Pious Citizens: Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran

Acknowledgments

xiii Acknowledgments It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that this project was inspired by the story of a tree: the legend of the Cypress of Kashmar, Zoroaster’s cypress, planted in commemoration of King Goshtasp’s acceptance of “the good religion .” The event, memorialized in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, appears in various histories. According to Qazvini, the famous cypress existed into the ninth century until it was felled on orders of Abbasid Caliph Mutawakkil. The demise of the magnificent tree caused great dismay among people, birds, and animals, and the caliph was murdered before the tree could be transported back to Baghdad , suggesting divine retribution for the sin of ordering it cut. A. V. Williams Jackson, touring Iran in 1907, met Iranians who confirmed that the cypress had grown in the vicinity of Torbat, Khorasan. This legend and its subsequent echoes inspired my attempts at uncovering the interplay of history, memory, and meaning in the reexamination and reconstruction of tradition, history, belief, and practice undertaken by Zoroastrian reformers in nineteenth- and twentieth-century India and Iran. I also like to think that this project began with a casual question on my first evening in Iran. The late professor Kasra Vafadari asked why I had omitted any discussion of Zoroastrian schools in my first book on educational reform in nineteenth-century Iran. This omission seems all the more glaring now in retrospect, but at the time it piqued my interest, and struck me as needing both response and redress. I was privileged to have Kasra’s assistance that summer and the next as I began hunting for sources. Although this project developed into something quite different along the way, I am indebted to Kasra for launching the idea of working on the Zoroastrian community of Iran. There are many others whom I wish to acknowledge. To my daughter, Soraya, I recognize all the ways in which work on this project kept us apart, and hope xiv | Acknowledgments that in as many ways or more, it has brought us together. To the many friends and colleagues whose own expertise and insight continues to inspire and educate me, helping me move from unconscious suspicions and roughly formed ideas to articulation and focus, I cannot thank you enough. Several individuals in particular have given generously of their time and knowledge, most especially John Hinnells, whose advice made an enormous difference. Mohammad TavakoliTarghi , Margaret Hunt, Chris Dole, Rudi Matthee, Holly Shissler, Alan Babb, Eric Hooglund, and Jon Armajani also read some or all of the manuscript and shared their recommendations. Thanks to Andrew Dole and David W. Wills for conversations about Christianity, and to Philip Stern who assisted with sources on the British in India. Yuhan Vevaina shared hard-to-find source material as well as his own published and unpublished work, as did Afshin Marashi, Dinyar Patel, and Mitra Sharafi. Talinn Grigor allowed me permission to use a couple of her photographs of Pahlavi government buildings. Over the years I presented ideas from this book in conference form. I owe special thanks to Berna Turam, who organized three conferences with me—two in Amherst and one at Bogazici University in Istanbul. The working group that grew out of these conferences facilitated many fruitful conversations, and I hope that this will continue, regardless of our future projects. To this group, Holly Shissler, Berna Turam, Ben Fortna, Carole Woodall, Yesim Bayar, and Irvin Schick, heartfelt thanks. I also wish to thank my Amherst students for propelling me to keep learning through teaching. Special thanks to my research assistants, Laura Alagna and Karl Teo Molin. Michael Kasper at Frost Library helped me with sources, and Rhea Cabin, unofficial head of the Amherst College History Department, helped me with too many things to properly list. Thanks also to President Tony Marx, Dean Gregory Call, and the Trustees of Amherst College for awarding me funding during my critical junior sabbatical year, and to the Mellon Foundation for two years of funding while I was teaching at Williams College. Mary Selden Evans and the editorial staff of Syracuse University Press have been simply marvelous. Last, my own teachers. My appreciation is due to Nikki Keddie for her honest and frank advice that is not always easy to hear, but in the end always spot-on. I also have never properly thanked Hossein Ziai for introducing me Acknowledgments | xv to Iranian history. My interest in Iran, and...