Zoroastrian Studies Seminar Series: Mazdak: The Holy Man of Late Antique Ērānšahr

Mazdak, son of Bāmdād’s life and career has been of a truly exceptional character in Iranian history. Remembered in Zoroastrian Middle Persian literature as the foremost of heretics (ahlāmogān ahlāmog), and in Perso-Arabic literature as a harbinger of change, Mazdak’s popularization in the twentieth century among the Soviet bloc scholars was as a proto-Socialist revolutionary. More recently, Mazdak has been interpretated as a Gnostic-like prophet, who continues to garner interest for those engaged in Iranian and Near Eastern history. This talk takes Mazdak as a Zoroastrian priest whose worldview may have been tinged by Gnosticism, though still working within the framework of the Zoroastrian tradition, and whose message resonated with an important segment of the population. Thus, we can see him as a holy man of the late antique Iranian world who was responsible for major shifts in society and in religious life.

Touraj Daryaee holds the Maseeh Endowed Chair in Persian Studies & Culture and is the Director of the Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies, University of California, Irvine. His book Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (I. B. Tauris, 2009) won the BRISMES Award. His edited volume, The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History (Oxford University Press, 2012), was chosen as one of the top 25 academic books of the year by Choice magazine and described as “the best single volume on the history of the Iranian world.” He is the editor of DABIR: Digital Archives of Brief Notes and Iran Review with E.J. Brill-De Gruyter, of Sasanian Studies with Otto Harrassowitz, and of the web project Sasanika: Late Antique Near East Project at UC Irvine. His articles have appeared both in English and Persian in Iranian Studies, Iran, Iranistik, Studia Iranica, Res Orientalis, Historia, Electrum, Indo-Iranian Journal, Journal of Indo-European Studies, Iranshenasi, Iran Nameh, Name-ye Baharestan, and Name-ye Iran-e Bastan.