{"id":160360,"date":"2025-12-04T12:57:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T09:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/?p=160360"},"modified":"2025-12-04T12:57:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T09:27:25","slug":"zoroastrians-and-the-origins-of-girls-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/?p=160360","title":{"rendered":"Zoroastrians and the Origins of Girls\u2019 Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

When was the first Zoroastrian girls\u2019 school established? Most researchers, following the late Rashid Shahmardan\u2019s account in Zoroastrian Luminaries, have long maintained that the earliest institution was the Ardeshiri School in Yazd, founded in 1903 CE (1282 AHS) through the efforts of Arbab Keyumars Vafadar Ardeshir. Yet evidence suggests the origins of girls\u2019 education among Zoroastrians may date even earlier, to a series of schools founded in Kerman by the late Arbab Keikhosrow Shahrokh.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Arbab Keikhosrow Shahrokh (1875\u20131940 CE \/ 1254\u20131319 AHS) recounts in his Notes that upon returning from Bombay, the Zoroastrian community in Kerman had only a single maktab-khaneh in the Mahaleh-Shahr neighborhood\u2014 \u201ca lone mud-brick room, without plaster, carpets, or chairs, its courtyard filled with piles of rubble\u201d (Notes, p. 40). Soon after, he reorganized that rundown school and went on to establish three girls\u2019 schools and several boys\u2019 schools across the city.<\/p>\n

The girls\u2019 institutions he founded were located in the Qobeh-Sabz district, in Mahaleh-Shahr, and outside the Naseri Gate near the Shah-Varahram Izad fire temple.<\/p>\n

Although Keikhosrow did not specify the exact founding dates of these girls\u2019 schools, historian Afshin Marashi notes in Nation and Exile that Keikhosrow returned to Kerman in 1893 CE (1271 AHS) (Marashi, p. 51). He adds that \u201cover the following decade, through local Zoroastrian initiatives and with the support of the Parsis of India, he established three new boys\u2019 schools and three girls\u2019 schools.<\/p>\n

Although the precise opening dates of the Zoroastrian girls\u2019 schools in Kerman remain unclear, it is evident that they were founded earlier than the Ardeshiri Girls\u2019 School in Yazd, which Master Keyumars Vafadar Ardeshir established in 1903 CE (1282 AHS). Ardeshiri\u2014long regarded in scholarship as \u201cthe first Zoroastrian girls\u2019 school\u201d\u2014was founded in Farvardin 1272 Yazdgerdi, yet Arbab Keikhosrow Shahrokh had already begun operating a girls\u2019 school in Kerman before that date.<\/p>\n

Even if one accepts the generous assumption that Keikhosrow\u2019s three girls\u2019 schools were all completed by 1902 CE (1281 AHS), the chronology still places the Kerman institution earlier than its Yazd counterpart. This means that Zoroastrians launched their first girls\u2019 school significantly sooner than the opening of the Ardeshiri school\u2014contrary to widespread claims in existing research.<\/p>\n

This earlier date matters because most historical accounts credit one of three Tehran-based schools as the first girls\u2019 school in Iran: Tooba Rushdieh\u2019s short-lived \u201cParvaresh\u201d School (1903), Bibi Khanom Astarabadi\u2019s \u201cDoushizegan\u201d School (1906), or Tooba Azmoudeh\u2019s \u201cNamous\u201d School (1907). In reality, Arbab Keikhosrow Shahrokh\u2019s establishment of a girls\u2019 school in Kerman predates all of them\u2014as well as the Ardeshiri Girls\u2019 School\u2014marking the Zoroastrian community as a pioneer in girls\u2019 education in Iran.<\/p>\n

Reassessing the Early History of Girls\u2019 Schooling in Iran<\/strong><\/p>\n

Historical accounts of modern Iranian education often credit the Armenian community with founding the country\u2019s first girls\u2019 school in Isfahan in 1857, followed by the Jewish community\u2019s establishment of the Etehad Girls\u2019 School in Tehran in 1897 with support from the Alliance Israelite Universelle. Yet both institutions, while important, were communal rather than national schools: instruction was in Armenian and Hebrew respectively, and their student bodies were limited to their own religious communities.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the girls\u2019 schools founded by Arbab Keikhosrow Shahrokh in Kerman and later by Arbab Keyumars Vafadar in Yazd were fully Iranian in character, offering all instruction in Persian and serving the broader Iranian public. Thus, although the contributions of Armenian and Jewish Iranians to girls\u2019 education merit respect, the question of who first established girls\u2019 schools in Iran must be reconsidered. The Zoroastrian community emerges as the earliest group to undertake the challenging work of creating formal educational opportunities for girls.<\/p>\n

For this reason, the narrative of girls\u2019 education in Iran may need to be rewritten to ensure that the pioneering role of Zoroastrians is properly recognized and preserved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When was the first Zoroastrian girls\u2019 school established? Most researchers, following the late Rashid Shahmardan\u2019s account in Zoroastrian Luminaries, have long maintained that the earliest institution was the Ardeshiri School in Yazd, founded in 1903 CE (1282 AHS) through the efforts of Arbab Keyumars Vafadar Ardeshir. Yet evidence suggests the origins of girls\u2019 education among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":160361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1360,1358,1359],"class_list":["post-160360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-zoroastrians","tag-arbab-keikhosrow-shahrokh","tag-girls-education","tag-rashid-shahmardan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/160361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.amordadnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}