ABSTRACT
Moving deeper, we look at Later Antiquity and begin an examination of Mazdak and Mazdakism as the key building-block in our macroscopic vision of Persian cultural and religious continuities from pre-to Islamic Iran. Specically, we must consider the transmigration of ideas from Mazdak to Mohammed. It is important to appreciate that the place of Mazdakism in the history of Persia has remained a subject almost totally ignored, or else glossed over as a Persian mistake best forgotten.1 e advent of Mazdak brings to attention one of the most successful Persian reactive movements, apart from the earlier implant of Manichaeism. Yet Mazdak is the face of a hidden tradition (allegedly going back to Zarathushtra) that for a time won the favour of the Sasanid court and was rapidly spread throughout the empire and, we should stress, as far as Arabia. If Mazdak and Mazdakism indeed form one of two crucial pieces in the jigsaw puzzle for lling out our alternative Persian macrohistory, the other piece, Salman the Persian, looks like the very joining of Iran and Islam.
