Fire temple
Zoroastrian place of worship
A fire temple (Persian: آتشکده, romanized: ātashkade; Gujarati: અગિયારી, romanized: agiyārī) is a place of worship for Zoroastrians. In Zoroastrian doctrine, atar and aban (fire and water) are agents of ritual purity.
Clean, white ash is an important part of Zoroastrian purification ceremonies. The use of fire in such ceremonies also indicates the proper way to tend domestic fires.
As of 2021, there were 167 fire temples in the world, of which 45 were in Mumbai, 105 in the rest of India, and 17 in other countries. Of these, only nine (one in Iran and eight in India) are the main temples known as Atash Behrams; the remainder are the smaller temples known as agiaries.
History and development
Concept
First evident in the 9th century BCE, the rituals of fire are contemporary with that of Zoroastrianism itself. It appears at approximately the same time as the shrine cult and is roughly contemporaneous with the introduction of Atar as a divinity. There is no allusion to a temple of fire in the Avesta proper, nor is there any Old Persian word for one.
That the rituals of fire was a doctrinal modification and absent from early Zoroastrianism is also evident in the later Atash Nyash.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Fire temple” is zoroastrian place of worship. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Fire, temple and Zoroastrian, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “zoroastrian place of worship” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q115278. The Library of Congress control number is sh2005001133. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2021.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Fire temple”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Fire temple primary sources, Fire temple archive and Fire research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Fire temple”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Fire temple” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.