The Mohammedan invasion (636), with the terrible persecutions of the following centuries, was the death-blow of Zoroastrianism.
An interesting article on the subject, by Stoyan Krstoff Vatralsky of Boston, Mass., entitled " Mohammedan Gnosticism in America," appeared in the American Journal of Theology for January 1902, pp. 57-58.
There is no doubt that the spread of the practice is connected with the ban imposed in Mohammedan countries on the use of alcoholic beverages, and to some extent with the long religious fasts of the Buddhists, Hindus and Moslems, in which opium is used to allay hunger.
