Ahuramazdâh, the Wise Lord, was the God of the Persians.
Dâriu the King said: "I am King by the grace of Ahuramazdâh. My kingdom has been granted to me by Ahuramazdâh."
The sacred fire of the divine blazed between the secular spirituality of India on one side and the heavenly great gods of Babylon and the worshipers of Yahweh on the other, with the humanistic gods of the Hellenes ruling over the People by the Sea.
While the Mazdean faith of King Darius and his successors were engraved permanently on stone, clues to the religious beliefs of the first Great Kings are in their deeds. The Great Cyrus (Kuru), the founder of the Persian Empire, renowned for his integrity and benevolence, was praised without reservation by the contemporary Babylonian and Judean sources for his respect and reverence for their ancestral gods. In the words of a historian, "The nobility of his character shines... from the writings of the Persians whom he led to world mastery, the Jews whom he freed, and the Greeks whom he overthrew." The Mazdean Kuru took the hand of Bêl Marduk in Babylon and the Second Isaiah called him, the anointed king of Yahweh. His son and heir, Cambyses, was the son of Amun-Ra in Egypt.
The Great Kuru and the imperial Achaemenids never imposed their own monotheistic religion on the lands and people of the empire. While political considerations were no doubt a major factor, their good actions were deeply rooted in their Mazdean religious beliefs of the doctrine of free will to decide one's path in life based on the teachings of Prophet Zoroaster.
However, while people of the empire were mostly left alone to worship their own ancestral and tribal gods by the Great Kings, theologians of all the practicing faiths must have come into contact with one another at the imperial courts of the Achaemenids and exchanged views.
The Egyptian account of killing of the Apis Bull by Cambyses, while proven false, was rooted in their hostility toward foreign rule, the reduction of the enormous temple funds and restriction of the power of the Egyptian priests.
The Babylonian account of the removal of the golden statue of Bêl Marduk from the Temple of E'sagila by Xerxes, if true, was punishment for Babylonian revolt against the Great King. No doubt imposing taxes on the wealthy Babylonian temples did not do much to endear the Great Kings to the Babylonian priests either.
Beyond superficial trappings shared by all religions, Mazdaism was a revealed religion through holy scripture and a profound philosophy in which world was corrupt by accident to be reformed by human wisdom and virtue to return to the state of perfection, free of darkness, disease and death, and all mankind had the freedom to choose the path of righteousness or wickedness. Mazdeans believed that it was their duty to restore world order through their own good thoughts, words and deeds. Men and women stood side by side and were regarded equally. Human soul was immortal and judgment, salvation and redemption rested solely on one's thoughts, words, and deeds. And at the end goodness prevailed.
Mazdaism concept of moral duality, man's thoughts, good and bad, evolved into cosmic dualism, traditionally interpreted as 'Truth' and 'Lie' or 'Good' vs. 'Evil', but probably closer to the universal concepts of 'Peace' and 'War' or 'Order' and 'Chaos'. Duality of Mazdaism, along with the concepts of 'Heaven' and 'Hell', immortality of the soul and resurrection on the Day of Last Judgment impacted other faiths within the Achaemenid Empire.
While rank, respect and reverential regard for Prophet Zoroaster and the impact of Mazdaism on other contemporary faiths within the empire and its footprint on the future faiths remain subjects of much modern debate, there is no question that the religious tolerance of the imperial Achaemenids was unique in the history prior to their rule and even long after the end of their reign.
Mazdaism was ravaged during the Macedonian invasion of the Persian Empire and Mazdan priests were executed. According to Denkard and Arda Viraf, a rare copy of sacred book of Abasta (Avesta) meaning Laws, stored at the Royal Library of Persepolis, was reportedly burned when Persepolis was put to the torch by Alexander, and another copy was separated into parts and scattered for safe keeping. While it has been suggested by some scholars that sacred Avesta did not exist in written form until much later, the language of parts of Gâthâs that have been preserved indicate that more than likely they existed in written form even before the Achaemenid period. There can be no doubt, however, that an older oral tradition existed that helped later with the recall of some of the treasured sacred texts that were lost.
Neither Babylonian nor Egyptian gods fared any better under the invading Macedonian rulers.
Most of the population of the Babylon was moved to Seleucia, the new capital of the Seleucids, and Babylon was left to turn to dust. Later Seleucid rulers tried unsuccessfully to force Hellenism within their domain and outlawed Judaism.
Under the Lagids, new city of Alexandria in Lower Egypt replaced the old capital of Memphis. To appease the Egytian priests and nobility, Ptolomy created a brand new god for the Egyptians, Serapis, who was half Egyptian and half Greek.
Judean were forced to become Hellenized and accept the 'Greek way of life'. Ancient lands of Israel and Judea remained the bloody battleground between the hostile Lagids and Seleucids, and eventually fell into the hands of the Romans. The Romans, unlike the Persians before them, reorganized the Holy Land as a part of Syria-Palestine.
Roman gods were the gods of Greeks, adopted by the Romans after conquering the Greeks. In the 4th century, Emperor Constantine had a vision prior the Battle of Milvian Bridge for the control of the Roman Empire, that caused him to fight under the protection of the Christian God. Following his victory, he declared that the empire should be neutral to religious practices, which effectively stopped the persecution of the Christians. He adopted Christianity later and declared all Christians, regardless of their nationality, subject to his imperial rule. Christianity became the secular religion of the Roman Empire and spread far and wide.
In the political world of empire building, religion became another tool in the hands of world empires to further their cause. Political and military hostilities between the Persian and Roman empires quickly spilled over to religion and caused hostilities between the official religions of Christianity and Mazdaism which continued until the fall of both empires.
Ancient faiths of Hindu and Buddhism were left alone to flourish and thrive due to the remoteness of India.
In the 7th century, Islam, a new faith out of Arabia, spread across the ancient lands of the Persians and beyond, conquering with the sharp blades of Arab swords and the simple cry of "There is no god but God".
The last irreparable blow to Mazdaism was dealt in the 13th century, when Persia was invaded by the hoards of bloodthirsty Mongols who poured like molten lava out of Central Asia and and left an estimated 40 million dead men, women, and children in their wake. Northern and eastern Persia were turned into wasteland and from 2.5 million Persians, only about 250,000 survived the bloody Mongol invasion. To this day, 'Mongol' stands for unspeakable cruelty and savagery in Persian language.
The characters of the new religions were established by the first kingly converts and not by the peaceful prophets who were the original messengers of the Divine. Christianity and Islam drew lines in the sand during the Wars of the Cross, crusades of the Middle Ages to reclaim the Holy Lands, which started the bloody battles between 'God's people', with each side claiming the pride of the place, as God's only favored people. Anyone belonging to a different faith than one's own was called a pagan and or a heretic, marked for death and destruction.
Over 500 years of crusading war and bloodshed, from the late 11th to late 15th century, sanctioned by Christian Popes to create a Christendom, forever changed Europe, strengthened the Islamic cultures of the Near East in its wake, and gave form to the concept of Islamic Just War against the infidels and unbelievers.
Although some in the West still think of all Muslims as Arabs and the East as an undifferentiated mass of 'Orientals', most in the East know well that: Iranians are neither Orientals nor Arabs. 14 centuries later after the Arab invasion of Iran, the Iranian Islam is decidedly non-Arabic and the mask of Islam sits lightly on Iranian faces. Shi'a Islam of the modern Iranians is in direct conflict with the orthodox Sunni Islam of the mostly Arabic world; where the authority of Shi'a Islam is firmly rooted in the Holy Qur'an and the family of the holy Prophet, Sunni Islam has followed the political authority of secular Arab caliphs.
The intolerant modern world would have indeed appeared barbaric to the eyes of the Persian Achaemenids.
One can almost hear Prophet Zoroaster murmuring:
"This I ask thee, tell it to me truly, My Lord... Is Ahuramazdâh, the Wise Lord, another name of Allah? This and more, My Lord, I long to know..."
