Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms
by Gerard Russell · first published 2014
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Despite its reputation for religious intolerance, the Middle East has long sheltered many distinctive and strange faiths: one regards the Greek prophets as incarnations of God, another reveres Lucifer in the form of a peacock, and yet another believes that their followers are reincarnated beings who have existed in various forms for thousands of years. These religions represent the last vestiges of the magnificent civilizations in ancient history: Persia, Babylon, Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. Their followers have learned how to survive foreign attacks and the perils of assimilation. But
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…authority. In the end this often looks the same, but it lends much greater power to those who interpret sacred texts, and pushes people to more and more extreme interpretations. There's a book I just read, Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms by Gerard Russell. It's a travelogue though the Middle East meeting the small religious movements that survived Christianity and Islam over the last ~2000 years: Mandaeans, Yezidis, Coptic Christians,…
on “Opposite of modern” ↗A while back I read a book called Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms about disappearing, often-obscure (at least to Westerners) Middle Eastern religions, which stretched its scope over to Iran/Persia at times and IIRC did treat of Zoroastrianism (maybe the least-obscure…
on “Alexander the ‘Accursed’ and Zoroastrianism” ↗