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Document Details : Title: Bull Sacrifice at Esfanjān, a Case of Ritual Syncretism Author(s): ASKARPOUR, Vahid , KHALILI, Mohaddese , MOTTAGHI, Neshat , SANGARI, Esmaeil , MOGHADDAS, Amirhossein Journal: Iranica Antiqua Volume: 56 Date: 2021 Pages: 261-275 DOI: 10.2143/IA.56.0.3290278 Abstract : Annual sacrifice of bull is a local ritual performed in one of the villages near Tabriz, known as Esfanjān. The ritual contains some features in terms of its date of exercise, its eminent emphasis on the bull, and the narrative which surrounds it, that absolutely take it apart from the current religious context of the village’s inhabitants, Islam. The present paper concerns with resolving this dilemma by looking for its possible pre-Islamic roots, through an in-depth examination of sacrifice within Avestan traditions. Through a consideration of sacrifice and its status within pre-Islamic religious traditions of Iran, and comparing their basic features with findings of ethnographical observations, it is shown that there is a tight match between the observed cult and pre-Islamic doctrines on animal sacrifice. As a relevant theoretical framework, syncretism is adapted here to discuss the hybrid nature of the Esfanjān event, which is composed of both Islamic and non-Islamic features. Although the exact origin of the Esfanjān bull sacrifice remains unknown, something is clear: it is not a passive remnant of something lost forever, but an active product of a creative process, through which some new and hybrid creature comes out of a successful interbreeding of two different belief systems. |
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