Islam and Mazdaeism

About Some Grave Syncretical Attempts

Wednesday 18 October 2006, by Paul du BREUIL
Having indicated in my works the influence exercised by Mazdaeo-Zoroastrianism u
pon the other religions, we cannot ignore that Islam, conqueror through force of
Iran and Mazdaeism from the 7th to the 9th centuries (the period of the last Pa
rsi resistances in Khorassan), finished up being subject to the cultural imprint
of ancient Iran. [*]
It is, however, appropriate to re-establish the historical facts in their tragic
and cruel reality.
The Mazdaean minorities which were not sided with Khorassan for organizing resis
tance to the invader withdrew into closed communities. For some centuries they w
ere able to maintain a clandestine activity in the rural districts. Whilst certa
in fire-temples discreetly kept to their worship, it was in Fars province that t
he theologians preserved their religious knowledge in the Pahlavi writings. Bein
g faced with the majority establishment of the Islamic faith and to forestall ma
ssive conversions, this resurgence of the Mazdaean religious culture culminated
in the 8th and 9th centuries (2nd and 3rd of the Hegira). It was, nevertheless,
soon followed by a massive exodus of Zoroastrians who, refusing conversion or th
e status and capitation (jizya) of infidels (dhimmi), fled towards Gujarat (8th/
10th centuries) where they founded the Parsi colonies of India.
At the same period a nostalgic new literature of ancient Mazdaean Iran arose in
the Iranian east, an intellectual step marked by Firdausi s incomparable Shah Nama
h.
But the Arab authors and historians manifestly wished to ignore the culture of a
ncient Mazdaean Iran whose riches were appropriated by Islam in crushing the Sas
sanian empire. It suffices to mention the names of scholars, astronomers, mathem
aticians, doctors and philosophers of origin, to ascertain that the whole of the
intellectual prestige of early Islamic civilization came from Iran, through the
direct cultural borrowing of the Muslim occupier from the Mazdaean occupied, an
d by the inclinations of new dynasties favourable to Mazdaean thought, like the
Barmacids who contributed to the accession to power of the Abbasids, the Samanid
s and the Buyids.
If early medieval Islam transmitted this cultural heritage to the west, with the
collapse of the Musulman empire divided and weakened since the 8th century, and
after repeated blows of the Mongols and the Crusades, Islamic decadence followe
d the end of Persian influence (Baghdad 1258-1401) and was to darken into obscur
antism.
But from the beginnings of Islam in Iran (at Kufa and Basra), it was Manichaeism
, much tended to be eclipsed because it no longer existed, which had played the
role of catalyst between Iranian thinking and Islamic dogmas
in particular with
the notions of spiritual light , column of light , light of Mahomet , etc. [1]
One cannot follow in their isolated developments the Muslim authors who had stri
ven to recoup some religious concepts from ancient Persia into Iranian Islam, an
d to pass over in silence the sufferings of the Mazdaean folk crushed by centuri
es of physical and doctrinal occupation, to the gain of a Persian esoterism whic
h had borrowed from the Zoroastrians whatever had made it great. With the help o
f Sufi syncretism, Ismaili gnosis and certain theological schools (Isfahan), enr
iched by neo-Platonism, elaborated a Shi ite theosophy peculiarly tinged with Mani

chaean and Mazdaeo-Zoroastrian ideas. The concept of the Khvarenah. inspired the
Ismaili A. Y. Sejestani (10th century), then above all the theosophy of Light o
f the 12th century S. Y. Sohrawardi, called the Shaikh al-Ishraq , and the oriental
theosophies (Ishraqiyun) which followed until the philosophical school of Molla S
adra Shirazi (17th century).
These closed circles claimed to restore within an Islamic milieu the ancient Zoroa
strian wisdom ever represented by the Zardushtis of Iran and the Parsis of India
who ignored these minority syncretic ventures [2].
Henry Corbin, a French specialist in Islamism and the religions of Arabia, had d
evoted an important part of his studies to Persian Islam in which he accords, af
ter the German Max Horten [3] a particular and remarkable role to Shihaboddin Ya
hya Sohrawardi (1155-1191), in fact a role truly overestimated by the French sch
olar.
Sohrawardi had well concealed the Avestic origin of his borrowings, it remaining
no less true that he could not resuscitate a religion to which he did not belong
and whose followers still exist, not solely under the Muslim occupation of Iran,
but also in India. Noting the inevitable misunderstanding H. Corbin did not for
all that, linger over the Zoroastrians in Iran or in exile, and still continued
to call Sohrawardi the resurrector of the wisdom of ancient Persia or of the Zoroa
strian theosophy of ancient Persia [4].
In this respect, it is most surprising to read that Sohrawardi, the shaikh al-Ish
raq himself explains in commenting on the presentation of his school s theosophy (t
ranslated from the Persian):
If there are certain obscurities in my propositions, it is not because my wr
iting is difficult; know, however, that all the ancient philosophers before me,
being affeared of ignorant people, expressed their ideas through arcane means wh
ose allusions are grasped by erudite folk. To explain our philosophy, we have ga
infully utilized Light and Darkness. And you should not think that this referenc
e to Light and Darkness is connected with Mani, the unbelievers and Zoroastrians
, because in the end the propositions of those folk lead to the denial of religi
on and culminate in dualism [the underscoring is ours]. [5]
Can one find a more flagrant refutation of the supposed recuperation of the anci
ent Zoroastrian wisdom by Sohrawardi? Let us not start to pretend that the secon
d part of the discourse condemns the Zoroastrians solely through fear of Koranic
orthodoxy. The discourse is sufficiently clear and the first part displays a me
thod of dissimulation whose avowal was already dangerously subversive in the eye
s of the mollahs, rendering all other subterfuge unnecessary.
Had Sohrawardi wished to distance himself from the non-Muslim heretics to be fav
ourably regarded by the mollahs, he could have rejected the dualists and unbeliever
s , but nothing obliged him to pinpoint the subjected minority Zardushtis (Zoroast
rians) who had formerly fought against Manichaeism and came to be regarded, exce
ptionally, as People of the Book , Ahl al-kitab, by Iranian Islam. His error shows
too that he mistakenly confounded the fundamental monotheism of the Avesta with
Zurvanite dualism. Some obvious errors arise from his criticism of Zoroastrianis
m. The Zoroastrian doctrine was different
non-dualist
and opposed to many an ide
a of Manichaeism. As to the placing in parallel with that of the unbelievers , it i
s the very depths for one of the oldest and most venerable theist faiths in the
world! Besides, the Zoroastrian faith hinged upon the worship of Truth (Rta/Arta
/Asha) known even to the great Greek authors (Plato, Xenophon, Strabo), as a fun
damental ethic of the ancient Persian wisdom which Sohrawardi had not retained (
?) and who nevertheless denounced all subterfuge tending to dissimulate the sour
ce which nourished his own philosophy, whilst rejecting the pre-Islamic religion
s concerned as miscreated and heretical

This capital text of Sohrawardi s effectively shows that he had only the feeblest
knowledge of the Zoroastrian religion which he accused of dualism (?) Most of al
l it proves that far from claiming kinship with Zoroastrianism, this Muslim grav
ely confounded (and reproved) the followers of Mani, dualists and atheists alike
as Zoroastrians !
Against what H. Corbin believed to have grasped from Sohrawardi as the will to co
ntinue the heritage of the Prophet and the Sages of Iran because he utilized part
of Avestic terminology to construct his very personal theosophy of Light, that
which this Sunnite mystic, born in Azarbaijan and died in Syria, speaks of here
is seen to be confirmed by the differences between Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism a
nd the thinking of the shaikh al-Ishraq , in fact truly Sohrawardian, and its lacun
ae [6].
Besides, can the metaphysical speculations of Muslim mystics suggest mutatis mut
andis that there could have been an assent or spiritual continuity from Mazdaean
Iran to Shi ite Iran, on the pretext that the second had unilaterally and in isol
ation recuperated certain concepts from the first? It is evident that the Shi ite
authors who had brought about this intellectual fantasy, had taken from Zoroastr
ianism whatever had served their very peculiar vision of Shi ism, without lingerin
g further on everything which, in the Avesta, totally went against this offensiv
e assimilation of Mazdaean elements kneaded into an Islamic doctrine. By way of
example, that Sohrawardi believed himself the resurrector of the wisdom of ancien
t Persia (H. Corbin), is an ill-considered formula to reduce the old Zoroastrian
religion, ever-present in Iran and India, to Islamo-neo-Platonic speculations an
d to the later mix of Book IV of the Denkart, whereas the authentic Mazdaean rel
igion and its descendants are purely and simply covered over in the operation.
H. Corbin wrote: Sohrawardi, repatriating (?) the Hellenized Magi into an Iran be
come Islamic, marked eo facto the integration of the Iranian epic with the Abrah
amic tradition is hustling things somewhat, when all an occupied people and an et
hnic group in diaspora still remain the legitimate heirs of the Iranian epic, an
integral part of their religion and their history.
It is true that Zoroaster s religion knew of many trials and regenerations of this
kind throughout history, particularly in an Abrahamic setting?
To associate Sufism or Shi ite mysticism with early Mazdaeism is to commit a serio
us confusion between an esoteric movement of a mystical vocation and an ancient
mother-religion with a life-affirming philosophy and of the world whose ethic is
opposed to contemplative Muslim asceticism.
Without doubting the spiritual values of Sufism, all attempts at identification
of this movement of ascetic piety and renunciation of the world can only be made
with Mazdaeism aside from a sound knowledge of the religion of Zarathushtra and
its virile ethics. Above all, this syncretist procedure collides against the in
ability of the Muslim movement to emerge from Arabism and to distance itself fro
m Koranic dogmatism, in particular the Shahadah, abridgement of the Sufi doctrine
and method and to rid itself of its religious tradition, notably its spiritual f
iliations ascending directly to the Prophet through Hasan and Ali [7].
To sustain this thesis, one should retain of the Avestic thinking only what serv
es a particular vision, and build an isolated syncretism contradicted by inheren
t doctrines and events. It is also to seriously confound two radically different
cultures: one a fundamentally agricultural society with elaborated structures w
here since Zarathushtra s times the woman had a status unique in antiquity, and a
nomadic and trading society, scorning land cultivation, practising slavery and e
xtolling absolute masculine priority.

The Muslim thinkers who speculated on this philosophical fusion disregarded the
Zoroastrians of Iran who were subjected to the persecutions and daily vexations
of the occupier as well as those of the sizeable Indian diaspora [8]. Moreover,
they remained entirely in the margin of the Zoroastrian ethic which they claimed
to fulfil in their Koranic schema. Thus, the Avestic good thoughts (humata) whi
ch they thought to possess in secretly restoring Zarathushtra s thinking within a Mu
slim surrounding, they completely lacked its good utterances (hukhta) and even mo
re its good actions (huvarshta), meditation upon which urged them to act in favo
ur of dispossessed Zoroastrians. This was also to ignore that the Pars is taken
refuge in India had to intervene in favour of their Iranian cousins to the exten
t of obtaining the quashing in 1882 of the shameful jizya (the tax paid by infid
els) imposed upon them by the Islamic regime from the time of the Arab conquest
[9].
Above all, it hardly needs to be stated
n in a hostile medium in the guise of a
and singularly different syncretism of
, in its very principles, is opposed to

that one cannot claim to restore a religio

metaphysics elaborated upon an arbitrary
this mystique, and to refuse to see what
this spiritual assimilation.

How, for example, can one not invoke the Pahlavi books which, from the early cen
turies of Arab occupation, bear traces of an apologist confrontation with Islam,
in particular with the speculative kalam of the Mu tazilites? [10]
For defending the validity of these metaphysical connexions, can one disregard t
he typically Indo-Iranian structure of the Avesta? Or fail to recognize the Indo
-European culture to the point of wishing to fuse together two such contradictor
y ideologies? Or again, to imagine that the tri-functional division of Indo-Euro
pean religions and societies (demonstrated by Georges Dumezil) was assimilable b
y Islamic structures and the Koranic religion?
Even better, if there exists within Mazdaeism a concept truly irreducible to all
Islamization, it is indeed that of the Victorious Light, of the Khvarenah (Pers
ian Farrah), of the Iranian Glory which belongs to Ahura Mazda , and not to Allah and
his Prophet, and which the demon Azhi Dahaka (Zohak) who in the Avesta represen
ted the Arab race (sic) sought to vainly seize [11]. Now, the theme of Victorious
Light is very precisely the philosophy most laid claim to by the Muslim ishraqiyu
n theosophists [12]. This Aryan and Mazdaean Glory (airyanem hvareno mazdadhatem) i
s unseizable (Yasht 19.45), which is to say it belongs to the sacred and inviolabl
e heritage of pre-Islamic Mazdaean Iran ( to the Aryan peoples, born and to be bor
n and to the saintly Zarathushtra ), and not only to the Kayanid sovereigns nor to
the Caliph of God upon His Earth [13]. The Iranian Glory may only come back to a
sovereign, a tradition or a regime legitimately Mazdaean, and only in the inheri
ting of the Zoroastrian religion upto the Saoshyant (Soshans), the Saviour desce
nded from Zarathushtra [14].
According to H. Corbin, Sohrawardi was conversant with the three spiritual categ
ories of the Mazdaean Glory [15] Thereupon, a question arises: Did Sohrawardi an
d other claimants to this important Mazdaean concept in Iranian Islam know of th
e inviolable restrictions of the Avesta as outlined above? Interesting as is the
thinking of Sohrawardi, whom the author does not reckon among the great ones of
Persian philosophical history (see A. A. Halabi, op. cit.), its synthesis being
everything one could wish for, it is not all from Zoroastrianism.
To invoke and sublimate these borrowings of Avestic dogmas and concepts by Shi ite
Islam, must one disregard as many specialists on ancient Iran as specialists on
Muslim philosophy as H. Corbin claimed? [16] Indeed, the reason of this non-scien
tific proposition is that this daring theory has neither historical ground nor h
as it ever been accepted by the Zoroastrians themselves, because it merely lays
on a tiny Shi ite hermeneutical attempt at abusive syncretism.

If it is true that theological and philosophical elements from ancient Persia ha

d transformed the thinking of Islam since the early centuries of its installatio
n in Iran, it may be doubted that the theosophical speculations on Zoroastrian w
isdom, transposed into an esoterical Islamic terminology, had rendered Shi ism com
parable with, and/or superior to Zoroastrianism.
Before the Islamic revolution in Iran, by forgetting history one could ignore th
e reality of Shi ism. Above all, should one disregard the excesses to which the fo
llowers of this religious and political sect had so often abandoned themselves s
ince the beginnings of the Shi ah [17].
Must one also pass over in silence the lucid and prophetic judgement of the wise
Montesquieu in the Esprit des Lois: the religion of the Gabars (the Zoroastrians
) had formerly made the kingdom of Persia to flourish: it corrected the evil eff
ects of despotism the Muhammadan religion today destroys that same empire (XXIV.I
I)? Defenders of this sublimation of the ancient Persian wisdom in Iranian Islam
, they would now invoke through a philosophical subtlety, that the Islam of the
ayatollahs and mollahs reflects only the exoterism of the established religion w
hich they would darken into an even greater contradiction since Shi ism styles its
elf precisely as the esoterism of Islam according to the teachings of the Imams th
emselves [18].
It did not suffice for Mazdaean Iran to have been crushed by an Islam of the mos
t exoteric and offensive kind; it must still be that in an esoteric milieu some of t
he unattached of Shi ism lay claim to the faith of Zoroaster to interpret it in Kora
nic terminology, poetic but quite different.
Furthermore, last but not the least, it cannot be forgotten that today, as yeste
rday, any religion kills when it brings about a schizoid rupture between action
and thought, when the ideological finality justifies the most barbaric means, in
total contradiction to the Zoroastrian ethic by which the Sage of ancient Iran
reconciled faith and deeds, to attempt the veritable moral and spiritual transfi
guration of humanity, beyond the dream of esoteric speculation of this kind.
[*] First published in 75 years Platinum Jubilee Volume, K.R. Cama Oriental Inst
itute, 1991.
[1] H. Mass, Louis Massignon et l Iran, L Herne, 1962, p. 99 f.
[2] In Sohrawardi s times, Zoroastrianism still flourished in the eastern regions
of the Caliphate (al-Biruni), as it was to remain alive within the Mazdaean comm
unities of Yazd, Kerman and Tehran, and in the sizeable Parsi colonies of wester
n India up to our times.
[3] Max Horten, Die Philosophie der Erleuchtung nach Suhrawardi (1191) bersetzt u
nd erliiutert van Max Horten, Niemeyer, Halle, 1912. Die philosophischen Problem
e der speculativen Theologie im Islam, Bonn, 1910/12. Die Philosophie der Islam,
1924.
[4] Islam iranien, II.p. 10 (cf. l.xvii; II.29; IV.390).
[5] Ali Asgar Halabi, Histoire des philosophes iraniens du debut de l Islam nos jo
urs (in Persian), Bibliothque Nationale, Tehran 1947/1351, 2-6; 1972, pp. 505, 50
6.
[6] Suhrawardi d Alep, Ste. d Et. Iran., G.P. Maisonneuve, Paris, 1939, p. 42; See (
in Persian) La Philosophie dans l Iran ancien et les principes de l Hikmat al-Ishraq
(thought, work and history of the life of Sohrawardi) by Sayyed Muhammad Kazem
Emam, Tehran (1353/1974).

[7] On Shi ism: Islamic Shi ite Encyclopaedia (4 vols.) by Hassan al-Amin, Beirut, 1
968-73. Martin Lings, What is Sufism? George Allen & Unwin, London, 1975 (Paris
transl. 1977), pp. 124, 138, amongst others. For an in-depth information on Sufi
sm see Les principes du Soufisme by Dr. Ehsanollah Estakhri, eminent Iranian the
ologian and former professor at the University of Tehran, Tehran 1338/1959: The m
ost complete work ever to appear in Persian on Sufism .
Cf. H. Ringgren and A.V. Strom, Les religions du monde, Paris, 1966 (L lslam); L.
Gardet, Philosophies et Mystiques compares, Paris,. 1972, p. 112, Daryush Shayaga
n, Hindouisme et Soufisme, Paris, 1979.
[8] Paul du Breuil, Histoire de la Religion et de la Philosophie Zoroastrienne,
Monaco, du Rocher, 1984, p. 165.
[9] M. L. Hataria, Ishar-i-siyahay-i Iran, Bombay 1865, on the steps undertaken
in Iran since 1854; also the commentaries and translation of the Decree (firman)
of Abolition of 1882, by Karaka and Murzban.
[10] Important in this regard is the apologist work kand Gumanik Vicar (the decis
ive resolution of doubts) edited by J. de Menasce (Fribourg, 1945), where the re
ligious polemic sufficiently shows the defence of Mazdaean specificity against I
slam and other religions. On the other hand, Marijan Mole judiciously remarks th
at when the (Persian) mystics were to speak of the tavern of the magians and to proc
laim themselves Mazdaeans , it was uniquely the case of a cipher for bad religion , whic
h implied no direct contact, nor, with the strongest of reasons, the influence o
f Mazdaeism upon Islamic mysticism (Les Mystiques musulmanes, P.U.F., Paris, 196
5, p. 7).
[11] Yt. 5.29; Avesta, op. cit., Il.p.375, n.39; cf. Denkart VIII.13.8; Bundahis
hn XV.26.28; Yt. 19.49; Avesta, op. cit., III. p. 206.
[12] H. Corbin, Histoire Philosophie Islamique, Paris 1964, p. 289 f.
[13] Yt. 19.56,59.
Aryan is intended in the original sense of arya applied to the Indo-Iranian people
s speaking an Indo-European language. It here concerns therefore the Avestic peo
ple, namely the Mazdaean Iranians; H. Corbin, Islam iranien, II. pp. 86, 87.
[14] Zamyad Yasht 19; Siroza I, Avesta, op. cit. ll. p. 306 and notes 5, 6, 7.
[15] Op. cit., II. p. 86.
[16] Terre cleste et corps de rsurrection, Paris 1960, p. 100.
[17] Political assassins since the beginnings of the schism, Ismaili Karmatians,
the Assassins (hashhashin) of Syria, persecutions, bloody rites, sacrifices, flag
ellations, lasting anathemas.
[18] H. Corbin, Histoire de la philosophie islamique, op. cit., p. 59.