I discuss the rise of Islam in my book,

A team led by the University of Basel’s Dominick Fleitmann, a professor of environmental sciences, investigated a stalagmite from the Hoota cave in Oman. Stalagmites are rock formations that rise from the floor of a cave as precipitation, carrying calcium residues, lava, sand and other materials drips down from the ceiling. Fleitman and his colleagues were able to establish rates of precipitation in the cave through the past 1500 years, and showed that there was almost no growth of the stalagmite for several decades in the 500s.

What we now call the Middle East was both familiar and alien in the 500s. The Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, held what is now Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel-Palestine, and Egypt, administering these provinces in Greek and usually favoring Chalcedonian Christianity, though some emperors had other tastes.

The Sasanian Empire ruled Iran, what is now Pakistan, some of Central Asia, and Iraq.

In 500 CE (A.D.) what is now Yemen was ruled by the Himyarite dynasty, as it had been for several centuries. The Himyarites were caught between the Eastern Romans and the Sasanian Iranians, just as today’s Yemen is an arena of conflict between the US and its allies on the one side and Iran on the other.

Across the Red Sea from Yemen, in what is now Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, the Christian kingdom of Aksum dominated. It adopted the Miaphysite theology in opposition to the Chalcedonian and used the Ge’ez language, old Ethiopic. The kingdom had Greek as the language of some administrative decrees and its theologians studied Greek in Alexandria.

The Himyarite dynasty appears to have turned against the old gods around 380, ceasing to patronize their temples, which fell into desuetude. The kings of Himyar instead begain making inscriptions to the All-Merciful, Rahmanan. Sometimes their inscriptions seem explicitly Jewish, but other instances they seem to be monolatrists, worshiping the Merciful God; one inscription suggests that these Rahmanists sometimes recognized other deities, such as the Jewish Yahweh. In the early 500s, an explicitly Jewish king, Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar, known as Dhu Nuwas, came to power and persecuted Christians in his environments. He may also have tilted to Iran geopolitically, since the Sasanians were Zoroastrians often at war with the Christian Eastern Roman Empire.

Around 520, the king of Aksum, Kaleb, launched an invasion of Himyar.Procopius says that Constantinople put him up to it to ensure that Iran’s proxy could not interfere with Roman trade down the Red Sea and through the Bab al-Mandeb that leads to the Indian Ocean and the trading entrepot of Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

Dhu Nuwas responded by massacring Christians at Najran in 523, creating storied martyrs whose stories provoked grief in Christendom. Ultimately the Aksumite armies defeated him and killed him. For a while, Kaleb’s general,
Sumūyafa Ashwa, became the viceroy of what is now Yemen. Around 531, he was deposed by an Aksumite general, Abraha, who made himself an independent king of Yemen. He persecuted Jews and promoted Christianity, probably dying around 668. He was briefly succeeded in turn by two sons, who fell out with one another, and one of them allied with the Sasanians. Around 570 an Iranian naval expedition conquered Yemen and Iran ruled the area until descendants (abna’) of the Iranian admirals and other officers garrisoned there embraced Islam in the late 620s, according to the later historian Tabari.

The great Classicist, G. W. Bowersock told this story in one of my favorite books, The Throne of Adulis.

So Professor Fleitmann’s stalagmite may help explain the end of the Himyarite kingdom and the rule instead of Aksumite generals for much of the 500s.

That is, Aksum had long been interested in dominating what is now Yemen, but that was a tall order. The country is rugged and Himyar had flourished, with dams and irrigation works. The Romans called it Arabia Felix, Happy Arabia, with the implication of “prosperous.” Wanting to dominate it and being able to were not the same thing.

But if in the 520s Himyar was in the grip of a prolonged drought, the irrigation canals would have dried up and the crops would have withered and the farming villages that may have provided Himyar with its troops would have been starving and weak. Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar was likely defeated so handily by the armies dispatched by Kaleb of Aksum because his sources of wealth and power had dried up in the drought.

The establishment of Christianity as the state religion in Yemen was in turn fateful for the religious history of the Tihama, the literal of the Red Sea from Yemen up through the Hijaz to the southern Transjordan. Even as the Transjordan was Christianizing and abandoning the old gods, Yemen was Christianizing, disprivileging the old Jewish court elite.

The successive conquests would have created refugees and slaves in Mecca and Medina, the cities of the Prophet Muhammad, first Jews in Medina fleeing Kaleb’s and Abraha’s persecution, then Christians from 570 fleeing Zoroastrian rule. Some of the audience of the Qur’an were said to be the lower class and slaves in Mecca, and were likely significantly Christian.

Professor Fleitmann and his colleagues have resolved a further piece of the puzzle of pre-Islamic Yemen, adding an important archeological finding to the work on inscriptions of Christian Robin and Iwona Gajda.

As the days become shorter and the nights become longer and darker, we are reminded that indeed winter is coming. As a child I would dread this time of the year. Not only was there was less time to play outside, but there was a string of holidays that my Iranian family didn’t celebrate, from Hanukkah to Christmas, which made me feel I didn’t belong in our new home in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

At the age of 11, I asked my parents for a Christmas tree. That’s when my grandmother, Ghamarjoon, placed two pomegranates in my hands and two in my mother’s and introduced me to Shab-e-Yalda: “shab” meaning night, and “yalda” meaning birth or light. It is a holiday celebrated by millions of people from Iran to Azerbaijan to the U.S., on Dec. 21, the winter solstice.

My path to becoming an anthropologist who studies rituals and traditions in the Middle East was, in part, a way discover the stories of my past, and Yalda was one of my first inspirations.

Celebrating light

Originating in the pre-Zoroastrian tradition of worship of Mithra, the God of Sun, but popularized by Zoroastrians, Yalda, also referred to as Chelleh, celebrates the sunrise after the longest night of the year. Ancient Persians believed that evil forces were strongest on the longest and darkest night of the year. People stayed up all night, telling stories and eating watermelon and pomegranate, in addition to dried fruit, in anticipation of the sun rising.

As the light spilled through the sky in the moment of dawn, Persians celebrated its appearance with drumming and dancing. It was thought that the day after the longest night belonged to Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian lord of wisdom.

Religious studies scholar Joel Wilbush argues that the early Christians loved this ancient Persian celebration. They saw the themes of light, sun and birth as interconnected with the birth of Jesus.

Triumph of light

Today my family continues the tradition by gathering every year to celebrate this ancient tradition. Like our ancestors before us, we stay up all night, curled under a korsi, a special Persian blanket lined with lumps of coal for warmth. We tell stories, read the poetry of Iranian poets like Hafez and Rumi, and speak of the good that can overcome evil.

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Foods such as pomegranate and watermelon are still eaten. A food indigenous to Iran, pomegranate is believed to be a symbol of life and resilience, for it blossoms during the harshest climate of winter. Persians also believe that eating summer foods, such as watermelon, will keep the body healthy through the winter, and that dried seeds like pumpkin and sunflower are a reminder of the cycle of life – of the rebirth and renewal to come.

While Christmas and Yalda are celebrated just a few days apart, the celebrations hold similar traditions and values. Family, love, resilience, rebirth and a triumph of light over dark.

Pardis Mahdavi, Dean of Social Sciences, Arizona State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The small, ancient religion of Zoroastrianism is being revived in northern Iraq. Followers say locals should join because it’s a truly Kurdish belief. Others say the revival is a reaction to extremist Islam.

One of the smallest and oldest religions in the world is experiencing a revival in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. The religion has deep Kurdish roots – it was founded by Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra, who was born in the Kurdish part of Iran and the religion’s sacred book, the Avesta, was written in an ancient language from which the Kurdish language derives. However this century it is estimated that there are only around 190,000 believers in the world – as Islam became the dominant religion in the region during the 7th century, Zoroastrianism more or less disappeared.

Until – quite possibly – now. For the first time in over a thousand years, locals in a rural part of Sulaymaniyah province conducted an ancient ceremony on May 1, whereby followers put on a special belt that signifies they are ready to serve the religion and observe its tenets. It would be akin to a baptism in the Christian faith.

The newly pledged Zoroastrians have said that they will organise similar ceremonies elsewhere in Iraqi Kurdistan and they have also asked permission to build up to 12 temples inside the region, which has its own borders, military and Parliament. Zoroastrians are also visiting government departments in Iraqi Kurdistan and they have asked that Zoroastrianism be acknowledged as a religion officially. They even have their own anthem and many locals are attending Zoroastrian events and responding to Zoroastrian organisations and pages on social media.

Although as yet there are no official numbers as to how many Kurdish locals are actually turning to this religion, there is certainly a lot of discussion about it. And those who are already Zoroastrians believe that as soon as locals learn more about the religion, their numbers will increase. They also seem to selling the idea of Zoroastrianism by saying that it is somehow “more Kurdish” then other religions – certainly an attractive idea in an area where many locals care more about their ethnic identity than religious divisions.

As one believer, Dara Aziz, told NIQASH: “I really hope our temples will open soon so that we can return to our authentic religion”.

“This religion will restore the real culture and religion of the Kurdish people,” says Luqman al-Haj Karim, a senior representative of Zoroastrianism and head of the Zoroastrian organisation, Zand, who believes that his belief system is more “Kurdish” than most. “The revival is a part of a cultural revolution, that gives people new ways to explore peace of mind, harmony and love,” he insists.

In fact, Zoroastrians believe that the forces of good and evil are continually struggling in the world – this is why many locals also suspect that this religious revival has more to do with the security crisis caused by the extremist group known as the Islamic State, as well as deepening sectarian and ethnic divides in Iraq, than any needs expressed by locals for something to believe in.

“The people of Kurdistan no longer know which Islamic movement, which doctrine or which fatwa, they should be believing in,” Mariwan Naqshbandi, the spokesperson for Iraqi Kurdistan’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, told NIQASH. He says that the interest in Zoroastrianism is a symptom of the disagreements within Islam and religious instability in the Iraqi Kurdish region, as well as in the country as a whole.

“For many more liberal or more nationalist Kurds, the mottos used by the Zoroastrians seem moderate and realistic,” Naqshbandi explains. “There are many people here who are very angry with the Islamic State group and it’s inhumanity.”

Naqshbandi also confirmed that his Ministry would help the Zoroastrians achieve their goals. The right to freedom of religion and worship was enshrined in Kurdish law and Naqshbandi said that the Zoroastrians would be represented in his offices.

Zoroastrian leader al-Karim isn’t so sure whether it is the Islamic State, or IS, group’s extremism that is changing how locals think about religion. “The people of Kurdistan are suffering from a collapsing culture that actually hinders change,” he argues. “It’s illogical to connect Zoroastrianism with the IS group. We are simply encouraging a new way of thinking about how to live a better life, the way that Zoroaster told us to.”

On local social media there has been much discussion on this subject. One of the most prevalent questions is this: Will the Kurdish abandon Islam altogether in favour of other beliefs?

“We don’t want to be a substitute for any other religion,” al-Karim replies. “We simply want to respond to society’s needs.”

However, even if al-Karim doesn’t admit it, it is clear to everyone else. Committing to Zoroastrianism would mean abandoning Islam. But even those who want to take on the Zoroastrian “belt” are staying well away from denigrating any other belief system. This may be one reason why, so far, Islamic clergy and Islamic politicians haven’t criticised the Zoroastrians openly.

As one local politician, Haji Karwan, an MP for the Islamic Union in Iraqi Kurdistan, tells NIQASH, he doesn’t think that so many people have actually converted to Zoroastrianism anyway. He also thinks that those promoting the religion are few and far between. “But of course, people are free to choose whatever religion they want to practise,” Karwan told NIQASH. “Islam says there’s no compulsion in religion.”

On the other hand, Karwan disagrees with the idea that any religion – let alone Zoroastrianism – is specifically “Kurdish” in nature. Religion came to humanity as a whole, not to any one specific ethnic group, he argues.

via Niqash.org

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Journeyman Pictures: “Zoroastrian Worship – Iran”