The Memory of Light: The Persian Concept of Āberū

Abstract

The article is devoted to the Persian concept of āberū, which in contemporary Persian expresses the meanings of ‘good reputation’, ‘good social image’, and ‘honour’ that a man possesses in the eyes of others. This concept, fundamental to the Persian culture, can be studied from multiple perspectives—linguistic, sociological, religious, or ethical. However, the present article’s main objective is to draw attention to the parallelism between the concept of āberū and the idea of light and luminosity. The author attempts to reconstruct the ‘memory’ of this concept by analysing the etymology of the term āberū, its semantics and selected contexts of its use in the classical Persian texts.