From Jund-i-Shapur, already in the territory of the Persian shahs, missionaries were sent out to every Eastern country, Chaldeans by birth and tongue, speaking Persian, and their enterprise carried them to India, Turkestan, and China. So great had become the hold of Christianity upon Persia, that at a very early date the country was divided into bishoprics.
This college was established about A.D. 550 by Nushirvan the Just, shah of Persia, one of the last of the Zoroastrian kings, and of the Sasanian dynasty. Through all the later ages of Persia and Arabia he has been the subject of eulogy, by Christian and Muhammadan alike, for his great justice, a virtue more highly esteemed in the East than by us, because so much rarer. Although he never became confessedly Christian, his sympathies with the Christians were such as to induce him to make a Chaldean woman his queen. Her son was brought up as a Christian, and by his zeal he provoked admonition from his father, whose policy seems to have dictated an impartial attitude toward all faiths.
Had his relationship with, and just bearing towards, Christians been insufficient to gain their gratitude and esteem,[36] he would have won it by his persecution of the peculiar sect of Mazdak, which the Christians had regarded with loathing and horror.
It is difficult to come at a true appreciation of Mazdak’s character and doctrines, for all we know of either has been recorded by sectaries of other religions, Christian, Zoroastrian, and Muhammadan, and such reports are naturally prejudiced.
In general the scheme was a communistic idea which involved mystic rites; the property of men, even to their wives, was common to all, and certain regulations for daily life were imposed, notably the prohibition from eating flesh and shedding blood, which last law excited the extreme abhorrence of priests of other faiths.
The sect arose and was favoured in the reign of that Kawad before mentioned, who probably earned the execration of the Christians and Zoroastrians alike by his favouritism of the Mazdakites, perhaps induced by hopes of quelling the great power the Zoroastrian priests had acquired.
Nushirvan, however, while yet Crown Prince, instituted a policy of repression that ended in a massacre of Mazdakites, and the execution of Mazdak himself, at which some Christian Persians and the court physician, a Christian priest, were present. This occurred only after Nushirvan (then known as Khosru) had exposed to his father the king, the means by which Mazdak performed his miracles. During the long and glorious reign of this prince, perhaps the most peaceable and tolerant period of that age, the Christians made great progress in Persia. Nushirvan, though refraining from any committal of his own convictions, imported to his college Greek philosophers and adherents of Nestorius, and went so far as to make with the Byzantines a treaty which protected them.
So at this time, the latter end of the 6th century, we have a pleasant enough picture of Persia excellently ruled by a monarch of broad views, whose queen and eldest son were Christians; whose courtiers, doctors, and advisers counted in their ranks men of the same faith; whose principal college, the glory of his life, was a Christian institution. Small wonder, then, that the Chaldeans looked with high hope upon the future, when Zoroastrianism should pass away to give place to a Christian Persia.[37]
But while Nushirvan dreamed of empire, and the Christians of religious supremacy, there was born he who would sweep before him the Persian Empire and the priests of Zoroaster, leaving but a remnant in their original domains. For Muhammad Mustafa—“The Prophet”—was born about this time, and mentioned it himself later—“I was born,” said he, “in the time of the just king,” i.e., Nushirvan, shah of Persia.
ADVENT OF ISLAM