معرفت ادیان (Ma`rifat Adyan)

Procopius was the Roman annalist, the judicial advisor to Belisarius, an officer and commander of the Roman army during the time of the Justinian Empire. He has written the cultural and social history of the times of the kings such as Peroz I, Kavad I and Khosrow I. Through the writings of Procopius, the religious situation as well as the beliefs of the kings can be deduced. Some of the first class sources in Pahlavi, as well as the writings of the early Islamic centuries on the history of Sassanid history, confirm a large part of Procopius's words. Analyzing the religious status and the attitude of the Sassanid kings towards Zoroastrian in the last Sassanid era is the purpose of this research. Accordingly, the most important question of this research is the effects of the attitude of the Sassanid kings on the Zoroastrian and the impact of this attitude on their domestic and foreign policies. Using a descriptive-analytical method this paper has analyzed the issue. As a result, according to Procopius's writings, the orthodoxy of the religious kings was more subject to the domestic and foreign political conditions, which the most important component in this regard was the war between the Sassanid and the Eastern Roman Empire. Sometimes the disregard for Zoroastrian laws by the Sassanid kings has been due to the above reasons or to the personality and psychological characteristics of the king. Therefore, sometimes the king would modify the rules of religion in his favor.