Non-Zoroastrian Women in Sasanian Court and Their Influence on Minority-Religion Policies in Iran (original) (raw)
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The Situation of Women in Sasanian Iran : Reflections on the Story of Bahr ā
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The concept of history of which the Zoroastrian priests and their secretaries were in charge in the Sasanian period was different from what is known as history nowadays. History was a means of education, glorification of kings, and preservation of the social order. Acts, myths, and legends were intertwined in historical accounts. Thus, historians were in a privileged position to modify history in favour of its educational aims, or even to make history more impressive by using rhetorical and figurative language such as metaphors and hyperboles. It is commonly believed that the situation of women in Iran in the Sasanian era had improved more significantly than that in the rest of the world, and that the women were better treated than in all previous epochs of Iran’s history. But there is a story about the king Bahrām Gōr that testifies to tyranny and injustice towards women. It is a hunting story where Barhām Gōr cruelly causes the death of one of his mistresses, who was in his compan...
A Most Orthodox Empire? Priestly Discourse in Sasanian Iran and Beyond
Journal of the American Oriental Society , 2024
This article explores a specific case of premodern social thought, the Middle Persian Zoroastrian system of estates, MP pēšagān, sg. pēšag, which originated in Sasanian Iran, and its link to the social position of priests in the empire. It is argued that Zoroastrian religious experts tried to impose a totalizing system of social organization and heuristic possibility in a situation characterized by competition for resources in a tributary society. Against a widely held belief, it will be shown that this system was only loosely based on an Avestan predecessor-an observation that should caution against broader attempts to project Middle Persian concepts onto the Avesta and vice versa. The findings also contribute to our understanding of the relationship between the Sasanians and the Zoroastrian tradition .
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Tehran University, 2014
As Christianity developed in the western regions of Iran during the Sasanian period, a large minority of Christians was formed in this border region. As a consequence of the religious alignment of the Roman Empire from the 4th century AD, followed by Byzantium with Christians, the Sassanid government considered the Christians in these areas as an influential factor in weakening the structure of the Sassanid government, despite the fact that they were Christian; as a result of the often dark political relations between the Iranian and Byzantine governments, Christians in western Iran were able to gain a special place in history by participating in the political and religious relations between both governments. Furthermore, their close relationship with the Sassanid court helped preserve Christianity in western Iran until Sassanid rule ended. Hence, the present study examines religious developments in the West and how they affect relations with the Sassanid government of Iran, along with how Christianity spread during the Parthian period and how religious centers influenced its expansion in the Sassanid era. This study also discusses the independence of the Iranian Church from the Byzantine state church, the dispersion of Christians in western Iran and the establishment of their church in the highlands, the internal differences among Iranian Christians, and the factors contributing to the stability of Christianity in Iran's western regions until the end of the Sasanian period. Along with the work of foreign researchers and Christian chroniclers of the first century AD, the works of Islamic historians and writers are also considered in this study. Using a descriptive-analytical approach, this historical research analyzes data collected from written sources.
The shahs of the early Sasanian dynasty faced the challenge of establishing their legitimacy as the rulers of an imperial polity after rising to power through military insurrection. The early shahs of the dynasty sought to locate themselves within the religious, mythic, and historical context to link themselves to the glorious rulers and dynasties of Iranian myth and history, while simultaneously espousing Mazdean virtue. Through the concepts of Ērānšahr and Farr, the notion of the territorial unity of the Mazda-worshiping peoples prescribed in the Avesta and the divinely-bestowed glory of rulers, respectively, the motivations that underlaid Sasanian statecraft during the first four generations of the dynasty are contextualized. The idea of Ērānšahr as a sacrosanct territorial delimitation of the homelands of the Mazdean peoples was first employed to validate and legitimize the rebellion of the Sasanians against the Parthian Aškānīān dynasty. After the civil war that established Ardašīr I as šāhanšāh, the defense of Ērānšahr as both a tangible expanse of territory and a religious concept was used to justify punitive and retaliatory military action in the west against the Roman Empire, as well as to acquire the Central Asian holdings of the Kushan Empire. The claim to the sole possession of Farr was similarly employed to justify first rebellion, and then conflicts with the Kushan Empire, whose own rulers claimed Farr from Mazdean divinities. Establishing the religious, mythic, and historical contexts to which the early Sasanian dynasts were subject illuminates the motivations for imperial policy and allows the scrutiny of those policies and actions to transcend the biases inherent in non-Iranian sources for the period. Furthermore, privileging autochthonous sculptural, epigraphic,and numismatic productions produces an innovative analysis of early Sasanian statecraft cognizant of, and rooted within, Iranian cultural paradigms.
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