Fire temple

Fire Temple
Otaşkada
The fire temple of Şahrixazar, Karzaristan
Religion
Affiliation	Ahurayasna

A fire temple (Darvozi: otaşkada, Pardarian: آتشکده) in Ahurayasna is a consecrated place of worship for Ahurans that houses an ever-burning fire. Although Ahurans have historically been characterized as "fire worshippers", this is inaccurate as fire is merely an icon that allows Ahurans to worship Ahura Mazda and reflect on Asha, the concept of truth and righteousness. Many temples have fountains, reflecting pools, streams, or ponds as fire and water are revered as agents of purity required for the Yasna ceremony.

Fire temples usually contain a prayer hall where the local community celebrates religious holidays. The prayer hall leads to an ambulatory surrounding a rectangular sanctuary where the holy fire is maintained in a ceremonial urn called an afrinagan placed on an elevated marble platform. Only ritually purified priests are allowed to enter this sanctuary, where veneration is offered only to Ahura Mazda and the fire itself. Fire temples are where the Yasna, Vendidad, and Visperad ceremonies are carried out. Temples are organized into three categories corresponding to the grade of fire they contain: Ātash Behram, Ātash Ādarān, and Dādgāh.

As of 2019, there were 90,212 fire temples in the world, 89,300 of which are in Karzaristan, 150 in Zorasan, and 762 in other countries. Historically, non-Ahurans were not allowed to enter Karzari fire temples, though this rule was abandoned in 1930.

History and development

Origins of the cult of fire

Although the first fire temples are thought to have been built during the 3rd century BC, the Ahuran veneration of fire has its origin in the ancient Hyndo-Pardarian religion. Due to the nomadic character of Hyndo-Pardarian society its religion was materially simple and the worship of deities did not involve any temples or idols. Instead, all that was required was a flat, clean piece of ground marked by a furrow. Fire and water were venerated along with deities and communities usually had a ritual fire that was lit on occasion or maintained by embers from the nearest hearth.

The only fire that continually burned was that of the hearth, maintained for as long as the man of the house lived. Hearth fires were regularly tended to and were offered dry wood, incense, and fat from sacrificial animals. Ancient Pardarian priests in particular held that fire, the last of the seven creations that comprise the material world, gave them an animating force that is responsible for all life. This gave fire and its worship a greater significance as that of a universal force.

The relevance of the cult of hearth fire among the Pardarians continued into the time of the Ahuran prophet Takhmaspa, who associated fire with Asha Vahishta, who represented order and righteousness (Asha), and was one of the divinities who appeared to him during his revelationn. In the Gathas, he instructed Ahurans to turn towards the Sun or their own hearths to reflect on Asha and the virtues it represented. In the Khordeh Avesta, the Atash Niyayesh (the prayer to fire) states:

The Fire of Ahura Mazda
Gives command to all
For whom he cooks
The night and morning meals

Although fire and its worship have been significant to Ahurans since the foundation of their religion, the fire temple itself did not emerge until much later and even today the basic religious observance of Ahurayasna does not require one. Within fire temples themselves, ceremonies that do not directly involve the holy fire are forbidden in the inner sanctuary and those that do are related to the maintenance of a domestic hearth.

Varkanid and Hasravanid periods

The first attestations of Ahuran religious observance start to appear in the 5th century BC with the rise of Varkana. According to Adripathi Adhikari, the Pardarians did not have temples and went up to high places for communal worship. This is supported by the lack of identifiable temple ruins at Varkanid royal sites such as those at Hazar Sutun and Takht-e Hormazd. Adhikari describes the Pardarian sanctuary at Hangmatana as a great walled-in mound open to the sky. This custom also explains the existence of ancient stone terraces built high in the mountains of Pardaran and Osrushana.

During the rise of the Hasravanids in the 4th century BC Pardarian religious sites began to feature fire altars, likely a result of cultural influence from regions where local religions tended to involve the use of devotional altars and shrines such as Khazestan, Irvadistan, Ninevah, Tokhariston, and western Hyndana. Archaeological excavations carried out at the Hasravanid capital of Tirazish in 1971 uncovered a large citadel with a central sanctuary centered around a massive mud-brick altar with a four-stepped top. In this was a shallow bowl with traces of burning in and around it. Despite speculations that this structure was a fire temple, archaeologists from the University of Zahedan found that the bowl was too shallow for the deep layer of ashes required to sustain an ever-burning fire. Similar altars have been found in the outer rooms of shrines and temples dedicated to yazatas (divinities in Avestan) built in later centuries. These would be kindled during religious festivals and other special occasions during which there would have been no need for a deep layer of ash to sustain a fire since a priest or layman could constantly attend to it when needed.

The oldest Hasravanid ruin that shares the layout of early fire temples is a large structure found at Tarava dating from the reign of Ashavazdah III. It consists of a courtyard leading into a square sanctuary where four free-standing pillars surround what was likely an idol. Since Ahurans did not originally have a temple-building tradition, its layout suggests that Hasravanid and later Mihranid fire temples had image shrines as architectural models. If Karzari archaeologist Roziya Ozod's theory is to be believed, the fire temples first attested to in the 3rd century BC originated from a fusion of the religious significance of the hearth fire and the cult of the yazata of victory Verethragna.

Mihranid period

The first definitive fire temples appear during the reign of Kaykhosrow I of the Mihranid Kingdom during the second half of the 2nd century BC. The structures identified as fire temples by archaeologists generally followed the layout of typical image shrines and were often built on hills reminiscent of the mountain terraces traditionally used by Ahurans, though less remote and always within reach of regular supplies required to fuel and sustain a holy fire. Among these structures is the temple at Mazoritaş where a ground plan traced by Karzari archaeologist Bobojon Ƣafur resembles the layout of the temple at Tarava, though it differs through the existence of a small chamber behind a square sanctuary featuring four central pillars surrounding the remains of a fire altar.

In the 1st century BC the Marathi-Tokharian merchant Bakhshi describes the following:

The Pardarians have sanctuaries of considerable size that they refer to as ātakhshkadagān. In the middle of each is an altar, upon which there is a large heap of ashes, and upon it the mobeds maintain a fire that is never put out.

In the 2nd century AD the Hyndanian scholar Matsyendra writes that the Pardarians of Tokhariston had temples with inner chambers featuring an altar bearing ashes where a priest would lay dry wood upon those ashes at intervals, reciting holy texts as it caught fire. Other accounts from contemporary Hyndanian scholars suggest that the ever-burning fires at these temples were only extinguished when the Mihranid king died. The Marathi-Tokharian merchant Bakhshi records that at the death of Kahkhosrow III "his successor ordered his subjects to carefully extinguish the sacred fires of Homrazd until he was crowned King", a link between the cult of hearth fire that has its origins in the Hyndo-Pardarian religion and the relatively recent cult of temple fire associated with modern fire temples. As the master of the kingdom, the king held the same relation to the fire temple as the master of the house of the hearth. This tradition changed after the rise of the Burzinshahis, under whom only lesser fires were allowed to occasionally grow cold while the Ātash-i Vahrām fires remained ever-burning.

Despite its origins in Pardaran, the cult of temple fire spread among the non-Ahuran Osrushanis and Tokharians of western Karzaristan. The strongest evidence for this Xalqobod where a recent excavation revealed an Osrushani sanctuary where the inner cult room featured two large altars still covered in a deep layer of ash flanked by large, colorful reliefs of birds. Though the design of these altars and the nature of the Osrushani religion make it unlikely that this building was an Ahuran temple, they nevertheless show strong Ahuran influences.

Early Mihranid kings tended to have images of Anahita accompany their portraits on coins, though this practice ended when Rewniz II replaced Anahita's image with a representation of a fire altar on the reverse of his coins in the 1st century AD - a practice that would continue until the fall of the Arasanid Empire. This coincides with a general trend within the Mihranid realm where opposition to the worship of idols representing prominent yazatas and support for the cult of temple fire gradually grew as the Mihranid period progressed.

Burzinshahi period

The role of fire temples in Pardarian society reached new heights under the Burzinshahis. Khodavand I was an active iconoclast who cast out an idol of Anahita at a prominent temple in the Burzinshahi stronghold of Artagan (present-day Ardakan). After he overthrew the Mihranids he made it illegal to worship idols of Ahuran figures. The Burzinshahi kings and mobads were active in raising holy fires in new temples and to replace older idols in image shrines.

A 1991 survey by Bobojon Ƣafur of over a thousand pre-Irfanic fire temple ruins across Zorasan, Karzaristan, and Hyndana found that over half of those temples were built by the Burzinshahis. If the accounts of 7th-century Osrushani and Hyndanian historians are to be believed, the iconoclastic Burzinshahis led a determined drive to built fire temples in cities, towns, and villages across their empire. The success of this drive is still heavily debated within academic circles, so most fire temple ruins in more distant regions such as Khazestan, Irvadistan, and Tokhariston were built by the Arasanids.

Some of the largest temples built by the Burzinshahis were devoted to Anahita and were centered around water, Anahita's element, rather than fire. At a royal temple dedicated to her at Javanrud water flows through a series of pumps and pies into a sunken stone sanctuary where the Ab-Zohr rite of the Yasna ceremony was conducted. Today, many modern fire temples have fountains and reflecting pools inspired by this design. The Burzinshahis were also active in building shrines to Anahita along natural springs and streams - many of which are still used in Karzaristan today.

Two distinct grades of holy fire emerged during this period. The first grade was the Ātash-i Vahrām ('Fire of Victory' in Middle Pardarian followed by the Ātash-i Ādarān (Fire of Fires). By the 7th century, Ahuran priests developed a system of observance for holy fires based on their grade. Embers from hearth fires were carried into the presence of an Ātash-i Ādarān to grow cold as its spirit united itself with that of the temple fire. Once a year, the Ātash-i Ādarān was carried to another temple to grow cold in the presence of an Ātash-i Vahrām, which was the only ever-burning fire.

There was also a third grade called the Ādurōg (Little Fire) that was identical to the hearth fire. These could be maintained by a layman unlike the temple fires whose maintenance was restricted to priests, rituals could be performed in its presence, and it could be used to bake unleavened bread for religious ceremonies. The main distinction between an Ādurōg and a hearth fire is that it burnt in a special place such as a shrine or private sanctuary, giving it the name of Ādurōg-i Dādgāh.

Burzinshahi and Arasanid records show that when an image was removed from a shrine or temple, it was common practice to temporarily install an Ādurōg to replace it so that its sanctity would drive away any demons that dwelt within the statue. Since the maintenance of even the lowest grade of fire was more demanding than that of an image, many shrines were left empty after the Ādurōg accomplished its task. These shrines had pedestals on which to light a fire for individual devotion or during religious festivals. The existence of these shrines and the continued veneration of yazatas among Ahurans to this day demonstrates that Burzinshahi iconoclasm was not directed at the yazatas or their shrines but only to the images within them.

Burzinshahi temples were also the first to feature a gumbad (dome, the Darvozi word gunbaz is the more common modern term) - a square sanctuary for the holy fire roofed by a round dome resting on four arches.

Arasanid period

Fire temples from the Arasanid period maintained the general layout of their Burzinshahi counterparts, though temples built after the 7th century were on a grander scale and were heavier in ornamentation. The first instance of this is the temple of Ādar Ardāwirāz near Namrin in western Pardaran built by Naoruz III in 711. There, archaeologists found a large pillared hall connected to passageways leading into domed rooms with lesser fire altars. This hall led to a great courtyard surrounded by an ambulatory centered around a massive domed building where a great fire altar once was.

At Ādar Ardāwirāz archaeologists have also found the remnants of stone reliefs depicting floral designs and glazed mosaics of complex geometric patterns with Irvadi and Hyndanian influences. Although these were common features even in secular Burzinshahi architecture, fire temples from previous periods were relatively austere. By the second half of the 8th century many Arasanid fire temples were built with domes and interiors decorated with intricate mosaics and stone reliefs. Many of the architectural elements associated with Irfani mazārs are descended from these features.

Irfani period

In Zorasan

After the fall of the Arasanids and the rise of the Heavenly Dominion, most fire temples in Pardaran, Khazestan, Irvadistan, and Ninevah were either demolished or converted into Irfani mazārs. Under Irfani rule, Ahurans maintained fire temples in plain mud-brick buildings where the fire altar was hidden away in a rectangular or barrel-vaulted sanctuary with a double roof to protect the purity of the fire, abandoning the custom still maintained by Karzari Ahurans of placing fire altars in large, conspicuous halls. Separate from the regular sanctuary was the main hall which usually contained an empty vessel which held the holy fire during religious festivals and special occasions. This was not always the case, as a few prominent temples in remote and mountainous areas such as those at Pir-e yazd in Ninevah and Pir-e nur in southern Pardaran were spared destruction and have since developed into centers of pilgrimage.

As restrictions on non-Irfanis lessened during the 19th century, the Ahurans of Zorasan began building fire temples in cities with Ahuran communities on a larger scale, often hiring Darvozi or Tokharian architects from Karzaristan or Hyndana. These temples were built in the Karzari style and include Darvozi, Tokharian, Hyndanian, and Osrushani architectural influences. Some fire temples from the 20th century are decorated with Varkanid and Hasravanid designs. Today, the maintenance of many Zorasani fire temples is funded by the Karzari government.