The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2770 page)

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Zoroastrianism
.

The religion of the followers of the prophet known in the West as
Zoroaster
(Zarathustra to his followers). However, by the 7th cent. BCE, his teaching had spread across the Iran plateau, and when Cyrus the Great established the Persian Empire in the 6th cent., Zoroastrianism became the official state religion and so held sway from N. India to Greece and Egypt.
In the 3rd cent. there was a revolt when the Sasanians from the SW of the country, Persia proper, overthrew the Parthian northerners. They legitimated their rebellion by presenting their rule as a reassertion of Zoroastrian power, publicity which has affected generations of W. scholars (e.g. R. C.
Zaehner's
Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism
, 1961). The Sasanian era was perhaps the time of the greatest courtly splendour in Iran. The monarchs threw their considerable power behind the official priesthood (magi), so Church and State were spoken of as ‘brothers, born of one womb and never to be divided’. Once the authority of the chief priests had been declared, deviance from their teaching became not only
heresy
, but treason. Whether that teaching was what historians consider ‘orthodox’ Zoroastrianism may be doubted. It seems rather to have been the ‘heresy’ of Zurvanism (
Zurvan
), which not only contravened traditional Zoroastrian teaching on free will, but also questioned the essential goodness of the material world. The Sasanian period is the only era in Zoroastrian history where there is clear evidence of the oppression of other religions. Whether this was royal fervour or Zurvanite teaching is not known, but there were attempts to convert or suppress Jews and Christians (
Naujote
).
The 1,200 years of Zoroastrian imperial history came to an end in the 7th cent. CE with the rise of Islam. The last Zoroastrian king, Yazdegird III, fled and was killed by one of his own people in 652. After the initial conquest, the imposition of Muslim rule on the lives of the people was a gradual affair. There was some ambivalence over the position of Zoroastrianism as a religion of the book (
ahl al-kit
b
), though in Islamic times the
Avesta
had emerged as the holy text of the religion. Ever-increasing Muslim oppression forced the diminishing number of Zoroastrians to retreat from the big cities near trade routes to the desert cities of Yazd and Kerman and their neighbouring villages. In the 10th cent., a band of Zoroastrians left the homeland to seek a new land of religious freedom, and settled in India where they are known as the
Parsis
, or the people from Pars (Persia).
In 20th cent. Iran, the Zoroastrians experienced a revival of their fortunes. Due largely to the efforts of a Parsi, Manekji Limji Hataria, the
jizya
had been removed in 1882, and grinding poverty was eased. He and others laboured hard to make educational and medical provisions for the oppressed Zoroastrians, so that, at the start of the 20th cent., they had improved in learning, health, and wealth as a number of merchants began to flourish. In 1906, a parliament, the Majles, was established and a Zoroastrian was elected. In 1909, all minorities were given one representative, including the Zoroastrian representative, Kay Khosrow Shahrokh. When the Majles deposed the last Qajar monarch and enthroned the prime minister as Reza Shah Pahlavi, the physical circumstances of Zoroastrians improved considerably. They were generally seen as the true, the ancient, Iranians, and were recognized as reliable, industrious, and able.
When the Islamic Republic under Ayatollah
Khumayni
assumed power in 1979, many Zoroastrians feared for their future. Those who remained in the homeland have not suffered the persecution they feared, but their rights in law are not equal to those of Muslims; their opportunities in education and the professions are restricted. Always there is the fear of an outbreak of fanaticism. The future of the world's oldest prophetic religion in its homeland seems delicately poised as the third millennium begins.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1452–1515).
Historian and astronomer. Zucuto was the author of the astronomical work,
Ha-Hibbur ha-Gadol
, under the patronage of the bishop of Salamanca. After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, he settled first in Portugal (where he advised Vasco da Gama) and then N. Africa. He also wrote
Sefer ha-Yuhasin
, a history of the
oral law
based largely on original research, on which Moses b. Israel
Isserles
subsequently wrote notes (publ. 1580).

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(Heb., ‘pairs’). The pairs of Jewish
sages
who maintained the chain of
oral law
. The zugot are seen as the link between the
prophets
and the
tannaim
(
Pe’ah
2. 6).

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search