“Your Heroic Deeds Give Us Pleasure!”: Culture and Society in the Christian Martyr Legends of Late Antique IraqSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/I9PF7V62/tei
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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.Joel ThomasWalker“Your Heroic Deeds Give Us Pleasure!”: Culture and Society in the Christian Martyr Legends of Late Antique Iraqhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/I9PF7V62https://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/I9PF7V62https://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/I9PF7V621998The persecution of Christians in the Sasanian Empire under Shapur II between ca. 340 and 379 C.E. inspired a voluminous martyr literature among the Christian communities of Iraq and southwestern Iran. Stories about the great persecution under Shapur continued to be told and composed long after wide-scale persecution ended. The History of Mar Qardagh, a Syriac martyr legend of the late sixth or seventh century, is one of these stories. Composed by an anonymous Nestorian Christian, the History describes the conversion of a Sasanian viceroy, Mar Qardagh, of the city of Arbela in northern Iraq during the last years of Shapur's persecution. This dissertation uses Qardagh's story as a focal point to examine several themes in the cultural history of Christianity in the late Sasanian Empire (sixth to mid-seventh centuries C.E.). After an introduction to the hagiography of the Persian martyrs (ch. I), it documents first Qardagh's similarities to the heroes of the Persian epic tradition, and examines the fusion of Christian and Persian components in the definition of Qardagh's heroism (ch. II). Chapter III investigates the disputation scene of Qardagh's story and the philosophical culture of the late Sasanian empire (a culture closely tied to the contemporary philosophical life of Byzantium); here I establish, in particular, the hagiographer's interest in the work of John Philoponus of Alexandria (d. ca. 565 C.E.). Chapter IV examines the story of Qardagh's bitter conflict with his Zoroastrian family and the evolution of the theme of familial support or conflict in the stories of other Persian martyrs. Chapter V traces the cult of Mar Qardagh from its origins at a cult site near Arbela, once dedicated to the goddess Ishtar, through its medieval chroniclers to a church built in southern India during the late 1960's. My translation of the History of Mar Qardagh appears in the appendix.
Walker, Joel Thomas. “‘Your Heroic Deeds Give Us Pleasure!’: Culture and Society in the Christian Martyr Legends of Late Antique Iraq.” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1998.
Joel Thomas Walker, ‘Your Heroic Deeds Give Us Pleasure!’: Culture and Society in the Christian Martyr Legends of Late Antique Iraq (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1998).Chronicle of ArbelaIV CEIranMar QardagPersian martyrsSassaniansVI CEVII CEZoroastrianismhagiographypersecutionprimary sources [Syriac] - English translation