11 April 2022, Utrecht University

‘The Shāh-Nāme: A Treasury for Persian Heroic Traditions’ (lecture by Dr M.J. Yahaghi)

The ERC team Beyond Sharia had an informative and enlightening meeting with Dr Mohammad-Jaʿfar Yahaghi of Ferdowsi University in Mashhad last Monday 11 April 2022. After his inspiring lecture in Persian entitled The Shāh-Nāme: A Treasury for Persian Heroic Traditions, we discussed at length about the Greater Khorasan as a fertile ground for the rise of non-conformist movements such as ʿAyyār (“vagabond”) and Javānmard (“young man,” a kind of “knight”) brotherhoods, and their social, cultural and religious ethos, which connected them with mystical movements such as Karrāmiyya, Malāmatiyya and Qalandariyya.