Muslim conquest of Persia

Islamic conquest of Persia
Part of the Muslim conquests
Stages of Muslim conquests
Date 634-652 Location Mesopotamia and Persia Result Decisive Muslim victory; Mesopotamia and the Iranian Plateau annexed
Belligerents
Sassanids	Rashidun Caliphate

The Islamic conquest of Persia (637-651) led to the end of the Sassanid Empire and the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion in Persia. However, the achievements of the previous Persian civilizations were not lost, but were to a great extent absorbed by the new Islamic polity.

As Bernard Lewis has quoted

"These events have been variously seen in Iran: by some as a blessing, the advent of the true faith, the end of the age of ignorance and heathenism; by others as a humiliating national defeat, the conquest and subjugation of the country by foreign invaders. Both perceptions are of course valid, depending on one's angle of vision."

Persia before the conquest

Since the 1st century BC, the border between the Roman (later Byzantine) and Parthian (later Sassanid) empires had been the Euphrates river. The border was constantly contested. Most battles, and thus most fortifications, were concentrated in the hilly regions of the north, as the vast Arabian or Syrian Desert separated the rival empires in the south. The only dangers expected from the south were occasional raids by nomadic Arab tribesmen. Both empires therefore allied themselves with small, semi-independent Arab principalities, which served as buffer states and protected Byzantium and Persia from Bedouin attacks. The Byzantine clients were the Ghassanids; the Persian clients were the Lakhmids. The Ghassanids and Lakhmids feuded constantly -- which kept them occupied, but did not greatly affect the Byzantines or Persians.

In the 6th and 7th centuries, various factors destroyed the balance of power that had held for so many centuries.

Balance between Persia and Byzantium swings wildly

See also: Fall of Sassanid dynasty

The Persian ruler Khusrau II defeated a dangerous rebellion within his own empire (the Bahram Chobin's rebellion). He afterwards turned his energies outwards, upon the traditional Byzantine enemies in the Roman-Persian Wars. For a few years, he succeeded gloriously. From 612 to 622, he extended the Persian borders almost to the same extent that they were under the Achaemenids, capturing great Byzantine cities like Antioch, Damascus, Alexandria, and Jerusalem.

The Byzantines regrouped and pushed back in 622 under Heraclius. Khusrau was defeated at a great battle near Nineveh in 627, and the Byzantines took back all of Syria and penetrated far into the Persian provinces of Mesopotamia. In 629, Khusrau's son agreed to peace, and the border between the two empires was once again the same as it was in 602.

Assassination of Khusrau II and a succession of weak rulers

Khusrau was assassinated in 628. There were numerous claimants to the throne; from 628 to 632 there were ten kings of Persia. The last, Yazdegerd III, was a grandson of Khusrau II and was said to be a mere child. However, no date of birth is known.

Revolt of the Arab client states

The Byzantine clients, the Arab Ghassanids, converted to the Monophysite form of Christianity, which was regarded as heretical by the established Byzantine Orthodox Church. The Byzantines attempted to suppress the heresy, alienating the Ghassanids and sparking rebellions on their desert frontiers.

The Lakhmids also revolted against the Persian king Khusrau II. Al-Noman III (son of Al-Monder IV), the first Christian Lakhmid king, was deposed and killed by Khusrau II, because of his attempt to throw off the Persian tutelage. After Khusrau's assassination, the Persian empire fractured and the Lakhmids were effectively independent.

It is tenable that weakening the Lakhmids and the Ghassanids bulwark contributed to the consequent Arab-Muslim breakthrough into Iraq and Bahrain (e.g. see [2]).

During Muhammad's life

After the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah in 628 Muhammad(Peace be upon him)sent many letters to the princes, kings and chiefs of the tribes inviting them to convert to Islam. These letters were carried by ambassadors to Iran, Byzantium, Ethiopia, Egypt, Yamamah, Bahrain and Hira (Jordan) on the same day.

In the beginning of the seventh year of migration the Muhammad (Peace be upon him)appointed one of his officers, Abdullah Huzafah Sahmi Qarashi, to carry his letter to Khosrau II inviting him to Islam:

"In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful. From Muhammad(Peace be upon him), the Messenger of God, to the great Kisra of Iran. (Peace be upon him), who seeks truth and expresses belief in God and in His Prophet(Peace be upon him) and testifies that there is no god but God and that He has no partner, and who believes that Muhammad(Peace be upon him) is His servant and Prophet(Peace be upon him). Under the Command of God, I invite you to Him. He has sent me for the guidance of all people so that I may warn them all of His wrath and may present the unbelievers with an ultimatum. Embrace Islam so that you may remain safe. And if you refuse to accept Islam, you will be responsible for the sins of the Magi."

There are two narrations about the reaction of Khosrau II.

Rise of the Islamic empire

By the time of [[Muhammad](Peace be upon him)]'s death in 632, most of what is now considered Arabia was united under the new religion of Islam. However, as Fred Donner argues in his 1981 book The Early Islamic Conquests, Arabic-speaking nomads or villagers roamed over or settled on the edge of the Syrian steppe as well. Any regime that aimed to unite all Arabs would have to conquer the Syrian steppe. Under Muhammad's (Peace be upon him)successor Abu Bakr, the first caliph, the Muslims first re-established their control over Arabia (the Ridda Wars) and then launched campaigns against the remaining Arabs of Syria and Palestine.

However, this put the nascent Islamic empire on a collision course with the Byzantine and Sassanid empires, which had been disputing these territories for centuries. The wars soon became a matter of conquest, rather than mere consolidation of the Arab tribes.

Islamic conquest of Persian Mesopotamia

The collapse of the Sassanid polity after the death of Khusrau II left the Persians in a weak position vis-a-vis Arab invaders. At first the Muslims merely attempted to consolidate their rule over the fringes of the desert and the Lakhmid Arabs. The border town of Hira fell to the Muslims in 633.

The Sassanids had reorganized under a new king, Yazdegerd III, and mounted a counterattack. They won a major victory at the Battle of the Bridge in October 634.

After a decisive Muslim victory against the Byzantines, in Syria at the Battle of Yarmuk in 636, the second caliph, Umar, was able to transfer forces to the east and resume the offensive against the Sassanians.

The Battle of al-Qādisiyyah

Main article: Battle of al-Qādisiyyah

Around the year 636, Rostam Farrokhzād, advisor and general for Yazdegerd III (r. 632 - 651) led an army said to number 120,000 men across the Euphrates River to al-Qādisiyyah, near the present-day city of Hilla in Iraq. Some have criticised him for this decision to face the Arabs on their own ground — on the fringes of the desert — and surmised that the Persians could have held their own if they had stayed on the opposite bank of the Euphrates.

The Caliph Umar dispatched 30,000 men under the command of Sa`d ibn Abī Waqqās against the Persian army. The Battle of al-Qādisiyyah followed, with the Persians prevailing at first, but on the third day of fighting, the Muslims gained the upper hand. The Persian general Rostam Farrokhzād was caught and beheaded. According to some sources, the Persian losses were 25,000, but the Arabs lost only 5,000 men.

Following the Battle, the Arab Muslim armies pushed forward toward the Persian capital of Ctesiphon (also called Madā'in in Arabic), which was quickly evacuated by Yazdgird after a brief siege. After seizing the city, they continued their drive eastwards, following Yazdgird and his remaining troops. Within a short space of time, the Arab armies defeated a major Sāsānian counter-attack in the Battle of Jalūlā', as well as other engagements at Qasr-e Shirin, and Masabadhan. By the mid-7th Century, the Arabs controlled all of Mesopotamia, including the area that is now the Iranian province of Khuzestan.

Conquest of the Iranian plateau

It is said that the caliph Umar did not wish to send his troops through the Zagros mountains and onto the Iranian plateau. One tradition has it that he wished for a "wall of fire" to keep the Arabs and Persians apart. Later commentators explain this as a common-sense precaution against over-extension of his forces. The Arabs had only recently conquered large territories that still had to be garrisoned and administered.

Battle of Nahavand

Umar's generals and warriors pushed for further action. They argued that Yazdegerd III could again become a threat if he were left undisturbed while raising more troops. The continued existence of the Persian government was an incitement to revolt in the conquered territories. Finally, those Arabs who felt slighted in the distribution of land and booty from the Mesopotamian conquests pushed for further raids.

Umar relented. Arab raiding parties passed over the Zagros mountains separating Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau.

Yazdegerd, the Sassanid king, made yet another effort to regroup and defeat the invaders. By 641 he had raised a new force, which took a stand at Nihavand, some forty miles south of Hamadan in modern Iran. Sa'ad ibn-Abi-Waqqas and his cavalry attacked and again defeated the Persian forces. Muslims recognized it as the Victory of victories(Fath alfotuh))

End of the Sasanids

Yazdegerd was unable to raise another army and became a hunted fugitive. He fled from one district to another until a local miller killed him for his purse [3] at Merv in 651. The Islamic forces established a garrison town at Merv. By 674, they had conquered Greater Khorasan (which included modern Iranian Khorasan province and modern Afghanistan), Transoxania, and Balochistan. For many centuries, this was the easternmost limit of Muslim rule.

Occupation

Under Umar and his immediate successors, the Arab conquerors attempted to maintain their political and cultural cohesion despite the attractions of the civilizations they had conquered. The Arabs were to settle in the garrison towns rather than on scattered estates. They were not to marry non-Arabs, or learn their language, or read their literature. The new non-Muslim subjects, or dhimmi, were to pay a special tax, the jizya or poll tax, which was calculated per individual at varying rates for men, women and children as determined by Muslim rules but paid collectively by the whole community. In addition, the so-called protected People-of-the-Book were subject to various restrictions of occupation, worship, and dress (Bashear 1997, p. 117).

Mass conversions were neither desired nor allowed, at least in the first few centuries of Arab rule. Later such restrictions disappeared.

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. Many Arab commanders destroyed Zoroastrian shrines and prohibited Zoroastrian worship. Many of the Zoroastrians were massacred and many fled to India to avoid persecution.

Before the conquest, the Persians had been mainly Zoroastrian, however, there were also large and thriving Christian and Jewish communities. However, there was a slow but steady movement of the population toward Islam. The nobility and city-dwellers were the first to convert, most likely to preserve the economic and social status and advantages; Islam spread more slowly among the peasantry and the dihqans, or landed gentry. By the late 10th century, the majority of Persians had become Muslim, at least nominally. Most Persian Muslims were Sunni Muslims. Though Iran is known today as a stronghold of the Shi'a Muslim faith, it did not become so until much later around the 15th century. The Iranian Muslims projected many of their own Persian moral and ethical values that predates Islam into the religion, while recognizing Islam as their religion and the prophet's son in law, Ali as an enduring symbol of justice.

According to Bernard Lewis:

"[Arab Muslims conquests] have been variously seen in Iran: by some as a blessing, the advent of the true faith, the end of the age of ignorance and heathenism; by others as a humiliating national defeat, the conquest and subjugation of the country by foreign invaders. Both perceptions are of course valid, depending on one's angle of vision... Iran was indeed Islamized, but it was not Arabized. Persians remained Persians. And after an interval of silence, Iran reemerged as a separate, different and distinctive element within Islam, eventually adding a new element even to Islam itself. Culturally, politically, and most remarkable of all even religiously, the Iranian contribution to this new Islamic civilization is of immense importance. The work of Iranians can be seen in every field of cultural endeavor, including Arabic poetry, to which poets of Iranian origin composing their poems in Arabic made a very significant contribution. In a sense, Iranian Islam is a second advent of Islam itself, a new Islam sometimes referred to as Islam-i Ajam. It was this Persian Islam, rather than the original Arab Islam, that was brought to new areas and new peoples: to the Turks, first in Central Asia and then in the Middle East in the country which came to be called Turkey, and of course to India. The Ottoman Turks brought a form of Iranian civilization to the walls of Vienna...[4]"

According to Tarikh-i Bukhara "The residents of Bukhara became Muslims. But they renounced [Islam] each time the Arabs turned back. Qutayba b. Muslim made them Muslim three times, [but] they renounced [Islam] again and became nonbelievers. The fourth time, Qutayba waged war, seized the city, and established Islam after considerable strife....They espoused Islam overtly but practiced idolatry in secret."

During the reign of the Ummayad dynasty, the Arab conquerors imposed Arabic as the primary language of the subject peoples throughout their empire, displacing their indigenous languages. However, Middle Persian proved to be much more enduring. Most of the structure and vocabulary survived, evolving into the modern Persian language. However, Persian did incorporate a certain amount of Arabic vocabulary, specially as pertains to religion, as well as switching from the Pahlavi Aramaic alphabet to one based on a modified version of Arabic characters. [5]

See also

• Islamicization in post-conquest Iran
• History of Iran
• Fall of Sassanid dynasty
• Muslim conquests
• Anti-Persianism by Arabs

Literature

• Bashear, Suliman -- Arabs and Others in Early Islam, Darwin Press, 1997
• Daniel, Elton -- The History of Iran, Greenwood Press, 2001
• Donner, Fred -- The Early Islamic Conquests, Princeton, 1981
• M. Ismail Marcinkowski, Persian Historiography and Geography: Bertold Spuler on Major Works Produced in Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, India and Early Ottoman Turkey, with a foreword by Professor Clifford Edmund Bosworth, member of the British Academy, Singapore: Pustaka Nasional, 2003, ISBN 9971-77-488-7.
• Sicker, Martin -- The Islamic World in Ascendancy: From the Arab Conquests to the Siege of Vienna, Praeger, 2000
• Zarrin’kub, Abd al-Husayn -- Ruzgaran : tarikh-i Iran az aghz ta saqut saltnat Pahlvi, Sukhan, 1999. ISBN 964-6961-11-8
• Arab Conquest of Iran, pp.203-210, Encyclopaedia Iranica.