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349
HERESIES

Ahriman.[1] Masudi calls him a Zendik.[2] Tabari, Mirkhond, and others accuse him of teaching the doctrine of the community of wives.[3] The Dabistan repeats the statement.[4] Mazdak's revolutionary reform, however, was not so much religious as it was social and economic, for he preached communism, pure and simple.

The account of Mazdak's system is very meagre; but it is known that he accounted Jealousy, Wrath, and Greed as the three main causes of all evil in the world. Everyone, according to Mazdak's teachings, should be given equal opportunity and equal share of the enjoyment of the earthly possessions of God. So it was originally ordamed by God, but that natural order has been upset by the aggressive strong for their own self-aggrandizement.[5] Society should therefore return to that original ideal state These revolutionary teachings thrilled for a time Iran, and exercised a powerful fascination on the masses. The crisis was brought to a head when, far from taking any initiative to stamp out the heresy, the king encouraged it, and finally embraced it. His son, Prince Noshirvan, summoned the Dasturs and Mobads to consider the situation It was certain that the cult would spread and the young prince adopted severe measures to suppress it, lest it should menace the public peace. The clergy, who viewed the new heresy with great alarm, advised rigorous measures to extirpate the threatening creed. Mazdak did not live long to preach his doctrine, for the prince arranged a banquet for him and his followers and put them all to the sword in A.D. 528.

This communistic socialistic sect received therewith a fatal blow from which it never wholly recovered, but it maintained a feeble spark of life for a considerable time. The Rawandis, Babak, called al-Khurrami, and al-Muqanna, the Veiled Prophet of Khurasan, later embodied the salient teachings of Mazdak in their system.[6]

  1. ↑ Al-Biruni, tr. Sachau, p. 192, Dabistan, tr. Shea and Troyer, 1. 373–375.
  2. ↑ Tr. Barbier de Meynard, vol. 2, p. 195.
  3. ↑ Zotenberg, 2 148–152; Sacy, Mémoires sur diverses Antiquités de la Perse, p. 354–356.
  4. ↑ Shea and Troyer, 1. 377, 378.
  5. ↑ Tabari, tr. Noldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur zeit der Sasaniden, p. 141, 154, Leiden, 1879.
  6. ↑ Browne, op. cit., 1. 316–318, 328.
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