FIRE WORSHIP?! The Truth About Ancient Persia's Religion

Full animated episode, 8:48. Published 2026-11-07.

Zoroastrianism explained: do Zoroastrians worship fire? No. In the ancient religion of Persia, fire is a symbol, not the god.

For centuries, outsiders called Zoroastrians "fire worshippers". They always said no. Here's what fire really means to them, and how this ancient Persian faith runs through Cyrus the Great, Persepolis, Nowruz, Yalda and even the English word "paradise".

0:00 What is Nowruz?

0:33 Who was Zoroaster (Zarathustra)?

1:24 Do Zoroastrians worship fire?

2:08 Cyrus the Great and the Cyrus Cylinder

3:19 Were the workers at Persepolis paid?

4:05 The Royal Road of the Persian Empire

4:58 What still lives on: Nowruz, Yalda and the word paradise

6:08 Who are the Parsis in India?

7:14 What happened to Zoroastrianism? Zoroastrians today

8:21 Every spring, again

Facts checked against Encyclopaedia Iranica, Britannica, the British Museum, UNESCO and the University of Chicago's ISAC. Where scholars disagree (like when Zarathustra lived), we say so.

Which one does your family keep: Nowruz, Chaharshanbe Suri or Yalda? Tell us in the comments.

Transcript

Every spring, more than three hundred million people celebrate the same New Year. They call it Now-rooz. And it's the holiest day of an ancient Persian faith. A faith that once stood behind the biggest empire of its day. Today, fewer than two hundred thousand Zoroastrians are left in the whole world. They'd all fit inside two or three big stadiums.

So what happened? And why is it still hiding all over Persian life, and even in English words you use every week? It starts with a priest and poet called Zarathustra. In Persian, Zar-tosht. Funny part? Nobody knows when he lived. Scholars' guesses run from about fifteen hundred to about five hundred BC A thousand-year argument, still going.

What survives are hymns that tradition says are his own words, the Gaa-thas. He praises one Wise Lord, Ahoora Mazda. And he sees the world as a contest between asha, truth and good order, and drooj, the lie. The big idea is choice. Nobody is born on a team. Every person picks a side, every day, with good thoughts, good words and good deeds.

His followers pray in front of one special thing. And that's where outsiders got it wrong. Zoroastrians pray facing a fire, or the sun, or the moon. So for centuries, outsiders called them fire worshippers. Zoroastrians have always rejected that name. To them, fire is an icon of truth, of asha. It helps you fix your mind on God and on what's right.

Calling them fire worshippers is like calling someone who reads by a lamp a lamp worshipper. Their temples keep sacred fires. The highest grade is the Ah-tash Bahram, the victorious fire, made by joining sixteen different fires. One of these, in India, survived a journey that took centuries. But first, this faith was about to meet an empire.

Around five hundred fifty BC, Cyrus the Great, Kourosh in Persian, founded the Achaemenid Empire. It grew into the largest empire the world had yet seen, from Egypt to India. So were these kings Zoroastrian? Honestly, scholars still argue. Darius, Dariush in Persian, a later king, praises Ahura Mazda again and again, but never mentions Zarathustra.

Then there's Cyrus's most famous object. A clay barrel about as long as a banana. Written after he took Babylon in five thirty-nine BC, it says he let deported peoples go home, and sent their gods' statues back to their temples. Some call it the first human rights charter. The British Museum, which holds it, says that's a modern reading.

Still, a copy has stood at the United Nations since nineteen seventy-one. And the Hebrew Bible calls Cyrus God's anointed. Not bad for a foreign king. Then Darius went bigger. He built a palace city, and he kept the receipts. In five eighteen BC, Darius began Persepolis. In Persian, Takhteh Jamsheed. In nineteen thirty-three, archaeologists from the University of Chicago found tens of thousands of clay tablets in its walls.

Basically, pay slips. They record grain, wine and sheep paid out to named workers. Skilled women got the same rations as skilled men. New mothers got extra food. Darius also carved a giant message on the cliff at Bay-hiss-toon. In it, he blames the revolts against him on the Lie. The same enemy as Zarathustra's drooj.

But an empire this big has one huge problem. How do you get a message across it? Enjoying this? Subscribing is how the next one finds you. The answer was the Royal Road. About twenty-five hundred kilometres, from Sardis in today's Turkey to Susa in Iran, with one hundred and eleven stations. On foot, about three months.

Royal couriers did it in seven to nine days. Herodotus, the Greek historian, wrote that fresh riders and horses waited a day apart, and nothing stopped them. Not snow, not rain, not heat, not darkness. More than two thousand years later, his line was carved over New York City's main post office. Not an official motto.

Just a Greek, describing Persian mail. In three thirty BC, Alexander the Great ended the empire. And yet, some Persian things refused to end. Start with Now-rooz, the holiest festival of the Zoroastrian year. UNESCO first listed it in two thousand nine, and today thirteen countries share that listing. Then there's Chahar-shanbeh Soori, jumping over bonfires on the last Tuesday night of the year.

Scholars trace it to old Persian fire festivals, though the jumping on that night probably came later, after Islam. And Yal-da, the longest night, with pomegranates, watermelon and poetry. UNESCO listed it in twenty twenty-two. The winged Fa-ra-va-har? Scholars still argue what it first meant. Today, Zoroastrians see a guardian spirit. Even Iran's month names are Zoroastrian.

Ordee-beh-hesht comes from Asha Vaheeshta, best truth. Azar means fire. And in English, paradise comes from an old Iranian word for a walled garden. Magic comes from the magi, Persia's priests. So when you call a beach paradise, you're speaking ancient Persian. But if all this survived, where did the Zoroastrians go? Under the Sasanian kings, from two twenty-four A.D., Zoroastrianism became the faith of the state, though historians debate how early.

Then Arab armies conquered Iran, and the last Sasanian king died in six fifty-one. Over centuries, under extra taxes and pressure, most Iranians became Muslim. Some Zoroastrians stayed, around Yazd and Kerman. In Yazd, a fire temple still keeps a sacred fire that, by tradition, has burned for about fifteen hundred years. Others sailed to India, and became the Parsees, which means, the Persians.

When? Even that's debated, somewhere between the seven hundreds and nine hundreds. Once they settled, they lit an Ah-tash Bahram. When their town was attacked, priests hid it in a mountain cave for years, then kept moving it. Talk about a careful house move. Since seventeen forty-two, it has burned in the small town of Ood-vah-da.

So how many Zoroastrians are left? Estimates vary, from about one hundred ten thousand to two hundred thousand people worldwide. The biggest group is the Parsees, about fifty-seven thousand in India's twenty eleven census. Iran's recent censuses counted around twenty-three to twenty-five thousand, mostly in Tehran, then Yazd and Kerman. But in a twenty twenty anonymous online survey, about eight percent of Iranians said they were Zoroastrian, and only about forty percent said Muslim.

Iran's constitution names Zoroastrians as a recognized religious minority, with one seat reserved in parliament. But in today's Islamic Republic, leaving Islam is forbidden, so a Muslim who becomes Zoroastrian can be punished. Newer communities have grown in North America, Europe and Australia. Community researchers describe real challenges. A small population that's getting older. Many young people moving abroad.

And a long debate about accepting converts, and the children of mixed marriages. So here's a faith nobody can date. It shaped an empire, and today it would fit in a small city. And yet its ideas never left. Good thoughts, good words, good deeds. Which of these does your family keep? Now-rooz? Chahar-shanbeh Soori?

Or Yal-da? Tell me in the comments. Because the bonfires burn, the long night passes, and it all starts again. Every spring,

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