Zoroastrians
Zoroastrians. Practitioners of Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism is the religion of pre-Islamic Iran founded by the prophet Zoroaster. Zoroastrianism became the official creed of the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanid empires.
The fundamental tenets of the Zoroastrian faith are set forth in the Avesta (meaning something like “authoritative utterance”), a collection of theological and ritual texts in the Old Iranian language of Zoroaster’s own hymns, the Gathas (which form the core of the Avesta, only a small part of which survives), and in a later dialect called Younger Avestan. Part of the Middle Persian Zand, a translation and commentary on the Avestan text, also survives. A number of theological works that reflect ancient traditions survive in Pahlavi. Other sources include the works of Greek and Latin authors, the inscriptions of the Achaemenids and Sasanids, and the writings of later Arab historians.
Zoroaster’s tribe practiced a polytheistic religion akin to Vedic Hinduism, in which offerings were made through fire to powerful gods, the daevas (Sanskrit, deva); a drink made of the intoxicant haoma (Sanskrit, soma) was prepared ritually (Avestan, yasna; Sanskrit, yajna); and sacred verses (Avestan, manthra; Sanskrit, mantra) were composed by priests. In pagan Iran, as in Vedic India, the gods were seen to personify both human characteristics and natural phenomena and to uphold cosmic order (Sanskrit, rta; Avestan, asha; Old Persian, arta; Greek, arete). Zoroaster, himself a priest learned in ritual and trained in the composition of religious poetry, was troubled by the often amoral behavior ascribed to the daevas and by the violence practiced in their cult and seen in the human and natural world. The answer to his questions came in the revelation of a cosmic dualism proclaimed in all its essentials in the Gathas and amplified, though never altered in its ethical character, in all later Zoroastrian literature, notably the Pahlavi Bundahishn (Creation).
According to the Gathas and other texts, Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, and Angra Mainyu, the Destructive Spirit (Pahlavi, Ohrmazd, Ahriman) existed from eternity as wholly separate entities, the first entirely good and all-knowing but not all-powerful, the second evil and implacably hostile. Ahura Mazda, whose desire is increase and beneficence, created the world and invited Angra Mainyu to forsake evil and to partake of the goodness of material being. Angra Mainyu refused, promising instead to corrupt the world, but Ahura Mazda in his omniscience knew that his adversary should be trapped, defeated, and cast from existence in time, lest he invade the material creation. The creator had formed the world through seven lesser divinities, evocations of himself, called the Amesha Spentas (“bounteous immortals”), who guard and personify various of the good creations, while embodying divine attributes. For example, Asha Vahishta (“best righteousness”) protects the creation of fire, which with its warmth, light and energy is said to pervade all the other creations. It remains the living icon of Zoroastrians, who are often mistakenly called fire worshipers. The cosmic order or rightness Asha Vahishta represents should likewise pervade the moral, spiritual, and temporal worlds. The Amesha Spentas in their turn emanated lesser divinities, the yazatas (“beings worthy to be worshipped”), among whom are gods of the pagan pantheon whose moral qualities are consonant with Zoroastrianism, such as Mithra (Sanskrit, Mitra), the lord of covenants.
The fravashis, or incorruptible spirits of men, are said to have made a primordial covenant with their creator to assume physical form and to aid Ahura Mazda in the cosmic struggle against evil, but in the present, “mixed” state of the world (Pahlavi, gumezishn), in which the good creations have been polluted through the invasion of Ahriman, the souls of men (Pahlavi, ruwan) possess free will. They are positively enjoined to procreate, to enjoy in moderation the good things of life, and to further the Good Religion, as Zoroastrianism is called by its adherents, through good thoughts, words, and deeds. Ultimately a savior (Avestan, Saoshyant) will be born of the preserved seed of Zoroaster, the dead will be resurrected and judged, the damned will be annihilated, and the righteous will enjoy eternal earthly bliss.
At about the age of seven (fifteen in ancient times), the Zoroastrian becomes a full member of the community and assumes moral responsibility for his or her actions with the ceremony of binding the sacred girdle (New Persian, kusti; the ceremony is called Navjote, “newborn,” among the Parsis). Particular stress is laid upon observance of the laws of purity, as death and disease are regarded as demonic assaults upon the good creation. Accordingly, corpses are exposed in so-called towers of silence to be picked clean by birds rather than being allowed to pollute earth or fire by interment or cremation. After death, the soul rises to heaven to be judged and is sent to await the resurrection, or the renovation of the world (Pahlavi, frashegird), and final judgment, in paradise, hell, or limbo (Pahlavi, hammistagan). Zoroastrian concepts of heaven, hell, salvation by a good shepherd, resurrection, and the last judgment antedate the appearance of these ideas in Judaism and Christianity, and Islam owes to Zoroastrianism, in addition, to the foregoing, the five daily times of prayer, the bridge (Arabic, sirat) of judgment, and the idea of the pre-eternal covenant between God and man (Sura 7:172).
All obligatory Zoroastrian rites may be solemnized by priests (the magi, later called mobads) before the ritually pure hearth fire, but around the mid-Achaemenid period a temple cult of fire was instituted, probably in response to the establishment of shrines with images of the yazatas on the Babylonian model. The holiest grade of temple fire, the atakhsh i warahran (Pahlavi, apparently meaning “victorious fire”) is elaborately consecrated and must be kept permanently ablaze. Three such fires, Adur Burzen Mihr in Parthia, Adur Gushnasp in Media, and Adur Farnbag in Persia, were particularly famed under the Sasanids. Adur Farnbag still burns in a temple outside Yazd, Iran.
The main feast of the Zoroastrian year is Now Ruz, the vernal new year, which honors fire and anticipates the eternal spring of the renovation. Six other seasonal feasts (Pahlavi, gahambar) commemorate the creation of the sky, water, earth, plants, animals, and man. In ancient times, the feasts of Mithra and Tiri (Mihragan and Tiragan) were also celebrated in royal splendor. The endowments established by individuals for the regular public celebration of feasts are believed to have provided the model for the Islamic waqf.
During the Achaemenid period, Zoroastrians came into contact with Mesopotamian civilization; several alien divinties were adapted to Iranian yazatas; the myth of the deluge was worked into the Indo-Iranian legend of the primal king, Yima (Sanskrit, Yama; New Persian, Jamshid); and the twelve thousand year Babylonian world cycle was fitted to the cosmic drama, with the onslaught of Angra Mainyu dated to the six-thousandth year after creation, and frashegird to the twelve-thousandth year. Most significantly, a god of time, Zurvan, was established in priestly doctrine as the single progenitor of Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu. This heretical doctrine, expunged from Zoroastrianism after the Sasanid period and never pervasive in the faith, may have evolved as a response to Western monist doctrines.
Although Zurvanism, established in Persia, was the official doctrine of the Sasanids, the ethical dualism of the religion was never altered, and the Zoroastrians retained their unique and separate character among the great religions as adherents of cosmic dualism. There was little proselytism, although the faith had been embraced by various Iranian peoples and by a few other nations with close cultural and dynastic ties to Iran, notably the Armenians, and although Zoroastrian influence on the religions of Iran’s neighbors was strong. The stringent requirements of the faith, and the national traditions intertwined with its teachings, may have combined to repel outsiders and to persuade Iranians that their religion was meant for them alone, for the three great dynasties suffered large foreign communities to flourish in Iran and ruled other lands tolerantly, persecuting infidels only when they proselytized among influential Iranians or were seen to favor an external enemy, such as Christian Byzantium. However, the authoritative Pahlavi Denkard (Acts of the Religion) states uncompromisingly that the Zoroastrianism is meant for all men, of all races. Zoroaster’s own Gathas likewise envisage a world faith.
Within Iran, two major religions and social movements were born out of Zoroastrianism -- Manichaeism and Mazdakism. They were violently suppressed in Iran and left no lasting influence on the faith, although the first became a great and influential religion, from China to Europe, while the second survived the Sasanids to play a role in altered form in early Islam.
Zoroastrianism waned gradually in the three centuries following the Arab conquest of Iran in 651 of the Christian calendar. In the tenth century, a small group of the faithful from the forcibly islamicized province of Khurasan fled to Gujarat in India. At the end of the twentieth century, about ninety thousand Zoroastrians, called Parsis (i.e., Persians), lived in India, mainly in the Bombay area. Another twenty thousand remained in Iran, in Tehran, Yazd, and Kerman, survivors of a millennium of systematic persecution and massacre by Islam. Five thousand or more live in other parts of the world, particularly Great Britain and America. The community, which accepts no converts, is dwindling rapidly through intermarriage and a low birthrate. It adheres conservatively to ancient rituals, but theological learning has suffered greatly from the introduction of theosophical, monist, and other doctrines adopted as a defensive response to British Christian proselytism among the Parsis in the nineteenth century.
The fundamental tenets of the Zoroastrian faith are set forth in the Avesta (meaning something like “authoritative utterance”), a collection of theological and ritual texts in the Old Iranian language of Zoroaster’s own hymns, the Gathas (which form the core of the Avesta, only a small part of which survives), and in a later dialect called Younger Avestan. Part of the Middle Persian Zand, a translation and commentary on the Avestan text, also survives. A number of theological works that reflect ancient traditions survive in Pahlavi. Other sources include the works of Greek and Latin authors, the inscriptions of the Achaemenids and Sasanids, and the writings of later Arab historians.
Zoroaster’s tribe practiced a polytheistic religion akin to Vedic Hinduism, in which offerings were made through fire to powerful gods, the daevas (Sanskrit, deva); a drink made of the intoxicant haoma (Sanskrit, soma) was prepared ritually (Avestan, yasna; Sanskrit, yajna); and sacred verses (Avestan, manthra; Sanskrit, mantra) were composed by priests. In pagan Iran, as in Vedic India, the gods were seen to personify both human characteristics and natural phenomena and to uphold cosmic order (Sanskrit, rta; Avestan, asha; Old Persian, arta; Greek, arete). Zoroaster, himself a priest learned in ritual and trained in the composition of religious poetry, was troubled by the often amoral behavior ascribed to the daevas and by the violence practiced in their cult and seen in the human and natural world. The answer to his questions came in the revelation of a cosmic dualism proclaimed in all its essentials in the Gathas and amplified, though never altered in its ethical character, in all later Zoroastrian literature, notably the Pahlavi Bundahishn (Creation).
According to the Gathas and other texts, Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, and Angra Mainyu, the Destructive Spirit (Pahlavi, Ohrmazd, Ahriman) existed from eternity as wholly separate entities, the first entirely good and all-knowing but not all-powerful, the second evil and implacably hostile. Ahura Mazda, whose desire is increase and beneficence, created the world and invited Angra Mainyu to forsake evil and to partake of the goodness of material being. Angra Mainyu refused, promising instead to corrupt the world, but Ahura Mazda in his omniscience knew that his adversary should be trapped, defeated, and cast from existence in time, lest he invade the material creation. The creator had formed the world through seven lesser divinities, evocations of himself, called the Amesha Spentas (“bounteous immortals”), who guard and personify various of the good creations, while embodying divine attributes. For example, Asha Vahishta (“best righteousness”) protects the creation of fire, which with its warmth, light and energy is said to pervade all the other creations. It remains the living icon of Zoroastrians, who are often mistakenly called fire worshipers. The cosmic order or rightness Asha Vahishta represents should likewise pervade the moral, spiritual, and temporal worlds. The Amesha Spentas in their turn emanated lesser divinities, the yazatas (“beings worthy to be worshipped”), among whom are gods of the pagan pantheon whose moral qualities are consonant with Zoroastrianism, such as Mithra (Sanskrit, Mitra), the lord of covenants.
The fravashis, or incorruptible spirits of men, are said to have made a primordial covenant with their creator to assume physical form and to aid Ahura Mazda in the cosmic struggle against evil, but in the present, “mixed” state of the world (Pahlavi, gumezishn), in which the good creations have been polluted through the invasion of Ahriman, the souls of men (Pahlavi, ruwan) possess free will. They are positively enjoined to procreate, to enjoy in moderation the good things of life, and to further the Good Religion, as Zoroastrianism is called by its adherents, through good thoughts, words, and deeds. Ultimately a savior (Avestan, Saoshyant) will be born of the preserved seed of Zoroaster, the dead will be resurrected and judged, the damned will be annihilated, and the righteous will enjoy eternal earthly bliss.
At about the age of seven (fifteen in ancient times), the Zoroastrian becomes a full member of the community and assumes moral responsibility for his or her actions with the ceremony of binding the sacred girdle (New Persian, kusti; the ceremony is called Navjote, “newborn,” among the Parsis). Particular stress is laid upon observance of the laws of purity, as death and disease are regarded as demonic assaults upon the good creation. Accordingly, corpses are exposed in so-called towers of silence to be picked clean by birds rather than being allowed to pollute earth or fire by interment or cremation. After death, the soul rises to heaven to be judged and is sent to await the resurrection, or the renovation of the world (Pahlavi, frashegird), and final judgment, in paradise, hell, or limbo (Pahlavi, hammistagan). Zoroastrian concepts of heaven, hell, salvation by a good shepherd, resurrection, and the last judgment antedate the appearance of these ideas in Judaism and Christianity, and Islam owes to Zoroastrianism, in addition, to the foregoing, the five daily times of prayer, the bridge (Arabic, sirat) of judgment, and the idea of the pre-eternal covenant between God and man (Sura 7:172).
All obligatory Zoroastrian rites may be solemnized by priests (the magi, later called mobads) before the ritually pure hearth fire, but around the mid-Achaemenid period a temple cult of fire was instituted, probably in response to the establishment of shrines with images of the yazatas on the Babylonian model. The holiest grade of temple fire, the atakhsh i warahran (Pahlavi, apparently meaning “victorious fire”) is elaborately consecrated and must be kept permanently ablaze. Three such fires, Adur Burzen Mihr in Parthia, Adur Gushnasp in Media, and Adur Farnbag in Persia, were particularly famed under the Sasanids. Adur Farnbag still burns in a temple outside Yazd, Iran.
The main feast of the Zoroastrian year is Now Ruz, the vernal new year, which honors fire and anticipates the eternal spring of the renovation. Six other seasonal feasts (Pahlavi, gahambar) commemorate the creation of the sky, water, earth, plants, animals, and man. In ancient times, the feasts of Mithra and Tiri (Mihragan and Tiragan) were also celebrated in royal splendor. The endowments established by individuals for the regular public celebration of feasts are believed to have provided the model for the Islamic waqf.
During the Achaemenid period, Zoroastrians came into contact with Mesopotamian civilization; several alien divinties were adapted to Iranian yazatas; the myth of the deluge was worked into the Indo-Iranian legend of the primal king, Yima (Sanskrit, Yama; New Persian, Jamshid); and the twelve thousand year Babylonian world cycle was fitted to the cosmic drama, with the onslaught of Angra Mainyu dated to the six-thousandth year after creation, and frashegird to the twelve-thousandth year. Most significantly, a god of time, Zurvan, was established in priestly doctrine as the single progenitor of Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu. This heretical doctrine, expunged from Zoroastrianism after the Sasanid period and never pervasive in the faith, may have evolved as a response to Western monist doctrines.
Although Zurvanism, established in Persia, was the official doctrine of the Sasanids, the ethical dualism of the religion was never altered, and the Zoroastrians retained their unique and separate character among the great religions as adherents of cosmic dualism. There was little proselytism, although the faith had been embraced by various Iranian peoples and by a few other nations with close cultural and dynastic ties to Iran, notably the Armenians, and although Zoroastrian influence on the religions of Iran’s neighbors was strong. The stringent requirements of the faith, and the national traditions intertwined with its teachings, may have combined to repel outsiders and to persuade Iranians that their religion was meant for them alone, for the three great dynasties suffered large foreign communities to flourish in Iran and ruled other lands tolerantly, persecuting infidels only when they proselytized among influential Iranians or were seen to favor an external enemy, such as Christian Byzantium. However, the authoritative Pahlavi Denkard (Acts of the Religion) states uncompromisingly that the Zoroastrianism is meant for all men, of all races. Zoroaster’s own Gathas likewise envisage a world faith.
Within Iran, two major religions and social movements were born out of Zoroastrianism -- Manichaeism and Mazdakism. They were violently suppressed in Iran and left no lasting influence on the faith, although the first became a great and influential religion, from China to Europe, while the second survived the Sasanids to play a role in altered form in early Islam.
Zoroastrianism waned gradually in the three centuries following the Arab conquest of Iran in 651 of the Christian calendar. In the tenth century, a small group of the faithful from the forcibly islamicized province of Khurasan fled to Gujarat in India. At the end of the twentieth century, about ninety thousand Zoroastrians, called Parsis (i.e., Persians), lived in India, mainly in the Bombay area. Another twenty thousand remained in Iran, in Tehran, Yazd, and Kerman, survivors of a millennium of systematic persecution and massacre by Islam. Five thousand or more live in other parts of the world, particularly Great Britain and America. The community, which accepts no converts, is dwindling rapidly through intermarriage and a low birthrate. It adheres conservatively to ancient rituals, but theological learning has suffered greatly from the introduction of theosophical, monist, and other doctrines adopted as a defensive response to British Christian proselytism among the Parsis in the nineteenth century.
Zubayda bint Ja‘far
Zubayda bint Ja‘far (Zubayda bint Ja'far ibn Mansur) (762-832). Wife of the ‘Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid. She is famous for her love of splendor, her liberality to poets and scholars, and for the public works she carried out.
Zubayda bint Ja`far ibn Mansur was granddaughter of the Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur, through his son Ja'far, and cousin (through mothers) of Harun al-Rashid (r.766-809), whom she later married (781).
Zubayda went on to become the best known of the Abbasid princesses. She and her husband's exploits are the subjects of The Thousand and One Nights. It is said that her palace 'sounded like a beehive' because she employed one hundred women maids who had memorized the Qur'an.
Zubayda is particularly remembered for the contributions she made to the ulema and the poor, and for the series of wells, reservoirs and artificial pools that provided water for Muslim pilgrims along the route from Baghdad to Mecca and Medina. The route was re-named Darb Zubayda (“Zubayda’s Way”) in her honor.
Zubayda bint Ja‘far (Zubayda bint Ja'far ibn Mansur) (762-832). Wife of the ‘Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid. She is famous for her love of splendor, her liberality to poets and scholars, and for the public works she carried out.
Zubayda bint Ja`far ibn Mansur was granddaughter of the Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur, through his son Ja'far, and cousin (through mothers) of Harun al-Rashid (r.766-809), whom she later married (781).
Zubayda went on to become the best known of the Abbasid princesses. She and her husband's exploits are the subjects of The Thousand and One Nights. It is said that her palace 'sounded like a beehive' because she employed one hundred women maids who had memorized the Qur'an.
Zubayda is particularly remembered for the contributions she made to the ulema and the poor, and for the series of wells, reservoirs and artificial pools that provided water for Muslim pilgrims along the route from Baghdad to Mecca and Medina. The route was re-named Darb Zubayda (“Zubayda’s Way”) in her honor.
Zubayda bint Ja'far ibn Mansur see Zubayda bint Ja‘far
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