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National History or Keyanid History?: The Nature of Sasanid Zoroastrian Historiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Touraj Daryaee
Touraj Daryaee*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of California at Los Angeles
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Extract

The Omission of the Achaemenids from Indigenous Accounts of Iranian history has puzzled many and led to the assumption that the Sasanids were unaware of the Achaemenids and did not have any historical memory of them; that, if anything, the Sasanids were heirs to the Parthians. The argument put forth is that, with some exceptions, sources from the Islamic period do not really show that the Sasanids knew about the Achaemenids. Indeed, it is correct that the Islamic sources have only a vague recollection of the Achaemenids. But does the vagueness in Islamic historiography in the ninth and the tenth centuries prove that the Sasanids (A.D. 224-651) were unaware of the Achaemenids (550- 331 B.C.) during their rule? The question of why the Achaemenids, in spite of their outstanding political and military achievements, were omitted from the national tradition during the reign of the Sasanids--who originated from the same region--has remained unanswered.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 3-4 , Summer Fall 1995 , pp. 129 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1995

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Professors H. P. Schmidt and C. Rapp for their help and comments. This paper is the result of two quarters of study on Sasanid history with Professor M. Morony, and I especially wish to thank him for reading it several times and making enlightening comments. None of the above professors are responsible for its shortcomings. The paper is dedicated to the memory of Mehrdad Bahar

References

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38. Boyce, M., The Letter Of Tansar (Rome, 1968)Google Scholar. According to the letter, when the king of kings died there would be a council that would choose a king. This cannot be a third-century idea because the Zoroastrian clergy could not have exerted so much influence and power in early Sasanid history. The letter states only that if the mobed mobedān's opinion was in accord with the other two, then there would be a decision. If the mobed mobedān's opinion was different, there would be no decision until he and other mobeds and hērbeds made a determination. What is important is the proclamation given by the mobed mobedān. Here again the tradition of kingship is given according to Zoroastrianism. The mobed mobedān would ask, “Do you accept the kingship from God Almighty (glory be to his name) according to the religion of Zoroaster, upheld by the King of Kings, Gushtasp son of Luhrasp, and restored by Ardashir son of Papak?” (p. 62). For the title of mobed mobedān in the text see Minovi, M., Nāma-yi Tansar (Tehran, 1352 Sh./1973), 88Google Scholar.

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46. Yasht 19.71 gives seven of the Keyanid names (Christensen, Les Kayanides, 18).

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56. Gnoli, Idea of Iran, 84.

57. Netzer, “Some Notes,” 51.

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62. Gnoli, Zoroaster's Time, 214.

63. Ibid., 222. Gnoli argues correctly that Zoroastrian orthodoxy began with the Sasanids.

64. Frye, History of Ancient Iran, 120; Diakonov, M. M., The History of Ancient Persia (Tehran, 1968), 17Google Scholar. Frye believes that the religion of the Achaemenids was a mixture of the old Indo-Iranian beliefs and Zoroastrianism, with influences from the religions, priests and practices of the Ancient Near East (p. 121). Earlier G. Cameron had expressed the same sentiment, minus the Near Eastern element: “Thus the court religion of the Achaemenid kings would seem to have been a fourth Iranian religion existing at the side of Magism, Mithraism, and Zoroastrianism, independent of all yet sharer in all” (Cameron, G., Persepolis Treasury Tablets [Chicago, 1948], 9Google Scholar).

65. Gnoli, Zoroaster's Time, particularly chap. 7.

66. Frye, History of Ancient Iran, 231; Boyce, Zoroastrianism, Its Antiquity and Constant Vigour, 135.

67. Shaki, “Denkard Account,” 118–19.

68. Yarshater, “Iranian National History,” 393–94.

69. S. Shaked, “Administrative Functions of the Priests in the Sasanian Period,” in Proceedings of the First European Conference of Iranian Studies (Rome, 1990), 1:260; Davidson, Poet and Hero, 42–43.

70. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, “Death of Cyrus,” 462.

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72. Ibid., 13:19: “Pas at ān ka Ohrmazd ō xwadāyīh rasēd, hāmīyēn Ārān-šahr abāz ō ēk-āyīh tuwānist āwurdan, ud sar-xwadāyīh ī kustag kustag Ohrmzad ō framān būrdārīh āwurd” (After Ohrmazd came to lordship, he was once again able to bring Iran back to monarchy and the lord of each district rendered obedience to Ohrmazd). What is significant is the word abāz, hinting that at another time—probably the Achaemenid period—all of “Iran-shahr” was united.

73. Gnoli, Idea of Iran, 137.

74. Ibid., 144.

75. There seems to be an alteration in Sasanid historical memory. In the Sasanid inscription at Persepolis in the fourth century the name is sad-stūn, the palace of one hundred columns. Interestingly, in the Achaemenid period the same name was applied to the structure. In the Persepolis treasury tablets the Elamite name for the structure is i-ia-an or “columned hall” (Cameron, Persepolis Treasury Tablets, seals 3a, 9, 15, 18, 22, 48a, 77, 79, 83). This shows a continuous remembrance of the name of the site down to Sasanid times. The name Takht-i Jamshid was given to the site perhaps in the records written in the late-Sasanid period or in Islamic times. The impact of Qur-‘anic legends also brought new names to Sasanid sites, such as the Adur-Gushnasp site which was called Takht-i Sulayman. In the Bundahišn the Var of Yima is located by Mount Yamagan (Kuh-i Rahmat). I. Gershevitch concludes that this is the reason why Persepolis came to be called Takht-i Jamshid in the Sasanid period (“An Iranianist's View of the Soma Controversy,” in Gignoux, P. and Tafazzoli, A., eds., Mémorial Jean de Menasce [Louvain, 1974], 53, 67Google Scholar).