It came therefore, to be used indiscriminately for all Iranian peoples. So to the Gujaratis all the Iranians who came to their country seeking religious freedom were “Parsis”, that is, Persians, even though most of them probably came from eastern Iran. (Certainly the founding group celebrated in the Qissai Sanjan are said to have been from Khorasan in the north-east, a region which had been part of ancient Parthia). Similarly, to the Greeks in the west all Iranians passed under the general term of “Persai”; and just as in Gujarat to be a Parsi was to be a Zoroastrian, so to them “Persai” were automatically identified as adherents of the Iranian religion. Thus when in 562 A.C. the Sasanian king Khosrow Anoshiravan made a treaty with the Byzantine emperor Justinian, each agreeing to show tolerance to the other’s co-religionists, they described these respectively as “Persians” and “Christians”. [1]

This treaty was made long after “Persians” (in fact Persians, Medes, Bactrians, Hyrcanians, and doubtless other groups of Iranians) had come to settle in the Byzantine territories concerned. These territories formed what was known in ancient times as Anatolia or Asia Minor (now Asiatic Turkey). In the sixth century B.C. Cyrus the Great conquered most of Anatolia, and it became part of the Achaemenian empire, remaining therefore, under Persian rule for the next two hundred or so years. Iranians arrived there as governors, civil servants, soldiers and colonists, accompanied naturally by their priests (who were all known uniformly to the Greeks as “magi”, the name of the priests of the Medes and Persians). Much of Anatolia was attractive to Iranians, and they settled there in numbers, their history being most readily traceable in two of its regions, Lydia and Cappadocia.

The chief city of Achaemenian Anatolia was Sardis, which before the Persian conquest had been the capital of the kingdom of Lydia. This was a small but fertile land, lying between the high central plateau and the coastal plain (which had been largely colonized by Greeks). The climate was delightful, and considerable trade passed through the region, contributing to its natural wealth. Here there grew up “Persian” towns and villages, identifiable by their ancient names, such as Hyrcanis (established evidently by settlers from Hyrcania, bordering Parthia in north-east Iran) and Dareiou Kome “Village of Darius” while a story told by Xenophon shows how Persian nobles lived in manor houses on their own large estates, with many servants and retainers [2].

In those times communication between Lydia and Iran, although slow, was relatively easy, for the famous Achaemenian Royal Road ran all the way from Sardis east to Susa and Persepolis, and along its entire length, Herodotus recorded, were “exceedingly good hostelries, and the whole of it passed through country that is inhabited and safe” [3]. One of the regions it traversed was Cappadocia, which comprised much of inner Anatolia. This was plateau-land, with wide grassy plains which provided good grazing for flocks and herds. The Iranians were then still largely a farming and pastoral people, and here too they settled in numbers — the noblemen in castles, the ordinary people in villages scattered about the plains. (There were then in the whole of Cappadocia only two towns of note.)

Wherever they went, the “Persians” would have maintained their devotions at their own hearth fires, and they probably soon created holy places where they gathered together for worship. The oldest Zoroastrian sanctuary known in Anatolia was in northern Cappadocia, at a little place called Zela. This was by a low hill in a small hill-encircled plain. According to Strabo, during the Achaemenian conquest the Persians won a notable victory near there; and Cyrus’ generals had more earth heaped up on Zela’s hill, and walled it round, and made it a place for worship and thanksgiving [4]. Herodotus, himself a native of Anatolia, born probably about 484 B.C. as a subject of the Persian Great King, says [5] that still in his day the Persians had no temples, but went up together (he meant evidently at festival seasons) into the mountains to worship “Zeus”, that is, Ahura Mazda, and the divinities of natural things — sun and moon and earth and fire and water and winds.

Archaeologists have confirmed Herodotus’ words, for no trace has been found of any Zoroastrian sacred building before the late Achaemenian period. But most of the Persians’ foreign subjects — notably the Egyptians and Babylonians — had long traditions of temple-worship, with statues of their gods. Many of their temples were very splendid buildings, and the statues in them costly and impressive; and the temptation must have been strong for the Persians, as the imperial people, to adopt the same usages and so to have an outward means of expressing their devotion to their own faith. The innovation appears to have been made through the worship of “Anahit” (“Anaitis” to the Greeks, Aban or Avan Yazat to later generations of Zoroastrians), to whom the Achaemenians are known to have been especially devoted. Artaxerxes II (404-358) is said to have had statues to her set up — in temples, it is safe to assume — in the chief cities of the empire, including Sardis, and to have encouraged Zoroastrians to venerate them [6]. Royal example and exhortation proved effective, and many Anahit temples were built. One was set up on the little hill at Zela [7], others are known in Cappadocia [8], and at least four, probably five, were founded in the neighbourhood of Sardis [9]. Excavations at the site of that city have yielded no trace, however, of an Anahit temple within it; and it is probable that Artaxerxes’ own foundation, said to be “at” Sardis, was in fact only near it, and is to be identified with a famous Anahit temple at Hypaipa, a small town a little to the south of the famous old city [10]. This town was built on a mountain slope on either side of a ravine down which water rushed in winter. It was probably established (long before Achaemenian times) to guard a road which led from Sardis west to the great port of Ephesus.

Many travellers must have taken this road, and Anahit’s pillared temple of white marble, set high on the hillside, evidently became famous, and is celebrated in a Greek poem composed in Artaxerxes II’s reign [11]. Remains of this temple have been found, with inscriptions identifying the divinity to whom it was dedicated as “Anaitis” [12]. Another great Anahit temple was founded by Artaxerxes’ younger brother Cyrus, who was satrap of Lydia from 407-401 B.C [13]. This temple was set on a low hill in a river valley a little to the north of Sardis, and in time a village grew up around it which was known by the Greek name of Hera Kome, “Sacred Village”. Later, in the Roman period, when this had become a thriving town, it renamed itself Hierocaesarea [14].

Once the custom of cult-statues and temples was introduced into Zoroastrianism, statues were made of yazatas other than Anahit; and an inscription from Sardis records the consecration there by the Persian satrap, in 365 B.C., of a statue to “Zeus Baradates”. This is thought to be a half-Greek rendering of “Ahura Mazda *Baradata”, that is, “the Lawgiver”. (There would originally have been a version of this inscription also in Imperial Aramaic, the written language of Achaemenian Persia, in which Ahura Mazda would have been accorded his proper Iranian name.) Although only a few Zoroastrian inscriptions survive from Anatolia, they have yielded several otherwise unknown epithets for yazatas, representing presumably Western Iranian rather than Avestan usage. The Sardis inscription shows that Ahura Mazda’s statue was set within the inner sanctuary of a temple, which only certain priests had the right to enter Gust as with the sanctuary of a consecrated fire) [15].

The golden years for Persians in Anatolia ended with Alexander’s overthrow of the Achaemenian empire. The first battle of his long-drawn-out campaigns was fought in 334 B.C. on the banks of the river Granicus, to the north of Lydia. The Persians were defeated with heavy slaughter, and in the shock and grief of the event Sardis surrendered without a blow. Lydia, and after it Cappadocia (where there were few fortified places capable of resistance) were thus spared the ravage and destruction inflicted on many places within Iran itself; and although from then on the Persians of Lydia were never again to be ruled by fellow-Zoroastrians, they retained in large measure their former places in local society. Some at least of the nobles kept their estates, the Persian villages and small towns retained something of their former identity, and, under religiously tolerant, polytheistic rulers, first Hellenes, then Romans, the Anahit temples continued to thrive. Indeed, like other temples in the region, in good times they grew even more prosperous, receiving evidently gifts in lands, pious offerings and other benefactions Greek, however, now replaced Persian as the language of government and administration, and gradually became the common tongue which the Persians learnt to speak and write, as the Parsis learnt to speak and write Gujarati.

By no means all times were good, however. There were local wars; and raids by predatory tribesmen. Anahit’s great temple at Hiera Kome is known to have been plundered twice by invading armies [16], and it is a tribute to its importance that it was singled out for mention in this way. For Lydia a harsh period began when, in 133 B.C., it was incorporated in the newly created Roman province of Asia; for the Roman republic dealt greedily with its new possession, whose people had to bear for a century “the grinding exactions, legal and illegal, of the Roman governors, tax-gatherers, and money-lenders” [17]. Cappadocia meantime suffered from incursions from neighbouring regions and internal dynastic troubles. Serener times came for both areas with the establishment of the Roman empire in place of the republic, an empire which acquired bit by bit possession of the whole of Anatolia. It is from the centuries of Roman imperial rule, down to the mid third century A.C., that most is known about the Persians of Anatolia, and especially of Lydia.

Inscriptions from that period from Anahit’s temple in Hypaipa show that its priests bore Greek names, wrote (and presumably spoke) in Greek, and took their part in the public affairs of the province, the high priest being evidently ex officio a member of the Provincial Assembly. The title given him in one inscription is archimagos, a half-Greek formation, attested elsewhere, corresponding evidently to Old Persian *magupati “master of priests” (Middle Persian mowbed, modern mobbed). The title magos is also attested for an ordinary priest [18].

Under the Roman empire most towns struck their own bronze coins, usually in connection with annual festivals. Both Hypaipa and Hierocaesarea (as well as a town called Philadelphia) had festivals in honour of Anahit, and at Hierocaesarea almost all the devices on the town’s coins had some connection with the yazata [19].

They repeatedly showed her statue, and one issue had on the obverse Anahit’s head, on its reverse what is generally identified as that of a magos. He wears the felt headgear called by the ancient Persians a tiara, which had side¬pieces that could be brought forward across nose and mouth to fulfil the function of the padan, protecting consecrated objects from the wearer’s breath. On one coin Anahit’s statue is shown within a temple-front with pillars. This was a regular convention on coins of Greco-Roman times to honour the chief divinity of a locality. Anahit is shown in this way also on coins of Hypaipa [20]. What is of particular interest there, however, is that several coins have, between the temple’s pillars, not the statue of the yazata but a conical fire-holder, crowned by leaping flames [21]. A sacred fire is thus presented, it seems, as of equal importance with the yazata in her own temple.

Yet the fire in question seems to have been at most an Atas-i Adaran, possible a Dadgah, to judge from the rites with which it was tended. These are known from a description of them by Pausanias, a Greek of Anatolia who lived in the second century A.C. He was a traveller, and he left an account of the places and things which he saw. In one passage he wrote:

Those of the Lydians who are popularly called Persians have a temple at the city named Hierocaesarea, and at Hypaipa. In each of these temples is an inner chamber and in this an altar upon which are some ashes of a colour unlike that of ordinary ashes. A magus enters the chamber, bringing dry wood which he places on the altar. After this, he first puts a tiara upon his head, and next intones an invocation to some god or other. The invocation is in a barbarian tongue, and quite unintelligible to a Greek. While intoning he peruses a book. This, without the application of a light, inevitably causes the wood to catch fire and break out into a bright flame. [22]

This not wholly sympathetic account by a wholly ignorant onlooker has points of great interest. Essentially what is described is the tending of a lesser fire more or less as today, with the laying of dry wood on the fire which is “sleeping” under its cover of hot ashes, whose heat soon causes the wood to catch fire. The “unintelligible” tongue of the accompanying prayers was presumably Avestan, and the magus may be supposed to have put the sidepieces of his tiara across his nose and mouth, to act as a padan. Two things are, however, startling. One is that, if Pausanias is to be trusted in all details, the priest went bare-headed into the fire’s sanctuary, and only there put the tiara on his head. This suggests — like Pausanias’ own presence as an observer — that some laxity had developed in usages at these two temples during the five hundred or so years in which the worshippers there had been under alien rule.

This is hardly surprising, for Lydian society was an open, tolerant, multicultural and multi-religious one, in which Anahit was clearly venerated by non-Zoroastrians as well as by her Persian adherents, and in which local customs — such as the Greek one of going bare-headed — are likely to have been influential. The other surprising thing is that, while reciting (it seems) Avestan the magus used a book. It is hardly conceivable that he would not have known by heart the Avesta for the five-times daily tending of the sacred fire; but possibly in that society at that time books had an especial prestige, which led the Zoroastrian priests there to make ostentatious use of one in order to show onlookers such as Pausanias that they too were “learned”. But, if so, in what script was he reading the Avestan text? The Avestan script had yet to be evolved, this being a development of later Sasanian times; so the possibilities seem that the Avestan text was set down either in the defective Pahlavi script (defective because the short vowels are not written, and there are ambiguities in certain letters) or in the Greek alphabet — just as later it came to be written sometimes among the parsis in Gujarati script, or among the Iranis in the Arabic one. This seems a perfectly possible development, the Greek alphabet being quite well adapted for such a purpose; and it suggests a further interesting possibility that there may have been a Greek zand — that is, a Greek translation with commentary — of some parts of the Avesta, just as there are partial Sanskrit and Gujarati zands.

There is no record in Lydia of any fire-temples separate from image-shrines; but Strabo (a native of northern or “Pontic” Cappadocia, born around 63 B.C.) states in his Geography that both were numerous in Cappadocia in his day. He wrote:

In Cappadocia — for there the tribe of the magi, who are also called “fire-kindlers”, is large … they … have fire-sanctuaries, noteworthy enclosures; and in the midst of these there is an altar, on which there is a large quantity of ashes and where the magi keep the fire ever burning. And there, entering daily, they made incantations for about an hour, holding before the fire their bundle of rods [= the barsom], and wearing round their heads felt tiaras which reach down over their cheeks far enough to cover their lips. The same customs […] are observed in the temples of Anaitis and Omanos [Anahit and Vohu Manah]; and these temples also have sacred enclosures; and the people carry in procession a wooden statue of Omanos. Now I have seen this myself; but those other things … are recorded in the histories. [23]

It thus seems that the Persians of Cappadocia, unlike those of Lydia, did not admit unbelievers to their sanctuaries, since Strabo saw only processions issuing from them; and that their priests did not use books during worship. Moreover, Strabo makes it very clear that there were sanctuaries there where a sacred fire alone was the object of veneration, and others which held both the image of a yazata and a sacred fire. This latter usage seems widespread [24], probably down into Sasanian times, when the use of images in worship was gradually put an end to [25] In general Strabo’s account suggests (as one might reasonably expect) that the Zoroastrians of rural Cappadocia were more conservative and traditional than their co-religionists in wealthy, more cosmopolitan Lydia. Moreover, Cappadocia was one of the few former Achaemenian territories which, with brief interruptions, continued to be ruled by Persian, presumably Zoroastrian, kings for many generations after Alexander’s conquest, until at last, in 17 AC., it was annexed by Rome.

Rome acquired other possessions still further east, and in the latter part of the third century AC. the Sasanian king Shabuhr I invaded its eastern provinces in a punitive war, seeking to inflict as much damage as he could on what was then Persia’s chief political enemy. The king led his armies in person and was accompanied evidently by the Persian high priest, who was then the famous Kirder. Thereafter Kirder included these lines in one of his inscriptions:

There were fires and priests in the non-Iranian lands which were reached by the armies of the King of kings. The provincial capital Antioch and the province of Syria, and the districts dependent on Syria; the provincial capital Tarsus and the province of Cilicia and the districts dependent on Cilicia; the provincial capital Caesarea and the province of Cappadocia and the districts dependent on Cappadocia, up to Colchis, and the province of Armenia. There too at the command of the King of kings I set in order the priests and fires which were in those lands. And I did not allow harm to be done them, or captives made. And whoever had thus been made captive, him indeed I took and sent back to his own land. [26]

Kirder, a notably strict authoritarian, thus recognized these expatriate “Persians” as faithful co-religionists some six hundred years after Alexander had sundered the political links between their country and Iran.

The end for these staunch Zoroastrians was foreshadowed when in the fourth century Christianity became the state religion of their rulers, for, unlike the old Greco-Roman religion, this was an ardently proselytizing and intolerant faith. In 392 A.C. an imperial decree was issued ordering that all places of worship other than Christian and Jewish ones should be closed. This decree appears to have been effective in Lydia, where there is in fact no attestation of public Zoroastrian worship later than the middle of the third century; but it clearly took longer to enforce in remoter Cappadocia. There a Christian bishop, Basil, had written angrily in 377 of the Zoroastrians that they were “widely scattered amongst us throughout almost the whole country”, and “practised their own peculiar customs, not mingling with other people; and it is altogether impossible to employ reasoning with them … For there are neither books amongst them, nor teachers of doctrine, but they are brought up in an unreasoning manner, receiving their impiety by transmission from father to son.” [27] It is perhaps not too far-fetched to see a parallel here with the old Parsi communities of Gujarat, which down to the early 19^th century also lived largely to themselves in separate town-wards and in villages, friendly with their Hindu neighbours but pursuing their own way of life and practising their own religion apart, and also making little use of books in passing on their beliefs and practices from generation to generation. The decree of 392 empowered the Cappadocian authorities to close all Zoroastrian temples; but the “Persians” there must nevertheless have continued to resist efforts to make them abandon their faith, for we have seen that nearly two hundred years later Khosrow Anoshiravan was negotiating with the Byzantine emperor for religious tolerance for them, and even for the building (presumably in fact rebuilding) of their temples, many of which had probably by then been destroyed [28]. This is, however, the last glimpse that history allows us of the Persians of Anatolia, who thus loyally maintained their ancestral faith for nearly a thousand years — perhaps even longer — after Alexander’s destruction of the Achaemenian empire.