Victoria A Arakelova
Biographic Data
| ID | 201723 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Victoria A Arakelova |
| GIVEN NAMES | Victoria A |
| FAMILY NAME | Arakelova |
| SIGNATURE | ARAKELOVA V A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Russian-Armenian University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9884-1331 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Alevitische und alevitisierte Armenier. “Wir sind Jesus untertan, wir sind Ali verpflichtet”, by Kâzım Gündoğan (Hg.)
Between Two Churches: Confessional Duality in a 19th-Century Udi Family
This article examines a mid-19th c. confessional dispute within the Udi community of Vartashen (Nukha Uyezd, later Baku Governorate). Drawing on unpublished archival materials from the Russian State Archive and the National Archives of Armenia, it reconstructs the case of Lieutenant Arutyun-bek Silikov, who resisted his enforced affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church and sought recognition as an adherent of the Armenian Apostolic tradition.…
She Did Not Give Bread to a Dog with Puppies”: The Idea of Retribution according to the Yezidi Text A’lī Šērē Xwadē Āxiratēdā
There is no unified Yezidi source that would give a complete understanding of sins and retribution in this tradition. The article is an attempt to identify a number of sins and the expected retributions for them, based on the analysis of the text A’lī Šērē Xwadē Āxiratēdā —“ ‘Ali, the Lion of God in the Hereafter”. The text, which can be attributed to the apologetic genre, tells about ‘Ali’s journey to the afterlife and the opportunity he was giv…
Richard Theremin and His “Report on the Clashes on the Persian-Turkish Border” (1907)
The article presents a brief biographical note on Richard Theremin—a Russian military officer, diplomat, and orientalist, and his “Report on the Clashes on the Persian–Turkish Border”, written in 1907 during his tenure as Russian vice-consul in Van. This document is a valuable historical source, offering first-hand insight into the dynamics of the Persian–Turkish frontier in the early twentieth century, as well as into the broader realities of th…
Contributions to Zagrology: V.F. Minorsky and C.J. Edmonds Correspondence (1928–1965), by Gennady Kurin and Metin Atmaca (eds./annotation/introduction)
ʿAbdulbahāʾ farzand-e Īrān: Baxš-e farāmūš-šode-ye tārīx-e roušanfekrī-ye Īrān, by Fereydūn Vahman (ed.)
The Case of a Molokan Woman from the Archive of the Erivan Uezd Court (Mid-19th Century)
The article focuses on a court case of the Erivan Uezd of the mid-19th century, involving a Molokan woman Lukeriya Korsakova. The lawsuit “Case of Lukeriya Korsakova’s settlement among the Molokans of the Erivan Uezd, March 7, 1847–May 21, 1848” was initiated as a result of the woman’s transition from Orthodoxy to the Molokan sectarianism, what was punishable by exile. The trial lasted from 1844 to 1848, and the case passed through several instan…
"The Servant of God", the Saint, the Universal Deity: Al-Khidr in the Yezidi and Alevi-Zaza Traditions
Al-Khidr is a universal figure in the Islamic world, a character widely recognized throughout Muslim societies and particularly prominent in mystical orders and folk Islam. He is notable for his exceptional adaptability to non-Muslim traditions in contact zones, his ability to influence local cults, and his capacity to assimilate characteristics of non-Islamic figures, especially Christian saints. This study aims to define the niche, primary doma…
An Unknown Source on Proselytism among the Udis
This paper presents the English translation with commentaries of some interesting passages from the unpublished manuscript by Abgar Payazat, an Armenian-Udi intellectual of the beginning of the 20th century. He particularly describes episodes of proselytism among the Udis from the Armenian Apostolic Church to the Russian Orthodoxy. The manuscript itself, is an attempt of compiling a grammar of the Udi language in Armenian
Christian Elements in the Zaza-Alevit Religion
Заза – иранский народ, населяющий преимущественно регион Дерсима (нынешний Тунджели в Восточной Анатолии). Часть заза – сунниты, остальные исповедуют синкретическую религию, формально относимую к алевизму, однако отмеченную рядом специфических черт, характерных исключительно для религиозной традиции заза-алевитов. Среди последних – внушительный пласт христианских элементов, заимствованных в период многовековых тесных контактов с соседями-армянами…
The Talishis on Opposite Banks of the Araxes River: Identity Issues
The Talishis are the fourth largest ethnic group in the South Caucasus and the largest nonstate people in the Caucasian-Iranian region. The problems of their ethnic history, culture, and identity are among the topical issues of Caucaso-Caspica. The Talishis are a divided people living on opposite banks of the Araxes River, in the current Azerbaijan Republic and the Islamic Republic of Iran. This historical division occurred in the 19th century as…
Again on the Demoness Šaša
The paper discusses the genesis of the demoness Šaša, an antagonist of procreation of the human race, attested in folk beliefs of Iranian peoples
A Struggle for Identity: The Ismailis in the Afghan War (1979-1989)
The paper is a part of a wider research on the Ismaili identity, peculiarities of the Ismailis’ self-identification in various parts of the world under different historical circumstances. The ambiguous status of the Ismailis in Afghanistan turned to be particularly problematic by the end of the 19th century when the Pashtuns became dominant in the traditionally Ismaili-inhabited areas. In a hostile milieu, under severe persecutions, the local Ism…
Yezidis
A Note on Tree Worship in the Zaza Folk Beliefs
The article presents some historical evidence about the veneration of individual trees, primarily the juniper and the oak-trees, traditionally considered to be sacred in the Zaza culture, as well as generally groves and forests. Unfortunately, the once vast and rich forestal covering of the Zazas’ main habitat in Dersim (Tunceli), which was a proverbial phenomenon still in the beginning of the 20th century, has been almost totally exterminated as…
Notes on Language Affinity and Imagined Kinships
The paper is an attempt to analyse the emergence of virtual “alliances” based on imagined kinship between some ethnic groups and peoples of the Irano-Caucaso-Anatolian region. It focuses on several illustrative examples, particularly the case of the Talysh-Zaza rapprochement, which has been developed recently as a result of popular interpretation of the postulated theory of the Caspian-Aturpatakan language union, implying a close symbiosis, in th…
Fereydun Vahman, 175 Years of Persecution. A History of the Babis and Baha’is of Iran, London: “Oneworld Publications”, 2019.−333 pp
Yezidis and Christianity: Shaping of a New Identity
For the last decades, the Yezidi identity whose main marker was for centuries based on a unique religion, the Sharfadin , has undergone specific transformations. One of the most stable trends playing a crucial role in the mentioned process, is the spread of Orthodox Christianity, particularly among the Yezidis of Georgia and Russia. This phenomenon is especially interesting regarding the fact that, unlike neo-Protestant missions, Orthodox Church …
Yezdistan versus Kurdistan: Another Legend on the Origin of the Yezidis
The paper focuses on the analysis of the term Yezdistan ( Ēzdīstān ) attested in a Yezidi legend, having obvious parallels with the Shahnameh ’s “Tale of Zahhak”. It is particularly interesting that this plot does not occur in any of the Kurmanji versions of the Shahnameh ever recorded in Armenia and represents, in fact, a separate legend out of the epic context
On the Shi‘a Constituent in the Yezidi Religious Lore
Built on the Islamic, primarily Sufi substrate, the religious beliefs of the Yezidis incorporate Gnostic, Christian, local pagan elements, and primitive beliefs. If certain parallels between Yezidism and the heterodox Shi‘ism are mainly part of common shibboleths typical of Near Eastern non-dogmatic milieu, the existence of key Shi‘a figures as objects of veneration and respect in the Yezidi religious lore seems to be a really enigmatic phenomeno…
On the Number of Iranian Turkophones
The main body of the Iranian Turkophone mass generally consists of two parts: proper Turkic groups (the Turkmens par excellence ) and the Turkic-speaking ethnic Iranians, predominantly the Azaris, inhabiting the north-west provinces of Iran roughly covering historical Aturpatākān. The number of the latter, usually depicted as a huge multimillion conglomeration, has remained one of the most speculative issues of the field. The article analyses the…
The Religion of the Peacock Angel: The Yezidis and Their Spirit World
Based in Iraq, Syria and Turkey, the Yezidi people claim their religion - a unique combination of Christian, Islamic, and historical faiths - to be the oldest in the world. Yezidi identity centres on their religion, Sharfadin, which has evolved into a highly complex pantheon of one God with many incarnations, the chief of whom is Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel. The Yezidi faith can be traced to a range of pre-Islamic belief systems, such as Sufism…
The Onion and the Mandrake: Plants in Yezidi Folk Beliefs
The non-dogmatic character of the Yezidi religion presupposes the presence of a heavy layer of so-called “primitive” religious elements, including plant worship. This paper focuses on plants having obvious sacred connotations in Yezidi beliefs, both on the level of the cult and marginal folk beliefs. There is no explicit tree cult in the Yezidism, or dendrolatry, despite the existence of a cultic complex connected with the so-called Dārā mirāzā o…
On the South Caspian Contact Zone: Some Talishi Folk Beliefs
One of the productive approaches to the analysis of the phenomenon of frontier zones, and the South Caspian region in particular, could be the delimitation of local cultural areas— not within administrative borders, but rather by frontier lines defined by such parameters as linguistic and toponymic areas, characteristics of the people’s mentality, specifics of local beliefs, etc. The southern and south-western shores of the Caspian Sea can be def…
The Halvori Vank‘: An Armenian Monastery and a Zaza Sanctuary
The Halvori Vank‘ , Armenian Surb Karapet (St. John the Precursor) Monastery in Dersim, has for centuries remained one of the most revered holy sites both for the Armenians and the neighbouring Zazas. The article is an attempt to generalise the information on the Halvori Vank‘ , culled from historical sources, including those unknown to wider academic audience—traveller accounts and descriptions by local Armenian intellectuals
Ethno-Religious Communities: To the Problem of Identity Markers
The paper focuses on the phenomenon of ethno-religiousness and, particularly, on the process of the formation of ethno-religious communities. In the spotlight of the research is the Yezidi identity—the stages of its formation from the new syncretic mentality, initially exclusively with the religious vector, and later having acquired the drive to ethnicity. The similar processes can be traced in other cases of ethno-religious identities, e.g., the…
Three Figures From the Yezidi Folk Pantheon
Sheykh Shams (Sex Sams, Sex Sims, Sesims, Sesim) and Faxr addin (Farxadin, Faxracin): deified historical personalities, brothers, the sons of 'Adi II, who was the third to lead the Adawiyya' community. Except for the fact that the former, Sheykh Shams, became the head of the community after his father's death, we can hardly find any significant event in their real biographies. The tradition has preserved neither scriptures nor even any oral testa…
Healing Practices among the Yezidi Sheikhs of Armenia
The Yezidis, speakers of a Kurdish dialect living mainly in northern Iraq, are distinguished from the (Muslim) Kurds and other neighboring communities by their religion, a syncretism of Islamic and Christian elements with local indigenous cults. They are at pains both to distance themselves from the Kurds and to keep their rituals secret from outsiders, having gone so far as not to adopt Arabic or any other writing system and to stigmatize litera…
The Talishis on Opposite Banks of the Araxes River: Identity Issues
The Talishis are the fourth largest ethnic group in the South Caucasus and the largest nonstate people in the Caucasian-Iranian region. The problems of their ethnic history, culture, and identity are among the topical issues of Caucaso-Caspica. The Talishis are a divided people living on opposite banks of the Araxes River, in the current Azerbaijan Republic and the Islamic Republic of Iran. This historical division occurred in the 19th century as…
The Onion and the Mandrake: Plants in Yezidi Folk Beliefs
The non-dogmatic character of the Yezidi religion presupposes the presence of a heavy layer of so-called “primitive” religious elements, including plant worship. This paper focuses on plants having obvious sacred connotations in Yezidi beliefs, both on the level of the cult and marginal folk beliefs. There is no explicit tree cult in the Yezidism, or dendrolatry, despite the existence of a cultic complex connected with the so-called Dārā mirāzā o…
The Halvori Vank‘: An Armenian Monastery and a Zaza Sanctuary
The Halvori Vank‘ , Armenian Surb Karapet (St. John the Precursor) Monastery in Dersim, has for centuries remained one of the most revered holy sites both for the Armenians and the neighbouring Zazas. The article is an attempt to generalise the information on the Halvori Vank‘ , culled from historical sources, including those unknown to wider academic audience—traveller accounts and descriptions by local Armenian intellectuals
The Unwelcome Neighbour: Turkey's Kurdish Policy
Malak-Tawus: The Peacock Angel of the Yezidis
The Yezidi Pantheon
Besides the Holy Triad,' constituting the so-called dogmatic base of the Yezidi religion and standing distinctly out in the cult and in the beliefs, the pantheon of the Yezidis includes a multiplicity of deities and spirit guardians, which are not too easy to determine, by many reasons other than scarcity or sparseness of the available material. Identifying the denotata of the Yezidi nomenclature of divine beings is obstructed by the multiplicity…
Notes on the Yezidi Religious Syncretism
Despite its unique and extremely original character, Yezidism reveals a number of striking parallels with other syncretic religions, in particular, with heterodox Shi'a sects. A part of these parallels are certainly common elements, derived from Islamic Mysticism and, probably, Gnostic teachings (for some Extreme Shi'a doctrines, like Isma'ili, latter is quite certain: they have been formed under a direct influence of Christian Gnosticism). As to…
Bayta GRAVIYke a lAment for a Noble Woman or Evidence for Polygamy Among the Yezidis
A Manual of Iranian Folk Magic in the Archive of the Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies in Yerevan
Books Reviews & Notes
The Heroes of Kasht (Kasti k'ajer): An Armenian Epic. Assembled from Oral Sources and Retold by Karapet Sital. Edited and Translated, with an Introductory Essay, by James R. Russell. Ann Arbor: "Caravan Books", 2000. 241 * Maryam Poya. Women, Work and Islamism: Ideology and Resistance in Iran. London & New York: "Zed Books", 1999. 245 Heinz Fahnrich. Lexikon Georgische Mythologie. Wiesbaden: "Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag", 2000. 246 * OCHOB]61 npaH…
Blunt, Bald and Wise Iranian Kund(-)
BLUNT, BALD AND WISE Iranian kund(-) GARNIK ASATRIAN VICTORIA ARAKELOVA Yerevan 1. An alleged hapax, kund, is attested in Oskip'orik, a late classic Armenian text, in the fol- lowing locus: kin mi kaxard ew kund: ?'aragorcac'n bari atner ew baregorcac'n - patuhas - "A woman, sorceress and kund: (she) showed benignity to the evildoers, and (was a) plague for the benign (people)" (apud: H.Acharian. Armatakan ba?-aran, II, p. 660). Hr. Acharian was …
Sufi Saints in the Yezidi Tradition I Qawlē H'usēyīnī H'alā
SUFI SAINTS IN THE YEZIDI TRADITION I Qawl H'us y n H'al VICTORIA ARAKELOVA Yerevan The formation of Yezidism took place seemingly in a multicultural and variegated region - the Northern Mesopotamia par exellance. The emergence of this syncretic system, which absorbed and transformed in its way many elements of various religious ideologies once exist- ed in the Middle East, is sometimes described akin to a birth of a new teaching out of ill-diges…
Healing Practices among the Yezidi Sheikhs of Armenia
The Yezidis, speakers of a Kurdish dialect living mainly in northern Iraq, are distinguished from the (Muslim) Kurds and other neighboring communities by their religion, a syncretism of Islamic and Christian elements with local indigenous cults. They are at pains both to distance themselves from the Kurds and to keep their rituals secret from outsiders, having gone so far as not to adopt Arabic or any other writing system and to stigmatize litera…
Three Figures From the Yezidi Folk Pantheon
Sheykh Shams (Sex Sams, Sex Sims, Sesims, Sesim) and Faxr addin (Farxadin, Faxracin): deified historical personalities, brothers, the sons of 'Adi II, who was the third to lead the Adawiyya' community. Except for the fact that the former, Sheykh Shams, became the head of the community after his father's death, we can hardly find any significant event in their real biographies. The tradition has preserved neither scriptures nor even any oral testa…
Malak-Tawus: The Peacock Angel of the Yezidis
The Yezidi Pantheon
Besides the Holy Triad,' constituting the so-called dogmatic base of the Yezidi religion and standing distinctly out in the cult and in the beliefs, the pantheon of the Yezidis includes a multiplicity of deities and spirit guardians, which are not too easy to determine, by many reasons other than scarcity or sparseness of the available material. Identifying the denotata of the Yezidi nomenclature of divine beings is obstructed by the multiplicity…
Notes on the Yezidi Religious Syncretism
Despite its unique and extremely original character, Yezidism reveals a number of striking parallels with other syncretic religions, in particular, with heterodox Shi'a sects. A part of these parallels are certainly common elements, derived from Islamic Mysticism and, probably, Gnostic teachings (for some Extreme Shi'a doctrines, like Isma'ili, latter is quite certain: they have been formed under a direct influence of Christian Gnosticism). As to…
Phallic Objects from Ardabil
The article examined the phallic objects recently identified by the authors in the cemetery of Onar, Ardabil. The objects are typologically similar to the so-called mushroom-shaped phalli attested in various ancient cultures all over the world. Still, adapted to the Islamic tradition by means of re-interpretation of their form, they are used here as tomb-stones, one of them even bearing an epitaphic inscription in Arabic
The Unwelcome Neighbour: Turkey's Kurdish Policy
Va⋅fe Xalīje Fārs dar naqšehāye tārīxī [Description of the Persian Gulf in the Historical Maps]
The Qur'an: An Encyclopedia
Ethno-Religious Communities: To the Problem of Identity Markers
The paper focuses on the phenomenon of ethno-religiousness and, particularly, on the process of the formation of ethno-religious communities. In the spotlight of the research is the Yezidi identity—the stages of its formation from the new syncretic mentality, initially exclusively with the religious vector, and later having acquired the drive to ethnicity. The similar processes can be traced in other cases of ethno-religious identities, e.g., the…
The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives
The Nusayrī-'Alawī Religion: An Introduction to the Religion, History and Identity of the Leading Minority in Syria
The Hereafter in the Yezidi Beliefs
The concept of the Afterlife is not explicitly articulated in the syncretic system of Yezidism. The paper is an attempt to reconstruct, as far as possible, the idea of the Hereafter among the Yezidis, based on all available data—popular beliefs, legends about deities, saints and other characters related to the sphere of life after death, as well as certain loci from the Yezidi lore ( Qawl-ū-bayt’ ), containing either direct information on or allu…
The Halvori Vank‘: An Armenian Monastery and a Zaza Sanctuary
The Halvori Vank‘ , Armenian Surb Karapet (St. John the Precursor) Monastery in Dersim, has for centuries remained one of the most revered holy sites both for the Armenians and the neighbouring Zazas. The article is an attempt to generalise the information on the Halvori Vank‘ , culled from historical sources, including those unknown to wider academic audience—traveller accounts and descriptions by local Armenian intellectuals
The Religion of the Peacock Angel: The Yezidis and Their Spirit World
Based in Iraq, Syria and Turkey, the Yezidi people claim their religion - a unique combination of Christian, Islamic, and historical faiths - to be the oldest in the world. Yezidi identity centres on their religion, Sharfadin, which has evolved into a highly complex pantheon of one God with many incarnations, the chief of whom is Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel. The Yezidi faith can be traced to a range of pre-Islamic belief systems, such as Sufism…
The Onion and the Mandrake: Plants in Yezidi Folk Beliefs
The non-dogmatic character of the Yezidi religion presupposes the presence of a heavy layer of so-called “primitive” religious elements, including plant worship. This paper focuses on plants having obvious sacred connotations in Yezidi beliefs, both on the level of the cult and marginal folk beliefs. There is no explicit tree cult in the Yezidism, or dendrolatry, despite the existence of a cultic complex connected with the so-called Dārā mirāzā o…
On the South Caspian Contact Zone: Some Talishi Folk Beliefs
One of the productive approaches to the analysis of the phenomenon of frontier zones, and the South Caspian region in particular, could be the delimitation of local cultural areas— not within administrative borders, but rather by frontier lines defined by such parameters as linguistic and toponymic areas, characteristics of the people’s mentality, specifics of local beliefs, etc. The southern and south-western shores of the Caspian Sea can be def…
On the Number of Iranian Turkophones
The main body of the Iranian Turkophone mass generally consists of two parts: proper Turkic groups (the Turkmens par excellence ) and the Turkic-speaking ethnic Iranians, predominantly the Azaris, inhabiting the north-west provinces of Iran roughly covering historical Aturpatākān. The number of the latter, usually depicted as a huge multimillion conglomeration, has remained one of the most speculative issues of the field. The article analyses the…
On the Shi‘a Constituent in the Yezidi Religious Lore
Built on the Islamic, primarily Sufi substrate, the religious beliefs of the Yezidis incorporate Gnostic, Christian, local pagan elements, and primitive beliefs. If certain parallels between Yezidism and the heterodox Shi‘ism are mainly part of common shibboleths typical of Near Eastern non-dogmatic milieu, the existence of key Shi‘a figures as objects of veneration and respect in the Yezidi religious lore seems to be a really enigmatic phenomeno…
Yezdistan versus Kurdistan: Another Legend on the Origin of the Yezidis
The paper focuses on the analysis of the term Yezdistan ( Ēzdīstān ) attested in a Yezidi legend, having obvious parallels with the Shahnameh ’s “Tale of Zahhak”. It is particularly interesting that this plot does not occur in any of the Kurmanji versions of the Shahnameh ever recorded in Armenia and represents, in fact, a separate legend out of the epic context
History (37 works) · Ancient history (33 works) · History (33 works) · Archaeology (28 works) · Asian studies (28 works) · Philosophy (26 works) · China (24 works) · Central asia (22 works) · Philosophy (22 works) · Islamic Studies and History (16 works)