Religion and Culture Seminar
2022 – 2023
University Center for the Study of Religion; Center for Advanced Study, Sofia

General Theme for 2022 – 2023: "Center and Periphery in Religion and Society"
Session 5: Dr. Igor Dorfman-Lazarev, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, "Peripheral Christianity and Peripheral Islam in the South-Eastern Caucasus According to David of Gandzak (ca 1065–1140)"
16 June 2023

The seminar was moderated by the CSR Director, Professor Simeon Evstatiev of the Department of Arabic and Semitic Studies at Sofia University. The session was attended by around twenty participants from various department of Sofia Univesity and the Institute for Historical Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, as well as by guest researchers from the United Kingdom and Ukraine.

Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev (PhD) teaches Oriental languages at Sofia University. He is interested in the interaction of religions across pre-modern Eurasia. In his recent publications he has focused on the role of apocrypha in the shaping of the idea of kingship in mediæval Armenia. He is the author of Christ in Armenian Tradition: Doctrine, Apocrypha, Art (Peeters, 2016) and the editor of: Apocryphal and Esoteric Sources in the Development of Christianity and Judaism (Brill, 2021), Sharing Myths, Texts and Sanctuaries in the South Caucasus (Peeters, 2022) and, in association with Haroutioun Khatchadourian, Monuments and Identities in the Caucasus (Brill, 2023).