AHC: 10 million Zoroastrians worldwide

The latest time you could probably go to for a large population of Zoroastrians is a 9th century Zoroastrian rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate. If you want to get into the implausible then maybe a tribe on the steppe converts, conqueres large swathes of land, and imposes Zoroastrianism on the population top down but this is more unlikely.
 
The latest time you could probably go to for a large population of Zoroastrians is a 9th century Zoroastrian rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate. If you want to get into the implausible then maybe a tribe on the steppe converts, conqueres large swathes of land, and imposes Zoroastrianism on the population top down but this is more unlikely.
Maybe Turkish tribes convert to Zoroastrianism.
 
Maybe Turkish tribes convert to Zoroastrianism.

I considered this but the trend among conquering nomads is that they adopt the religion of the conquered (see Mongols, Pechenegs, Jurchen, etc.) so I think the Turks managing to impose Zoroastrianism top down on the conquered populations is implausible.

The only exception I can think of right now is the Sultanate of Rûm, but they were backed by the Seljuqs and had a lot of co-religionists to draw on. Also, they had centuries to settle this relatively small area and it still took quite a while to make Anatolia fully Turkish-Sunni.
 
Muslim conquest of Persia never happen and the country remain as Zoroastrian and in later centuries some Persian move to other places of the world.
 
What is the maximum size of a Zoroastrian community within India? Is it destined to remain a tiny minority, like OTL Parsees? Or could it become a mass religion with numbers in the millions?
 
From memory, the last Zoroastrian king of Persia decided between escaping to China or the Byzantines, deciding upon the former.

If this is the case, perhaps the Byzantines keep him and his court on for a while under the premise of being able to install their own shah (which they did a few times if I recall).
Whilst I can hardly see them succesfully doing so, I could see the Shah's court being a basis for later Zoroastrian migration, with a slow diaspora into europe so that there is another ethno-religous minority like judaism.
 
What if Zoroastrianism caught on in China somehow? It wouldn't even need to be anything close to a majority religion there to have 10 million+ followers.
 
10 millions is not that large for India, numerous Guru can gain that many followers within their lifetimes, so Single Charismatic Preacher could pull that off, perhaps by making remix/syncretism of Zoroastrian and Hindu theology.
 
If you really want a pod as late as possible couldn't Freddie Mercury convert to zoroastrianism and it becomes some kind of celebrity religion? I mean he was Parsi after all.
 
If you really want a pod as late as possible couldn't Freddie Mercury convert to zoroastrianism and it becomes some kind of celebrity religion? I mean he was Parsi after all.

He somehow survives AIDS long enough for anti-retrovirals to come on the scene (I seem to recall it was really only a matter of him not admitting he was sick until it was too late) and credits Ahura Mazda with keeping him alive. This leads millions of his fans to convert.
 

Zwinglian

Banned
If you really want a pod as late as possible couldn't Freddie Mercury convert to zoroastrianism and it becomes some kind of celebrity religion? I mean he was Parsi after all.
Scientology has only 30,000 members and they have a lot of celebrities
 
Scientology has only 30,000 members and they have a lot of celebrities
I don't think Freddie Mercury could hit a million believers but Scientology is a dangerous cult while Zoroastrianism is just a normal religion which would be westernized if it became a meme religion in the west anyway.
 
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