¹ Xanthus, cited by Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 3, 11, 1, in Jacoby, F., ed., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, vol. 3, C2 (Leiden, 1958), no. 765 [pp. 757f].Google Scholar

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³ Compare Pauly's Realencyclopädie, 2nd series, vol. 9A (2) (Stuttgart 1967), s. v., “Xanthos (der Lyder),” where easy divorce laws are singled out. For the institution of wifelending, see below.Google ScholarPubMed

⁴ The most important works are Nöldeke, Th, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari (Leiden, 1879),Google Scholar a translation with invaluable comments; Christensen, A., Le Règne de Kawādh I et le communisme mazdakite (Copenhagen, 1925),Google Scholarsummarized in L'Iran sous les Sassandies ² (Copenhagen, 1944),Google Scholar ch. 7; Mazdak, O. Klíma, Geschichte einer sozialen Bewegung im sassanidischen Persien (Prague, 1957);Google Scholaridem,Reiträge zur Geschichte des Mazdakismus (Prague, 1977);Google ScholarYarshater, E., “Mazdakism,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. III: 2 (Cambridge, 1983;Google Scholar and the articles by Molè and Shaki cited below in note 20). The present study is based on Crone, P., “Kavād's Heresy and Mazdak's Revolt,” Iran, xxix (1991), to which the reader is referred for further details and proper documentation.Google Scholar

⁵ Crone, “Kavād's Heresy,” 24 and notes 63–75 thereto.Google Scholar

⁶ Joshua, the Stylite, Chronicle, Wright, W., ed. and tr. (Cambridge, 1882), §20.Google Scholar

⁷ Procopius, History of the Wars, Dewing, H. B., ed. and tr. vol. 1 (London, 1914),Google Scholar I, 5, lff; cf. A. Cameron, Procopius and the Sixth Century (London, 1985), 8, 152ff.Google ScholarPubMed

⁸ A Cameron, ed. and tr., “Agathias on the Sassanians,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, xxiii-xxiv (1969–1970), pp. 128f through 129f.Google Scholar

⁹ Scher, A., ed. and tr. “Histoire nestorienne (Chronique de Séert),” part I: 1. in Patrologia Orientalis, Graffin, R. and Nau, F., eds. vol. vii (Paris, 1911), 125.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Croné, “Kavād's Heresy,” 21ff.Google Scholar

¹¹ Ibid., p. 26 and notes 118–20 thereto.

¹² Chronicle, §23.

¹³ Wars, I: 5, lf.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Cameron, “Agathias on the Sassanians,” 128 through 129.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See the references in Crone, “Kavād's Heresy,” notes 9–14.

¹⁶ Ibid., 24, 27 and notes 74–80, 159 thereto. The sources which present him as a chief priest (ibid., note 160) do so on the basis of his supposed association with Kavād. For an attempt to deny his existence, see Gaube, H., “Mazdak: Historical Reality or Invention?,” in (Mélanges offerts à Raoul Curiel), Studio Iranica, (1982).Google Scholar

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¹⁹ For all this, see Crone, “Kavād's Heresy,” 24 and notes 81–87 thereto.

²⁰ Molè, M.;, “Un ascétisme moral dans les livres pehlevis?,” Revue de l' Histoire des Religions, civ (1959), 162ff;Google Scholar id., “Le probleme des sectes zoroastriennes dans les livres pehlevis,” Orlens, XXIII-IV (1960–1961), 24;Google ScholarShaki, M., “The Social Doctrine of Mazdak in the Light of Middle Persian Evidence,” Archiv Orientdini, XXXXV (1978), 291ff.Google Scholar

²¹ Crone, “Kavād's Heresy,” 26 and notes 122–8 thereto.

²² Tabarī, Ta'rīkh, ser. 1, 886, in Nöldeke, Geschichte, 142.

²³ Al-Magdisī, , Kitāb al-bad wa'l-ta'rikh, Huart, Cl, ed. and tr. (Paris, 1899–1919), vol. III: 168 [171].Google Scholar

²⁴ Tabarī, Ta'rīkh, ser. i, 886, in Nöldeke, Geschichte, 141.

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²⁶ Crone, “Kavād's Heresy,” 23, 30–33 and note 47.

²⁷ Magdisī, Bad';, vol. IV: 31 [28]Google ScholarIbn al-Nadir, Kitāb al fihrist, Tajaddud, R., ed. (Tehran, 1971), 406;Google ScholarTabarī, Ta'rīkh, ser. III, 1228, in id., The Reign of Mu'tasim, Mann, E., tr. (New Haven, 1951), 52Google Scholar; Madelung, W., Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran (Columbia, 1988), 10.Google Scholar

²⁸ Magdisī, Bad', vol. IV: 31 [29].Google Scholar

²⁹ Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, Schefer, C., ed. (Paris. 1892), 73Google Scholar in id., The History of Bukhara, Frye, R. N., tr. (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 75.Google Scholar

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³¹ Thus, the Parsee Dabistān-i madhāhib (Calcutta, 1809), vol. 1: 166fGoogle Scholar, in The Dabistán, or School of Manners, Shea, D. and Troyer, A., trans. (Paris, 1843), vol. I: 378.Google Scholar

³² Thus Yarshater, “Mazdakism,” 999f, cf. 1013; similarly, if more briefly, Bausani, A., The Persians (London, 1971), 63Google Scholar; Frye, R. N., “The Political History of Iran under the Sasanians,” Cambridge History of Iran, vol. III: 1 (Cambridge, Cambridge), 150Google Scholar; Kennedy, H., The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates (London, 1986), 9.Google Scholar

³³ This point is discussed at length in Crone, “Kavād's Heresy,” 29f.

³⁴ Cf. Nöldeke, Christensen, Klíma (above note 1), Molé, Shaki (above, note 20) and myself. Only Yarshater is sceptical, but not consistently, for though he begins by toning down the Mazdakite doctrine concerning women (above, note 32), he later accepts that the Carpocratians and Mazdakites “offered the same argument for the community of property and women” (‘Mazdakism’, 1020).

³⁵ Baron, S. W., A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. III (New York, 1957), 56 (another general work).Google Scholar

³⁶ Cameron, , “Agathias on the Sasanians,” 128 [129].Google Scholar

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³⁸ For Joshua, see the references given above, notes 6, 12; for Zarādusht's doctrine as a tenet that “all physical pleasures are licit,” see Scher, “Histoire nestorienne,” part II: 1, 157.

³⁹ Cf. Magdisī, Bad, note 28.

⁴⁰ Thus, Carratelli, G. Pugliese, “Les doctinres sociales de Bundos et de Mazdak,” Acta Iranica, II (1974), 286fGoogle Scholar, takes the fact that the Zarādushtīs preached equal access to the good things of life to mean that they preached abstention from such things in an effort to kill desire; J. Duchesne-Guillemin argues much the same La religion de l'Iran ancien [Paris, 1962], 286Google Scholar; Id.,“Zoroastrian Religion,” in Cambridge History of Iran, vol. III: 2, 892Google Scholar. Others merely credit the Khurramis with ascetic tendencies: thus, Christensen, Kawādh, 102f; cf. also id., L' Iran, 342f; Yarshater, “Mazdakīsm,” 1013f; Madelung, Religious Trends, 5; Shaki, M., “The Cosmogonical and Cosmological Teachings of Mazdak,” Acta Iranica, XI (Papers in Honour of Mary Boyce) (1985), 543Google Scholar. But there is much evidence against the more modest proposition too, and none in its favour. The Shahrastānī passage adduced by Christensen does not refer to mortification of the self but to killing in the literal sense of the word (cf. Crone, “Kavād's Heresy,” 27, and notes 171–3 thereto; cf. also Qur'ān, 5:35); neither the vegetarianism nor the pacifism of the Zarādushtīs was meant in an ascetic vein (the taking of lives was forbidden because life was good, not because one should seek to escape from it); and the sixteenth-century assertion that Mazdak “wore woolen clothing and engaged in constant devotion” is obviously a mere embellishment (Mīrkwānd, Tdrīkh-i rawdat al-safā, vol. I [Tehran, 1338], 774,Google Scholar in id., The Rauzat-us-saftl, Rahatsek, E., tr. part I, vol. ii (London, 1892), 369).Google Scholar

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⁴³ See the references given above in notes 22, 24, 25.

⁴⁴ Crone, “Kavād's Heresy,” 25 and notes 97–98 thereto.

⁴⁵ Madelung, , Religious Trends, 10.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Al-Ya'qūbī, Ta'rīkh, Houtsma, M. Th, ed. (Leiden, 1883), vol. Lo 186;Google Scholar cf. Tabarī, Ta'rīkh, ser. i, 893, in Nöldeke, , Geschichte, 154.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibn al-Athīr, al-kāmil fitta' rikh, note 25.

⁴⁸ Cf. the references given above, notes 22, 24.

⁴⁹ AI-Malati, kitāb al-tanbīh, Dedering, S., ed. (Istanbul, 1937), 72f.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Durkheim, E., Socialism and Saint-Simon, Sattler, C., tr., and Gouldner, A. W., ed. (London, 1959), ch. 2.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Durkheim, , Socialism, 21.Google Scholar

⁵² As he sees it, it has contributed most to the confusion (Durkheim, , Socialism, 35).Google Scholar

⁵³ Cf. Crone, , “Kavād's Heresy,” 50 and notes 212–20 thereto.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Cf. above, note 2. Modem Zoroastrians explain away the institution of close-kin marriage by blaming it on Mazdak! (Christensen, L'Iran, 325).

⁵⁵ Magdisī, Bad', vol. III: 168 [171]Google Scholar Tabarī, Ta'rikh, ser. i, 893, in Nöldeke, , Geschichte, 154.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Al-Th'ālibī, , Ghurar akhbār mulūk al-furs wa-sivarihim, Zotenberg, H., ed. and tr. (Paris, 1900), 602Google Scholar; cf. Nizam al-hulk, Siyāsatnāme, Qazvīnī, M. and Chahārdehī, M. Modarressī, eds. (Tehran, 1956), 203Google Scholar, in id., The Book of Government or Rules for Kings, Darke, H., tr. (London, 1960), 202f.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ See the references in Crone, “Kavād's Heresy,” notes 210–11.

⁵⁸ Cf. Crone, “Kavād's Heresy,” 32 and notes 244–5, 250 thereto.

⁵⁹ Klima, , Mazdak, 196Google Scholar; Pigulevskaya, N., Les villes de l' état iranien aux époques parthes et sassanide (Paris, 1963), 195, 209Google Scholar; Nomani, F., “Notes on the Origins and Development of Extra-Economic Obligations of Peasants in Iran, 300–1600 A.D.,” Iranian Studies, IX (1976), 122fGoogle Scholar. Compare O'Leary, B., The Asiatic Mode of Production (Oxford, 1989), 145f.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See the reference given above, note 18.

⁶¹ Thus, for example, the Carpocratian treatise, below, note 79.

⁶² For all this, see Crone, , “Kavād's Heresy,” 30–34.Google Scholar

⁶³ I owe this useful distinction to Schofield, M., “Communism in Plato and the Stoics,” an unpublished paper submitted to the conference on pre-modern communism (Cambridge, 1992).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Herodotus, , Histories, IV: 104. The translation is A. de Selincourt's.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Pompeius Trogus (first century A.D.) in Lovejoy, A. O. and Boas, G., Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore, 1935), 67.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Cf. Lovejoy, and Boas, , Primitivism; J. Ferguson, Utopias of the Classical World (London, 1975), 19f.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Cf. Christensen, A., Les types du prmier homme et du premier roi, part i (Stockholm, 1917), 145ff, on Hōshang.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Above, note 17; Malati, , Tanbīh, 72Google Scholar; cf. also Ibn al-Balkhī, Fārsnāme, 84Google Scholar; Nizam al-Mulk, Siyāsatnāme, 197 [197].Google Scholar For the Iranian Adam (Gayōmard), see Christensen, , Premier homme, 41ff.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ The evidence is assembled in Lovejoy and Boas, Primtivism. To the section on India (by Dumont), add O'Flaherty, W. Doniger, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley, 1976), ch. 2.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Herodotus, Histories, I: 216 (the translation is Godley's).Google Scholar

⁷¹ As seen already, Herodotus also imputes it to the Agathyrsoi, presumably an offshoot of the Scythians (above, note 65); and Herodotus knew that others attributed it to the Scythians themselves, though he himself did not believe it: “The Greeks say that this is a Scythian custom; it is not so, but a custom of the Massagetae” (Histories, I: 21.6). His correction notwithstanding, later authors continued to present the Scythians as communists, usually in respect of women and property alike (Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism, 288f, 315n, 327, cf. 328), but it seems unlikely that there was more to it than an initial mistake and continued romanticism.

⁷² Crone, “Kavād's Heresy,” 25 and notes 112–17 thereto.

⁷³ Cf. Perikhanian, A.. “Iranian Society and Law,” in Cambridge History of Iran, vol. III: 2, 649f, 653ff.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Perikhanian, , “Iranian Law and Society,” 650Google Scholar; compare Shaki, M., “The Sassanian Matrimonial Relations,” Archiv Orientáiny, xxxix (1971), 330f.Google Scholar

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⁷⁶ Thus already Christensen, L'Iran, 329f, 344f.

⁷⁷ The Zarādushtīs have also been presented as female liberators (Pigulevskaja, Villes, 200; Klima, Mazdak, 186), but this is certainly mistaken (cf. Shaki, “Social Doctrine,” 301ff).

⁷⁸ Klíma, Mazdak, 209ff (but he later changed his mind, cf. Klíma, Beiträige, 129, n. 20); Carratelli, “Doctrines sociales de Bundos et Mazdak,” 288ff Yarshater, “Mazdakism,” 1020. Klíma helpfully translates Clement of Alexandria's extract from the Carpocratian treatise “On Justice,” of which there is also an English summary in Cohn, N., The Pursuit of the Millennium (London, 1984Google Scholar; first published 1957), 189f. Cohn asserts that the treatise is probably not of Gnostic origin, with reference to Kraft, H., “Gab es einen Gnostiker Karpokrates?,” Theologische Zeischrift, 8 (1952); but Kraft does not deny the Gnostic origins of the treatise, only the existence of a Gnostic sect by the name of Carpocratians.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Cf. Crone, , “Kavād's Heresy,” 28.Google Scholar

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⁸¹ That Zarādushtism was an offshoot of Zoroastrianism rather than Manichaeism should no longer need to be stressed, though Christensen's mistaken ideas to the contrary still have not been flushed out of the secondary literature (cf. Crone, “Kavād's Heresy,” 26ff).

⁸² Cf. above, note 40. That it is the presence of Gnostic ideas in Khurramism which causes some to present them as ascetics is particularly clear in Duchesne-Guillemin.