Iranian media reports say the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution of Iran adopted a plan to observe 10 national occasions including birthday of Zoroaster, the ancient Iranian prophet.
According to IRNA, Secretary of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution Saeed-Reza Ameli said that Zoroaster's birthday will be formally observed in Iran in the context of a plan to commemorate 10 new occasions.
Ameli said that Iran is the cradle of Zoroastrianism.
According to the last survey of the statistics organization of Iran, more than 23,000 Zoroastrian live in Iran.
Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra, was an ancient Iranian spiritual leader who founded what is now known as Zoroastrianism. His teachings challenged the existing traditions of the Indo-Iranian religion and inaugurated a movement that eventually became the dominant religion in Ancient Persia.
There is no scholarly consensus on when he lived. However, approximating using linguistic and socio-cultural evidence allows for dating to somewhere in the second millennium BC. However, other scholars still date him in the 7th and 6th century BC as a near-contemporary of Cyrus the Great and Darius.
Meanwhile, according to the Zoroastrian community of Iran, Zoroaster was born on Farvardin 6 (March 26 or 25), 1768 BC and passed away on Dey 5 (December 26 or 25), 1691 BC at the age of 77.
