“God First and Last”. Religious Traditions and Music of the Yaresan of Guran: Volume 1: Religious Traditions by Philip G. Kreyenbroek

Description

The Yaresan or Ahl-e Haqq are a relatively large minority group whose religion originates in the border regions between Iran and Iraq. As members of traditional Yaresan communities are becoming more visible in the West, both as diaspora groups and in academia, there is an increasing demand for reliable information about their background. Academic interest is also growing. Recent scholarly publications, however, tend to assume a fundamental knowledge of the Yaresan tradition, which is not easy to glean from existing sources. This is made more complicated by the very real differences between the European world view and that of traditional Yarsanism. For that reason and because music plays an unusually prominent role in Yaresan observance, it was decided to combine the authors’ work on religious traditions and music respectively in two volumes. In doing so the religious realities of the traditional Yaresan of the Guran region is communicated by quoting extensively from interviews with community members. The first volume also offers a survey of other religious traditions that are thought to have been influential in shaping modern Yarsanism. Cover Abbreviations Preface Acknowledgements Terminology and Transcription Introduction General History of the Study The Gurani Tradition Aspects of the Yāri World-view Aims and methods The hymns in book form: collections of texts Chapter One: the Religious Background The Indo-Iranian Religion: some relevant aspects Zoroastrianism in Western Iran Roman Mithraism and the ancient Western Iranian religion Hellenistic cults Gnostic Movements of late Antiquity, Manichaeism Christianity Islam Yezidism Alevism Chapter Two: The Yāresān Community and its SocialOrganisation Languages Geography ‘Caste’, ritual functions, social institutions Chapter Three: Mythical and Factual History Mythical History Factual History Chapter Four: The Religious Universe Aspects of the Yāri Worldview Divine and Great Beings The Dowres Eschatology Chapter Five: Ritual and Observance Music The Jam The Nazr The Niyāz or Shokrāne Sar Sepordan Feasts and Fasts Funerary observances Other observances Yāri Observances and Twelver Shi’ite influences Chapter Six: Religious Narratives and Sacred Texts Texts and storylines The Form of the Kalāms Texts and Performance Texts and Religious Knowledge Collections of Kalāms The Perdiwari Kalāms The role of the kalāms in religious life APPENDIX 1: Extracts from the ‘Exegesis’ of Sayyed Wali [On Creation] [The History of Religions] [The Dowres] APPENDIX 2: Views from Iraqi communities Interview with Sayyed Khalil Āghābāb Kāka’i, Iraqi Kurdistan Beliefs of the Perdiwari Community, near Halabja APPENDIX 3: Another View of Yāri. Sayyed KhalilĀlinezhād from Sahne APPENDIX 4: Authoritative Muslim Comments on Yāri APPENDIX 5: Kalāms in recent compilations Bibliography Index