CSI Monday Majlis:

Olga Merck Davidson
Ferdowsi’s ecumenism in the Shahnama
Monday Majlis Online on the 13th of November, 17:00-18:30 (UK time)
Centre for the Study of Islam, Exeter

Registration is required. Register please on this link:
https://universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYvfu6tqjIuGtFJdwdSjkbT6KWiTPCSwaA-

Abstract: In working on a new translation of and commentary on the so-called Preface of the Bāysonghori Recension of the Shāhnama of Ferdowsi, commissioned in 1426 CE and published in 1430 under the aegis of a Timurid prince named Bāysonghor, I have been delving into what I call the “ecumenism” of this poet, by which I mean that Ferdowsi’s verses are contextualized in this Preface as tolerant of West as well as East Persian epic traditions, also of Shiʿite as well as Sunni world views, despite the historical fact that the primary patron of Ferdowsi, according to most “Life of Ferdowsi” traditions, was decidedly intolerant of Shiʿite and other non-Sunni religious adherents. That patron was Maḥmud ibn Sebüktegīn of Ghazni, sultan and ruler of the Ghaznavid Empire from 998 to 1030. In my presentation, I offer an explanation in terms of the historical context of the commissioning of the Bāysonghori Recension, and I take into account recent theories about literary reception in the premodern world.

Bio: Olga M. Davidson earned her Ph.D. in 1983 from Princeton University in Near Eastern Studies. She started her teaching career with a series of yearly appointments as lecturer, and then in 1992 she became an Assistant Professor at Brandeis University; from 2000 to 2005, she continued there as an Associate Professor. Meanwhile, from 1986 to 1991, she was Faculty Dean of Currier House, Harvard College. During her years as professor at Brandeis, she organized the creation of a Concentration in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, and she served as the chair of that concentration from 1992 until 1997. A course she regularly taught at Brandeis was “The Woman’s Voice in the Muslim World.” In 2007-2008 she was Visiting Associate Professor, Modern Languages and Comparative Literature, at Boston University and, starting in 2009, she has been affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations at Boston University, as Research Fellow. Since 1999, she has been Chair of the Board, Ilex Foundation.
  
Professor Davidson is the author of Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, 1994; 2nd ed. Mazda Press: Los Angeles, CA, 2006; 3rd ed. distributed by Harvard University Press, 2013) and Comparative Literature and Classical Persian Poetry, Bibliotheca Iranica: Intellectual Traditions Series (Mazda Press: Los Angeles, CA, 2000; 2nd ed. distributed by Harvard University Press, 2013), both of which have been translated into Persian and distributed in Iran. Olga M. Davidson and Marianna Shreve Simpson edited Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāma: Millenial Perspectives (Harvard University Press, 2013), as well as The Arts of Iran in Istanbul and Anatolia: Seven Essays (Harvard University Press, 2019).
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