Iran in the Early Islamic Period: Politics, Culture, Administration and Public Life Between the Arab and the Seljuk Conquests, 633–1055

649 Pages·2014·4.83 MB·English

by  Bertold Spuler

Iran in the Early Islamic Period
Iran Studies
Editorial Board
Ali Gheissari (University of San Diego, CA)
Yann Richard (Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Christoph Werner (University of Marburg)
VOLUME 12
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/is
Iran in the Early Islamic Period
Politics, Culture, Administration and Public Life
between the Arab and the Seljuk Conquests, 633–1055
By
Bertold Spuler
Edited by
Robert G. Hoyland
Translated by
Gwendolin Goldbloom & Berenike Walburg
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Originally published as Iran in früh-islamischer Zeit: Politik, Kultur, Verwaltung und öffentliches Leben
zwischen der arabischen und seldschukischen Eroberung 633 bis 1055 (Frank Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1952).
Cover illustration: Alexander the Great, who is accounted of Persian ancestry by many Muslim historians,
visits the Kaʿba in Mecca. Ms 22-1948, fol. 18v / Firdawsi, Shahnama © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spuler, Bertold, 1911–
 [Iran in früh-islamischer Zeit. English]
 Iran in the early Islamic period : politics, culture, administration and public life between the Arab and
the Seljuk conquests, 633–1055 / by Bertold Spuler ; edited by Robert G. Hoyland ; translated by Gwendolin
Goldbloom & Berenike Walburg.
   pages cm. — (Iran studies ; v. 12)
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-27751-9 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-28209-4 (e-book) 1. Iran—
History—640–1500. I. Hoyland, Robert G., 1966- II. Goldbloom, Gwendolin. III. Walburg, Berenike. IV. Title.
 DS288.S613 2015
 955’.022—dc23
2014035103
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issn 1569-7401
isbn 978-90-04-27751-9 (hardback)
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Contents
Editor’s Preface and Acknowledgements  vii
Selective Post-1952 Bibliography  xiv
Author’s Preface and Acknowledgements  xxiv
General Maps  xxix
1 Chronological Overview of Political History  1
2 The Religious Situation  125
3 The Ethnic Situation  213
4 Intellectual and Cultural Life  250
5 The Administration of Persia  282
6 The Legal Situation  361
7 The Social and Economic Situation  376
Specialised Maps  518
Abbreviations  525
Bibliography  526
Primary Sources  526
Secondary Sources  541
Indices  580
Index of Persons and Dynasties  580
Index of Places, Languages and Communities  594
Index of Subjects and Objects  610

Editor’s Preface and Acknowledgements
Bertold Spuler was one of the leading German Orientalists of the middle
decades of the twentieth century. He was a specialist of Iran and Central Asia
and composed numerous books on this subject, attaining high international
standing, as is indicated by the fact that many of his writings were translated
into a variety of European languages.1 One that did not receive this treatment
(though it was translated into Persian) was his monumental work on early
Islamic Iran: Iran in früh-islamischer Zeit, which provides a fundamental basis
for the study of Iran from the first Arab conquests in the 630s until the arrival
of the Seljuk Turks in 1055. This is a very difficult period to write about, espe-
cially the first half of it, which has been labelled ‘The Two Centuries of Silence’
by the prominent Iranian historian Abdulhossein Zarrinkub.2 Documentary
evidence is very scarce and the Arabic and Persian literary accounts, though
voluminous, are court-orientated, intended principally for edification and
entertainment. It takes a lot of effort to use this material for historical ends
and Spuler expended much labour sifting through it so that he could piece
together a picture of numerous aspects of Iranian society. These included:
1 Die Chalifenzeit: Entstehung und Zerfall des Islamischen Weltreichs (Leiden, 1952); translated
as The Age of the Caliphs by F.R.C. Bagley (Leiden, 1969); with a new introduction by Jane
Hathaway (Princeton, 1995). Geschichte der Mongolen, nach östlichen und europäischen
Zeugnissen des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts (Zürich and Stuttgart, 1968); translated as History of
the Mongols: based on Eastern and Western accounts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centu-
ries by Helga and Stuart Drummond (London, 1972; repr. New York, 1988). Les Mongoles dans
l’histoire (Paris, 1961); translated as The Mongols in History by Geoffrey Wheeler (New York,
1971). Die historische Literatur in persischer Sprache (HdO; Leiden, 1968); translated as Persian
Historiography and Geography by M. Ismail Marcinkowski (Singapore, 2003). Geschichte der
islamischen Länder: 1. ein Überblick (Berlin, 1948); translated as The Muslim World: a historical
survey by F.R.C. Bagley (Leiden, 1960). Geschichte der islamischen Länder: 2. die Mongolenzeit
(HdO; Leiden, 1953); translated as The Mongol Period: a History of the Muslim World by Arthur N.
Waldron (Princeton, 1994). Regenten und Regierungen der Welt, vols. 3 and 4 (Bielefeld, 1953-);
translated with revisions as vols. 2 and 3 of Martha Ross et al., Rulers and Governments of the
World (London and New York, 1977–78). A bibliography of Bertold Spuler’s writings can be
found in I. Türschmann and A. Hartmann, ‘Die wichtigsten Publikationen Bertold Spulers’
in Hans Roemer and Albrecht Noth, eds., Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Vorderen
Orients: Festschrift fur Bertold Spuler zum 70. Geburtstag (Leiden, 1981), 458–77 (up to 1980),
and in ‘Spuler, Bertold’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition, New York, 1996–.
2 Do Qarn Sokut (Tehran, 1956), though his explanation for the silence – the destructiveness
of the Arab conquests and the low cultural level of the conquerors – is not now generally
accepted.
viii Editor’s Preface and Acknowledgements
religion (Zoroastrians, Muslims, Christians, Jews and Buddhists), ethnic groups
(Arabs, Turks, Persians etc.), intellectual and cultural life, administration, law,
economy (agriculture, manufacture, trade, etc.), social stratification, landown-
ership, taxes, the military and daily life.
The volume Spuler produced is doubly difficult to access. Possibly because
of the situation in Europe after the Second World War, it did not enjoy a wide
distribution and many university libraries – even some very good ones – do not
possess a copy. Secondly, being in German, it has not reached the worldwide
audience that it deserved. And yet, more than half a century on, no textbook
for this period of Iranian history has been produced that might serve in its
stead, which greatly impedes the teaching of this subject to new students. It
seems worthwhile, then, to make Spuler’s work on this period accessible to a
global audience. Now is a particularly opportune time, for Iranian history is
enjoying something of a renaissance, in part because of current events, which
see Iran featuring prominently in the world news and which have made schol-
ars understand how important Iran is and was in geopolitical terms, as a cru-
cial bridge between the Fertile Crescent and Central Asia, and in part because
of the expanding horizons of late antique studies. Already in 1971, Peter Brown,
in his by now cult book The World of Late Antiquity, argued that early Islamic
Iran should be included within the purview of the scholar of late antiquity,
for in the course of its encounters with the Late Roman Empire it had been
exposed to some of the key phenomena of late antiquity, such as the tighten-
ing bond between religion and politics, the emergence of self-governing reli-
gious communities and the spread of Greek logic and science. The Sasanian
period (224–652) has benefited from this attention, now well served by Touraj
Daryaee’s Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (London, 2009), and
the medieval period is also quite well catered for, notably by David Morgan’s
Medieval Persia 1040–1797 (London, 1988). It is to be hoped that the transla-
tion of Spuler’s Iran in früh-islamischer Zeit will stimulate interest in and aid
research on the time between these two eras.
Of course, the fact that no textbook for early Islamic Iran has been pro-
duced since Spuler wrote does not mean that scholarship in this field has stood
still – indeed, it has become an increasingly popular area of study of late. Since
no recent advances in our knowledge will be represented in Spuler’s text, it
would perhaps be helpful if I comment here on a few of the most important
publications. As regards reference works the most significant development has
been the launch of the Encyclopaedia Iranica, which made its début in 1982.
Under the careful guidance of Ehsan Yarshater, it has become an essential tool
for consultation and research on all aspects of Iranian history and culture,
comprising high-quality entries on an enormous range of topics. Its usefulness
Editor’s Preface and Acknowledgements ix
has been greatly enhanced by the fact that it is available free online, which
also means that it can be easily and swiftly updated. In addition, I should men-
tion the voluminous output of C.E. Bosworth, who, over the last five decades,
has produced foundational works on numerous aspects of Iranian history,
including monographs (in particular the ones on the Ghaznavid dynasty and
the province of Sistan), translations (especially of al-Ṭabarī), articles and ency-
clopaedia entries (300 or so in the Encylopaedia of Islam and Encyclopaedia
Iranica).
Academic articles on early Islamic Iran published since 1952 are too numer-
ous to consider here, but monographs are still relatively few, and it is worth
mentioning those that have changed the way we think about and approach
the subject. Particularly important are three highly original works by Richard
Bulliet. His Patricians of Nishapur (1972) makes good use of biographical dic-
tionaries to give a fascinating picture of a number of leading wealthy families
in this east Iranian city in the aftermath of the breakup of the Abbasid Empire.
He illustrates the crucial role of religious learning in their achievement of sta-
tus, the rivalry that existed between the law-schools of the Shafi’is and Hanafis,
and the part played by the recently introduced institution of the madrasa. In
his Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period (1979) Bulliet turns once again to
biographical dictionaries in order to try to answer the question of when Iran
became a majority Muslim country. Because Muslim and non-Muslim names
were very often markedly different in Iran, it is reasonably easy to spot con-
verts: thus someone called ʿAli ibn Rustam is very likely either a convert him-
self or the son of a convert. Examining a sample of 469 of such cases Bulliet
is able to show that conversion to Islam occurred mostly during the period
ah 150–300 (ad 767–912), with the process substantially complete by the end
of the third Islamic century. His latest book, Cotton, Climate and Camels in Early
Islamic Iran (2009), is perhaps his most innovative, tracing the rise of cotton
cultivation in Iran in response to a demand for a simple and distinctive form of
attire by newly-converted Muslims and its subsequent demise as demand fell
and a long period of cold weather led to the migration into the Islamic world of
large numbers of Turkic nomads from the Central Asian steppe.
In the field of religion the contribution of Wilferd Madelung has been signif-
icant, in particular his Religious Trends of Early Islamic Iran (1988), which grew
out of his 1983 Columbia Lectures on Iranian Studies. It is full of rich insights
into the religious diversity of this land, illustrating the intersection between the-
ology, law and ethnicity. For example, it considers the links between Maturidi
theology and the Turks, the role played by the Murjiʾite sect in the spread of
Hanafism in east Iran, the theological dimension to the rivalry between the
Hanafi and Shafiʿi law schools in Iranian cities, the nature of Persian Kharijism
x Editor’s Preface and Acknowledgements
and the varieties of Persian Shiʿism, and the links between Sufi mystical orders,
Shafiʿi law and Ashʿari theology. What shines through clearly in this volume is
the complexity of relationships between religious movements and their ideo-
logical motivations, geographical distribution, internal dynamics and external
events.
The other giant in the field is Patricia Crone. Many of her writings offer
insights into Iranian history and culture in the late antique and early Islamic
periods; for example, her Medieval Islamic Political Thought (2004) deals with
Shiʿism and Ismaʿilism in Iran and has a long section on the Persian tradition
of kingship. But her greatest contribution to our understanding of this region
lies in her recent work The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran (2012). Here
she examines a number of insurrections that took place in the mountainous
regions of western and eastern Iran in the eighth and ninth centuries. A close
analysis of the doctrines of the rebel leaders leads her to conclude that they
rest upon regional forms of Zoroastrianism, but with local colouring; in east
Iran/Transoxania, for example, some insurgents drew upon Buddhist ideas. She
then relates these events to the bigger picture of the socio-economic changes
wrought by the Arab conquests and Abbasid revolution and the ways in which
the pre-Islamic Persian religious worldview found its expression within the
new Islamic milieu.
Besides the output of these three prominent scholars the study of early
Islamic Iran has been enriched in the last decade or so by a series of stimu-
lating monographs. Saleh Agha’s The Revolution which toppled the Umayyads:
neither Arab nor Abbasid (2003) is an insightful investigation into the incuba-
tion of the revolution of ad 750 that led to the rise of the Abbasid Empire and
demonstrates convincingly that the role played by Iranians was much more
substantial than had previously been recognised. Deborah Tor’s Violent Order:
Religious Warfare, Chivalry and the ʿAyyar Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic
World (2007) shows that ʿayyaris, who have often been portrayed negatively
as brigands, originally began as ascetic defenders of a newly emerging Sunni
Orthodoxy, and she illustrates their close links to the Saffarid state, which ruled
east Iran in the ninth and tenth centuries. Parvaneh Pourshariati’s Decline and
Fall of the Sasanian Empire (2008) offers a new interpretation of the collapse
of the Persian Empire in the wake of the Arab conquests, namely that the alli-
ance between the Sasanian and Parthian families (whose heartlands lay in the
southwest and the northeast of Iran respectively) that had endured since the
220s began to unravel in the late sixth century, and particularly in the aftermath
of the disastrous defeat inflicted by the Byzantines upon Emperor Khusrau ii
in 628. Turning to literary culture, we have Mohsen Zakeri’s Persian Wisdom in