Note 14 — Chapter II · The Zoroastrians in Persia

“When the Arabs by right of conquest imposed a new religion on the Persians, the fusion of the Turano-Aryans had been already for the greater part accomplished in the north and east of the empire. At this time there was no difference of race, manners, customs or religion between the ancestors of the Mahomedan Persians and those of the real Guebres. Separated to-day as surely by their religion as by vast extent of space, they no longer commingle; but being descended from the same ancestors, and neither having undergone any modification since that period, we find them again to-day not unlike each other in the same region.... The only ethnical element which could have been introduced among the Persian Mahomedans and not among the Guebres, would be the Semitic element due to the Arab conquerors. But it was not so. The soldiers of Islam were indeed sufficiently fanatical and violent to impose their laws and religion on the people, but not sufficiently numerous to effect any change in them. It would be practically quite the truth to say that this invasion has left no traces outside the families of the Seides. The language alone has felt its effects; all words connected with religion and government are Arabic. The Guebres should be all the less regarded as pure descendants of the Aryans, as they resemble their Mussulman neighbours, and are, on the other hand, not all of the same type. Those of Yezd have, according to Khanikoff, Aryan characteristics. It is not because they are Guebres, but because they dwell in a country adjoining Fars. Those of Teheran resemble the other inhabitants of Teheran. The Parsis of India, whose ancestors preferred exile to conversion, are more like the Parsis of Persia, and differ from their co-religionists of the North. Since their exodus, they have not at all mixed with the people who received them; they are such as they were then. Thus at the time of the Arabic conquest there was no single race. The ethnical distribution, which can be observed even now, existed already. The Guebres who remained in Persia were the Turano-Aryans; the emigrants, who had chiefly started from the south of the kingdom, were Aryans.”14