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1 - Mazdak and Late Antique ‘Socialism’

from Egalitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

By
Touraj Daryaee
Edited by
Marcel van der Linden
Marcel van der Linden
Affiliation:
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
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Summary

During the reign of Kawād I (AD 498–531), king of Ērānšahr (Realm of the Iranians), a Zoroastrian priest by the name of Mazdak, son of Bāmdād, appears in some sources whose rulings about property and ownership have been deemed proto-socialist. According to sources in Middle Persian of the late Sasanian Empire (AD 224–651), Mazdak promoted the sharing of women and property.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Socialism , pp. 39 - 55
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

de Blois, François, ‘A New Look at Mazdak’, in Bernheimer, Teresa and Silverstein, Adam (eds.), Late Antiquity: Eastern Perspectives (Exeter: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2012), pp. 13–24.Google Scholar
Crone, Patricia, ‘Zoroastrian communism’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, 3 (July 1994), pp. 447–62.Google Scholar
Daryaee, Touraj, Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013).Google Scholar
Shaki, Mansour, ‘The social doctrine of Mazdak in the light of Middle Persian evidence’, Archív Orientální 46, 4 (1978), pp. 289–306.Google Scholar
Yarshater, Ehsan, ‘Mazdakism’, in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. iii, The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, Part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 991–1024.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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