Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn , Apple , Spotify , and Stitcher and a variety of other platforms. This episode is somewhat unique in that the guest is anonymous. He is well informed and well read and we had an interesting chat about Indian politics, recent history and his fascination with Steve McQueen.
We talk about Indian politics, his research and whatever else comes up.. The book serves as a useful primer on Iranian history for novices such as myself , covering over 3, years of history in less than pages. I found myself skimming through the latter parts of the book- the Pahlavi era and the subsequent Islamic Revolution- as I am broadly familiar with the events of the modern period. Pre-Islamic Persia was an advanced and sophisticated civilisation.
Axworthy provides a good overview of the Achaemenid, Parthian and Sassanid periods of Iranian history. Ancient Iranians developed a complex and nuanced theology centred around the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster. Zoroastrianism was the predominant religion of the Sassanid Empire, one of the superpowers of the pre-Islamic world. All of this was to change with the arrival of Islam in the seventh century.
The armies of Islam burst out of the Arabian Peninsula like a supernova and reduced the Sassanid Empire to dust. The Zoroastrian religion was swept away in this upheaval. One group of Zoroastrians escaped and sought refuge in Gujarat in Western India. These Zoroastrians are commonly known as the Parsis from Pars or Persia.
The essay below is a personal account of the Parsis of Mumbai. I had written it a decade ago. Continue reading The Parsis of Bombay.
