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Revision as of 06:34, 24 October 2005 by ParthianShot (talk | contribs) (→Iranians under Arab Rule)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Islamic conquest of Iran led to the collapse of the Sassanid Empire, the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion in Iran, and the birth of Islamic civilization.
Introduction
Within one year of Muhammad's death in 632, Arabia itself was secure enough to allow his successor, Abu Bakr, the first caliph, to begin the campaign against the Byzantine and Sassanid empires.
The Bedouin Arabs who toppled the Sassanid Empire were propelled not only by a desire for conquest and plundering but also by a new religion, Islam. The rich Sassanid lands of Iraq made it a choice area for Arab settlement after the collapse of the Sassanids. In fact "the desire to wrest these lands from the Iranian aristocracy" provided a prime motive for "the aggressiveness" of the Arabs. (Encyclopedia Iranica, p211) Furthermore, Richard Nelson Frye writes that the invading Arabs were initially interested merely in the booty collected from the battles. Tabari even reports Omar ibn al-Khattab to have discouraged, if not actually forbid conversion to Islam for Iranians in the days of early Islam, seeking to restrict conversions to Islam only to Arabs. One report even claims that he stopped the victorious Arabs from invading the Iranian plateau after the battle of Jalula' because he did not wish to see Persians converted to Islam. (Tabari. Series I. p2778-9). Thus, as Frye verifies, the conquest of Persia and beyond was thus frankly intended to raise new revenues.
Occupation and conquest
Abu Bakr defeated the Byzantine army at Damascus in 635 and then began his conquest of Iran. In 637, the Arab forces occupied the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon following the Battle of Kadisiya (Qadesiya) (which they renamed Madain), and in 641 - 642 they defeated the Sassanid army at Nahavand. After that, Iran lay open to the invaders.
The Islamic conquest was aided by the material and social bankruptcy of the Sassanids; the native populations had little to lose by cooperating with the conquering power. Moreover, the Muslims offered relative religious tolerance and fair treatment to populations that accepted Islamic rule without resistance.
The occupation of Persia however was not a smooth process. Many Arab Muslims for example believed that Iranian converts should not clothe themselves as equal to Arabs, among many other forms of discrimination that emerged. ( See "Mohammedanische Studien" Goldziher. Vol 2 p138-9.) And there are various reports of brutal and inhumane treatment and massacres of Iranians by the Arab forces that are well documented. (See "Ansab al Ashraf" or "Futūh al Buldan" by Baladhuri, p417. Also: Tabari. Series II p1207. Also: "Tarikh e Sistan" p82. Also: "Tarikh e Qum" p254-6.)
It was not until around 650, however, that resistance in Iran was quelled. Conversion to Islam, which offered certain advantages, was fairly rapid among the urban population but slower among the peasantry and the dihqans. The majority of Iranians did not become Muslim until the ninth century.
Although the conquerors, especially the Umayyads (the Muslim rulers who succeeded Muhammad from 661-750), tended to stress the primacy of Arabs among Muslims, the Iranians were gradually integrated into the new community. The Muslim conquerors adopted the Sassanid coinage system and many Sassanid administrative practices, including the office of vizier, or minister, and the divan, a bureau or register for controlling state revenue and expenditure that became a characteristic of administration throughout Muslim lands. Later caliphs adopted Iranian court ceremonial practices and the trappings of Sassanid monarchy. The purdah domestic living arrangement is also said to have entered Islamic culture through Persian influence. Men of Iranian origin served as administrators after the conquest, and Iranians contributed significantly to all branches of Islamic learning, including philology, literature, history, geography, jurisprudence, philosophy, medicine, and the sciences.
The Arabs were in control, however. The new state religion, Islam, imposed its own system of beliefs, laws, and social mores. In regions that submitted peacefully to Muslim rule, landowners kept their land. But crown land, land abandoned by fleeing owners, and land taken by conquest passed into the hands of the new state. This included the rich lands of the Sawad, a rich, alluvial plain in central and southern Iraq. Arabic became the official language of the court in 696, although Persian continued to be widely used as the spoken language. The shuubiyya literary controversy of the ninth through the eleventh centuries, in which Arabs and Iranians each lauded their own and denigrated the other's cultural traits, suggests the survival of a certain sense of distinct Iranian identity. In the ninth century, the emergence of more purely Iranian ruling dynasties witnessed the revival of the Persian language, enriched by Arabic loanwords and using the Arabic script, and of Persian literature.
Iranians under Arab Rule
The Arabs who conquered Iran were generally illiterate after Persian Golds and booties, who had little or no knowledge of prophet's teachings. However, it appears that at first they allowed the Iranians to practice their religion, i.e. Zoroastrian so long as they paid the Jaziya (Poll Tax) and accepted Arab rule.
Arab Commander Sa'd Ibn Abi-Vaghas wrote to Caliph Umar ibn Al-Khatab about what should be done with the books at capital Tyspwn (Ctesiphon) in province of Khvarvaran (today known as Iraq). Umar wrote back: "If the books contradict the Qoran, they are blasphemous. On the other hand, if they are in agreement, they are not needed." All the books were thrown into the Euphrates.
Under another ruler Gotaibeh ibn Moslem in Khwarezmia, all the historians, writers, and mobeds were massacred and their books burned in fire, so that after one generation, the people became illiterate. Other libraries at Ray, Khorassan, Gay of Isphahan and University of Gondishapour were eventually destroyed. Only a few books that were translated into Arabic survived.
Yazid ibn Mohlab is reputed to have ordered the decapitation of so many Iranians that their blood flowed in the water powering a millstone for one full day. There are many other massacres recorded.
The first voice of protest cam from Firouz (known to Arabs as Abu LoLo), an artisan who had been enslaved by an Arab. He assassinated Umar. Later uprisings are recognized as Abu Moslem of Khorassan, White-clads, Red-clads (led by Babak), Mâziyâr, Ostâdzis, Afshin, and many others. Finally, after 200 years, known as "Two Centuries of Silence", the Arabs were driven out of Iran by a man and later king from Sistan, Yaghoub Lais, the founder of Saffarid dynasty.
Many Iranian noblemen had by this time picked up Arabic/Islamic names and the new religion. They were even more zealous in converting their fellow-Iranians to Islam. One Iranian premier, Sahib ibn-e Obbad (900 AC) would not look in the mirror as he would see a Zoroastrian. Publication in Persian was banned by Abdollah ibn Tahir (Taherid Dynasty), who burned Persian books.
The 9th and 10th century saw the revival of Persian literature and culture by Zoroastrian poets like Daghighi and Zarthost Bahram Pazdouh and later by Ferdowsi, Rudaki, Molavi, Nezami, Umar Khayyam and Hafez.
Shi'a Islam
Another legacy of the Arab conquest was Shi'a Islam, which, although it has come to be identified closely with Iran, was not initially an Iranian religious movement. It originated with the Arab Muslims. In the great schism of Islam, one group among the community of believers maintained that leadership of the community following the death of Muhammad rightfully belonged to Muhammad's son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, and to his descendants. This group came to be known as the Shiat Ali, the partisans of Ali, or the Shi'as. Another group, supporters of Muawiyah I (a rival contender for the caliphate following the murder of Uthman ibn Affan), challenged Ali's election to the caliphate in 656. After Ali was assassinated while praying in a mosque at Kufa in 661, Muawiya was declared caliph by the majority of the Islamic community. He became the first caliph of the Umayyad dynasty, which had its capital at Damascus.
Ali's youngest son, Husayn, refused to pay the homage commanded by Muawiya's son and successor Yazid I and fled to Mecca, where he was asked to lead the Shi'as--mostly those living in present-day Iraq--in a revolt. At Karbala, in Iraq, Husayn's band of 200 men and women followers, unwilling to surrender, were finally cut down by about 4,000 Umayyad troops. The Umayyad leader received Husayn's head, and Husayn's death in 680 on the tenth of Moharram continues to be observed as a day of mourning for all Shi'as.
The largest concentration of Shi'as in the first century of Islam was in southern Iraq. It was not until the sixteenth century, under the Safavids, that a majority of Iranians became Shi'as. Shi'a Islam became then, as it is now, the state religion.
The Abbasids, who overthrew the Umayyads in 750, while sympathetic to the Iranian Shi'as, were clearly an Arab dynasty. They revolted in the name of descendants of Muhammad's uncle, Abbas, and the House of Hashim. Hashim was an ancestor of both the Shi'a and the Abbas, or Sunni, line, and the Abbasid movement enjoyed the support of both Sunni and Shi'a Muslims. The Abbasid army consisted primarily of Khorasanians and was led by an Iranian general, Abu Muslim. It contained both Iranian and Arab elements, and the Abbasids enjoyed both Iranian and Arab support.
Nevertheless, the Abbasids, although sympathetic to the Shi'as, whose support they wished to retain, did not encourage the more extremist Shi'a aspirations. The Abbasids established their capital at Baghdad. Al-Mamun, who seized power from his brother, al-Amin, and proclaimed himself caliph in 811, had an Iranian mother and thus had a base of support in Khorasan. The Abbasids continued the centralizing policies of their predecessors. Under their rule, the Islamic world experienced a cultural efflorescence and the expansion of trade and economic prosperity. These were developments in which Iran shared.
See also
related articles
References
- Chardin, John. 1673-1677. Travels in Persia. Reprint with Preface and Introduction. Dover Publications, New York. 1988.
- Hourani, Albert. 1991. A History of the Arab Peoples. Faber & Faber, London.
- Frye, Richard. The Golden Age of Persia. ISBN 1842120115
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