Zoroastrianism and the Iranian Great Sufis

Dear Friends

I'm studying the Sufi mystics Rumi and Shams from Iran, and I can't help thinking how strongly influenced by Zoroastrianism these thinkers must have been. Shams even complains that Persian is much better than Arabic as the language to describe the mysteries of the world. And Rumi's texts are often referred to as "The Persian Qoran" as if they were superior to the Qoran itself. Rumi was of course the founder of the dervish movement in Sufism. Do you know in what more ways Rumi and Shams are related to Zoroastrian thinking? We are after all talking of a Bactrian and East Iranian culture here that was always highly controversial in the rest of the Islamic world (even if contemporary followers of Rumi and Shams count in the millions, in Iran, Turkey, Kurdistan and the United States).

Ushta
Alexander