9. Persia

Once the Ridha war came to an end with all the Arabs of the Arabian peninsula subjugated and converted to Islam, the Muslims turned their attention on their northern neighbours, Sasanid Empire of Persia and the Byzantine Empire. And these Empires were least prepared to face an adversary equal to which there were none in history.

Till the rise of creed of Islam, the world had known only imperial conquests, where the conqueror, be he Alexander, Cyrus, Julius Caesar, Hannibal or any other, the war took place between the opposing armies. The fate of the battle was decided on the battlefield alone. The common people, the unarmed civilians were not in danger of life and livelihood. They only had to accept the victorious adversary, new taxes and new administrators.

The Muslim Arabs were different. They were not only nomads and fighting for profit; they were indoctrinated in a murderous creed. On one hand they had nothing to lose and on the other hand they were inspired by the concept of jihad. For a Muslim, war was jihad; a religious duty. Win you get booty and lose you get a great afterlife. Muslims were a determined force. Because they were not just after conquering land, occupying properties of the enemy and enslaving the female and children for sex but they wanted to bring whole world under Islamic rule and Islamic doctrine; Dar el Islam. They had religious sanction to kill any non-Muslim, rape their women and children or enslave them. They may as well convert infidels to Islam at the pain of death. This was a pious duty for every Muslim. Quran promises Muslims a sensuous life after death for a glorious death in pursuance of jihad. To this end, Muslims were ready to fight unto death. They were fearless for they were God’s own army. At the same time they would break all norms of fair practices, rules, agreements and humanity. They were guided by Mohammed’s famous direction, “War is deceit.”

The Battles of Namraq and Kasker (634 A.D.)

Initially, Muslim Arabs started attacking the border towns and harassing the civilian Persian population. The people of the border areas along the Euphrates River petitioned the Persian king Yazdjurd (Yazdgard) to save them from the depredations of the Muslim Arabs. The king sent a reconnaissance force under the command of a general named Jaban. This force first approached the town of Hira that had been occupied by the Arabs. On seeing the Persians approach, the Arab force withdrew towards the desert into the oasis town of Namraq (modern Kufa) to draw the Persians into the desert, a terrain that the Arabs were familiar with, but the Persians were not. The Muslim Arabs had camels in addition to their infantry. The Persians were on horseback. While cavalry gave an advantage while fighting on normal terrain, they were a liability in the desert. With the Persians in the desert, the Arab force caught up with them and inflicted a defeat, and forced them to withdraw. The Persian reconnaissance force then withdrew to join the main Persian army at a town called Kasker.

Here another Persian general named Narsi had assembled a good concentration of forces. This town was well away from the border. Kaskar was so far away from the Muslim camp that Narsi did not expect a Muslim attack. He was waiting for further re-enforcement. But Abu Ubaid, the Muslim commander, rushed to Kaskar in darkness and attacked the Persian forces and defeated them. Persians were forced to retreat to the east, beyond the Euphrates.

Battle of the Bridge -  636 A.D.

The next major clash between the Persians and the Arab Muslims is known as the Battle of the Bridge. The Persians used elephants for the first time; the Persians used their elephants to trample over the Arab attackers. The Arabs were not prepared and started fleeing in panic. The Persians chased the Arabs up to the Bridge on the Tigris River, which then marked the boundary between the Persian Empire and the domain of the Arabs.

The Persians stopped at the bridge and chased the Arabs across it, but did not follow the Arabs into the Arabian Desert. The Persians wasted an opportunity to utterly defeat the Muslims by going right into Arabia and hunting down the Muslim Arabs in their homeland.

The Battle of Qadissiyah ( 637 A.D.)

This seminal battle of Qadissiyah was fought over four days; the Persians were led by a general named Rustam-e-Farrokhzad (Farokh Hormazd), and Arab Muslims were led by Saad-Ibn-Waqas. Saad-ibn-Waqas, lured the Arab contingents to defect from the Persian army. Arab contingent switched side but this defection by itself did not make any difference in the course of the battle. But the Arabs in the Persian pay helped Muslim army to neutralise the advantage of elephants with the Persian army. The elephants played havoc on the Arabs at beginning of the first day of the battle. But the Arab contingent who had defected and betrayed the Persian paymasters, helped the Arab Muslims to cut the girdles of the elephants so that mahouts lost control of the elephants. The elephants became directionless without their mahouts. Persians lost the advantages of elephants. The second tactic adopted by the Arab Muslims was to blind the elephants in one eye only, so that they would lose direction and flee away from that direction. When this gruesome act was done, the elephants turned around away from the Arab-Muslim tormentors and broke through the Persian ranks, causing disorder in the Persian army and opened up passages for the Muslims to advance into the Persian ranks.

The Arabs and Persians had agreed at the beginning of the battle not to fight after sundown, but when the tide of the battle began to turn against the Persians on the third day of the battle, the Arabs continued to attack the Persians all through the night and pressed for the advantage. During this third night, the Arabs waylaid the Persian general Rustam and beheaded him and next morning they displayed Rustam’s decapitated head to the shocked Persian army.

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Arabs decimated Persian army when Persian army started retreating at the sight of their commander’s head on a spear. Muslim army followed the Persian army and slaughtered two thirds of them at Qadissiyah. They did not stop but continued to march to the Persian capital Ctesiphon (Teesfoon). The Arabs were not interested in small gains in border war but were intent to bring entire Persia under Islamic rule. Soon Muslim army found the prize – the Persian capital was the first in their path. The Arab hordes started nearing Ctesiphon, the hapless Persian emperor Yazdgard, who had never thought that such a calamity would befall him with the barefooted Muslim Arabs, coming to his doorstep as victors, sent out an emissary to the advancing Arab Muslims. The emissary said:

"Our emperor asks if you would be agreeable to peace on the condition that the Tigris should be the boundary between you and us, so that whatever is with us on the eastern side of the Tigris remains ours and whatever you have gained on the western side is yours. And if this does not satisfy your land hunger, then nothing would satisfy you."

Saad-ibn-Wagas the Arab Muslim Commander-in-Chief told the emissary that the Muslims were not hungry for land; and that they were fighting to convert the Persians to Islam. He added that if the Persian emperor wanted peace it was open to him to accept Islam, or to pay Jizya. If both the alternatives were not acceptable then peace was out of question, and only the sword could decide the issue between them.

Muslims marched in to Ctesiphon and occupied the capital and it’s White Palace of the Persian kings without much resistance. They beheaded the Persian commandant left by the retreating Persian Emperor, and displayed his head to the assembled Persian captives giving them a choice of Islam, or death. This is how the first batch of Zoroastrian Sassanid Persians was converted to Islam.

After the disastrous defeat at Qadsiyah and the occupation of his capital Ctesiphon, the Hapless Persian emperor Yazgard, withdrew to the fortress of Hulwan, from there to Rayy and finally to Merv, near the border of the Persian empire with the domain of the Central Asian Turks, where he died fighting the Muslims in 651 – seventeen years after the Arabs had first attacked Persia. But before this happened, the Persians put up one final major resistance to the Muslims at Nihavend (Nihawand).

Battle of Nihavend

After the disastrous defeat at Qadisiyah, the Persians regrouped under a new Commander-in-Chief named Pirojan. The first step that Pirojan took was to re-organize the Persian army in the light of the foul tactics that the Arabs used. He purged the Persian army of all Arab contingents, and provided the entire Persian army with mail armour. The Persians had a burning desire in them to liberate Persia that was being slowly occupied by the Arabs after their victory at Qadisiyah.

The Persians took the oath by the holy fire that they will die, but not let the Arabs occupy Persia. With this new resolution, the Persians regrouped their forces at Nihavend. When the two armies faced each other, the Persians had taken a vantage position on the slope of a hill. The Arab historians describe the Persian army as a ‘Mountain of Steel’. The determined Persians put up a stiff resistance under the leadership of their general Mardanshah and the Arabs could not make any headway.

The battle of Nihavend was going the way of the Persians and the Arabs faced certain defeat. This was the first day of the Battle. To turn the tide against the Persians, the Arab Muslims decided to use foul play once again.

Earlier Muslims had taken Shahrbanu a child princess of the Persian King Yazdgard, a prisoner, when they captured Ctesiphon, capital of Persia. Shahrbanu was presented as a gift to the Caliph Umar, who in turn gifted her to Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali as maal-e-ganimat (slaves obtained by Muslims after a war). At that time Ali was thirty two years old and he decided to take the three year old child princess as his concubine. In doing this he was following the illustrious footsteps of his father-in-law, Mohammed.

According to Ali’s advice, on the second day Mugheera-ibn-Shu'ba displayed the captured Persian child princess to the assembled Persians and challenged them to come and save her. The astonished Persians took some time to recognize the princess. But once they recognized her as their own princess, they went into frenzy for rescuing her. Against their commanders’ orders the front ranks of the Persian soldiers broke their formation and charged at the Arabs leaving the fortified heights they had occupied on the first day of the war.

Seeing the Persians leaving their fortified unassailable positions, Mugheera ordered his troop to withdraw into a valley and then climb into the hill of the opposite side. The Persians thinking that the Arab Army was retreating with their princess; completely broke their formation to liberate their princess from the clutches of her Arab captors and charged at the Arabs who were feigning to retreat. When the Persians with their heavy armour, reached the lowermost portion of the valley, the Arab with their light cavalry fell upon them from three sides. Weighed down by their armour and being chained to each other, the Persians had little room for manoeuvring in the narrow valley where the Arabs had hemmed them in. After a valiant but futile battle, what followed was a carnage of the Persian army all through the day. By nightfall the remnants of the Persian army retreated in the dark and many of the retreating Persians fell into the steep cliff, behind the hill on which they had assembled to attack the Arabs from the high ground. This way the Arabs could annihilate the Persians once again.

Consolidation

Arabs continue to destroy pockets of Persian resistances. They used all ploys in that direction. Sometimes Arabs won because of their superior military skill. Sometime they won because of their conviction that they are fighting a war of God but most of the time they won by deceit. Islamic deceit made single combat, a Persian practice a deathly trap for Persians.

The Persians, who were one of the first non-Arab people, on whom the Muslims fell upon, had specialized a practice wherein they nurtured champions who were called Hazar Mard (A thousand men), which meant that these champions had the strength of a thousand men and who would fight off a champion from the opposing army to stave off the need for an actual battle. The strongest person from the army would fight the champion of the adversary’s army. The winner’s army would be deemed to have won the battle and the actual battle was not then fought, as both the armies were honour-bound to abide by the result of the duel.

The duel was a test of strength and skill. The opponents were not bound to kill their adversary, but only to defeat him and in most cases the defeated champion was allowed to return to his camp, and his army withdrew thus preventing a battle and saving of many lives. The Persians, the pre-Islamic Turks, the Greeks and Romans had used this practice of single-combat to settle the result of many a battle. This practice was fine as long as both the adversaries were bound by honour.

But with the coming of the Muslims, the single combat became a farce. It was now one more tool to humiliate the enemy and to demoralize them before the actual combat could begin. Even if the Arab Champion was defeated, the Arabs would nevertheless attack the opposing army. And if the Arab champion was victorious, and the opposing army accepted defeat, the Arab Muslims would fall on the retreating opposing army and a carnage would follow. The Arabs never allowed their adversaries to escape by retreating. They found sadistic glee in slaughtering their defeated opponents to the last man. The Persians were the first to bear the brunt of this beastly practice of the Muslim Arabs.

Arab chroniclers have gloated about the heap of bones that marked every encounter of the Persians and the Arabs. At the battle of Al Madain (Ctesiphon) the capital of the Sassanids, Arab chroniclers tell us that a huge camel like Persian champion named Shahryar, challenged the Arabs to a duel of single combat. They refer to him as a camel like man, perhaps since he could have had a protruding lower lip, that would have made his face look like that of a camel which also has a protruding lower lip. This Persian champion had the Arab champion at his mercy and was about to pin him to the ground, when the Arab champion, on realizing that he could only defeat the Persian with foul tactics, bit the Persian’s thumb so hard that he crushed it between his teeth. When the Persian momentarily withdrew writhing in pain, the Arab stabbed him to death. This is one example of how the Arab Muslims used foul tactics  to defeat their adversaries.

Islamization vs Arabization

No wonder after the Battle of Nihavend, the Arabs called the Persians "Ajam" which means retarded. The carnage of Nihavend was the break the back of the Persian resistance to Muslim Arab and the remaining history of Persia is that of Islamization and Arabization. During next hundred years of Umayyad rule, Arabic was the court language. Persian speakers were looked down. At some point of time, persians who could read or write were ruthlessly killed. All previous knowledge, literature and work of art were systematically destroyed. Only illiterate peasants and artisans who had no knowledge of Persian language, history or culture were left behind. Arabs called these Persians speakers ‘Ajam’, it refers to people who are illiterate.

Arabs came to Persia in droves. They also took Persian women as wives or concubines. Arabization of Persia started in full earnest. Persian people were relegated to villages. Those who did not convert had to pay jizya. They were also subjugated to various kinds of discriminations. It included taking away possessions of a Persian at will, abducting women for sex slave, killing or conversion at pain of death. Of course, some Persians were converting to Islam voluntarily; some to achieve official position, some to avoid discrimination and some to join the loot. Even then only 10% of Persian population was Muslim when in 750 A.D., just hundred years after advent of Arabs in Persia, Abbasids ousted Umayyad from Persia. These Abbasids were supported by Persian converts of Islam. In fact Abu Muslim, commandant of Abbasids who defeated the Umayyad army was a recent convert. Abbasid relocated their capital to Bagdad, very near to Persia and were depended on able support of Persian Muslims. These converted Muslims had become staunch Islamist but they retained their love for Persian language and Persian culture. Persian language did not immediately regain its position but it was restored as people’s language while Arabic remained court language. Abbasids continued the policy of persecution of Zoroastrians and other non-Muslim Persians. Islamization of Persians continued under Abbasid rule but Arabization stopped. Slowly Persia became autonomous, sometime independent. Persian rulers preserved their Persian identity and refused to become Arab. Even they continue to cherish faint memory of their pre-Muslim past that was captured by poets, historians and bards in their works, of which Firdawsi’s Shah-nameh is the most famous example. Ferdowsi was the one who started all this by writing a book in which he used the minimum number of Arabic words. And now there is no Iranian who has never read a single story of Shahnama.

Slowly Persia converted to Islam. By the end of tenth century Persia was almost 100% Muslim. Persia once again became an independent state in 1501 by the Safavid dynasty which also made Shia Islam as the official religion of their empire. This caused breaking away of Persia from Arab domain as Arabs mostly follow Sunni sect of Islam and considers Shia sect as apostate. Persia did not become Arab unlike Syria, Iraq, Egypt and several other states of North Africa. Persia could retain its identity despite being the first country which fell to Arab Muslims because of following reasons
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Language is the first factor: the languages spoken in Syria and Egypt were of the same Semitic-Hamitic branch as that of Arabic. So it was easier for the locals there to pick up Arabic, probably starting with an intermediate phase of mixing their language with Arabic, before emerging at the other end a few generations later with more or less full blown Arabic. Persian on the other hand is of the Indo-European linguistic branch, so it would have taken a complete displacement of the local language by the Arabs - something that didn’t happen.

Settlement is another factor. In Syria, there was already a significant Arab presence on the marshes - there were even Arab client states there - before Islam. Indeed, the Syrian Desert and scrub lands are part and parcel of the Arabian plateau - the homeland of the Arab tribes. After the Arab conquests, it was relatively easy for the Arabs of the border marches to move to the centre - which happened when the Umayyad relocated the seat of the Islamic Caliphate to Damascus. And relocating the seat of power of an Arab dominated empire to Syria naturally drew many Arab settlers there.

Egypt also saw significant Arab settlement, both as a regional base for the Islamic empire in Africa, attracting many Arab soldiers and their families, and over the centuries, entire Arab tribes migrated en masse from Arabia to Egypt. Persia on the other hand was not settled by the Arabs to the same extent. The Arabs who did settle frequently ended up being Persianized by the locals, rather than Arabizing them.

Strength of Identity was yet another factor. By the time of the Arab conquests, Egypt was already over a millennium removed from when it had last been an independent country. The Egypt, conquered by the Arabs was not the Egypt of the Pharaohs. It had been conquered and ruled since by Libyans, Persians, Macedonians, Romans, and Greeks/ Byzantines, and the locals had adapted to each wave of rulers. They adapted to the Arabs in turn. Syria, likewise, had been conquered and ruled by various empires, and the locals adapted to each. The Arabs were just another wave - just one that never left.

Persia on the other hand, apart from the stretch between conquest of Alexander the Great and the rise of the Parthians, had remained independent and thus had a stronger identity which proved more resilient and resistant to full absorption into the culture of the Arab conquerors.

Coming of Persian Dynasties Moreover, the era of living directly under the Arab conquerors proved relatively brief. Within hundred years, the Abbasids defeated the Umayyads and brought converted Persian officials for administrative jobs who wielded considerable power within the Caliphate. Later Persian strongmen regained a measure of local independence in the Persian heartland, starting from semi independent seats of power to their own mini dynasties. Those Persian figures were thus in a position to kick start a revival of Persian culture by acting as patrons for Persian writers and poets.

Lastly Persians accepted Islam more easily, worked on it; even revitalizing it. Persians contributed immensely to Islamic culture and even Arabic language. This allowed them to preserve their own language and culture. On the other hand Christians in Egypt and Syria refused to accept Islam and remained as Dhimmi. They slowly lost their land, property and women to the Arabs and reduced to small number whereupon they accepted language and culture of the masters. They lost everything but preserved their religion till date while Persians preserved everything but their religion.  

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