
that are useful and, if we go down, Padjavant [spelled phonetically]
by M. Nahn Netzer [spelled phonetically] --
speaking of M. Nahn Netzer, one of the major works
that we have two copies of at the Library --
and the other headings that I think you will find interesting,
if you go through, it's done historically.
Under History, you have 17, 18, 19, 20th century [unintelligible]
and then as you go down, it's broken down by city,
[Persian city names], and so on, and so forth.
So you can search by city and subject, and as you go down,
it even shows you the Diaspora communities.
Biography, in California, for example, in Los Angeles,
Iranian Jews in Israel, Iranian Jews in New York,
and then it goes to Iraq.
For those of you who are interested in Iranian Jewry,
you know that Babylon is where a lot of this began.
So, under Jews, Iraq, Babylonia,
there is additional information that is of use.
Similarly, if you did a search under Jews, Bukhara,
you are going to get all the material on Bukharan Jews,
which is important as well.
I'm going to plug in some of the subject headings that I have here,
that I think are interesting.
Well, I'll just go over it since I don't have that much time.
Jews Bukhara is a good one.   Jews Kurdish, or Jews Neo-Aramaic,
would be another one to search under.
For the Tati-speaking Jews, you would search under Jews Azerbaijan,
or you would just do the title Tati,
because Judeo-Tat directs you back to Tati language.
Then under Persian language dialects, Judeo-Persian,
there is also a wealth of material under Judeo-Persian.
I think that's something I would like to quickly show you.
Under Judeo-Persian -- there you go.
You have the material that is there in different languages about --
as you see, some is in French, some is in Hebrew, some is in Persian,
and whatever subject category there is.
So one way to search is to search by subject heading and you get a sense
of what I'm talking about.
In Bible, Old Testament, there is also several wonderful resources
that you can look under.
There's also another way to search, which is under Names.
Queen Esther, for example,
is of course a very important icon, very famous.
Biblical Figure, it guides you to there.
Her full listing is Esther, Queen of Persia,
and look at all the headings under Queen Esther.
So there is a wealth of material there.
In addition to that, there are famous Iranians
who have Jewish connections.
There is Bahram Guhr [spelled phonetically],
is famed to be of Jewish heritage.
Apparently Shushon Docht [spelled phonetically] was his mother,
a Jewish lady.
Shaheen [spelled phonetically], the famous poet,
who his Musanome [spelled phonetically] is a translation
of the Torah in Persian poetry and in Persian rhyme.
Emrani [spelled phonetically], another famous one.
And in modern times, the famous --
I'm going to perform a different search this time.
So far we've done subject searches,
but if we did an Author search this time and we did Soleman--
let me do him as an author.   Okay, there you go, 23.
This person is very important in Iran.
He is the first, in a way, you could say, next to [Persian],
the father of Persian dictionaries and the first person
to put together Persian dictionaries in the modern period.
These are a list of 23 dictionaries we have from him in Persian,
or English-Persian dictionaries that were done
by Soleman Hayim, a very important figure.
M. Nahn Netzer, which we spoke about earlier, if we did a search
under his name -- let's click -- [Persian].
M. Nahn Netzer, these are the eight books that we have by him.
Also I wanted to mention the important work of the Center
for Iranian Jewish Oral History Project,
and we have Homassah Shar [spelled phonetically]
and Huhman [spelled phonetically] here, which we are indebted
to for this wonderful work that they have done.
The entire work has been cataloged at this point and these are list
of all the prominent Jewish-Iranians who, essentially,
recordings have been made of their experiences and have contributed
to this really noteworthy project.   These are his other books.
In Persian, in Hebrew, and other languages.
So, going back, I'm going to quickly end with other important people.
Of course, Miss Homar Sanchar [spelled phonetically] is right
here, also Nassir Holili, the famous curator of Islamic Art.
We have collections and collections, volumes of his work.
Of course he's of Jewish heritage, but his focus,
love has been art of the Islamic world.
Also, I was going to do an author search and show you Royahak Hakyan,
who's a personal favorite.
Then these are some of the connections I have found on my trips
in California, which I thought were fantastic.
The Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, which is responsible
for an immense amount of work in the Diaspora in Los Angeles,
with the material that they have published in oral history
and books, and what have you.
And you have Homan here, and Homan Reha [spelled phonetically] here
as well.
And again we are very grateful for the work they are doing and last,
but not least, is another institution that I ran
into when I was there, the Graduate Society Foundation that focuses
on publishing books by Pan-Persian Jews, in Persian and English,
mind you, in both languages, that comes out of Los Angeles.
And if you look at some of the books here,
it has a list of fantastic books for you to look at.
Again, we have special collections that I alluded to earlier that are
out there from the maps and the geography
and photos and prints division.
I want to thank them for bringing this brand new material
out for you to look at.
The way the library is broken down, we are the public face
of the library, the African, Middle Eastern division.
We have an Islamabad office that buys all Persian language material
from inside Iran and Afghanistan.
But for the diaspora communities in Los Angeles, Europe,
and elsewhere outside Iran, we have an acquisition team here
which I'm sure you know Gail Shirazi, responsible for that.
And a cataloging team which, Peggy alluded to earlier.
Also Michael Chiat [spelled phonetically]
who does the cataloging for us and Sarah Ostert [spelled phonetically].
And that's it and I'm done.   Sorry for taking so much time.
[applause] Okay very quickly, I just wanted to take a minute
and thank Hooman Sanshar [spelled phonetically],
Doctor [unintelligible], Himelepin,
and Doctor Marsha Rosenblit who's support
and hard work made this conference possible and a special thanks
to the numerous student volunteers of bout the Persian
and Jewish Study Center at UMD for their hard work yesterday.
On our end in the Library, it was a joy and privilege
to have been working closely with Peggy in the Hebraic section.
Also noteworthy has been the help of the special formats division.
Finally, it is important for me to emphasize that we
at the Library truly value and seek any and all research and publishing
and scholarship in the field of Iranian-Jewish studies
and I would take this opportunity at this gathering
of specialized scholars like yourselves to ask you
to always think of registering your work via the copyright office here
at the library, or to donate a copy of your articles, publications,
and work to the library so that the future generations
of researchers have access to your work.
During my trips to L.A. in California,
I have come across many Jewish Iranians who have inherited rich
and rare collections and for that purposes,
this would be a great home, if you have collections that you would
like to find a good home for.   That's it.
Chris Murphy: Thank you very much Hirat
for that wonderfully illuminating presentation.
That guided many of us into giving us details into how
to use the library's resources, and I promise I had nothing to do
with the many, many plugs that my book author and your presentation,
all of which were very much appreciated.
The next presentation is by my friend
and colleague, Doctor Vera Moreen.
She was previously introduced to you.
She's going to be here to talk to us about her work
in this wonderful project, "The Encyclopedia
of Jews in the Islamic World.
The title of her presentation Of Making Many Encyclopedias,
There is no End: Reflections on the Encyclopedia
of Jews in the Islamic World."   Doctor Moreen.
[applause]
Vera Moreen: Thank you Hooman, both for your introduction and especially
for the hard work you did on this conference.
Look, I only have one page.
[laughter] So you'll be all relieved.
This is very much work in progress, and I only want to say nice things,
Also, I'm going to start by asking the scholars among you
to raise your hand if you enjoy writing encyclopedia articles.
One solitary person.   Two! Okay, three.
All right.
That leaves the majority of you where I know you are,
because getting articles
out of people has been a little bit like pulling teeth.
Having said that, let me give you a few words
about what this encyclopedia is.
It was and it is the brainchild of Professor Norman Stillman
at University of Oklahoma or Oklahoma University.
I would probably not have gotten involved with it at all except
that he's extremely persuasive, an old friend,
and saying no to him is very hard.
So when he approached me to help with the Iranian section,
I was full of trepidation for all the right reasons
and they are now proving to have been correct trepidations.
Anyways, this encyclopedia would be a reference work
for post-graduate and general audiences.
That already is problem number one.
Right? Because the two don't mix so easily.
It aims to fill the gap of information
of Middle Easter Jewry including North Africa, Muslims, Spain,
Ottoman Empire, and modern Turkey, Iran, Kurdistan, Caucuses,
Central Asia, from the medieval, I mean starting
with the Islamic period through the medieval, early modern,
and into the modern periods.
It will be published by Brill in five volumes,
one of which will be an index volume.
It was started in 2005, 6, and we hope to publish by 2009.
And [unintelligible] will come in 2010.
[laughter] Something like that.
It's a very difficult project because the size,
for example, is a problem.   Four volumes?
I mean, that's nothing.
But Brill and many of you are familiar with Brill as publishers,
and they're a fine outfit; they're also interested in making money
and having very precise deadlines so it's pretty much
like fitting the entire project into a straight-jacket
that doesn't quite fit from many, many points of view.
With those limitations in mind, I should tell you
that it's going nicely and these are the following divisions in it.
Professor Stillman has assigned several section editors.
Al-Andalus is the domain of Professor Angel Saenz-Badillos,
a professor at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid
and also at Harvard these days.
The Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey are
under Avigdor Levy at Brandeis University.
The modern Arab speaking world is covered
by Professor Daniel Schroeter of the University of California Irvine.
[unintelligible] Diaspora is
under the aegis Professor Joelle Bachlew [spelled phonetically]
of Indiana University.
And the medieval speaking world is the area
of Professor Meira Polliack of Tel Aviv University.
I'm responsible for the small area of Persia, modern Iran, Kurdistan,
the Caucuses, and Central Asia.   It's a joke; it's very funny.
But it's really hard.   We have assigned 2,349 entries.
We have a projected number of contributors
of 380 scholars involved in this.
The way the areas that I just enumerated break
down are most entries will be on the modern Arabic-speaking world.
Second tier will be the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey.
Third tier is medieval Arabic speaking world
and fourth tier is Al-Andalus.
We, with the Iranian enormous geography
that I have just cited are the fifth out of six tiers,
which is very depressing.
It means that for, in this encyclopedia,
I will only have 216 entries, which will comprise
about 9.67 percent of the total.
There are many reasons for this poor representation.
One is that many scholars are just simply overbooked
and I am very sympathetic with that, everybody has their own projects
and have not had -the chance to be involved or want
to be involved in any way.
Having said that, and Professor Stillman is a very fine scholar;
with all these limitations, he convinced me and many others
that it's a very worthwhile enterprise, that our field
of middle Eastern Jewry is now at a point
where he can collect a substantial of articles and appear
as a discipline in its own right, that could be a work of reference
for undergraduates, graduate students, and perhaps not so much
for scholars, but for interested learned audiences, lay audiences.
Many articles are presented in English, others are,
think they are English and many are in Hebrew and are sent straight
to translators, so it's a very complex project with deadlines and,
you know, no scholar likes to work with deadlines,
certainly none that I know.
Having said all of this, it is my pleasure
to acknowledge the hard work of my colleagues here
and who have participated graciously and kindly, Hidis Hamin,
Daniel Sadik, [unintelligible] and hopefully I will have contributions
from Professor Menashry
and Professor Shakid [spelled phonetically] I know,
I know full well that all of your decks are full and all
of you would have preferred an encyclopedia on the model
of encyclopedia Islamica, Encyclopedia Iranica.
The good part about this encyclopedia is
that it will have an online version, which will grow,
which will grow beyond the printed version,
which will incorporate corrections
and which will become hopefully a very substantive work of reference.
So, having said this, those of you want to contribute to it in any form
or shape, are welcome to suggest still entries,
I think we still have room.   And all of you should buy it.
Thank you.   [applause]
Male Speaker: Thank you very much Vera for that update.
I know I certainly was waiting with bated breath
to hear more about the project.
Two questions: Heida [spelled phonetically], please.
Female Speaker: Basically, if you will permit me, I have two comments.
In your list of languages of Judaic languages, Judaic Iranian languages,
may I suggest that you include the dialect of the Jews
of Ormea among the Aramaic?   Male Speaker: Sure.
Female Speaker: And another comment and something that's very close
to me and bugs me, excuse me.
If you have not managed to change the transliteration
of Kurdish, listen.   It's time.
If we accept Mehmit [spelled phonetically] from the Turks
and Ottomans, why can't we accept Mohammed with an O from Iranians?
It's time.
Hirad Dinavari: I would love to answer that, actually.
You touched upon a big sore that's there, in the library
and Iranian Studies community.
Unfortunately the problem that we are having with this is there are
so many records that have been catalogued as of right now;
talking in the hundreds of thousands, maybe a million
that have been done in Persian.
Kurdish and the other things are more recent and there's not
that many, so it's easier to change and switch.
As a result, what's happened is -and this was done 60 years ago,
well before I was-you know [laughter].
Many Iranians, me, myself included, despise this system
but unfortunately we have to also be, you know, practical and I hope
down the road that enough complaints are going to go various librarians
and what have you to really push for change.
But the change I would like to see is something that is not political,
that includes all dialects and scripts of Persian,
whether it be Tajik Cyrllic, or the Judeo-Persian Hebrew.
I would like to see the Roman transliteration
and the Arabic script, the Hebrew Script, and the Cyrillic script side
by side, just like I showed you for Kurdish for Persian.
But this is beyond one individual and me being able to do it;
it needs to get librarians from everywhere together and people
in Persian studies riled up enough to push for it
and really that's all I can say;
it's beyond my pay grade, if you like.
[inaudible]
Hoomah [spelled phonetically]- it's-with an O because the book
that was in English is spelled with an O, so whatever is done
in English, they take the exact thing that's on the book.
But the Persian form has to follow the transliteration.
Anything that's in Persian is written with a U.
So it becomes Humah with a U because there's no O used.
And by the way, mind you, I wanted to say
that this transliteration was taken from Hayim's dictionary 60 years ago
and it's based on middle Persian, it's not based on Arabic.
It's based on middle Persian that was used in Moghul
and in Central Asia and in Iran, so the pronunciations are based
on the old middle Persian that was more prevalent,
instead of [Persian] it's not a-or like a Tajik speaker exactly.
It's not a "e", the way Iranians today pronounce it,
it's the more classical form of Persian,
which was a multi-it was the lingua franca of a region stretching
from Turkey to the subcontinent of India.
And for that reason, they had to go
with something that's more universal, so I mean,
anyway- Male Speaker: Thank you for letting me know that this was taken
from [unintelligible] so I think in this particular conference alone,
but thank you very much the panelists,
thank you ladies and gentleman.
Please, please be back at 1:30 sharp so we continue to program.
Female Speaker: This has been a presentation
of the library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.   [end of transcript]