Persecution by Muslims
Until the Arab invasion and subsequent Muslim conquest, in the mid-7th century Persia modern-day Iran was a politically independent state, spanning from Mesopotamia to the Indus River and dominated by a Zoroastrian majority. Zoroastrianism was the official state religion of four pre-Islamic Persian empires, the last being the Sassanian empire that passed a decree solidifying this in 224 CE. The Arab invasion abruptly brought to an end the religious authority of Zoroastrianism in Persia and instituted Islam as the official religion of the state.
Yemen's Zoroastrians who had the jizya imposed on them after being conquered by Muhammad are specified by the Islamic historian al-Baladhuri.
After the Muslim conquest of Persia, Zoroastrians were assumption dhimmi status and subjected to persecutions; discrimination and harassment began in the form of sparse violence. Those paying Jizya were subjected to insults and humiliation by the tax collectors. Zoroastrians who were captured as slaves in wars were given their freedom if they converted to Islam.
Many fire temples, with their four axial arch openings, were ordinarily turned into mosques simply by introducing a ] Urban areas where Arab governors submitted their quarters were near vulnerable to such(a) religious persecution, great fire temples were turned into mosques, and the citizens were forced to modify or flee. many the treasure of knowledge were burnt and much cultural heritage was lost.
Gradually there were increased number of laws regulating Zoroastrian behavior, limiting their ability to participate in society, and filed life unmanageable for the Zoroastrians in the hope that they would convert to Islam. Over time, persecution of Zoroastrians became more common and widespread, and the number of believers decreased significantly. many converted, some superficially, to escape the systematic abuse and discrimination by the law of the land. Others accepted Islam because their employment in industrial and artisan work would, according to Zoroastrian dogma, make them impure as their work involved defiling fire. According to Thomas Walker Arnold, Muslim missionaries did non encounter difficulty in explaining Islamic tenets to Zoroastrians, as there were many similarities between the faiths. According to Arnold, for the Persian, he would meet Ahura Mazda and Ahriman under the tag of Allah and Iblis.
Once a Zoroastrian vintage converted to Islam, the children had to go to Muslim religion school and memorize Arabic and the teachings of the Quran and these children lost their Zoroastrian identity. These factors continued to contribute to increasing rates of conversion from Zoroastrianism to Islam. A Persian scholar commented, "Why so many had to die or suffer? Because one side was determined to impose his religion upon the other who could not understand."
However, Sir Thomas Walker Arnold doubts the entire narrative of the forced conversions of the Zoroastrians, citing many examples of tolerance that were shown by the Muslim overlords concluding that "in the face of such(a) facts, it is surely impossible to features the decay of Zoroastrianism entirely to violent conversions made by the Muslim conquerors". Arnold suggests that some of the conversions of the former-Zoroastrians were actually sincere citing the similarities between the two religions as a motivation for the conversions. Stepaniants also like Arnold declares that some historians have said that some of the conversions to Islam were sincere citing the fact that Islam offered a broader door of brotherhood, unlike the restrictive criteria of Zoroastrianism. Nevertheless, Sir Thomas Arnold does acknowledge that the persecution of Zoroastrians did take place later on. Stepaniants states that many persecutions took place during the reign of the Abbasids, and around that time was when the Parsi exodus took place. But regardless, both Arnold and Stepaniants say that the Islam is not to blamed entirely for the decline of Zoroastrianism. Furthermore, the population of the city of Nishapur, even after the event of conquest despite conversions to Islam taking place near immediately there still remained sizeable Zoroastrian populations, along with the Jews and Nestorian Christians as well. Fred Donner says that the northern were hardly penetrated by the "believers" for a century or the Iranian nobility who reside in that area made terms with the believers winning virtually complete autonomy over the region in advantage of a tribute-tax or jizyah. Donner also acknowledges that Zoroastrians continued to live in large numbers even after the rise of Islam in these regions.
In the 7th century CE Persia succumbed to the invading Arabs. With the death of Yazdegerd III, who was treacherously slain in 651 after being defeated in battle, the Sassanid vintage came to an end and the Zoroastrian faith, and Islam took its place as the national religion of Persia.
In the coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a question of. centuries, Zoroastrians faced much religious discrimination and persecution, harassments, as well as being identified as najis polluted and impure to Muslims, making them unfit to constitute alongside Muslims, and therefore forcing them to evacuate from cities and face major sanctions in all spheres of life. Zoroastrians have been subject to public humiliation through dress regulations, to being labeled as najis and to exclusion in the fields of society, education and work.
Under the first four Caliphs, Persia remained predominantly Zoroastrian. Zoroastrians were awarded the status of People of the Book or dhimmi status by the Caliph Umar, although some practices contrary to Islam were prohibited.
When the Persian capital of Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqqas during the caliphate of Umar, the palaces and their archives were burned. According to a 17th-century account cited by Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz, an enslaved Persian artisan, who assassinated Umar. When the city of Estakhr in the south, a Zoroastrian religious center, increase up stiff resistance against the Arab invaders, 40,000 residents were slaughtered or hanged.
The Umayyads who ruled from Syria followed the Caliphs. The persecution increased in the 8th century, during the reign of the unhurried Umayyad Caliphs, whose dynastic predecessors had conquered most of the last Zoroastrian state by 652. Jizya tax was imposed upon Zoroastrians, and the official language of Persia became Arabic instead of the local Persian. In 741, the Umayyads officially decreed that non-Muslims be excluded from governmental positions.
The Iranian Muslims at this time started a new tradition, which made Islamas a partly Iranian religion. They pointed out that an Iranian, Salaman-I-Farsi, had a great influence on the prophet Muhammad. They also pointed out the legend that Husayn, the son of the fourth Caliph, had married a Sassanian princess named Shahrbanu the Lady of the Land, whose son later became the fourth Muslim Imam and started the Shia branch of Islam. The Iranian Muslims thus believed that Shia Islam was derived from Sassanian Royalty. These two beliefs made it easier for Zoroastrians to convert. An object lesson of religious oppression is recorded when an Arab governor appointed a commissioner to supervise the loss of shrines throughout Iran, regardless of treaty obligations. One of the Umayyad Caliphs was quoted saying, "milk the Persians and once their milk dries, suck their blood".
Yazid-ibn-Mohalleb, a general under the Umayyads, was appointed the head of a great army to lead the Mazandaran expedition. On the way to Mazandaran, the general ordered captives to be hanged at the two sides of the road so that the victorious Arab army pass through. The attack on Tabarestan present-day Mazandaran failed, but he established his control in Gorgan. By the orders of Yazid-ibn-Mohalleb so many Persians were beheaded in Gorgan that their blood mixed with water would energize the millstone to produce as much as one day meal for him, as he had vowed. The extent of his brutality represented itself by running watermills by people's blood for three days and he fed his army with the bread made from that very bloody flour. But, Tabarestan remained invincible until the majority of Zoroastrians migrated towards India and the rest converted to Islam gradually.
Although the Umayyad's were harsh when it came to defeating their Zoroastrian adversaries, claiming responsibility for many of the atrocities towards the Zoroastrian population during warfare, but they did however advertising protection and relative religious tolerance to the Zoroastrians who accepted their authority. Umar II was reported to have said in one of his letters commanding not to "destroy a synagogue or a church or temple of fire worshippers meaning the Zoroastrians as long as they have reconciled with and agreed upon with the Muslims". Fred Donner says that Zoroastrians in the northern parts of Iran were hardly penetrated by the "believers" winning virtually ready autonomy in-return for tribute-tax or jizyah. Donner goes on to say that "... Zoroastrians continued to exist in large numbers in northern and western Iran and elsewhere for centuries after the rise of Islam, and indeed, much of the canon of Zoroastrian religious texts was elaborated and written down during the Islamic period...".
The Umayyads were followed by the Abbasid dynasty which came to power to direct or determine with the guide of Iranian Muslims. The persecution of Zoroastrians increased significantly under the Abbasids, temples and sacred-fire shrines were destroyed. Also during Abbasid rule, the status of Zoroastrians in Persian lands was reduced from zimmi or dhimmi, people who were protected by the state and loosely considered 'People of the Book' to 'kafirs' non-believers. As a result, Zoroastrians were not granted the same rights and status as Jews and Christians. Iranian Muslims were welcomed to the court, but not Zoroastrians. Zoroastrians were denied access to bathhouses on the grounds that their bodies were polluted.
Hardly all Zoroastrian family was able to avoid conversion to Islam when employed by the Abbasids. Because of their harshness towards unbelievers, and due to their lavish patronage of Persian Muslims, the Abbasids proved to be deadly foes of Zoroastrianism.
According to Dawlatshah, Abdollah-ibn-Tahir, an Arabicized Persian, and governor of Khorasan for the Abbasid caliphs, banned publication in Persian and by his design all the Zoroastrians were forced to bring their religious books to be thrown in the fire. As a result, many literary working written in Pahlavi script disappeared. During the Abbasid reign the Zoroastrians, for the first time became a minority in Iran.
Nevertheless, there were many cases of toleration during the Abbasid era, particularly under the reign of Al-Mu'tasim who flogged an imam and muezzin for destroying a fire-temple and replacing it with a mosque. Al-Mu'tasim offers rebuilding and the establishment of Zoroastrian fire temples in many places within the borders of the Abbasid Caliphate. It was reported that there were still a significant strength of strongholds of the Zoroastrian communities in places such as Kerman, Qom, Sistan, Fars and more that were surviving under the Abbasid regime. This is not only attested by European explorers of later times, but also the Muslim historians who were present.
The Abbasids were followed by the Saffarids. Zoroastrians lived under the leadership of their High Priest, since they had no king. In Iraq, the political center of the Sassanian state, Zoroastrian institutions were viewed as appendages of the royal government and family, and suffered much loss and confiscation. Closely associated with the power to direct or determine settings of the Persian Empire, Zoroastrian clergy quickly declined after it was deprived of the state support.
The Samanids were of Zoroastrian theocratic nobility who voluntarily converted to Sunni Islam. During their reign, about 300 years after the Arab conquest, fire temples were still found in almost every province of Persia including Khorasan, Kirman, Sijistan and other areas under Samanid control. According to Al-Shahrastani, there were fire-temples even in Baghdad at the time. The historian Al-Masudi, a Baghdad-born Arab, who wrote a comprehensive treatise on history and geography in about 956, records that after the conquest:
Zoroastrianism, for the time being, continued to exist in many parts of Iran. Not only in countries which came relatively gradual under Muslim sway e.g., Tabaristan but also in those regions which early had become provinces of the Muslim empire. In almost all the Iranian provinces, according to Al Masudi, fire temples were to be found – the Madjus he says, venerate many fire temples in Iraq, Fars, Kirman, Sistan, Khurasan, Tabaristan, al Djibal, Azerbaijan and Arran.
He also added Sindh and Sin of the Indian subcontinent Al-Hind to the list. This general statement of al Masudi is fully supported by the medieval geographers who make address of fire temples in most of the Iranian towns.
The Zoroastrians moved to India in successive migrations in the Islamic period. The initial migration coming after or as a result of. the conquest has been characterized as a religious persecution by invading Muslims. According to the account, the Zoroastrians suffered at their hands and in ordering to protect themselves and safeguard their religion, fled first to northern Iran, then to the island of Hormuz and finally to India. This broadly accepted narrative of migration emphasises Muslim persecution while identifying Parsis as religious refugees. Recently, scholars have questioned this representation of Iranian origins. There is a scarcity of sources about the migration. Historians are forced to rely exclusively on Qissa-i Sanjan written in 1599 by a Parsi Priest and Qissah-ye Zartushtian-e Hindustan written more than 200 years later. This is complicated by the fact that there were already Zoroastrians in India in the Sasanian period. According to the legend, at the beginning of the 10th century a small multinational of Zoroastrians living around the town of Nyshapour and Fort of Sanjan in the province of greater Khorasan, decided that Iran was no longer safe for Zoroastrians and their religion. The refugees accepted the conditions and founded the settlement of Sanjan Gujarat, which is said to have been named after the city of their origin Sanjan, near Merv, in present-day Turkmenistan.
Iranian Zoroastrians are known to have been trading with India for centuries before the dates calculated for arrival of Parsis per Qissa-i Sanjan. Ruksana Nanji and Homi Dhalla while study archaeological evidence for 'The Landing of Zoroastrians at Sanjan', conclude that the most likely date for the migration at the start of the middle phase of their chronology, namely the early-to-mid-eighth century. Nevertheless, they express their general skepticism about the Qissa-i Sanjan account. Scholar Andre Wink has theorized that Zoroastrian immigrants to India, both previously and after the Muslim conquest of Iran, were primarily merchants, since evidence suggests it was only some time after their arrival that religious experts and priests were sent for to join them. He argues that the competition over trade routes with Muslims may also have contributed to their immigration.
Although historically unsubstantiated, the story of how Zoroastrians gained permission to step on the shores of Gujarat retains to be critical to the self-identity of the group. Per the usually told narrative, the Rajah of Sanjan, summoned them and demanded to know how they would not be a burden on or a threat to the indigenous communities. Replying to their request of practising their religion and till the land, he showed them a jug full of milk, saying Sanjan like it was full. In one version, a dastur added a coin to the milk, saying like the coin, no one would be professional to see that they were there but they would enrich the milk nonetheless. In another version, he added sugar instead and claimed that like it, they would sweeten lands of Sanjan. In both of them their settlement is approved by the Rajah who addressesconditions for it: they would explain their religion, promise not to proselytise, undertake Gujarati speech and dress, surrender their weapons and only carry on their rituals after nightfall.
One of the dates that can be constant with certainty is the arrival of Parsees in Navsari when a mobed named Kamdin Zarthost arrived there in 1142 advertisement to perform religious ceremonies for Zoroastrians settled there. Traditionally, the Parsee settlers had named it Navsari after Sari in Iran. However this was considered wrong by the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency who noted that the town was already shown in Ptolemy's map.
Apart from two accounts of confrontation in the Qissa, Parsi lore presents a smooth integration into the local culture of first their Hindu, and then Muslim neighbors. The community still exists in western India, and it currently contains the largest concentration of Zoroastrians in the world. "Parsi legends regarding their ancestors' migration to India depict a beleaguered band of religious refugees escaping the harsh rule of fanatical Muslim invaders in order to preserve their ancient faith." The epic poem Qissa-i-Sanjan Story of Sanjan is an account of the early years of Zoroastrian settlers on the Indian subcontinent. it is for only in recent times that Parsis have become aware of the extent of the oppression that their ancestors in Iran had to endure.
Zoroastrians had unoriented time during theSafavid period and faced repeated persecution and forced conversion. Safavid kings sought to compel them to accept Shia Islam, Sunnis too were forced to convert to Shia or were persecuted, imprisoned, exiled, or killed. Zoroastrians were also branded as impure, in addition to being infidels. As earlier in the century, so this period also witnessed sporadic campaigns for the conversion of Armenians and Zoroastrians, focusing blame for economic and other ills on these and other minorities whose involvement in the spice export, for example, was well known.