Devises of Zoroastrian Priests to Prevent Zoroastrian's Conversion to Islam

This study aims to explain how Zoroastrian Priesthood, encountering with the criticalsituation of post-Arab conquest era, devised ways to guarantee the survival of itscommunity and prevent conversion. It relied mainly upon the historical documents andtextual material- especially Zoroastrian texts. These texts largely have a religiousnature and, have been generally produced during the 3th/9th and 4th/10th Centuries.These are solutions which based mainly on the old traditions and could be classifiedunder four categories: a) those which addressed economic pressure and punishments,b) devises for economic encouragements, c) those of self isolation, and d) those whichenjoy an apocalyptic nature, including salvation literature. But, these devises, whatevertheir importance, apparently were not effective enough to prevent the increasingprocess of Zoroastrians’ conversion to Islam. They even in some occasions resultedreversely and caused more pressure on Zoroastrians (especially when Islam’ssuperiority in Iran was completed and Zoroastrians changed into a vulnerableminority). Therefore, it increased the rate of conversion of Zoroastrians to Islam.Among these solutions, just apocalyptic and salvation literature- that seems to be aresult of hard conditions which Zoroastrians endured as a minority in Islamic societywereuseful enough to keep the rest of Zoroastrians hopeful, and encouraged them tohold their Zoroastrian religion.