HISTORYAT A GLANCE |
Islamic Conquest (Part.2)
Another legacy of the Arab conquest was Shia Islam, which, although it has
come to be identified closely with Iran, was not initially an Iranian religious
movement. It originated with the Arab Muslims. In the great schism of Islam, one
group among the community of believers maintained that leadership of the
community following the death of Muhammad rightfully belonged to Muhammad's
son-in-law, Ali, and to his descendants. This group came to be known as the
Shiat Ali, the partisans of Ali, or the Shias. Another group, supporters of
Muawiya (a rival contender for the caliphate following the murder of Uthman),
challenged Ali's election to the caliphate in 656. After Ali was assassinated
while praying in a mosque at Kufa in 661, Muawiya was declared caliph by the
majority of the Islamic community. He became the first caliph of the Umayyad
dynasty, which had its capital at Damascus.
Ali's youngest son, Husayn, refused to pay the homage commanded by Muawiya's
son and successor Yazid I and fled to Mecca, where he was asked to lead the
Shias -- mostly those living in present-day Iraq -- in a revolt. At Karbala, in
Iraq, Husayn's band of 200 men and women followers, unwilling to surrender, were
finally cut down by about 4,000 Umayyad troops. The Umayyad leader received
Husayn's head, and Husayn's death in 680 on the tenth of Moharram continues to
be observed as a day of mourning for all Shias.
The largest concentration of Shias in the first century of Islam was in
southern Iraq. It was not until the sixteenth century, under the Safavids, that
a majority of Iranians became Shias. Shia Islam became then, as it is now, the
state religion.
The Abbasids, who overthrew the Umayyads in 750, while sympathetic to the
Iranian Shias, were clearly an Arab dynasty. They revolted in the name of
descendants of Muhammad's uncle, Abbas, and the House of Hashim. Hashim was an
ancestor of both the Shia and the Abbas, orSunni, line,
and the Abbasid movement enjoyed the support of both Sunni and Shia Muslims. The
Abbasid army consisted primarily of Khorasanians and was led by an Iranian
general, Abu Muslim. It contained both Iranian and Arab elements, and the
Abbasids enjoyed both Iranian and Arab support.
Nevertheless, the Abbasids, although sympathetic to the Shias, whose support
they wished to retain, did not encourage the more extremist Shia aspirations.
The Abbasids established their capital at Baghdad. Al Mamun, who seized power
from his brother, Amin, and proclaimed himself caliph in 811, had an Iranian
mother and thus had a base of support in Khorasan. The Abbasids continued the
centralizing policies of their predecessors. Under their rule, the Islamic world
experienced a cultural efflorescence and the expansion of trade and economic
prosperity. These were developments in which Iran shared.
Iran's next ruling dynasties descended from nomadic, Turkic-speaking warriors
who had been moving out of Central Asia into Transoxiana for more than a
millennium. The Abbasid caliphs began enlisting these people as slave warriors
as early as the ninth century. Shortly thereafter the real power of the Abbasid
caliphs began to wane; eventually they became religious figureheads while the
warrior slaves ruled. As the power of the Abbasid caliphs diminished, a series
of independent and indigenous dynasties rose in various parts of Iran, some with
considerable influence and power. Among the most important of these overlapping
dynasties were the Tahirids in Khorasan (820-72); the Saffarids in Sistan
(867-903); and the Samanids (875-1005), originally at Bukhara (also cited as
Bokhara). The Samanids eventually ruled an area from central Iran to India. In
962 a Turkish slave governor of the Samanids, Alptigin, conquered Ghazna (in
present-day Afghanistan) and established a dynasty, the Ghaznavids, that lasted
to 1186.
Several Samanid cities had been lost to another Turkish group, the Seljuks, a
clan of the Oghuz (or Ghuzz) Turks, who lived north of the Oxus River
(present-day Amu Darya). Their leader, Tughril Beg, turned his warriors against
the Ghaznavids in Khorasan. He moved south and then west, conquering but not
wasting the cities in his path. In 1055 the caliph in Baghdad gave Tughril Beg
robes, gifts, and the title King of the East. Under Tughril Beg's successor,
Malik Shah (1072-92), Iran enjoyed a cultural and scientific renaissance,
largely attributed to his brilliant Iranian vizier, Nizam al Mulk. These leaders
established the observatory where Umar (Omar) Khayyam did much of his
experimentation for a new calendar, and they built religious schools in all the
major towns. They brought Abu Hamid Ghazali, one of the greatest Islamic
theologians, and other eminent scholars to the Seljuk capital at Baghdad and
encouraged and supported their work.
A serious internal threat to the Seljuks, however, came from the Ismailis, a
secret sect with headquarters at Alumut between Rasht and Tehran. They
controlled the immediate area for more than 150 years and sporadically sent out
adherents to strengthen their rule by murdering important officials. The word
assassins, which was applied to these murderers, developed from a European
corruption of the name applied to them in Syria, hashishiyya, because folklore
had it that they smoked hashish before their missions.
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