Iran: Empire of the Mind (3 page)

From these circumstances a system of tribute or what a Mafioso in another context would call protection could develop: the peasants would pay over a proportion of their harvest to be left alone. From another
perspective, augmented with some presentational subtlety, tradition and perhaps charisma, it could be called taxation and government (just as in medieval Europe the distinction between robber baron and feudal lord could be a fine one). Most of the rulers of Iran through the centuries originated from among the nomadic tribes (including from among non-Iranian nomads that arrived in later waves of migration), and animosity between the nomads and the settled population also persisted down to modern times. The settled population (particularly later, when towns and cities developed) regarded themselves as more civilised, less violent, less crude. The nomads saw them as soft and devious, themselves by contrast as hardy, tough, self-reliant, exemplifying a kind of rugged honesty. There would have been elements of truth in both caricatures, but the attitudes of the early Iranian élites partook especially of the latter.

Medes and Persians

The Iranian-speakers who migrated into the land of Iran and the surrounding area in the years before 1000
BCE
were not one single tribe or group. In time some of their descendants became known as Medes and Persians, but there were Parthians, Sogdians and others too (and the people known to modern scholars as the Avestans, in whose language the earliest Zoroastrian liturgies were compiled), who only acquired the names known to us later in their history. And even the titles Mede and Persian were themselves simplifications, lumping together shifting alliances and confederacies of disparate tribes.

From the beginning the Medes and Persians are mentioned together in historical sources, suggesting a close relationship between them from the very earliest times. The very first such mention is in an Assyrian record of 836
BCE
, an account of a military campaign by the Assyrian King Shalmaneser III, which he and several of his successors waged in the Zagros mountains and as far east as Mount Demavand, the high, extinct volcano in the Alborz range, to the east of modern Tehran. The accounts they left behind listed the Medes and Persians as tributaries. The heartlands of the Medes were in the north-west, in the modern provinces of Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Hamadan and Tehran. In the region of the Zagros south of
the territories occupied by the Medes, the Assyrians encountered the Persians in the region they called Parsuash, and which has been known ever since as Pars or Fars, in one form or another
²
.

Appearing first as victims of the Assyrians and as tributaries, within a century or so the Medes and Persians were fighting back, attacking Assyrian territories. Later traditions recorded by Herodotus in the fifth century
BCE
mention early kings of the Medes called Deioces and Cyaxares, who appeared in the Assyrian accounts as Daiaukku and Uaksatar; and a king of the Persians called Achaemenes, who the Assyrians called Hakhamanish. By 700
BCE
(with the help of Scythian tribes) the Medes had established an independent state, which later grew to become the first Iranian Empire; and in 612
BCE
the Medes destroyed the Assyrian capital, Nineveh (adjacent to modern Mosul, on the Tigris). At its height the Median Empire stretched from Asia Minor to the Hindu Kush, and south to the Persian Gulf, ruling the Persians as vassals as well as many other subject peoples.

The Prophet Who Laughed

But probably rather before the first mentions of the Iranians and their kings appear in the historical records, another important historical figure lived—Zoroaster or Zarathustra (modern Persian
Zardosht
). That is, he is a historical figure because it is generally accepted that he lived and was not just a man of myth or legend; but his dates are unknown and experts have disagreed radically about when he lived. Compared with Jesus, Mohammad or even Moses, Zoroaster is a much more indistinct figure and little is known for sure about his life (the best evidence suggests he lived in the north-east, in what later became Bactria and later still, Afghanistan—but another tradition has suggested he came from what is now Azerbaijan, around the river Araxes, and others have suggested a migration from the one locality to the other). As a key figure in the history of world religions and as a religious thinker, Zoroaster certainly ranks in importance with those other prophets. But it is also difficult to establish the precise import of his teaching, for the same reason that the details of his life are obscure—because the Zoroastrian religious texts that are the
main source for both (notably the
Avesta
) were first written in the form they have come down to us more than a thousand years after he lived, around the end of the Sassanid era, in the sixth century
AD
.
³
The stories about Zoroaster they contain are little more than fables (though some of them correspond with information from Classical Greek and Latin commentators, showing their genuine antiquity—for example the story that at birth the infant Zoroaster did not cry, but laughed), and the theology combines what are undoubtedly ancient elements with innovations that developed and were incorporated much later.

So although Zoroastrian tradition places his birth at around 600
BCE
(and associates him with an Achaemenian Persian prince, Vistaspa) most scholars now believe he lived earlier. It is still unclear just when, but it is reasonable to think it was around 1200 or 1000
BCE
, at the time of or shortly after the migrations of Iranian cattle-herders to the Iranian plateau. This view is based on the fact that the earliest texts (the
Gathas
, traditionally hymns first sung by Zoroaster himself) show significant differences with the later liturgical language associated with the period around 600
BCE
; but also on the pastoral way of life reflected in the texts, and the absence in them of references to the Medes or Persians, or the names of kings or other people known from that time. It seems plausible that Zoroaster’s revelation arose in the context of the changes, new demands and new influences associated with the migration; and the self-questioning of a culture faced with new neighbours and unfamiliar pressures. The religion was the result of an encounter with a new complexity. It was to some extent, a compromise with it, but also an attempt to govern it with new principles.

Other evidence supports the view that Zoroaster did not invent a religion from nothing, but reformed and simplified pre-existing religious practices (against some resistance from traditional priests), infusing them with a much more sophisticated philosophical theology and a greater emphasis on morality and justice, in this period of transition. One element to support this is an early tradition that writing was alien and demonic—suggesting that the Iranians associated it with the Semitic and other peoples among whom the migrants found themselves in the centuries after the
migration
⁴
. Another telling indication is the fact that the Persian word
div
, cognate with both Latin and Sanskrit words for the gods, in the Zoroastrian context was used for a class of demons opposed to Zoroaster and his followers—suggesting that the reforming prophet reclassified at least some previous deities as evil spirits.
⁵
The demons were associated with chaos and disorder—the antithesis of the principles of goodness and justice represented by the new religion. At the more mundane level they also lay behind diseases of people and animals, bad weather and other natural disasters.

At the centre of Zoroaster’s theology was the opposition between Ahura Mazda, the creator-God of truth and light, and Ahriman, the embodiment of lies, darkness and evil (though in the earliest times Ahriman’s direct opponent was
Spenta Mainyu
—Bounteous Spirit—rather than Ahura Mazda, who was represented as being above the conflict). This dualism became a persistent theme in Iranian thought for centuries: modern Zoroastrianism is much more strongly monotheistic, and to make this distinction (and others) more explicit many scholars refer to the religion in this early stage as Mazdaism. Other pre-existing deities were incorporated into the Mazdaean religious structure as angels or archangels—notably Mithra, a sun god, and Anahita, a goddess of streams and rivers. Six Immortal archangels (the
Amesha Spenta
) embodied animal life, plant life, metals and minerals, earth, fire and water (the names of several of these archangels—for example Bahman, Ordibehesht, Khordad—survive as months in the modern Iranian calendar, even under the Islamic republic). Ahura Mazda himself personified air, and in origin paralleled the Greek Zeus, as a sky-god.

The modern Persian month Bahman is named after the Mazdaean archangel Vohu Manu—the second in rank after Ahura Mazda, characterised as Good Purpose and identified with the cattle who were the second class of beings to be created by Ahura Mazda after man himself. Part of the creation myth in Zoroastrianism is the story that, after all was created good by Ahura Mazda, the evil spirit Ahriman (accompanied by six evil spirits matching the six Immortals) assaulted creation, murdering the first man, killing the sacred bull Vohu Manu and polluting water and
fire. The importance of cattle to the nomadic early Iranians is shown by the frequent appearance of bulls and cattle in sculpture and iconography from the Achaemenid period—but many of these images may have a more specific religious significance, referring to Vohu Manu.

Fig. 1. This image of a bull attacked by a lion has normally been taken to symbolise Noruz, the Iranian New Year, with spring replacing winter at the spring equinox (21 March). But it may have a more precise Mazdaean significance, referring to the assault of the evil spirit Akoman on the embodiment of Good Purpose (and cattle), Vohu Manu.

The name Ahura Mazda means Lord of Wisdom, or Wise Lord. The dualism went a long way to resolve the problem of evil that presents such difficulties for the monotheistic religions (the origin of evil in the world was Ahriman, against whom Ahura Mazda struggled for supremacy) and at least initially permitted a strong attachment to the ideas of free will (arising out of the necessity of human beings choosing between good and evil), goodness emerging in good actions, judgement after death, and heaven and hell. Some scholars have suggested that within a few centuries, but at any rate before 600
BCE
, Mazdaism developed in addition a theory of a Messiah—the Saoshyant, who would be born miraculously at
the end of time from a virgin mother and the seed of Zoroaster himself.
⁶
But the dualism implied other difficulties, which emerged later. One such was that of how Ahura Mazda and Ahriman themselves came into existence. To explain this some later followers of the Iranian religion believed in a creator-god, Zurvan (identified with Time, or Fate), who prayed for a son and was rewarded with twins. The twins became Ahura Mazda and Ahriman. This branch of Mazdaism has been called Zurvanism.

It was a characteristic of the new religion that philosophical concepts or categories became personified as heavenly beings or entities—indeed these seem to have proliferated, a little like characters in Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress
. One example is the idea of the
daena
, which according to one later text appeared to the soul of a just man after his death as a beautiful maiden, the personification of all the good works he had done in life, saying:

‘For when, in the world, you saw someone sacrificing to the demon you, instead, started adoring God; and when you saw someone carrying out violence and robbery and afflicting and despising good men and gathering in their substance with evil actions you, instead, avoided treating creatures with violence and robbery; you took care of the just and welcomed them and gave them lodgings and gifts. Whether your wealth came from near or from afar, it was honourably acquired. And when you saw people give false judgements and allowed themselves to be corrupted with money and commit perjury you, instead, undertook to tell the truth and speak righteously. I am your righteous thoughts, your righteous words, your righteous actions, thought, spoken, done by you.’
⁷

Elsewhere the word daena was used to signify religion itself. Another example is the identification of five separate entities belonging to each human being—not just body, soul and spirit but also
adhvenak
and
fravashi
. Adhvenak was the heavenly prototype for each human being, associated with semen and regeneration. The fravashi, though also entities in the spirit world, were more active, associated with the strength of heroes, the protection of the living in life (like guardian angels) and the collection of souls after death (rather like the Valkyries in Germanic mythology). These and other personifications or angels prefigure the role of angels in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also have obvious connections to the idea of forms in Platonism, and many scholars believe Plato was strongly influenced by Mazdaism.