At the conclusion of the
last historiolicious gathering in the Cave of the Moonbat, we left off with the Sassanids in pretty dire straits. It was 636 CE, little more than a decade after they had had their sasses handed to them by the Byzantines, and only four years removed from the passing of the Prophet Muhammad. Now fierce men bearing the star and crescent had appeared on the Euphrates; to Yadzgard III, the last Zoroastrian king of the Persians, fell the task of defending Ctesiphon and the gateway to Iran...
Historical Ethics and Controversial Topics - skip ahead if you want to get straight to the narrative
Now, before we get started, let me be up front about a few things: I'm not a Muslim, nor Iranian, nor of any ancestry or creed related to what I am about to report. That said, I am an American of European descent and left/libertarian politics, and so carry with me the inevitable biases that that particular combination of cultures is bound to impart - and while I'm on a confessional kick, I might as well state that my area of historical expertise is not Ancient Mesopotamia, nor Islam, nor theology. That said, I do have a degree (in history) that clearly proves I have spent many hours among stacks of books and before flickering computer screens. Ostensibly, a history degree should also serve as proof that I have gained at least some skill in BS detection and differentiation, insofar as such skills are applied in the historiographic arts, and that I've learned how to assemble a narrative from disparate sources. You'll just have to take my word that I'm of a personality that seeks to level playing fields and to approach with integrity every project and job I take on, even when following the rules (of debate, or of decorum) works against me.
As an historian, the idea is to transcend all that negative stuff to the greatest degree possible: the task is to gather available data, assess it critically with an historian's eye, and write down what the historian concludes most closely approximates the truth of what happened. For guidance in approaching controversial topics like the one I'm about to go into, I always like to refer to the Greek writer Lucian (120-200 CE), who had the cajones to entitle a book, How History Should Be Written:
The historian should be fearless and incorruptible; a man of independence, loving frankness and truth; one who, as the poet says, calls a fig a fig and a spade a spade. He should yield to neither hatred nor affection, but should be unsparing and unpitying. He should be neither shy nor deprecating, but an impartial judge, giving each side all it deserves but no more. He should know in his writings no country and no city; he should bow to no authority and acknowledge no king. He should never consider what this or that man will think, but should state the facts as they really occurred.
Yeah. What he said. As soon as I finish changing my sig line, we'll get started.
Geography and stuff
The Sassanid Empire in 636 CE extended to the Euphrates River, which formed a natural border on the western frontier. In modern terms, this means that much of what is now eastern Iraq was traditionally Persian land. This is also the reason why some of the key events in the history of Iran and Shi'a Islam actually occur in Iraq, and why that country factors so prominently in the story of how a Zoroastrian people became Muslim.
After being decisively spanked by the Byzantines, and having their ruler assassinated by his own army, the Sassanids fell into chaos and disunion. They ran through a dozen kings in the last twenty years of the empire, but this was just one of many symptoms of social and economic decline that were ultimately rooted in the vast power of the Zoroastrian state religion. Its rigid system of social stratification was beginning to strain under the weight of taxation (ie., more favors to the priests and the powerful than could be paid for by the plebians) and the common folk were starting to resent the burden. Additionally, since persecution of non-Zoroastrians was sanctioned by the state, the empire could always be counted upon to produce a small-but-virulent undercurrent of seething resentment, just waiting for an opportunity to erupt into rebellion. And finally, that old Persian problem of freedom-minded satraps started cropping up again; the Lakhmids were only the first to assert their independence after the assassination of Khorasu II in 628 CE; other vassal states on the periphery soon followed.
Meanwhile, down in the Arabian desert...
The Prophet Muhammad led his followers on the hijrah from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE. Since this is event which separates once-and-for-all the umma (community) from those who had heard and rejected the Prophet's word, the hijrah also marks the start of the year 1 A.H. (anno hegira), and the first day of the Islamic calendar. Six years later, after a couple of important battles that I'll have to detail in some future diary - and in the same year as the assassination of Khorasu - Muhammad decided to return to Mecca for a peaceful pilgrimage.
Since he'd also decided to bring 1600 friends with him, the Meccans thought it best to stop him at the border. There the two sides concluded a treaty which forbade that year's pilgrimage but would permit one after a one-year cessation of hostilities. The tenusous peace held for two years, but when the Meccans violated its terms, Muhammad gathered a force said to number 10,000 and took the city without a fight. He died two years later, in 632 CE, the same year the child-king Yazdgard III ascended the throne of the Sassanids.
Muhammad's father-in-law, Abu Bakr, became the first caliph (leader) of the Muslim community after Muhammad's death, but the succession was not without controversy. According to Shi'a tradition, Muhammad publicly proclaimed his successor to be Ali, husband of the Prophet's daughter Fatima, at a place called Ghadir Khumm. The subsequent appointment of Abu Bakr to the leadership position was denounced by supporters of Ali as a conspiracy between Abu Bakr and Umar, another of Muhammad's companions and a later caliph. Sunnis, who trace their heritage through the dynasties which grew out of Abu Bakr's line of caliphs, the Ummayads, hold fast to the fact that Abu Bakr's position was freely and duly conferred by the leadership of the community. Though they do honor the descendents of Muhammad, Sunnis do not concur with the Shiite assertion that the rightful leaders of the faith are those related by blood to the Prophet.
Abu Bakr spent the two years of his reign subduing rebel Arabian tribes in a series of small battles which came to be known as the Ridda Wars. He launched a Muslim invasion of Syria and Palestine, ostensibly to consolidate all the Arabic peoples under one Islamic banner, and in the process became a devastating wildcard in the neverending border wars between Orthodox Christian Byzantium and Sassanid Persia. In 633 CE, as part of a campaign to bring the recently-independent Lakhmid Arabs into the fold, the Muslims took the border town of Hira. They marched against the Sassanids in earnest in 634 CE, but were repelled by the great Persian general Rostam Farrokhzad at the Battle of the Bridge.
Every silver lining's got a touch of grey
They were overeager, the Arabs on the western bank of the Euphrates, near modern-day Hilla, Iraq, were. The Persians camp lay on the other side of the river, and the Arab general thought he might be able to surprise them if he were able to build a bridge of boats and get his army across before being detected. Over the protestations of his advisors, he ordered the bridge built in a single night, and tried to execute his plan.
It didn't work out. The Persians put their elephants at the head of their army, which spooked the horses of the Arab cavalry and left the Muslim leadership exposed and subsequently slaughtered as the Sassanid infantry advanced. In the process, the Arab soldiers were trapped with their backs to the Euphrates. The day turned into a rout, with the Muslim army trying to flee back across the boat bridge. They lost two-thirds of their 9000-man army that day, and were vulnerable in a way that they might never be again. Rostam should have pursued and attacked, but he couldn't; at the very moment of victory, he received an urgent summons to return to Istakhr to put down yet another revolt.
Arab spirits were revived when, in 636 CE, they - with the help of a fortuitous sandstorm - kicked some Byzantine ass at the Battle of Yarmuk in Syria. The now-caliph Umar felt comfortable shifting his forces east and reopening hostilities with the Sassanids. At nearly the same time, a Muslim army of indeterminate size - though definitely smaller than the reputed 100,000 on the Persian side - again approached the area of Hilla (specifically, al-Qadisiyyah) but this time it would be overeagerness on the Sassanid side that would lose the battle. And this time, the attacker would pursue his retreating foe.
Operation Enduring Motif
Rather than waging a defensive war on the east bank of the Euphrates, Rostam this time crossed over to the Arab side, hoping to crush the smaller Arab force before reinforcements could arrive from Syria. For two days, the Persian elephants wreaked havoc among the Muslim cavalry. It looked like all might be lost for the foot soldier, too, but on the third day, the Arabs turned the tables on the elephants: they costumed their horses in such a way as to terrify the huge beasts, and when a soldier managed to kill the lead elephant, the other pachyderms panicked, turned, and trampled their way through the Persian army. As the anticipated troops from Syria began to arrive, the Arabs decided to press their advantage, and continued to advance even after night fell. The resultant clashes in the darkness gave the attack its name: "Night of Clangour."
As the day broke, a sandstorm blew up from behind the Muslims and straight into the faces of the Sassanids. The Muslim commander, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, ordered his army forward, and the Persian center collapsed before them. Rostam, caught up in the disorganized retreat, was captured and beheaded by a Muslim soldier as he tried to swim to safety across a canal. The soldier, Hilal ibn `Ullafah by some accounts, is reported to have held the severed head aloft in full view of the Persian soldiers, screaming, "By the Lord of the Ka'bah!" It was enough to turn the battle into a rout, and though a few Zoroastrians converted to save their skins, most of the Sassanid army that went to Al-Qadisiyyah died there as infidels in the eyes of their conquerors. From that day forward, those who had fought in the great victory were accorded privileged status in Iraq and, especially, in its garrison at al-Kufah. Veterans were thereafter known as ahl-al-Qadisiyyah - kind of like adding "fought at Normandy" to a WWII vet's legal name.
The Battle of al-Qadisiyyah has enormous significance in the Arab world - places ranging from a public square in Libya to a city in Kuwait to a university in Jordan bear its name. It probably doesn't come as any surprise, but Iraqis hold this memory especially close: they named a province after the battle, and a neighborhood in Baghdad, and a host of schools and clubs. Remember that big cross-sword sculpture that arches over that road in Baghdad? It has two names: "Hands of Victory" and "The Sword of Al-Qadisiyyah." Saddam built it 1989. He also had images of the battle printed on Iraqi money, murals of himself surveying the battle (along with some tanks) painted across a swath of cityscape, and said this about the Iran-Iraq War:
In your name, brothers, and on behalf of the Iraqis and Arabs everywhere we tell those [Persian] cowards and dwarfs who try to avenge Al-Qadisiyah that the spirit of Al-Qadisiyah as well as the blood and honor of the people of Al-Qadisiyah who carried the message on their spearheads are greater than their attempts.
Zoroastrian Persia extinguished
There was a token siege of Ctesiphon before Yadzgard fled and the Arabs sacked the city. The Sassanids marched eastward before the pursuing Muslims, turning to launch a major counterattack at Jalula. The ploy was unsuccessful; the Persians were again defeated. Though there were a handful of unsuccessful engagements in Mesopotamia afterwards, Yadzgard and the bulk of what remained of the Sassanid army retreated east of the Zagros, onto the Iranian Plateau.
Caliph Umar initially felt that the piedmont of the Zagros would make an excellent border while he consolidated and garrisoned all the new lands so recently acquired. He even expressed desire at one point for a "wall of fire" to separate the two empires (interesting choice of metaphor, from a Zoroastrian point of view), but he soon started hearing compelling rationales for continuing the invasion. His generals argued that Yadzgard, safe behind his mountain barrier, would rebuild an army. His political advisors warned of the rebel-inducing effect in the newly-conquered territories of allowing any Persian government to survive. Finally, he had a lot of soldiers who were expecting to be paid in land at the end of the campaign, and most of the non-desert land in Mesopotamia was already spoken for.
Umar gave in to the pressure and authorized an attack across the Zagros. In 641 CE, at Nihavand (about 60 km south of Hamadan, Iran), Yadzgard made one final stand in defense of his dynasty. Again the Sassanids faced the general ibn-Abi-Waqqas, and again the great cavalryman led the star and crescent to victory. His empire shattered, Yadzgard spent nearly ten years as a fugitive before being captured and executed in the city of Merv in 651 CE. For centuries thereafter, the eastern border of the Caliphate lay in Afghanistan, Transoxania, and the Sind region of India to the west bank of the Indus. By 674 CE, the last vestiges of the Sassanid Empire - heirs to Parthians, heirs to the Seleucids, heirs to the Achaemenians - had fallen under Muslim control.
What seems clear...
The conquering Muslims took steps to ensure that their soldiers and settlers didn't "go local." Intermarriage with non-Arabs was forbidden, troops were kept in garrison towns rather than on out-of-sight/out-of-mind estates, and Muslims were forbidden from learning the language and literature of those they had vanquished. They were not averse, however, to incorporating much of the Persian governmental structure, and the ancient Persian systems of court etiquette, coinage, and imperial administration were adopted by the Arabs, who had previously had no need of either.
Non-Muslims were placed in a separate category for purposes of taxation, and were subject to restrictions regarding cultural displays, but they were not forced to convert to Islam. As for Zoroastrians, this appears in Wikipedia:
Muhammad, the Islamic prophet, had made it clear that the "People of the Book", Jews and Christians, were to be tolerated so long as they submitted to Muslim rule. It was at first unclear as to whether or not the Sassanid state religion, Zoroastrianism, was entitled to the same tolerance. Some Arab commanders destroyed Zoroastrian shrines and prohibited Zoroastrian worship; others tolerated the native Persian beliefs. After some dispute, Zoroastrians were accepted as People of the Book. Some authorities identified them as the mysterious Sabeans mentioned in the Qur'an and thus entitled to tolerance.
Many of these dhimmi (incidentally, this is a wingnut nickname for us) did convert, and the pace was faster in the cities than in the rural areas. The majority of Iran was not converted until the 9th century, and Shi'a Islam, with which Iran is so intimately associated today, did not become the state religion until the Safavid Dynasty in the 16th century (see History for Kossacks: Persia, part 4, coming soon to a computer screen in front of you!).
Now for the controversial part
The subject of how Islam came to Iran is a matter of heated debate among scholars, and a lot of the issues are inseparable from such dissention-causers as nationalism, ethic pride, and religion. Here I will try to present a couple of different views, and end this way-too-long diary by asking the reader to make his or her own determination about whether Islam came to Iran in the form of mass epiphany or at the point of a sword.
From a relatively neutral source:
Many Persians submitted to the invaders when the Arabs demanded less taxes than the Sassanids had, and did not force conversion to Islam. Later, Islam did spread to non-Arab groups, most notably the Persians, who began to convert in significant numbers as Islamic rule over Persia strengthened in the centuries after the initial conquest. However, the Sassanid Empire played a major role in developing a distinct Persian nationalism, which survived the Islamic conquest and mass conversion of Persians to Islam. The Persians and the Arabs would become the leading ethnic groups in the Islamic world, and each soon realised that their cooperation was fundamental to the survival of the empire.
From a pro-Iranian source:
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.
And a link to a really pro-Iranian source: http://www.iranian.ws/...
Regardless of the interpretation of its means and ends, the empire which adopted these Iranian traditions and structures was the Abbassid, the founding of which is the stuff of another diary entry. Suffice to say that when they came to power in 750 CE, the Abbasids moved the capitol of the Caliphate to the newly-constructed city of Baghdad, which subsequently experienced a golden age of culture and learning. I'll detail that period in the next (and, I believe, final) diary on Persian history.