Modern Zoroastrian nation

katchen

Banned
I realize that the Portuguese enclaves in Diu and Damao and Goa were quite small, but relatively speaking, so is the population of Zoroastrian Parsees. How about a TL in which Parsees gravitate to Portuguese India and then demand independence and self-determination rather than be submerged in a Hindu majority when the issue of decolonization comes up?
Could that work?
 
Errnge

Errnge

How about a Zoroastrian Polynesia? There are some weird religious proportions in those islands, I'd bet it wouldnt be hard to have a Zoroastrian Tahiti or Fiji
 
Sulemain

Sulemain

Banned
Wasn't Freddie Mercury a Zoroastrian?

Anyway, I'd say a no Islam TL might do the the trick. Although I've heard that might result in Neostrian Christian (what is that, anyway?) Persia.
 
Jonathan Edelstein

Jonathan Edelstein

With an early enough POD, a united India could be avoided altogether, and in that case a surviving Parsi city-state would be very possible.

Africa might also work, even with Islam, if Zoroastrianism can spread into the interior. If a sixth-century Persian merchant goes on a trading expedition to the Great Lakes, for instance - or if one of his converts does - then the religion could have centuries to take root before anyone comes knocking.
 

Delvestius

Banned
Sulemain said:
Wasn't Freddie Mercury a Zoroastrian?

Anyway, I'd say a no Islam TL might do the the trick. Although I've heard that might result in Neostrian Christian (what is that, anyway?) Persia.
Click to expand...

I did one of them, it's in my sig. And indeed Zoroastria remains.

I doubt the Nestorians would have much of a chance between the Monophysites and the Persians.

Freddie Mercury was born in Zanzibar to Zoroastrian parents, so yeh lol
 

Malta

Sulemain said:
Wasn't Freddie Mercury a Zoroastrian?

Anyway, I'd say a no Islam TL might do the the trick. Although I've heard that might result in Neostrian Christian (what is that, anyway?) Persia.
Click to expand...

The number of Nestorian Persians is one that is always overestimated, there were more Assyrian Nestorians.
 

Kishan

After defeating Darius and conquering the Persian Empire, Alexander was impressed by the Persian culture and it is said that he adopted some of the Persian customs, which was resented by his Macedonian companions. Suppose Alexander decided to adopt the Persian culture and her traditions totally and adopted the Zoroastrian religion too. He proclaim himself to be the Persian Emperor and the rightful heir of Darius and all the lands conquered by him as part of the Achaemenid Empire. He decides to make the Zoroastrian religion, the state religion and decrees everyone to follow him. If he does not die early as in OTL, but continue to live and rule to his ripe old age, he may succeed in making Zoroastrianism as the largest religion and block the future rise of Christianity and Islam. Then there would be not one but many modern Zoroastrian nations.
 

Dfront21

That would be a good POD. After Alexander burns alll the Zoroastrian holy books, he receives a vision from Ahura Mazda chastising him for his offense and ordering him to make ammends. As a result of this vision, Alexander converts to Zoroastrianism and his conquest take on a religious zeal. Zoroastrianism ends up becoming the dominant organized and state sponsored religion in western Asia and the mediterranean. Alexander ends up writing his own equivalent of a new testament and is looked upon as the savior of Zoroastrianism.
 

Elfwine

Dfront21 said:
That would be a good POD. After Alexander burns alll the Zoroastrian holy books, he receives a vision from Ahura Mazda chastising him for his offense and ordering him to make ammends. As a result of this vision, Alexander converts to Zoroastrianism and his conquest take on a religious zeal. Zoroastrianism ends up becoming the dominant organized and state sponsored religion in western Asia and the mediterranean. Alexander ends up writing his own equivalent of a new testament and is looked upon as the savior of Zoroastrianism.
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I notice the conspicuous absence of any reaction on the part of the Macedonian army, which would probably regard him as having taken leave of his senses even earlier than OTL.

That can't end well for Alexander or Zoroastrianism.
 

Dfront21

Elfwine said:
I notice the conspicuous absence of any reaction on the part of the Macedonian army, which would probably regard him as having taken leave of his senses even earlier than OTL.

That can't end well for Alexander or Zoroastrianism.
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Alexander anticipates a revellion among his Macedonian troops, as it is foretold to him by Ahura Mazda. To hedge against this, he recruits more and more among Iranic troops.
 

Elfwine

Dfront21 said:
Alexander anticipates a revellion among his Macedonian troops, as it is foretold to him by Ahura Mazda. To hedge against this, he recruits more and more among Iranic troops.
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Who do him a fat lot of good when Parmenion (or someone else) assassinates him.

Dreams of being spoken to by Ahura Mazda are not a shield of invulnerability.
 

Blackfox5

There probably needs to be an easily defendable location with a large population that stays Zoroastrian after the Islamic conquest. That preserves a Zoroastrian homeland. Persia has lots of mountainous areas so it is very possible. You just need a significant defeat of the Muslim areas at some point during the initial invasions. That could preserve an area of northern/eastern Persian as well as parts of Central Asia and Afghanistant that could retain Zoroastrianism as a major faith.

A Greater Khorasan could serve as such a homeland. You still need to fill in some 1400 years of history to keep it intact, but there is no reason why that would be impossible.

A possible POD might be that the Muslims fail to win a decisive victory at the Battle of Nahavand. Maybe the battle is avoided entirely, or the Muslims win only a slight victory, or they experience a defeat. The result is that future Muslim conuests are blunted or avoided, leaving most of eastern Persia safe. The old Persian heartland might become a frontier warzone between Muslim and Zoroastrianism (like how Anatolia eventually became), and Khorasan eventually becomes the new heartland of the Zoroastrian faith.
 
LNSS

LNSS

Could the faith be carried fron northeast Persia, to Central Asia, then to the steppes, and eventually end up in the states of Rus?
 

katchen

Banned
The way for the Zoroastrian Sassanids to inadvertently assure their survival would be for them to complete their conquest of the Arabian Peninsula, which they partially conquered, all the way to the Red Sea and Mecca and Yathrib, spreading the Zoroastrian religion and suppressing the Kaaba cults at Mecca. Muhammad would have grown up Zoroastrian and Islam would have been butterflied away.
 

Flocculencio

Donor
Not a nation, per se, but if Zorastrianism took off more strongly in India to the extent that there was a region or subregion of India that was majority Parsee (or at least with a Parsee plurality) assuming a butterfly net that results in a recognisable Union of India gaining independence in much the same way as OTLs did, they might very well get their own state within the Union, since Indian state divisions have tended to go along ethnic/ethnolinguistic/cultural lines.
 
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