A literary history of Persia

206 THE ARAB INVASIONtime, indeed, a strong effort was made by ' Abdu'l-Malik,seconded by his ferocious but able lieutenantal-Hajjaj,torepress and curtail the foreign influences, Persian and Byzantine,which were already so strongly at work, and to expel non-Arabs from the Government offices, but the attempt resultedonly in a partial and temporary success. 1Meanwhile, as has been already pointed out, Zoroastrianism,though cast down from its position of a State religion, by nomeans disappeared from Persia, and the bands of exiles whofled before the Arab invasion first to the islands of the PersianGulf and then to India, where they founded the Pars! colonieswhich still flourish in and about Bombay and Surat, were but aminority of those who still preferred Zoroaster to Muhammadand the A vesta to the Qur'dn. Pahlawi literature, as we haveseen, continued side by side with the new Arabic literatureproduced by the Persian converts to Islam ;the high priests orthe Magian faith were still persons of importance, in prettyconstant communication with the Government officials,andstillenjoying a large amount of influence amongst theirco-religionists, to whom was granted a considerable measure of2self-government ;and the fire-temples, even when laws werepromulgated ordering their destruction, were in practiceseldom molested, while severe punishment was sometimesinflicted by the Muhammadan authorities on persons whoman indiscreet zeal led to injure or destroy them.3 5 Threecenturies after the Arab Conquest fire-temples still existed inalmost every Persian province, though at the present day,according to the carefully compiledstatistics of Houtum-Schindler, 4 the total number of "fire-worshippers" in Persiaonly amounts to about 8,500. According to Khanikof(Memoir e sur la part'ie meridionale de I'Asie Centrale^ p. 193), at1See A. von Kremer's Culturgeschichte d. Orients, vol. i, pp. 166-183.aIbid., vol. i, p. 183.3 Cf. Arnold's Preaching of Islam, p. 179.4 Die Parsen in Pcrsien, in the Z. D. M. G. for 1882, vol. xxxvi, pp. 54-88.The actual number of fire-temples he gives as twenty-three.