parsee

Zoroastrian community in the Indian subcontinent descended from Persian migrants

Parsis or Parsees are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent whose religion is Zoroastrianism. Their ancestors migrated from Persia following the Muslim conquest of the seventh century CE. Persia had been part of the Sassanid Empire, the state religion of which, prior to the conquest, was Zoroastrianism. They are the first of two such Iranian ethnic groups to have done so, with the other being Iranis, who migrated to the subcontinent many centuries after Persia fell to the Rashidun Caliphate. According to the Qissa-i Sanjan, the Parsi people continued to migrate from the collapsed Sassanid Empire to the territories comprising the modern-day states of India and Pakistan in between the 8th and 10th centuries CE, where they were given refuge to escape persecution during the Muslim conquests. The bulk of the Parsi people settled in the Gujarat region of western India.

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