Lurian

Lurian is an adjective used to refer to two main, distinct senses in scholarly and cultural contexts. It can describe things related to the Lur/Lori people of western Iran and their languages, or things connected to the Jewish mystic Isaac Luria and his Kabbalistic tradition. In some academic writings, the term appears in both of these unrelated domains.

The Lur/Lori sense concerns an Iranian ethnic group native to western Iran, especially Lorestan and surrounding areas, with communities in Khuzestan, Ilam, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, and other provinces. The Luri languages form a group within the Western Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian family and include Northern Luri and Southern Luri (often collectively called Luri or Lori). These languages are closely related to Persian, and many Lurs are bilingual in Persian. Lur communities are noted for diverse cultural practices, music, and dress, and they have historical ties to pastoralist and agricultural livelihoods in the Zagros region.

In the religious and scholarly sense, Lurianic Kabbalah refers to the school of Jewish mysticism associated with Isaac Luria (the Ari), active in Safed during the 16th century. Luria’s teachings on creation, emanations, and cosmic repair influenced subsequent Kabbalistic thought and Jewish philosophy; the term Lurian can appear in discussions of this tradition or its literature, though “Lurianic” is the more common form.

Apart from these main usages, Lurian may appear as a surname or in related place-name contexts.