Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Illustrations

Notes on Transliteration and Abbreviations

Introduction: New Perspectives on Orality in Iranian Studies

Part 1 Approaching Orality

Chapter 1 Memory and Textuality in the Orality-Literacy Continuum

Chapter 2 Orality and Esotericism: Reflections on Modes of Transmission in Late Antiquity

Part 2 Sacred Traditions and Oral History

Chapter 3 Irano-Talmudica III: Giant Mythological Creatures in Transition from the Avesta to the Babylonian Talmud

Chapter 4 The Islamic Ascension Narrative in the Context of Conversion in Medieval Iran: An Apocalypse at the Intersection of Orality and Textuality

Chapter 5 The Motif of the Cave and the Funerary Narrativesof Nāṣir-i Khusrau

Part 3 Iranian Epic Tradition

Chapter 6 ‘The Ground Well Trodden But the Shah Not Found . . .’: Orality and Textuality in the ‘Book of Kings’ and the Zoroastrian Mythoepic Tradition

Chapter 7 ‘The Book of the Black Demon,’ or Shabrang-nāma, and the Black Demon in Oral Tradition

Chapter 8 Why So Many Stories? Untangling the Versions of Iskandar’s Birth and Upbringing

Chapter 9 Some Comments on the Probable Sources of Ibn Ḥusām’s Khāvarān-nāma and the Oral Transmission of Epic Materials

Chapter 10 Professional Storytelling (naqqālī) in Qājār Iran

Part 4 Oral and Literary Traditions as Channels of Cultural Transformation

Chapter 11 The Literary Use of Proverbs and Myths in Nāṣir-i Khusrau’s Dīvān

Chapter 12 Classical Poetry as Cultural Capital in the Proverbs of Jews from Iran: Transformations of Intertextuality

Chapter 13 Gashtak: Oral/Literary Intertextuality, Performance and Identity in Contemporary Tajikistan

Chapter 14 The Tale of ‘The Old Woman on the Mountain’: A Jewish Folktale from Afghanistan

Part 5 Performative Aspects of Orality in Visual Artefacts

Chapter 15 Aramaic Incantation Texts between Orality and Textuality

Chapter 16 Between Demons and Kings: The Art of Babylonian Incantation Bowls

Chapter 17 Between Written Texts, Oral Performances and Mural Paintings: Illustrated Scrolls in Pre-Islamic Central Asia

Index