Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheistic ontology and an eschatology which predicts the ultimate conquest of evil by good. Zoroastrianism exalts an uncreated and benevolent deity of wisdom known as Ahura Mazda as its supreme being. Historically, the unique features of Zoroastrianism, such as its monotheism, messianism, belief in free will and judgement after death, conception of heaven, hell, angels, and demons, among other concepts, may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including the Abrahamic religions and Gnosticism, Northern Buddhism, and Greek philosophy.
Shahre Rey or simply Rey is the capital of Rey County in Tehran Province, Iran. Formerly a distinct city, it has now been absorbed into the metropolitan area of Greater Tehran as the 20th district of municipal Tehran, the capital city of the country.
Hyrcania is a historical region composed of the land south-east of the Caspian Sea in modern-day Iran and Turkmenistan, bound in the south by the Alborz mountain range and the Kopet Dag in the east.
Abu Muslim was a Persian general who led the Abbasid Revolution that toppled the Umayyad dynasty, leading to the establishment of the Abbasid Caliphate.
Hashim, better known as al-Muqanna‘ was leader of an anti Islamic revolt who claimed to be a prophet, and founded a religion which was a mixture of Zoroastrianism and Islam. He was a chemist, and one of his experiments caused an explosion in which a part of his face was burnt. For the rest of his life he used a veil and thus was known as "al-Muqanna‘". Said Nafisi and Amir-Hossein Aryanpour have written about him in the "Khorrām-Dīnān" armies.
Mani was an Iranian prophet and the founder of Manichaeism, a religion most prevalent in late antiquity.
Mazdak was a Zoroastrian mobad (priest), Iranian reformer, prophet and religious reformer who gained influence during the reign of the Sasanian emperor Kavadh I. He claimed to be a prophet of Ahura Mazda and instituted social welfare programs.
Iranian religions, also known as Persian religions, are, in the context of comparative religion, a grouping of religious movements that originated in the Iranian (Persian) plateau.
Ustadh Sis was a Persian heresiarch and anti-Abbasid rebel leader. It is speculated that he was once a governor of Khorasan and possibly father to Ma'mūn’s Iranian mother, Marjil, which would make him Ma'mūn's maternal grandfather.
Ishaq al-Turk was an Iranian rebel who started a rebellion in Khorasan against the Abbasid Caliphate, after the murder of Abu Muslim. Ishaq was a Zoroastrian, or a Khurramite.
Bābak Khorramdin was one of the main Iranian revolutionary leaders of the Iranian Khorram-Dinān, which was a local freedom movement fighting the Abbasid Caliphate. Khorramdin appears to be a compound analogous to dorustdin "orthodoxy" and Behdin "Good Religion" (Zoroastrianism), and are considered an offshoot of neo-Mazdakism. Babak's Iranianizing rebellion, from its base in Azerbaijan in northwestern Iran, called for a return of the political glories of the Iranian past. The Khorramdin rebellion of Babak spread to the Western and Central parts of Iran and lasted more than twenty years before it was defeated when Babak was betrayed. Babak's uprising showed the continuing strength in Azerbaijan of ancestral Iranian local feelings.
Pāpak Fort or Babak Castle, ″Ghal’eh-e Baz″ is a large citadel on the top of a mountain in the Arasbaran forests, 50 km from Ahar, one parasang from Ardabil, 6 km southwest of Kalibar City in northwestern Iran. According to Ibn al- Nadim, it was the stronghold of Javidhan and Babak Khorramdin, the leaders of the Khurramites in Iranian Azerbaijan who fought the Islamic caliphate of Abbassids. The fort was conquered and ruined by Afshin′s army in 837.
The Khurramites were an Iranian religious and political movement with its roots in the Zoroastrian movement of Mazdakism. An alternative name for the movement is the Muḥammira, a reference to their symbolic red dress.
Istakhr was an ancient city in Fars province, five kilometres north of Persepolis in southwestern Iran. It flourished as the capital of the Persian Frataraka governors and Kings of Persis from the third century BC to the early 3rd century AD. It reached its apex under the Sasanian Empire, and was the hometown of the Sasanian dynasty. Istakhr briefly served as the first capital of the Sasanian Empire from 224 to 226 AD and then as principal city, region, and religious centre of the Sasanian province of Pars.
The SasanianEmpire, officially known as Eranshahr, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th–8th centuries AD. Named after the House of Sasan, it endured for over four centuries, from 224 to 651 AD, making it the longest-lived Persian imperial dynasty. The Sasanian Empire succeeded the Parthian Empire, and re-established the Persians as a major power in late antiquity alongside its neighbouring arch-rival, the Roman Empire.
Āzar Kayvān was the Zoroastrian high priest of Istakhr and a gnostic philosopher, who was a native of Fars, Iran and later emigrated to Patna in the Mughal Empire during the reign of Emperor Akbar. A member of the Sepāsīān community ,), he became the founder of a Zoroastrian school of ishraqiyyun or Illuminationists, which exhibited features of Sufi Muslim influence. This school became known as the kis-e Abadi "Abadi sect".
Sistān, known in ancient times as Sakastān, is a historical and geographical region in present-day Eastern Iran and Southern Afghanistan. Largely desert, the region is bisected by the Helmand River, the largest river in Afghanistan, which empties into the Hamun Lake that forms part of the border between the two countries.
Abu al-Abbas Iranshahri was a 9th-century Persian philosopher, mathematician, natural scientist, historian of religion, astronomer and author. According to traditional sources, he is the first figure in the wider Muslim world to be associated with philosophy after the advent of Islam.
Shahrbānū was allegedly one of the wives of Husayn ibn Ali, the third Shia Imam and grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, as well as the mother of his successor, Ali ibn Husayn. She was reportedly a Sassanid princess, a daughter of Yazdegerd III, the last Sassanid emperor of Persia. Shahrbanu has also been referred to with several other names by different writers, such as: Shaharbānawayh, Shāhzanān, Shāhjahān, Jahānshāh, Salāma, Salāfa, Ghazāla, and Sādira.
Abū ʿAwn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Yazīd al-Khurasānī was an early supporter of the Abbasids. He participated in the campaigns of the Abbasid Revolution and served as governor of Egypt and Khurasan.
