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Chapter 4. Remains concerning fire in Sasanian timesArdashir was a son of Papak,(1) who was, or had made himself, vassal-ruler of Istaxr near Persepolis in Pars, where there was a great temple of Anahid (Anahita).After Ardashir succeeded his father, he extended his territory by defeating Shadhshapur, vassal-ruler of Isfahan, and thereafter he defied and defeated his over-lord, the Arsacid King of kings, Ardawan (Artabanus) at the battle of Hormuzd in A. D. 224.(2)He then entered the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon and was possibly crowned there as King of kings in 226.(3)According to one tradition, he took a princess of the house of Arsaces as his wife(4) and thus secured the legitimacy of his kingship.His kingdom extended from the Oxus to Azerbaijan and Armenia; and in order to unite these far-flung countries, none of which had submitted easily to him, he seems to have used a great deal of propaganda, which included giving prominence to his dynastic fire.Tosar,(5) Chief Herbed,(6) was the religious counsellor of Ardashir I, and also had evidently some authority in political matters.He wrote a letter, now known as the Tansar Name,(7) in reply to one from Gushnasp, King of Parishwar and Tabaristan, in which he admitted that Ardashir 'has taken away fires from the fire temples and extinguished them and blotted them out'.(8)He justified this action with the following words: 'After Darius each of the "kings of the peoples" built his own fire -temple.This was pure innovation, introduced by them without the authority of kings of old'.In reversal of this act, the new King of kings, he wrote, 'has razed the temples, and confiscated the endowments, and had the fires carried back to their place of origin'.(9)Other sources tell us that in Armenia Ardashir destroyed idols and established sacred fires instead.(10)Ardashir seems thus to have refused to admit the existence of any dynastic fires but his own, as part of establishing sole dominion Vol.
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