Introduction
According to ancient accounts, the Adur Burzen-Mihr Fire Temple was located within the territory of ancient Parthia. Alongside the Adur Farnbag and Adur Gushnasp fire temples, it reflected the tripartite division of the Sasanian Empire’s sacred fires among the Parthians, Persians, and Medes. Accordingly, the central place of the Adur Burzen-Mihr Fire Temple within this sacred triad constitutes the principal research problem of the present study. The overall aim and scope of this research are to elucidate the cultural significance of the Adur Burzen-Mihr Fire Temple within the cultural geography of Khorasan. The study seeks to answer the following question: What position did the Adur Burzen-Mihr Fire Temple occupy in Zoroastrian religious texts and in the works of Muslim historians from the early Islamic centuries? The hypothesis proposed in response to this question is that the Adur Burzen-Mihr Fire Temple had long held a prominent position in Zoroastrian tradition because of the importance attached to agriculture. As Sasanian society became increasingly stratified, the status of the wāstryōšān (the agricultural class) declined. Nevertheless, the Adur Burzen-Mihr Fire Temple, which symbolized this class, may have retained its elevated status because of substantial textual evidence, religious affirmations, and sacred narratives associated with it. Regarding the research background and rationale, only a limited number of books and articles have addressed the subject under investigation. Relevant works include Volume III of The Cambridge History of Iran (Yarshater, 2001) and an article entitled “The Chahartaq of Khāneh-ye Div: A Newly Discovered Sasanian Fire Temple” (Hashemi Zarjabad et al., 2010, pp. 80–81), among others. A review of the existing literature suggests that a scholarly gap remains in explaining the cultural significance of the Adur Burzen-Mihr Fire Temple. This gap highlights the need for a systematic and comprehensive investigation of the subject.
Method
This study employs the historical research method. It seeks to reconstruct past events as objectively as possible through the examination of authentic Zoroastrian texts, Middle Persian literary works, inscriptions, literary texts, and historical-geographical writings from the early centuries of the Islamic era. Building on a specific hypothesis, the study aims to systematically investigate accounts that contain relevant evidence pertaining to the research question. Such accounts, which are often of Zoroastrian origin, are particularly well suited to describing and explaining unique historical events and specific phenomena.
Results
The overall findings of this study indicate that the substantial textual evidence preserved in Zoroastrian sources, together with its reflection in Islamic historical works, attests to the high status of the Adur Burzen-Mihr fire temple, despite the relatively low standing of the wāstaryōšān (the agricultural class) within the Sasanian social hierarchy. Among the principal contributions of this article is an examination of how the sacred fire of Adur Burzen-Mihr transitioned from a mobile to a stationary state, as well as the possibility that it could subsequently have returned to a mobile state. According to explicit Zoroastrian accounts preserved in the Selections of Zadspram and the Bundahishn, Ohrmazd created the Adur Burzen-Mihr fire before the advent of Zoroaster, at the very beginning of creation, and appointed it to protect the world, in a role comparable to that of the xwarra (divine glory). A characteristic feature of the xwarra, which was associated with fire and fire temples, was its ability to move in the forms of a varəγna bird, an exceptionally stout lamb, and other similar manifestations. This feature was closely connected with the mobility of fire. Other findings of the present study include an examination of the various aspects of the relationship between the name of the Adur Burzen-Mihr fire temple and the god Mihr (Mithra); an investigation of the relationship between this fire temple, the class of farmers, and the Zoroastrian seasonal festivals; a more precise assessment of the temple’s revenues; and a detailed etymological analysis of the term Adur Burzen-Mihr.
Discussion and Conclusion
It was probably during the Sasanian period that the three social classes of priests, warriors and farmers were first formally placed under the patronage of three powerful fire temples. The Fire of the Magi in Azerbaijan symbolized the head (thought and wisdom), the fire associated with the warrior class symbolized the heart (courage and valor), and the fire associated with the farming class symbolized the human belly (stomach). According to this organic conception of the social order, Sasanian society was envisioned as a body with all its parts intact, in sound condition, and each assigned a specific function. All its members were expected to cooperate in safeguarding the integrity of the empire and ensuring its continued existence. For this reason, a study of the Avesta, the authoritative corpus of Middle Persian (Pahlavi) literature, and various other extant traditions revealed positive documentary evidence concerning the Adur Burzen-Mihr fire temple. These sources provided consistent and repeated testimony to the temple’s religious and political legitimacy, seeking to establish the proposition that the absence of any one of the fire temples from the institutional structure of the Sasanian political system would have constituted a kind of loss of a vital organ in that system. An important reason why Adur Burzen-Mihr retained its status until the end of the Sasanian period was that the fire temple was in Parthia, the region that had been the homeland of the Arsacid dynasty. The Karen, Suren, and Spahbed families were among the foremost noble houses of the Parthian decentralized political order and played a vital role in Sasanian civil and military affairs. Out of respect for the aristocratic elite, the Sasanians were compelled to promote western fire temples of the empire, including Adur Gushnasp, to consolidate their central authority. Ultimately, considerable patience is required when attempting to determine the location of the Adur Burzen-Mihr fire temple, and further archaeological discoveries must be awaited. Avoiding speculative and unfounded theories about its location will help prevent cultural distortions. Considering the substantial body of evidence, it is plausible that the fire temple was in the village of Rivand, and that its status declined abruptly during the Islamic period, after which it gradually faded from collective memory.