The Survival of Zoroastrianism in Yazd

Survey Zoroastrians: Online Religious Identification in the Islamic Republic of Iran

“…If 8 percent of this population defines their religious identity as Zoroastrian, that amounts to almost 4 million people. That is more than hundredfold the number of Zoroastrians recorded by scholarship on contemporary Iranian Zoroastrianism (Foltz 2011;Fozi, 2014Fozi, , 2022Green 2000;Kestenberg Amighi 2016;Stausberg, 2012Stausberg, , 2015Stewart, 2016Stewart, , 2018Stewart, , 2020; also compare with Eberhard, Simons, and Fennig 2021). We dub this numerical inflation as recorded by GAMAAN "Survey Zoroastrianism."…”

“…If 8 percent of this population defines their religious identity as Zoroastrian, that amounts to almost 4 million people. That is more than hundredfold the number of Zoroastrians recorded by scholarship on contemporary Iranian Zoroastrianism (Foltz 2011; Fozi, 2014, 2022; Green 2000; Kestenberg Amighi 2016; Stausberg, 2012, 2015; Stewart, 2016, 2018, 2020; also compare with Eberhard, Simons, and Fennig 2021). We dub this numerical inflation as recorded by GAMAAN “Survey Zoroastrianism.” The hypothesis is that these millions of people are not “closeted Zoroastrians” who have come out of their hiding places, nor people intending to convert to Zoroastrianism, but participating in the anonymous survey, free from scrutiny by the government, gave participants an unprecedented opportunity of making a choice among different religious identities included in the questionnaire.…”

From Power to Powerlessness: Zoroastrianism in Iranian History

“…Local ethnographic studies include Fischer 1973, who did fijieldwork among the religious minorities of Yazd during the late 1960s; Boyce 1977, who paints a somewhat romantic picture of religious life in a remote village based on fijieldwork in the early 1960s; Kestenberg Amighi 1990, on assimilation and ethnic persistence based on fijieldwork in Teheran in the early to mid-1970s. For a more recent sketch of Yazd, see Green, 2000. See also Sanasarian 2000, for a synoptic survey of the religious minorities.…”

Religious Minorities in the Middle East

“…Local ethnographic studies include Fischer 1973, who did fijieldwork among the religious minorities of Yazd during the late 1960s; Boyce 1977, who paints a somewhat romantic picture of religious life in a remote village based on fijieldwork in the early 1960s; Kestenberg Amighi 1990, on assimilation and ethnic persistence based on fijieldwork in Teheran in the early to mid-1970s. For a more recent sketch of Yazd, see Green, 2000. See also Sanasarian 2000, for a synoptic survey of the religious minorities.…”