Parsis
Culture | Active
936 CE to 2215 CE
Parsis or Parsees (which means 'Persian' in the Persian language) are a Zoroastrian community who had migrated to the Indian subcontinent from Persia during the Muslim conquest of Persia of CE 636–651; one of two such groups (the other being Iranis).
According to the Qissa-i Sanjan, Parsishad migrated from Greater Iran to Gujarat, where they were given refuge, between the eighth and tenth century CE to avoid persecution following the Muslim conquest of Persia.
At the time of the Muslim conquest of Persia, the dominant religion of the region (which was ruled by the Sasanian Empire) was Zoroastrianism.
Iranians such as Babak Khorramdin had rebelled against Muslim conquerors for almost two hundred years.
During this time many Iranians (who are now called Parsis since the migration to India) had chosen to preserve their religious identity by fleeing from Persia to India.
The word پارسیان, pronounced "Parsian", i.e., "Parsi" in the Persian language, literally means Persian.
Note that Farsi is an arabization of the word Parsi which is used as an endonym of Persian, and Persian language is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajkistan, and some other former regions of the Persian Empire.
The long presence of the Parsis in India distinguishes them from the smaller Zoroastrian Indian community of Iranis, who are much more recent arrivals, mostly descended from Zoroastrians fleeing the repression of the Qajar dynasty and the general social and political tumult of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran.
After having spent centuries in South Gujarat, particularly Udvada, Valsad and Navsari, the majority of the Parsi diaspora speak Gujarati.
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Most of the Bugis sea traders had migrated to Macassar after the Dutch made it a free port in 1847, and by 1860 the Bugis population of Singapore has declined to less than a thousand.
Small numbers of Arabs, Jews, and Armenians, many of them already well-to-do, are drawn to Singapore, where they amass even greater wealth.
Another small group numbered among Singapore's upper class are the Parsis, Indians of Iranian descent who are adherents of Zoroastrianism.
Indians had become Singapore's second largest community by 1860, numbering more than eleven thousand.
Some of these people are laborers or traders, who, like the Chinese, have come with the hope of making their fortune and returning to their homeland.
Some are troops garrisoned at Singapore by the government in Calcutta.
Another group are convicts who were first brought to Singapore from the detention center in Bencoolen in 1825, after Bencoolen was handed over to the Dutch.
Singapore then became a major detention center for Indian prisoners.
Rehabilitation rather than punishment is emphasized, and prisoners are trained in such skills as brick making, carpentry, rope making, printing, weaving, and tailoring, which later will enable them to find employment.
Singapore's penal system is considered so enlightened that Dutch, Siamese, and Japanese prison administrators come to observe it.
Convict labor is used to build roads, clear the jungle, hunt tigers, and construct public buildings, some of which will still be in use in the late twentieth century.
After completing their sentences, most convicts settle down to a useful life in Singapore.
As with Chinese and Europeans, Indian men far outnumber women because few Indian women come to Singapore before the 1860s.
Some Indian Muslims marry Malay women, however, and their descendants will become known as Jawi-Peranakan.
The highly unbalanced sex ratio in Singapore contributes to a rather lawless, frontier atmosphere that the government seems helpless to combat.
Little revenue is available to expand the tiny police force, which struggles to keep order amid a continuous influx of immigrants, often from the fringes of Asian society.
This tide of immigration is totally uncontrolled because Singapore's businessmen, desperate for unskilled laborers, oppose restriction on free immigration as vehemently as they resist any restraint on free trade.
Public health services are almost nonexistent, and cholera, malnutrition, smallpox, and opium use take a heavy toll in the severely overcrowded working-class areas.