The Letter of Tansar ( fa, نامه تنسر) was a 6th-century

Sassanid The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the History of Iran, last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th cen ...

propaganda instrument that portrayed the preceding Arsacid period as morally corrupt and heretical (to

Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheisti ...

), and presented the first Sassanid dynast

Ardashir I Ardashir I (Middle Persian: 𐭠𐭥𐭲𐭧𐭱𐭲𐭥, Modern Persian: , '), also known as Ardashir the Unifier (180–242 AD), was the founder of the Sasanian Empire. He was also Ardashir V of the Kings of Persis, until he founded the new ...

as having "restored" the faith to a "firm foundation." The letter was simultaneously a declaration of the unity of Zoroastrian church and

Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...

state, "for church and state were born of the one womb, joined together and never to be sundered." The document seems to have been based on a genuine 3rd-century letter written by

Tansar Tansar () was a Zoroastrian Herbadan Herbad (Chief judge) in late Parthian Empire And one of the supporters of Ardashir I. Tansar was apparently a Parthian aristocrat, but he turned to Neoplatonic beliefs. Then he joined Ardashir I and became Herba ...

, the Zoroastrian high priest under Ardashir I, to a certain Gushnasp of Parishwar/Tabaristan, one of vassal kings of the Arsacid Ardavan IV. This original missive was apparently written not long after Ardashir had overthrown Ardavan, and Tansar appears to have been responding to charges levelled at Ardashir, and the delay in accepting Ardashir's suzerainty. Representative of those charges is the accusation that Ardashir "had taken away fires from the fire-temples, extinguished them and blotted them out." To this, Tansar replies that it was the "kings of the peoples .e. Parthians' vassal kings that began the practice of dynastic fires, an "innovation" unauthorized by the kings of old. A similar response appears in Book IV of the 9th century ''

Denkard The ''Dēnkard'' or ''Dēnkart'' (Middle Persian: 𐭣𐭩𐭭𐭪𐭠𐭫𐭲 "Acts of Religion") is a 10th-century compendium of Zoroastrian beliefs and customs during the time. The Denkard is to a great extent considered an "Encyclopedia of Ma ...

''. The letter was revised in the 6th-century, during the reign of Khusrow I Anoshiravan. The legend that the Arsacid Parthians had allowed Zoroastrianism to fall into neglect stems from the same period. The letter was translated into

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

in the 9th century by Ibn al-Muqaffa, and from Arabic into

New Persian New Persian ( fa, فارسی نو), also known as Modern Persian () and Dari (), is the current stage of the Persian language spoken since the 8th to 9th centuries until now in Greater Iran and surroundings. It is conventionally divided into thr ...

in the 13th-century when

Ibn Isfandiyar Baha al-Din Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Isfandiyar ( fa, بهاءالدین محمد بن حسن بن اسفندیار), commonly known as Ibn Isfandiyar (), was a 13th-century Iranian historian from Tabaristan, who wrote a history of his native provinc ...

, an Iranian Muslim, put it in his ''History of Tabaristan'' (a mountainous region in northern

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

). The Ibn Isfandiar version, which dates to 1210–1216, is the only one that survives. The importance of the Letter of Tansar was first perceived by James Darmesteter, who published the first critical translation of it in 1894.

References

;Citations ;Bibliography * . * . * . * . * . * . {{DEFAULTSORT:Letter Of Tansar Zoroastrian texts 6th century in Iran Propaganda by topic Sasanian Empire Letters (message)