Kamran Djam Lectures 2025 | The Wisdom of Iran: From the Gāthās of Zarathushtra to the Masnavī of Rūmī

Lecture 1: Wednesday 7 May

The Wisdom of the Gāthic tradition in Pahlavi literature: Dēnkard VI (9th Century A.C.)

In 1979 Shaul Shaked published his Wisdom of the Sasanian Sages (Dēnkard VI), which was a revised version of his own doctoral thesis on Pahlavi andarz (gnomic) literature (1964). Shaked had foreshadowed the bold ideas of his thesis about the gnomic aphorisms of Dēnkard VI in an article with the controversial title ‘Esoteric trends in Zoroastrianism’ (Jerusalem, 1969). 

This latter article did not meet with much favour among Western scholars at the time. In this lecture, 56 years after its first publication, there will be a further consideration of Shaked’s ideas about ‘esoteric trends’ in Zoroastrianism and andarz literature in general.

Lecture 2: Thursday 8 May

Wisdom in the Masnavī of Mowlānā Jalāloddīn Rūmī Balkhī (1207-1273)

Rūmī is a Persian ‘Sūfī’ poet who has been afforded ‘saintly’ status in the Muslim world, and is nowadays fêted globally as the epitome of mystical knowledge and love. Yet, in the Masnavi, Rūmī appears as a Ḥanafī Muslim who cites from the Qur’ān and Ḥadīth countless times. The question whether Rūmī himself was ‘orthodox’, on the one hand,  or ‘antinomian’ and unorthodox, remains a live issue for Muslims. 

Also, it is possibly of concern to many influenced by the ‘versions’ of those who edit out Rūmī’s Muslim background and depict him as a ‘universalist’ thinker whose poetry transcends religious boundaries and categories.

Professor Alan Williams is one of the few contemporary Western academics to have researched and published on both Old and Middle Iranian languages and literature, on the one hand, and also on Islamic Persian Classical and contemporary New Persian poetry. He went up to the University of Oxford in 1972 to read Literae Humaniores (Classics) but changed his degree to Persian and Arabic. 

Then he did a doctoral thesis at SOAS, University of London with Professors Mary Boyce and Nicholas Sims-Williams. This required the study of a range of pre-Islamic languages, including Avestan, Old Persian, and others such as Manichaean Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, and Zoroastrian Book Pahlavi, which latter was the topic of his PhD thesis.

After the doctorate, he taught Zoroastrian history and religion at SOAS, part-time for several years, while teaching as Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Sussex (1979-85). In 1985 he relocated to the University of Manchester 1985-2022, as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader, until he became Professor in 2009. He retired in 2022, and is now Emeritus Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Religion. In 2013 he was awarded a British Academy Wolfson Research Professorship, and in 2016 a Leverhulme Major Research Scholarship.

He has been a Trustee and Member of Council of the British Institute of Persian Studies, and is a Trustee of the E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust. He was for a period on the Academic Council of the Persian Heritage Foundation. He has published editions and translations of Pahlavi and pre-modern New Persian Zoroastrian texts, as well as studies of several volumes of Rūmī’s Masnavī, and also of 20^th century Persian poetry.

With Professors Almut Hintze and John Hinnells, and Dr Sarah Stewart, he has edited several collections of essays on Zoroastrianism and the Parsis, and written many articles on Zoroastrianism, Sufism, Cultural Anthropology and Translation Studies, as well as chapters in books. His translations of Rūmī have been published by Penguin and latterly by IB Tauris / Bloomsbury Press. 

The first volume of his study of the Masnavi has recently been translated into Spanish to be published by the University of Mexico Press this year. He has recently written a new Introduction to the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust’s re-publication of R.A. Nicholson’s Mathnawí of Jalálu’ddín Rúmí. 

Chair

• Narguess Farzad

This event is free to attend, but registration is required. Please note that seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.

In 2011 SOAS was awarded a gift of £2 million by the Fereydoun Djam Charitable Trust to promote Iranian studies. This generous endowment enables SOAS to build on its long and distinguished tradition of study into one of the world's oldest and richest cultures. As part of this initiative, SOAS introduced new scholarships in Iranian studies as well as this lecture series to promote diverse aspects of Iranian studies.

The Kamran Djam Lecture Series is hosted by the Centre for Iranian Studies at SOAS and are named after Fereydoun's son, Kamran Djam, who predeceased his parents in 1989.