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Liber XXXVI · Zoroastrianism

Liber XXXVI · Zoroastrianism · Chapter IV: The Magi

Kartir and the Sasanian Zoroastrian Church: Priests and Power

Kartir, high priest of Sasanian Iran: his rock inscriptions, fire temples, persecution of rival faiths, his vision of the afterlife and his legacy.

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Kartir (also spelled Kerdir or Kirdir) was a Zoroastrian priest who rose to the highest religious office in the Sasanian Persian empire in the second half of the third century CE. He is the only person outside the royal family to have carved his own inscriptions and portrait on the rock faces of the empire, and those texts — recording new fire temples, the suppression of other religions and a visionary journey to the other world — are our most direct witness to the making of a Zoroastrian state church.

Kartir: A Priest Who Wrote Like a King§

The Sasanian dynasty came to power in 224 CE, when Ardashir I, a ruler of Persis (Fars) in south-western Iran, overthrew the last Parthian king. The Sasanians presented themselves as restorers of Iranian tradition, and their coins showed a fire altar on the reverse. Under Ardashir's son Shapur I (reigned about 240–270), who defeated three Roman emperors and captured Valerian, the empire reached a new height of power.

Kartir first appears in Shapur's great trilingual inscription on the stone tower called the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht at Naqsh-e Rustam, where he is listed among the court as "Kartir the herbed", a priestly title meaning teacher. His own inscriptions trace his later promotions. Under Hormizd I (about 270–271) he received the cap and belt of high rank and the title "mowbed of Ohrmazd". Under Bahram I (about 271–274) his influence grew further, and under Bahram II (274–293) he styled himself the judge of the whole empire and master of the fire temple of Anahid at Istakhr, the dynasty's ancestral shrine. A priest of this name and title is still mentioned under King Narseh (293–302), after which he disappears from view.

The title mowbed, from Old Persian magupati, "chief of the Magi", shows that Kartir stood in direct line with the priesthood described in the Magi: priests of ancient Persia. On later priestly titles and training see Zoroastrian priests: mobeds and dasturs.

The Inscriptions of Naqsh-e Rustam, Sar Mashhad and Naqsh-e Rajab§

Kartir left four inscriptions in Middle Persian, all in the heartland of Fars near Persepolis. The best preserved is carved on the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht itself, beneath the Middle Persian version of Shapur's inscription — a striking statement of the priest's standing beside the king. A second, long text at Sar Mashhad accompanies a relief of Bahram II defending his queen against lions; a third, closely parallel, is at Naqsh-e Rustam; a shorter one at Naqsh-e Rajab is set beside a bust of Kartir himself, a bearded figure in a tall cap raising his hand in a gesture of reverence. His personal emblem, a sign resembling a pair of scissors, appears on the reliefs.

The inscriptions are autobiographical and devotional. Kartir recounts his offices under each king and insists that he served the gods and the rulers faithfully. Their language is formulaic, and parts of the longer texts are badly weathered, so that modern editions, especially the French edition by Philippe Gignoux, contain substantial restorations. Even so, they offer an unparalleled view of how a Zoroastrian priest wished to be remembered.

Fire Temples, Orthodoxy and the Suppression of Other Religions§

The heart of Kartir's account is religious organisation. He states that throughout the provinces the rites of Ohrmazd and the yazads (divine beings) increased, that many Wahram fires — the highest grade of sacred fire, described in Zoroastrian fire temples and ritual — were established, that many Magi became prosperous, and that charters and documents were sealed for temples and priests. He also claims to have extended this work to lands conquered by Shapur in the Roman East and the Caucasus, and to have corrected priests who held false doctrines.

He then lists the religions that were "smitten" in the empire: Jews; shaman (Buddhist monks) and braman (Brahmins); two groups of Christians, probably distinguishing native Aramaic-speaking Christians from Greek-speaking deportees from the Roman provinces; makdag, a term usually taken to mean baptist sects such as the Mandaeans or the Elchasaites; and the zandik, the Manichaeans. Idols were destroyed, the "abodes of demons" were broken up and made into seats of the gods. Kartir also boasts of having promoted next-of-kin marriage, a practice Zoroastrian tradition valued as meritorious and which outsiders regarded with horror.

The Manichaean sources agree that Kartir opposed Mani, whose career at Shapur's court and death under Bahram I are told in Mani, prophet of light. How far his claims of persecution describe systematic policy is uncertain. Royal inscriptions do not repeat them, Shapur I had tolerated Mani, and later Sasanian kings alternated between pressure and tolerance towards Christians and others. Many historians read Kartir's list partly as a statement of priestly ideals, though there is no reason to doubt that real coercion took place.

Kartir's Vision of Heaven and Hell§

The most remarkable passages, preserved in the inscriptions of Sar Mashhad and Naqsh-e Rustam, describe a vision. Kartir says that he prayed to the gods that, if he was righteous, they would show him the fate of the soul after death, so that he and others might be more confident in the religion. What follows is fragmentary, but the outline is clear: a figure described as Kartir's "likeness" or double travels into the other world, meets a woman of great beauty who comes from the east, and crosses a bridge, while scenes of hell and of a radiant paradise with its palaces are glimpsed.

The episode closely matches the Zoroastrian teaching that after death the soul meets its own daena, its conscience personified as a beautiful maiden for the righteous, and crosses the Chinvat bridge to the house of song — the doctrine described in Zoroastrian eschatology. It also anticipates the Middle Persian Book of Arda Viraz, in which a righteous priest is sent in a trance to view heaven and hell in order to confirm the truth of the faith. Scholars such as Prods Oktor Skjærvø have discussed whether Kartir describes a ritual, a dream or a literary convention; whatever its form, the vision served the same purpose as his building programme, authenticating the priestly religion as true.

The Sasanian Church after Kartir: From Adurbad to Mazdak§

Kartir did not create the Sasanian church single-handed, and his prominence may owe something to the accident of survival. Later tradition credited the dynasty's founder Ardashir with a priest-adviser, Tansar, who gathered the scattered scriptures; the Letter of Tansar, defending Ardashir's religious policy, survives only in a much later Persian version and is of debated date. Under Shapur II (309–379) the priest Adurbad i Mahraspandan was remembered as the great champion of orthodoxy, said to have submitted to an ordeal of molten metal poured on his chest to prove the truth of the religion. The same reign saw severe persecution of Christians in the empire.

Over the following centuries the church developed a recognised hierarchy headed by the mowbedan mowbed, "chief of the mobeds", with legal and political as well as religious functions. The Avesta was written down in a specially invented alphabet, probably in the fifth or sixth century, and debates about the nature of Time and the origin of evil — the subject of Zurvanism — engaged both court and clergy. At the end of the fifth century the reformer Mazdak, supported for a time by King Kavad I, preached a radical social programme that the priests regarded as heresy; it was crushed around 528 by Kavad's son, the future Khosrow I.

The Arab conquest of 636–651 ended the alliance of throne and altar. The priests who later wrote the Pahlavi books, described in the Bundahishn and Pahlavi literature, looked back on the Sasanian era as the age when the religion had been whole.

Kartir in Modern Scholarship§

Kartir's inscriptions were deciphered gradually in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the reading of his name itself long varied, which is why he appears in the literature as Kartir, Kerdir, Kirdir or Karder. Some twentieth-century historians, such as R. C. Zaehner, cast him as a zealous enforcer of orthodoxy and the true founder of the state church. Recent work is more cautious. It emphasises that the relationship between Sasanian kings and priests was a negotiation, that the empire remained religiously plural, and that Christians and Jews could hold office and flourish in many periods; Richard Payne, for example, has argued that Zoroastrian elites developed ways of including Christians within Iranian political culture rather than simply excluding them.

Kartir remains significant on any reading. His inscriptions are the earliest dated Zoroastrian texts after the Achaemenid royal inscriptions described in the Achaemenid kings and Zoroastrianism, the earliest datable statement of the soul's journey over the bridge, and the clearest testimony to the moment when the priests of the Magi became a church allied to an empire.

Frequently asked questions§

Who was Kartir?§

Kartir was a Zoroastrian high priest of the Sasanian empire who served kings from Shapur I to Bahram II in the third century CE. He is known from four rock inscriptions in which he records his offices, his religious foundations and a vision of the afterlife.

Did Kartir persecute Mani?§

The Manichaean sources and Kartir's own claim to have smitten the zandik (Manichaeans) suggest that he was a leading opponent of Mani. Mani died in prison under Bahram I, at a time when Kartir's influence at court was growing.

Why is Kartir's vision important?§

It is the earliest datable Zoroastrian description of the soul's journey after death, including the meeting with a beautiful woman and the crossing of a bridge. It confirms that doctrines known from later Pahlavi books were already current in the third century.

Sources and further reading§