دار بيبليون
Zara 2: The Houris between Zoroastrianism and Islam
Conference by Lwiis Saliba on Zoom,
Wednesday 19/01/2022
Fire is only a symbol
The followers of the religion of Zoroaster in the later stages of its foundation were called the worshippers of fire. The truth is that Zoroaster never made fire an object of worship, as some of his predecessors did. Rather, fire was for him, and for his traditional followers, a symbol of the wise god and god of good, Ahura Mazda, and no more than a symbol.
The orientalist Foltz explains the reasons why the followers of Zoroaster are called fire worshippers. He brings it down to several factors, the two most important of which are
1- In every Zoroastrian family, there was someone who was responsible for maintaining the sacred fire that should never be extinguished.
2- This focus on fire and the need for its sanctification, as well as the constant preservation of its flame and ignition, were the most important external characteristics that distinguished Zoroastrians from the followers of other religions, especially among foreign observers such as the ancient Greeks. This sanctification of fire and the great interest in it led Arab writers, after the time of the Islamic invasions, to call the Zoroastrians “fire worshippers” as an unjustly derogatory title.
However, most ancient Arab writers and historians realised that the Magi did not worship fire, but rather turned to it in their prayers. Al-Qazwini (605-682 AH / 1208-1283 AD), narrating about Zoroaster and his followers, says: “He therefore ordered in all the kingdoms of Kashtasif to build houses of fire, and made fire a qiblah (direction of prayer), not a god.
The Zoroastrian historian Dhalla states that most Islamic sources did not attribute fire worship to Zoroaster and his followers, and merely said that it was their qiblah. While Ferdowsi, the author of the Shahnameh epic in the history of the Persians, stressed that Zoroastrians were unifiers like the Muslims. Summarising his research into the texts of ancient Muslim authors who wrote about Zoroastrianism, Dhalla said: ‘Among the Muslims are those who called the Fire the Kaaba of Zarathustra, and among them are those who said that the Fire was his qiblah just as the Kaaba was the qiblah of the Muslims. And Ferdowsi in particular rebukes and blames, he asks every Muslim not to speak of the Zoroastrians or describe them as fire worshippers, for, as he points out, they worship only God, the One and Great.
Zoroastrian fire worship cannot be understood apart from the sacrificial ritual Yajna in the Rig Veda, which includes the burning of fire for the God Agni, i.e. Kundalini in the yogic term. We have dealt with this subject in our book mentioned above: Rig-Veda.
Al-Biruni (d. 440AH/1048AD), the earliest student of Hinduism and the Vedas, confirms that fire rituals are the most important content of the Vedas. He says in his encyclopaedia ‘A Realization (Tahqiq) of India’: “The Veda includes commandments, prohibitions, encouragements, intimidations, specifications, appointments, rewards and punishments, and most of them deal with praises and offerings of fire of all kinds which are almost innumerable, and difficult.
A study of the fire rituals in Zoroastrianism, in comparison with the same close rituals of the fire god Agni in the Rig Veda, would reveal much about the origins, development and transformation of this cult and who started it: India or Iran? This is not the subject of our study.
Zoroaster was the first to explain the doctrine of judgment after death
Among Zoroaster’s most important contributions to religions, their history and development, is the doctrine of reward, punishment and judgment after death. He described in detail the final fate of man as a result of the choices he makes in life. Thus, the Iranian prophet is the first to explain, in a fully integrated way, the idea, or rather, the doctrine of judgment after death, which the Abrahamic religions adopted, and even built their ideological system on it. Zara says: “After the death of each person, his good and bad deeds are evaluated. If he is a righteous man, Ashavan, he will be elevated to heaven and ruled by the god Ahura Mazda, but if he is classified as a wicked man, Drugvant, he will be brought back to the hell of torment controlled by the hostile spirit Angra Mainyu. The Zoroastrian texts go on to confirm that this evaluation will take place on Mount Hara on the fourth day after death.
On that memorable day, the dead will cross a bridge called Cinvat. If he is one of the righteous, he will find the bridge before him wide and easy to cross, while he will find it as narrow as a sword if he is one of the wicked.
This Cinvat Bridge was known in Islam as the Sirat Bridge. We have presented and analysed it in our book “Al-Mi’raj” from the point of view of comparative religions, where we have quoted the orientalist Sinclair Tisdal saying: “The Muslims have not taken from the ancient Zoroastrians only the word ‘Sirat’, path, but they have taken from them the whole belief. The word Sirat originally means the extended bridge only. However, they developed the meaning of this word after that, and it became the ‘path’, as it has been mentioned in Surah Al-Fatiha. It is the bridge that the dead cross. And we have quoted in the book we mentioned, Ahmad Amin’s assertion that: the Islamic belief in Jisr al-Sirat was entirely derived from Zoroaster, as he says: “Reading the doctrine of Zoroaster, one feels that it had a great impact on the Muslims. We recall that the belief of the Muslims in general in the way, in the manner narrated by Zarathustra, as well as in the customs of that way, is the flight of the soul above the body (…) All these beliefs are quite similar to what is in the Zoroastrian religion. The doctrine of the Mu’tazilites on free will, and the doctrine of the Sufis on the divisions of the soul, are all taken from this religion.
We will be content with this regarding the Sirat bridge in Islam and its conformity with the Sinvat bridge in Zoroastrianism, and we will return to it in the chapter on Zoroastrianism and Islam, (p2/ch4).
The Zoroastrian texts add that a righteous person will meet on his way a beautiful female spirit, Daena, who will accompany him to heaven. And Daena in the ancient texts of Zoroaster is the incarnation of a real woman. This is probably the origin of what we find in the Koran about the houris of Paradise. It should be noted that the doctrine of the Houri Daena will develop later in the late Zoroastrian texts, to become the abstract and simple idea of the religion itself (). On the other hand, Zoroaster’s texts state that the wicked will meet a frightening demon with a foul smell who will hold him in his clutches and throw him into the abyss of Hell ().
In the chapter on Zoroastrianism and Islam (p2/ch4), we will describe and comment on Daena by quoting the Zoroastrian holy book “Arda Viraz”.
Zarathustra confirms that his belief is the Truth
Zoroaster sent missionaries to spread his message to all parts of Persia, and some of them went beyond Iran. Avesta texts and other religious writings mention that a number of them were persecuted and even killed. ( ) It is important to mention here that the idea of switching from one religion to another was not common in the ancient world. The orientalist Foltz goes so far as to say: “It may not have existed at all. To most people this may seem very strange. What we consider today to be a religion was not seen as something different from the general culture of the society” ().
We need to dwell on this important issue here. Preaching was unknown in the ancient world and religions did not have rigid or entrenched boundaries, but overlapped. In a study on the city of Byblos, we said: “In one of the temples of Byblos, one notices an Egyptian goddess next to the ancient local god of Byblos for the Canaanites. Byblos has always been open to the religions of the neighbouring peoples who passed through its territory. The Phoenicians accepted to mix their gods with the gods of the Greeks and Romans, and considered them all as the same gods, not differing in essence, but rather accidentally. (…) Thus you see the same Temple, in Lebanon and especially in Byblos, honoured by the Greeks, the Romans and the Phoenicians. Each of them claims that they honour their own deity there. And what we have said of the Phoenicians applies to most of the peoples we have called ‘pagans’. These religions were intermingled and were not based on a rigid belief, as is the case with the Abrahamic religions. Instead, the religion was more like an art of living and a way of life. This is what the orientalist Foltz comes back to when he says: “Perhaps people at that time did not think that one religion and culture was more correct or less correct than another. It was simply a different religion, and what one believed was much less important than what one did. ( ).
This is the clear rule found in Hinduism, to which we have already referred several times: “What counts is not what a person believes, but what he experiences and lives” ().
As for Zoroaster, contrary to what was prevalent in his time, he built his religion on belief. And his absolute dualism: good/evil and true/false, led him to a radical and strict position on the other and on religions in their concept, and on the concept of the prophets of Israel who took this concept from him: either the good religion, i.e. his religion, or a false religion: all the other religions, as we have explained in our previous research (). We commented as follows: “The dualism of good and evil has led, then, to a radical and even fundamentalist position in relation to the other. Thus, when we are right and we are soldiers of the God of good, and of truth, then that other is inevitably wrong.”
The research of the orientalist Foltz confirms what we have said and say here, as he comments: “Zoroaster’s emphasis on correct belief, personal choice and personal responsibility must have been revolutionary in every sense of the word” ().
We agree with him on the revolutionary character of what Zarathustra emphasised, but we comment and add that it was a double-edged sword, because the violence of religions, of which we are all victims nowadays, starts precisely from there: the belief and certainty that we are right and that the other is wrong, hence his atonement (Takfir). The beginning is the atonement, the end is the explosion, as we explained earlier in a number of our researches.
Thus, Zoroaster was the first to affirm the unity of truth, but he was the pioneer of religious fundamentalism, violence and religious wars that took place. The Iranian scholar of the history of religions, Mehrdad Mehreen, is not far from what we are saying here. He concludes his research on Zoroastrianism by saying: “The greatest characteristic of Zoroaster’s doctrine is that it is bold and intolerant. He commands his followers to “fight evil without mercy and defeat your enemies”.
The fact remains that the Veh Din concept we have mentioned, which has prevailed in Zoroastrianism since its ancient times, is the basis of an inferior view of other religions and of the atonement of the other. We will deal with the issue of atonement in Zoroastrianism and its impact on Islam in the last chapter of our study.