Origin from 1979
Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution was, in the source's own words, "equally traumatic" for the country's Zoroastrian minority, whose numbers it states were "reduced drastically." Muslim revolutionaries entered the main Zoroastrian fire temple in Tehran and replaced a portrait of Zoroaster with one of Ayatollah Khomeini. Official recognition continued even so: Zoroastrians kept the one parliamentary seat reserved for them since Iran's 1906 constitution, and the country's 2012 census recorded 25,271 Zoroastrians, a 27.5 percent rise from the 2006 count. The source gives no numeric pre-revolution population figure and no date for the temple incident narrower than the revolution itself, and this atlas carries both gaps rather than inventing a number or a day.
Facts
Dates
Start YearSourced to the subject's own accountThe source names no month or day for the fire-temple incident more precise than the 1979 revolution itself, and no end year for the persecution it describes; the 2012 census figure cited in this event's own description is a later data point, not a stated close to the period. StatusSourced to the subject's own account Learn More
How the 1979 Revolution Brought Persecution to Iran's Zoroastrians
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979 brought sudden persecution to the country's Zoroastrian minority. Muslim revolutionaries entered the main Zoroastrian fire temple in Tehran and replaced a portrait of Zoroaster with one of Ayatollah Khomeini, a single act that announced how far the new state's tolerance for the old Persian faith would extend.
The revolution's effect on the community was severe: contemporary accounts describe it as equally traumatic for Zoroastrians as for Iran's other religious minorities, and describe the community's numbers as reduced drastically in its wake, though no precise count survives from the years just before the revolution to measure the fall against.
Official recognition did not disappear entirely. Zoroastrians kept the single parliamentary seat reserved for their community since Iran's 1906 constitution, a protection that predated the revolution by more than seventy years and that the new Islamic Republic left in place even as it curtailed the community in other ways.
What the years after 1979 changed for Zoroastrianism in Iran was survival under narrower terms rather than disappearance. Iran's 2012 census counted 25,271 Zoroastrians, a rise of 27.5 percent over the 2006 count, evidence that a community battered by revolution was nonetheless still growing rather than vanishing decades later.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Tehran, Cities This source names Tehran directly: "the main Zoroastrian fire temple in Tehran and replaced a portrait of Zoroaster with one of Ayatollah Khomeini."
This source names Zoroaster directly: "le in Tehran and replaced a portrait of Zoroaster with one of Ayatollah Khomeini. Officia..."
Occurred In
Spread Event Of
Zoroastrianism's most recent event on this atlas's map by more than two centuries, and its first reversal since the Arab conquest already on record; the tradition's map otherwise ends at 1728.
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