Islamic conquest of Persia

The Islamic conquest of Persia (637-651 CE) led to the end of the Sassanid Empire and the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion in Persia (modern day Iran). Over the centuries, most of the Iranian peoples, including the Persians and Kurds converted to Islam, many from Zoroastrianism. However, the achievements of the previous Persian civilizations were not lost, but were to a great extent absorbed by the new Islamic polity.

Persia before the conquest

Since the 1st century BCE, 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 CE, 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 613 to 614, he extended the Persian borders as far west as the great Byzantine cities of Antioch, Damascus, and Jerusalem.

The Byzantines regrouped and pushed back. 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.

Assassination of Khusrau II and a succession of weak rulers

Khusrau was assassinated in 628 CE. 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 ^*).

Rise of the Islamic empire

By the time of Muhammad's death in 632 CE, 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 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

Around the year 636, Rostam Farrokhzād, advisor and general for Yazdegerd III (r. 632 - 651) led an army said to number 100 000 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 Arab cavalrymen 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 Muslim sources, the Persian losses were enormous, but the Arabs lost only 7500 men. The size of the forces and the disparity of the losses may be later exaggerations, but the fact that the Arabs won this battle is undisputed.

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 and sacking 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.

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, raiding, looting, and beating down all resistance.

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.

Yazdegerd was unable to raise another army and became a hunted fugitive. He fled from one district to another until at last he was discovered and killed at Merv in 651.

The Islamic forces established a garrison town at Merv. By 674, they had conquered Afghanistan, Transoxania, and the portion of India then known as Sind on the west bank of the Indus River. 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, and be 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; yet, others may have tolerated this native Persian religion. After some disputes, Zoroastrians were accepted as People of the Book.

Before the conquest, the Persians had been mainly Zoroastrian, however, there were also large and thriving Christian and Jewish communities. Adherents of all three faiths were allowed to practice their faith under the restrictions imposed by the Arab conquerors. However, there was a slow but steady movement of the population toward Islam. The nobility and city-dwellers were the first to convert; 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. 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. In this new sect of Islam, the Shi'as projected many of their own Persian moral and ethical values that predates Islam into the religion, while recognizing the prophet`s son in law, Ali as an enduring symbol of justice.

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 native 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. ^*

References

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 9971774887.
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.

External links

History of Iran | Sassanid dynasty | Islamic conquests

تاریخ ایران پس از اسلام | Conquête islamique de la Perse | Den islamske erobringen av Iran

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