# Zoroaster The first fact about Zoroaster is that the century is unknown. Encyclopaedia Iranica’s general survey at https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroaster-ii-general-survey/ states that one does not know when and where he lived, and that proposed dates range from the second millennium BCE to a few centuries before Alexander. Britannica at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zoroaster refuses a civil-registry birthday. Stanford at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zoroastrianism/ and IEP at https://iep.utm.edu/zoroastrianism/ independently mark later redaction of the Avesta. Country is stored as Iran. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Aryanist print used Zarathustra as a racial ancestor for European politics. That misuse is a polarising reception, not a Gatha, and it is stored as a later instrument he did not write. Sasanian Zoroastrianism as later encyclopedia and museum history — Iranica’s historical review at https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroastrianism-i-historical-review/, Met Heilbrunn at https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/sasan/hd_sasan.htm, British Museum at https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection — describes an imperial state religion that could coerce Christians, Jews, and rival Iranian groups. Fire temples were political instruments of kingship as later described. UNESCO Takht-e Soleyman at https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/761/ presents a Sasanian sanctuary bound to royal fire; that 2003 interpretation is a political-use heading as well as a conservation file. Darmesteter’s public-domain Zend-Avesta at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17921 and avesta.org at https://www.avesta.org/ print a later corpus, including purity books, not a founder notebook. Dualism in that English could be weaponised against neighbours. Closed purity codes could mark bodies. OHCHR minority pages at https://www.ohchr.org/en/minorities frame later communal squeeze without making the founder a modern legislator. The Wiley Blackwell Companion at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118785539 is a later handbook of the same limits. The offsets are dated public carriers, not a recovered autograph. Gathas as received ethical hymns appear in the same English: asha as truth-and-order against the lie, not a ballot and not a racial myth. Iranica’s 2009 survey is honesty about the gap. UNESCO Yazd at https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1544/ lists later urban fabric of a small community. The Met’s Sasanian essay is museum fire-temple interpretation for a general reader, a learning object rather than a licence to back-date a founder. Parsi educational and hospital philanthropy in the nineteenth century, including Maneckji Hataria’s 1854 mission as Iranica records at https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hataria-manekji-limji/, is communal access work he did not endow. British Library collection items at https://www.bl.uk/collection-items and the Endangered Archives Zoroastrian manuscript cluster at https://eap.bl.uk/collection/EAP1014-1 show later copies, not autographs. Library of Congress print holdings at https://www.loc.gov/ keep the cheap English. Mary Boyce’s later scholarly reception is a handbook neighbourhood, not a recovered vita. Complex contribution is the honest type. Confidence is high on UNESCO dates, Iranica’s uncertainty, and Aryanist misuse existing; medium on Sasanian coefficients; low on any founder-century civil file, because there is none here. 1898 English is a translation. 2003 is UNESCO. 2009 is Iranica. 1854 is a Parsi mission. A fake 628 BCE birthday is not a Fact on this page. Keep Aryanist misuse, Gathas, Sasanian cult, fire-temple politics, and UNESCO fires on separate dates rather than averaging them into a temperament. ## Dated facts - 2017: British Library catalogues and the Endangered Archives programme present Avestan books as public scholarly objects. https://factrail.ai/facts/zo-bl-manuscripts. Sources: https://eap.bl.uk/collection/EAP1014-1, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items. - 2017: UNESCO lists the Historic City of Yazd, including later Zoroastrian urban fabric. https://factrail.ai/facts/zo-unesco-yazd-2017. Sources: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1544/, https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroaster-ii-general-survey/. - 2015: Handbook accounts print Sasanian priestly archives as a personal-file machine of ritual status. https://factrail.ai/facts/zo-sasanian-priestly-files. Sources: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118785539, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/sasan/hd_sasan.htm. - 2009: Encyclopaedia Iranica publishes a citable public general survey that marks uncertainty of century. https://factrail.ai/facts/zo-iranica-survey-2009. Sources: https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroaster-ii-general-survey/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zarathustra. - 2009: Encyclopaedia Iranica and Britannica state that the century of Zarathushtra is high-uncertainty. https://factrail.ai/facts/zo-century-uncertainty-gap. Sources: https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroaster-ii-general-survey/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zarathustra. - 2005: Later histories print Sasanian-Roman and internal wars in which fire-cult and church pressured populations. https://factrail.ai/facts/zo-forced-conversion-later-wars. Sources: https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroastrianism-i-historical-review/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zarathustra. - 2005: Iranica and museum accounts print Sasanian Zoroastrianism as an imperial state religion that could coerce rivals. https://factrail.ai/facts/zo-sasanian-state-religion. Sources: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/sasan/hd_sasan.htm, https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroastrianism-i-historical-review/. - 2003: UNESCO fire-sanctuary interpretation prints a shared ritual calendar of fire as cohesion. https://factrail.ai/facts/zo-social-cohesion-fire. Sources: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1544/, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/761/. - 2003: UNESCO Takht-e Soleyman interpretation includes fuel and water of a fire sanctuary. https://factrail.ai/facts/zo-energy-fire-temples-fuel. Sources: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/sasan/hd_sasan.htm, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/761/. - 2003: UNESCO lists Takht-e Soleyman, a Sasanian fire-sanctuary landscape of later Zoroastrian state cult. https://factrail.ai/facts/zo-unesco-takht-2003. Sources: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/761/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zarathustra. - 2003: UNESCO Takht-e Soleyman interpretation prints a royal fire sanctuary as a political instrument of later kingship. https://factrail.ai/facts/zo-fire-temple-political-uses. Sources: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/sasan/hd_sasan.htm, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/761/. - 2000: Modern minority-rights pages frame later pressures on Zoroastrian communities as squeeze. https://factrail.ai/facts/zo-sanctions-minority-later. Sources: https://www.ohchr.org/en/minorities, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zarathustra. ## Methodology https://factrail.ai/methodology Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/zoroaster