The following text is excerpted from "Iran: Underrated Civilization and Unfinished Changes", written by Michael Axworthy, translated by Zhao Yishen, Zhejiang People's Publishing House December 2021 edition. Iran expert Axworthy started with Iran's own history and analyzed in detail the process of Persian civilization being Islamized.
Alternating power: The history of ancient Iran
The historical process of Iran has been interrupted several times by foreign forces. The first happened in 334 BC, when Alexander the Great invaded Iran and the Achaemenid dynasty was destroyed. Because of the implementation of a loose rule similar to that of Cyrus , Alexander the Great once consolidated his occupation of Iranian plateau . Although he was a dictator (without any Athenic democracy ), he gave enough respect to the Iranian under his rule and tried to encourage intermarriage to integrate Greek and Iranian culture. In 323 BC, Alexander the Great died in Babylonian . After his death, the empire was also divided by his generals, with the eastern region inherited by Seleucus Nicator (after a series of wars, the defeated generals were purged and their territory was annexed by others). Seleucus continued the rule of Alexander the Great, striving to reach a partnership with the Persians under his rule and delegated a lot of power. But he himself and his successors never stopped their ambitions of expedition in the West, trying to recreate the glory of the Alexander Empire by conquering Egypt , Asia Minor, and Greece. They won a certain degree of victory but failed to win. Instead, some areas in the eastern part of the Seleucid Empire launched rebellions and eventually became independent. Parthian Empire (about equivalent to today's Turkmenistan and the northern region of Khorasan Province, Iran) is one of them. The locals have always lived an ancient Iranian nomadic life.
Pathia is a nation with horseback culture, whose army is almost entirely composed of horse-riding archers and small-scale armored spear cavalry. From 250 BC to 80 BC, after some obstacles and setbacks, the Parthians finally expanded their power to the eastern provinces of the Seleucid Empire, and gradually squeezed the Seleucid power out of the middle ground between the Parthian Kingdom and the constantly expanding Roman Empire. The early Eastern Expeditions of the Roman Empire were related to the Greeks' continuous resistance to the rule of the Seleucid Empire (these rebels also included the founders of the Great Xia Kingdom and even people from the further east), and to the commerce and trade exchanges of the Silk Road, which was in full swing and huge profits. The Silk Road runs through the emerging cities where the Greeks settled, and the commercial value it brings at least partly explains why the early Parthian monarchs attached so much importance to friendly relations with the Greeks. They even engraved the word "philhellenon" (loving the Greeks) on their own currency in Greek styles. Like the Seleucids and the Achaemenids, the Parthian Empire relied on local nobles or governors to maintain their rule.
After the Seleucid Empire was completely destroyed, the Parthians and Romans began a direct confrontation with the eastern part of the Anatolian Peninsula in Syria. In 53 BC, in the Battle of Carrhae (located in the east of Turkey), the Parthian army defeated the more with fewer and defeated the Roman invading army led by Marcus Licinius Crassus. This defeat brought unprecedented shame to the Romans, which made them unforgettable and inspired the generals and emperors of Rome to continue to try to stand up from where Crassus fell. At first, no one succeeded. Until 116, the Roman emperor Trajan (Trajan) used the Tigris and Euphrates to fight against the Parthian army in the Mesopotamian plains and successfully seized the capital Ctesiphon. He called himself the "Parthicus" to commemorate the victory. For the Parthians and Romans, the war was partly to seize the vast and rich areas of the northern Mesopotamian plains, Syria and Armenia, but more importantly, to dignity. The following text is excerpted from "Iran: Underrated Civilization and Unfinished Changes", written by Michael Axworthy, translated by Zhao Yishen, Zhejiang People's Publishing House December 2021 edition. Iran expert Axworthy started with Iran's own history and analyzed in detail the process of Persian civilization being Islamized. Alternating power: The history of ancient Iran The historical process of Iran has been interrupted several times by foreign forces. The first happened in 334 BC, when Alexander the Great invaded Iran and the Achaemenid dynasty was destroyed. Because of the implementation of a loose rule similar to that of Cyrus , Alexander the Great once consolidated his occupation of Iranian plateau . Although he was a dictator (without any Athenic democracy ), he gave enough respect to the Iranian under his rule and tried to encourage intermarriage to integrate Greek and Iranian culture. In 323 BC, Alexander the Great died in Babylonian . After his death, the empire was also divided by his generals, with the eastern region inherited by Seleucus Nicator (after a series of wars, the defeated generals were purged and their territory was annexed by others). Seleucus continued the rule of Alexander the Great, striving to reach a partnership with the Persians under his rule and delegated a lot of power. But he himself and his successors never stopped their ambitions of expedition in the West, trying to recreate the glory of the Alexander Empire by conquering Egypt , Asia Minor, and Greece. They won a certain degree of victory but failed to win. Instead, some areas in the eastern part of the Seleucid Empire launched rebellions and eventually became independent. Parthian Empire (about equivalent to today's Turkmenistan and the northern region of Khorasan Province, Iran) is one of them. The locals have always lived an ancient Iranian nomadic life. Pathia is a nation with horseback culture, whose army is almost entirely composed of horse-riding archers and small-scale armored spear cavalry. From 250 BC to 80 BC, after some obstacles and setbacks, the Parthians finally expanded their power to the eastern provinces of the Seleucid Empire, and gradually squeezed the Seleucid power out of the middle ground between the Parthian Kingdom and the constantly expanding Roman Empire. The early Eastern Expeditions of the Roman Empire were related to the Greeks' continuous resistance to the rule of the Seleucid Empire (these rebels also included the founders of the Great Xia Kingdom and even people from the further east), and to the commerce and trade exchanges of the Silk Road, which was in full swing and huge profits. The Silk Road runs through the emerging cities where the Greeks settled, and the commercial value it brings at least partly explains why the early Parthian monarchs attached so much importance to friendly relations with the Greeks. They even engraved the word "philhellenon" (loving the Greeks) on their own currency in Greek styles. Like the Seleucids and the Achaemenids, the Parthian Empire relied on local nobles or governors to maintain their rule. After the Seleucid Empire was completely destroyed, the Parthians and Romans began a direct confrontation with the eastern part of the Anatolian Peninsula in Syria. In 53 BC, in the Battle of Carrhae (located in the east of Turkey), the Parthian army defeated the more with fewer and defeated the Roman invading army led by Marcus Licinius Crassus. This defeat brought unprecedented shame to the Romans, which made them unforgettable and inspired the generals and emperors of Rome to continue to try to stand up from where Crassus fell. At first, no one succeeded. Until 116, the Roman emperor Trajan (Trajan) used the Tigris and Euphrates to fight against the Parthian army in the Mesopotamian plains and successfully seized the capital Ctesiphon. He called himself the "Parthicus" to commemorate the victory. For the Parthians and Romans, the war was partly to seize the vast and rich areas of the northern Mesopotamian plains, Syria and Armenia, but more importantly, to dignity.Tessifon was only temporarily occupied, and Tulazhen's successor Hadrian (Hadrian) gave up the entire eastern occupied area. In the following 80 years, the Romans won two defeats the Thai-Shi Seal in 164 and 197 respectively. The continuous progression of the Crisis led to the complete collapse of the Parthian Empire in 224. Ardashir, the last monarch of Parthia, was defeated, and a new dynasty, the monarch of the Sassanid dynasty, ascended the throne of Persian . Ardashir and his successors never emphasized any connection between themselves and the Greeks, but instead repeatedly emphasized their identities as Iranians, Persians, and Mazda believers. The name of Artaxerxes is taken from an important monarch of the Achaemenid dynasty, Artaxerxes, and the Sassans, like the Achaemenids, came from the Fars Province of Iran. The Sassanians have close ties with clergy, and Ardashire himself has several ancestors who are priests . Ardashir and his descendant Shapur achieved a series of victories against the Romans in the decades after the establishment of the Sassanid dynasty, as if by this proved that they were more qualified to be rulers than the Parthians. Shapur eventually captured the Roman emperor Valerian in 260. The lucky balance swung left and right between the two sides of the war, but by the mid-5th century, the Romans and Persians seemed to have reached a tacit understanding of the ceasefire, as they faced a new threat from the north - the Huns. The Sassanid dynasty was almost destroyed, and some areas survived because the Huns advanced westward and instead attacked the Roman Empire in the west. But the Huns can only be regarded as one of the many crises faced by the Sassanid dynasty. Famine, disease, and heavy taxes all pushed the dynasty to decline. There are very few written records about this period, and it was recorded after a long time. But these crises led to a communist uprising. The uprising was led by Mazdak, a pagan prophet of Zoroastrian . He preached to everyone and suggested that since private property and the desire to possess women are the source of all sins in the world, the solution must be to publicize all property and women (but the premise is that the woman himself must agree, basically no one will agree). Before the uprising, the nobles and priests in the country were powerful and pretentious, so the king once formed an alliance with the uprising power of Mazdak to attack this group of people. But once the king's purpose was achieved, he not only immediately parted ways with Mazdak, but also organized a public trial meeting attended by other religious leaders (Zoroastrian, Christian and Judaism, etc.) to judge Mazdak. Eventually, Mazdak and his followers were executed. After the entire situation was completed, a new social and political order was formed in the country, and the king played the role of arbitrator and guarantor among all social classes, balancing the forces of all classes and striving to achieve fairness and justice. Some point out that this division of social labor is similar to the political form of later medieval Europe. The medieval European monarchs also continuously strengthened the social status of land power to achieve the effect of strengthening the army and enhancing the royal power. Screenshot of BBC documentary "Persia". The new royal model reached its peak during the reign of King Khosraw I Anushirvan (531-579). King Hoslau is known for his just and wise rule. Not only is he brave and good at fighting, he also encourages the development of science, advocates learning, and organizes the collection and translation of documents from all over the world. Looking back at history, his reign later ( Islam after Iran became popular) was hailed as the Golden Age, and the governance model of the Sassanian dynasty was finally established during his reign. In this theory, the victory of war comes from God's gifts and gives the king a halo of royal honor, showing the legitimacy of his rule. But this right is conditional - if the king imposes good policies, his people will prosper and support their rule, the country will have a rich tax revenue, strong troops and strong horses, forming a virtuous cycle; on the contrary, if the king imposes bad policies, the people's livelihood will decline, tax revenue will decrease, the country will be weak, the country will be weak and the army will be exhausted, and the king will eventually lose the right to rule (farr), forming a vicious cycle.He will also lose the war, and the gods favor those who resist him and usurp his power. The key lies in justice and good governance. These theories of governance (even if never real) proposed during the last prosperity of the Sassanid dynasty were reinterpreted and accepted after the conquest of Iran by the Arabs, especially the Abbasid Caliphate 750 years later, becoming the most influential governance theories of governance in the entire Islamic world in centuries.
Why can Muslims conquer Iran quickly?
One of the reasons why the Islamic Empire was able to expand rapidly was that neighboring countries consumed severely in previous wars, and another major reason was that Islam, a new religion, gave the Arab Muslim army a strong cohesion and firm determination. The importance of the early history of Islam to Iran is that it explains how Iran has become an Islamic state step by step, and also explains the origin of the Shiites. Most Iranians today believe in Shiites.
From around 613, the Prophet Muhammad began to preach Islamic revelation in Mecca . Due to opposition and persecution in Mecca, he and his followers went to Medina in 622, where he was supported as the leader of the Islamic believers and also educated many locals to convert to Islam. With the surrender of the Meccans in 630, the war between Mohammed and Mecca ended in victory. By the time Mohammed returned to the realm in 632, most people on Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam. After Muhammad's death, his followers split, and Abu Bakr became the leader of the Muslim Caliph, who strengthened his internal unity by launching a series of wars against non-Islamists around him. Of course, another motivation for war is to spread Islam and naturalize Protestants. The speed of Islam expansion may even surprise the Arabs themselves. In just 20 years, they achieved decisive victory over Byzantium and Persia, and occupied territories in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and the former Sassanid dynasty. Byzantines barely maintained its rule in most of the Anatolian Peninsula and several other western provinces until the 11th century, while the Sassanian dynasty and its empire collapsed. Zoroastrianism began to decline and gradually became a minority religion. Muslims made it a precept that they could not use force to force the pagans to convert, but after centuries they found that converting to a dominant religion had its inevitable advantage. In the following hundreds of years, the Iranians were mainly ruled by foreign dynasties and aristocrats.
For the Arabs, the joy of conquering foreign races and success gave them a common goal. However, there is also serious division within the entire Muslim group, and all the consequences and huge wealth brought about by conquest have created more problems. Throughout Christian history, the divisions between Orthodox and Catholicism, and later the divisions between Catholicism and Protestantism, both emerged a long time later, and are largely due to differences in theological views. In contrast, the opposition between Shiites and Sunnis in Islam emerged immediately after the Prophet Muhammad returned to the truth (632), and its core contradiction was the issue of leadership.
After Muhammad returned to the realm, a group of key figures among his followers believed that his son-in-law Ali should become the new caliph, not Abu Burkel. This group of people later became Shiites, also known as Alis. After Abu Berkel's death, he experienced two more heirs before Ali finally became a caliph, but his caliphate status was not solid. He was assassinated by members of the Kharijite in 661 because they believed that Ali easily compromised the enemy led by Syrian Governor Muawiya, an act that betrayed the Hawaliji. After Ali's death, Muaweiye became the new caliph and established the Umayyad dynasty. The Shiites (although this name did not really appear at the time, but for the sake of easy understanding, it was not wrong to call these people "Shiites") believed that the Caliph should be inherited by descendants of Ali (of course, also descendants of Muhammad), rather than being held by Muaweiye or Umayyad.
BBC documentary "Persia".
External occupation brought the Umayyads a steady stream of wealth. After they came to power, they gained the reputation of being extravagant and indecent. In 680, Ali's son Hussein (the grandson of Prophet Muhammad), inspired by the Ku legal person from Iraq, rose up to resist the Umayah Caliph Yazid, and led a small number of his followers toward Kufa. But before they arrived, Yezid's army stopped Hussein and his party in Karbala. Hussein refused to surrender, so Ye Qide's army killed Hussein and most of his followers and arrested all the remaining entourages. This is a major event in the history of Islam. For more than a thousand years, Shi'a has never forgotten it and has marched on Ashura Festival every year to commemorate the incident. The division between Shiite Muslims and mainstream Sunnis [the name "Sunna" comes from "sunna", that is, those who abide by the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad] has deepened since the Karbala massacre, and the contradictions have become more intense. This state has not changed to this day. Shiites have always been a minority (the number of Shiites in the global Muslim population today does not exceed 15%) and are often persecuted, although Shiites occasionally take power. Among them, the more famous ones are the Fatima Dynasty located in Egypt and North Africa in the 10th to 12th century. Most Sunni Muslims (not just extremists) regard Shia as pagans, believing that their respect for Ali, Hussein and his descendants (Shia Imam. Shia Imam. It means that Shia religious leaders and inheritors of their doctrine. - Editor's note) is idolatrous and has an unacceptable polytheistic nature.
The core cities of Shi'a Muslims are the "holy city" Najaf (Najaf, where Ali was buried) and Karbala. Both are located in the territory of today's Iraq . Until the 16th century, Iran was not the main control area of Shi'a. However, after the Safavid dynasty began in 1501, it designated Shiites as the state religion, and Iran has since become an important Shiite Islamic state. Iranian Shi'a Muslims believe in the twelve Imams. They respected Ali and his descendants as Imams, and believed that the twelfth generation of Imams had disappeared from the mid-ninth century. They believe that the twelfth generation of imams did not die, but would reappear at the end of the world (holding Jesus on his shoulder). The other smaller Shia branches [the most influential one is the Ismailis] have different beliefs about the inheritance of Imam (the Shia mentioned elsewhere in this book mainly refers to the "twelve Imam schools"). The differences between Shiites and Sunnis are an important issue. At the beginning of the 21st century, with the rise of political Islam, the rise of extreme Sunni forces such as Wahhabi and Salafi, and the regional competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia is becoming increasingly tense, and the issue of opposition between Shiites and Sunnis has become increasingly important. Screenshot of
BBC documentary "Persia".
What kind of continuity exists in Iran before and after Islamization?
After being conquered by the Arabs in the 7th century, Iran was invaded by the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century, Mongols in the 13th century, and Timur (Timur) and a new wave of Turkic Mongolian nomadic warriors in the 14th century. Iran has been ruled by foreign races for most of the centuries. All foreign invasions have caused destruction to Iran, at least to invade, and some are even devastating. Because Iran neglected Genghis Khan's envoy, Genghis Khan used cruel means to punish Iran in anger. From 1220 to 1221, the Mongols invaded Iran and completely destroyed several Iranian cities. These destroyed cities are located in the current provinces of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Iran. These eastern cities once flourished in the inland areas due to Silk Road trade and extensive (time-consuming and labor-intensive) agricultural water irrigation systems. Some of these cities, such as Nishapur, Tus, Balkh, are also the hometowns of many famous poets and the central city of the Sufis. The entire Khorasan region (including all of the above regions in the Middle Ages) was once the best place for the interweaving and fusion of Arab and Persian cultures, where it created the "golden age" for the development of Persian language, literature and science. The Mongols and their vassal Turks, in some cities with a population of hundreds of thousands, such as Merv, Urgench, and Balch, killed or kidnapped almost the entire city's population, destroyed water conservancy facilities, and large areas of high-yield arable land became pastures for grazing. There are also some cities that were rebuilt or partially rebuilt, just to allow Emperor Timur to destroy again from 1383 to 1385. Mongolia's multiple invasions effectively ended the prosperity and development of Iranian civilization brought about by Islamic conquest of Khorasan .
However, just a few generations later, the Mongolian conquerors converted to Islam, and the top government officials were full of Persian-speaking Iranians. As early as the reign of Seljuk and Arabs, the Iranians proved that they were indispensable to the new dynasty and empires, as there were a large number of Iranians serving as clerks and officials in the government. In addition, there are many poets, priests, documentary illustrators, architects, various craftsmen, etc. who are also Iranians, and these make the conquerors believe that the Iranians are crucial at all times. The Persian civilization was not stifled, but continued to evolve and continued to bloom in another place. A few years after Timur invaded Iran, his son Shahrokh (Shahrokh) ascended the throne and moved the capital to Herat . Persian culture revives and prospers.
In the centuries after the country's Islamization, Iran's language and culture were still preserved in waves of foreign invasions. The reason is that it constantly emphasizes its own cultural influence and even cultural dominance to the invaders. At the same time, this also shows that before the arrival of the Arabs, the Sassanian culture was quite mature and had a high level of confidence. Some social classes also had high resilience and adaptability, especially the upper class dehqan (i.e., the Sassanian and early Islamic powers who owned land. - Editor's note) class. They provided cavalry to the Sassanian army and also benefited from the penultimate monarchy reform of the Sassanian dynasty. Screenshot of
BBC documentary "Persia".
Persian is an important element in maintaining the continuity of Iranian nation during foreign invasions. One explanation for this is that Persian appears in a new form after the Islamization of the state through transformation, absorption, and simplification. Another explanation is that contemporary Persian is a new language formed by Arabic and Islam in the existing Persian language. Contemporary Persian has been simplified in terms of grammar compared to Persian during the Sassanian period and contains a large number of Arabic vocabulary. This is like contemporary English absorbed a large amount of words from French used by the foreign invader Normans and eventually formed in the late Middle Ages. Shakespeare appeared in the decades after the emergence of contemporary new English.Similarly, those great Persian poets also revealed their talents in the world with the birth of the new Persian language. New language forms seem to have an internal ability to inspire and produce newer, more mature, more delicate and more beautiful forms of expression.
The earliest poets included Ferdowsi, whose masterpiece Shahnameh was mainly focused on Iran before Islamization, covering religion, war culture and monarchy rule. In Firdosi's time, Arabic vocabulary was common in Persian, but Firdosi still avoided the use of Arabic vocabulary in this masterpiece as much as possible. In "The Book of Kings", you can see the works of the previous poet Daqiqi and the works left over from the Sassanid period. Both Dazizi and Firdosi were funded by the Samanid Dynasty (located in the present-day Balgh Province of Afghanistan). The Sammanid dynasty designated Persian as the official language, and at the same time, it set the encouragement of Persian culture and tradition as a national policy.
Ferdosi and later Hafez may be the two most familiar poets of contemporary Iranians. The stories recorded in the "Book of Kings", such as "Sohrab and Rostam", "Khosrow and Shirin", "Bijan and Manijeh", etc., have been passed down from centuries to the present, and are still household names among Iranians today. The discourses and various expressions involved in the story are still frequently quoted. Together with later poets, Ferdosi and his poems played a stereotype and normative role in the formation of contemporary Persian is just like Shakespeare's "King James Bible" to contemporary English, Luther's "Bible" to contemporary German , and Dante's "Hell" to contemporary Italian. At the same time, the work also strengthens the Iranian sense of identity.
It is obvious that the Arab invasion interrupted the development trajectory of Iran's history, and the trauma caused to Iran by the continuous foreign invasions made this fracture even more deepened. But it must also be clearly seen that both the Samanids, Firdosi, or the Iranian ministers ruled by the Abbasids or other rulers had a strong need to preserve the continuity of the Iranian nation and the spiritual culture of the Sassanian dynasty, and despite the difficult and bleak prospects, they still did it very successfully. Not only that, on the basis of inheritance, they brought Persian culture to a new height of prosperity far beyond any previous era.
Written by | [English] Michael Axworthy
Excerpted and edited by | Li Yongbo
Introduction proofreading | Lu Qian
He will also lose the war, and the gods favor those who resist him and usurp his power. The key lies in justice and good governance. These theories of governance (even if never real) proposed during the last prosperity of the Sassanid dynasty were reinterpreted and accepted after the conquest of Iran by the Arabs, especially the Abbasid Caliphate 750 years later, becoming the most influential governance theories of governance in the entire Islamic world in centuries. html In the early 17th century, the Sassanid dynasty and Eastern Roman Empire (later called Byzantine Empire ) reopened and took steps forward, almost recreating the territory of the Achaemenid dynasty. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. The Byzantine army made a comeback and attacked the heart of the Sassanian dynasty in one fell swoop. In 627, it defeated the Sassanian army at Nineveh (Nineveh), and all the previous victory of the Persians was wasted. The war-induced conflicts of force, the destruction of trade activities, the spread of famine and disease caused by it, and the serious damage to water conservancy facilities and the permanent loss of cultivated land caused by destruction have all caused great damage to both sides. It is generally believed that the decline of the Sassanian dynasty and Byzantine Empire caused by this destruction was largely conducive to the rapid expansion of Muslims in this region after the return of the Islamic prophet in 632, which also changed the development process of Iran's history .Why can Muslims conquer Iran quickly?
One of the reasons why the Islamic Empire was able to expand rapidly was that neighboring countries consumed severely in previous wars, and another major reason was that Islam, a new religion, gave the Arab Muslim army a strong cohesion and firm determination. The importance of the early history of Islam to Iran is that it explains how Iran has become an Islamic state step by step, and also explains the origin of the Shiites. Most Iranians today believe in Shiites.
From around 613, the Prophet Muhammad began to preach Islamic revelation in Mecca . Due to opposition and persecution in Mecca, he and his followers went to Medina in 622, where he was supported as the leader of the Islamic believers and also educated many locals to convert to Islam. With the surrender of the Meccans in 630, the war between Mohammed and Mecca ended in victory. By the time Mohammed returned to the realm in 632, most people on Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam. After Muhammad's death, his followers split, and Abu Bakr became the leader of the Muslim Caliph, who strengthened his internal unity by launching a series of wars against non-Islamists around him. Of course, another motivation for war is to spread Islam and naturalize Protestants. The speed of Islam expansion may even surprise the Arabs themselves. In just 20 years, they achieved decisive victory over Byzantium and Persia, and occupied territories in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and the former Sassanid dynasty. Byzantines barely maintained its rule in most of the Anatolian Peninsula and several other western provinces until the 11th century, while the Sassanian dynasty and its empire collapsed. Zoroastrianism began to decline and gradually became a minority religion. Muslims made it a precept that they could not use force to force the pagans to convert, but after centuries they found that converting to a dominant religion had its inevitable advantage. In the following hundreds of years, the Iranians were mainly ruled by foreign dynasties and aristocrats.
For the Arabs, the joy of conquering foreign races and success gave them a common goal. However, there is also serious division within the entire Muslim group, and all the consequences and huge wealth brought about by conquest have created more problems. Throughout Christian history, the divisions between Orthodox and Catholicism, and later the divisions between Catholicism and Protestantism, both emerged a long time later, and are largely due to differences in theological views. In contrast, the opposition between Shiites and Sunnis in Islam emerged immediately after the Prophet Muhammad returned to the truth (632), and its core contradiction was the issue of leadership.
After Muhammad returned to the realm, a group of key figures among his followers believed that his son-in-law Ali should become the new caliph, not Abu Burkel. This group of people later became Shiites, also known as Alis. After Abu Berkel's death, he experienced two more heirs before Ali finally became a caliph, but his caliphate status was not solid. He was assassinated by members of the Kharijite in 661 because they believed that Ali easily compromised the enemy led by Syrian Governor Muawiya, an act that betrayed the Hawaliji. After Ali's death, Muaweiye became the new caliph and established the Umayyad dynasty. The Shiites (although this name did not really appear at the time, but for the sake of easy understanding, it was not wrong to call these people "Shiites") believed that the Caliph should be inherited by descendants of Ali (of course, also descendants of Muhammad), rather than being held by Muaweiye or Umayyad.
BBC documentary "Persia".
External occupation brought the Umayyads a steady stream of wealth. After they came to power, they gained the reputation of being extravagant and indecent. In 680, Ali's son Hussein (the grandson of Prophet Muhammad), inspired by the Ku legal person from Iraq, rose up to resist the Umayah Caliph Yazid, and led a small number of his followers toward Kufa. But before they arrived, Yezid's army stopped Hussein and his party in Karbala. Hussein refused to surrender, so Ye Qide's army killed Hussein and most of his followers and arrested all the remaining entourages. This is a major event in the history of Islam. For more than a thousand years, Shi'a has never forgotten it and has marched on Ashura Festival every year to commemorate the incident. The division between Shiite Muslims and mainstream Sunnis [the name "Sunna" comes from "sunna", that is, those who abide by the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad] has deepened since the Karbala massacre, and the contradictions have become more intense. This state has not changed to this day. Shiites have always been a minority (the number of Shiites in the global Muslim population today does not exceed 15%) and are often persecuted, although Shiites occasionally take power. Among them, the more famous ones are the Fatima Dynasty located in Egypt and North Africa in the 10th to 12th century. Most Sunni Muslims (not just extremists) regard Shia as pagans, believing that their respect for Ali, Hussein and his descendants (Shia Imam. Shia Imam. It means that Shia religious leaders and inheritors of their doctrine. - Editor's note) is idolatrous and has an unacceptable polytheistic nature.
The core cities of Shi'a Muslims are the "holy city" Najaf (Najaf, where Ali was buried) and Karbala. Both are located in the territory of today's Iraq . Until the 16th century, Iran was not the main control area of Shi'a. However, after the Safavid dynasty began in 1501, it designated Shiites as the state religion, and Iran has since become an important Shiite Islamic state. Iranian Shi'a Muslims believe in the twelve Imams. They respected Ali and his descendants as Imams, and believed that the twelfth generation of Imams had disappeared from the mid-ninth century. They believe that the twelfth generation of imams did not die, but would reappear at the end of the world (holding Jesus on his shoulder). The other smaller Shia branches [the most influential one is the Ismailis] have different beliefs about the inheritance of Imam (the Shia mentioned elsewhere in this book mainly refers to the "twelve Imam schools"). The differences between Shiites and Sunnis are an important issue. At the beginning of the 21st century, with the rise of political Islam, the rise of extreme Sunni forces such as Wahhabi and Salafi, and the regional competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia is becoming increasingly tense, and the issue of opposition between Shiites and Sunnis has become increasingly important. Screenshot of
BBC documentary "Persia".
What kind of continuity exists in Iran before and after Islamization?
After being conquered by the Arabs in the 7th century, Iran was invaded by the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century, Mongols in the 13th century, and Timur (Timur) and a new wave of Turkic Mongolian nomadic warriors in the 14th century. Iran has been ruled by foreign races for most of the centuries. All foreign invasions have caused destruction to Iran, at least to invade, and some are even devastating. Because Iran neglected Genghis Khan's envoy, Genghis Khan used cruel means to punish Iran in anger. From 1220 to 1221, the Mongols invaded Iran and completely destroyed several Iranian cities. These destroyed cities are located in the current provinces of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Iran. These eastern cities once flourished in the inland areas due to Silk Road trade and extensive (time-consuming and labor-intensive) agricultural water irrigation systems. Some of these cities, such as Nishapur, Tus, Balkh, are also the hometowns of many famous poets and the central city of the Sufis. The entire Khorasan region (including all of the above regions in the Middle Ages) was once the best place for the interweaving and fusion of Arab and Persian cultures, where it created the "golden age" for the development of Persian language, literature and science. The Mongols and their vassal Turks, in some cities with a population of hundreds of thousands, such as Merv, Urgench, and Balch, killed or kidnapped almost the entire city's population, destroyed water conservancy facilities, and large areas of high-yield arable land became pastures for grazing. There are also some cities that were rebuilt or partially rebuilt, just to allow Emperor Timur to destroy again from 1383 to 1385. Mongolia's multiple invasions effectively ended the prosperity and development of Iranian civilization brought about by Islamic conquest of Khorasan .
However, just a few generations later, the Mongolian conquerors converted to Islam, and the top government officials were full of Persian-speaking Iranians. As early as the reign of Seljuk and Arabs, the Iranians proved that they were indispensable to the new dynasty and empires, as there were a large number of Iranians serving as clerks and officials in the government. In addition, there are many poets, priests, documentary illustrators, architects, various craftsmen, etc. who are also Iranians, and these make the conquerors believe that the Iranians are crucial at all times. The Persian civilization was not stifled, but continued to evolve and continued to bloom in another place. A few years after Timur invaded Iran, his son Shahrokh (Shahrokh) ascended the throne and moved the capital to Herat . Persian culture revives and prospers.
In the centuries after the country's Islamization, Iran's language and culture were still preserved in waves of foreign invasions. The reason is that it constantly emphasizes its own cultural influence and even cultural dominance to the invaders. At the same time, this also shows that before the arrival of the Arabs, the Sassanian culture was quite mature and had a high level of confidence. Some social classes also had high resilience and adaptability, especially the upper class dehqan (i.e., the Sassanian and early Islamic powers who owned land. - Editor's note) class. They provided cavalry to the Sassanian army and also benefited from the penultimate monarchy reform of the Sassanian dynasty. Screenshot of
BBC documentary "Persia".
Persian is an important element in maintaining the continuity of Iranian nation during foreign invasions. One explanation for this is that Persian appears in a new form after the Islamization of the state through transformation, absorption, and simplification. Another explanation is that contemporary Persian is a new language formed by Arabic and Islam in the existing Persian language. Contemporary Persian has been simplified in terms of grammar compared to Persian during the Sassanian period and contains a large number of Arabic vocabulary. This is like contemporary English absorbed a large amount of words from French used by the foreign invader Normans and eventually formed in the late Middle Ages. Shakespeare appeared in the decades after the emergence of contemporary new English.Similarly, those great Persian poets also revealed their talents in the world with the birth of the new Persian language. New language forms seem to have an internal ability to inspire and produce newer, more mature, more delicate and more beautiful forms of expression.
The earliest poets included Ferdowsi, whose masterpiece Shahnameh was mainly focused on Iran before Islamization, covering religion, war culture and monarchy rule. In Firdosi's time, Arabic vocabulary was common in Persian, but Firdosi still avoided the use of Arabic vocabulary in this masterpiece as much as possible. In "The Book of Kings", you can see the works of the previous poet Daqiqi and the works left over from the Sassanid period. Both Dazizi and Firdosi were funded by the Samanid Dynasty (located in the present-day Balgh Province of Afghanistan). The Sammanid dynasty designated Persian as the official language, and at the same time, it set the encouragement of Persian culture and tradition as a national policy.
Ferdosi and later Hafez may be the two most familiar poets of contemporary Iranians. The stories recorded in the "Book of Kings", such as "Sohrab and Rostam", "Khosrow and Shirin", "Bijan and Manijeh", etc., have been passed down from centuries to the present, and are still household names among Iranians today. The discourses and various expressions involved in the story are still frequently quoted. Together with later poets, Ferdosi and his poems played a stereotype and normative role in the formation of contemporary Persian is just like Shakespeare's "King James Bible" to contemporary English, Luther's "Bible" to contemporary German , and Dante's "Hell" to contemporary Italian. At the same time, the work also strengthens the Iranian sense of identity.
It is obvious that the Arab invasion interrupted the development trajectory of Iran's history, and the trauma caused to Iran by the continuous foreign invasions made this fracture even more deepened. But it must also be clearly seen that both the Samanids, Firdosi, or the Iranian ministers ruled by the Abbasids or other rulers had a strong need to preserve the continuity of the Iranian nation and the spiritual culture of the Sassanian dynasty, and despite the difficult and bleak prospects, they still did it very successfully. Not only that, on the basis of inheritance, they brought Persian culture to a new height of prosperity far beyond any previous era.
Written by | [English] Michael Axworthy
Excerpted and edited by | Li Yongbo
Introduction proofreading | Lu Qian
