Iranian History - The Arab Conquest
One account of Khosro Parviz tells of how the hot-tempered Sassanid
king tore to shreds the letter from Mohammad that invited the Persians
to convert to Islam – an act which provoked the Arab conquest of
Persia by war.
Though almost certainly a myth, this story is symbolic of the bankruptcy
of the Sassanid
Empire from the time of Khosro II onwards. The all out invasion by
the Arab tribes was not to occur until the reign of Yazdegerd III but
it was clear even at this time that the Sassanids were in decline and
a new force was in the ascendancy.
By the time the Arabs had overcome the Byzantine Empire and turned their
attention to the east, the Persian satrap of Yemen had already accepted
Islam and many capable Persian generals had abandoned the Sassanids to
join forces with Mohammad.
The people too were ready for change. Exhausted by centuries of war with
Byzantium, disillusioned by the decadence and corruption of their kings
and priests, Yazdegerd III was unable to rally their support against the
Arab threat.
The fall of Ctesiphon-Seleucia in 642 and subsequent defeats were all
but foregone conclusions. Yazdegerd himself fled to the interior with
his harem and his wealth, only to be murdered by a commoner at Merv.
Converts to the new religion were many, not least because it offered
certain advantages under the new administration. However, the cultural
assimilation of Iran into the Arab world was not immediate, nor even deep.
Lacking experience in government, the Umayyad Caliphs left most of Irans
existing administrative system intact. Thus, though the higher echelons
of government were invariably populated with Arabs, the backbone of the
administration remained largely Persian. Under this system, many Iranians
rose to positions of prominence and influenced affairs to the benefit
their home country.
In time, the Umayyads grew corrupt and decadent and aroused opposition
from non-Arab movements in former Sassanid territories. Some were anti-Arabic
and fought unsuccessfully for a return to pre-Islamic rule.
One other, however, was a movement led by Abu Moslem, the son of a converted
Iranian from Khorasan, which threw its weight behind an opposition group
with a claim to the Caliphate and which paved the way for the 500 year
rule of the greatest of all the Islamic dynasties, the Abbasids.
The Abbasids
Claiming descent from Abbas, one of the uncles of Mohammed, the Abbasids,
with the popular support of non-Arab Muslims, overthrew the Umayyads in
750. Leadership remained therefore in Arab hands but the importance of
the Iranian power base which brought them to power led the Abbasids to
move the capital east from Damascus to Baghdad.
Non-Arab Muslims were welcomed in court and this led to a measure of
integration between Persian and Arab culture with the exchange flowing
both ways. The Abbasids even exaggerated the trend towards borrowing from
Irans past, tending more and more to the construction of glorious monuments
in the architectural style of the Sassanid
period.
Whereas the Ummayads had stressed the superiority of Arab culture in
their claim to legitimacy, the Abbasids openness to outside influence
was instrumental in bringing on Islam's golden age.
From the time of the third and fourth Abbasid Caliphs (late 8th century),
Baghdad attracted numerous scholars to its libraries and centres of learning,
many from Iranian lands and some even heretical Muslims or non-Muslims.
From the reign of Haroun Al-Rashid (r. 786-809) onwards, thinkers of
all disciplines worked to recover, preserve and elaborate on pre-Islamic
thought. It is to this period that we owe our knowledge of the works of
Euclides, Ptolemy and Aristotle. These, and many other Greek, Latin and
Sanskrit works, only became known to the West through the translations
and commentaries of the Islamic scholars of this period.
But the unity of the empire under the Abbasid Caliphs was bought at
the price of an increasingly heavy-handed rule. The ruthlessness of Al-Rashid
was quite as legendary as his valour as a soldier and his learning as
a scholar.
His own ministers, the brilliant Barmaki brothers from the Persian state
of Bactria, were put to death by their caliph having amassed too much
power of their own. Various Shiite movements were putting up an uncompromising,
if fragmented, opposition to his rule and these too were put down by a
combination of force and assassination that continued during the reign
of his successors. The murder and imprisonment of the Shiite Imams under
the Abbasids is remembered by Shiite Moslems with great anguish to this
day.
Will Yong and Kazem Vafadari
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Iran
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