Reclaiming the Faravahar: Zoroastrian Survival in Contemporary Tehran by Navid Fozi (review)

Zoroastrianism is one of the most influential traditions in the history of religions, having provided many of the basic concepts now found in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and even Buddhism, but it is very little known today outside specialist circles. It was the state religion of the Sasanian Empire in Iran prior to the Arab conquests in the mid-seventh century, and has been in decline ever since. Today there are fewer than 60,000 practitioners in India (descendants of migrants who fled Iran more than 1,000 years ago) and perhaps 15,000–20,000 in its original homeland of Iran; diaspora communities exist in the United States (14,000), Canada (7,000), the United Kingdom (5,000), and elsewhere throughout the world. Iranian nationalists began to reclaim Zoroastrianism — along with its principal symbol, a human figure within a winged disk known as the faravahar — during the early 20^th century. Today many Iranians claim to have “reverted” to their “original national religion,” but such conversions are not recognized in Iran and are controversial elsewhere since traditional Zoroastrian communities do not accept converts.

Iran’s ever diminishing Zoroastrian community has been the subject of several ethnographic studies, notably Michael Fischer’s “Zoroastrian Iran: Between Myth and Practice,” (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1973); Mary Boyce, A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism (Clarendon Press, 1977); and Janet Kestenberg Amighi, Zoroastrians of Iran: Conversion, Assimilation, or Persistence (AMS Press, 1990). To these may now be added Navid Fozi’s work on the Zoroastrians of Tehran.

Fozi, who completed the work under review as part of a PhD in anthropology, seems to have stumbled upon his subject almost by accident after having been thwarted in his initial aim to conduct research on a rural Sufi sect and settling on the Ahl-e Haqq of Kermanshah Province. (He does not seem to have realized that the Ahl-e Haqq are not Muslims and therefore not a Sufi sect.) His knowledge of Zoroastrianism is somewhat hastily acquired, and appears to be based largely on personal communication with one scholar who is himself Zoroastrian, but not Iranian (Jamsheed Choksy) supplemented by an uncritical use of secondary sources a number of which are by nonspecialists (Kathryn Babayan) or amateurs (Shahin Bekhradnia). Fozi’s treatment of Zoroastrian history and beliefs largely reflects the contemporary Zoroastrian narrative, which is presented as if it were not problematic.

Once having decided to work on the Zoroastrian community of Tehran, the author complains at length about the difficulties he encountered gaining access to Zoroastrian ceremonies, attributing his subjects’ reticence to their being doubly suspicious of him as an Iranian (and therefore potentially a government spy) and as a Baha’i (and thus a potential proselytizer). Nevertheless, Fozi’s extensive descriptions of some of the ceremonies he was able to attend constitute one of the principal contributions of his book.

The author’s stated aim is to demonstrate the attempts of Zoroastrians in Tehran to “construct an alternate identity” to that of the dominant Shi‘i Muslim culture, through “performative acts” consisting mainly of their traditional rituals but also cultural events where their distinct history is emphasized. He largely succeeds in fulfilling this aim, although the conclusion is hardly surprising since for a minority to see themselves as distinct and to express this distinctiveness through the maintenance of unique rituals and narratives is precisely what one would expect. One wonders how deliberately today’s Zoroastrians are busily “constructing an alternate identity,” or whether they are simply being their non-Muslim selves just as they always have been throughout their history.

Readers interested in the experience of religious minorities, especially in the Iranian context, will perhaps be tempted to pick up this book, but may be disappointed not to learn much about what it is actually like to be a Zoroastrian in Iran today. Do they spend their days engaging in performative acts so as to differentiate themselves from Muslims, or do their lives in...