Origin from 1578
In 1578, the Mughal emperor Akbar invited the Zoroastrian high priest Dastur Meherji Rana of Navsari, Gujarat, to the Ibadat Khana, the hall of worship he had built at his capital, Fatehpur Sikri, where Hindu, Jain and Christian representatives already debated matters of faith before him. Meherji Rana taught Akbar the rituals and practices of the Parsi community, including the tending of a sacred fire never to be extinguished, and contemporary Mughal chroniclers recorded Parsi priests from Navsari attending the royal court that year. Pleased with the priest's learning, Akbar granted him tax free land near Gelkharri in Gujarat. The exposure to Zoroastrian practice, alongside the Ibadat Khana's other faiths, fed into the syncretic Din-i-Ilahi that Akbar promulgated a few years later, which adopted the veneration of light and fire among its elements.
Facts
Dates
StatusEstablished marks a specific, dated imperial audience and land grant, not the founding of Zoroastrianism in India, which the Gujarat migration already on this timeline predates by more than six centuries, and not a claim that Akbar adopted Zoroastrianism itself rather than selectively absorbing elements of it into Din-i-Ilahi. Connections
Associated With
This source names Akbar directly: "In 1578, the Mughal emperor Akbar invited the Zoroastrian high priest Dastur Meherji Rana of Navsari, Gujarat, to the Ibadat Khana, the hall of worship he had built at his capital, Fatehpur Sikri..."
Source The Ibadat Khana (World History Encyclopedia)
This source names Din-i-Ilahi directly: "other faiths, fed into the syncretic Din-i-Ilahi that Akbar promulgated a few years later, which adopted the veneration of light and fire among its elements."
Source The Ibadat Khana (World History Encyclopedia)
This source names Fatehpur Sikri directly: "worship he had built at his capital, Fatehpur Sikri, where Hindu, Jain and Christian representatives already debated matters of faith before him."
Source The Ibadat Khana (World History Encyclopedia)
This source names Gujarat directly: "priest Dastur Meherji Rana of Navsari, Gujarat, to the Ibadat Khana, the hall of worship he had built at his capital, Fatehpur Sikri, where Hindu, Jain and Christian representatives already debated..."
Source The Ibadat Khana (World History Encyclopedia)
Occurred In
Source The Ibadat Khana (World History Encyclopedia)
Spread Event Of
Adds a specific, dated imperial encounter between the community's ninth century migration to Gujarat and its eighteenth century establishment of Bombay as a communal centre already recorded here: a Mughal emperor's own invitation of a Zoroastrian high priest to his court and the land grant that followed.
Source The Ibadat Khana (World History Encyclopedia)
Sources
1. The Ibadat Khana (World History Encyclopedia)
Meherji Rana (Wikipedia)
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