1 See Daryaee, Touraj Sasanian Persia (London, 2009), 26–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is curious that in none of the sources is Kavad's restoration said to be a direct result of him actually giving up his heterodox beliefs; rather it is supposed to be an outcome of his outright re-conquest of his kingdom (ibid., 27). It seems that the religion was hardly involved in the affair, although the devotional historiography often appears to suggest that the exile was a period of cleansing, or rather of Kavad realizing the error of his ways.

2 See W. Sundermann, “Cosmogony and Cosmology IV: in the Mazdakite Religion,” Encyclopaedia Iranica (hereafter, EIr). The authoritative new study on Mazdakite traditions, beliefs, and historiography is Crone, P The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran (Cambridge, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Sexual communalism might have been no more than a regular charge of slander. The charge seems to have been a standard one, even attributed to the Sufi revolutionary of the early fifteenth century, Sheikh Badreddin, who acted against the Ottomans: Balivet, Michel Islam mystique et révolution armée dans les Balkans ottoman: Vie du cheykh Bedreddîn, le Hallâj des Turcs (Istanbul, 1995)Google Scholar. For the case of Mazdak, it might have carried some symbolic truth though, as I have argued in an unpublished paper, “Sexual Communism and the Revolution of Mazdak: Problems in Sasanian Succession.” The charge, in this sense, might have been an exaggeration by Khusrow I to justify the removal of his older brother, Kawus, from the line of succession for his Mazdakite tendencies, and his dubious parentage, as he was supposedly born during the time that Kavad was a follower of Mazdak, and thus not in full “possession” of his wife, Kawus' mother. See now Crone, Nativist Prophets, 391ff.

4 Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk (Beirut, 1407/1986), I: 421–2; and Balʿamī, Tārīkh-i Balʿamī, ed. M.T. Bahār and M. Parvīn Gonābādi (Tehran, 1341/1962, reprint: Tehran, 1386/2008), 844–7; but also see al-Shahrastānī, al-Milal wa-al-niḥal, ed. Ahmad Fahmi Muhammad (Beirut, 1992), 275–7, who seems not to be as harsh as others, although he is largely confusing matters, it seems. On al-Shahrastānī's account, see Crone, Nativist Prophets, 193ff.

5 As in al-Shahrastānī, al-Milal wa-al-niḥal.

6 Al-Bīrūnī, al-Āthār al-bāqiyah, ed. C.E. Sachau (Leipzig, 1923), 29; al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk, I: 422, who is quite hostile.

7 P.G. Kreyenbroek, “Iran ix. Religions in Iran (1) Pre-Islamic (1.1),” EIr.

8 Al-Shahrastānī, on the Khurramīiniyyah and other Zandiqs. Also al-Isfarāʾīnī lists the Khurramdīniyyah as a Majūsī school: Tabṣīr al-dīn, ed. el-Ḥūt (Beirut, 1983), 150. On this, now see Crone, Nativist Prophets.

9 See Menasce, Jean de, ed., Le troisième livre du Dēnkart (Paris, 1973), 229Google Scholar; references to Dēnkart outside of Book 3 are to the book, chapter and paragraph numbers in Dresden, M.J., Dēnkart: A Pahlavi Text (Wiesbaden, 1966)Google Scholar.

10 Dresden, Dēnkart, V.31.30.

11 Procopius, History of the Wars, vols. I–II (Persian Wars), trans. H.B. Dewing (Cambridge, MA, 1914), I: 5, or pseudo-Joshua Chronicle of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite, trans. Frank R. Trombley and John. W. Watt (Liverpool, 2000), 23 (pp. 20–21); notice that none of the sources supposed to be contemporary with the events of the reign of Kavad ever mention the name Mazdak, although others related to the heresy are mentioned, namely Zaradusht son of Khurrag; see further below.

12 Procopius, Wars, I: v–xi. but also Theophanes the Confessor, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, ed. and trans. Cyril Mango and Roger Scott (Oxford, 1997), AM 5943 and AM 6016, who seems most concerned with the social ills caused by Mazdakism.

13 E.g. Shaki, M “The Cosmogonical and Cosmological Teachings of Mazdak,” Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce, Acta Iranica 25 (Leiden, 1985), 527–43Google Scholar.

14 Nöldeke, T., Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden (Leiden, 1879)Google Scholar. Christensen, A Le régne du roi Kawādh I. et le communisme mazdakite (Copenhagen, 1925)Google Scholar, was a truly ground-breaking work dedicated to this matter, as was that of Klima, O Mazdak. Geschichte einer sozialen Bewegung im sasanidischen Persien (Prague, 1957)Google Scholar. For a full historiography, see Yarshater, E “Mazdakism,” in Cambridge History of Iran III/2 (Cambridge, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 991–1024; more recently, see Crone, Nativist Prophets. As will become clear, the issue has continued to occupy a central place in the historiography of the Sasanian period.

15 Pigulevskaja, N Les villes de l'État iranien aux époques parthe et sassanide (Paris, 1963)Google Scholar is a notable example, but see also Modi, J “Mazdak the Iranian Socialist,” in Dastur Hoshang Memorial Volume (Bombay, 1918), 116–31Google Scholar for a more “native” take on the issue. Extreme cases even go as far as describing Mazdak as a “Bolshevik” a good 1400 years before the Russian political party was founded. See Luttinger, Paul “Mazdak,” The Open Court 11 (1921): 664–85Google Scholar.

16 Plekhanov, G.V., The Materialist Conception of History (London, 1976)Google Scholar. See Rihani, Ameen F., The Descent of Bolshevism (Boston, 1920)Google Scholar, where Mazdakism is put as chapter I on the ancestors of the modern political party. Also Luttinger, “Mazdak.”

17 For a useful summary, see Yarshater III/2, but now see Crone, Nativist Prophets.

18 Theophanes the Confessor, the ninth-century compiler of a major Byzantine chronicle, who seems to be aware of the Khurramidiniya as well, is the first Byzantine source who uses the name of Mazdak.

19 Altheim, F. and Stiehl, R., “Mazdak und Porphyrios,” La nouvelle Clio 5 (1953): 356–76Google Scholar; Malalas, J.: Malalae, Ioannis, Chronographia, ed. Dindorf, Ludwig (Bonn, 1831), 309–10Google Scholar. On the interpretation of this evidence in Malalas, see Yarshater, “Mazdakism,” 995.

20 Al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk, Ι: 421; Pseudo-Joshua refers to the socio-religious controversy as the “deplorable beliefs of Zaratushtakan” (the original Syriac, zrtštkana, suggesting a plural, and not purely a Syriac rendering of the Middle Persian patronymic). Procopius similarly considers the whole thing to be related more to Zaradusht Khurragan and never mentions the name of Mazdak. The same is true for the continuators of Procopius' history, Agathias and Menander Protector; see Yarshater, “Mazdakism,” 995–96.

21 Crone, P “Kavad's Heresy and Mazdak's Revolt,” Iran 29 (1991): 21–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Zoroastrian Communism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, no. 3 (1994): 447–62.

22 Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist (Tehran, 1971), 406.

23 This would mainly be a certain Mazdak-Nāmag, a non-extant Middle Persian “romance” which reportedly was used by the Muslim historians to write the history of Mazdak (Yarshater, “Mazdakism,” 994–5).

24 Gaube, H “Mazdak: Historical Reality or Invention?, “ Studia Iranica 11 (1982): 111–22Google Scholar.

25 Indeed, it is interesting to note that the same line of reasoning can be developed for Zoroastrianism as well in that the name Zarathushtra is rarely mentioned in the early sources pointing to the religion. This would mean that the religion, which only later, and externally, came to be associated with the name of a prophet called Zarathushtra was in fact never credited to him in the Achaemenid through to the Sasanian periods. Exceptions to this, showing Zarathushtra as the figurehead of Mazda-worship do exist, as in Y. 12.1: frauuarānē mazdaiiasnō zaraθuštriš “I profess myself a Mazda-worshiper, a follower of Zaraθuštra…” I wish to thank my friend and colleague, Arash Zeini, for this point.

26 See in particular Book 4 of the Dēnkart.

27 Al-Ṭabarī (I/388–89) considers Sasan, Ardashir's supposed grandfather, to have been the caretaker (Ar. mutawwali) of the temple of Anahita in Istakhr. The undetermined status of Sasan has been discussed before, including the fact that none of the Sasanian primary sources (e.g. Shapur Ka'abeh-i Zardusht (ŠKZ)) call him a grandfather of Ardashir. On the connections of Sasan with a Semitic god, see Schwartz, M “Sesen: A Durable East Mediterranean God in Iran,” in Proceedings of the Third European Conference of Iranian Studies held in Cambridge, 11th to 15th September 1995, ed. Sims-Williams, N. (Wiesbaden: Reichert 1998), 1: 9–13Google Scholar. Other evidence from the Sasanian period exists as well. The coins of Ardashir and his successors, up to the fifth century, identify the king of kings as a mazdēsn, a “Mazda Worshipping” Lord (MP bay); see Robert Göbl, Sasanian numismatics (Braunschweig, 1971), now largely superseded by Michael Alram and Rika Gyselen, Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum, vol. I (Vienna, 2003) and vol. II (Vienna, 2012), as well as Nikolaus Schindel, Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum, vol. III (Vienna, 2004).

28 This letter is quoted in the thirteenth century History of Tabaristan by Ibn Isfandiyar. The letter was edited and published by M. Monovi and translated based on that edition by Boyce, Mary (trans.) Minovi, M., ed., The Letter of Tansar, trans. Mary Boyce (Rome, 1968)Google Scholar.

29 Honigmann, E. and Maricq, André, Recherches sur les “Res gestae divi Saporis” (Bruxelles, 1953)Google Scholar; Rubin, Zeev “Res Gestae Divi Saporis: Greek and Middle Iranian in a Document of Sasanian Anti-Roman Propaganda,” in Bilingualism in Ancient Society: Language Contact and the Written Word, ed. Adams, J.N., Janse, Mark and Swain, Simon (Oxford, 2002), 267–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 See Gignoux, Philippe Les quatre inscriptions du mage Kirdīr: textes et concordances (Paris, 1991)Google Scholar, especially 69–70 for reference to the persecution of Jews and other religious minorities.

31 Gignoux, P Le livre d'Arda Viraz (Paris, 1984)Google Scholar.

32 Bundahishn, Greater; Dēnkard (in ed. J. de Menasce, Le Troisième livre du Denkart (Paris, 1973), 208–10)Google Scholar; A. Tafazzoli, “Ādurbād ī Mahrspandān,“ Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. 1, 1983. The presence of Adurbād is of course only verifiable through references to him in the early Islamic encyclopaedic works such as Dēnkard and Bundahišn or through Hamzah al-Iṣfahānī and other Muslim historians: see Tafazzoli, “Adūrbād ī Mahrspandān.”

33 Arda Wiraf's adventures are told in a ninth–tenth century book called Ardaviraz Namag, edited by P. Gignoux (Le livre d'Arda Viraz). His journey to the other world is apparently a Zoroastrian literary and religious topos; see Skjærvø, P.O., “Kirdir's Vision: Translation and Analysis,” Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 16 (1983): 269–206Google Scholar, and Gignoux, P “La signification du voyage extra-terrestre dans l'eschatologie mazdéenne,” in Mélanges offerts a Ch.-H. Puech (Paris, 1974), 63–89Google Scholar.

34 In the Dēnkard, the “evil” words of Mani are set directly opposite the good advice and utterances of Adurbād ī Mahrspandān, in order to clearly demonstrate the contrast.

35 Of course, this has been the subject of many studies and speculations, most of which also do point out that the reforms start with Kavad, although they take the name of Khusrow. See Zeev Rubin, “The Reforms of Khusro Anushirwan,” The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East 3 (1995): 227–97. For a classic study, see F. Altheim and R. Stiehl, Finanzgeschichte der Spätantike, with contributions from R. Göbl and H.W. Haussig (Frankfurt/M, 1957).

36 Assuming that one of the major targets of the Mazdakite revolt was to break the back of the nobility and its inheritance of property and privilege, we can observe that it succeeded in fact in that aspect, as we are not to hear of them much after this point. Some have hypothesized that the problem might lie elsewhere: P. Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire (London, 2008). The case of Wahram Cōbin (VI) might have been an exception: Christensen, A Romanen om Bahram Tchobin (Copenhagen, 1907)Google Scholar.

37 On this, again see the case of Adurbād ī Mahrspandān whose trial serves to show a continuity of his religious tradition of which he was a caretaker.

38 Dēnkart, Book VIII; Shaki, M “The Dēnkard Account of the History of the Zoroastrian Scriptures,” Archív Orientalní 49 (1981): 114–25Google Scholar. For a discussion of the historicity of this claim, see Bailey, Harold Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-century Books (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar.

39 For an accessible translation of the Gathas, see Humbach, Helmut and Ichaporia, Pallan, The Heritage of Zarathustra, A New Translation of his Gathas (Heidelberg, 1998)Google Scholar.

40 Boyce, Mary Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London, 2007), 19–20Google Scholar.

41 See the discussion in W. Malandra, “Gathas II: Translations,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2000. See the issues involved with the matters of authorship of the Gathas, central to the discussion, in Kellens, J. and Pirart, E., Les textes vieil-avestiques, 3 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1988–89)Google Scholar. Foltz, Richard Spirituality in the Land of the Noble (Oxford, 2004), 22ffGoogle Scholar. for a general summary of the traditional history of Zoroastrianism.

42 Stausberg, Michael Die Religion Zarathustras, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 2002)Google Scholar, particularly volume II for the state of the study, and the continuing debates about the Zoroastrian cosmography.

43 For various critiques of this, see Kellens' works, including Kellens, J “Characters of Ancient Mazdaism,” History and Anthropology 3 (1987): 239–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Zoroastrianism's ritual character, see Herrenschmidt, Clarisse and Kellens, Jean, “La Question du rituel dans le mazdéisme ancien et achéménide,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions (1994): 45–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Oddie, Geoffrey A., Imagined Hinduism: British Protestant Missionary Constructions of Hinduism, 1793–1900 (New Delhi, 2006)Google Scholar.

45 On a collection of texts which show the gradual process through which this was done, see Marshall, J ed., The British Discovery of Hinduism in the 18th Century (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar.

46 This was in fact done as early as the eleventh century, when al-Bīrūnī was writing his treatise on India: Kitāb Taḥqīq mā lil-Hind, ed. C.E. Sachau (London, 1887).

47 Boyce's re-telling of the history is quite close to the traditional Zoroastrian one: Boyce, Zoroastrians. Problems with the narrative were spotted early on, with Nyberg taking the position that the “prophet” of the religion, Zarathushtra, was nothing but a shaman of a nomadic pagan cult: Nyberg, Henrik S., Die Religionen des alten Irans (Leipzig, 1938)Google Scholar. This was of course famously debunked, along with Herzfeld, by that giant of Iranian studies Henning, W.B. in his Zoroaster: Politician or Witchdoctor (Oxford, 1951)Google Scholar. Revisionism, in the denial of the existence of Zoroaster and hypothesizing the composition of the Gathic corpus by a group of poets (or poet-sacrificers) has come in the form of Kellens, Jean' Les textes veiel-avestiques I (Wiesbaden, 1988)Google Scholar, and is supported by his articles, including the translation of them by his most prominent promoter in the Anglophone world, P.O. Skjærvø: Kellens, J Essays on Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism, trans. and ed. Skjærvø, Prods Oktor (Costa Mesa, CA, 2000)Google Scholar; Skjærvø himself is of course a major figure of the revisionist trend on whose ideas part of this essay is based: Skjærvo, P.O., “The State of Old Avestan Scholarship,” Journal of the American Oriental Society (1997): 103–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar, among many other works.

48 Shaked, Dualism in Transformation. See also W. Malandra, “Zoroastrianism i: Historical Review,” under “sources.” The dominant narrative easily leads one to reconstruct the events, even when a “source” such as the letter of Tansar belongs to the thirteenth century!

49 The arguments about the age of the Avestan corpus abound. The earliest parts, the Gathas, might have been composed as early as 1200 BCE, while the Younger Avestan texts belong to the later periods, but most likely no later than the Achaemenid one. An easy summary is J. Kellens, “Avesta,” EIr. 1987; more discussion of the issues of the composition of the text can be found in Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems, and Skjærvø, “The State of Old Avestan Studies.”

50 Admittedly, the oldest Dēnkard MS seems to have been composed in Baghdad, and Adurfarnbaγ Farrukhzādān, its composer, was a contemporary of the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mūn: Menasce, J.P. de, Une encyclopédie mazdéenne, le Dēnkart (Paris, 1958)Google Scholar. From the testimonies of Hamzah al-Iṣfahānī and others, however, we know of the major Zoroastrian communities in Fars/Persis Kerman, Yazd, and indeed Sistan. The Bundahišn, despite its patchy structure, seems to be more comfortable with eastern Iranian geography, and its authorship is also closely related to that of the Dēnkard: D. Niel MacKenzie, “Bundahišn,” EIr, 1989; see Cereti, C “Middle Persian Geographic Literature: The Case of the Bundahišn,” in Gyselen, R., ed., Contributions à l'histoire et la géographie historique de l'empire sassanide, Res Orientales 16 (2004), 11–34Google Scholar and part II of the same article in Res Orientales 17 (2007) for a study of the geography of the Bundahišn.

51 M. Macuch, “Mādayān ī Hazār Dādestān,” EIr, 2005, and of course Macuch's own Rechtskasuistik und Gerichtspraxis zu Beginn des siebenten Jahrhunderts in Iran: Die Rechtssammlung des Farroḫmard i Wahrāmān (Wiesbaden, 1993).

52 See Hamzah al-Iṣfahānī's tales of his exclusive access to several otherwise lost histories of the Sasanian kings, including an illustrated one: Hamzah al-Iṣfahānī, Taʾrīkh sinī mulūk al-arḍ wa-al-anbiyāʾ (Cairo, nd), 38ff.

53 Al-Masʿūdī, al-Tanbīh wa-al-ishrāf, trans. A. Payandeh (Tehran, 1970), 106.

54 Hamzah again is quite adamant about this, and most of the sources to which he refers are apparently composed or preserved by Mōbeds of various kinds.

55 The standard edition, with the most reliable inclusion or exclusion of problematic verses, is now Jalāl Khāliqī Muṭlaq, ed., Shahnameh (Costa Mesa, CA, 1988–2009).

56 Riahi, M.A., Sarcheshmehaa-ye Ferdowsi Shenasi (the Sources of the Study of Ferdowsi) (Tehran, 1382/2004), 138ffGoogle Scholar.

57 Frye, Richard N., “The Charisma of Kingship in Ancient Iran,” Iranica Antiqua 6 (1964), 36–54Google Scholar.

58 Ibid.

59 It is often assumed that some manner of a Khwaday-Namag text was hidden behind all of the early Islamic historiographical works about Iran. See Peacock, A.C.S., “Early Persian Historians and the Heritage of Pre-Islamic Iran,” in Early Islamic Iran, vol. V, Idea of Iran, ed. Herzig, E. and Stewart, S. (London, 2012), 61Google Scholar. The curious disappearance of this text (or texts) or any sort of direct Arabic translation (including that of Ibn Muqaffaʿ) is among the mysteries of Islamic historiography.

60 Yarshater, E “Iranian National History,” in Cambridge History of Iran III/1 (Cambridge, 1983), 366Google Scholar.

61 For an updated discussion of the Khwadāy-Nāmag genre, and the research associated with it, see Shahbazi, A. Shapur, Tarikh-e Sasanian [Sasanian history] (Tehran, 1389/2010), 72–81Google Scholar.

62 J. Derek Latham, “Ebn Moqaffa,” EIr; also Peacock, “Early Persian Historians,” 61, 64 (on Hamzah's claims to have Ibn Muqaffa‘ as his source). Also Shabazi, Tarikh, 81–91 for a study of the Arabic sources that are based on Sasanian sources, including the Khwadāy-Nāmag. However, Shahbazi also assumes the existence of the Khawadāy-Nāmag as a text, although he calls it khoday-nāmeh-hā (Khwadāy-Nāmags, in plural) thus suggesting implicitly that there was not one single text: Shahbazi, Tarikh-e Sasanian, 73.

63 Boyce, Mary “Middle Persian Literature,” Hdb. d. Orientalistic, 2. Absch., Literature (Leiden, 1968), 31–66Google Scholar. Some of the surviving Middle Persian texts, most prominently Khusraw-ī Kawādān ud Rēdak, obviously hearken back to the time of Khusrow I. Even the completion of a “definitive” corpus of the Avesta itself is associated with Khusrow I: Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems, 173.

64 Balkhi, Ibn Fārsnāme, ed. G. Lestrange and R.A. Nicholson (Cambridge, 1921, reprint Tehran, 1385/2006), 89–93Google Scholar. Of course, the same praise is bestowed upon him by all other historians of the period, earning him the nickname of Ādel (Per. Dādgar), “the Just,” evidently for exposing the deviant ways of his father under Mazdak's influence. This is an achievement that obviously makes Khusrow wiser than his father and more worthy of the throne, prompting Kavad to abdicate the throne and become an ascetic to repent his sins! (Fārsnāme, 87–8).

65 As mentioned before, almost all Muslim historians, in some manner or another, refer to a Mōbed as the author or the protector/archivist of the text to which they are referring (e.g. al-Masʿūdī, al-Tanbīh, 61). In the introduction to the Shahnameh, Ferdowsi attributes the collection of the stories which he is making into verse to a Degγān-zādeh (son/descendant of the Dihgāns, Sasanian gentry, for whom see Zakeri, Sasanid Soldiers, 22–31), the aforementioned ʿAbd al-Razzāq. However, even his sources are Mōbeds who have come together to relate the oral and textual stories that they possess.

66 For a possibly more nuanced assessment of the state of affairs, and the environment in which these texts are being composed, see Huyse, P “Late Sasanian Society Between Orality and Literacy,” in V. Sarkhosh Curtis and S. Stewart, eds., The Sasanian Era, vol. III, Idea of Iran (London, 2008), 140–57Google Scholar.

67 The idea of the Sasanian Empire as matching the ideal domain of the Ēr, as opposed to that of the An-Ēr, was reflected as early as the third century in the inscription of Kerdīr (KKz). For a discussion of this, see Gnoli, G The Idea of Iran (Rome, 1989)Google Scholar.

68 Malandra, W.W., “Zoroastrianism i: Historical Review,” EIr, 2005Google Scholar.

69 Al-Masʿūdī in the story of Wahram II: Murūj al-dhahab (Beirut, 1985), 245–8.

70 For the letter of Tansar, a long exegesis in the genre of advice-literature or Fürstenspiegel, see Boyce and Minovi, Letter of Tansar. The letter is most likely a late Sasanian composition, although one commonly sees it taken as evidence for the existence of a Hirbēd/Mōbed of the same name as the chief priest of Ardashir I (e.g. Malandra in EIr).

71 The inscriptions have been published by Gignoux, P Les quatre inscriptions du mage Kirdīr (Leuven, 1991)Google Scholar.

72 Kerdīr Ka'aba Zardusht (KKZ), paragraph 9, when he mentions that Wahram I gave him the rank of “Grandee”: MacKenzie, D. Neil, “Kerdir's inscription,” Iranische Denkmäler, fasc. 13 (1989): 35–72Google Scholar.

73 Daryaee, T “Katībe-ye Kertīr dar Naqše Rajab,” Nāme-ye Īrān-e Bāstān (NIB) I, no. 1 (1380/2001): 8Google Scholar.

74 KKZ 11.

75 MacKenzie, “Kerdir's Inscription,” 45ff.

76 ŠKZ 47.

77 Like his later “successor,” Adurbad-ī Mahrspandān, Kerdīr has to prove his righteousness and the orthodoxy of his beliefs, even at the height of his power—an effort that seems to foreshadow literary elements of the later journey of the Arda Wiraf: Skjærvø, “Kirdir's Vision.”

78 It seems that the nobility were unhappy with Kavad forcing them to share their wives with others, and thus lose track of their noble lineage, and they therefore removed the king (Fārsnāme, 84–5). Balʿamī suggests that the Mōbeds sided with the nobility to advise Kavad not to follow Mazdak (Balʿamī, Mazhdak), but does not specify a religious instrumental in his removal, rather a general rebellion of the nobility who were fed-up: Balʿamī, 846.

79 Dīnawarī, Akhbār al-ṭiwāl, trans. M.M. Dāghānī (Tehran, 1992), 95.

80 Ibn Balkhi makes the whole thing sound like a conspiracy, pre-mediated by Khusrow to prevent the followers of Mazdak, who were evidently in power at the time, from diverting the plans: Fārsnāme, 89–91.

81 For example, Ardashir I is invested with a diadem by the god Ahura Mazda, similarly mounted on a horse, and at the same height as Ardashir himself; see Levit-Tawil, Dalia, “The Sasanian Rock Relief at Darabgird—A Re-Evaluation,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 51 (1992): 161–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In contrast, other deities appear: e.g. Anahita, the goddess of purity, is stands opposite Narsē (293–302 CE), and Mithras is present in the relief of Shapur II and Ardashir II; on this, see MacKenzie, D.N., The Sasanian Rock Reliefs at Naqsh-i Rustam, Iranische Denkmäler (Berlin, 1989)Google Scholar, and Tanabe, Katsumi “Date and Significance of the So-called Investiture of Ardashir II and the Images of Shahpur II and III at Taq-i Bustan,” Orient 21 (1985): 102–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For 200 years after these monarchs, there is no other Sasanian relief until the beginning of the seventh century when Khusrow II is flanked by two gods at his relief in Taq-ī Bostān reliefs (next to Shapur II and Ardashir II's reliefs). Here, Khusrow is standing on a platform, above the level of the two gods who are flanking him, Ahura Mazda and Anahita, on which see Daryaee, Sasanian Persia, 34.