Solved, the riddle of the Parsi

 

Whist trawling through the Bombay Gazette of  4 May 1866 I notice an article documenting a soldiers diary from his travels in the Persian Gulf. In it he mentions a place called Bushire which I had come across when looking at the hand written Family Tree of the Goolam Hoosein Arab descendants. For those of you who looked at the 'Tree' post yesterday you will notice that I had Mahomed Arab as an Indian National. I am afraid to say I am wrong. In the early part of my research I took the Carl Smith Records version of his M Arab's birth place Abushar (Also spelt the same in his Last Will and Testament) as Ambarsar the colloquial name for Amritsar. It is obvious to me now that the spoken Bushire was misspelt as Abushar. It is easy to see how a translated document does not always reflect the original.

So I have emended the original and also yesterdays 'Tree' post to reflect this.

Whats more, while he was living in India it is highly possible/probable that he was referred to as a 'Parsi', that being the Indian term for Persians as opposed to the religious connotation we use today. When the 'Zoroastrians' fled persecution in Peria for India they became known as 'parsi'. As more Persians arrived they too would have been referred to in the same way. 

We can say then that at the time all Zoroastrians were 'Parsi' but not all 'Parsi' were Zoroastrians.

I am now happy to say Auntie Hani's insistence her family were 'Parsi' and still Muslim was correct.

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