The Persian Shadow: Zoroastrianism and the Formation of Islamic Theology
Overview This three-part scholarly series investigates the historical and theological relationship between Zoroastrianism and Islam through the lenses of chronology, structure, and transmission.
What this resource contributes
Overview This three-part scholarly series investigates the historical and theological relationship between Zoroastrianism and Islam through the lenses of chronology, structure, and transmission. Drawing on mainstream scholarship in Iranian studies, biblical studies, religious history, and Late Antique studies, the series argues that many of Islam’s central theological concepts, ritual practices, and cosmological assumptions did not emerge in isolation in seventh-century Arabia but developed within a religious ecosystem whose foundations were laid in ancient Iranian religion. Rather than advancing polemic, the series applies historical method: examining dates of texts, patterns of doctrinal development, ritual continuity, linguistic influence, and cultural transmission.
Topics and source signals
Primary sources detected
Gathas · Vendidad · Talmud
