L’acqua, la roccia, la santa. Santuari femminili in Iran tra zoroastrismo e sciismo

Abstract

The topic of the paper is Bībī Šahrbānū’s Shia shrine near Ray (Iran) which shows a continuity of places of worship and ritual practices from the pre-Islamic period to the Islamic one. It was a place of worship dedicated originally to Anāhīd, the Zoroastrian goddess of water and fertility, protector of the royalty of the ancient Persian empires. The symbolic connector element is the water, sacred to the goddess Anāhīd, and important in the Shia worship of Bībī Šahrbānū, but also in the Zoroastrian sanctuaries near Yazd, such as that of Bānū-Pārs and Pīr-e Sabz.