Zoroastrians after the Arab Conquest

The Arab conquest ended Zoroastrianism’s position as the state religion of Iran, but it did not end the religion. Under Muslim rule Zoroastrians became a protected but taxed minority, and Iran’s population turned Muslim slowly, over roughly three centuries, while some Zoroastrians kept their faith in Iran and others migrated to India, where they became the Parsis.

From state church to minority

Under the Sasanians, Zoroastrianism had a powerful priesthood, great royal fire temples and a close bond with the monarchy, as described on Zoroastrianism under the Sasanians. The conquest removed the king, the court and the state revenues that had supported much of this. The religion survived, but as the faith of local communities rather than of the empire.

The conquerors had to decide how to treat a religion that was not mentioned among the “People of the Book” in the usual sense. Early Islamic tradition settled the matter by treating Zoroastrians, called Majus (Magians) in Arabic, like Jews and Christians: they could keep their religion on payment of the jizya. A report attributed to the Prophet, that the Magians of Bahrain should be treated in the same way as the People of the Book, was widely cited in support.

Treaties, taxes and fire temples

The surrender treaties recorded by al-Baladhuri often guaranteed the inhabitants their lives, property and religion in return for tribute. Many fire temples stayed in use; the 10th-century geographers still describe working temples in Fars and elsewhere. Others were turned into mosques, especially in the garrison cities, and there are reports of temples destroyed during revolts or in campaigns of the 8th and 9th centuries.

The jizya was a real burden and a mark of lower status, and later rules, applied unevenly, required dhimmis to wear distinctive clothing and forbade them to build new places of worship. How far these rules were enforced varied greatly by period and place. The picture is of pressure and discrimination that grew over time, rather than a single moment of forced conversion.

How fast did Iran become Muslim

This is one of the most argued questions in early Islamic history, because the sources record conversions only for a small and unusual part of the population. The best-known attempt to measure it is by Richard Bulliet, in Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period (1979). Bulliet counted the moment Muslim names appear in family trees preserved in biographical dictionaries of Iranian cities, mostly scholars from Nishapur and elsewhere. His curve shows few conversions under the Umayyads, a sharp rise after the Abbasid revolution of 750, and a population that was about 80 percent or more Muslim by around 950.

Bulliet’s method has been criticised and refined. His data come from an urban, educated elite, so they may not reflect villages and remote regions; some areas, such as parts of Fars, Kerman and the Caspian, clearly kept large Zoroastrian populations for longer. Historians such as Jamsheed Choksy and Michael Morony stress that conversion was a social process: people converted to keep jobs in the administration, to avoid the jizya, to join the ruling class, through marriage, or out of conviction, and the balance of motives differed by region and century. What is not in serious dispute is that conversion was gradual.

A Zoroastrian revival in writing

Paradoxically, much of the Zoroastrian literature that survives was written down under Muslim rule. In the 9th and 10th centuries priests in Fars and Iraq compiled the Denkard, an encyclopaedia of the religion, the Bundahishn on creation, and works of argument such as the Shkand-gumanig wizar, which defends dualism against Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Manichaeism. These texts, in Middle Persian, show a community working to explain its faith in a world where it was no longer dominant. The background is on Middle Persian language and literature.

Religious movements also mixed old and new. Around 747 a preacher called Behafarid in Khorasan proclaimed a reformed Zoroastrianism and was condemned by the Zoroastrian priests themselves; he was put to death by Abu Muslim, as told on Abu Muslim and the Abbasid revolution.

The journey to India

Some Zoroastrians left. The Parsi community of western India traces its origin to a group that sailed from Iran and landed at Sanjan on the coast of Gujarat, where a local ruler allowed them to settle on conditions. The main account is the Qissa-i Sanjan, a Persian poem written by a Parsi priest in 1599, many centuries after the events. Its chronology is unclear, and scholars have proposed dates for the landing anywhere from the early 8th to the 10th century. Archaeology at Sanjan has confirmed an early medieval trading settlement with links to the Persian Gulf. The sacred fire the Parsis consecrated, the Iranshah, now burns at Udvada.

The community in Iran

In Iran itself Zoroastrian communities lasted longest in the desert cities of Yazd and Kerman and their villages. Over the following centuries their numbers fell and their situation depended heavily on the ruler of the day, as described on Zoroastrianism through the ages. The modern community and its sites are covered on Yazd and the Yazd fire temple and towers of silence.

Competing memories

Few subjects in Iranian history are as charged. Some Iranian nationalist writing, and Zoroastrian tradition, describes the conquest as a catastrophe followed by forced conversion. Muslim religious accounts often present conversion as a willing acceptance of a message that Iranians found convincing. The evidence supports neither extreme on its own: there was violence and discrimination, and there was also long coexistence, voluntary conversion and a deep Iranian contribution to Islamic civilisation. Historians try to keep both in view.