On the margins of minority life: Zoroastrians and the state in Safavid Iran

This article looks at the treatment of the Zoroastrians by central and provincial authorities in early modern Yazd, Kirman and Isfahan, emphasizing the institutional weaknesses of the central or khāsṣạ protection they were supposed to benefit from under the Safavids (907–1135/1501– 1722). It is argued that the maltreatment the Zoroastrians endured under the Safavids had little to do with religious bigotry. Rather, it arose from rivalries between the central and the provincial services of the Safavid bureaucracy, putting Zoroastrians in Yazd, Kirman, Sistan and Isfahan at risk of over-taxation, extortion, forced labour and religious persecution. The argument developed in this article pivots on the material interest of the central and the provincial agents of the Safavid bureaucracy in the revenue and labour potentials of the Zoroastrians, and the way in which the conflict of interest between these two sectors led to such acts of persecution as over-taxation, forced labour, extortion and violenc

Chronologie orientalischer Völker

von Albêrûnî. Hrsg. von C. Eduard Sacha

The Book of instruction in the elements of the art of astrology : written in Ghaznah, 1029 A. D.; reproduced from Brit. Mus. MS. Or. 8349

by Abuʾl-Rayḥān Muḥammad Ibn Aḥmad al-Bīrūnī. The translation facing the text by R. Ramsay WrightNamensform des Übersetzers im Paralleltitel: Ramzī Rai