ZOROASTRIAN SOURCES ON BLACK PEOPLE

Abstract

The purpose of this short note is to draw attention to Zoroastrian attitudes to the Black Africans.' These attitudes can be seen in the traditional Zoroastrian literature in Middle Persian, which flourished more than a millenium ago. As is well known, Zoroastrianism2 was the state-religion of the Iranian empire, ruled by the Sasanian dynasty (226-636 CE).3 The sacred texts of this religion exist in Avestan, an ancient Iranian language closely related to Sanskrit, but in fact, Sasanian Zoroastrianism was based on Middle Persian (or, Pahlavi) versions and re-workings of the Avestan texts.4 Soon after the Sasanian Empire fell to the Muslim Arabs in the mid-7th century, Islamized Iranians began to play a highly prominent role in the formation of the new Islamic civilization, which is probably endebted to its Iranian pre-Islamic heritage no less than it is to its Arab legacy. In this respect, it should be interesting to examine Zoroastrian attitudes to the Black Africans, as reflected in the Pahlavi sources. It must however be stressed that we are not implying here that these attitudes determined the Muslim views on race and color. Iranians of the Late Sasanian period (the 6th/mid-7th centuries CE) were well acquainted with East and North-East Africa,5 and so it seems, it was in their footsteps that the Muslims (Arabs and/or Iranians and others, too) were able to