Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish

Who was Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish?

Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish was the founder of the religious movement known as Mazdaznan. His origin is not verified, and differing birth dates are mentioned in various documents. According to some sources, he was born Otto Hanisch, a German immigrant from Poznan. He adopted the name Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish in 1902, and his European follower David Ammann claimed that he was born in 1844 to a Russian diplomat in Teheran and to have been sent as a child to a secret society of Zarathustrians in the Iran mountains due to his serious congenital heart defect, where he was trained to master his hypoxic condition with control of breathing.