Was Muhammad foretold in Parsi Scriptures?

The Muslim web site  http://www.erols.com/zenithco/  has the clear goal to spread Islam by showing the attractiveness of Islam regarding the essence of its message and the reality of its history, to convince non-Muslims of its truth and to invite them to accept Islam as their own religion. These are good goals and one cannot object. Every believer will want to tell the best about his religion and convictions. Nevertheless, invitation to any religion should only be done on the basis of truth, not fraud. I am sure, most Muslims would agree with this principle.

In a section containing various articles on the person and prophethood of Muhammad we find the article "Prophet Muhammad in Parsi Scriptures" and in it the following claims:

Many other Muslim pages either copied the above into their own site, make the same claim in slightly different words, or link to a site making the claim: [1], [2], [3], [4]

Should Muslims intend to uphold this "prophecy" they need to put some effort into authenticating the document itself, i.e. its age and content, not only the accuracy of the translation.

We have inquired with a scholar in the field of Zoroastrianism and early Persian texts and were given this information:

... you are entirely right in suspecting the authenticity of the 'Epistle of Sasan 1'. The 'Desatir', from which it is cited, aroused a great deal of interest among Parsis and in the academic community at its publication, because it contained much remarkable material, but as soon as it was the subject of serious scholarly investigation it was established, on the basis of language and contents, that it was a literary forgery. It is thought to be the product of some Persian Sufi school, with only the most tenuous connection with Zoroastrianism. The spuriousness of your particular passage is instantly apparent, because there was no Sasan 1. "Sasan" was the eponymous ancestor of the Sasanian royal family, but nothing is known about him, and the name was never borne by any king of the dynasty. A whole succession of obscure "Sasans" were, however, invented to link the historic dynasty with the legendary Kayanian dynasty of the Zoroastrian 'Avesta' [prayer book of Zoroastrianism], and so the name occurred in semi-mystical writings, and would readily have been picked up by the unknown author of the 'Desatir'. There is no reason to suppose that the text of an 'Epistle of Sasan 1' existed outside that work.

The fact that there never was a "Sasan I" can easily be confirmed through the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the article "The History of Ancient Mesopotamia - THE SASANIAN PERIOD".

A non-existing Sasan I can obviously neither be a reformer of the religion of Zoroastrianism, nor could he have uttered prophecies about Muhammad.


On June 11, 1998, I sent a message to the web master of the site carrying the discussed article containing part of the above information. My message ended with this paragraph:

I have not received any response. The article remained on the site unchanged. Therefore, this web page went online to expose the hoax, June 25, 1998, two weeks after the above inquiry.


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