RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESsociety who rejected priestly authority and material values in favor of
ascetic, gnostic sects, such as the Manichaeans, or Christianity. Maz-
daeans normally opposed all forms of asceticism, such as fasting,
because it weakened people in their struggle against evil, and celibacy
because it was important for believers to have children in order to
increase the forces of Ohrmazd. But there are traces of an apocalyptic
asceticism in which the successive abstention from meat, milk, plants,
and water would precede and might even bring about the millenium
of Oshedar which was believed to be imminent in the late Sasanian
period.^99
Conversion to Christianity in Iraq had become a serious issue by
the late Sasanian period. Well-organized and aggressively proselyting
Christians directed their efforts especially at the conversion of the
members of the Sasanian ruling class and royal family in their attempt
to capture the state in the same fashion as they had the Roman Empire
through Constantine. In the late Sasanian period, the number of Ma-
gians in Iraq was declining. By the fifth century, Christians were con-
verting Magians at Kirkuk and Hale.JOo In the sixth century, the ca-
tholicos Mar Aba (540-52), who was himself a Magian convert from
Hale, converted other Magians to Christianity.lol Magians were also
converted at Takrit in the 570s, including a member of the Sasanian
royal family. 102 Mihramgushnasp (George) and his sister-wife Hazar6e
(Mary), who were aristocratic natives of the Sawad, converted near
the end of the sixth century and migrated to Nasibin, where George
entered a monastery.J03 Tiriis, the bishop of Haditha in about 600,
was also a Magian convert.1°^4 In the early seventh century, more
Magians converted at the village of Qorl05 in Adiabene and Babai the
Great is said to have converted Magians when he was in charge of
the monastery of Mar Abraham near Nasibin from 604 until 628.^106
Many converts came from upper-class Magian families, and by the
fifth and sixth centuries increasing numbers of ex-Magi an Persian
99 Duchesne-Guillemin, "Religion of Ancient Iran," pp. 291, 358-59; Zaehner, Dawn
and Twilight, pp. 227, 313; idem, "A Zurvanite Apocalypse I," BSOS 10/2 (1940),
380, 391-95, and part 11, BSOS 10/3 (1940), 609-611.
100 Hoffmann, Persischer Martyrer, p. 73.
101 Braun, Persischer Martyrer, pp. 196-99, 210.
102 Nau, "A!'lOudemmeh," pp. 11, 33-34.
103 Chabot, Synodicon, p. 626.
104 Scher, "Histoire nestorienne," 11(2), 473.
IOS Chabot, "Jesus-Sabran," pp. 488, 492, 509-11.
106 Scher, "Histoire nestorienne," 11(2), 532.