Main article:has been the official religion and part of the governments of since the c. It took another few hundred years for Shia Islam to gather and become a religious and political power in Iran. In the the first Shia state was (780–974) in, a region of north west Africa. Then the dynasty (864–928 AD) became established in (Tabaristan), in northern. The Alavids were of the Shia (sometimes called 'Fiver'.) These dynasties were local. But they were followed by two great and powerful dynasties: which formed in in 909 AD and the emerged in, in north central Iran, about 930 AD and then extended rule over central and western and into until 1048 AD.

Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd. An Introduction to Ancient Iranian Religion Readings from the Avesta and Achaemenid. An Introduction To Ancient Mesopotamian Religion Download Free (EPUB, PDF) In An Introduction to Mesopotamian Religion Tammi J. Schneider offers readers a basic guide to the religion of the peoples living in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers from the beginning of the Bronze Age to the time of Alexander the Great and Darius III.

The Buyid were also Zaidiyyah Shia. See also:The number of Iranian is a matter of dispute. In 2009, there were an estimated 5,000 and 10,000 Mandaeans in Iran, according to the Associated Press, while Alarabiya has put the number of Iranian Mandaeans as high as 60,000 in 2011.Until the, Mandaeans had mainly been concentrated in, where the community historically existed side by side with the local population. They had mainly practiced the profession of goldsmith, passing it from generation to generation. After the fall of the shah, its members faced increased religious discrimination, and many sought new homes in Europe and the Americas.In 2002 the US State Department granted Iranian Mandaeans protective refugee status; since then roughly 1,000 have emigrated to the US, now residing in cities such as. On the other hand, the Mandaean community in Iran has increased in size over the last decade, because of the exodus from of the main Mandaean community, which once was 60,000–70,000 strong.Christianity.

Main article:in has had a long history, dating back to the very early years of the faith. And the region is thought to have affected Christianity as well with perhaps the introduction of the concept of. There are some very old churches in Iran – perhaps the oldest and largest is the, which is also called the Ghara Kelissa (the Black Monastery), south of. By far the largest group of Christians in Iran are Armenians under the which has between 110,000, 250,000, and 300,000 adherents. There are many hundreds of Christian churches in Iran, with at least 600 being active serving the nation's Christian population. The Armenian church is currently as of early 2015 organized under, who has succeeded, the Armenian Apostolic Archbishop since at least the 1980s. Unofficial estimates for the Christian population range between 20,000, and 70,000.

Christian groups outside the country estimate the size of the Protestant Christian community to be fewer than 10,000, although many may practice in secret. There are approximately 20,000 Christians who left after the 1979 revolution.Christianity has always been a minority religion, overshadowed by the majority — in the past, and today. Christians of Iran have played a significant part in the history of. While always a minority the Armenian Christians have had an autonomy of educational institutions such as the use of their language in schools.

The Government regards the as Christians, and they are included among the three recognized religious minorities; however, Mandaeans do not consider themselves Christians.Christian population estimations range between 300,000 and 370,000 adherents; one estimate suggests a range between 100,000 and 500,000 Christian believers from a Muslim background living in Iran, most of them evangelical Christians. Of the three non-Muslim religions recognized by the Iranian government, the 2011 General Census indicated that Christianity was the largest in the nation.The small evangelical Protestant Christian minority in Iran has been subject to Islamic 'government suspicion and hostility' according to Human Rights Watch at least in part because of its 'readiness to accept and even seek out Muslim converts' as well as for its Western origins. According to in the 1990s, two Muslim converts to Christianity who had become ministers were sentenced to death for apostasy and other charges. There still have not been any reported executions of apostates. However many people, such as, have been recently harassed, jailed and sentenced to death for Apostasy.Yarsanism. Main article:is one of the oldest religions practiced in Iran and dates back to the late biblical times. The biblical books of, and contain references to the life and experiences of Jews in Persia.Iran is said to support by far the largest Jewish population of any Muslim country, although the Jewish communities in and are of comparable size.

In recent decades, the Jewish population of Iran has been reported by some sources to be 25,000, though estimates vary, as low as 11,000 and as high as 40,000. According to the Iranian census data from 2011 the number of Jews in Iran was 8,756, much lower than the figure previously estimated.Emigration has lowered the population of 75,000 to 80,000 Jews living in Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic revolution. According to The World Jewish Library, most Jews in Iran live in, (3,000),. Reported is home to ten Jewish families, six of them related by marriage, however some estimate the number is much higher.

Historically, Jews maintained a presence in many more Iranian cities.Today, the largest groups of Jews from Iran are found in the which is home to approximately 100,000 Iranian Jews, who have settled especially in the area and area. Is home to 75,000 Iranian Jews, including second-generation Israelis. Hinduism.

Main article:There is a very small community of Sikhs in Iran numbering about 60 families mostly living in Tehran. Many of them are Iranian citizens. They also run a gurdwara in Tehran.Sikhism in Iran is so uncommon amongst the families that many citizens of Tehran are not even aware of the gurdwara in their city. This is due to Tehran being the capitol of Iran and the reputation that Iran has of being intolerant towards religions other than Shia. The United Nations has repeatedly accused Iran of persecuting citizens based off of their religion. Although the Sikhs of Iran experience persecution like many other minority religions they are still envied by those other minority groups. Regular worshippers in Tehran have even stated that they feel no discrimination at all from fellow citizens of Tehran.Sikhs began migrating to Iran around the start of the 20th century from British controlled areas of India that eventually became Pakistan.

They originally settled in Eastern Iran and slowly moved towards Tehran. Before the Iranian Revolution of 1979 the Sikh community was believed to be as many as 5,000 strong, but after the revolution and the Iraqi war the numbers declined. Part of this exodus out of Iran was attributed to the new laws and restrictions on religion put in place by the new Iranian government.Currently there are four gurdwaras in Iran. Tehran, Mashhad, Zahidan, and Bushehr. Every Friday morning and evening they participate in prayers, and Guru-Ka-Langer every Friday after the Akhand Path. They also participate in community service by establishing schools, and teaching young students Punjabi and Dharmik (Divinity). With the dwindling number of Sikhs in the area the school attached to the gurdwara's in Iran have been opened to non-Sikhs.

The majority of the students still come from India or surrounding countries. Religious freedom.

Book Description:When Persia fell to Islam in the mid-seventh century, the ancient Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism all but disappeared (although it is still practiced by small groups in India and Iran). As one of the dominant religions of antiquity, it influenced the Judeo-Christian tradition as well as some forms of gnosticism. Despite its age and venerable place in the history of world religions, Zoroastrianism remains little known outside of a few philologists and historians of religion. Because of the difficulty of translation, there is little primary textual material available for nonspecialists; the few translations that do exist are quite old.x000BIn An Introduction to Ancient Iranian Religion, William Malandra provides not only modern English translations of the sacred texts but also a comprehensive introduction to the subject of Zoroastrianism itself.

In an introductory essay Malandra outlines the main features of Zoroastrianism in its historical, cultural, and spiritual setting. His new translations of readings from the Avesta, the sacred book of Zoroastrianism, and selections from the Achaemenid inscriptions of the great kings Darius and Xerxes are accompanied by interpretive notes that allow students to make their way through this difficult material. This book is, therefore, not just a collection of texts but a self-contained introduction to Zoroastrianism that can be used by the nonspecialist without recourse to additional interpretive works.

Before the Buddha, before Christ and Muhammad, in a remote area of Iran a unique individual emerged from the anonymity of his traditional tribal culture to preach a new gospel, one that was destined to become the foundation of Iranian spirituality for more than a millennium. Like the Buddha, Christ, and Muhammad, he had the vision of transforming his inherited religion into a new faith.

His name was Zarathushtra (Zoroaster in the West), and the religious vision to which he gave expression is known as Zoroastrianism, a religion whose roots go back to the beginning of the second millennium b.c. As with Mithra, so with Rashnu, the starting point for an understanding of his nature is understanding the meaning of his name. It means ‘judge’ and in its appellative sense is also applied once to Mithra (Yt. The name is derived from a verbal base raz-s ‘to direct, make straight, judge’, which also provides Rashnu’s standing epithet razishta‘straightest, most just’. The same verb in Indo-European,. reĝ, was highly productive, yielding, for example, NHG Recht‘law’ and Richter‘judge’, and in Latin, Celtic, and Old Indian the common word for ‘king’ (see below). As divine Judge, he seems to.

It is immediately clear from the most cursory reading of Yasht 14 that Wǝrǝthraghna is a god of combat, of physical force. The name itself, which means ‘victory’, stands in need of further elucidation in order that one may achieve an understanding of the god’s basic nature. ‘Victory’, which is the translation given in the traditional Zoroastrian commentaries, is an accurate yet colorless approximation. The name is a compound consisting of a prior member wǝrǝthraand a final member ghna. The element wǝrǝthra means ‘defense, resistance, obstruction’; ghna means ‘the smashing, breaking, smiting’. Together they form a neuter noun meaning. One of the most complex and unusual phenomena of Zoroastrianism is that of the Frawashis.

The Frawashis, for reasons to be given, are guardian spirits, which play three quite distinct roles. In one aspect, they are a band of ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine powerful deities whose functions and modes of operation are various.

In their second aspect, which in actual practice, as opposed to literary reference, may have been as or more important than the first, they are ancestor spirits. Finally, the frawashi is one of the spiritual elements of the human personality. The meaning of the word frawashi. Deeply rooted in Indo-Iranian religion was the belief in the extreme sanctity of water in general and specifically of bodies of water, especially rivers. Like other divinized elements of the material world, the waters must be understood from the religious perspective to be at once a physical entity and a divine reality.

For the ancient Iranians water was never a neutral, objective substance, but rather substance and divinity in one. Herodotus tells the—from the Greek perspective—ridiculous story of how Xerxes, furious at the Hellespont for having wrecked the Persian bridge across it, had it flogged with three hundred. Sraosha is a deity who, at least from the time of Zarathushtra, has played an important role in Iranian religion.

His worship was so deep-rooted in Iranian religious custom that he survived Islam to continue in an altered state as the angel Surōsh. He is also the only deity to have two Yashts dedicated to him, namely Yasna 57 and Yasht 11 (Srōsh Yasht Hadhōxt). He name itself, derived from the verb ‘to hear’ ( sru-), means something like ‘obedience, discipline’.

Unlike many abstract deities who, like the Amǝsha Spǝntas, have quite empty personalities, god Obedience is a flesh-and-blood figure of. Despite the relative wealth of information furnished by Yasht 8, the deity to whom it pertains remains, in many respects, something of a mystery.

He has no immediately apparent counterpart in the Rgveda, nor is any trace of him to be found in Old Iranian religion outside of the Avesta. In the Pahlavi books he is frequently confused with another astral deity, Tīr, but sometimes, in astrological texts, he is pitted against Tīr as his archenemy. He is normally identified as the star Sirius, yet the myth of his conflict with Apaosha, involving his ability to provide the earth with.

Two elements stand at the very center of Indo-Iranian ritual. They are haoma/ somaand fire. From the times of the Avesta and the Vedas down to the present day, the major Zoroastrian and Vedic rituals have been inseparable from these elements. Avestan haoma (OPers hauma, MPers hōm, OInd soma, IIr.sauma) is a word whose meaning is as clear as anyone could wish.

It is a noun derived with a suffix - ma- from a verb hu-/hau- (. su-/sau-), which means ‘to press or extract (juice from something)’. Therefore, haoma is simply ‘the thing which has been pressed, pressing, i.e., juice’. In the popular conception of Zoroastrianism, fire worship is one of the most prominent features of the religion. The characterization of Zoroastrians as fire worshippers is quite old, as fire played an important role in Zoroastrianism, especially as it evolved in Sasanid times. As important as fire is to the religion, its importance can be overstated.

To judge by the evidence provided by our Old Iranian sources, fire was not an especially important component of the religion in terms, at least, of its intellectual expression. Although there is a hazard in making an all too sharp division between a religion’s. For religious man generally, and for the Zoroastrian in particular, the paired concepts of purity and pollution play an exceptionally important role in daily life.

Most activities are carefully circumscribed by rules whose purpose is to protect the individual, the religious community, and even nature at large from pollution. It should be kept in mind from the outset, however, that when one speaks of purity and pollution one is not necessarily speaking with reference to hygiene as we understand it today.

Although it is true that many rules concerning purity and pollution do in fact correspond to modern scientific notions. Yima has already appeared in numerous places (e.g., Y. 19.31-38 pp. It is now time to examine closely this complex and important figure. At the outset, one must be reminded that, as in so many cases, the Avesta does not provide one with a simple, primitive myth, but develops a complicated mythic complex whose component parts betray a multiplicity of origins and also of interrelated though variant themes.It is a firmly established fact that the myth of Yama (Av Yima) is proto-Indo-European in origin.

Not only does he appear in the Indian.