mazdak a mobad

The economic basis of his religious reform. The second great heretic of this period who had a considerable following was a pious Mobad named Mazdak, son of Bamdat.68 A Pahlavi treatise named Mazdak Namah, Book of Mazdak, is said to have been rendered into Arabic by Ibnul Muqaffa. The work has been lost, but its contents have been preserved in other Arabic works.69 The author of Dabistan says that he met some Mazdakites who practised their religion secretly among the Mohammedans. These showed him a book called Desnad, written in Old Persian.70 There are references to Mazdak and his teachings in Greek and Syriac, Arabic and Persian. He is called the accursed heterodox who observes fasts,71 who ap­peared to cause disturbance among the faithful.72 He was con­temporary with Kobad.73 Mazdak agreed with the fundamental doctrine of Zoroastrianism in respect to the indelible antithesis between the two principles, Light and Darkness, or Ohrmazd and [349] Ahriman.74 Masudi calls him a Zendik.75 Tabari, Mirkhond, and others accuse him of teaching the doctrine of the community of wives.76 The Dabistan repeats the statement.77 Mazdak's revolutionary reform, however, was not so much religious as it was social and economic, for he preached communism, pure and