Zoroastrian fires are graded, and the highest grade, the Atash Behram, is consecrated from sixteen different sources of fire in a process taking a year or more. Yazd holds one, and the community states that this fire has been kept burning continuously for many centuries, moved from place to place before being installed in its present temple in the twentieth century. It is tended by priests who cover the mouth and nose with a cloth so that breath does not pollute it, and fed with dry sandalwood at fixed times. Visitors see it through glass; the fire is not worshipped but treated as the purest visible sign of the divine.
The city kept the largest Zoroastrian population in Iran through the centuries of Muslim rule, in which the community held the status of a protected minority and paid the poll tax, under conditions that varied from tolerable to severe. The tax was lifted in 1882 after sustained pressure, including from Parsi philanthropy in India.
Outside the city stand two dakhmas, the round walled enclosures on hilltops where the dead were laid out for birds, so that a corpse, the most polluting thing there is, would not defile earth, water or fire. Exposure was ended in Iran in the 1970s under public health law, and burial in concrete lined graves replaced it. The towers are empty now and open to visitors, while the Parsi community in Mumbai continues the practice under increasing difficulty as vulture populations collapse.