Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-9nwgx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-26T15:11:46.864Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Distinction and Survival: Zoroastrians, Religious Nationalism, and Cultural Ownership in Shiʿi Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2022

Navid Fozi Open the ORCID record for Navid Fozi [Opens in a new window]
Navid Fozi*
Affiliation:
Anthropology Department, Bridgewater State University, MA, USA Email: nfoziabivard@bridgew.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article argues that the notion of Iranian culture employed in the public discourse of Zoroastrians allows them to tackle the dilemma of Shiʿi-dominated Iranianness without provoking Shiʿi authorities. The piece offers an analysis of ethnographic data, including detailed speech acts documented in Zoroastrians’ ritual spaces and cultural exhibitions. It explores the Zoroastrian configuration of an Iranian culture that summons and encodes pre-Islamic tropes and modern nationalist sentiments by constantly maneuvering around national, religious, and ethnic categories. This configuration's underpinning assumptions, narratives, and texts have powerful platforms in Iranian nationalist imagination. I propose that this arrangement attempts to carve out a space for Zoroastrians’ distinct identity by connecting the history of the Muslim Arab invasion of Persia to the Shiʿi hegemonic norms of Iranian culture today. It further invokes Zoroaster's indigeneity and teachings as the foundation of authentic Iranianness to establish Zoroastrians’ survival as a cultural system.

Keywords

Iranian cultureIranian Zoroastriansreligious nationalismritualsZoroaster
Type
Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 56 , Special Issue 1: Parsis and Iranians in the Modern Period , January 2023 , pp. 85 - 100
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Iranian Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abisaab, Rula Jurdi. Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.Google Scholar
Abisaab, Rula Jurdi. “The Ulama of Jabal ʿAmil in Safavid Iran, 1501–1736: Marginality, Migration and Social Change.” Iranian Studies, 27 no. 1–4 (1994): 103–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adelkhah, Fariba. Being Modern in Iran. Translated by Jonathan Derrick. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Aguilar, Mario I. “Religion as Culture or Culture as Religion? The status quaestionis of Ritual and Performance.” Culture and Religion 1, no. 2 (2000): 233–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Babayan, Kathryn. Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscape of Early Modern Iran. Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 35. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Baumann, Gerd. Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-Ethnic London. Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, 100. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Bekhradnia, Shahin. “The Decline of the Zoroastrian Priesthood and Its Effect on the Iranian Zoroastrian Community in the Twentieth Century.” Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (1992): 37–47.Google Scholar
Beyers, Jaco. “Religion and Culture: Revisiting a Close Relative.” HTS: Theological Studies 73, no. 1 (2017): 1–9.Google Scholar
Boyce, Mary. A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Boyce, Mary. Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. London: Routledge, [1979] 2001.Google Scholar
Brock, Sebastian P. “Christians in the Sasanian Empire: A Case of Divided Loyalties.” Studies in Church History 18 (1982): 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech: A Politic of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997.Google Scholar
Chehabi, Houchang. “Anatomy of Prejudice: Reflections on Secular Anti-Baha'ism in Iran.” In The Baha'is of Iran: Socio-Historical Studies, edited by Brookshaw, Dominic Parviz and Fazel, Seena B.. London: Routledge, 2008.Google Scholar
Choksy, Jamsheed K. Conflict and Cooperation: Zoroastrian Subalterns and Muslim Elites in Medieval Iranian Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Choksy, Jamsheed K. “Despite Shāhs and Mollās: Minority Sociopolitics in Premodern and Modern Iran.” Journal of Asian History (2006): 129–84.Google Scholar
Choksy, Jamsheed K. “Religious Sites and Physical Structures.” In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism, edited by Strausberg, Michael, Veveina, Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw, and Tessmann, Anna. Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015.Google Scholar
Choksy, Jamsheed K. “Zoroastrians in Muslim Iran: Selected Problems of Coexistence and Interaction during the Early Medieval Period.” International Society for Iranian Studies 20, no. 1 (1987): 17–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbin, Henry. Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shi'ite Iran. Translated from the French by Pearson, N.. Bollingen Series 91, 2. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Cronin, Stephanie, ed. The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921–1941. London: Routledge, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darmesteter, James. “Parsi-ism: Its Place in History.” In Bombay: Voice of India. 1887.Google Scholar
Dehkhoda, Ali-Akbar. “Farhang.” Dehkhoda Dictionary, online edition. Accessed October 2, 2022. https://www.vajehyab.com/dehkhoda/%D9%81%D8%B1%D9%87%D9%86%DA%AF.Google Scholar
Fischer, Michael. “Zoroastrian Iran: Between Myth and Praxis.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1973.Google Scholar
Fozi, Navid. “Neo-Iranian Nationalism: Pre-Islamic Grandeur and Shiʿi Eschatology in President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's Rhetoric.” Middle East Journal 70, no. 2 (2016): 227–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fozi, Navid. Reclaiming the Faravahar: Zoroastrian Survival in Contemporary Tehran. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frye, Richard N. The Golden Age of Persia: The Arabs in the East. London: Weidenfield and Nicolso, 1975.Google Scholar
Gershevitch, Ilya. “Zoroaster's Own Contribution.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 23, no. 11 (1964): 12–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimes, Ronald L. Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in Its Practice; Essays on Its Theory. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1990.Google Scholar
“Iran Celebrates All Night Long.” Los Angeles Times. December 21, 2008. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-dec-21-fg-iran21-story.html.Google Scholar
Irani, Dinshah. Falsafa-ye Irān-e Bāstān. Tehran: [1933] 1982.Google Scholar
Ivanescu, Carolina. “Politicised Religion and the Religionisation of Politics.” Culture and Religion 11, no. 4 (2010): 309–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Williams. “The Gathas of Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) in Meter and Rhythm by L. H. Mills.” American Journal of Theology (1902): 768–69.Google Scholar
Jackson, Williams. “On the Date of Zoroaster.” Journal of the American Oriental Society (1896): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Williams. “Where Was Zoroaster's Native Place?” Journal of the American Oriental Society (1893): 221–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kestenberg Amighi, Janet. The Zoroastrians of Iran: Conversion, Assimilation, or Persistence. New York: AMS Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Khanbaghi, Aptin. “De-Zoroastrianization and Islamization: The Two Phases of Iran's Religious Transition, 747–837 CE.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 29, no. 2 (2002): 201–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kotwal, Firoze. “Select Ritual Aspects of the Gathas and Their Continuity in Later Tradition.” Iran and the Caucasus (1999–2000): 1–8.10.1163/157338499X00010Google Scholar
Lambek, Michael. The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindholm, Charles. “The Rise of Expressive Authenticity.” Anthropological Quarterly 86, no. 2 (2013): 361–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luhrmann, Tanya. The Good Parsi: The Fate of a Colonial Elite in a Postcolonial Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Marashi, Afshin. Exile and the Nation: The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Marashi, Afshin. “Irani, Dinshah Jijibhoy.” Encyclopaedia Iranica. January 28, 2015. https://iranicaonline.org/articles/irani-dinshah.Google Scholar
Marashi, Afshin. Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870–1940. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Milani, Mohsen M. The Making of Iran's Islamic Revolution: From Monarchy to Islamic Republic. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1994.Google Scholar
Mills, Lawrence. “Vahumanah in the Gathas.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1900.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moulton, James. Early Zoroastrianism (Hibbert Lectures, second series, 1912). London: Williams and Norgate, 1913.Google Scholar
Niechcial, Paulina. “Constructing Zoroastrian Identity in Muslim Iran.” Akta Fakulty Filozofické Západočeské Univerzity v Plzni 1 (2011): 191–202.Google Scholar
Niechcial, Paulina. “The Key Content of Contemporary Zoroastrian Identity in the Islamic Republic of Iran: A Socio-Anthropological Approach.” In Studies on the Iranian World: Medieval and Modern, edited by Krasnowolska, Anna and Rusek-Kowalska, Renata, vol. 2, 149–56. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2015.Google Scholar
Niknam, Kurosh. Āiyn-e Ekhtiyār: Goftāry Pirāmun-e Farhang va Falsafe-ye Zartosht. Tehran: Tus Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Niknam, Kurosh. Az Noruz tā Noruz: Āiynhā va Marāsem-e Sonnati-ye Zartoshtiān-e Iran. Tehran: 2006.Google Scholar
Nye, Malory. “Culture and Religion.” Culture and Religion 1 (2000): 5–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Payne, Richard E. A State of Mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians, and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity. Transformation of the Classical Heritage, 56. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Price, Massoume. Iran's Diverse Peoples: A Reference Sourcebook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005.Google Scholar
Rajabi, Parviz. Hezarehā-ye Gom-Shodeh. Vol. 1. Tehran: 2005.Google Scholar
Rivetna, Roshan. “The Zarathushti World, a 2012 Demographic Picture.” FEZANA Journal 3 (2013): 26–35.Google Scholar
Russell, James R. “On Mysticism and Esotericism among the Zoroastrians.”Iranian Studies 26, no. 1–2 (1993): 73–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanasarian, Eliz. Religious Minorities in Iran. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stausberg, Michael. “From Power to Powerlessness: Zoroastrianism in Iranian History.” In Religious Minorities in the Middle East: Domination, Self-Empowerment, Accommodation, edited by Longva, Anh Nga and Roald, Anne Sofie, 171–93. Leiden: Brill, 2012.Google Scholar
Stepaniants, Marietta. “The Encounter of Zoroastrianism with Islam.” Philosophy East and West (2002): 159–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad. “Historiography and Crafting Iranian National Identity.” In Iran in the 20th Century: Historiography and Political Culture, edited by Atabaki, Touraj, 5–21. London: I. B. Tauris, 2009.Google Scholar
Williams, Alan V. “Zoroastrians and Christians in Sasanian Iran.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 78 (1996): 37–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Rhys H. “Religion as Political Resource: Culture or Ideology?” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (1996): 368–78.Google Scholar
Writer, Rashna. Contemporary Zoroastrians: An Unstructured Nation. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994.Google Scholar
Zaehner, Robert Charles. The Teachings of the Magi: A Compendium of Zoroastrian Beliefs. London: Allen and Unwin, 1956.Google Scholar