AHC: Zoroastrian Revival in Post-Islamic Persia

Your challenge is to find a way for Persia after having largely converted to Islam experience a Zoroastrian revival and shift back to being (possibly slim) majority Zoroastrian. POD has to be post 651 AD (when the Sassinid dynasty collapsed).
 
Not gonna happen at all after the 9th century.

It could ONLY if;

-Somehow, muslims believes drop, and there is an acceptation of 'apostasy' one day - perhaps a Future topic... There IS a discrete rate of agnostism-atheism in nations like of Maghreb...

-A Neozoroastrism appears, a religion based on ancient iranian believes...

Not that it is both very probable, but.. not totally impossible.
Still, like 5% or so...
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Muslim_Khorasani


make this man instead of meeting Caliph on Baghdad, escaped and return to Iran. then he create weird fusion of Islam and Zoroastrianism and launch a rebellion.

You're going to need substantial support from the nobles...that's for sure. The original drive against Zoroastrianism was a result of the clash between the Persian nobles and Kings and the Zoroastrian priesthood...so the priesthood's role in society is definitely going to go the way of the Dodo as far as any future Zoroastrian Persia is concerned.
 
I'm not quite sure how possible this'd be. From what I know - which, I'll be the first to admit, isn't too much, but hey, why be here if not to be willing to learn? - Islam had much more support amongst the population as a whole, with Zoroastrianism being more, well, stratified. If this is the case - and please, do correct me if I've gotten it wrong - it seems hard to remove Islam once it's already entrenched, at least to replace it with Zoroastrianism.
 
Some felt the Umayyad dynasty's discrimination against non-Arab Muslims was was tantamount to colonialism, and their harsh repression of the partisans of Ali (proto-Shia) alienated others. Because the Abbasids were distant relations of Fatima, and thus of Ali's offspring, they initially enjoyed the backing of some Shia, but I digress. If the Umayyads retain control of much territory outside Iberia or exercise tenuous control over the Middle East empire for another couple decades, it's possible the Islamic Empire would succumb to deeper, sustained civil war. Some of the incipient rebels would likely be Zoroastrian, and they would have some opportunity to seize power. Or perhaps they survive as major group in Perisa, not unlike the Levantine or Egyptian Christians.
 

WeisSaul

Banned
Have Zoroastriansim catch on somewhere else (Turkestan or northwest India) and have the people there take over the Iranian plateau, even of they go the way of the Mughals (a minority religion ruling over but tolerating a majority religion) some people will covert back and the religions will syncretize. Considering the Persians always had to tolerate and respect their conquered peoples, a Zoroastrianism leadership would have no qualms tolerating people's of faiths and their beliefs.

In other news Zoroastrianism is catching on in Iran today (especially in the youth). Probably because of the strong link between Islam and the repressive dictatorship that is the ayatollah. If you draw a similar connection between Islam and Arab racism you could probably win over a few converts back to Zoroastrianism.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
You're going to need substantial support from the nobles...that's for sure. The original drive against Zoroastrianism was a result of the clash between the Persian nobles and Kings and the Zoroastrian priesthood...so the priesthood's role in society is definitely going to go the way of the Dodo as far as any future Zoroastrian Persia is concerned.


Uh, no. if neo-Zoroastrian to have any hope to succeed they have to absorb Mazdakism strain of Zoroastrian. It is egalitarian and popular among the poor. Many radical strain of Islam that popular in Iran is believed to be absorb Mazdak doctrine.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazdakism


Their doctrines probably mixed with radical currents of Shī‘a Islam, influencing them and giving rise to later powerful revolutionary-religious movements in the region. In the 9th century, the Khurramites, an egalitarian religious sect possibly originating from Mazdakism, led a revolt under the leadership of Bābak Khorramdin against the Abbasid Caliphate and successfully defended large territories against the Caliphate's forces for some twenty years. The Batiniyya, Qarmatians and other later revolutionary currents of Islam may also be connected to Mazdakism and were often equated with it by contemporary authors. Turkish scholar Abdülbaki Gölpinarli sees even the Kizilbash of the 16th century - a radical Shī‘a movement in Persia which helped the Safavid dynasty establish this branch of Islam as the dominant religion of Iran - as "spiritual descendants of the Khurramites" and, hence, of the Mazdakites.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazdakism#cite_note-S-G-16
 
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