Papers by Julia Rubanovich
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Feb 1, 2003
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Jul 22, 2005
The volume demonstrates the cultural centrality of the oral tradition for Iranian studies. It con... more The volume demonstrates the cultural centrality of the oral tradition for Iranian studies. It contains contributions from scholars from various areas of Iranian and comparative studies, among which are the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian tradition with its wide network of influences in late antique Mesopotamia, notably among the Jewish milieu; classical Persian literature in its manifold genres; medieval Persian history; oral history; folklore and more. The essays in this collection embrace both the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods, both verbal and visual media, as well as various language communities (Middle Persian, Persian, Tajik, Dari) and geographical spaces (Greater Iran in pre-Islamic and Islamic medieval periods; Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan of modern times). Taken as a whole, the essays reveal the unique blending of oral and literate poetics in the texts or visual artefacts each author focuses upon, conceptualizing their interrelationship and function.
Oral Narration in Iranian Cultures, 2022
Iranian Studies
This article explores the remaniement of three episodes current in the Perso-Arabic Alexander tra... more This article explores the remaniement of three episodes current in the Perso-Arabic Alexander tradition—i.e., Eskandar's confrontation with the Indian king Fur; Eskandar's visit to Queen Qeydāfeh; and Eskandar's encounter with the Gymnosophists—in the anonymous Persian Eskandarnāmeh, a medieval epic narrative in prose (dāstān; ca. 12th–14th c.). Through extensive comparative evidence from other genres, primarily narrative poetry (Ferdowsi's Shāhnāmeh, Nezāmi's Sharafnāmeh and Eqbālnāmeh), mirabilia (ʿajāyeb), and exegetical works (qesas al-anbeyāʾ and tafsir), this study engages with how the modalities of the dāstān genre, with its strong leaning towards traditional oral storytelling, affect the narrative choices Eskandarnāmeh's author makes in treating these themes. In so doing, this article attempts to develop a more informed assessment of the strategies and devices which, activated both on the production and reception planes, generate competing interpretat...
Journal of Persianate Studies, 2020
The Tale of Yusof and Zoleykhā appears as part of a religious epic poem, the Bereshitnāma (Book o... more The Tale of Yusof and Zoleykhā appears as part of a religious epic poem, the Bereshitnāma (Book of Genesis), by the fourteenth-century Judaeo-Persian poet Shāhin. Composed in 1358/9, in classical Persian with an admixture of Hebraisms and written in Hebrew characters, this tale was enormously popular within Persian-speaking Jewish communities and was frequently copied on its own. The paper focuses on two episodes from this story: Yusof's marriages to Zoleykhā and to Osnat (Asenath). Shāhin was active in the late Il-khanid and early post-Mongol periods, when new forms of patronage of literary and artistic production emerged seeking to blend different cultural worlds. The poet indeed fashioned unique amalgams of Jewish and Perso-Islamic traditions, both in form and content. The two episodes constitute small case studies for exploring Shāhin's diverse array of sources and for determining the thematic and structural ramifications of this fusion. The paper pinpoints how Shāhin accommodated and adapted Jewish and Islamic materials and demonstrates that, though Jewish, the poet firmly ensconces himself in a Persianate cultural sphere.
This is a revised and corrected version that supersedes the one published in Iran after the Mongo... more This is a revised and corrected version that supersedes the one published in Iran after the Mongols. Ed. by S. Babaie. The Idea of Iran 8. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2019, pp. 235-269. In the published version, mistakes in numbering footnotes were inadvertently introduced in the editorial process, which are here rectified.
Jerusalem Studies of Arabic and Islam. A Special Issue on Authorship in Mediaeval Arabic and Persian Literatures. Ed. by J. Rubanovich and M. Goldstein. 45 (2018), pp. 127-179.
In Romance and Reason: Islamic Transformations of the Classical Past. Ed. by R. Casagrande-Kim, S. Thrope, and R. Ukeles. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018, pp. 26-47.
Irano-Judaica VII. Ed. by J. Rubanovich and G. Herman. Jerusalem, 2019, pp. 341-370.
Studies in Honor of Shaul Shaked. Jerusalem, 2019, pp. 158-175.
Orality and Textuality in the Iranian World, 2015
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Papers by Julia Rubanovich