The Contemporary Collective Identity of Zoroastrians in Tehran: Between the Strategies of Dichotomization and Complementarization

Abstract

Contemporary Zoroastrians in Iran are a tiny population famous for keeping alive the ancient religion of Iranians’ ancestors, despite centuries of marginalization, discrimination, and persecution they faced after the Islamization of the region. After the majority of Iran’s population converted to Islam as a result of the Arab conquest, Zoroastrians grouped themselves in the Yazd and Kerman provinces, finding there shelters to keep their religion-last bastions, as Mary Boyce called them (Boyce 2001, 162). Their situation has been improving since the second half of the nineteenth century thanks to the help of their coreligionists who centuries ago had migrated to India (Parsis), as well as a result of sociopolitical transformations in Iran. In the twentieth century economic and educational opportunities drew them to the cities, so today the traditionally Zoroastrian villages of Yazd are almost depopulated, and the significant part of Zoroastrian population lives in Tehran-the capital city.