Page Michael - Heirs to forgotten kingdoms: journeys into the disappearing religions of the Middle East

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Copyright 2014 by Gerard Russell

Published by Basic Books,
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Designed by Pauline Brown Typeset in Times New Roman

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

LCCN: 2014948120

ISBN: 978-0-465-03056-9 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-465-05685-9 (e-book)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my parents
And to Linda Norgrove, Vadim Nazarov,
and others who shared my journeys
but are no longer here to read this book

Contents

By the early eighth century, Muslim rulers controlled most of the land between Afghanistan and the edge of North Africa. But Islamic stateswhich developed in Europe a reputation as fierce and exclusiveproved ultimately more tolerant of other religions than Western Christianity. In Europe, pagans were eliminated so completely and so rapidly that the details of the pre-Christian religion of somewhere like Britain can barely be recovered. In the Muslim world, however, complete pagan religions were allowed to survive intact into the twenty-first century, and it is still possible to interview their believers.

There are the Yazidis of northern Iraq, whose temples include a statue of a peacock, somehow associated with the devil. There are the Kalasha of the Afghan-Pakistan border, whose faith incorporates wooden statues of ancestor-heroes. From Lebanon to Iran religions survivesome with a special relationship to fire, others that center on immersion in water, others with focus on the sun and the moon. Some of these faiths long predate the birth of Christ.

The subject is wonderful. These groups are not just symbols of religious sensibilities and possibilities now faded. They suggest a great deal about the origins and evolution of the major world religions. And they are challenging components of a modern world: intricate compressed identities, rooted in history and landscape, but also systems of belief that have changed dramatically over time, incorporated rival religions, and been exported to new lands.

But the subject is almost impossible. These religions are formidably difficult to access, understand, or describe. They survived partly because they are located in some of the most remote, mountainous, and dangerous regions of the Middle East. The believers sometimes speak obscure, archaic languages. The archives and scholarly accounts of the faiths are intimidating. In some cases the religions are esoteric: it is forbidden to record, discuss, or reveal their beliefs. In other cases, the religions are persecuted, and believers have had to learn to conceal the details of their faith, to avoid being murdered. They rarely can or will speak to outsiders. It is, therefore, very difficult to imagine someone qualified to address the subject.

Gerard Russell is one of the few people able to write a book of this kind. Born in 1973 in America to British parents, Gerard Russell studied classical languages and philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford. He then joined the British Foreign Service, which sent him to Cairo to learn Arabic. His Arabic became sufficiently fluent for him to become the UK public spokesman on Arabic news channels. He was posted to Iraq after the US invasion, became consul general in Jeddah, and then was political counselor in the embassy in Kabul. In those posts, when many diplomats remained isolated from the local populations, he developed strong friendships with Arabs and Afghans outside the compound, aided by his linguistic skills, and became an ever greater expert on the countries and people with whom he lived. In 2009, he joined a group of Afghan specialists at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, at Harvards Kennedy School.