Kartir

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Kartir Hangirpe (alternatively Kartēr , Kerdēr , Kerdīr , Kirdēr , Kirdīr ) was Mobedan- Mobed ("priest of priests", high priest) of the Zoroastrian religion. He is considered a reformer of the Zoroastrian faith and the founder of Zoroastrian orthodoxy in the Persian Empire .

Image and inscription of Kartir near Naqsh-e Rajab , Iran

Kartir probably began his career as a simple priest and became court priest of Shapur I , accompanying him on his campaigns and serving as an advisor. Eventually he rose to the rank of chief priest ( mobed ), rewarding loyal priests and punishing others whose opinions he considered heretical. He later called for the persecution of Jews , Buddhists , Hindu, as well as native and Greek Christians and the Manicheans .

Shapur's son Hormizd I gave Kartir the title magupat (magu-paiti = lord of the magicians [priests]) and increased his influence. Also Bahram I and Bahram II. Encouraged him, among the latter, he rose to the peerage and became chief priest and judge of the empire. He received the additional honorary title "Kartir, by which the soul of Bahram is saved": "Kirder-i-bokhtruwan-Wahram".

The temple of Anahid-Ardaschir and the Anahita temple at Istachr were finally subordinated to Kartir's authority . Thus, he also took over that temple, the care of which had been hereditary to the house of the Sassanids so far and already in Parthian times .

Kartir's social rank is particularly clear because he was allowed to leave inscriptions in royal fashion. He left behind many inscriptions in which he emphasized that he had donated numerous fire altars and that he had always rendered services to the king and kingdom. He encouraged the promotion of the existing temples and the foundation of new fires, especially on trips and campaigns that he undertook in the wake of the great king. This is how he reports on Ka'ba-yi Zardushht :

"And I let many fires and seminaries flourish in the empire of Iran and also in non-Iranian areas. There were fire and leanness in non-Iranian areas that reached the armies of the King of Kings. The provincial capital Antioch and the province of Syria and that of Syria dependent districts, the provincial capital Tarsus and the province of Cilicia and the districts dependent on Cilicia "..." And I drew up many documents and deeds for the fires and the seminaries. "

In Manichaean writings Kartir is mentioned as the persecutor of Mani under Bahram I ; the persecutions seem to have stopped under King Narseh . It appears that the influence of Zoroastrianism in the Sassanid Empire reached its peak at the time of Kartir and then declined again.

literature

  • Mary Boyce : Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism . The University of Chicago Press, 1984, pp. 112-113.
  • Mary Boyce: Zoroastrians . Routledge, 2001.
  • Frantz Grenet: Observations sur les titres de Kirdir , in: Studia Iranica 19 (1990), pp. 87-94.
  • Walther Hinz : Mani and Karder , in: La Persia nel Medioevo, Rome 1971, pp. 485-499.
  • Philip Huyse: Kerdir and the first Sasanians , in: Nicholas Sims-Williams (ed.), Proceedings of the Third European Conference of Iranian Studies , Vol. 1, Wiesbaden 1998, pp. 109-120.
  • MacKenzie, David Neil: The Kartir Inscriptions , Henning Memorial Volume. Lund Humphries, London 1979.
  • Klaus Schippmann : Fundamentals of the History of the Sasanid Empire , Darmstadt 1990.
  • Martin Sprengling: Kartir. Founder of Sassanian Zoroastrianism , in: American Journal of Semitic Languages ​​and Literature 57 (1940), pp. 197-228.

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Information on the illustration: Zoroastrians - Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Mary Boyce. Routledge London & New York, 2008
personal data
SURNAME Kartir
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Karder, Kirdir
BRIEF DESCRIPTION High priest of the Zoroastrian religion
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd century
DATE OF DEATH 3rd century or 4th century