Mazdak

The Mazdakiten were a written around 500 AD religious reform movement that I returned the Persian Sassanid Empire at the time of the Great King Kavadh in turmoil. The details are unclear and controversial. The most later and / or foreign sources, appeared as a reformer of Zoroastrian orthodoxy on a certain Mazdak, apparently to proclaim the teachings of the founder Zaraduscht. Starting from the basis of faith of Zoroastrianism approached the Mazdakiten Gnostic currents, which also included the Manichaeism, and combined these apparently with a based on quasi- Communist ideas about social ethics: The world should not, therefore, at the end of days through a great struggle against evil be cleaned, but people could their souls and thus save the world by sacrificing personal property. Part of the population obviously felt by the mystical elements of the new doctrine addressed, the aristocracy was, however - in a politically turbulent time - challenged and responded split. King Khosrau I (reigned 531-579 ) is to break the power of mazdakitischen movement, but probably lived on their ideas to the people in Islamic period succeeded.

History

Already Mazdak who was, according to which the movement in some eastern sources (such as Tabari ) is called, and when he lived is uncertain. Was he the leader of those groups that made in the late 5th century, talked about, or called you only to him? It appears that the ideas of Mazdakiten in the core religious in nature. They were of Zoroastrianism and probably also influenced by Manichaeism and its supporters understood probably as a religious innovator. Apparently they saw worldly possessions as the root of all evil; this is called well- at least in parts of the movement, the idea of ​​a "communist" community of goods produced.

Maybe there was a mixing of different groupings originally a single, religious and " social revolutionary " moments united in itself and possibly wanted to meet the demands of the poorer sections of the population. Late Roman sources - especially Prokopios of Caesarea and Agathias - report from the spectacular demand of Mazdakiten (or the king Kavadh ) to " women's community "; this element is also mentioned by the Oriental reports. It is probably related to the idea of ​​a community of goods.

Both the Zoroastrian clergy as well as parts of the nobility ( but apparently not all of the aristocracy, as the sources suggest ) were the Mazdakiten hostile - so the women's community would have led to an uncertainty of biological paternity, which would probably mean the end of hereditary nobility. The role of the king is unclear basically. Most researchers believe Kavadh 've tried the Mazdakiten to use, in order to weaken the nobility, and had therefore been deposed and imprisoned 496 of nobility and priesthood. After Kavadh 499 had regained his crown with the help of the Hephthalites, the sources are silent long from the Mazdakiten, but it is widely believed that his son and successor of Chosroes I. them in the first years of his reign (ie 530 ) bloody as " Manichean " have followed. Quite to exterminate the movement, however, did not let.

However, this reconstruction is not plausible at all points, so that it has been questioned in different ways: One extreme position asserts Mazdak was merely a fiction, with which you have the prominent role Kavadhs covered up later. Other scientists, however, think that it had in those groups that had occurred around 490, not traded at the predecessors of those who were then followed by 530, but two very different phenomena. Most likely, perhaps, is that the United Kingdom only after 526 - at this time was the powerful nobles Seoses, who was a follower of the Mazdakiten, deposed and killed - turned entirely on the Mazdakiten, which would explain the onset of around 530 prosecutions: Maybe also occurred only at this late stage to a radicalization of the movement, especially as it initially also in the high nobility quite " Mazdakitenfreunde " was - among other things said Seoses - what makes a fundamentally directed against the aristocracy teaching of Mazdakiten unlikely at least for the initial period ( see Wiesehöfer 2009).

Mostly it is assumed that parts of the ideas of Mazdakiten after 530 popularly had remained alive and in post-classical movements - perhaps up to the Bogomils and Cathars - were once again become virulent.

Sure is ultimately only that Persia was plagued in the years around 500 of inner unrest, in which also the Great King was involved and which were connected in some way with a religious- social-revolutionary movement, which denote the Oriental sources as Mazdakiten. Apparently the events which ultimately led to a weakening of the old nobility, which it seems to have allowed Kavadh and Chosroes, to strengthen the position of the king. Everything else is still the subject of scholarly debate within the ancient history and iranistischen research.