The work is inspired by the ambiguous figure of Al-Muqannaʿ (“The Veiled One”), a dyer who became a spiritual and political agitator in eighth-century southern Central Asia, while it speculates about the cultural and political echoes of his revolutionary ideas. Al-Muqannaʿ preached an ideological syncretism of Zoroastrianism, Mazdakism and Buddhism, and awakened the minds of his “White-Clothed” disciples by shedding light on the status quo of his time, challenging practices... see more