The Arabs and, as we will see, Turks owe their prominence on the world stage to Islam. The Persians do not. Persians have a proud and long history of statehood that dates back to the Achaemenid period (559–330 BCE); when Arab conquerors defeated the Sasanid empire (224–651), they were putting an end to some 12 centuries of almost uninterrupted Persian self-rule and political autonomy. Thus, whereas the rise of Islam was an unmitigated success for the Arabs and Turks, it was something of a mixed blessing for the Persians, who gained monotheism and the True Religion, but lost their empire and independence. And although the early Muslims created their state in formerly Byzantine and Sasanid lands, the Sasanids paid the higher price of the two: conquered Byzantine subjects could fl ee to parts of the empire that had not been conquered and any Christian, Greek culture that had been uprooted by the conquests could be replanted in surviving Byzantine lands. The whole of the Sasanid empire, however, was conquered by Muslims, and although some Zoroastrians did flee to India (where they have been known as ‘Parsees’ ever since), Persian culture had nowhere to go but underground. All of this had shortterm, medium-term, and long-term consequences.
In the short
term, the Persian people (and landscape) resisted the Arab armies fi ercely,
which meant that in some provinces caliphal rule, conversion to Islam, Arab
settlement, and Arabization were superficial. In most regions, Persian notables
were allowed to retain a measure of power and Persian administrative traditions
endured accordingly. Curiously, many Persians viewed the Muslim conquests as a
temporary, reversible blip, and for the next two centuries an array of
‘redeemers’ appeared with the declared aim of restoring the
pre-Islamic political, social, and religious status quo. Some modern historians
and even some observers at the time have (wrongly) viewed various events in
Islamic history as examples of Persian-redemption movements, including the
Abbasid Revolution, the creation of Baghdad, the rise of the Buyids, Samanids, and
Safavids, and the adoption by the Safavid rulers and their subjects of Shiism.
Such an interpretation of events is incorrect in each case, but it is accurate
in its general awareness of the traumatic impact that the rise of Islam had on
many Persians.
In the medium
term, rather than attempting to reverse the effects of Islam’s arrival,
Persians and Persian culture were Islamicized. This happened most obviously
under the Abbasids who, by moving to Iraq, constructed their power-base from
the rubble of Sasanid institutions. Not only was political and governmental organization
inherited from Persian traditions (as Byzantine ones had been inherited by the Umayyads
in Syria), but much of Abbasid civilization – including literature, history,
theology, religious sciences, Quranic studies, and even Arabic poetry and linguistics
– was created and dominated by people who composed books in Arabic but told
bedtime stories in Persian. Persians were very much aware of their cultural
dominance and a literary movement arose promoting Persian culture and reminding
the Arabs of their indebtedness to it. Even the great Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406),
writing in the far west of the Islamic world, included in his Muqaddima (on
which, see below p. 105) a section entitled ‘Most of the scholars of Islam have
been Persians (‘ajam)’.
In the long
term, Islamic culture itself was Persianized, even in the face of viable
alternatives. This process began with the rise of semi-independent Persian
dynasties in the Abbasid east, where rulers adopted Sasanid titles, traced for
their dynasties Sasanid genealogies, and, most importantly, patronized
literature in the Persian language. Perhaps the most famous literary work in
Persian, the Shahnama (‘Book of Kings’), was composed in Samanid times and
dedicated to a Ghaznavid ruler. It recounts in epic form all of Iranian history
that is thought to have really mattered, beginning with the creation of the
world and, tellingly, ending
abruptly with the Muslim defeat of the Sasanid forces at the Battle of al-Qadisiyya
(637).
Above all, the
spread of Turks, Mongols, and Turco-Mongols to and within Islamic lands led to
an effl orescence of Persian literature, even – or especially – outside of
Iran. Persian-speaking missionaries played a
pivotal role in the spread of Islam to the east, and it is no coincidence that
the religious terminology used by Chinese Muslims prefers Persian words such as
namaz (‘prayer’) over Arabic synonyms (in this case, salat). Before entering
the Islamic world in the late 10th century, the Turkish tribes from whom the Saljuqs and
Ottomans are descended were converted to Islam by Persians; religion was thus
filtered to them through a Persian sieve. When the Saljuqs created a dynasty
in Iran/Iraq, its administrative and literary forms were Persian, and when
their relatives moved westwards to conquer Anatolia and create the Ottoman
empire, here too Persian was adopted as the language of culture.
The Mongol and
Timurid conquests, destructive though they were, also contributed to the
success of the Persian language: on the one hand, having no attachment to
Arabic as a religious language, the Mongols in Iran (who employed local,
Iranian administrators) patronized Persian scholarship even in those fields that
hitherto had been reserved for Arabic. On the other hand, the havoc wrought by
the conquests forced leading Iranian scholars to seek safety (and patronage)
elsewhere, mostly in Muslim India.
Under the Delhi and, especially, the Mughal sultans Indo-Islamic literature,
the arts (painting, in particular), and imperial administration were Persian in
language and form, and some of the fi nest specimens of Persian culture were
produced in Mughal lands. Thus, from the 11th to 19th centuries (even later, in some
regions) Persian was the leading language of high culture throughout the
Islamic world. Even when it was eventually eclipsed, by English and then Urdu
and Hindi in India, and by Turkish and Arabic in the post-Ottoman provinces,
its impact was still felt on many levels: Urdu literature still follows Persian models, while
trendy Westerners read the mystical writings of Rumi (d. 1273), about whom it
was said, ‘He has brought a [Holy] Book, though he is not a prophet’. Persian
literature also found fans in Goethe (West-Eastern Divan) and Puccini (Turandot),
amongst numerous other Western authors.
