Zoroastrianism

node · earth · Iranian plateau, Central Asia, western India

An Iranian tradition attributed by its adherents to the teacher Zarathushtra, whose dating is one of the most unsettled questions in the field — proposals range across more than a millennium. It was the tradition of the Achaemenid, Parthian and Sasanian courts and travelled the same Silk Road corridor as Buddhism, with Sogdian merchant communities carrying it eastward. Its trajectory is the clearest counter-example in this Journey to the assumption that trade diffusion is irreversible: after the fall of the Sasanian Empire to the Rashidun Caliphate in 651 CE, Zoroastrian populations in Iran declined over centuries under a mix of taxation, disadvantage, social pressure and conversion whose relative weights scholars continue to debate. Some communities migrated to Gujarat, becoming the Parsis.