According to the census of October, 1879, by General Houtum-Schindler,[6] the Zoroastrian population comprised 8,499 individuals, of whom 4,367 are men and 4,132 women, they being distributed in the following manner: In Yezd, 1,242; in the surrounding districts, 5,241; in Kirman, 1,498; in the surrounding districts, 258; at Bahramabad, 58; at Teheran, 150; at Kaschan, 15; at Shiraz, 25; at Bushire, 12. The latest census (1892) shows a sensible increase of the population, rising to 9,269 individuals.
Yezd and Kirman are the two most important towns, the former being about two hundred miles south-east of Ispahan, the latter about three hundred and eighty miles from the sea, in the port of Bunder Abbas. They are both situated on the confines of two extensive deserts, the Dasht-i-Kavir and the Dash-i-Lut, which, to the north, cover an area of over five hundred miles, and which are separated by a chain of rocky mountains through which the caravans trace their way with difficulty. This region is feared by travellers, and is hardly known to Europeans.[7]
Yezd[8] communicates with the rest of Iran only by the caravan roads. On leaving the argillaceous plateaus, the rocks and the sandhills, the town and the villages around seem to emerge from a veritable oasis of mulberry trees; the desert begins at the very foot of the walls, where the sand driven by the tempests is heaped up. A line of ruins surrounds it and testifies to its ancient extent. Yezd is, however, prosperous. It contains a population of from seventy to eighty thousand inhabitants, composed of the most diverse elements—amongst others 2,000 Jews, still obliged to wear on their cloaks the badge of their disgrace, and some Hindoos called to this place by their business affairs.
There are five reservoirs, abambars, fifty mosques, eight madressas, and sixty-five public baths; a post office ensures a regular weekly service with Bander-Abbas and Bushire; the telegraph puts it in communication with Kirman and Ispahan. Commerce flourishes; about the middle of this century eighteen hundred manufactories gave work to nine thousand workmen. Nowadays the number is, however, less.
It is here that we find, grouped together, the scattered remnants of the Zoroastrian community. The Guebres gave themselves up chiefly to gardening and the cultivation of mulberry trees, notably of the species of brown fibre, the wearing of which was formerly incumbent on them. But a great change has taken place, and such a trader now possesses a thousand camels. There are schools there, four Fire Temples, and several Towers of Silence. About twenty kilometres to the south-west is the town of Taft, where was preserved for a very long time the permission to keep up openly the sacred fire. The community has a high priest, and also a lay chief, Ardeshir Meherban. Some of the Guebres are naturalised Englishmen, and thanks to them, for the last fifty years the trade of Yezd has grown by their intercourse with India. Their rôle is similar to that performed in the open ports of Japan by the compradores and the Chinese agents into whose hands nearly all business passes. This activity is due to the efforts of their co-religionists in India, for in spite of their recognised probity and practical intelligence, the Guebres have long been exposed to the most humiliating vexations.
Kirman is the chief city of ancient Caramania[9] and stands in the centre of four great highways which run from the south and the west. Its situation makes it a very important centre of commerce between the Persian Gulf and the markets of Khorassan, Bokhara, and Balk. Of the twelve thousand Guebres who were formerly resident in this locality, there only remain, according to the census taken in 1878 by the orders of the Governor, thirteen hundred and forty-one.[10] At the time of the Arab invasion, Kirman served as a place of refuge for King Yezdezard, and passed successively into the hands of the Beni-Buzak, the Seldjoukides Turks, the kings of Kharezm (Khiva), and a Kara-Kitaïenne family which remained in power till the year 1300; and it was also the See of the Nestorian metropolitan bishopric of Fars. This city had to suffer much from the invasions, from the east and west, of Gengis-Khan, Timour, the Afghans and Nadirshah. The siege it sustained in 1494 is memorable for the massacres ordered by Aga Mahomed Khan.[11] It was within its walls that the last of the family of the Zends, Luft Ali-Khan, had taken refuge. Betrayed by his followers, the young prince contrived, however, to escape the cruelty of the redoubtable Kadjar eunuch. For three months the soldiers committed all sorts of excesses, the town was given up to plunder[12] and finally razed. A little later, having been rebuilt by Fath-Ali-Shah, it recovered by degrees its ancient prosperity, thanks to a capable and at the same time avaricious and strict governor, Vekil-ul-Mulk. The ruins of Kirman occupy a length of three miles. The modern town contained in 1879, 42 mosques, 53 public baths, 5 madressas, 50 schools, 4 large and small bazaars, and 9 caravanserais. Its commerce is flourishing, the carpets and shawls manufactured there being very wonderful.
The physical and moral condition of the Guebres has changed very little in Persia. Their contact with the Mussalmans has neither relaxed nor enervated that condition. The women, of whom the majority belong to poor families, are renowned for their chastity, while the men are so famous for their morality that they are particularly employed in the gardens of the Shah. From an ethnographical point of view, this is what can be said; we follow the résumé given by M. Houssay[13]:
“When the Arabs by right of conquest imposed a new religion on the Persians, the fusion of the Turano-Aryans had been already for the greater part accomplished in the north and east of the empire. At this time there was no difference of race, manners, customs or religion between the ancestors of the Mahomedan Persians and those of the real Guebres. Separated to-day as surely by their religion as by vast extent of space, they no longer commingle; but being descended from the same ancestors, and neither having undergone any modification since that period, we find them again to-day not unlike each other in the same region.... The only ethnical element which could have been introduced among the Persian Mahomedans and not among the Guebres, would be the Semitic element due to the Arab conquerors. But it was not so. The soldiers of Islam were indeed sufficiently fanatical and violent to impose their laws and religion on the people, but not sufficiently numerous to effect any change in them. It would be practically quite the truth to say that this invasion has left no traces outside the families of the Seides. The language alone has felt its effects; all words connected with religion and government are Arabic. The Guebres should be all the less regarded as pure descendants of the Aryans, as they resemble their Mussulman neighbours, and are, on the other hand, not all of the same type. Those of Yezd have, according to Khanikoff, Aryan characteristics. It is not because they are Guebres, but because they dwell in a country adjoining Fars. Those of Teheran resemble the other inhabitants of Teheran. The Parsis of India, whose ancestors preferred exile to conversion, are more like the Parsis of Persia, and differ from their co-religionists of the North. Since their exodus, they have not at all mixed with the people who received them; they are such as they were then. Thus at the time of the Arabic conquest there was no single race. The ethnical distribution, which can be observed even now, existed already. The Guebres who remained in Persia were the Turano-Aryans; the emigrants, who had chiefly started from the south of the kingdom, were Aryans.”[14]
The condition of the Zoroastrians who had remained behind in Persia had been, as we have said, always miserable. In 1511, they wrote to their co-religionists who had taken refuge at Naosari, that since the reign of Kaïomar, they had not endured such sufferings, even under the execrable government of Zohak, Afrasiab, Tur and Alexander! As a matter of fact, the connection between the two communities, which had been broken, was happily renewed since the end of the fifteenth century. At this period Changa Asa, a rich and pious Parsi of Naosari, had at his own expense sent a learned layman, Nariman Hoshang, with the view of acquiring from the members of the Iranian clergy certain information regarding important religious questions. (Parsee Prâkâsh, pp. 6–7.)
In another letter to their co-religionists in India dated from Serfabad, September 1, 1486, Nariman Hoshang declared that all the Iranians had been desiring for centuries to know if any of their co-religionists still existed on the other side of the world! After an absence of several years he returned to India, and eight years later went back to Persia, where he collected the most curious information. These statements are confirmed by the letters of the Guebres addressed to the Parsi community of India (1511), in which it is said that “since their departure from Persia to the arrival of Nariman Hoshang (in all thirty years) the Mazdiens had not known that their co-religionists had settled in India, and that it was only through Nariman Hoshang that they had come to know of it.”