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criticism of scholars who wrote in Persian, all in different ways acknowledged
the distinctiveness of their heritage. There was also the old pre- Islamic Iran-
ism to be encountered, and still evolving, among the Mazdeans, about whom
Bīrūnī has plenty to say. By the end of the tenth century not only do we see
the revival of Persian language and literature (including the Persian- language
Islamic scholarship that turned Persian into the second language of Islam^7 ),
but Ferdowsi was re- creating the epic of pre- Islamic Iran both in response to
the Arab conquests, and with one eye on his people’s future.
Before glancing at that evolving Iranism, one may recall that the Iranian
Commonwealth embraced much else besides, notably Manicheism. Mani’s
doctrine (once more, Bīrūnī is a major source) was strongly influenced by
Judaism and Syriac Christianity. Such coloring as it took from its Mazdean
environment was quite superficial, for instance the names of certain gods.
The little Mani knew about Zarathushtra himself probably came from Syriac
sources, especially Bardaisan.^8 yet in the rescript he issued against Mani-
cheism in 302, the Emperor Diocletian asserted categorically that it was a
“Persian poison,” so it was treated as a fifth column in the recurrent political
and military conflict between Iran and Rome, just as Christians in the Sasa-
nian Empire were at times treated as allies of Rome.^9 It is a striking example
of how political prejudice might extend the range of a (perceived) cultural
commonwealth. So too is the attack by the Christian polemicist Firmicus
Maternus, writing in 346, on Roman worshippers of the Iranian god Mithras,
whose religion had by then been totally acclimatized in the Roman Empire
for a very long time:
you then who claim that in these temples you celebrate your mysteries
in the manner of the Magi, according to the Persian ritual, why is it
only these customs of the Persians that you praise? If you think it wor-
thy of the Roman name to follow Persian rituals and Persian laws...^10The supreme irony came when a Church of the East synod held on Sasanian
territory in 612 claimed Manicheism had originated in the Roman Empire
and thence been grafted into Iran, a land previously innocent of heresies!^11
Iranism is, then, a concept subject to interested manipulation. But at least
7 Fragner, “Persophonie” [4:58] 27–33.
8 W. Sundermann, “Manicheism ii,” EIr, http://www.iranicaonline.org ; A. L. Khosroyev, “Manichäismus:
Eine Art persisches Christentum?,” in Mustafa and Tubach (eds), Inkulturation des Christentums [4:65]
43–53; Gardner, in Cusack and Hartney (eds), Religion and retributive logic [6:119] 153–56.
9 Lieu, Manichaeism [4:24] 121–25; cf. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical history [3:35] 7.31.2: “a deadly poi-
son that came from the land of the Persians.”
10 Firmicus Maternus, On the error of profane religions [ed. and tr. (French) R. Turcan (Paris 1982)]
5.2.
11 J. B. Chabot, Synodicon orientale (Paris 1902) 584–85 (567 syr.).