The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran Tradition, Memory, and Conversion by DR Sarah Bowen Savant

The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran
Tradition, Memory, and Conversion
How do converts to a religion come to feel an attachment to it? The

New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran answers this important question
for Iran by focusing on the role of memory and its revision and erasure
in the ninth to eleventh centuries CE. During this period, the descen-
dants of the Persian imperial, religious, and historiographical tradi-
tions not only wrote themselves into starkly different early Arabic and
Islamic accounts of the past but also systematically suppressed much
knowledge about pre-Islamic history. The result was both a new “Per-
sian” ethnic identity and the pairing of Islam with other loyalties and
affiliations, including family, locale, and sect. This pioneering study
examines revisions to memory in a wide range of cases, from Iran’s
imperial and administrative heritage to the Prophet Muh.ammad’s stal-
wart Persian companion, Salmān al-Fārisı̄, and to memory of Iranian
scholars, soldiers, and rulers in the mid-seventh century. Through these
renegotiations, Iranians developed a sense of Islam as an authentically
Iranian religion, as they simultaneously shaped the broader histori-
ographic tradition in Arabic and Persian.
Sarah Bowen Savant is a historian of religion and an Associate Professor

at the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisa-
tions in London. Her publications include Genealogy and Knowledge
in Muslim Societies: Understanding the Past (2013), co-edited with
Helena de Felipe, as well as book chapters and journal articles treating
early Islamic history and historiography.
Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization
Editorial Board
David O. Morgan, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison
(general editor)
Shahab Ahmed, Harvard University
Virginia Aksan, McMaster University
Michael Cook, Princeton University
Peter Jackson, Keele University
Chase F. Robinson, The Graduate Center, The City University of
New York
Published titles are listed at the back of the book.

The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran
Tradition, Memory, and Conversion
SARAH BOWEN SAVANT

Aga Khan University
Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107014084

C Sarah Bowen Savant 2013
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2013
Printed in the United States of America
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Savant, Sarah Bowen.
The new Muslims of post-conquest Iran : tradition, memory, and conversion / Sarah
Bowen Savant, Aga Khan University.
pages cm – (Cambridge studies in Islamic civilization)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-107-01408-4 (hard covers)
1. Islam – Iran – History. 2. Conversion – Islam – History. I. Title.
BP63.I68S28 2013
297.0955–dc23 2013012348
ISBN 978-1-107-01408-4 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs
for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not
guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents
Illustrations page ix
Maps xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
part i traditions for remembering

1. Prior Connections to Islam 31
2. Muh.ammad’s Persian Companion, Salmān al-Fārisı̄ 61
3. Finding Meaning in the Past 90
part ii traditions for forgetting

4. Reforming Iranians’ Memories of Pre-Islamic Times 137
5. The Unhappy Prophet 170
6. Asserting the End of the Past 198
Conclusion 230
Bibliography 237
Index 269
vii
Illustrations
0.1. Relief figure of an individual dressed in a kaftan page xxii

0.2. Throne Hall, Persepolis 8
0.3. Bowl with Arabic inscription, “He who multiplies his
words, multiplies his worthlessness” 23
1.1. Ādur Gushnasp 56
2.1. The capture of Is.fahān 74
3.1. Shahrbānū 103
4.1. Ahriman tempts Mishyana 142
5.1. Drachma of Queen Būrān 192
6.1. The battle of al-Qādisiyya 199
6.2. Tomb of Daniel at Susa (Sūs) 208
6.3. Vahrām (Bahrām) VI 218
ix
Maps
0.1. The Great Empires on the Eve of the Arab Conquests page xix
0.2. Historical Iran xx
1.1. Fārs 58
3.1. Jurjān 110
3.2. Sı̄stān 116
4.1. Jibāl (Media) 152
xi
Preface
For the period of this study, the primary language of our written sources
is Arabic. I follow the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies’
(IJMES) transliteration system for Arabic; accordingly, I do not indicate
final tāʾ marbut.a or distinguish between alif mamdūda and alif maqs.ūra.
Technical terms and place names used in English appear without trans-
literation (e.g., vizier, Baghdad), as do Anglicized derivatives of Arabic
words and dynasties (e.g., ʿAjam, ʿAbbasid). From the fourth/tenth cen-
tury onward, a few, albeit culturally significant, Persian sources enter
circulation, with more in the centuries that follow. My transliteration of
Persian texts generally reflects that of IJMES, but where Persian words
appear in Arabic texts, I give priority to Arabic transliteration. I hope I
will be forgiven for this choice by Persianists, and by all for any incon-
sistencies.
For the Qurʾan, I draw primarily on the English translation by Alan
Jones (Cambridge: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2007).
For dates, I generally use those in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd
ed.; Encyclopaedia Iranica; and Tarif Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought
in the Classical Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),
235–42.
xiii
Acknowledgments
Although this book is not a revision of my Ph.D. dissertation (which I

now see as heavily circumscribed by time and circumstance), the seeds
for it were first planted while I was a Ph.D. student, so I would like
to start by acknowledging with gratitude the insights and guidance of
Roy Mottahedeh at Harvard, without whom this study would never
have been conceived. At Harvard, I also benefited from the advice of
William Graham, Wolfhart Heinrichs, and Charles Hallisey, among other
members of the faculty, and the fruitful companionship of fellow students
who remain important interlocutors and among whom I would single out
Kristen Stilt, Raquel Ukeles, Joseph Saleh, Greg White, Christian Lange,
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, and Bruce Fudge. At an early stage, I also profited
from reading courses with Ahmad Mahdavi-Damghani. Harvard, the
Fulbright-Hays Commission, and the Social Science Research Council
funded work on the Arabic sources in Egypt with two extraordinarily
helpful teachers from Cairo University, Rida al-ʿArabi and ʿAbd al-Hamid
Madkour. The University of California, Berkeley, was a second home to
me for much of the dissertation-writing process as well as afterward, when
I was a Sultan post-doctoral Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern
Studies. John Hayes, Emily Gottreich, Nezar AlSayyad, Wali Ahmadi,
James Monroe, and Fred Astren welcomed me and offered key expertise
and friendship. It was at Berkeley that this book began to take shape.
The more recent environment in which it developed was London, and
its progress was helped by the opportunities I have had since joining the
faculty of the newly established Institute for the Study of Muslim Civi-
lisations of the Aga Khan University. Abdou Filali-Ansary, the Institute’s
founding director, and Farouk Topan, its director since 2009, deserve
xv
xvi Acknowledgments
special mention, as do now five cohorts of our students from across

the globe who have sensitized me to the ways in which early Islamic
history can today be interpreted in different Muslim-majority contexts.
At an early and critical stage, I benefited from stimulating conversations
with colleagues, including Stefan Weber, now of the Pergamonmuseum in
Berlin. Rebecca Williamson aided me with research for an important year,
which freed me to read widely and to think. Fasih Khan has throughout
provided unstinting support in all matters technical, and likewise, in
our library, Waseem Farooq, Jessica Lindner, Walid Ghali, and Shah
Hussain. The U.K. has generally proved an exciting environment for work
on historiography. I have particularly benefited from collaboration with
Konrad Hirschler and James McDougall in a now annual workshop on
“Arabic Pasts: Histories and Historiography.” Hugh Kennedy, an early
supporter of “Arabic Pasts,” has been a generous friend and commentator
on my work.
Several parts of this study have been presented in public talks and
at conferences, and I would like to thank these audiences. Comparative
Islamic Studies has kindly permitted me to reproduce in Chapter One
material from my 2006 article, “Isaac as the Persians’ Ishmael: Pride and
the Pre-Islamic Past in Ninth and Tenth-Century Islam,” Comparative
Islamic Studies 2, no. 1 (2006): 5–25, C Equinox Publishing Ltd 2006.
I would like to thank Annales Islamologiques for permission to use in

the Introduction a few paragraphs from my article “‘Persians’ in Early
Islam,” Annales Islamologiques 42 (2008): 73–91, in which I explored
ideas relating to Persians, memory, and forgetting.
Many friends read drafts at various stages of the project. Dealing with
a significant variety of fields, genres, and languages was a risky endeavor
requiring some familiarity with a wide range of specialist scholarship. I
have often drawn on the expertise and guidance of others, who should
not, however, be held responsible for the book’s shortcomings. I would
like to thank in particular Zayde Gordon Antrim, Fred Astren, Patri-
cia Crone, Touraj Daryaee, Robert Gleave, Mohammadreza Hashemi-
taba, John Hayes, Stefan Heidemann, Karim Javan, Wadad Kadi, Aptin
Khanbaghi, Majid Montazer Mahdi, Raffaele Mauriello, Christopher
Melchert, John Nawas, Farid Panjwani, Richard Payne, Parvaneh Pour-
shariati, Kathryn Spellman Poots, Khodadad Rezakhani, Andrew Rippin,
Fatemeh Shams-Esmaeli, Maria Subtelny, and Raquel Ukeles. Antoine
Borrut, Peter Webb, Philip Wood, and Travis Zadeh have especially
enriched this study through fruitful discussions about Arabs, Persians,
memory, narrative, and historiography and through their insightful feed-
back on the entirety of the manuscript.
Acknowledgments xvii
Marigold Acland of Cambridge University Press supported this proj-

ect at an early stage and throughout. I also thank William Hammell, Joy
Mizan, Sarika Narula, and the editorial staff at Cambridge. John Tall-
madge provided critical early advice on writing, and Hanna Siurua helped
me to shape the manuscript into its final form. Joe LeMonnier created
the maps. Cambridge’s anonymous reviewers offered encouragement and
constructive criticism, which I have accepted gratefully.
Finally, I would like to thank my family: my parents, William and
Susan Bowen, and sister, Julia Bowen, and numerous in-laws and “out-
laws,” especially John Joseph Savant and Stephanie Murphy. Above all, I
thank John Paul, Johnny, Leila, and Julian, who have provided important
perspective on life as on work; to them I gratefully dedicate this study.
map 0.1. The Great Empires on the Eve of the Arab Conquests
map 0.2. Historical Iran
figure 0.1. Relief figure of an individual dressed in a kaftan. Nizamabad (south-
east of Tehran), Iran, seventh–early eighth century. C Museum für Islamische
Kunst, Berlin State Museums. Photo by I. Geske. (Inv. no. I.4591b.)
Introduction
Worries were at my stopping place, so I turned

my sturdy she-camel toward the White Palace of al-Madāʾin.
Consoling myself with good fortune, and sorrowing
at the traces of the camp of the clan of Sāsān.
Successive afflictions reminded me of them;
incidents make one remember, make one forget.
al-Buh.turı̄ (d. 284/897)1
Amid the alluvial flatlands east of the Tigris River in Iraq stands a great
hulk of a ruin known as the Arch of Khusraw, or to Iranians today as the
Tāq-i Kisrā. When Robert Mignan, in the service of the East India Com-
pany, came upon the “Tauk Kesra” in 1827, he described “a magnificent
monument of antiquity, surprising the spectator with the perfect state of
its preservation, after having braved the warring elements for so many
ages; without an emblem to throw any light upon its history; without
proof, or character to be traced on any brick or wall.” Mignan noted
that “the natives of this country assert” that “the ruins are of the age
of Nimrod,” a conclusion that he seems to have found credible.2 In the
1 This qas.ı̄da is widely repeated in Arabic sources. The lines featured here follow the recen-
sion provided by A. J. Arberry in his Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1965), 72–81 (no. 11); they are translated by Richard A.
Serrano in “Al-Buh.turı̄’s Poetics of Persian Abodes,” Journal of Arabic Literature 28,
no. 1 (1997): 79–80 (lines 11–13). See also al-Buh.turı̄’s dı̄wān in the edition of H . asan
Kāmil al-S.ayrafı̄, 5 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1963–8), 2:1152–62 (no. 470).
2 Robert Mignan, Travels in Chaldæa, including a Journey from Bussorah to Bagdad,
Hillah, and Babylon, Performed on Foot in 1827: With Observations on the Sites and
Remains of Babel, Seleucia, and Ctesiphon (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley,
1829), 71 and 73.
1
2 The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European travelers who came upon

the mysterious site assumed the majestic arch and the large columned
structure flanking it to be a temple of the sun, or else the work of a
Roman emperor.3 But while the Tāq-i Kisrā was built on the remnants of
past civilizations, the history of the site was much more recent, belonging
to the Sasanian period and the environs of Ctesiphon, when, within the
residential district of Asbānbar, it had served as the throne hall of a palace
possibly built by Khusraw Anūshirvān (r. 531–79 CE).4
The Arab invasion of Iraq in the 630s initiated a new phase in the
area’s history, ultimately resulting in the fall of the Sasanian dynasty and
the conquest of Iran, and so Ctesiphon and its monuments were eclipsed.
The entire area straddling the Tigris became an Arab-Muslim settlement,
which the Arabs called al-Madāʾin (Arabic for “the cities”). In the centu-
ries that followed, they dismantled its buildings in order to construct new
ones in Kufa and Baghdad. But even as they removed vestiges of the Sa-
sanian architecture, they began the long process of memorializing the site.
On the night of the Prophet Muh.ammad’s birth, according to one report,
the battlements of the Tāq-i Kisrā shook so hard that fourteen of them
collapsed. At the same moment, for the first time in a thousand years, the
Zoroastrians’ sacred fire in Fārs (Is.t.akhr) died out. According to another
account, when the Arabs’ conquering hero, Saʿd b. Abı̄ Waqqās., entered
the Tāq-i Kisrā he performed the special “prayer of conquest” (s.alāt al-
fath.) that Muh.ammad had performed on entering Mecca.5 Afterward,
al-Madāʾin was governed by Salmān al-Fārisı̄ (Salmān “the Persian”), a
companion of Muh.ammad. There were also tales of spoils so magnificent
that antiquities dealers today still hunt for treasures from Ctesiphon.
The Line of Enquiry

The story of Islam’s spread beyond Arabia is central to every general
history of the faith and of Muslim civilizations, and to understanding
the shape of the Muslim world today. Whereas the early community
3 Oscar Reuther, “The German Excavations at Ctesiphon,” Antiquity 3, no. 12 (1929):

440 and 447.
4 Regarding his role, see esp. the doubts expressed by E. J. Keall, “Ayvān-e Kesrā (or T.āq-e
Kesrā),” in EIr. Kisrā is the Arabized form of the Middle Persian xusrō and the new
Persian Khusraw.
5 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, ed. M. J. de Goeje et al., 15 vols. in 3 series
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1879–1901), ser. I, 981 and 2443. Subsequent references to this work
give the series and page number of the citation.
Introduction 3
was based on a small, tribal, Arabian elite, Islam quickly spread beyond
this narrow group and was woven into the fabric of innumerable local
contexts. Today, although adherents still acknowledge the importance of
the Arabian origins of their religion, Islam commands the loyalty of people
of virtually every nationality and is the dominant religion in some of the
world’s most culturally and socially dynamic regions. About 98 percent
of Iran’s nearly seventy million people are Muslim; Zoroastrianism, the
Sasanian state religion, claims adherents only in the tens of thousands.
One of the most important questions relating to the success of Islam
worldwide is how loyalty has been fostered among the newly converted.
In particular, how have they come to feel a sense of belonging to a Muslim
community? This study addresses questions of loyalty and belonging in
relation to Iran’s Persians of the third/ninth to fifth/eleventh centuries,
who represented the first large group of non-Arab converts to Islam.
It does so by showing how the post-conquest descendants of the Persian
imperial, religious, and historiographical traditions wrote themselves into
starkly different early Arabic and Islamic accounts of the past. Although
they soon developed a sense that Islam was as much an Iranian religion as
it was an Arab one, nothing guaranteed that Islam would succeed among
them, especially in the ways that it did.
The book addresses the issue of loyalty and belonging from the twin
angles of tradition and memory. For groups, as for individuals, loyalty and
a sense of belonging depend on how they make sense of the past, including
their origins, their ancestry, and the achievements of previous generations.
The past helps inform and stabilize group identity, particularly during
times of political, cultural, or social change. Conversion to Islam led
Iranians to recall their past in new ways and to accumulate new memories
about their history. Despite the complexity of this process, one can trace
its broad outlines by examining the deep currents of Arabic texts that
circulated in the third/ninth to fifth/eleventh centuries, including not only
works of local, regional, and universal history, but also biographical
dictionaries, geographies, works of belles-lettres (adab), and “religious”
texts such as Qurʾan commentaries, collections of and commentaries
on Prophetic Hadith, and works of jurisprudence. These Arabic works
represented only the first phase in Iran’s rewriting of its past, a process
that continued with the subsequent development of Persian letters from
the fourth/tenth century onward.
The terms “tradition” and “memory” are central to the book and
enable it to draw on a broad body of work that has developed largely
outside Arabic, Islamic, and Iranian Studies and that treats memory as
integral to processes of cultural and social change. By “tradition” I mean

reports handed down about the past in whatever form, including but not
limited to the conventional Prophetic traditions and historical reports
known as Hadith and akhbār (sing. khabar). I treat transmission as evi-
dence of the fostering of shared memories. Traditions, like objects, patterns
of action, and ways of thinking, are reproduced and disseminated, and
they frequently exhibit differences that suggest adaptation and therefore
interpretation. I label those who transmit them “traditionists,” whatever
other affiliations they may have had.6 The concept of memory, on the
other hand, draws attention to the power of traditions to affect individu-
als and collectivities. As a tradition accumulates weight and authority, it
shapes collective agreements about the past, thereby creating memories.
These collective agreements are deeply held by groups and the individuals
within them, but they can also be opposed, changed, and otherwise sub-
jected to negotiation, especially by the people who consider them to rep-
resent “their” past: the descendants of the actors in the story, the residents
of the country where the events took place, and the present-day believers.
The period under principal consideration here witnessed great creativ-
ity in the fashioning and circulation of traditions about the founding
moments of Islam in Iran. This was when Iran’s urban elite classes likely
converted to Islam, as Richard Bulliet observed more than thirty years
ago. Bulliet based his conclusions for Iran chiefly on biographical diction-
aries composed for Is.fahān and Nı̄shāpūr, thriving cities in central and
northeastern Iran.7 In adopting a quantitative methodology for the study
of conversion across the Middle East (with prominent attention to Iran),
he noted:
6 This expansive notion of tradition follows especially Edward Shils, Tradition (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981).
7 Bulliet found that the “basic conversion process” in Iran was completed by 400 AH
(1010 CE), leaving about 20 percent of the population “adamant non-Muslims, whose
number was reduced only very slowly” afterward; Richard W. Bulliet, Conversion to
Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 1979), esp. 18–19 and 43. Jamsheed Choksy has hypothesized that
urban Zoroastrians adopted Islam between the eighth and tenth centuries CE, whereas the
countryside saw an accelerating wave of conversion from the tenth through the thirteenth
centuries. See Jamsheed K. Choksy, Conflict and Cooperation: Zoroastrian Subalterns
and Muslim Elites in Medieval Iranian Society (New York: Columbia University Press,
1997), 106–7. But see also the critique of such periodizations by Michael G. Morony,
“The Age of Conversions: A Reassessment,” in Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous
Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Michael
Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi, 135–50 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1990).
Introduction 5
The great conversion experience that fundamentally changed world history by

uniting the peoples of the Middle East in a new religion has had few mod-
ern chroniclers, the reason being that conversion plays so slight a role in the
narratives of medieval chroniclers. Without data it is difficult to write history,
and medieval Islam produced no missionaries, bishops, baptismal rites, or other
indicators of conversion that could be conveniently recorded by the Muslim
chronicler.8
What has not been duly appreciated, however, is that in writing about
history – including their history before the conquests – Muslims were
engaged in an effort to make sense of Islam in the changing and multi-
religious communities in which they lived. Conversion is more than a
background context for traditions; it is often a point of concern. This is
the case even though, as a whole, narrators of traditions generally refer
only obliquely to conversion itself and represent themselves as speaking
exclusively to other committed Muslims.
Iran in the First Centuries of Islam

In terms of historical background, the following summary will be useful
for readers new to Islamic or Iranian history. It represents something of a
standard narrative and chronology of the first centuries of Islam, though
readers should also be aware that some of its points have been subject
to vigorous debates and skepticism among historians.9 It is commonly
thought that Muh.ammad was born in or about 570 CE in the town of
Mecca in the western Arabian region of the H . ijāz. From around 610,
Muh.ammad developed a conviction that he had been specially selected
by God and began to gather a small group of followers.10 At intervals,
he recited passages that, he said, were a revelation from God and formed
a corpus called the Qurʾan, and which gave confidence and guidance to
his followers. Facing opposition in Mecca, in 622 Muh.ammad formed
a new community in Medina – the moment that traditionally marks the
8 Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, 4.

9 Regarding what follows, see esp. Chase F. Robinson, “The Rise of Islam,” in The New
Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1, The Formation of the Islamic World, Sixth to
Eleventh Centuries, edited by Chase F. Robinson, 173–225 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), and Elton L. Daniel, “The Islamic East,” in the same volume,
448–505 (he treats Iran’s conversion on pp. 463–6).
10 As an example of skepticism, see Lawrence I. Conrad’s arguments regarding these dates;
“Abraha and Muh.ammad: Some Observations Apropos of Chronology and Literary
Topoi in the Early Arabic Historical Tradition,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies 50, no. 2 (1987): 225–40.
beginning of the Islamic (hijri) calendar. Over the second half of the
620s, he gained the support of many Arab tribal groups as he consol-
idated his authority in Medina and then fixed his attention on Mecca,
which he conquered about two and a half years before his death in
11 AH/632 CE. His followers were known collectively as companions
(s.ah.āba) and were divided into two groups: the Muhājirūn (emigrants
from Mecca) and the Ans.ār (helpers), those Medinans who supported
him. After Muh.ammad’s death the Muslims engaged in military cam-
paigns so extensive that, within twenty years, they had brought down the
Sasanian Empire, which stretched from Iraq to Marw in modern Turk-
menistan. Arabs settled in cities such as Hamadhān, Rayy, and Nı̄shāpūr,
building their own quarters with palaces, mosques, and gardens. Several
former villages, such as Qum, became cities as a result of such settlement,
but many territories, protected by mountains and deserts, remained be-
yond the reach of the Arabs’ armies.11 The Byzantine Empire, mean-
while, had controlled the eastern remnants of the Roman Empire, but
Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa fell quickly to the Arabs, with
the net result that the Arabs acquired control over approximately half of
the former territory of Byzantium.
In the emerging empire, after the first four successors to Muh.ammad
rule passed down along dynastic lines, first among the Umayyads in
Syria (r. 41–132/661–750), and after 132/750, among the Iraq-based
ʿAbbasids, who descended from the Prophet’s uncle, ʿAbbās. The early
ʿAbbasid period is often depicted as a golden age (as in the stories from the
Arabian Nights), when caliphs ruled with the assistance of their able Per-
sian viziers. Yet for all its strengths, by the second half of the third/ninth
century, the ʿAbbasid state had begun to show weakness. In Baghdad,
the caliphs subsequently fell under the control of Buyid (r. 334–447/945–
1055) and Seljuk (447–547/1055–1152) amirs and sultans, the Buyids
hailing from the Caspian region of Daylam and the Seljuks from the
steppes north of the Caspian and Aral seas. While the caliphs retained
nominal sovereignty, Iran and the central and eastern stretches of the
empire came under the rule of these de facto rulers, as well as of other
dynasties who at various times controlled portions of the ʿAbbasid realm:
the Samanids (204–395/819–1005), the Saffarids (247–393/861–1003),
11 On the persistence of belief systems in rural Iran after the conquests, see now Patricia
Crone, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastri-
anism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Introduction 7
and the Ghaznavids (366–582/977–1186), to name but three.12 While

our earliest extant narrative sources were written in ʿAbbasid Iraq at the
height of its glory through the first half of the third/ninth century, a real lit-
erary outpouring took place later, often exhibiting different perspectives,
when the caliphs were weak and Iranian and Central Asian rulers patron-
ized scholarship and learning. Throughout the period, Arabic functioned
as the language of elites much as Latin did in the premodern West. Even
local Iranian histories of the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, for
example, tended to be written in Arabic (though in some cases they were
later translated into Persian).
Coins give a sense of the cultural confidence and political will of Ira-
nians from the mid-fourth/tenth century onward. The Caliph ʿAbd al-
Malik (r. 65–86/685–705) and his successors had made sure that Arabic
epigraphy distinguished the caliphate’s gold and silver coins from those
of its predecessors and current neighbors. However, semi-independent
or autonomous governors, such as the Buyids, struck coins with their
personal names, which were often of ancient Persian derivation.13 When
Ah.mad b. Buwayh (d. 355/967) became commander of the caliph’s armies
in 334/945, he quickly usurped the caliph’s authority: he and his Buyid
successors adopted lofty titles, including shāhān-shāh (“king of kings”);
had their names read out in the sermon (khut.ba) of the weekly com-
munal prayer, traditionally a caliphal prerogative; and inscribed their
names on coins. The Buyids drew on the iconography of earlier days and
reemployed the Pahlavi script in coins minted and presented to digni-
taries on special occasions across their domains.14 The ʿAbbasids could
12 There had been Iranian “statelets” throughout the early Islamic period, but these had
existed on the fringes of the empire, in territories that were hard to reach and offered
little material reward to the ʿAbbasid state. For a useful summary of this situation, see
Hugh Kennedy, “Survival of Iranianness,” in The Idea of Iran, vol. 4, The Rise of Islam,
ed. Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart, 13–29 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009).
13 Regarding the extensive use of Persian names, see esp. Vladimir N. Nastich, “Per-
sian Legends on Islamic Coins: From Traditional Arabic to the Challenge of Lead-
ership,” in The 2nd Simone Assemani Symposium on Islamic Coins, ed. Bruno
Callagher and Arianna D’Ottone, 165–90 (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste,
2010).
14 Regarding the Buyids, see esp. Mehdi Bahrami, “A Gold Medal in the Freer Gallery of
Art,” in Archaeologica Orientalia in Memoriam Ernst Herzfeld, ed. George C. Miles,
5–21 (Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1952); Wilferd Madelung, “The Assumption of
the Title Shāhānshāh by the Būyids and ‘the Reign of the Daylam (Dawlat al-Daylam),’”
Journal of Near Eastern Studies 28, no. 2 (1969): 84–108; John J. Donohue, “Three
Buwayhid Inscriptions,” Arabica 20, no. 1 (1973): 74–80 and idem, The Buwayhid
figure 0.2. Persepolis (Iran), Throne Hall, standing figures drawn from rock
reliefs depicting representatives of the nations of the Empire “supporting the
throne,” 1903–1936. Ernst Herzfeld Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M.
Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Gift of Ernst
Herzfeld, 1946. Drawing by Ernst Herzfeld (D-903a).
do little as pre-Islamic symbols such as Sasanian winged crowns entered

the larger currency system, although there were protests. The great jurist
and caliphal adviser al-Māwardı̄ (d. 450/1058), for example, reportedly
once declared a legal opinion ( fatwā) against the Buyid ruler Jalāl al-
Dawla, who in 429/1037–8 demanded from the reigning caliph, al-Qāʾim
(r. 422–67/1031–75), the right to the Arabic title malik al-mulūk (“king
of kings”).15
The term “Persia” was used in Achaemenid (559–330 BCE) and
Sasanian (224–651 CE) times to refer both to the ethnic homeland of a
“Persian” ethnic group in southwestern Iran and to the vast lands under
the imperial control and cultural influence of this people following its
Dynasty in Iraq, 334H./945 to 403H./1012: Shaping Institutions for the Future (Leiden:
Brill, 2003); Luke Treadwell, Buyid Coinage: A Die Corpus (322–445 A.H.) (Oxford:
Ashmolean Museum Oxford, 2001), xv–xvii; and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh, “The Idea
of Iran in the Buyid Dominions,” in The Idea of Iran, vol. 5, Early Islamic Iran, ed.
Edmund Herzig and Sarah Stewart, 153–60 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012).
15 Al-Māwardı̄ declared the fatwa in 429/1037–8; see ʿIzz al-Dı̄n b. al-Athı̄r, al-Kāmil fı̄
al-taʾrı̄kh, ed. C. J. Tornberg, 15 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1851–76), 9:312–13; also, C.
Brockelmann, “al-Māwardı̄,” in EI2 and K. V. Zetterstéen, “Djalal al-Dawla,” in EI2 .
Ibn al-Athı̄r’s citation of the title as malik al-mulūk rather than shāhān-shāh (as stated
by Brockelmann) is noteworthy.
Introduction 9
dispersal.16 Scholars have traced the ambiguous usage of the geograph-

ical term “Persia” in early Islam to this prior, pre-Islamic ambiguity.17
In early Arabic sources, one can thus find the term Fārs/Fāris applied both
in the narrow sense to a specific province, particularly by geographers,
and in wider senses to refer to a territory that includes the province but
exceeds it. Likewise, the term ahl Fārs/Fāris (or sometimes just Fāris)
may denote either a “Persian” people sharing a culture and a sense of
historical community, in general, or the people of the province of Persia
in particular, whereas the much more common term al-Furs most often
refers to a people not limited to a province.18 By contrast, the idea of
Iran (Middle Persian, Ērān) has quite a different sense and history, and
the term “Iran” had only limited usage in the period of this study. In the
late 1980s, Gherardo Gnoli initiated reconsideration of this term and its
associations with the argument that a notion of Iran reached a point of
clarity only at the beginning of the Sasanian period, when it was part of
a program that included among its elements an appeal to Achaemenid
origins.19 Accordingly, the Sasanians introduced the Middle Persian title
of shāhān-shāh Ērān and invented the idea of Ērān-shahr, the “domain of
the Iranians,” to refer to their realm; the term was subsequently used as
part of state propaganda.20 Sasanian titles made extensive use of the name
16 The “Persian” rulers of both the Achaemenid and the Sasanian empires established
imperial centers outside of Fārs, including Susa (Achaemenids) and Ctesiphon (Sasani-
ans).
17 “The confusion between the two senses of the word was continuous, fueled by the Greeks
who used the name Persai to designate the entire empire. It lasted through the centuries
of Arab domination, as Fārs, the term used by Muslims, was merely the Arabicized
version of the initial name.” Xavier de Planhol, “Fārs i. Geography,” in EIr. Cf. David
Morgan, Medieval Persia, 1040–1797 (London: Longman, 1988), 1–2, and Edward G.
Browne, A Literary History of Persia, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1928), 1:4–5.
. asan al-Masʿūdı̄, Kitāb al-Tanbı̄h wa-l-ishrāf, ed. Michael J. de Goeje
18 See, e.g., Abū al-H
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1893), 77–8, where al-Masʿūdı̄ includes in the land of the Persians
Fārs as a province (quite far down his list), as well as other regions and towns, including
Nı̄shāpūr, Herat, and Marw in Khurāsān. Al-Masʿūdı̄ describes seven original nations
(umam), including the Persians, al-Furs. The term al-ʿAjam is sometimes also used
synonymously with “Persians”; see C. E. Bosworth, “ʿAjam,” in EIr, and Jan Retsö,
The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads (London:
RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), 24–8. Writers also appear to use the term al-ʿAjam to avoid
the ethnic sense of “Persians” (a good example being Abū H . anı̄fa al-Dı̄nawarı̄, d. ca.
281 or 282/894–5, in his al-Akhbār al-t.iwāl, discussed in Chapters 3 and 4).
19 Gherardo Gnoli, The Idea of Iran: An Essay on Its Origin (Rome: Istituto italiano per il
Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1989), 178.
20 Gnoli argues that “This new title had a very important value insofar as, in its adoption
by Ardaxšı̄r and his successors, we can actually detect the birth of the very idea of Iran in
Ērān, and it was also used as part of personal names.21 Since Gnoli (and,
indeed, before him as well), many scholars both inside and outside of
Iran have undertaken studies that consider the meaning and significance
of “Iran” as a focus of “national” loyalties from Sasanian on through to
modern times. As with many studies of other, modern nationalities, opin-
ions are deeply divided, with some scholars viewing identification with
Iran as reaching back into the distant primordial Avestan, Achaemenid,
or Sasanian past, while others argue for the modernity of Iranian national
sentiment.22
In contrast to the Sasanian period, and at variance with the situation
today, we find early Islam to be the era of Persia and Persians.23 Muslims
its political, cultural and religious meaning. He who coined that title wanted to refer to
the arya and Zoroastrian tradition so as to cement his politics and to differentiate them
from those of his hated predecessors.” Gnoli describes Ērān-shahr as “something new,
though in the guise of a venerable tradition,” and invokes Eric Hobsbawm and Terence
Ranger’s notion of the “invention” of tradition. Gnoli, Idea of Iran, 138, 139, and
177; Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983).
21 Gnoli, Idea of Iran, 130. Cf. Arthur Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sassanides (Copenhagen:
Levin & Munksgaard, 1936), esp. 108ff., 214–15, 416, and 513ff.
22 The bibliography on this subject is extensive; see especially Mostafa Vaziri, Iran as Ima-
gined Nation: The Construction of National Identity (New York: Paragon House, 1993);
Afshin Marashi, Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870–1940 (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2008); Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Historiography
and Crafting Iranian National Identity,” in Iran in the 20th Century: Historiography
and Political Culture, ed. Touraj Atabaki, 5–21 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), and in the
same volume, Afshin Marashi, “The Nation’s Poet: Ferdowsi and the Iranian National
Imagination,” 93–111; and Abbas Amanat and Farzin Vejdani, Iran Facing Others:
Identity Boundaries in a Historical Perspective (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
See also the series published by I. B. Tauris in association with the London Middle East
Institute at SOAS and the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, The Idea of
Iran, including vol. 4, The Rise of Islam, ed. Curtis and Stewart (2009), and vol. 5, Early
Islamic Iran, ed. Herzig and Stewart (2012). Regarding Ērān as a focus for Zoroastrian
religious loyalties in the Sasanian period, see vol. 3, The Sasanian Era, ed. Curtis and
Stewart, and especially the chapter by Shaul Shaked, “Religion in the Late Sasanian
Period: Eran, Aneran, and Other Religious Designations,” pp. 103–17.
23 A strain of recent scholarship relating to Iran has sought to limit strictly the size of
the social group called Persians in early Islam, with the argument that early Muslim
sources, when they refer to al-Furs, err by confusing the people of a part of Iran,
that is, Fārs, for the entirety of the Iranian population. See, for example, Choksy,
Conflict and Cooperation, 8–9. Considering that early Muslims, including Iranians,
themselves used the term “Persians,” such scholarship risks favoring a hypostatized
notion of Iranians. One can refer to Iranians, but with the acknowledgment that this
was not the primary category employed in early Muslim sources. For the term “Iran”
in later centuries, however, see esp. Dorothea Krawulsky, Īrān, das Reich der Īlḫāne:
Eine topographisch-historische Studie (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1978), and
Krawulsky, “Zur Wiederbelebung des Begriffes ‘Īrān’ zur Ilkhânzeit,” in Mongolen und
Introduction 11
continued to use the terms Īrān and Īrān-shahr (as transliterated from
Arabic and New Persian, versus Middle Persian Ērān-shahr), although
they do not appear to have been attuned to the terms’ potential. Geo-
graphers, in their entries, treat Īrān-shahr and Fārs, the province, separ-
ately. Likewise, Muslims refer to Īrān-shahr in contexts in which Iran’s
pre-Islamic past, especially its “national” tradition, is mentioned.24 But
otherwise the term “Persia” is generally preferred, often even in discus-
sions of geography and of the national past.25 Muh.ammad himself is
remembered to have spoken of Persia but not of Īrān-shahr. At the same
time, other ethnic identities were submerged. For example, a notion of
“Pahlav” as an ethnicon may have lingered, but in the early Muslim
sources the term fahlaw has nothing of the currency of the terms al-Furs
or Banū Fāris.
In what follows, I will use the term Iran to refer to a territory centered
on a plateau, and in recognition of shared linguistic and cultural patterns
that do have antique origins; likewise, the term “Iranians” will refer to
its inhabitants and is useful for encompassing a variety of groups. But
in the period under consideration, regional identities were far stronger
than pan-Iranian ones. The major identity that cut across regions was a
Ilkhâne: Ideologie und Geschichte; 5 Studien, 113–30 (Beirut: Verlag für Islamische
Studien, 1989).
24 Still today, historians commonly, if uncritically, apply the term “national” to Iran’s epic
nation, as well as to Sasanian-era historiography. For the roots of this view among mod-
ern Iranian academics, see esp. Marashi, “Nationalizing Pre-Islamic Iran,” in National-
izing Iran; regarding European scholarship and the lineage of the term, see esp. Theodor
Nöldeke, Das Iranische Nationalepos (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1920); Christensen, Les Kay-
anides (Copenhagen: Andr. Fred. Høst & Søn, 1931), 35ff.; and Ehsan Yarshater, “Ira-
nian National History,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3(1), The Seleucid,
Parthian and Sasanian Periods, ed. Ehsan Yarshater, 359–477 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), 395ff.
25 See, for example, al-Yaʿqūbı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, ed. M. Th. Houtsma, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1883; repr., Beirut: Dār S.ādir, 1960), 1:178 (where, however, Persia’s kings figure as part
of prophetic history, a phenomenon I treat in Chapter 1). But compare the Shahrestānı̄hā-
ı̄ Ērān-shahr, a Middle Persian text that its modern translator, Touraj Daryaee, believes
reflects a sixth/early seventh-century CE imperial Sasanian vision of Ērān-shahr, although
its last redactors lived under the ʿAbbasid caliphate in the eighth century CE. Touraj
Daryaee, ed. and trans., Šahrestānı̄hā ı̄ Ērānšahr: A Middle Persian Text on Late Antique
Geography, Epic, and History (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2002), “Introduc-
tion.” See also M. Boyce, trans., The Letter of Tansar (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il
Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1968), 26, n. 1, and Gnoli, Idea of Iran, 153–5. For another
exception, see Roy P. Mottahedeh, “Finding Iran in the Panegyrics of the Ghaznavid
Court,” paper presented at the conference “Eastern Iran and Transoxiana 750–1150:
Persianate Culture and Islamic Civilization,” Institute of Iranian Studies, University of
St. Andrews, March 9, 2013.
“Persian” one, and this imperfectly, in different ways at different times.26

As for all times and locales, it is also important to bear in mind the
extent to which identity was intersubjective and contextual. During the
first century and a half of Islam, tribes from throughout the Arabian
peninsula, Syria, Palestine, southern Iraq, and as far away as Khurāsān
came to see themselves as sharing in a larger “Arab” identity as part of
a process in which many other, non-“Arab” groups began to recognize
their own distinctiveness in new ways. So a man might identify himself
as a Persian relative to other ethnic groups and in recognition of shared
customs, language, homeland, history, and descent, but consider himself a
Kirmānı̄ (a native of the province of Kirmān) when traveling in Khurāsān
or a partisan of the Shiʿa or of the legal school of al-Shāfiʿı̄ when sectarian
or juristic affiliations mattered. Like other Muslims of their day, the
inhabitants of Iran tended to affiliate themselves with many different
groups based on bonds of ethnicity as well as of language, lineage, loca-
lity, and profession. Regarding sectarian loyalties, in the first centuries,
the family of ʿAlı̄ also won the affection of some Iranians, although it
was centuries before Shiʿi sectarianism won the loyalty of Iranians as
a whole.27 For understanding the loyalties and affiliations of Iranians
after the Muslim conquest, therefore, a number of possibilities must be
considered, of which Persian ethnicity is an important but not the sole or
overriding one.
Tradition
In Islamic Studies, the term “tradition” is often used in a limited sense
to refer to the Hadith of the Prophet or to reports about him and the
early community (akhbār) that circulated in “historical” texts, such as
Prophetic biographies. In this book, the term is used in a more general
sense to emphasize not only the common characteristics of reports about
the past but also the ways in which these reports participate in larger pat-
terns of culture. The definition itself is silent on questions of soundness,
authenticity, and truth. A bowl may be faulty for a variety of reasons
but still be traditional, insofar as it follows past patterns, and likewise, a
26 For consideration of the term “Persians” in another context, that of the ʿAbbasid Revolu-
tion, with special attention to Syriac historiography, see Antoine Borrut, Entre mémoire
et pouvoir: L’espace syrien sous les derniers Omeyyades et les premiers Abbassides
(v. 72–193/692–809) (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 345ff.
27 On this, see esp. Rula Jurdi Abisaab, Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the
Safavid Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004).
Introduction 13
historical proposition may rise or fall depending on “rational and empir-

ical evidence,” but in either case, it can justifiably be called traditional.28
For a student of history, a key opportunity presents itself in the way in
which our Arabic sources tend to return to a common pool of memories
about locales, events, institutions, and persons, but with different meth-
ods of selecting and manipulating the record. These divergent methods
can often suggest something about the hermeneutics of individual tradi-
tionists. One can compare texts so as to decipher novelties, discern goals,
and understand the social and cultural stakes involved in remembering
the past in one particular way as opposed to another. Ctesiphon, for
example, was made into an expressive relic by reporters who made much
of the spoils, including a massive carpet, the qit.f, known in Persian as the
Bahār-i Khusraw (“the king’s spring”); this was divided up with a large
piece given to ʿAlı̄, perhaps suggesting the metaphorical transfer of a por-
tion of the kingdom of Kisrā (the Sasanian ruler) to his later partisans.29 A
different memory is encapsulated in the qas.ı̄da of al-Buh.turı̄, cited at the
beginning of this introduction, which was composed during the reign of
Caliph al-Muntas.ir (r. 247–8/861–2) and which has its own perspective
on the site. The poet dwells on and even exaggerates the ruin of the monu-
ments at al-Madāʾin as he connects the past majesty of the monuments
to that of their unnamed builder. As Richard Serrano has argued, he is
attentive to their present state and, most importantly, to their affective
power, but for him, the ruins are positive reminders of a great though
vanished empire with which he identifies as the descendant of a people
that was once allied to it. Al-Buh.turı̄ stresses the resilience of Kisrā’s ı̄wān
(throne hall) against all attempts to plunder it and refers specifically to
its carpets:
It was not disgraced by the robbery of carpets

Of silk brocade, or plunder of curtains of raw silk;
Lofty, its battlements soar,
Raised on the summits of Radwa and Quds;
Clothed in white, so that
You see of them but cotton robes.
It isn’t known if it’s the workmanship of men for jinn
Who inhabit it, or the work of jinn for men,
Yet I see it gives witness that
The builder is not the least of kings.30
28 For Shils’s point regarding historical truth, see Tradition, 89–90.

29 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:2454.
30 Serrano, “Al-Buh.turı̄’s Poetics of Persian Abodes,” 83–4.
Al-Buh.turı̄ profited from the patronage of several ʿAbbasid caliphs, but he

appears to have composed his qas.ı̄da in a moment of upset. Through the
motif of an abandoned site, he has made al-Madāʾin and its monuments,
including the ı̄wān, into a subject that shows the finitude of empires in
general, insinuating, perhaps, the same fate for his ʿAbbasid patrons. He
has also, as Serrano has proposed, imagined himself in the place of Khus-
raw Anūshirvān, served by the king’s boon companion al-Balahbadh; his
praises are for himself, not for his patrons, who we are led to believe have
failed him.31
Wherever possible, I employ a comparative method to discern what
makes a particular author’s perspective distinctive. This method requires
consideration for a traditionist’s own particular, historical circumstances,
as well as some attention to those of the genre within which he worked,
since a historian of the conquests, for example, will tend to provide a
perspective that differs from that of a Qurʾan commentator, though they
both reflect on the same, seminal events. This method is greatly facilitated
by modern technology and databases of Arabic texts, but it does have
some limitations. For example, it gives little consideration to earlier, lost
sources and their particular perspectives, and it leaves open the question of
how much fifteenth-century Persian translations or reworkings of tenth-
century Arabic texts can tell us about tenth-century views. Sometimes
such views do become fossilized in later sources, with traditionists passing
on reports indifferently. Historians often drew on past layers of history
writing. As is frequently noted, Arabic historiography is a cumulative
endeavor. Still, I believe that scholars have too often overlooked creative
possibilities in their quest to uncover the origins of ideas or to establish the
boundaries of genres. I prefer, then, the risk of overstating the plasticity
of our sources for the benefit of querying them.
Remembering
The expansion of Islam and the birth of Islamic historiography occurred
within a late antique world where techniques of memory played an
important role in the transmission of knowledge. The Qurʾan was recited
31 Serrano argues that al-Buh.turı̄ questions the “source – and value – of imperial Arab
culture” (“Al-Buh.turı̄’s Poetics of Persian Abodes,” 69). This may be so, but if anything,
it won him the admiration of ʿAbbasid poets and anthologists. For example, the ʿAbbasid
prince and poet Ibn al-Muʿtazz (d. 296/908) reportedly praised the qas.ı̄da, and his
appreciative comments are repeated throughout Arabic literature. See, e.g., al-Khat.ı̄b
al-Baghdādı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Baghdād, 14 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjı̄, 1931), 1:130.
Introduction 15
and transmitted orally in support of ritualized prayer, but also Hadith,

akhbār, all manner of historical lore, and poetry were passed down in
oral form. Children often learned the Qurʾan at a young age so as to
prepare themselves for later studies (not to mention the social cachet that
went with such knowledge), and they also memorized Hadith and other
reports, the authenticity of which depended on continuous transmission.
Those who cited the Prophet’s warning against the writing down of tradi-
tion sought to combat the use of the pen and, they feared, the consequent
erosion of memory.32 As they juxtapose written and oral transmission,
Muslim sources from the first centuries often depict this debate as an
inquest, including questions posed and information gathered, with a high
degree of anxiety about the loss of connections and information. Long
after the place of written transmission was secured, the values of an oral
culture, and a focus on memory, continued.33 Throughout the first four
centuries of Islamic history, the ideal of the perfectibility of memory is
widely in evidence, most conspicuously in works that provide ratings on
the reliability of Hadith transmitters. Such individuals are linked to each
other but also backward in time, as communities in which a perfectible,
if not perfect, memory inheres.34
Historians of Islam have long recognized the importance of memory
to the work that they do, though until recently typically without consid-
ering its social or cultural dimensions. By contrast, a recent and expans-
ive study by Antoine Borrut considered the formation of a “vulgate
historiographique” at different phases, particularly in ʿAbbasid times,
that filtered and reshaped memory about the Umayyad dynasty and the
early ʿAbbasids, about the Syrian landscape, and about the eras’ her-
oes and rebels, institutions, and monuments.35 Like the Umayyad and
32 Michael Cook, “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition in Early Islam,” “Voix et
Calame en Islam Médiéval,” special issue, Arabica 44, no. 4 (1997): 437–530.
33 The relationship between oral and written transmission was complex and varied depend-
ing on the nature of the material being passed on. They also occurred simultaneously;
see esp. Gregor Schoeler, Écrire et transmettre dans les débuts de l’Islam (Paris: Presses
universitaires de France, 2002). Translated as Gregor Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature
in Islam: From the Aural to the Read, rev. ed., trans. Shawkat M. Toorawa (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2009). Even in later centuries, orality and memory remained
integral to education; see Konrad Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic
Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Uni-
versity Press, 2012).
34 See also Chase F. Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), 172–7.
35 See Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir; 168–73, for a useful summary of scholarship on
memory relating to Islam and early Islamic history; see also Borrut and Paul M. Cobb,
early ʿAbbasid eras, the first century of Islam also has been treated as
a subject of remembrance, as have other phases in Islamic history.36
Several studies of narrative have pursued similar goals, that is, to exam-
ine a textual tradition, its agents (or “authors”), and its plasticity and
meaningfulness.37 Consideration has also been given to memory in stud-
ies on books and book cultures.38 As for Iran, despite work on a variety
of topics, especially the transmission of pre-Islamic texts and ideas into
Arabic and Persian (particularly relating to the Shāh-nāmah and courtly
tradition),39 and modern memories of the pre-Islamic past, so far there
have been few works treating historical consciousness among Iranian
Muslims in the period of conversion, and no study dedicated to the issue
of their shared memories.40
Readers familiar with Jan Assmann’s work on the representations of
Moses in European history will find echoes of his methodology in my
own. What Assmann calls “mnemohistory” concerns itself with the past
as it is remembered: he lifts out memory from history writing, connects
it to social and cultural contexts, and returns it as an object of inquiry.
Memory is not opposed to history, but part of it. If scholars generally
eds., Umayyad Legacies: Medieval Memories from Syria to Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2010),
esp. Borrut, “La Memoria Omeyyade: Les Omeyyades entre souvenir et oubli dans les
sources narratives Islamiques” (pp. 25–61).
36 Surprisingly little work has been done on this topic; but see Asma Afsaruddin, The
First Muslims: History and Memory (Oxford: Oneworld, 2008), to be read in the light
of Robinson’s review article, “The Ideological Uses of Early Islam,” Past & Present,
no. 203 (2009): 205–28. Work on prophetic biography has not typically taken up the
question of collective memory, as such, though it has treated the “reception” of ideas
about Muh.ammad; see Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muh.ammad as
Viewed by the Early Muslims (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995).
37 E.g., Fred Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Histor-
ical Writing (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1998), and Tayeb El-Hibri, Reinterpreting
Islamic Historiography: Hārūn Al-Rashı̄d and the Narrative of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). While narratives can be evidence for
the shaping of memory, they should not be conflated with memory, as I argue below.
38 Such studies foreground questions about orality, with a central interest in Arabic literary
history and in the ways in which knowledge was transmitted in the first centuries of
Islam; see esp. Schoeler, Genesis of Literature in Islam, and Shawkat M. Toorawa, Ibn
Abı̄ T
. āhir T
. ayfūr and Arabic Writerly Culture: A Ninth-Century Bookman in Baghdad
(London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), esp. “From Memory to Written Record.”
39 I address this body of scholarship especially in Chapters 1 and 4.
40 In Persian a few Iranian scholars have recently engaged with the question of historical
consciousness after the conquests with an eye toward identifying continuities across eras
in different domains, including with regard to the Persian language; see, for example,
Ādhartāsh Ādharnūsh, Chālish miyān-i Farsı̄ va ʿArabı̄: Sadah-hā-yi nukhust (Tehran:
Nay, 1385 shamsı̄/[2006]).
Introduction 17
seek to distinguish history from myth, mnemohistory seeks to identify a

representation in its Sitz im Leben. It does not ask, “Was Moses really
trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians?” Instead, it considers “why
such a statement did not appear in the book of Exodus, but only appeared
in Acts (7:22), and why the Moses discourse in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries almost exclusively based its image of Moses not on
Moses’ elaborate biography in the Pentateuch, but on this single verse in
the New Testament.”41
As one reviewer noted, Assmann gave a gratifyingly precise name to
what many historians were already seeking to do.42 In terms of method,
Assmann’s approach rests on bringing together different accounts for the
purpose of noting similarities and dissimilarities, and it assigns impor-
tance to narratives as repositories of memory. Comparison of narratives
can uncover the layering of memory, taking the form of stratigraphy,
to borrow a term from geology, but it equally requires distinguishing a
variety of perspectives: that of someone living on the frontier versus in
Baghdad; that of a partisan of the Shiʿa versus that of a Sunni traditionist;
that of a courtier with “skin in the game” versus that of a political out-
sider; that of a descendant of the conquerors versus that of the conquered.
From my perspective, the significance of mnemohistory as a method
lies in its attentiveness to meaning and in the light it can shed on the
renegotiation of identities and their associated loyalties. This way of read-
ing the sources suggests something quite profound about Persians of the
third/ninth to fifth/eleventh centuries that has not been noted previously,
and this is the occurrence of not one but two conversions: one to Persian-
ness, and the other to Islam. One involved a particular ethnic group, the
other a religion of nonparticular, universal membership. As part of this
dual process of conversion, aspects of Persian identity were contested,
41 Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 9–10. Assmann’s broader theory
of “cultural memory” involves “the handing down of meaning,” and within it the
written, textual dimension is but one matter of concern among others (such as the
institutional frameworks and technologies associated with writing). See Jan Assmann,
Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagi-
nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
42 Daniel Boyarin, review of Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Mono-
theism, by Jan Assmann, Church History 67, no. 4 (1998): 842–4. Or as Assmann
himself noted, “mnemohistory is nothing new. . . . Only the distinction between history
proper and mnemohistory is new. Without an awareness of this difference, the history
of memory, or mnemohistory, turns all too easily into a historical critique of memory.”
Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 12–13.
especially the Persians’ heritage of imperial rule as an elite class and

their previous bonds to Zoroastrianism, the Sasanian religion. Persians
became possessors of a variant Muslim culture, with common holidays,
ritual practices, social conventions, and norms of behavior. This Persian
Muslim culture was further characterized by bilingualism among elites,
including religious specialists, but the use of dialects of Persian among
ordinary members of society, and by a shared reservoir of memories, our
point of investigation. A Persian collective sensibility likely varied in the
extent and intensity of its hold over different populations, with possibly
more consciousness among the elite and literate social strata for which
we have evidence. It developed gradually, my period being only the start
of the phenomenon, though events occasionally propelled it forward.43 It
was neither continuously present nor always at the forefront of groups’
senses of themselves, as they could also identify along other lines, such
as in terms of locale, lineage, sect, or dialect. In other words, in putting
stress on Persians, I do not wish to substitute a primordial or perennial
Iranian identity with a Persian one. Still, whereas other ethnic groups
dissolved and fell into near or absolute oblivion, having failed to adapt
effectively in the new environment, Persians were successful and indeed
absorbed members of other groups. Many factors played a role, but the
sense of a shared past, and therefore a future, as Persian Muslims was
among the most important.44
The idea of collective memory itself is often traced back to Maurice
Halbwachs, whose work remains remarkably prescient and insightful. His
Social Frameworks of Memory greatly extends Durkheim’s observation
that knowledge is socially constructed – in other words, it cannot be dis-
covered as a simple “given” but resides in and results from groups.45 For
43 Notably, the first stages of its development preceded the emergence of New Per-
sian, on which see, for example, Ludwig Paul, “The Language of the Šāhnāme in
Historical and Dialectical Perspective,” in Languages of Iran: Past and Present; Iranian
Studies in Memoriam David Neil MacKenzie, ed. Dieter Weber, 141–51 (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 2005).
44 In the terminology of Anthony D. Smith, Persians survived and were transformed as an
ethnie, sharing a collective name, a mythology of common descent, a shared history,
a distinctive shared culture, an association with a specific territory, and a sense of
solidarity. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986),
21ff.
45 Halbwachs was recognized in his lifetime for his contribution to the study of collective
memory, although it was not until the 1980s that the significance of his work was
extensively acknowledged. This prompted Barry Schwartz to conclude: “Halbwachs’s
discoveries did not cause the current wave of collective memory research; they were
rather swept into it.” Schwartz, “Collective Memory,” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia
Introduction 19
Halbwachs, memory is knowledge about the past that individuals acquire

through social interaction. We remember because we are in dialogue with
other members of society, and through this dialogue meaning and signif-
icance are assigned to the past and make it memorable. Groups provide
“social frameworks for memory” that give an individual the means to
recall the past, on the condition, Halbwachs writes, “that I turn toward
them and adopt, at least for the moment, their way of thinking.”46 Indi-
viduals have their own memories, but these are in large measure part
of “group memory” because an event, person, or fact leaves an impres-
sion only to the extent that “one has thought it over,” that is, “to the
extent that it is connected with the thoughts that come to us from the
social milieu.”47 Paul Ricœur summarized Halbwachs’s contribution as
showing that “to remember, we need others.”48
Halbwachs believed that the present generation becomes conscious
of itself in counterposing its present situation to its own constructed
past.49 There are as many collective memories as there are groups and
institutions in society. Shared memories are necessary for group solidarity,
and therefore loss of memory results in loss of place in the social group,
as occurs with aphasics.50 Halbwachs illustrated how memory resides in
several groups, including the family, religious groups, and social classes.
In a family, the expressions and experiences of individuals in relations of
kinship are given their form and “a large part of their meaning” by the
domestic group, so the idea of the family as an institution is variable across
societies and between families.51 Families have their own “customs and
modes of thinking” that impose their form on the opinions and feelings of
their members; likewise, each family has its own mentality, “its memories
of Sociology, ed. George Ritzer, 11 vols. (New York: Blackwell-Wiley, 2007). Much of
the interest in memory, and the most interesting work of a theoretical nature, has been
propelled by the catastrophic events of World War II, during which Halbwachs himself
died at Buchenwald.
46 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1992), 38.
47 Ibid., 53.
48 Paul Ricœur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 120. In the field of the sociology of
knowledge, an analogous point is made, i.e., that knowledge cannot exist independently
of social frameworks that recognize it. See Max Scheler, Problems of a Sociology of
Knowledge, trans. Manfred S. Frings, ed. Kenneth W. Stikkers (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1980), 67.
49 See Lewis A. Coser, “Introduction,” in Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 1–34, at 24.
50 Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 43.
51 Ibid., 56.
which it alone commemorates, and its secrets which are revealed only to
its members.” Memories are not individual and disinterested images of
the past; rather, they work on a higher plane as models, examples, and
elements of teaching. These express the “general attitude of the group”
and “reproduce its history,” but they also, importantly, define the group’s
very “nature and its qualities and weaknesses.”52 Within these memories
there are certain “landmarks” that stand out as points of group interest:
figures that express an “entire character,” or facts that recapitulate “an
entire period in the life of the group.”53
Among these landmarks would be Assmann’s Moses and the Exodus,
or in the case of Persian Muslim historiography, the Tāq-i Kisrā, Salmān
al-Fārisı̄, and the Arab conquest of Iran. Such landmarks are labeled
“sites of memory” (lieux de mémoire) by Pierre Nora, whose ideas also
inform this study. Nora introduced his theory of lieux de mémoire both
as a way of understanding what he terms the “consolidation” of a French
national heritage and its most spectacular symbols and, it would seem, as
a program ultimately concerned with the preservation of a catalog of a
fading French national memory. Sites are presented expansively as nostal-
gic devotional institutions around which French society’s “memory crys-
tallizes and secretes itself,” exemplified by museums, archives, cemeter-
ies, festivals, anniversaries, treaties, depositions, monuments, sanctuaries,
and fraternal orders.54 For a study such as mine, Nora’s theory offers
several points of interest, first, in his explanation of how history and his-
torical propositions themselves can become objects of collective memory,
and, second, in his emphasis on the will of society and its members to
remember and create lieux de mémoire. This means, for example, that
there is a difference between the archive and the memory, between that
which is recorded and preserved and that which is held and maintained
by society in itself. Third, sites of memory are hot spots: they have a
capacity for metamorphosis, “an endless recycling of their meaning and
an unpredictable proliferation of their meaning.” To take an example,
a children’s textbook, Tour de la France par deux enfants, published in
1877, portrayed a France that drew its seductive power from a past that
no longer existed. The book continued to circulate, and on the eve of
52 Ibid., 58–9.
53 Ibid., 61.
54 Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les lieux de mémoire” (trans. Marc Roude-
bush), “Memory and Counter-Memory,” special issue, Representations, no. 26 (1989):
7 and 12. See also Nora, ed., Les Lieux de mémoire, esp. vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard,
1997).
Introduction 21
World War I, it was a nostalgic institution. The book eventually slipped

out of the collective memory, but it returned to public consciousness when
reprinted on its centennial. The same book and text now took on new
meaning and significance because of the transformations undergone by
French society in the interval and the effect that these had on those who
now considered it memorable.55
Forgetting
Common ideas about forgetfulness overwhelmingly stress it as a failure
of memory. The Hebrew Bible (Deuteronomy 8:11) warns against this
sort of forgetfulness when it states: “Beware lest you forget the Lord
your God so that you do not keep His commandments and judgments
and ordinances.” This forgetting, in a collective sense, occurs, as Yosef
Hayim Yerushalmi has written, when “human groups fail – whether
purposely or passively, out of rebellion, indifference, or indolence, or as
the result of some disruptive historical catastrophe – to transmit what
they know about the past to their posterity.”56 Yerushalmi points to the
astounding lack of reliability of both individual and collective memory.
As Ricœur has also noted, “forgetting is the challenge par excellence put
to memory’s aim of reliability.”57
Arabic and Persian sources remember remarkably little about Iran’s
pre-Islamic and early Islamic past. Consider again the case of Ctesiphon.
Despite the importance of Iraq under the Umayyad and ʿAbbasid dy-
nasties – and even though Arabic sources often provide our most con-
vincing literary evidence – by the late third/ninth century many of the
details about Ctesiphon’s origins, early history, and topography had
been forgotten. Early Arabic sources refer to it in ways that suggest
its displacement. It is al-madı̄na al-ʿatı̄qa, that is, “the ancient city.” As
55 See Jacques and Mona Ozouf, “Le Tour de la France par deux enfants: Le petit livre
rouge de la République,” in Les Lieux de mémoire, ed. Nora, 1:277–301, and Nora,
“Between Memory and History,” 19–20. Nora’s ideas on memory and history can be and
have been critiqued on several grounds, inter alia for creating too strong an opposition
between memory and history and between premodern and twentieth-century views of the
past; for seeming to possess a romantic agenda not just to describe lieux but to preserve
and sacralize them; and for the expansiveness of the concept lieux de mémoire itself.
For an especially lucid critique, see Hue-Tam Ho Tai, “Remembered Realms: Pierre
Nora and French National Memory,” American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (2001):
906–22.
56 Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: Univer-
sity of Washington Press, 1996), 108–9.
57 Ricœur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 414.
for details: when was Ctesiphon founded, and by whom? What monu-
ments were located there, rather than in other cities? Was the White
Palace joined to the Tāq-i Kisrā? Some of the answers were no longer
available, whereas others were contested. That the Arabs used the name
al-Madāʾin (“the cities”) to refer both to the entirety of the Sasanian
metropolis, of which Ctesiphon represented one piece, and to Ctesiphon
itself only added to the confusion. And which cities were the madāʾin?
Were the cities located on both sides of the Tigris, or on the eastern side
only?58
Historians have recognized such amnesia as they have labored to con-
struct their narratives, often performing complex recoveries of historical
data, such as for the late Sasanian Xwadāy-nāmag, which was transmitted
in some form in Arabic-language writings from the second/eighth century
onward. Such gaps have generally been viewed as emerging from failures
of memory that resulted from the conquests, the settlement and move-
ment of populations, the growth of new urban centers, the emergence of
new bases for elite status (even if old elites successfully negotiated their
survival), and the exigencies of an empire centered, initially, outside of
the former Sasanian territories. All of these factors did play a role. With
time, conversion to Islam likewise undermined knowledge about past reli-
gious institutions, associations, practices, and beliefs insofar as they fell
from use.
As students of memory increasingly realize, however, forgetting is an
essential human practice. On a practical level, we simply cannot remem-
ber everything, nor is there a need to remember much of what we expe-
rience. Forgetting is required for new memories, since when the past is for-
gotten, memories can be reshaped or recreated to meet present needs. If we
remembered absolutely everything, we would find ourselves in the posi-
tion of Alexandr Romanovitch Luria’s mnemonist, whose memory was
58 On the confusions in the Arabic sources regarding Ctesiphon, see especially Saleh Ahmad
el Ali, “al-Madāʾin fı̄ al-mas.ādir al-ʿarabiyya,” Sumer 23 (1967): 47–65, and el Ali,
“Al-Madāʾin and Its Surrounding Area in Arabic Literary Sources,” Mesopotamia 3–
4 (1968–9): 417–39. See also Guy Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate:
Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia, from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of
Timur (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905; repr., Boston: Adamant Media,
2006), 33–5; J. M. Fiey, “Topography of Madaʾin (Seleucia-Ctesiphon area),” Sumer
23 (1967): 9–11; Keall, “Ayvān-e Kesrā (or T.āq-e Kesrā),” in EIr; Hugh Kennedy,
“From Shahristan to Medina,” Studia Islamica, no. 102/103 (2006): 13; and Savant,
“Forgetting Ctesiphon: Iran’s Pre-Islamic Past, ca. 800–1100,” in History and Identity
in the Late Antique Near East, ed. Philip Wood, 169–86 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013).
Introduction 23
figure 0.3. Bowl with Arabic inscription, “He who multiplies his words, multi-
plies his worthlessness.” Nı̄shāpūr, Iran, tenth century.
C 2011 by The Metropol-
itan Museum of Art/Art Resource/SCALA Florence. C Photo SCALA, Florence.
so prodigious that he found himself incapable of functioning in society.59

As James E. Young has explained: “Not only does every remembered past
moment displace the present lived moment, substituting memory for life
itself, but without forgetting there is no space left by which to navigate
the meaning of what one has remembered.”60 The need to make room
for new memories was well understood in antiquity. Wax tablets were
used as writing instruments for everyday purposes because their surface
could be smoothed out and reused. In the Platonic heritage, writers there-
fore referred to smoothing out the wax tablet as an archetypal image
of voluntary forgetting.61 Greek mythology knows the river Lethe as a
river of forgetting: whoever drinks of its waters forgets his or her earlier
59 Aleksandr Romanovich Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast
Memory, trans. Lynn Solotaroff (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
60 Young, foreword to Oblivion, by Marc Augé, trans. Marjolijn de Jager (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2004), viii.
61 Harald Weinrich, Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting, trans. Steven Rendall
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 5.
existence and is freed for rebirth.62 Medieval Europeans explained the

process with agricultural metaphors: one cuts down groves of trees that
were once sacred to the gods so that one can create arable land.63 When
the forest has been cleared, the land will appear visually quite different
from its previous state, and the past of the land will seem discontinuous
with its present.
But how does one clear the metaphorical forest? The answer lies
only partially in omission and failure. At least as important is the new
knowledge that overwrites and often confuses past memory. As Umberto
Eco has observed, such “mnemonic additions” foster forgetfulness of
the past “not by cancellation but by superimposition, not by producing
absence but by multiplying presences.”64 Though not typically focused
on memory as such, studies of “invented” traditions illustrate this well.
In his iconic essay, Hugh Trevor-Roper, for example, argues that in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Highland Scots forgot their Irish,
Celtic past in large measure through the artificial creation of new High-
land practices that were presented as “ancient, original and distinctive.”
Through invented conventions of “traditional” dress, Highlanders came
to see themselves as a distinctive people with an antique history separate
from that of Ireland, which was forgotten. Highlanders themselves played
a role in this, but important contributions were also made by a variety
of other groups, including the British government with its formation of
the Highland military regiments.65 In times of change, such as with the
advent of modernity, groups often find meaning in the image of a stable,
antique past. To paraphrase Benedict Anderson, antiquity is often the
consequence of novelty, as awareness of significant social, cultural, or
political change generates the need for narrative explanation to erase the
older historical consciousness.66 Scholars who have studied transforma-
tions in identities have highlighted the way in which new identities and
62 Ibid., 6–7.
63 Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the
First Millennium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 114.
64 Umberto Eco, “An Ars Oblivionalis? Forget It!” (trans. Marilyn Migiel), PMLA 103,
no. 3 (1988): 254–61.
65 Hugh Trevor-Roper, “The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scot-
land,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, 15–41
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
66 Anderson is concerned principally with a modern phenomenon, but I find this aspect of
his theory helpful for premodern contexts. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflec-
tions on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991), xiv.
Introduction 25
their associated heritages have effaced past ones and the role of both a
group and its neighbors in fashioning its sense of itself.67
The Route
The primary purpose of this study is to shed light on the shaping of
memory about and among Iran’s first Muslims. The book consists of two
symmetrical, chronologically organized parts. In Part 1, I focus on the
development of certain ideas, persons, and events as nostalgic sites of
memory depicting a natural and easy transition to Islam in which Irani-
ans themselves played a meaningful role. Chapter 1 highlights theories
of ethnogenesis that placed Persians within an overarching genealogical
system that included many of the world’s known peoples. In this way
of thinking, Persians descended from Muh.ammad’s spiritual ancestors,
that is, the prophets who preceded him and whose progeny populated the
earth. Such accounts often emphasized the Persians’ deep and enduring
connections to Islam and, by extension, the antiquity of Islam in their
country. Iranians even came to see ancient monuments such as Persepolis
as part of this history.
Chapter 2 considers the transformation of the Prophet’s companion
Salmān into a paragon of Persian history. In early works on Muh.ammad
and his followers, Salmān stands out more as a non-Arab than as a
Persian; it is even stressed that with his conversion to Islam, he abandoned
his Persian homeland and identity altogether. But by the fourth/tenth
century, Salmān’s identity as a Persian is embraced in numerous Arabic
traditions that nostalgically recall his homeland as well as the Prophet’s
affection for it and its people. The chapter includes a discussion of the
particular situation of Is.fahān and its local histories, which feature legal
texts important to Salmān’s descendants.
Chapter 3 turns to memory of the Arab conquests of the first/seventh
and second/eighth centuries to show how Iranians, and Persians in par-
ticular, were assigned meaningful roles in the conquests’ transformative
events. I argue that if one compares accounts across the third/ninth cen-
tury, one can observe a transformation that parallels the transformation
67 As but one example, Leyla Neyzi demonstrates the replacement of individual memories
of a Sabbatean past with those of a Kemalist past in “Remembering to Forget: Sabbatean-
ism, National Identity, and Subjectivity in Turkey,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History 44, no. 1 (2002): 137–58.
of Salmān discussed in Chapter 2: Iranians are increasingly given credit

for their own roles, as the Iranian origins of institutions such as the mil-
itary register are recognized. Local histories shared this vision to a great
extent, but they also adapted it for their own audiences.
Part 1 therefore explores the role of tradition and memory in the cre-
ation of Iranian, and especially Persian, Muslim identities. In Part 2, I
turn to a corresponding need to forget some elements of Iran’s past. This
involved the development of strategies by which traditionists undermined
elements of Persian identity that were viewed in some quarters as incom-
patible with Islam, especially the Persians’ long history of independent
political rule. The pre-Islamic past has posed problems to communities
ranging from medieval Egypt and Spain to modern Indonesia for chiefly
two related reasons. First, the past can cast a long shadow. The rul-
ing elites of a new and insecure society may wish to erase the traces of
their predecessors. For no matter how politically quiescent the previous
regime and its descendants may be, their monuments, cultural traditions,
and achievements in law and economy can still provoke nostalgia. Second,
the contrary values of the past can also pose a threat. Because they provide
alternative frames for behavior and action, and thus alternative measures
of success, they can prevent the assimilation of new cultural traits, feed
the ambitions of the imperfectly assimilated, and tempt the newly con-
verted. Such residual values remind a people of a heritage, now viewed
through a different lens, which they would often prefer to forget. They
challenge the antiquity and continuity of ethical standards, putting into
relief and context what is otherwise presented as a given.68 For both types
of reasons, Muslim authors have frequently revised history.
In Chapter 4, I introduce three general ways in which our reporters
sought to limit memory: by rewriting Persia’s past within a purely local
frame of reference, by replacing a Persian past with a Muslim past, and by
promoting unfavorable traditions about Persia’s past. Chapter 5 focuses
on the last of the three methods and gives a deeper sense of how reporters
filtered memory by developing labels, homologies, and icons, as well
as ideas about gender. Chapter 6 explores a central impulse behind all
forgetting, namely, the wish to move on, by showing how third/ninth-
and fourth/tenth-century histories erased the identities of the losing side:
Sasanian soldiers, religious communities, and elite families. I consider the
specific problems that the past posed for authors, the agendas of elites,
68 On such problems, see esp. David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985).
Introduction 27
and the challenge of past values. The sources also permit us to recapture
voices of protest against history and its outcomes.
In many ways, this book is a new attempt to consider a transformative
period in knowledge regarding Iran’s past. This period had a profound
impact on what was subsequently available to later generations.69 At
the outset, I must make a few caveats. Memory about Iran should be
considered both on its own terms and in terms of the broader historio-
graphical tradition to which it belongs. I have tried to be cautious in my
reading of the texts and to avoid asserting Iranian interests where narra-
tors may not have intended them. Such a reading of the sources is more
art than science, and it is likely some readers will interpret texts differ-
ently. Second, focusing on founding moments will bring to light particu-
lar dimensions of memory but occlude others. The themes I treat tend to
mention Zoroastrians but not Christians, Jews, Manicheans, Buddhists,
or Iranians of other religions, some of whom may have also considered
themselves to be “Persians.” While this silence may be discouraging as
a view onto Iranian religions, it does reveal the way in which the con-
stitutive myths of Persian Muslims developed with an emphasis on a
Zoroastrian past and their focus on the Sasanians and their religious
allegiances.
Third, when discussing Iran’s new Muslims, modern interpreters since
the great Hungarian Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921) have fre-
quently made reference to a movement known as the Shuʿūbiyya to
explain the ambitions and conflicts of Iran’s early Muslims.70 Genera-
tions of scholars afterward have adopted Shuʿūbism as an interpretive
69 Further research could probe the issue of what no longer can be imagined or thought as a
result of the way history has been shaped. In the sociology of knowledge, the question of
oblivion has been theorized more profoundly. See Mohammed Arkoun, The Unthought
in Contemporary Islamic Thought (London: Saqi Books, 2002).
70 Goldziher described a “literary battle” waged by a “party” (Partei, Shuʿūbijjapartei) of
Muslim Persians against Arabs. Goldziher saw an “intimate connection” between the
Shuʿūbiyya and “the political and literary renaissance of the Persians” and advanced the
argument that the movement arose in a “political and social atmosphere” characterized
by the growth of “foreign elements in Islam,” growing displacement of Arabs in places
of power, and even a revival of Persian religious customs and the “defiant reaction
of the ʿAjam element against Islam” itself. These foreign elements ultimately achieved
foreign rule and the emergence of independent dynasties within the caliphate, breaking
not only the caliphate’s power but “also that of the nation from which this institution
stemmed.” Muslim Studies, ed. S. M. Stern, 2 vols. (Chicago: Aldine, 1966), 1:137, 40–
4; translated by C. R. Barber and Stern from Muhammedanische Studien, 2 vols. (Halle:
Max Niemeyer, 1889–90). The Shuʿūbı̄s are mentioned in three chapters: “ʿArab and
ʿAjam”; “The Shuʿūbiyya”; and “The Shuʿūbiyya and Its Manifestation in Scholarship.”
framework as they have sought to identify Shuʿūbı̄ partisans, their moti-

vations, and the movement’s broader stakes, which H. A. R. Gibb wordily
summed up as “the whole cultural orientation of the new Islamic society –
whether it was to become a re-embodiment of the old Perso-Aramaean
culture into which the Arabic and Islamic elements would be absorbed,
or a culture in which the Perso-Aramaean contributions would be sub-
ordinated to the Arab tradition and the Islamic values.”71 But why –
modern interpreters should ask more seriously – have historians turned
up virtually no self-professed Shuʿūbı̄s, only their opponents? The cen-
tral evidence marshaled for the existence of the movement, furthermore,
pertains mainly to late second/eighth- and third/ninth-century ʿAbbasid
Baghdad and to its courtly circles, and hardly ever extends beyond that
first cited by Goldziher. What about the rest of the empire and centers
outside of its orbit in the three centuries that followed? Accordingly, I
treat the Shuʿūbiyya lightly in the first and third chapters, but otherwise
not at all.
Finally, I am concerned with ways and methods of shaping memory,
and I try to strike a balance between analysis of traditions as a whole
and up-close readings of particular texts. But it is impossible to provide
an exhaustive catalog of memory. Upon such an attempt, one would find
oneself, like Luria’s mnemonist, unable to take measure of meaning or
significance. What one can do is focus on a set of remembered pasts and
examine the strategies employed, learn something of their circumstances,
and investigate how they supported or effaced memory. This might open
fruitful paths of inquiry not only for historians of Iran and its conversion,
but also for historians of other periods and locations interested in how
memory can be retrained during times of significant social and cultural
change.
71 Gibb, “The Social Significance of the Shuubiya,” in Studies on the Civilization of Islam,
ed. Stanford J. Shaw and William R. Polk, 62–73 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962), at 66.
By way of further example, see Ah.mad Amı̄n, D . uh.ā al-Islām, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-
Kitāb al-ʿArabı̄, [1933–6]), 1:49–78 and ʿAbd al-ʿAzı̄z al-Dūrı̄, al-Judhūr al-taʾrı̄khiyya
li-l-Shuʿūbiyya (Beirut: Dār al-T.alı̄ʿa, 1962).
part i
TRADITIONS FOR REMEMBERING
29
1
Prior Connections to Islam
Every child is born in the state of fit.ra [with a natural disposition for
Islam]. Then his parents make him a Jew, a Christian, or a Zoroastrian.
Muh.ammad, the Prophet
One of the central challenges the early Muslim community faced was
determining the relationship between kinship-based ways of organizing
Muslim society and those that claimed to transcend kinship in the name
of Islam. In the end, genealogy was put to many uses and provided
a common vocabulary that expressed and mobilized modes of social
organization.1 Muh.ammad’s family tree, enumerating his ancestors, de-
scendants (known as sayyids or sharı̄fs), and adoptive clients (mawālı̄),
served as the most important paradigm. The families of sayyids and sharı̄fs
were, and still are, accorded enormous prestige, as their lineages under-
wrote dynastic arrangements, provided access to patronage, and created
power brokers and mediators. Converts who adopted familial connec-
tions to other Muslims as mawālı̄ gained a sense of belonging to their
new faith. And other forms of kinship, such as tribal lineages or des-
cent from Sufi saints, conferred similar forms of belonging, prestige, and
benefits, including access to office and positions of leadership.
1 Early Arab Muslims’ fascination with genealogy can readily be seen in the Jamharat
al-nasab of Hishām b. Muh.ammad al-Kalbı̄ (d. ca. 204/819 or 206/821): Ǧamharat an-
nasab: Das genealogische Werk des Hišām ibn Muh.ammad al-Kalbı̄, ed. Werner Caskel,
2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966). See now esp. Sarah Bowen Savant and Helena de Felipe,
eds., Genealogy and Knowledge in Muslim Societies: Understanding the Past (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2013) and Savant, “Genealogy,” in The Princeton Encyclo-
pedia of Islamic Political Thought, ed. Gerhard Böwering et al., 189–90 (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2012).
31
This chapter traces the importance of genealogical representation dur-

ing the process of Iran’s conversion to Islam, when there was a great need
for a persuasive image of a Persian community with deep connections to
Islam. Traditionists promoted the idea that in the distant past the Persians
were descended from Muh.ammad’s spiritual ancestors, that is, the proph-
ets who preceded him and populated the planet; in this way, their reports
connected Persians to history before Muh.ammad and God’s final revela-
tion. Islam became part of the ancient landscape and heritage of Iran, and
all that followed the conquests likewise became part of a developmental
progression. This primordial vision was articulated most forcefully in
Iraq and western Iran, spoke for the entirety of the Persian population,
and eventually was woven into the dominant narratives of the history of
Islam. It ultimately even provided a creative license to claim Muslim
associations for Iran’s monuments of antiquity. Muh.ammad b. Jarı̄r
al-T.abarı̄ (d. 310/923) – a towering figure in Muslim historiography –
played a central role in promoting the idea of the Persians’ primordial
connections to the spiritual tradition of Islam. His work consequently
receives significant attention in what follows.
The Origins of the Idea of Ethnogenesis

The Persians’ prophetic genealogies were first and foremost an extension
of Muh.ammad’s own genealogy and represented the development of ideas
surrounding the history of his countrymen, the Arabs; the relationship of
Muh.ammad and his people to the history of monotheism; and the signif-
icance of blood ties for securing bonds within and among peoples. The
parallels between biblical traditions and those of Islam have been noted,
as have the ways in which Muslims developed these in their narratives
about the Prophet’s life and the origins of their faith. To summarize: just
as the Bible traced the ancestries of patriarchs, prophets, and Jesus back
to Adam, Muh.ammad was shown to descend from Adam through a series
of prestigious ancestors including Noah, Abraham, and Ishmael. Jesus’
genealogy in the gospel of Matthew shows, in the words of one Bible
scholar, that “the entire history of Israel finds its fulfillment in Jesus
Christ.”2 Muh.ammad’s genealogy, likewise, shows that Muh.ammad
was the fulfillment of prior monotheisms: he completes the prophecy
especially of Abraham, from whom the Arabs, as sons of Ishmael,
2 Barclay M. Newman Jr., “Matthew 1.1–18: Some Comments and a Suggested Restruc-
turing,” Bible Translator 27, no. 2 (1976): 209. Jesus’ genealogy is detailed in Matthew
1:1–18 and in Luke 3:23–38.
Prior Connections to Islam 33
descend – in parallel to Jewish prophets, who descend from Abraham’s

other son, Isaac. The biography of Muh.ammad by Ibn Ish.āq (d. ca.
150/767) – transmitted by Ibn Hishām (d. 213/828 or 218/833) in
the edition dominant today – begins with the Prophet’s genealogy and
runs through key Arab eponyms and Arabized biblical figures back to
Adam: “Muh.ammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Mut.t.alib . . . b. Kaʿb . . . b.
Fihr . . . b. Mud.ar b. Nizār b. Maʿadd b. ʿAdnān . . . b. Nābit b. Ismāʿı̄l
b. Ibrāhı̄m [Ishmael, son of Abraham] . . . b. Arfakhshadh b. Sām b. Nūh.
[Arpachshad, son of Shem, son of Noah] . . . Shı̄th b. Ādam [Seth, son
of Adam].”3 As Daniel Martin Varisco has written, it is in the genera-
tion after Abraham, with Ishmael, that the line is Arabized at the joining
point of the biblical with the Arab genealogy that continues through
Muh.ammad himself.4
Traditionists extended these ideas by elaborating Muh.ammad’s ances-
tors. For the Arab part of his ancestry, this yielded a schematized map
of Arab tribes. For the biblical part, it resulted in different peoples, all
linked by blood ties to Noah or Abraham, and implicitly to Muh.ammad
himself. Such a genealogy was supported by a discourse according to
which Muh.ammad belonged to a prophetic family. He was remembered
to have referred to his fellow prophets using familiar terms, suggesting
a shared kinship. In one Hadith, Muh.ammad is quoted as saying that
the prophets are sons of one father by different mothers. In another
version, he refers to them as brothers.5 God bestowed His favor not
just on previous prophets but on their progeny as well, or at least on
those of their progeny who believed.6 This family knew islām, or the
monotheistic submission to God that He revealed throughout the ages to
particular prophets and their peoples. Every time God sent a prophet, “a
window onto the unseen was opened up and a glimpse of ultimate reality
3 ʿAbd al-Malik b. Hishām, al-Sı̄ra al-nabawiyya, ed. Mus.t.afā al-Saqqā, Ibrāhı̄m al-Abyārı̄,
and ʿAbd al-H
. afı̄z. Shalabı̄, 2 vols. (Cairo: al-Bābı̄ al-H
. alabı̄, 1955), 1:1–3.
4 Daniel Martin Varisco, “Metaphors and Sacred History: The Genealogy of Muhammad
and the Arab ‘Tribe,’” “Anthropological Analysis and Islamic Texts,” special issue,
Anthropological Quarterly 68, no. 3 (1995): 139–56. Cf. Franz Rosenthal, “The Influ-
ence of the Biblical Tradition on Muslim Historiography,” in Historians of the Middle
East, ed. Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt, 35–45 (London: Oxford University Press,
1962).
5 Al-Bukhārı̄, al-Jāmiʿ al-s.ah.ı̄h., ed. M. Ludolf Krehl, 4 vols. (vol. 4 partly ed. Th. W.
Juynboll) (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1862–1908), 2:369.
6 Qurʾan 3:33–4: “God chose Adam and Noah and the family of Abraham and the family
of ʿImrān above all created beings, the seed of one another. God is the Hearer and the
Knower.” Throughout this book, I rely most on the Qurʾan translation of Alan Jones
(Cambridge: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2007). On these verses, see al-Bukhārı̄, S.ah.ı̄h., 2:365.
See also Qurʾan 6:83–7.
was transmitted to the earth.”7 The Qurʾan therefore refers to Abraham

and his sons Ishmael and Isaac as muslims, or “submitters” to the one
God.8
The Persians’ genealogies were, equally, an attempt to account within
an “Islamic” model for Iranian ways of explaining the origins of the
world and the course of human history. These ways posed a challenge
to a history centered on prophets, as they proposed their own accounts
of the origins of humanity, its development into distinct peoples, and the
overall diversity of human relations. They were related in tales within
which chronology typically moved according to a different rhythm, that
of a history of kingship. Most importantly, they featured ideas of “Īrān,”
sovereignty, topography, and heroes and villains going back, with some
interruptions, at least to Sasanian times if not further. They also featured
noble Iranian families and their descendants in the present, which, insofar
as prophetic history was concerned, could be reckoned, theoretically, as
merely late offshoots.
Iranian accounts of the past attracted the early interest of Muslims
(including Persian Muslims), who responded to them by translating them
from Middle Persian into Arabic, debating their ideas, reworking them
into their own narratives, and otherwise engaging with them. Such rewrit-
ing occurred within what scholars have called Iranian “national” history.
Its best-known representative, the “Book of Kings,” known in Middle
Persian as the Xwadāy-nāmag (in Arabic written as Khudāy-nāma,
-nāmaj, or -nāmak), covered Iranian history from its beginnings until
the last Sasanian monarch to rule Iran, Yazdagird III (r. 631–51 CE),
though a final chapter seems to have been added after that monarch’s
death.9 The work seems to have been compiled at different stages, but it
7 Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam; Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic
Political Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 10.
8 For the term muslim as applied to Abraham and his family, see Qurʾan 2:127–8, 2:131–3,
and 3:67–8; for Noah, see 10:72; for Joseph, 12:101; for Moses, 10:90; and for Lot, by
interpretation, 51:36.
9 Much has been written about the Xwadāy-nāmag. See especially Nöldeke, Das Iranische
Nationalepos, 13–15; Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sassanides, 53–6; Yarshater, “Iranian
National History,” 359–60; J. Derek Latham, “Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and Early ʿAbbasid
Prose,” in ʿAbbasid Belles-Lettres, ed. Julia Ashtiany et al., 48–77 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1990), at 53–4; A. Shahpur Shahbazi, “On the Xw adāy-nāmag,”
in Iranica Varia: Papers in Honor of Professor Ehsan Yarshater, 208–29 (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1990); Latham, “Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ, Abū Moh.ammad ʿAbd-Allāh Rōzbeh,” in EIr;
Zeev Rubin, “Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and the Account of Sasanian History in the Arabic Codex
Sprenger 30,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 30 (2005): 52–93; Rubin, “H . amza
al-Is.fahānı̄’s Sources for Sasanian History,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 35
(2008): 27–58; and M. Macuch, “Pahlavi Literature,” in The Literature of Pre-Islamic
was fixed in a coherent form by the end of the reign of Khusraw Parvı̄z
(r. 590–628 CE). It was first translated into Arabic in the ʿAbbasid
period by the prolific courtier ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 139/756)
and retranslated several times later. In Arabic, it served as a major source
for Arabic traditionists and in some fashion as one of the likely sources
for Firdawsı̄’s Persian Shāh-nāmah (completed ca. 400/1010).10 On the
other hand, Muslims ignored, or were unaware of, much of Iranian histor-
ical knowledge. This was particularly true of Iranian “religious” history,
namely, Zoroastrian ideas about the past; these received highly selec-
tive attention in Muslim historical works.
The greatest challenge to studying how Muslims took account of such
history lies in the nature of the surviving sources, nearly all of which
postdate the rise of Islam. This does not allow for a stable point of com-
parison, that is, a “pure” pre-Islamic national or religious historiography
against which to measure interpretations by Muslims. No historical books
have survived intact from Seleucid, Parthian, or Sasanian times that could
chronicle Iranian national history, although there is some non-narrative
evidence of it in the Avesta, Achaemenid inscriptions and tablets, Middle
Iranian inscriptions, ostraca, papyri, graffiti, coins, and the Arabic and
Persian Muslim sources themselves.11 This has had the odd result that
attempts to describe the Xwadāy-nāmag have relied on Firdawsı̄’s epic
or on al-T.abarı̄’s History of Prophets and Kings (Taʾrı̄kh al-rusul wa-
l-mulūk). Likewise, Zoroastrian Middle Persian texts, while containing
much old material, came into their current forms in the eighth century CE
and afterward, when Zoroastrians had been interacting with Muslims for
some time.12 A further challenge arises from the fact that while one can
Iran, companion volume 1 to A History of Persian Literature, ed. Ronald E. Emmerick

and Maria Macuch, 116–96 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), at 172–81.
10 On the sources for the Shāh-nāmah, see also Nöldeke, Das Iranische Nationalepos,
who holds that the Xwadāy-nāmag likely passed directly from Pahlavi through versions
in neo-Persian to Firdawsı̄’s epic (pp. 16–19); and esp. W. Barthold, “Zur Geschichte
des persischen Epos” (trans. Hans Heinrich Schaeder), Zeitschrift der Deutschen Mor-
genländischen Gesellschaft 98 (1944): 121–57; F. Gabrieli, “Ibn al-Muk.affaʿ,” in EI2 ;
Mahmoud Omidsalar, “Could al-Thaʿâlibı̂ Have Used the Shâhnâma as a Source?” Der
Islam 75, no. 2 (1998): 338–46; and Macuch, “Epic History and Geographical Works,”
172–4. Cf. Dick Davis, “The Problem of Ferdowsı̂’s Sources,” Journal of the American
Oriental Society 116, no. 1 (1996): esp. 50–1, and Kumiko Yamamoto, The Oral Back-
ground of Persian Epics: Storytelling and Poetry (Leiden: Brill, 2003), esp. xix–xxiv and
60ff.
11 Yarshater, “Iranian National History,” 360.
12 On this problem, see esp. J. de Menasce, “Zoroastrian Pahlavı̄ Writings,” in The Cam-
bridge History of Iran, 3(2):1166–95, and “Zoroastrian Literature after the Muslim
speak of Zoroastrian historiography, elements of Iranian national and

religious history are often merged in the Arabic sources.13 Other times,
what once may have counted as Zoroastrian history is “nationalized,”
becoming part and parcel of the history of all Persians. Whatever the
heuristic value of a religious/national distinction, the state of our sources
should cause misgivings about any rigid categorization of contents as
simply either “national” or “religious,” since although it may be true
that such a division held once upon a time, as the two types of history
were produced and first consumed, the distinction softens in Arabic and
Persian, as traditionists make use of a variety of sources.
Finally, there is every reason to believe that historical knowledge of
a more local nature also served as a source for genealogies featuring the
prophets and for Muslim historiography more generally, though identify-
ing its original, pre-Islamic forms is fraught with difficulties. Some of this
evidence is circumstantial: Jews and Christians, who may have served as
sources of such knowledge, inhabited Iranian towns such as Hamadhān,
Nihāwand, and Jayy, from which we also have testimony about proph-
etic genealogies. Other support is derived from pure conjecture: Iraq
with its Jewish and Christian populations would have provided a fer-
tile ground for discussions of the prophets’ ancestries.14 Local histories
contain much material relating to pre-Islamic times, and they even take
archaic forms, such as the Pahlavi treatise on the “Wonders and Mag-
nificence of Sı̄stān.”15 Although their first audiences resided in Iranian
localities, they circulated widely and transmitted their ideas about ancient
history, and other matters, to wider horizons.
Conquest,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4, The Period from the Arab Inva-
sion to the Saljuqs, ed. R. N. Frye, 543–65 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1975); Shaul Shaked, “Some Islamic Reports Concerning Zoroastrianism,” Jerusalem
Studies in Arabic and Islam 17 (1994): 43–84; M. Stausberg, “The Invention of a Canon:
The Case of Zoroastrianism,” in Canonization & Decanonization: Papers Presented to
the International Conference of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR)
Held at Leiden 9-10 January 1997, ed. A. van der Kooij and K. van der Toorn, 257–77
(Leiden: Brill, 1998); and D. Neil MacKenzie, “Bundahišn,” in EIr.
13 They may even have been blended in the Xwadāy-nāmag itself.
14 Work on the Babylonian Talmud under the late Sasanians is suggestive of the possibilities
for exchange of ideas on a variety of matters, genealogy included. Also, for Mandaean
appropriation of the Kayanids, see Louis H. Gray, “The Kings of Early Irān according
to the Sidrā Rabbā,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 19,
no. 2 (1906): 272–87.
15 For a translation, analysis, and bibliography, see Bo Utas, “The Pahlavi Treatise Avdēh
u sahı̄kēh ı̄ Sakistān or ‘Wonders and Magnificence of Sistan,’” Acta Antiqua Academiae
Scientiarum Hungaricae 28 (1980): 259–67.
When Muslims tried to account for Persians in prophetic history, they

therefore had on offer a complex network of traditions from which to
choose: those preoccupied with Islam’s biblical heritage; those reflecting
native Iranian knowledge in different forms, including that produced for
particular localities and disseminated widely; and ideas originating with
longstanding local Jewish and Christian populations.
The Inheritance of Noah

Let us look at the most commonly mentioned prophet-forefather for the
Persians, Noah, and at the various ways in which descent from him
could connect them to prophetic and Islamic history. The story of the
Flood that destroyed all peoples except Noah’s family has required those
who subscribe to its mythology of ethnogenesis to trace their ancestries
to one or another of his sons, Shem, Ham, or Japheth. This has been
accomplished in a variety of ways. Although early European Christians,
for example, were not mentioned in the Genesis 10 account of Noah’s
progeny, they traced their lines to Japheth.16 Jewish traditions supported
this ancestry, but details proved difficult to work out17 and, in some cases,
involved the recasting of a former god as a royal figure.18 According to an
unusual tradition circulating in ninth-century England, the Anglo-Saxon
royal line of Wessex descended from an ark-born son of Noah named
Sceaf.19 In the complex search for roots that took place in Reformation
era Germany, Christians identified Ashkenaz, a grandson of Japheth, as
their forefather.20
16 Genesis 10:2–5 mentions Japheth’s seven sons and adds that “From these the coastland
peoples spread. These are the sons of Japheth in their lands, each with his own lan-
guage, by their families, in their nations.” (Throughout this study, I rely on the Revised
Standard Version of the Bible.) Genesis 10 mentions Japheth’s grandsons through his
sons Gomer and Javan, omitting mention of progeny through Japheth’s other five
sons.
17 Donald Daniel Leslie, “Japhet in China,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 104,
no. 3 (1984): 404–5.
18 Craig R. Davis has described this as a reversal of the process described by Euhemerus
in the third century BCE: “The ancient gods are not glorified heroes; heroes, or at least
some of them, are fallen gods.” Davis, “Cultural Assimilation in the Anglo-Saxon Royal
Genealogies,” Anglo-Saxon England 21 (1992): 23–4.
19 Daniel Anlezark, “Sceaf, Japheth and the Origins of the Anglo-Saxons,” Anglo-Saxon
England 31 (2002): 26–7.
20 For Noah’s sons in European historiography, see esp. Benjamin Braude, “The Sons of
Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and
Early Modern Periods,” William and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997): 103–42.
In adopting the ancient Near Eastern idea of the Flood, Muslims inher-
ited its ethnogenic imperative as well: if all other peoples perished at that
time, then Muslims and their ancestors, whatever their origins, must de-
scend from Noah, too. There could be no autochthons. For Arabs, this
was quickly addressed. The early biographers of Muh.ammad, as men-
tioned, constructed for him a lineage that went back to Noah (and before
him, to Adam). The Arabian prophets – Hūd, S.ālih., and Shuʿayb – were
also given lineages. The eponyms of Arab tribes, such as Qah.t.ān, also
became Noah’s progeny, conferring this ancestry upon the tribes gener-
ally and upon the individuals within them.
Scholars of the genealogical sciences placed non-Arab peoples in a
great number of segmented lineages that showed more than one line of
descent from a given ancestor. Such lineages contain multiple branches,
and are therefore well suited for different purposes. For many scholars,
no matter what their own locale, a clear primary concern was the way in
which kinship to Noah provided a biological explanation for the Arabs’
relations with other peoples, especially the “Children of Israel” (Banū
Isrāʾı̄l).21 For others, genealogy reflected a salvific hierarchy of peoples
(in which, for example, Ham’s descendants tended to fare poorly), or
it could root in primordial times devolution from an original Islam and
therefore serve as part of a critique (as I discuss in Chapter 4).
Persians were considered in some of the earliest schemes that gave an
anthropology of the world’s peoples. For example, traditions attributed
by al-T.abarı̄ to ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbbās (d. 68/687 or 688) or Wahb b.
Munabbih (d. 110 or 114/728 or 732) would have the Persians descend
from Shem or Japheth. Ibn ʿAbbās reportedly named Shem’s descen-
dants as Moses’s people (qawm Mūsā, i.e., the Children of Israel), the
Arabs, the Persians (al-Furs), the Nabat (al-Nabat., that is, the Aramaic-
speaking population of Syria and Mesopotamia, not the Nabateans of
Petra familiar to modern readers), and the people of India and Sind (al-
Hind wa-l-Sind).22 Wahb, meanwhile, specified Persians, Arabs, and the
people of Byzantium as Shem’s descendants, thus rendering the Arabs kin
21 This agenda, in which Abraham also figures prominently, animates works composed
across the Muslim world, including in Muslim Spain, as demonstrated by Ibn H . azm’s
(d. 456/1064) Jamharat ansāb al-ʿArab, ed. É. Lévi-Provençal (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif,
1948). For a broad study, see Zoltan Szombathy, “The Nassâbah: Anthropological
Fieldwork in Mediaeval Islam,” Islamic Culture 73, no. 3 (1999): 94.
22 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh I:218–19. Regarding this genealogy, see The History of al-T . abarı̄,
vol. 2, Prophets and Patriarchs, trans. William M. Brinner (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1987), 17–18, n. 61.
to the two major imperial powers they conquered. For him, “the Blacks”
(al-Sūdān) descended from Ham and the Turks (al-Turk) and Gog and
Magog from Japheth.23
The Accommodation of al-T

. abarı̄
The most systematic attempt to account for translocal Iranian histori-
ography was undertaken by al-T.abarı̄ in his History of Prophets and
Kings. For al-T.abarı̄, the Persians’ genealogies, including Noah as a fore-
father, were part of a larger project of narrating the history of Islam and
the Muslim community upon the premise that knowledge of true mono-
theism, islām, came into the world with the first prophet, Adam, and was
reinforced by all prophets after him. In al-T.abarı̄’s work, Persians play a
major role in this early history, which prepares audiences to spot them in
the narratives that follow and lead to the early fourth/tenth century. By
this logic, it would not be too far-fetched to view Islam as an indigenous
religion, forgotten and then recovered.
Al-T.abarı̄ was born in 224 or 225/839 in the city of Āmul in the
Persian province of T.abaristān on the Caspian Sea, which developed
loyalties to Islam rather late and whose control was contested at the time
of al-T.abarı̄’s birth.24 His own family may well have had Arab roots,
though he discouraged speculation about his ancestry.25 He left home at
the age of twelve and finally settled in Baghdad when he was about thirty,
funding his studies with income from the rent of properties in his home
town.26 He was well acquainted with Iran’s cultural and literary heritage
but at some remove, and he was certainly no chauvinist. Rather, he likely
wanted to preserve an Iranian historiographical tradition, to make other
Muslims aware of it, and to give it a certain pride of place, but also to urge
Iranians to see their history as part of a wider Muslim history. And so, in

24 In 224 and 225 AH, a recent convert to Islam and member of a non-Muslim dynasty
known as the Bāwandids revolted unsuccessfully against the central authorities of the
caliphate; heavy taxes were imposed on the landowners of Āmul, and the city itself was
laid waste. See R. N. Frye, “Bāwand,” in EI2 , and Franz Rosenthal’s description of
al-T.abarı̄’s early life in The History of al-T
. abarı̄, vol. 1, General Introduction and From
the Creation to the Flood, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1989), 10–11.
25 See the comments by Rosenthal; History of al-T . abarı̄, 1:12.
26 Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, vol. 1 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967), 323–
8; Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 162; Claude Gilliot, “La formation intellectuelle
de Tabari (224/5–310/839–923),” Journal Asiatique 276 (1988): 203–44.
his book, al-T.abarı̄ presents a wealth of possible ways in which Persians

might be related to prophets and other Qurʾanic figures – including Adam,
Seth, Noah, Dhū al-Qarnayn, al-Khid.r, Solomon, Abraham, and Isaac –
whose lines intertwined with, and spawned, many possible Persian ones.
The Persian lines include those of Gayūmart – about whom we will
have much to say in this study – as the father either of the human race
as a whole or of the Persians in particular; Hūshang, as the first king
of the so-called Pı̄shdādian dynasty; Mashı̄ and Mashyāna, figures of
Zoroastrian cosmogony; Jamshı̄d, Farı̄dūn, and Manūshihr, all known
from the Persian epic tradition; Kay Qubādh, who features in al-T.abarı̄’s
account as the first Kayanid ruler; and Yazdagird III, the last Sasanian
ruler of Iran. He identifies many different advocates of varying views
of Persian genealogy: Muslim akhbārı̄s, Arab and Persian genealogists,
poets, and Zoroastrian priests, as well as Persians, Zoroastrians, and Jews
(the Children of Israel) in general.
As a whole, al-T.abarı̄’s volume presents its readers with a range of
possibilities relating to the origins of humanity, its branching out, its
ancient history of prophets and kings, especially in Palestine, Arabia, and
Iran, and its religious and ethnic forms in his own day. The possibilities
address problems in merging what al-T.abarı̄ likely saw as a Qurʾanic
vision of history with the Iranian views he apparently knew quite well. The
thrust of his inquiry is earnest, searching, and literal, if not philosophically
systematic, in its mode of thinking: With whom does the human race start?
When did the major communities we know today come into existence?
What role did the Flood, its devastation of humanity, and its aftermath
have in shaping humanity in the present? Genealogically speaking, what
are the origins of the key figures of the Persian epic tradition – especially
Jamshı̄d, Farı̄dūn, and Manūshihr?
It was once held that al-T.abarı̄ was unoriginal in his presentation
because of his extensive citation of authorities, his reproduction of sub-
stantial portions of earlier texts, often without attribution, and the general
discourse of learning in his day that was based on faithful reproduction
through both memorization and scrupulous note taking. Although one
still finds some adherents to such a view, the consensus of scholars now
begins with the premise of al-T.abarı̄’s intervention and looks for his own
position in his comments on reports, his references to sources in dif-
ferent, distinguishing ways, and his choices regarding emplotment (how
he structures his text, and with what narrative economy), weighting (by
length, chiefly), and assumptions within and across portions of the text.
In his general introduction to the translation of al-T.abarı̄’s History, Franz
Rosenthal went so far as to assert that “the most remarkable aspect of

T.abarı̄’s approach is his constant and courageous expression of ‘inde-
pendent judgment (ijtihād).’”27 While this is surely an overstatement, as
al-T.abarı̄ rarely speaks in his own “voice,” it is often possible to discern
his perspective.28
His view of the Persians’ genealogy runs something like this and
emerges out of the various contradictory details. The Persians’ history
begins with famous figures whose lineages run deep into prophetic his-
tory: they begin either at creation or, more likely, after the Flood, prob-
ably with Noah’s son Shem. Afterward, pre-Islamic Persian history, par-
ticularly dynastic history, runs mostly on its own track, independent of
prophetic history. It provides a useful and stable point of reference for
prophetic history but is also part of prophetic history, both because it
originates in the latter and because it is part of a broader narrative and
telos leading to Muh.ammad, the final prophet, and Islam in Iran itself.
Three aspects of al-T.abarı̄’s position deserve special comment. First,
he treats Zoroastrian opinions as plausible; reports them, he says, di-
rectly from Zoroastrians; and uses them to flesh out the early history of
the Persians. For him, such opinions are not disqualified by the religious
identity of their proponents and may even be a valid source of inform-
ation, at least insofar as the Persian branch of humanity is concerned.
Most interestingly, al-T.abarı̄ singles them out as representing the native
“Persian” view with which a history of Islam must come to terms. He
does not describe them as Sasanian, nor as expressly part of the heritage
of an imperial Iran.
Second, Zoroastrian ideas, though treated seriously, cannot be accept-
ed as plausible if they contradict basic tenets of Muslim belief about the
past, chiefly about human origins and the Flood. Adam, not Gayūmart,
was father to the human race, whatever the relationship between the two.
There was a Flood. The Zoroastrians, al-T.abarı̄ notes, say there was no
Flood, or they say there was, but it did not cover their lands or inter-
rupt their genealogies, as they “assume that it took place in the clime
27 Rosenthal, History of al-T . abarı̄, 1:55–6. Rosenthal is speaking here of all of al-T.abarı̄’s
works. He cites unfavorably Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur,
2nd ed., 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1943–9), 1:148, and the latter’s assessment of al-
T.abarı̄ as “kein selbständiger Kopf,” or unoriginal.
28 See “T.abarı̄’s Voice and Hand,” in Boaz Shoshan, Poetics of Islamic Historiography:
Deconstructing T . abarı̄’s History (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 109–54. Cf. Tayeb El-Hibri, Rein-
terpreting Islamic Historiography and “T.abarı̄’s Biography of al-Muʿtas.im: The Literary
Use of a Military Career,” Der Islam 86, no. 2 (2011): 187–236.
of Babylon and nearby regions, whereas the descendants of Gayūmart

had their dwellings in the East, and the Flood did not reach them.”29
Al-T.abarı̄ points to the error of this view: “The information given by
God concerning the Flood contradicts their statement,” he says, citing
Qurʾan 37:75–7, in which the Qurʾan describes Noah and his offspring
as “survivors,” saved by God.30 God therefore indicates that “Noah’s
offspring are the survivors, and nobody else.”31 Al-T.abarı̄ repeats this
assertion amid a discussion of the mythic tyrant D . ah.h.āk, as he notes
that “some people” (baʿd.ahum) claim that Noah lived during his reign.32
For him, it is clear that there is in reality no uninterrupted and inde-
pendent Persian line that preceded the Flood and continued after it. He
goes on to discuss various theories about the Persians’ genealogies that
may explain the Zoroastrians’ errors regarding their origins. One theory
is based on a simple confusion of names: he reports that the Magians
of his day believed Gayūmart to have been the same person as Adam,
with 3,139 years passing between Gayūmart’s lifetime and the hijra of
Muh.ammad.33 He also notes that Persian scholars – whom he does not
describe specifically as Zoroastrians but rather as members of a schol-
arly class (ʿulamāʾ al-Furs) – assume that Gayūmart was Adam.34 A
second explanation relies on genealogical sublimation through the depic-
tion of Gayūmart as “the son of Adam’s loins by Eve.”35 Al-T.abarı̄
also reports a combination of these two methods of reconciliation with
regard to Hūshang on the authority of “some Persian genealogists” (baʿd.
nassābat al-Furs). This theory takes the equation of Gayūmart with Adam
as its starting point and further assumes that Hūshang descends from
Gayūmart through Gayūmart’s son Mashı̄, grandson Siyāmak, and great-
grandson Afrawāk (Frawāk). Thus Gayūmart would be Adam, Mashı̄
would be Seth, Siyāmak would be Enosh, Afrawāk would be Kenan, and
finally Hūshang would be Mahalalel – perfectly reflecting Adam’s bib-
lical descendants.36 Al-T.abarı̄ puzzles over whether the equations would

30 Qurʾan 37:75–7 says: “Noah called out to Us, and how excellent was the Answerer.
We delivered him and his household from the great distress, and made his seed the
survivors.”
32 Ibid., I:210.
33 Ibid., I:17.
34 Ibid., I:147.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., I:155; Genesis 5:1–12.
plausibly permit Hūshang to be a contemporary of Adam, as Mahalalel

was, and concludes that it would be possible.37
A third important aspect of al-T.abarı̄’s position is his belief that
the Persians were born early in the history of humanity, whether at its
inception, with Gayūmart, or more likely afterward, from Noah’s sons.
They are among its original stock, their history emerging before that
of either Jews or Arabs. An alternative genealogy, which al-T.abarı̄ also
mentions, traces the lineage of the Persians to the later figure of Abraham
and his son Isaac (through Manūshihr, a claim considered below), and so
places them chronologically on a par with the Jews and Arabs. However,
al-T.abarı̄ discounts this theory; he credits it to an unnamed source or
sources (baʿd. ahl al-akhbār); he notes that this is a view not shared by the
Persians themselves; he quotes a good Muslim source that contradicts it
(Ibn al-Kalbı̄, d. ca. 204/819 or 206/821); and in a subsequent mention of
Manūshihr, al-T.abarı̄ casually refers to him as Manūshihr b. Īraj. He thus
dispenses with the possibility that the Persians descend from Abraham.38
The cumulative result of these features of al-T.abarı̄’s discussion is the
placement of Persians within the story of Islam at an early stage, and in
ways that respect and preserve some of their native traditions, for which
Persians, and even Zoroastrians, are given significant credit. Genealogical
autonomy, after a point, paves the way for autonomy in other realms.
Persian history sets the pace for, and is part of, prophetic history. Toward
the beginning of the History al-T.abarı̄ remarks that pre-Islamic Persian
history, beginning with Gayūmart, is the most reliable benchmark for
measuring history. That is, “the history of the world’s bygone years is
more easily explained and more clearly seen based upon the lives of the
Persian kings than upon those of the kings of any other nation (ghayrihim
min al-umam).” Indeed, “a history based upon the lives of the Persian
kings has the soundest sources and the best and clearest data.”39 This his-
tory shares much of the same Near Eastern geography as other narratives
of prophetic history, overlaps in dramatic content, and runs toward the
lifetime of the Prophet and the Muslim conquests, including of Iran itself.
In al-T.abarı̄’s writing, one gets a sense of the challenge the author
probably first encountered when, as a youth, he moved south from Āmul

38 “As for the Persians (al-Furs), they disclaim this genealogy, and they know no kings
ruling over them other than the sons of Farı̄dūn and acknowledge no kings of other
peoples. They think that if an intruder of other stock (min ghayrihim) entered among
them in ancient times, he did so wrongfully.” Ibid., I:432–4.
. abarı̄, 1:319; see also Taʾrı̄kh, I:353.
39 Ibid., I:148; History of al-T
to Rayy, located near modern Tehran and a major center of the empire
in his day, to study Muslim traditions, including Ibn Ish.āq’s biography
of the Prophet and Kitāb al-Mubtadaʾ, which treats prophetic history
prior to Muh.ammad’s lifetime, with major figures such as Muh.ammad
40
b. H . umayd (d. 248/862). While there and afterward in Baghdad, he
certainly recognized the problem of reconciling prophetic history with
knowledge otherwise available in Iran. When he sat down to write the
History, which he finished in 302/915,41 he ostensibly had a full range
of Islamic and older Iranian materials at his disposal, and he chose to
address the conflicts that they presented by assembling them in this partic-
ular way.
In contrast to his general precision in citing sources in his History, it is
remarkable that al-T.abarı̄ describes the sources of his knowledge about
Gayūmart, Hūshang, Farı̄dūn, and Jamshı̄d and these very first chapters
of prophetic history in such general terms, as owing to Zoroastrians or
to Persians in general. He does not specify Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, the Xwadāy-
nāmag, or a Siyar al-mulūk (as Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s translation of the latter
is sometimes called), nor does he otherwise name his informants, unless
they are Muslims (including Ibn al-Kalbı̄). Instead, he employs the passive
voice (dhukira, “it is said that”) and generally speaks ambiguously. Mod-
ern scholars have persuasively argued, however, that al-T.abarı̄’s knowl-
edge of Iran’s pre-Islamic history derived in significant measure from the
Xwadāy-nāmag, if not through a copy of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s translation,
then through another channel.42 His way of citing contrasts sharply with
that of later traditionists writing outside of Iraq, who seem to have felt
much more comfortable identifying Iranian sources by name. These other
reporters include H . amza al-Is.fahānı̄ (d. after 350/961) – a particularly
strong point of contrast, surely – who spent most of his life in Is.fahān and
who begins his work by listing eight sources for knowledge about Iran’s
pre-Islamic history, first on the list being Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Kitāb Siyar
mulūk al-Furs. H . amza mentions a Zoroastrian priest named Bahrām who
claimed to have collected more than twenty copies of the Xwadāy-nāmag
40 Gilliot, “La formation intellectuelle de Tabari,” 205–6; Rosenthal, “The Life and Works
of al-T.abarı̄,” in History of al-T
. abarı̄, 1:17–19.
41 Rosenthal, History of al-T . abarı̄, 1:133.
42 Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden aus
der arabischen Chronik des Tabari (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1879; repr., 1973); Arthur
Christensen, Les types du premier homme et du premier roi dans l’histoire légendaire des
Iraniens, vol. 1, Gajōmard, Masjaγ et Masjānaγ , Hōšang et Taχ mōruw (Stockholm:
P. A. Norstedt, 1917), 64–6. See also Gabrieli, “Ibn al-Muk.affaʿ,” in EI2 .
in order to establish the correct dates of the reigns of Persian kings.43

The other reporters also include Balʿamı̄ (d. ca. 363/974), who was,
until the studies by Elton L. Daniel and Andrew C. S. Peacock, widely
regarded as al-T.abarı̄’s “translator” into Persian.44 In his adaptation of
al-T.abarı̄’s work, produced under the autonomous Samanid governate of
Khurāsān and Transoxiana and considered the earliest work of Persian
historical writing, Balʿamı̄ mentions a far more varied list of sources that
also features Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, a Shāh-nāmah-yi buzurg (attributed to the
Samanid era Persian poet and writer Abū al-Muʾayyad Balkhı̄), and “the
book of Bahrām b. Mihrān Is.fahānı̄,” perhaps referring to some version
45
of what H . amza had on hand – among several other works.
Why does al-T.abarı̄ not give credit where it was likely due? It could
be that such knowledge was diffusely held, with al-T.abarı̄ gaining it di-
rectly from Persians, especially Zoroastrians, so it deserved the general
attributions he gave to it; he also may have known it to be part of a Per-
sian corpus already heavily filtered by the Arabic sources. But there may
be more to his silence. His reluctance to name the work represents a way
of dealing with two possible historical visions identified by Julie Scott
Meisami in Persian-language historical texts: one is “Iranian, focusing
on pre-Islamic Iranian monarchy up to the Islamic conquest,” whereas
the other is “Islamic,” and gave rise to dynastic history. Meisami traced
these visions to the emergence of Persian historical writing in the last
. amza al-Is.fahānı̄, Kitāb Taʾrı̄kh sinı̄ mulūk al-ard. wa-l-anbiyāʾ (Berlin: Kaviani,
43 H
1340/1921 or 1922), 9 and 19.
44 For the hugely complex history of the work’s transmission, see Elton L. Daniel, “Manu-
scripts and Editions of Balʿamı̄’s Tarjamah-yi Tārı̄kh-i T. abarı̄,” Journal of the Royal Asi-
atic Society, n.s., 122, no. 2 (1990): 282–321. Andrew C. S. Peacock’s recent study raises
further, serious questions about how historians have traditionally used Balʿamı̄’s text; see
his Mediaeval Islamic Historiography and Political Legitimacy: Balʿamı̄’s Tārı̄khnāma
(London: Routledge, 2007), esp. 73–102, “Balʿamı̄’s Reshaping of T.abarı̄’s History.”
45 Tārı̄kh-i Balʿamı̄: Takmilah va Tarjumah-yi Tārı̄kh-i T. abarı̄, ed. Muh.ammad Taqı̄ Bahār
and Muh.ammad Parvı̄n Gunābādı̄, 2 vols. (Tehran: Zavvāl, 1974), 1:3–5 (incl. 5, n.
11); on this passage, and Balʿamı̄’s treatment of Gayūmart generally, see esp. Maria
Subtelny, “Between Persian Legend and Samanid Orthodoxy: Accounts about Gayu-
marth in Bal‘ami’s Tarikhnama,” in Ferdowsi, the Mongols and Iranian History: Art,
Literature and Culture from Early Islam to Qajar Persia, ed. Robert Hillenbrand, A. C.
S. Peacock, and Firuza Abdullaeva (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013). Subtelny persuasively
argues, however, that Balʿamı̄ copies a passage, including a list of sources, from the
so-called older prose preface to the Shāh-nāmah (completed in 346/957 for Abū Mans.ūr
b. ʿAbd al-Razzāq, the governor of T.ūs); i.e., he would seem to overstate the variety of
what he actually had at hand. For the relevant passage, see V. Minorsky, “The Older
Preface to the Shāh-nāma,” in Studi orientalistici in onore di Giorgio Levi Della Vida,
2 vols., 2:159–79 (Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1956), 2:173.
half-century of Samanid rule (the second half of the fourth/tenth

century).46 It seems more likely, however, that these visions existed in ten-
sion much earlier and in Arabic, from the moment of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s
translation, as can be seen in a complaint of the ʿAbbasid litterateur al-
Jāh.iz. (d. 255/868 or 869), who said that his contemporaries were overly
impressed by old models.47 In the early days extending to those of al-
T.abarı̄, the conflict was often resolved with little acknowledgment of the
pre-Islamic and Iranian strand. It is significant that even Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s
own Arabic translation was eventually lost – a fate that would have
seemed shocking from the perspective of other fields of knowledge where
the past was meticulously (if differently) recorded, such as Hadith study.
The result can be seen in the fourth/tenth century, when H . amza cites a
Mūsā b. ʿĪsā al-Kisrawı̄, who bemoans the instability of the Xwadāy-
nāmag’s textual tradition. Mūsā notes that all of the copies of the Arabic
text differ, and he could not find even two copies agreeing in content.48
Generally speaking, al-T.abarı̄’s History played a large role in shaping
the historiographical tradition that followed him, so much so that a Buyid
amir was once chastened by Mah.mūd of Ghazna for having failed to read
his al-T.abarı̄.49 Besides all of the other topics al-T.abarı̄ treats in his work,
we have him to thank for a considerable amount of our knowledge of Iran
and its pre-Islamic history. But whatever he and other giants of Arabic or
46 J. S. Meisami, “The Past in Service of the Present: Two Views of History in Medieval
Persia,” “Cultural Processes in Muslim and Arab Societies: Medieval and Early Modern
Periods,” special issue, Poetics Today 14, no. 2 (1993): 249 and 257. According to
Meisami, the Shāh-nāmah represents a pre-Islamic and Iranian narrative, whereas a
variety of other texts represent an Islamic one. In speaking of Firdawsı̄’s ambitions,
however, Meisami softens the distinction. The Shāh-nāmah reflects a cyclical view of
history and the rise and fall of states. Implicit in this structure, she argues, “is the hope
for the appearance of a house which would combine both Iranian and Islamic ideals, a
hope clearly expressed in the poem’s panegyrics.”
47 See al-Masʿūdı̄, al-Tanbı̄h, 76–7 (al-Masʿūdı̄ criticizes here a romanticization of past
authorities, citing al-Jāh.iz.). Cited by Edward G. Browne in “Some Account of the
Arabic Work entitled ‘Niháyatu’l-irab fı́ akhbári’l-Furs wa’l-‘Arab,’ particularly of that
part which treats of the Persian Kings,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s., 32,
no. 2 (1900): 200. See also al-Jāh.iz.’s skepticism regarding the authenticity of ancient
Persian writings transmitted in Arabic; al-Bayān wa-l-tabyı̄n, 2nd ed., ed. ʿAbd al-Salām
Muh.ammad Hārūn, 4 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjı̄, 1960–1), 3:29.
. amza al-Is.fahānı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, 15. On this passage of H
48 H . amza’s text and its implications for
historiography, see Zeev Rubin, “H . amza al-Is.fahānı̄’s Sources for Sasanian History,”
Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 35 (2008): 43–4.
49 For this example, see Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 115. Robinson cites Ibn al-Athı̄r
(d. 630/1233); see al-Kāmil fı̄ al-Taʾrı̄kh, 9:261. Firdawsı̄’s Shāh-nāmah is dedicated to
Mah.mūd; the anecdote might represent a comment on the relative worth of the two
texts so as to show the importance of the History (see also Chapter 4).
Persian letters give us, we should not underestimate the significance of the
fact that first the Pahlavi and then the Arabic texts are so quietly absorbed
into other texts, a process that we explore in the second half of this book.
Contents cannot survive unchanged regardless of the structures in which
they are encased; nor can the memories they encapsulate, especially when
their origins date back to a conquered empire. And quiet absorption
suggests less fidelity to an original text than diligent attribution.50
Abraham and a New Divine Election

A further theory regarding the Persians’ genealogy enjoyed currency in
the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries. This theory, briefly mentioned
earlier, held that the Persians descended from Abraham through his son
Isaac. In ancient times, Persians even made their way to Mecca for the
pilgrimage that Abraham first established. In his Murūj al-dhahab, the
historian and litterateur Abū al-H. asan al-Masʿūdı̄ (d. 345/956) describes
the visits: “the Persians’ ancestors (aslāf al-Furs) would betake themselves
to the Sacred House [i.e., the Kaʿba] and circumambulate it to honor
their grandfather Abraham, to hold fast by his way, and to preserve their
genealogies.”51 The last pre-Islamic Persian to perform the pilgrimage was
Sāsān, the dynasty’s eponym: “When Sāsān came to the House, he circum-
ambulated it and mumbled prayers (zamzama) over the well of Ishmael.
It is named ‘Zamzam’ only on account of his and other Persians’ mum-
bling prayers over it. This indicates the frequency of their practice over
this well.”52 Al-Masʿūdı̄ cites two poets, whom he does not name, attest-
ing to this “mumbling.” The first states: “The Persians mumbled prayers
over Zamzam (zamzamat al-Furs ʿalā Zamzam). That was in their most
ancient past.”53 Al-Masʿūdı̄ also cites this line in his Tanbı̄h, noting there
that the Persians would bring to the Kaʿba offerings to show respect for
Abraham and his son: “it is, according to them, the greatest of the seven
50 In a related vein, see Fred Donner’s caution against the “T.abarization” of history in his
review of Hugh Kennedy’s The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near
East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century, Speculum 65, no. 1 (1990): 182–4. Also,
on the same tendency in scholarship, see Antoine Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir,
106–7.
. asan al-Masʿūdı̄, Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʿādin al-jawhar, vols. 1 and 2, ed.
51 Abū al-H
Charles Pellat (Beirut: Manshūrāt al-Jāmiʿa al-Lubnāniyya, 1965–6), 1:283 (no. 573).
Regarding al-Masʿūdı̄, see esp. Tarif Khalidi, Islamic Historiography: The Histories of
Masʿūdı̄ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975).
52 Al-Masʿūdı̄, Murūj, 1:283 (no. 574).
53 Ibid. Neither poet can be identified.
great temples (hayākil) and the world’s noble houses of worship.”54 The
second poet al-Masʿūdı̄ cites in the Murūj “boasted after the appearance
of Islam” because of the Persians’ ancient practices, saying:
In bygone times we kept visiting the sanctuary (nah.ajju al-bayt),

And setting up camp securely in its valleys.
Sāsān b. Bābak journeyed from afar
To support religion with a visit to the Ancient House.
Then he circumambulated it and mumbled prayers (zamzama) at a well
belonging
To Ishmael that quenches the drinkers’ thirst.55
The topos of pilgrimage to the Kaʿba before Islam is found elsewhere

in Arabic historiography.56 In genealogical terms, the significance of the
idea lies in the ties it establishes with Arabs and Muh.ammad, of whose
genealogy the Arab portion, as noted above, begins with Abraham’s son
Ishmael. In this manner, Persians become Muh.ammad’s kin and, as is
more often emphasized, kin to the Arabs; see, for example, the following
poem that was recited by Jarı̄r b. ʿAt.iyya (d. ca. 110/728–9), an Umayyad-
era Arab poet, and circulated widely:
The sons of Isaac are lions when they put on

Their deadly sword-belts, wearing their armor.
When they boast, they count among themselves the Ispahbadhs,57
And Kisrā and they list al-Hurmuzān and Caesar.
They had scripture and prophethood,58
And were kings of Is.t.akhr and Tustar.
54 Here he refers to the poet as an Arab poet from pre-Islamic times (jāhiliyya), whom the
Persians cited as proof of their ancient practice. Al-Masʿūdı̄, al-Tanbı̄h, 109. The “seven
great temples” refers, according to Bernard Carra de Vaux, to a Sabian syncretism.
The Sabians, he writes, believed these temples to have been founded by Hermès. Al-
Masʿūdı̄, Le livre de l’avertissement et de la revision, trans. Bernard Carra de Vaux (Paris:
Imprimerie nationale, 1896), 155, n. 2. See also Yāqūt al-H . amawı̄, Muʿjam al-buldān,
ed. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld as Jacut’s geographisches Wörterbuch, 6 vols. (Leipzig: F. A.
Brockhaus, 1866–73), 3:166, s.v. “Zamzam.” All of the preceding should, however,
be read in light of Kevin van Bladel’s sober The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to
Prophet of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
56 For example, in Alexander the Great’s pilgrimage; see al-Dı̄nawarı̄, al-Akhbār al-t.iwāl,
ed. ʿIs.ām Muh.ammad al-H . ājj ʿAlı̄ (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2001), 75. See also
G. R. Hawting, “The Disappearance and Rediscovery of Zamzam and the ‘Well of the
Kaʿba,’” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43, no. 1 (1980): 44–54.
57 Arabic, al-s.ibahbadh.
58 Regarding post-conquest characterizations of Zoroaster as a prophet bringing a book,
see Stausberg, “Invention of a Canon,” 268–70.
They included the prophet Solomon, who prayed

And was rewarded with distinction and a pre-determined
sovereignty.
Our father is the father of Isaac;
A father guided [by God] and a purified prophet unites us.
He built God’s qibla by which he was guided,
And so he bequeathed to us mightiness and longlasting sover-
eignty.
We and the noble sons of Fāris are joined by a father
Who outshines in our eyes all those who have come after him.
Our father is the Friend of God and God is our Lord.
We have been satisfied with what God has given and decreed.59
The “sons of Isaac” whom Jarı̄r so proudly claims as kin were both
worldly leaders and prophets. They included “Caesar,” the usual Arabic
name for the Roman and Byzantine emperors, and the Children of Israel as
Solomon’s descendants. More unusually from a biblical perspective, they
included the “Ispahbadhs,” a reference to the Persian title for army chiefs
of pre-Islamic Persian empires;60 “Kisrā,” referring to the Sasanian rulers
collectively; and “al-Hurmuzān,” referring to a famous Persian general
who was defeated by Caliph ʿUmar (r. 13–23/634–44) but who later was
said to have converted to Islam. Isaac’s sons were kings of Is.t.akhr in the
province of Fārs, the religious center of the Sasanian kingdom and its
capital. They were also kings of Tustar, a town in southwestern Persia
in the province of Khūzistān, where al-Hurmuzān was captured.61 All
of Isaac’s sons benefited from their ancestry with Abraham, who was a
“father guided [by God],” “a purified prophet,” and “the Friend of God”
(khalı̄l Allāh, Abraham’s common epithet).
The portrayal of Abraham as the common ancestor linking the Arabs
and the Persians played a crucial role in enabling the latter to be integrated
into the communal world view of Muslims. Recent work on ethnicity and
nationalism has emphasized the importance of ideas of divine election for
social mobilization and national coherence. The work of Anthony D.
Smith, in particular, has drawn attention to the ways in which myths of
divine election both promote sociocultural survival and serve as a stim-
ulus for ethnopolitical mobilization. For Smith, divine election signifies
59 Cited in al-Masʿūdı̄, Murūj, 1:280–1 (no. 568). Otherwise, see, e.g., Jarı̄r b. ʿAt.iyya,
Dı̄wān Jarı̄r bi-sharh. Muh.ammad b. H . abı̄b, ed. Nuʿmān Muh.ammad Amı̄n T.āhā,
2 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1969–86), 1:472–4 (no. 112, lines 27–39); al-T.abarı̄,
Taʾrı̄kh, I:433; and Yāqūt, Buldān, 2:862–3, s.v. “al-Rūm.”
60 C. E. Bosworth, “Ispahbadh,” in EI2 .
61 On his defeat at Tustar, see Chapter 6.
a community’s shared belief in its special destiny. Ethnic election is not

ethnocentrism in a simple sense, but far more demanding:
To be chosen is to be placed under moral obligations. One is chosen on condition
that one observes certain moral, ritual and legal codes, and only for as long as
one continues to do so. The privilege of election is accorded only to those who
are sanctified, whose life-style is an expression of sacred values. The benefits of
election are reserved for those who fulfil the required observances.62
For Smith, there are two basic types of myths of ethnic election.
“Missionary” election myths exalt their community “by assigning them
god-given tasks or missions of warfare or conversion or overlordship.”63
The community believes itself to be chosen to preserve and defend the
true faith. This is the most common type of ethnic election and has been
invoked by, among others, Armenians, Franks, Orthodox Byzantines,
Russians, Catalans, and Catholic Poles. “Covenantal” election, by com-
parison, is contractual and conditional upon compliance with the will
of God. This type of election has been seen less often, but it has sur-
faced among certain Protestant communities that have seen themselves
as the heirs of the ancient Israelites (including the Puritan settlers of New
England, the Ulster Scots, and Afrikaners).64
From an early date, the Arabs often espoused a missionary sense of
chosenness when they sought new converts, first among other Arabs and
then among their neighbors.65 Arabic literature is filled with claims rep-
resenting them as a people of religion, set apart from others. A common
identity, documented through tribal genealogies, was nurtured, and it was
also their election that made Arabs out of former non-Arabs. An ideol-
ogy of election was supported by the Prophet as well as by the supreme
62 Anthony D. Smith, “Chosen Peoples: Why Ethnic Groups Survive,” Ethnic and Racial
Studies 15, no. 3 (1992): 441. See also Smith’s Chosen Peoples (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2003), esp. ch. 3, “Election and Covenant,” 44–65, and “Ethnic Election
and Cultural Identity,” “Pre-Modern and Modern National Identity in Russia and East-
ern Europe,” special issue, Ethnic Studies 10, no. 1–3 (1993): 9–25, esp. 11–12. For a
useful summary and analysis of much of Smith’s work on myths of divine election, see
Bruce Cauthen, “Covenant and Continuity: Ethno-Symbolism and the Myth of Divine
Election,” Nations and Nationalism 10, no. 1/2 (2004): 19–33.
63 Anthony D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999), 15.
64 Anthony D. Smith, The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity
and Nationalism (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000), 67; Anthony
D. Smith, “The ‘Sacred’ Dimension of Nationalism,” Millennium: Journal of Interna-
tional Studies 29, no. 3 (2000): 791–814, esp. 804–5. See also Cauthen, “Covenant and
Continuity,” 21–2.
65 Although some members of the Umayyad elite reportedly discouraged conversion.
importance of the Arabic language in Muslim religion and ritual. It is a

mature sense of Arabness that is reflected in the statement of al-Jāh.iz.:
Since the Arabs are all one tribe, having the same country and language and
characteristics and pride and patriotism and temperament and disposition, and
were cast [in] one mould and after one pattern, the sections are all alike and the
elements resemble each other, so that this became a greater similarity than certain
forms of blood-relationship in respect of general and particular and agreement
and disagreement: so that they are judged to be essentially alike in style.66
As their kinsfolk, Persians were given a share in the Arabs’ ethnic election
through reference to the most antique source of this chosenness, Abra-
ham. As Jarı̄r said: “Our father is the father of Isaac; A father guided
[by God] and a purified prophet unites us.” The idea may well have orig-
inated in pre-Islamic times, as extensions to Abraham’s genealogy were
made by eastern Jews, who were also Isaac’s descendants. In any event,
by ʿAbbasid times, the view was credible to Arabs because they knew it
to have been voiced by earlier Arabs, who claimed kinship with Persians
as a point of pride. The Arab tribal context for such claims is alluded to
by al-Masʿūdı̄ and other traditionists. Al-Masʿūdı̄ explains to his read-
ers that Jarı̄r was directing his poem against Qah.t.ān, the name given to
the southern Arabian tribal alliance.67 Jarı̄r, as a “northern” Arab, thus
boasted of his noble kinsmen against a southerner.68
In ʿAbbasid times, the clearest (but by no means only) rhetorical con-
text in which ideas about the Persians and Isaac were articulated was that
of the Shuʿūbiyya movement. The name of the movement’s “Shuʿūbı̄”
proponents derived from a Qurʾanic verse they were fond of quoting,
which includes the statement: “We have created you male and female and
made you peoples (shuʿūb) and tribes so that you may know one another.
The most noble among you before God is the most God-fearing” (Qurʾan
49:13).69 The movement had its roots among the Persian court secretaries
and was mainly centered in Baghdad; its members were overwhelmingly
66 Translated by C. T. Harley Walker in “Jāh.iz. of Bas.ra to al-Fath. ibn Khāqān on the

‘Exploits of the Turks and the Army of the Khalifate in General,’” Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society, n.s., 47, no. 4 (1915): 639.
68 Elsewhere different tribal loyalties are cited, suggesting a rivalry among “northern”
Tamı̄mı̄s. See Jarı̄r b. ʿAt.iyya, Naqāʾid. Jarı̄r wa-l-Farazdaq, ed. Anthony Ashley Bevan,
3 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1905–12), 2:991–1003 (no. 104), and Savant, “Isaac as the
Persians’ Ishmael: Pride and the Pre-Islamic Past in Ninth and Tenth-Century Islam,”
Comparative Islamic Studies 2, no. 1 (2006): 18–19, n. 19.
69 Ibn Qutayba, Fad.l al-ʿArab wa-l-tanbı̄h ʿalā ʿulūmihā, ed. Walı̄d Mah.mūd Khālis. (Abu
Dhabi: Cultural Foundation Productions, 1998), 109; Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, Kitāb al-ʿIqd
Persians. It took issue with the idea of Arab election, based on what
the movement’s adherents saw as the egalitarian ideals of Islam, the ill-
conceived idea of a chosen people, and the failures of Arabs generally in
the realms of culture and social manners. The Shuʿūbı̄s belittled the Arabs
as the sons of a slave, since Ishmael, their father, was born of the slave
woman Hagar, whereas the Shuʿūbı̄s’ “mother” was Sarah, Abraham’s
wife. Shuʿūbı̄s even referred to Arabs as “sons of the unclean woman”
because of Hagar’s lowly origins. Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), whose own
lineage went back to Khurāsān, responded to the Shuʿūbı̄s by noting that
not all slaves are unclean and that many great figures of Islamic history
had been born of slave women. Is it allowable, he asked, for an apostate
(mulh.id), let alone a Muslim, to describe Hagar as unclean?70
The idea that the Persians descend from Isaac is attested after the
Shuʿūbiyya and, in the rarefied world of ʿAbbasid Baghdad, involved
assertions about hierarchy, social status, and privilege, and would
appear to assert the chosenness of Persians, alongside Arabs. After the
fourth/tenth century, the idea of Isaac as a father persists, though it is
hard to say how widely it was held. A few cases suggest that it endured in
wider circles than Iranians might imagine today. Abū Nuʿaym al-Is.fahānı̄
(d. 430/1038), in his history of Is.fahān and its scholars, cites a Hadith
in which Abū Hurayra quotes Muh.ammad as saying that “Persia is the
Children of Isaac (Fāris Banū Ish.āq).”71 In seventh/thirteenth-century
Baghdad, Ibn Abı̄ al-H . adı̄d (d. 656/1258) in his commentary on the
Nahj al-balāgha – an anthology of speeches, letters, testimonials, and
opinions traditionally attributed to ʿAlı̄ b. Abı̄ T.ālib – cites a report in
which ʿAlı̄ puts an Arab woman belonging to the Banū Ismāʿı̄l on a
par with a woman from the ʿAjam belonging to the Banū Ish.āq.72 An
early folio of a local history of Nı̄shāpūr (the Kitāb-i Ah.vāl-i Nı̄shāpūr)
from the ninth/fifteenth century or later cites a Hadith in Arabic and
then translated into Persian in which Ibn ʿAbbās reports that “Fāris” was
mentioned in the presence of the Prophet. The Prophet stated that Fāris,
that is, Persia, was “our paternal relations” and part of the ahl al-bayt
(“people of the house,” that is, the Prophet’s family). When prodded
al-farı̄d, ed. Ah.mad Amı̄n, Ah.mad al-Zayn, and Ibrāhı̄m al-Abyārı̄, 7 vols. (Cairo: Lajnat
al-Taʾlı̄f wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Nashr, 1940–53), 3:404.
70 Ibn Qutayba, Fad.l al-ʿArab, 47–8.
71 Abū Nuʿaym al-Is.fahānı̄, Dhikr akhbār Is.bahān, ed. Sven Dedering, 2 vols. (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1931– 4), 1:11.
72 Ibn Abı̄ al-H . adı̄d, Sharh. Nahj al-balāgha, ed. Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhı̄m, 20 vols.
(Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābı̄ al-Ḥalabı̄, 1959–63), 2:200–1.
for an explanation, the Prophet said: “Because Ishmael was the paternal
uncle of the descendants of Isaac, and Isaac was the paternal uncle of the
descendants of Ishmael.”73
Still, in the long term, the theory of the Persians’ descent from Isaac
convinced neither al-T.abarı̄ nor Iranians generally, likely because it was
so thin on supporting mythology. The lineage seemed forced, as when al-
Masʿūdı̄ notes a claim that Manūshihr was the son of a man by the name
of Manushkhūrnar b. Manūshkhūrnak b. Wı̄rak, with Wı̄rak being the
very same person as Isaac, the son of Abraham.74 According to the claim,
Manushkhūrnar (Manūshihr’s father) went to the land of Persia, where
he married the Persian queen, a daughter of Īraj named Kūdak, who
bore Manūshihr, whose descendants multiplied, “conquering and ruling
the earth.”75 With their rise, the “ancient Persians disappeared like past
nations and the original Arabs (al-ʿArab al-ʿāriba).”76 Al-Masʿūdı̄ does
not bother to follow through by, for example, reconciling the relationship
between Isaac’s known sons and the person of Manūshkhūrnak. And
although he says that Persians “are led to this” opinion and do not deny
it, he admits that the genealogy was offered by Arab savants.77 Nor
does the idea have a narrative to accompany it that would explain the
Persians’ origins, describe the lives of exemplary forebears, and connect
this history to the Persians in their own day. By comparison, Arabs,
Persians, and Muslims in general knew the detailed history of the Jewish
people, beginning from Isaac and Abraham.
Instead, it is probably best to view the advocates of this idea, al-
Masʿūdı̄ among them, as seeking to offer the Persians a prominent
place in prophetic history in lieu of older Iranian genealogies. They were
losers in an ideological contest, insofar as their model was not accepted.
73 The Histories of Nishapur, ed. Richard N. Frye (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1965), fol. 4. The Kitāb Ah.vāl-i Nı̄shāpūr is based on a lost Arabic history of
Nı̄shāpūr by Muh.ammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-H . ākim al-Bayyiʿ (d. 405/1014). On the
manuscript, see Frye’s remarks in Histories of Nishapur, 10–11. The manuscript has
been edited and published by Muh.ammad Rid.ā Shafı̄ʿı̄ Kadkanı̄ as Abū ʿAbd Allāh
H. ākim al-Nı̄sābūrı̄, Tārı̄kh-i Nı̄shābūr: Tarjamah-yi Muh.ammad b. H . usayn Khalı̄fah-yi
Nı̄shābūrı̄ (Tehran: Āgah, 1375/1996), 64.
74 Al-Masʿūdı̄, Murūj, 1:279 (no. 566). There are variants of these names; I follow Pellat.
75 Ibid. The other kings feared Manūshihr’s descendants “on account of their courage and
horsemanship.”
76 Ibid.
77 Most of the Arab savants from Nizār b. Maʿadd, according to al-Masʿūdı̄, say this and
make it a foundation for genealogy; they have, he says, boasted about their kinship with
the Persians, who descend from Isaac b. Abraham, against the Yemenites, who descend
from Qah.t.ān (iftakharat ʿalā al-Yaman min Qah..tān). Ibid., 1:280 (no. 567).
Al-Masʿūdı̄ was almost certainly aware of the sentiments of the

Shuʿūbiyya, Ibn Qutayba, and al-T.abarı̄ regarding the Persians’ puta-
tive link to Isaac since he was educated in Baghdad by some of the city’s
most respected scholars; indeed, al-Masʿūdı̄ listed al-T.abarı̄’s History
as one of the many sources he consulted for the Murūj, though he did
not share his predecessor’s judgment on Isaac’s progeny.78 Al-Masʿūdı̄
traveled widely, including throughout Iran, and extensively documents
more Iran-centric accounts in the Murūj and Tanbı̄h.79 Still, he gives no
sense of the controversies or polemics surrounding the Isaac claim. It
may well be that al-Masʿūdı̄, an Arab of reputable stock himself, simply
wished to provide the Persians with a way of viewing their history and
genealogy as inseparable from those of the Arabs.80 But in another, more
fundamental sense al-Masʿūdı̄ was part of a successful campaign to get
Iranians to see themselves as part of a broader prophetic history.81
A Creative License
It was not just the collective category of Persians that was swept into
prophetic history, but also individual localities. Consider the cases of
Hamadhān and Nihāwand, two towns of ancient standing in the medieval
province of Jibāl, which are located less than fifty miles apart as the crow
flies. Hamadhān had been the capital of the Medes, the summer capital
of the Achaemenids, and under the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian dy-
nasties, an important city on the trading route from Mesopotamia to the
East. It is mentioned throughout antiquity as a wealthy city renowned
for its architecture.82 Nihāwand has a somewhat less documented and
illustrious heritage, although in Sasanian times it seems to have played a
role in the politics of the Sasanian state, and its Zoroastrian associations
were reportedly strong.83 By the ʿAbbasid period, however, both cities
78 Ibid., 1:15.
79 On al-Masʿūdı̄ as a source for Iranian history, see esp. Michael Cooperson, “Masʿudi,”
in EIr.
80 Biographers give him a pedigree running back to the Prophet’s companion ʿAbd Allāh b.
Masʿūd. On his travels, see Ahmad M. H. Shboul, Al-Masʿūdı̄ and His World: A Muslim
Humanist and His Interest in Non-Muslims (London: Ithaca Press, 1979), 1–28.
81 For a fuller discussion of al-Masʿūdı̄’s ideas, see Savant, “Genealogy and Ethnogenesis
in al-Masʿudi’s Muruj al-Dhahab,” in Genealogy and Knowledge in Muslim Societies,
ed. Savant and de Felipe.
82 R. N. Frye, “Hamadhān,” in EI2 , and Stuart C. Brown, “Ecbatana,” in EIr.
83 V. Minorsky, “Nihāwand,” in EI2 ; al-Dı̄nawarı̄, al-Akhbār al-t.iwāl, 197.
were traditionally associated with the figure of Noah. A widely cited late
ninth/early tenth-century geography by Ibn al-Faqı̄h gives some sense of
the association. In it, there is a report that Hamadhān – the possible
birthplace of Ibn al-Faqı̄h – was named for a descendant of Noah named
Hamadhān, who was a son of Peleg (in Arabic al-Falūj) b. Shem b. Noah
and the brother of a certain Is.fahān, who built his own eponymous city:
“and so, each of the cities was named after its builder.”84 Nihāwand,
however, was built by Noah himself and was called Nūh. awand (the
awand suffix signifying a possessive relationship).85
Ibn al-Faqı̄h also furnishes such founding fathers for other locales and
peoples; the Hephthalites of Central Asia, for example, descended from a
certain Hayt.al, who was a great-grandson of Noah who moved eastward
after languages became confused (in Babylon, as the story goes).86 The
northwestern province of Azarbaijan provides a particularly interesting
case. Throughout the Sasanian period Atropatene/Āturpātakān, as it was
then known, was an important religious center and home to one of the
empire’s most sacred fires, that of Ādur Gushnasp, whose hearth was in
the town of Shı̄z (see Figure 1.1). Legend has it that every newly crowned
Sasanian king had to visit it on foot. There was also a royal palace in
the province.87 Muslims acknowledged this Zoroastrian heritage, with
a good number believing the region to be the birthplace of Zoroaster
himself.88 However, Ibn al-Faqı̄h quotes Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ as tracing the
name of the province back to a prophetic eponym, one Āzarbādh b. Īrān
84 Ibn al-Faqı̄h here cites Abū Mundhir Hishām b. al-Sāʾib al-Kalbı̄. Ibn al-Faqı̄h (fl. second
half of the third/ninth century), Kitāb al-Buldān, ed. Yūsuf al-Hādı̄ (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-
Kutub, 1996), 459 and 529.
. asan ʿAlı̄ b.
85 Ibid., 527. See also the “abridgment” of Ibn al-Faqı̄h’s text by Abū al-H
Jaʿfar b. Ah.mad al-Shayzarı̄ (ca. 413/1022); Mukhtas.ar Kitāb al-Buldān, ed. Michael J.
de Goeje (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1885), 217, 258, and 263. On Ibn al-Faqı̄h’s text and the
abridgment, see André Miquel, La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au
milieu du 11e siècle, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Paris: Mouton, 1973–80), 1:153–60, and Travis
Zadeh, “Of Mummies, Poets, and Water Nymphs: Tracing the Codicological Limits of
Ibn Khurradādhbih’s Geography,” in ʿAbbasid Studies IV: Occasional Papers of the
School of ʿAbbasid Studies, ed. Monique Bernards (forthcoming in 2013). Cf. Anas B.
Khalidov, “Ebn al-Faqı̄h, Abū Bakr Ah.mad,” in EIr. See also Yāqūt, Buldān, 5:313 and
410 (Yāqūt borrows from Ibn al-Faqı̄h, whose reporting he closely follows).
86 Ibn al-Faqı̄h, Kitāb al-Buldān, 601; Mukhtas.ar Kitāb al-Buldān, 314. Muslim exegetes
followed the myth in Genesis 11:5–9.
87 Klaus Schippmann, “Azerbaijan iii. Pre-Islamic History,” in EIr. See also Klaus
Schippmann, Die iranischen Feuerheiligtümer (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971), 309ff.
88 C. E. Bosworth, “Azerbaijan iv. Islamic History to 1941,” in EIr.
figure 1.1. Ādur Gushnasp. Azarbaijan (Iran). Photo by Wahunam.
b. al-Aswad b. Shem b. Noah.89 This is a bold attribution, especially since

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was a major transmitter of Iran’s pre-Islamic Sasanian
heritage and seems an unlikely advocate of such an idea.
The shape and contours of the earliest history writing connected to lo-
calities are still debated among today’s historians, in large measure because
so few sources survive, but the problem is also partly terminological.90
Whatever its earliest forms, starting approximately in the second half of
the fourth/tenth century, we have local histories for Iranian territories
that are filled with descriptions of towns and regions, geography, topog-
raphy, biographies of notable residents (especially the ʿulamāʾ), and
political history and that reflect the density of religious learning, at least
among elites. Such works were composed for many of the major centers
of Iranian Islam, including old cities such as Hamadhān and Is.fahān and
new ones such as Shı̄rāz, as well as places where wide-scale conversion
89 Alternatively, Ibn al-Faqı̄h identifies the province’s founder as Āzarbādh b. Bı̄warāsf,

Bı̄warāsf (i.e., al-D
. ah.h.āk) being a tyrant of Iranian legend. Ibn al-Faqı̄h, Kitāb al-Buldān,
581; Mukhtas.ar Kitāb al-Buldān, 284. See also Yāqūt al-H . amawı̄, Buldān, 1:128–9, s.v.
“Āzarbaijān.” Compare a foundation myth for Shı̄z relating to Jesus’ nativity, which
Vladimir Minorsky attributes to Christians or Zoroastrians; “Two Iranian Legends in
Abū-Dulaf’s Second Risālah,” in Medieval Iran and Its Neighbours (London: Variorum
Reprints, 1982), 172–5.
90 On the question of regional schools of historiography, see Robinson, Islamic Histori-
ography, 138–42. In the late second–third/ninth century, there were already works that
sang the praises of particular localities such as Medina, Basra, and Kufa. For Iran, see
Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, 1:351–4.
and Islamization appear to have occurred at a slower pace and where

significant Zoroastrian communities lived on, including the provinces of
Fārs in the southwest of Iran, Yazd in central Iran, and T.abaristān.
These works also took up ideas about the prophets, and they suggest
the importance of the earlier, schematizing sources, such as those of Ibn al-
Kalbı̄ and Ibn al-Faqı̄h. Whatever the paths that such knowledge traveled,
perhaps including transmission by Jews and Christians, the legacy of
ʿAbbasid Iraq is visible in works such as the early sixth/twelfth-century
Fārs-nāmah, which cites al-T.abarı̄ as one of its authorities for Iran’s
earliest history. The Persian-language text is attributed to a little-known
author whose ancestors hailed from Balkh and who is consequently
known as Ibn al-Balkhı̄. The work treats Gayūmart as the first king
to rule the world and faintly echoes al-T.abarı̄’s reporting on theories
about him as well as ideas about his kingly successor Hūshang, including
that Hūshang fathered the biblical prophet Enoch, also known as the
Qurʾanic Idrı̄s.91 This was a well-traveled proposal and an apparently
fitting way to start a text that, while containing abundant detail on Fārs,
also constitutes an important source on Iran’s pre-Islamic rulers.92
A result of this transmission of ideas was the gradual conversion of
Iranian sites of great antiquity into ones with Muslim associations. In
this transformation, the prophet Solomon, with his extensive travels and
his association with major sites of antiquity, played an important role.
Solomon was recognized as ruler over Greater Syria and associated with
several sites of its antique heritage, including Jerusalem and the Temple
Mount, Baalbek, and Palmyra,93 but Iran also figured prominently in his
itinerary.94 A good example relates to the abovementioned sacred fire of
Ādur Gushnasp. While the name of Azarbaijan came to be linked to Noah,
the fire and its temple became folded into a set of ruins surrounding a clear
91 Ibn al-Balkhı̄, The Fársnáma of Ibnu’l-Balkhı́, ed. Guy Le Strange and Reynold A.
Nicholson (London: Luzac, 1921), 8–10. Cf. al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, esp. I:155, and H
. amza
al-Is.fahānı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, 19 and 23.
92 For the text, see Ibn an-Balkhı̄, Description of the Province of Fars in Persia at the
Beginning of the Fourteenth Century A.D., trans. and ed. Guy Le Strange (London: The
Royal Asiatic Society, 1912). See also Clifford Edmund Bosworth, “Ebn al-Balkı̄,” in
EIr.
93 Borrut, “La Syrie de Salomon: L’appropriation du mythe salomonien dans les sources
arabes,” Pallas 63 (2003): 107–20, and Entre mémoire et pouvoir, 217–38.
94 On his travels in Iran, see Roy P. Mottahedeh, “The Eastern Travels of Solomon:
Reimagining Persepolis and the Iranian Past,” in Law and Tradition in Classical Islamic
Thought: Studies in Honor of Professor Hossein Modarressi, ed. Michael Cook, Najam
Haider, Intisar Rabb, and Asma Sayeed, 247–67 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
map 1.1. Fārs
blue lake and known as the Takht-i Sulaymān (“Throne of Solomon”).

The ruins’ name pointed to a belief that the buildings were a royal palace
built and used by Solomon during his travels.95
Another case is that of Persepolis (Takht-i Jamshı̄d) in the province
of Fārs, an enormous complex of columned halls, palaces, gates, and a
treasury created by Darius the Great (r. 522–486 BCE) and his successors
that covers some 125,000 square meters and was one of the five royal
capitals of the Achaemenid empire. The site was founded on a promontory
above the plain of Marvdasht, and the natural drama surely served it
well in Achaemenid times for royal and religious occasions, as it did
in the Sasanian era and in 1971, when Mohammadreza Shah Pahlavi
celebrated the 2,500th anniversary of Iran’s monarchy (reckoned by Iran’s
solar hijri calendar). The term Takht-i Jamshı̄d signaled the role that the
great king of Persian legend, Jamshı̄d, was meant to have played in the
site’s founding.96 After Alexander the Great sacked Persepolis, the city
of Is.t.akhr grew up a short distance away, and the ruins of Persepolis
served as a quarry for the new city. Sāsān, the eponym of the Sasanian
95 Ibid.
96 An important study of the site is that of Eric F. Schmidt, Persepolis, 3 vols. (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1953–70); see also A. Shapur Shahbazi, Persepolis Illustrated
(Persepolis: Institute of Achaemenid Research, 1976), 4–6.
dynasty and sometimes remembered as the grandfather to its founder,

Ardashı̄r, was reportedly the superintendent of the Fire Temple of the
goddess Anāhı̄d in Is.t.akhr. Muslims appropriated Persepolis’s charisma
for prophetic history through traditions that conflated it with nearby
Is.t.akhr and associated it to Solomon. The geographer Abū Ish.āq al-Fārisı̄
al-Is.t.akhrı̄ (d. mid-fourth/tenth century), for example, said of the town
whose name he bore:
As for Is.t.akhr, it is a medium-sized city, a mile in width, and among the oldest
and most famous cities of Fārs. The kings of Persia dwelled in it until Ardashı̄r
transferred rule to Gūr [also in Fārs]. It is relayed in reports that Solomon (eternal
peace be his), the son of David, traveled from [the town of] Tiberias to it in a day
[lit. “from morning to evening”]. In it, there is a mosque known as the “Mosque of
Solomon.” A group of Persian common folk claim with no proof that Jam[shı̄d],
97
who preceded al-D . ah.h.āk, was Solomon.
In his Fārs-nāmah, Ibn al-Balkhı̄ vividly described a carved figure at
Persepolis that he took to represent Burāq, the horse upon which
Muh.ammad reportedly made his night journey to heaven: “The figure
is after this fashion: the face is as the face of a man with a beard and curly
hair, with a crown set on the head, but the body, with the fore and hind
legs, is that of a bull, and the tail is a bull’s tail.”98
The path by which such ideas about prophetic history came to be accep-
ted among Iranian Muslims was surely complicated. In weighing evidence,
though, Muslims appear to have frequently recognized as authoritative
Arabic traditions from earlier centuries that wrote Iranian locales into
prophetic history.
Conclusion
To sum up, genealogies were important ingredients for stories about the
origins of the Persians that circulated at least from the third/ninth century
97 Abū Ish.āq al-Fārisı̄ al-Is.t.akhrı̄, al-Masālik wa-l-mamālik, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden:

E. J. Brill, 1927), 123; regarding Is.t.akhr, see C. Barbier de Meynard, Dictionnaire
géographique, historique et littéraire de la Perse et des contrées adjacentes (Paris:
L’Imprimerie impériale, 1861), 48–50 (“Isthakhr”). The term “mile” likely refers to
a distance of between roughly one-and-a-half and two kilometres; see Walther Hinz,
Islamische Masse und Gewichte: Umgerechnet ins metrische System (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1955), 63, and Moshe Gil, “Additions to Islamische Masse und Gewichte,” in Occident
and Orient: A Tribute to the Memory of Alexander Scheiber, ed. Robert Dán, 167–70
(Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1988), 169. Regarding the Sasanians’ genealogy, see esp.
R. N. Frye, “The Political History of Iran under the Sasanians,” in The Cambridge
History of Iran, 3(1):116–77, at 116–17.
98 Ibn al-Balkhı̄, The Fársnáma of Ibnu’l-Balkhı́, 126; Le Strange, Description of the
Province of Fars, 27.
onward. Ramón d’Abadal i de Vinyals, John Armstrong, and Anthony D.

Smith have termed such stories mythomoteurs, and much of what they
say about these stories applies to the Persian case.99 At the center of every
ethnic community and its view of the world lies a “distinctive complex
of myths, memories, and symbols” that advance claims about the com-
munity’s origins and lineages. These are the engines that distinguish one
ethnic group from another, and much of their emotional pull is nostalgic.
As they describe origins, the Persians’ genealogies are schematic, posi-
tioning Persians relative to other groups and notable ancestors relative to
one another. Blood ties in the remote past create filiations that explain
relationships and recover and present other filiations for consideration.
These bonds, in turn, inspire and encourage recognition of particular
loyalties, even as they also represent antagonisms. Traditionists saw the
Persians’ descent in different ways, which reflects both the layering of
traditions and, more profoundly, different appeals for modes of social
definition. This is to be expected in a community in transition. But the
divergent accounts also offer a picture of primordial continuity. Since
the Persians were written into prophetic history as descendants of either
Noah or Abraham, the subsequent historical trajectory that yielded the
arrival of Islam in Iran represents a process of recovering the initial, col-
lective state of fit.ra into which every child is born, as mentioned in the
Prophetic tradition cited at the beginning of the chapter. This process
also provided a license to appropriate monuments of Iran’s antique his-
tory and to integrate these creatively into a narrative about Persians. And
so we have a glimpse into the conflictual understandings of what it meant
to be a Persian during the period of Iran’s conversion to Islam.
99 The notion of mythomoteur originated with d’Abadal i de Vinyals, “À propos du Legs
visigothique en Espagne,” Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medio-
evo 5 (1958): 541–85. See also John A. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), and Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations.
For a trenchant criticism of Smith and the school of ethnosymbolism that he repres-
ents, see Umut Özkirimli, “The Nation as an Artichoke? A Critique of Ethnosymbolist
Interpretations of Nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism 9, no. 3 (2003): 340.
2
Muh.ammad’s Persian Companion,

Salmān al-Fārisı̄
Many Iranians are proud that one of their number – a man by the name
of Salmān al-Fārisı̄, Salmān “the Persian” – was among Muh.ammad’s
companions and played a role both in the Muslim community in Medina
and afterward, when the Muslims controlled an empire. Salmān’s tomb in
Ctesiphon, which he governed after the Arab conquest, became a destina-
tion for travelers, who still visit it today. He is remembered as a special
friend of ʿAlı̄ and as a defender of the interests of the ʿAlids. Among the
Ismāʿı̄lı̄s, Salmān has played a role in gnostic strands of thought. Recently,
he has received attention in a number of popular Persian-language biog-
raphies dedicated to him.1
Salmān’s Iranian, or Persian, identity is often emphasized today, espe-
cially in Iran. Scholars outside of Iran likewise treat him as an early
Iranian representative of Islam. But was this always true? In many early
texts by Muslims, including biographies of the Prophet, Salmān’s Per-
sian birthplace gives a specificity to his foreign, non-Arab origins, but
1 In Christian polemics, Salmān has been credited with helping to compose the Qurʾan;
see, for example, a writing attributed to the Byzantine emperor Leo III the Isaurian (r.
717–41) and written against ʿUmar II (r. 717–20). Much has been written about the
emperor’s polemic; see Arthur Jeffery, “Ghevond’s Text of the Correspondence between
ʿUmar II and Leo III,” Harvard Theological Review 37, no. 4 (1944): esp. 292. For
an early European iteration of the claim, see Humphrey Prideaux, The True Nature of
Imposture Fully Display’d in the Life of Mahomet, with a Discourse annex’d for the
Vindication of Christianity from this Charge, Offered to the Consideration of the Deists
of the Present Age, 8th ed. (London: E. Curll, 1723), 33–4. Regarding the Ismāʿı̄lı̄s,
see esp. W. Ivanow, “Notes sur l’‘Ummu’l-Kitab’: Des Ismaëliens de l’Asie Centrale,”
Revue des Études Islamiques 6 (1932): 419–81, and Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʿı̄lı̄s: Their
History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 100–1 and 394.
61
its primary function is simply to illustrate a major theme in early Arabic

writings, namely, the acceptance of Islam by diverse peoples, Persians
among them. The importance of Salmān’s Persian origins solidifies, how-
ever, with the emergence of the Muslim community in Iran. From the
second half of the fourth/tenth century onward, Salmān’s identity as an
Is.fahānı̄ and a Persian is embraced in Arabic traditions that nostalgi-
cally recall his homeland as well as the Prophet’s affection for it and its
people. There were even traditions claiming special status for Salmān’s
descendants, possibly including those who did not convert to Islam.
Scholars have long sought to disentangle the enormous quantity of
traditions attributed to and about Salmān for different purposes.2 In this
chapter, I trace the adoption of Salmān as a site of memory for Persians
and particularly for the people of Is.fahān.
Salmān in the Early Biographical Tradition

Salmān figures prominently in the Muslim biographical tradition and
particularly in the second/eighth- and third/ninth-century biographies of
the Prophet and the early Muslim community. A prominent story nar-
rates how Salmān abandoned his homeland in search of a better religion.
In the version repeated by Ibn Hishām and still widely known today,
Salmān’s yearning for a better religion compels him to overcome numer-
ous obstacles, until at last he finds satisfaction. The story is placed amid
others that show Muh.ammad’s arrival was anticipated, and it precedes
Ibn Hishām’s accounts of the revelation of the Qurʾan, the first people
to accept Islam, and memorable events involving Muh.ammad and the
early Muslims in Mecca and Medina. The reporting begins with Salmān
relating his story to Ibn ʿAbbās, the Prophet’s cousin:
2 For all the diversity of this literature, three or four purposes have chiefly been pursued: to
establish Salmān as a historical person distinct from the figure of later legend, to assess
the date and place of the traditions’ origination, and to find evidence of the very earliest
sectarian and/or Iranian ideologies. Major European studies relating to Salmān include
Cl. Huart, “Selmân du Fârs,” in Mélanges Hartwig Derenbourg (1844–1908), 297–310
(Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1909); Leone Caetani, “Salmān al-Fārisı̄,” in Annali dell’Islām, vol.
8, Dall’anno 33. al 35 H. (Milan: U. Hoepli, 1918); Josef Horovitz, “Salmān al-Fārisi,”
Der Islam 12, no. 3–4 (1922): 178–83; Louis Massignon, Salmân Pâk et les prémices
spirituelles de l’Islam iranien (Tours: Arrault, 1934); and Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, “The
Corruption of Christianity: Salmān al-Fārisı̄’s Quest as a Paradigmatic Model,” Studia
Orientalia 85 (1999): 115–26. See also G. Levi Della Vida, “Salmān al-Fārisı̄,” in EI2 ,
and Parvı̄z Azkāʾı̄, “Salmān Fārisı̄,” in Dāyirat al-maʿārif-i Tashayyuʿ, ed. Aḥmad Ṣadr
Ḥājj Sayyid Javādı̄, Kāmrān Fānı̄, and Bahā al-Dı̄n Khorramshāhı̄ (Tehran: Bunyād-i
Islāmı̄-yi Tāhir, 1988–), 9:262–5.
Muh.ammad’s Persian Companion, Salmān al-Fārisı̄ 63
I was a Persian man from among the people of Is.fahān, from a village called Jayy.
My father was a man from the class of the landed gentry (dihqān) of his village,
and I was the most beloved of God’s creatures to him. He loved me so much that
he imprisoned me in his house, just like one imprisons a slave girl. I exerted myself
in Zoroastrianism (al-majūsiyya), until I became the attendant of the sacred fire,
who stokes it, not letting it die down for a moment.3
One day when Salmān’s father was busy, he sent his son to check on his
estate. En route, Salmān passed by a Christian church, from which he
overheard the sound of prayer. He entered and, becoming engrossed by
what he saw and heard, decided to forget his father’s mission. “Since I
had been held prisoner in my father’s house, I had no idea what they were
doing,” he later recalled to Ibn ʿAbbās. “From where does this religion
originate?” he asked. “Syria,” came the reply. When he returned home,
his father reprimanded him: “My son, there is no good in that religion;
your religion and the religion of your fathers is better than it.” Salmān
naively contradicted him: “By God, no, it is better than our religion.”
His father, trying to put a stop to the nonsense, shackled Salmān and
imprisoned him within his house.4 Determined to find out more about
this wonderful religion, Salmān escaped to Syria and entered upon a
semi-itinerant existence, which first had him join up with a Christian
bishop (al-usquf), who stole from his own church. At the bishop’s death,
Salmān exposed his corruption and then passed as a student through the
hands of his successor and three good Christians in, sequentially, Mosul,
Nisibis, and Amorium,5 each at his death passing Salmān on to the next.
At last Salmān joined a party of merchants from the tribe of Kalb, who
promised to take Salmān to Arabia but instead, when they reached Wādı̄
al-Qurā (in the northern H
. ijāz), sold him to a Jew, who sold him onward
to a cousin of his from the tribe of Qurayz.a, who then brought him to
Medina. Muh.ammad had not yet emigrated from Mecca to Medina, but
when he did, Salmān recognized him by the clues the last Christian had
given. This man had promised a prophet would soon arise in Arabia,
sent with the “religion of Abraham.” The prophet would emigrate to a
land between two lava belts, amid which grow date palms; eat food given
3 Ibn Hishām, Sı̄ra, 1:214–5; see also Ibn Hishām, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation
of Ibn Ish.āq’s Sı̄rat Rasūl Allāh, trans. A. Guillaume (Karachi: Oxford University Press,
1955; repr., 1978), 95–8.
4 Ibn Hishām, Sı̄ra, 1:215.
5 Mosul and Nisibis (modern Turkish, Nusaybin) lie in upper Mesopotamia whereas
Amorium was situated in Phrygia, on the Byzantine military road from Constantinople
to Cilicia. Regarding the latter, see M. Canard, “ʿAmmūriya,” in EI2 .
as a gift (al-hadiyya), but not as alms (al-s.adaqa); and bear the “seal of
prophecy” (khātam al-nubuwwa) between his shoulders.6 Upon meeting
Muh.ammad, Salmān offered him alms, which the Prophet handed over to
his companions, and then a gift, which Muh.ammad accepted for himself.
Returning on another day, Salmān came upon the Prophet, who had just
attended a funeral. Ibn Hishām claims to quote Salmān in his own words,
addressed still to Ibn ʿAbbās:
[Muh.ammad] was sitting with his companions. I greeted him and then went
around to look at his back. Could I see the seal which my companion had
described to me? When the Messenger of God saw me go around him, he recog-
nized that I was seeking evidence for something that had been described to me,
and so he threw off his cloak, laying bare his back. I looked at the seal and
recognized it. I leaned over him, kissed him, and wept. The Messenger of God
then said to me: “Come here.” So I went and sat before him, and told him my
story, just as I am telling you, O Ibn ʿAbbās.7
Afterward, Muh.ammad told Salmān to write out an agreement with his

master, with Salmān agreeing to plant three hundred date palm trees
for the master and to pay forty measures of gold in order to secure his
freedom. Muh.ammad asked his companions to help Salmān, which they
did, each bringing as many palm shoots as he could. Salmān and the
companions then dug holes, and the Prophet himself planted the palms in
the holes. Then the Prophet gave Salmān the gold with which to finalize
his freedom.8
On the whole, the narrative hangs together well, as its plot unfolds with
climactic moments in Medina. There are good guys (Salmān, most of the
Christians, and Muh.ammad) and bad guys (one Christian and the Kalbite
merchants). The devices of a narrator (Salmān himself) and an audi-
ence (Ibn ʿAbbās, as well as the reader/listener) are employed. Salmān’s
voice is infused with emotion on his first encounter with Christianity: “By
God, no, it is better than our religion!”9
6 Ibn Hishām, Sı̄ra, 1:218.

7 Ibid., 1:220.
8 Ibid., 1:220–1.
9 Ibid., 1:215. The story, prophesying Muh.ammad’s coming as a prophet, has parallels
elsewhere, including for the monk Bah.ı̄rā, on which see Barbara Roggema, The Legend
of Sergius Bah.ı̄rā: Eastern Christian Apologetics and Apocalyptic in Response to Islam
(Leiden: Brill, 2009). It also has echoes in the story of Bulūqiyā, for which see esp.
Josef Horovitz, “Bulūqjā,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 55
(1901): 519–25; Stephanie Dalley, “Gilgamesh in the Arabian Nights,” Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd. ser., 1, no. 1 (1991): 1–17, and Dalley, “The Tale of Bulūqiyā
and the Alexander Romance in Jewish and Sufi Mystical Circles,” in Tracing the Threads:
The story opens onto a variety of points, none of which make much
of Salmān’s Persian origins. They do, however, address the succession of
religions and the nature of Islam and belonging to the Muslim community.
In refusing Salmān’s alms, Muh.ammad demonstrated his integrity, in
contrast to Salmān’s first patron, the corrupt bishop. This point about
Muh.ammad’s integrity and the precedent he set is picked up in other
traditions that narrow in on the gift and employ the terms hadiyya and
s.adaqa.10 The rightness of true religion was recognized before Islam, as
was the inadequacy of other religions. It was Christians who predicted
the coming of Islam, but not all Christians recognized true religion. Pious
Christians showed the way to Islam, but on the eve of Islam’s arrival,
Salmān’s last Christian mentor could think of no Christian worthy of
Salmān’s service; this would seem to suggest that Christianity had been
replaced by Islam.11
Salmān’s instinct for true religion raises the question for Ibn Hishām
of whether he should be classified as a h.anı̄f, that is, as a follower of the
original and true monotheism. Ibn Hishām seems here to grapple with
a question common to religions that make their entry into environments
crowded with other religions: how does one classify people who, because
of the accident of their birth, could not have known the most recent
revelation but were familiar with previous ones? Ibn Hishām finishes his
account of Salmān with a further report, in which Salmān relates to the
Prophet his journey and mentions his search for “al-H . anı̄fiyya,” identified
by Salmān as “the religion of Abraham.” Salmān recounts that he tracked
down a holy man in Syria, who was healing the sick. When questioned,
the man said: “You are inquiring about something that people do not ask
about today. The time has drawn near when a prophet will be sent from
the people of the h.aram [i.e., Mecca] with this religion. Go to him, for he
will bring you to it.” Hearing this account, Muh.ammad says to Salmān,
“O Salmān, if you have told me the truth, then you have met Jesus, the
son of Mary.”12
Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha, ed. John C. Reeves, 239–69 (Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1994).
10 E.g., Ah.mad b. H . anbal, Musnad, ed. Samı̄r T.āhā al-Majdhūb et al., 8 vols. (Beirut:
al-Maktab al-Islāmı̄, 1993), 5:546 (no. 23717).
11 As Hämeen-Anttila notes, the story of Salmān’s conversion is placed among other stories
about Jews and pagans who had some preknowledge of the coming of the Prophet.
On the issue of the annunciation of Muh.ammad, see Hämeen-Anttila, “Corruption of
Christianity,” esp. 117.
12 Ibn Hishām, Sı̄ra, 1:222. On the matter of salvation, see Savant, “‘Persians’ in Early
Islam,” Annales Islamologiques 42 (2008): 80.
It is also significant that Salmān has left behind his family, religion,
and home in Jayy, suggesting that one must make a long journey –
real or figurative – before being admitted into the new, Muslim com-
munity (umma). Salmān’s travels call to mind other quests for truth,
knowledge, and wisdom, as well as aspects of the more legally weighted
theme of hijra – that is, the break that Muh.ammad made with his past
in Mecca and his emigration from the town to the more hospitable
Medina, as well as the migration of the early Muslims to garrison cit-
ies in the conquered lands. Hijra marked the founding of a new life for
Muh.ammad and these settlers, as did Salmān’s journey for him, far from
his homeland.13 Such views of Salmān and his emigration also resonate
with much wider ideas in the Qurʾan and early Islamic historiography
according to which Islam requires a dedication that can render problem-
atic former commitments and loyalties. Accordingly, Salmān’s origins are
left behind.
Ibn Hishām’s biography, composed in Egypt, is an adaptation of the
work of his great predecessor Ibn Ish.āq. Ibn Ish.āq worked within a tra-
dition of historiography that had deep roots in Iraq, although he is often
regarded as a representative of Medinese historiography.14 Ibn Ish.āq’s
book circulated widely in different recensions and played a large role
in the shaping of memory about Muh.ammad and his early community,
Salmān included. The stories quoted here turn up in the works of Iraqi
traditionists who cite Ibn Ish.āq as well as other authorities and paint
a common picture of a man who has left his past behind.15 Ibn Saʿd
(d. 230/845), for example, was a younger contemporary of Ibn Hishām
who composed in Iraq a multivolume treatment of the generations of
the Muslim community. The work includes the Prophet and Salmān, to
whom Ibn Saʿd dedicated a lengthy biography, with the story of the
13 For the early concept, see Christian Décobert, Le mendiant et le combattant: L’institution
de l’islam (Paris: Seuil, 1991), esp. 259–65; Patricia Crone, “The First-Century Concept
of Hiǧra,” Arabica 41, no. 3 (1994): 352–87.
14 Ibn Hishām used a recension of Ibn Ish.āq’s text transmitted by Ziyād al-Bakkāʾı̄
(d. 183/799), who lived mostly in Kufa. Ibn Hishām may also have traveled to Iraq.
W. Montgomery Watt, “Ibn Hishām,” in EI2 ; see also Johann Fück, Muh.ammad b.
Ish.āq: Literarhistorische Untersuchungen (Frankfurt 1925), 44; and Guillaume’s intro-
duction, Ibn Hishām, The Life of Muhammad, xxx.
. anbal, whose chain of transmission runs as follows: Abū Kāmil – Isrāʾı̄l –
15 E.g., Ibn H
Abū Ish.āq [Sabı̄ʿı̄, d. 127] – Abū Qurra al-Kindı̄ – Salmān al-Fārisı̄; Musnad, 5:545
(no. 23707). He also cites a second, longer version through Ibn Ish.āq; Musnad, 5:548
(no. 23732). Regarding lines of transmission (including that of Ibn Ish.āq) of the story of
Salmān’s journey to Muh.ammad, see Massignon, Salmân Pâk et les prémices spirituelles
de l’Islam iranien, 13–16.
journey repeated toward the start and attributed to Ibn Ish.āq.16 Ibn Saʿd
also reports another widely transmitted story, which describes a contro-
versy that took place after Salmān’s arrival in Medina at the so-called
Battle of the Ditch (al-khandaq), when the Muslims were besieged by the
Meccans and dug a deep ditch to keep the Meccans out of Medina. Amid
the digging, a dispute arose among Muh.ammad’s followers. It centered on
Salmān and on whether he, as a Muslim from neither Mecca nor Medina,
belonged more with the Meccan Muhājirūn or with the Medinan Ans.ār.
The Muhājirūn reportedly said, “Salmān is one of us” (Salmān minnā),
and the Medinans likewise claimed him as one of their own. Ibn Saʿd
explains that the issue was which group Salmān would aid in the digging
since he was strong. Muh.ammad settled the matter, declaring: “Salmān
is one of us, [a member of] the ahl al-bayt.”17
The term ahl al-bayt denotes the Prophet’s own family, including espe-
cially ʿAlı̄, his cousin who married his daughter Fāt.ima, and their descen-
dants, who include the Imams of the Shiʿa. Throughout Arabic sources,
traditionists cite the report, and among the Shiʿa today, it is widely known
and taught to schoolchildren, though not always in the context of the
Battle of the Ditch. For Ibn Saʿd, it signals that Muh.ammad had accept-
ed Salmān as a member of his own family, and likewise that Salmān
had broken ties with his past and especially with his birth family. This
acceptance explains why Ibn Saʿd places his biography of Salmān, fea-
turing the latter’s journey, within a section of his book dedicated to the
Banū Hāshim, the Prophet’s own clan. Within the organization of the
work, this is a logical place for Salmān. Ibn Saʿd quotes in the same sec-
tion other traditions that underscore the replacement of Salmān’s original
family with the family of Muh.ammad. The Prophet makes his compan-
ion Abū Dardāʾ (or, in a variant version, H. udhayfa) Salmān’s “brother”
(ākhā bayna Salmān al-Fārisı̄ wa-Abı̄ Dardāʾ), thus replacing birth with
spiritual kinship. We are told that Salmān imparted wisdom about reli-
gious practice to Abū Dardāʾ.18 In a different report, ʿAlı̄ is asked about
Salmān and replies, “That is a man who is one of us and belongs to us,
the ahl al-bayt.” ʿAlı̄ goes on to praise Salmān’s knowledge, a prominent
16 Ibn Saʿd, al-T . abaqāt al-kabı̄r, ed. Eduard Sachau et al., 9 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1904–40), vol. 4, pt. 2, 53ff. Based on evidence internal to Ibn Saʿd’s book, Christopher
Melchert has persuasively argued that it was not completed until a decade or more
after Ibn Saʿd’s death; see Melchert, “How H . anafism Came to Originate in Kufa and
Traditionalism in Medina,” Islamic Law and Society 6, no. 3 (1999): 324–6.
17 Ibn Saʿd, al-T . abaqāt al-kabı̄r, vol. 4, pt. 1, 59.
18 Ibid., vol. 4, pt. 1, 60–1.
theme taken up in gnostic lines of thought that make reference to Qurʾan

13:43: “Those who do not believe say: ‘You are not sent as a messenger.’
Say: ‘God is sufficient witness between me and you, [as are] those who
possess knowledge of the Scripture (wa-man ʿindahu ʿilm al-kitāb).’” ʿAlı̄
says: “Salmān read the ‘first scripture’ (al-kitāb al-awwal) and the ‘last
scripture’ (al-kitāb al-ākhir).”19
These traditions evoke another theme, that of a convert accepting Islam
and consequently becoming kin with a fellow Muslim and through him
with his tribe and kinsmen. Up through at least the Umayyad period,
manumitted slaves and converts (Salmān was both) seem to have entered
Muslim society through a practice in Islamic law known as walāʾ that
created a bond, and rights and obligations, between the new entrants
and established Muslims. Freedmen and converts became mawālı̄ (sing.
mawlā), or clients, of an agent of conversion. In public law, converts
(freeborn or freed) enjoyed the same rights and duties as other Muslims,
but in private law, they were dependents.20 According to the legal thinking
that underpins this mechanism, the patron and his kinsmen replace the
convert’s prior blood ties and affiliations (practice was another matter, as
I discuss below). In medieval biographical dictionaries, the idea is reflected
in the tendency for a person’s lineage to begin with the ancestor who was
the first to convert to Islam, a tendency that represents a fundamental
assumption in Bulliet’s mapping of the conversion process.21
This discussion of Salmān in the early biographical tradition, though
by no means complete, points to a perspective within the tradition that
values cultural assimilation and advertises meritocracy according to its
own ideals. Ibn Saʿd also appears to show, for example, that the early
Muslims valued dedication to Islam over a noble birth when he recalls
that after the conquests Salmān was given a pension of four thousand
dirhams, whereas ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar, the son of the second caliph,
ʿUmar, received 3,500 dirhams. This prompted another companion to
19 Ibid., vol. 4, pt. 1, 61.

20 Patricia Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Pa-
tronate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 35–6; regarding the histor-
ical demographics of the mawālı̄ ulama, see John A. Nawas, “A Profile of the Mawālı̄
ʿUlamāʾ,” in Patronate and Patronage in Early and Classical Islam, ed. Monique Ber-
nards and John Nawas, 454–80 (Leiden: Brill, 2005) (based on research conducted jointly
with Monique Bernards). Nawas finds that after 240/854–5 compilers of biograph-
ical dictionaries “scarcely made mention of whether an ʿālim was a mawlā or Arab,”
which illustrates the demise of this social category during the course of the third Islamic
century.
21 Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, 18–19 and 64ff.
ask: “How is it that this Persian gets four thousand, and the son of the
Commander of the Believers receives 3,500?” To which he received the
reply: “Salmān accompanied the Messenger of God to battles that resulted
in martyrs, whereas ʿUmar’s son did not.”22
The Ingredients for More Satisfying Memories

The accounts of Ibn Hishām and Ibn Saʿd emerged out of the tradition of
prophetic biography, but I would argue that the early Hadith collections
tend to share a similar perspective on Salmān and his background. For
example, one of the earliest surviving collections, by ʿAbd al-Razzāq
al-S.anʿānı̄ (d. 211/827), contains the following account.23 Salmān was
present at a gathering with Saʿd b. Abı̄ Waqqās., a companion of the
Prophet who played a major role in the conquest of Iran. Saʿd said to
one of the men present: “Give me your genealogy.” The man did so;
Saʿd then made the same request to others, who also complied. Reaching
Salmān, Saʿd received the answer: “God favored me by means of Islam,
for I am Salmān b. al-Islām.” Adding to this, ʿUmar, who heard about
the gathering, said: “The Quraysh had known during the jāhiliyya [pre-
Islamic times] [my father] al-Khat.t.āb as the most powerful of them, but
verily, I am ʿUmar b. al-Islām, the brother of Salmān in Islām.”24
On the face of it, such works of Hadith already carried reports
about Salmān that could be used to value his origins more positively,
the best example being a report that is generally read today as show-
ing the Prophet’s affection for Salmān’s people. In Salmān’s presence,
Muh.ammad is remembered to have declared: “If faith (ı̄mān) were
hung from the Pleiades, then the people of Persia (Fāris; in variants
abnāʾ Fāris or al-Furs) would obtain it.” This tradition (hereafter called
the Pleiades Hadith) might attest to Muh.ammad’s confidence in the
22 Ibn Saʿd, al-T . abaqāt al-kabı̄r, vol. 4, pt. 1, 62 (the companion in question was Maymūn).
But see also the report on p. 65 to the effect that Salmān did not marry Arab women.
23 ʿAbd al-Razzāq was a Yemeni client with likely Persian origins. Pending further investi-
gation, it seems reasonable to follow Harald Motzki’s conclusion that the work genuinely
originates with ʿAbd al-Razzāq. See Harald Motzki, “The Mus.annaf of ʿAbd al-Razzāq
al-S.anʿānı̄ as a Source of Authentic Ah.ādı̄th of the First Century A.H.,” Journal of Near
Eastern Studies 50, no. 1 (1991): 1–21, and Motzki, “ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-S.anʿānı̄,” in
EI3 .
24 The account contains two possible phrasings of Salmān’s statement, the other being:
“I do not know a father in Islam; rather, I am Salmān b. al-Islām.” ʿAbd al-Razzāq
al-S.anʿānı̄, al-Mus.annaf, ed. H . abı̄b al-Rah.mān al-Aʿz.amı̄, 11 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktab
al-Islāmı̄, 1970–2), 11:438–9 (no. 20942).
Persians’ faith (ı̄mān) or, in variants of the Hadith, their religion (dı̄n),
Islam, or knowledge (ʿilm). It may be the most frequently cited Proph-
etic tradition relating to Persians, and it is nearly always cited on
the authority of Muh.ammad’s companion Abū Hurayra. Its diffusion
reflects a general confidence that the tradition goes back to Muh.ammad
himself.25
There is no consensus regarding the occasion on which the Pleiades
Hadith was stated, even if the perception that it was solidly rooted in
the Prophetic past appears to have facilitated its pairing with different
Qurʾanic verses. Exegesis worked in both directions: the Qurʾan explain-
ing the Hadith and it, in turn, explaining the Qurʾan. Some reporters
linked the Pleiades Hadith to Qurʾan 9:39 or 47:38, which speak about
the replacement of the Qurʾan’s immediate listeners with another people
and offer a challenge to the Qurʾan’s first audience.26 Qurʾan 47:38
states: “If you turn away, He will replace you with another people, and
they will not be like you.” According to al-Tirmidhı̄ (d. 279/892), Abū
Hurayra was present when some other companions asked the Prophet
about the verse and the people that it mentioned. Muh.ammad, who
was next to Salmān, struck Salmān on the thigh and said: “This one
and his companions.” Then, swearing by God, he added, “If faith were
hung from the Pleiades, then men of Persia (rijāl min Fāris) would
obtain it.”27
As one often finds with Hadith, however, the report and its meaning
were not as straightforward as some Iranians might have wished. Instead
of Persians specifically, versions of the report identify the people who
would reach the Pleiades simply as al-aʿājim or, more ambiguously, as
“some of these men” (rijāl min hāʾulāʾi). For example, some reporters
thought Muh.ammad’s comment was meant to explain the italicized por-
tion of Qurʾan 62:2–3, which states: “[It is] He who has sent among the
25 E.g., al-Bukhārı̄, S.ah.ı̄h., 3:352–3 (within the section of al-Jāmiʿ al-s.ah.ı̄h. entitled “Kitāb
Tafsı̄r al-Qurʾān,” on Qurʾan 62:2–3), and the citations below. I have not systematically
traced the first appearance of this Hadith, but it is noteworthy that it does not figure in
the works of Ibn Hishām and Ibn Saʿd treated earlier in this chapter, nor in the Mus.annaf
of ʿAbd al-Razzāq.
26 Qurʾan 9:39: “If you do not come out, He will punish you severely, and will substitute
another people for you. You cannot do Him any harm. God has power over everything.”
27 Al-Tirmidhı̄, al-Jāmiʿ al-s.ah.ı̄h., ed. Ah.mad Muh.ammad Shākir, Muh.ammad Fuʾād ʿAbd
al-Bāqı̄, and Ibrāhı̄m ʿAt.wa ʿAwad., 5 vols. (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1937–
56), 5:384 (within the “Kitāb Tafsı̄r al-Qurʾān,” no. 3261, on Qurʾan 47:38). See also
5:413–14 (within the “Kitāb Tafsı̄r al-Qurʾān,” no. 3310, on Qurʾan 62:3) and 5:725–6
(within the “Kitāb al-Manāqib,” no. 3933, also on 62:3).
common people a messenger from among themselves, to recite His signs

to them and to purify them and to teach them the Book and the Wisdom –
previously they were in manifest error – and others of them who have
not yet joined them. He is the Mighty and the Wise.” Who are these
“others”? Muslim b. al-H . ajjāj (d. 261/875), the compiler of one of the
collections of s.ah.ı̄h. (“sound”) Hadith that Sunni Muslims consider most
authoritative, places the report within a chapter of his collection entitled
“Kitāb Fad.āʾil al-s.ah.āba,” where he reports that someone once asked
Muh.ammad: “O Messenger of God, who are the others [of them who
have not yet joined them]?” Muh.ammad did not immediately reply, but
when pressed, he put his hand on Salmān and stated, “men from these
[people].” Did Muh.ammad mean the Persians? Our scholar hardly leads
us to believe the praise was as general as that since he precedes this report
with another in which the Prophet states: “If faith (ı̄mān) were hung from
the Pleiades, then a man from Persia would obtain it.”28 Given the two
reports’ placement among Hadith about the Prophet’s companions, the
Prophet’s affection might belong to Salmān and a handful of Persians
alone.29
The Shiʿa formed a special affection for Salmān centuries before
Shiʿism became a defining feature of Iranian identity.30 In the early Imāmı̄
Shiʿi texts from the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, Salmān is
named as a narrator, as an interlocutor to Muh.ammad and ʿAlı̄, and as
among the companions loyal to the Prophet’s family. But what was the
significance of his inclusion to Iranian compilers and their audiences?31
For example, the Imāmı̄ traditionist Ibn Bābawayh (d. 381/991) cites
the eighth Imam, ʿAlı̄ al-Rid.ā, when he recalls Muh.ammad’s statement,
“Salmān is one of us” (Salmān minnā) amid other prophetic Hadith
28 Or a man “from the sons of Persia” (abnāʾ Fāris). Muslim b. al-H . ajjāj, S.ah.ı̄h., 2nd ed.,
ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqı̄, 5 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1978), 4:1972–3 (nos.
230 and 231/2546). Emphasis added.
29 It was also possible to understand the Hadith and the term Fāris differently, as Ibn
Qutayba does in his tract against the Shuʿūbiyya, where he argues that the Prophet
meant Khurāsān by the term Fāris. In other words, Muh.ammad did not have an idea of
the Persian empire in mind. Ibn Qutayba, Fad.l al-ʿArab wa-l-tanbı̄h ʿalā ʿulūmihā, 104.
30 Scholars with no discernible connection to the Shiʿa also recognized his special connec-
tion to ʿAlı̄. For example, see a section dedicated to Salmān (no. 598) in Sulaymān b.
Ah.mad al-T.abarānı̄’s (d. 360/971) biographical dictionary devoted to Hadith transmit-
ters, al-Muʿjam al-kabı̄r, 2nd ed., ed. H. amdı̄ ʿAbd al-Majı̄d al-Salafı̄, 25 vols. ([Beirut:
Maktabat al-Tawʿiyya al-Islāmiyya], 1404/1983–[1410/1990]), 6:212ff.
31 On lists as a narrative device, see esp. Albrecht Noth, with Lawrence I. Conrad, The
Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A Source-Critical Study, 2nd ed., trans. Michael
Bonner (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1994), 96–108.
transmitted by the Imam.32 Or we have another time that Ibn Bābawayh

refers to Salmān as an authority on the Qurʾan.33 Or take the cases
throughout Imāmı̄ writings in which Salmān is listed among ʿAlı̄’s other
loyal followers, especially Abū Dharr al-Ghifārı̄, al-Miqdād b. al-Aswad
al-Kindı̄, and ʿAmmār b. Yāsir. What did the various names on a list mean
in their individuality, and as pieces of a whole? And what did Salmān’s
Persian origins signify to the producers and readers of texts? In what sense
did his Shiʿi and Persian identities overlap, and in what sense were they
distinct? Andrew J. Newman has persuasively shown the local, Qummı̄
perspective of three prominent Shiʿi traditionists of the second half of
the third/ninth and first half of the fourth/tenth centuries. In large mea-
sure, his analysis rests on analysis of networks and of the way in which
ideas supported by Qummı̄ specialists of Hadith were privileged by other
scholars with ties to Qum.34 Within such networks, it seems reasonable
to expect new readings of older ideas about Salmān and the generation
of new ones. But how can we discern them, and in what sense are they
precisely sectarian or Persian in character, rather than demonstrative of
affection for the Prophet’s family generally?
Making Tradition Work for Is.fahān

I propose that memories about Salmān are indicative of a wider pat-
tern, which is that before the mid-third/ninth century our sources do not
often speak to Persians, but rather about them. Until this time, Iranian
audiences were small and the Persian identity of producers of narrative
typically weak. This situation begins to change in the second half of the
third/ninth century, during the lifetime of Muslim and al-Bukhārı̄ and
toward the end of what Claude Gilliot has termed the “imperial period”
32 Al-Shaykh al-S.adūq b. Bābawayh al-Qummı̄, ʿUyūn akhbār al-Rid.ā, ed. Mahdı̄ al-
Hu.sayn al-Lājūrdı̄, 2 vols. in 1 (Najaf: al-Mat.baʿa al-H . aydariyya, 1970), 2:64 (no.
282).
33 Ibn Bābawayh, A Shı̄ʿite Creed: A Translation of Iʿtiqādātu ’l-Imāmiyyah (The Beliefs
of the Imāmiyyah) of Abū Jaʿfar, Muh.ammad ibn ʿAlı̄ ibn al-H . usayn, Ibn Bābawayh
al-Qummı̄, known as ash-Shaykh as.-S.adūq (306/919–381/991), rev. ed., trans. Asaf A.
A. Fyzee (Tehran: World Organization for Islamic Services, 1982), 106.
34 The works that Newman most closely examines are al-Mah.āsin of al-Barqı̄ (d. 274–
80/887–94), the Bas.āʾir al-darajāt of al-S.affār al-Qummı̄ (d. 290/902–3) – both, as he
notes, assembled in Qum in the late third/ninth century – and al-Kāfı̄ fı̄ ʿilm al-dı̄n
of al-Kulaynı̄ (d. 329/940–1), assembled in Baghdad in the early fourth/tenth century.
Andrew J. Newman, The Formative Period of Twelver Shı̄ʿism: H . adı̄th as Discourse
between Qum and Baghdad (Richmond: Curzon, 2000).
(moment impérial).35 Sensitivity to Persians and their aspirations and

concerns grows more dramatically over the course of the fourth/tenth
century and into the fifth/eleventh, as evidenced particularly in the pub-
lication of works dedicated to localities and their men of learning that
recognize networks of elite Muslims in centers like Qum and Is.fahān and
reveal new sensitivities to ethnicity as well as locale and lineage.36
As is common with Arabic and Persian historiography, the old report-
ing was not simply discarded, but selectively retained and rewritten, in
Salmān’s case with authors of local histories reframing stories about
him to give prominence to Is.fahān and Salmān’s early life, selecting and
emphatically reiterating reports that stress his Persianness, and introdu-
cing information of obscure origins that favors Is.fahān. Is.fahān and its
countrymen move to the center of the story in ways that appear to belong
to a wider pattern common to local histories that recycle and invent
traditions so as to perpetuate and enhance the memory of the Prophetic
companions, soldiers, scholars, mystics, missionaries, and merchants who
made their way eastward to Iran.
In the remainder of this chapter, I will dwell on these three ways
that local histories could make use of their favorite sons – reframing
of content, emphatic reiteration, and the discovery of new information –
through a discussion of the case of Is.fahān. First, a few words are in order
about the city and its histories. In pre-Islamic times and after the Arab
conquests, the province of Is.fahān comprised several towns or villages,
districts, and rural areas. These included the walled village of Jayy, which
was the main city of the province and contained a mint (the name Jayy
appearing on coins minted into ʿAbbasid times), and about two miles to
the west, Yahūdiyya, whose name points to Jewish inhabitants. Is.fahān,
as a geographically distinct city of the province of the same name, seems to
35 Gilliot characterizes this period – which he does not define precisely, but which seems to
occupy in his thinking the end of the third/ninth century (in the lifetime of Ibn Qutayba,
whom he cites) – as one of “a codification in nearly all fields: grammar, poetry, literature,
criteria for accepting the prophetic traditions, exegesis, jurisprudence, theology, etc.”
Gilliot, “Creation of a Fixed Text,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Qurʾān, ed.
Jane Dammen McAuliffe, 41–57 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), at
49. Sheila S. Blair has argued that “the same regularisation took place in the field of
architecture and art.” Blair, “Transcribing God’s Word: Qurʾan Codices in Context,”
Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 10, no. 1 (2008): 79.
36 The situation of Shiʿi-Persian loyalties is more difficult to discern, as I discuss again in
Chapter 3. Regarding the “silence” of Iranian Persians in the first centuries, cf. ʿAbd
al-H. usayn Zarrı̄nkūb, Dū qarn sukūt (Tehran: Jāmiʿah-yi Lı̄sānsı̄yahā-yi Dānishsarā-
yi ʿĀlı̄, 1330 shamsı̄/[1951]); but also, his second edition (Tehran: Amı̄r Kabı̄r, 1336
shamsı̄/[1957]).
figure 2.1. The capture of Is.fahān. From a manuscript of the Z

. afar-nāmah,
1533.
C The British Library Board.
postdate the ʿAbbasid Revolution, when it developed around Yahūdiyya

and Jayy.37 In terms of geography, history, and culture, the distance
separating pre-Islamic Medina and Jayy must have been enormous – one a
western Arabian desert oasis, the other a Sasanian town about a thousand
miles to the east as the crow flies across desert, mountain, and valley, but
much further via Syria, as Salmān was said to have traveled. But the
two localities may not in fact have seemed remote, given the Christian
and Jewish populations of both cities and the presumed networks of
monotheists settled in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the H . ijāz. This is what the
account of the journey would, in fact, presuppose.38
I rely on texts by Abū al-Shaykh al-Is.fahānı̄ (d. 369/979)39 and Abū
Nuʿaym al-Is.fahānı̄ (d. 430/1038),40 each of whom treats Is.fahān and
the lives of its scholars and a few other men of notoriety. They wrote
their biographical compilations in Is.fahān during the period when the
city was ruled in theory by the ʿAbbasids, but in practice by Buyid
(r. 323–421/934 or 935–1029) and other rulers, and prior to the Seljuk
conquests when that dynasty downgraded the ʿAbbasids’ authority still
further.41 At that time, Is.fahānı̄s were beginning to view their home as a
37 Regarding the coins, see Stephen Album, Checklist of Islamic Coins, 3rd ed. (Santa Rosa,
CA: Stephen Album Rare Coins, 2011), 50. On Is.fahān, its centers, and its population,
see Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, 202–7; Touraj Daryaee, Šahrestānı̄hā ı̄
Ērānšahr, 20 (no. 53) and commentary on p. 55; Hossein Kamaly, “Isfahan vi. Medieval
Period,” in EIr; A. K. S. Lambton and J. Sourdel-Thomine, “Isfahan,” in Historic Cities
of the Islamic World, ed. C. Edmund Bosworth, 167–80 (Leiden: Brill, 2007). For East-
ern Syriac Christians, Jayy/Is.fahān seems to have been a diocese through at least the early
twelfth century; see “Ispahan,” in Jean Maurice Fiey, Pour un Oriens Christianus Novus:
Répertoire des diocèses syriaques orientaux et occidentaux (Beirut and Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner, 1993), 96–7. Jayy is located at 32°37 50.32 N latitude and 51°42 46.12 E
longitude. Hugh Kennedy, personal communication based on Google Earth, Oct.
2011.
38 Even closer ties between the H . ijāz and Iran, involving Sasanian representatives at Medina
in the sixth century CE, may also have existed; for this argument (based, however, on
later Muslim sources), see Michael Lecker, “The Levying of Taxes for the Sassanians
in Pre-Islamic Medina,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 27 (2002): 109–26. See
also M. J. Kister, “Al-H . ı̄ra: Some Notes on Its Relations with Arabia,” Arabica 15, no.
2 (1968): 143–69.
. abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n bi-Is.fahān wa-l-wāridı̄n ʿalayhā, ed. ʿAbd al-Ghafūr ʿAbd al-
39 T
Ḥaqq Ḥusayn al-Balūshı̄, 4 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1987–92). All subsequent
references to this work are to this edition, except where specified.
40 Dhikr akhbār Is.bahān; on him, see Jacqueline Chabbi, “Abū Nuʿaym al-Is.fahānı̄,” in
EI3 .
41 The name Is.fahān appears consistently on Buyid coinage from 323/934–5 until the
year 421/1029; see Treadwell, Buyid Coinage. After that time, control of Is.fahān was
contested by different factions, including Ghaznavid armies from Afghanistan. Clifford
second city to Baghdad and tended to face culturally westward.42 Both

books, and especially Abū Nuʿaym’s, have been extensively mined in
studies of Is.fahān and the period, including by Bulliet when he formu-
lated his periodization of Iran’s conversion.43 Nurit Tsafrir has also used
these works to argue that the H . anafı̄ school of law had a foothold in
Is.fahān already a decade after the death of Abū H . anı̄fa (d. 150/767),
that by the beginning of the third/ninth century a “significant” H . anafı̄
community had developed in Is.fahān, and that it survived into the
fourth/tenth century.44 There were other histories of Is.fahān that have
not survived, as well as a work by a third author, al-Māfarrūkhı̄ (writ-
ten most likely in the period 464–84/1072–92), who composed what
Jürgen Paul has termed “Adab-oriented local historiography” in his Kitāb
Mah.āsin Is.fahān. This last work, though consulted, plays a minor role in
what follows because of its author’s different historical circumstances and
interests.45
Reframing Content
Abū al-Shaykh’s book was probably written in the 350s/960s and likely
represents the oldest surviving biographical dictionary written for an
Iranian territory.46 It consists of an edifying historical introduction that
Edmund Bosworth, The New Islamic Dynasties: A Chronological and Genealogical

Manual, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 154–7, 160–1, 185–8,
and Kamaly, “Isfahan vi. Medieval Period,” in EIr.
42 On which, see esp. David Durand-Guédy, Iranian Elites and Turkish Rulers: A History
of Is.fahān in the Saljūq Period (London: Routledge, 2010), ch. 1, “Identity.”
43 Bulliet, using Abū Nuʿaym’s text, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, 16–32
and 142.
44 Nurit Tsafrir, “The Beginnings of the H . anafı̄ School in Is.fahān,” Islamic Law and
Society 5, no. 1 (1998): 1–21 and Tsafrir, The History of an Islamic School of Law:
The Early Spread of Hanafism (Cambridge, MA: Islamic Legal Studies Program and
Harvard University Press, 2004), 63–72. Among her evidence, Tsafrir cites the appoint-
ment of H . anafı̄ qād.ı̄s and the transmission of H . anafı̄ Hadith. She circumscribes her
argument by acknowledging a rivalry between H . anafı̄s and Shāfiʿı̄s (the latter mak-
ing inroads from the second half of the third/ninth century) and by showing that with
only two exceptions, until the beginning of the fourth/tenth century none of Is.fahān’s
H. anafı̄ qād.ı̄s is known to have been Is.fahānı̄ in origin. See also the review of Tsafrir’s
book by Christopher Melchert in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 67, no. 3 (2008):
228–30.
45 Paul, “Isfahan v. Local Historiography,” in EIr; also, his “The Histories of Isfahan:
Mafarrukhi’s Kitāb mah.āsin Is.fahān,” Iranian Studies 33, no. 1/2 (2000): 117–32, and
Bulliet, “al-Māfarrūkhı̄,” in EI2 . For other works on Is.fahān, see Paul’s two articles
as well as Sven Dedering’s analysis in Abū Nuʿaym al-Is.fahānı̄, Dhikr akhbār Is.bahān,
2:viii–x.
46 Paul, “The Histories of Herat,” Iranian Studies 33, no. 1/2 (2000): 94, and Paul, “Isfahan
v. Local historiography,” in EIr.
features Is.fahān’s role in prophetic history as a supporter of Abraham

and an opponent of Nimrod and as a stopping place on the itinerary of
the Qurʾanic figure Dhū al-Qarnayn, the roles of Alexander the Great and
Khusraw Anūshirvān in building the city of Is.fahān and in determining
its dimensions, the extent of its territory, the natural wonders and famous
products of Is.fahān, and the companions of Muh.ammad involved in its
conquest during the reign of ʿUmar.47 The introduction is then followed
by eleven generations (t.abaqāt) of biographical entries featuring mainly
Hadith transmitters and running to as late as 353/964. Salmān figures
in the first generation – after short entries for the Prophet’s grandson
al-H. asan and the counter-caliph ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr, who passed
through Is.fahān en route to fight infidels in Jurjān.48
Salmān is the only Prophetic companion with origins in Is.fahān, and he
is honored by a longer biography than those of his peers, with accounts of
his journey and conversion filling more than half of it.49 The entry begins
with statements including the Prophetic Hadith, “Salmān is one of us, [a
member of] the ahl al-bayt” and “Salmān is the tenth of ten in Paradise,”
as well as a statement by ʿAlı̄ in praise of Salmān’s knowledge. Is.fahān
can be proud of him, Abū al-Shaykh states, because “among the ways in
which God beautified Is.fahān and its people was that he made Salmān
al-Fārisı̄ be from it.”50 In Chapter 1, I showed the authority that figures
such as Ibn al-Kalbı̄ garnered outside of Iraq when Iranians imagined
their earliest history. Ibn Ish.āq commands here a similar respect as an
authority on Salmān, as Abū al-Shaykh inserts a version of his report
on Salmān’s journey, containing some precise wording but also editorial
changes that suggest a written text orally transmitted along the lines
described by Gregor Schoeler.51 These liven up the story and stress for
audiences Salmān’s foreknowledge of the coming tide of Islam. Now
Salmān’s father sends someone out looking for him, and Salmān answers
his father: “I passed by some people who are called Christians. Their
speech and supplications filled me with wonder, so I sat, watching them
to see what they were doing.” Salmān’s father protests: “Your religion and
the religion of your fathers is better than their religion.” Salmān replies
47 A treaty is subsequently quoted in the entry for ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAtbān
al-Ans.ārı̄; Abū al-Shaykh, T
. abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n, 1:291–2.
48 Ibid., 1:191–202.
49 Ibid., 1:203–36.
50 Ibid., 1:203.
51 Schoeler, Genesis of Literature in Islam. Abū al-Shaykh cites here a recension of Ibn
Ish.āq’s text from the Kufan Yūnus b. Bukayr (d. 199); on the latter, see Fück, Muh.ammad
b. Ish.āq, 44.
firmly: “By God, no, it is not better than their religion. They are a people
worshipping God, supplicating him, and praying to him, whereas we only
worship a fire that we light with our hands. If we leave it, it dies.”52
When he finishes Ibn Ish.āq’s account, Abū al-Shaykh moves on to two
other, shorter reports that again take the reader/listener back to Salmān’s
first encounter with monotheism. The first features a holy man, as in Ibn
Hishām’s text discussed above.53 Salmān says that he was born and grew
up in Rāmhurmuz, but that his father was from Is.fahān. His mother,
a woman of means, had her son educated as a scribe, a profession at
which he excelled. But one day, while passing by a mountain cave, he
came across a holy man, who informed him of Jesus, a Messenger of God
(rasūl Allāh). The man also mentioned “Ah.mad” (a variant of the name
Muh.ammad) as a “Messenger,” who would come in the future bearing
tidings of the afterlife. Salmān strayed from the path cut out for him by
his mother by becoming a student of the holy man, and he learned to
pronounce a forerunner to the Muslim profession of faith: “There is no
God but God alone, who has no partner (lā sharı̄k lahu). Jesus, the son of
Mary, is the Messenger of God and Muh.ammad, God bless him and keep
him, after him is the Messenger of God.” Also: “Faith (ı̄mān) [includes the
belief in] resurrection after death.” The man also gave Salmān lessons in
prayer, as well as instructions that when Muh.ammad appeared, Salmān
should remember his teacher to Muh.ammad; for according to what the
teacher had heard about Jesus’ sayings, he would still get the benefit of
the encounter, whether he saw Muh.ammad in person or not.54 In the
second report, Salmān says, “I was a man from the people of Jayy. We
were worshipping speckled horses, but I knew that they did not mean
anything. So I was searching for the [true] religion.” The report then
carries on with Salmān’s arrival in Medina and his gift to the Prophet.55
Rather than appearing as a place abandoned, Is.fahān, or perhaps
Rāmhurmuz, takes center stage in Abū al-Shaykh’s biography as the place
where Salmān first learned about Jesus and Muh.ammad. Abū al-Shaykh
goes on to undermine Rāmhurmuz, an inconvenient possibility that does
52 Abū al-Shaykh, T . abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n, 1:211.

53 The isnād would suggest that Abū al-Shaykh is not relying upon Ibn Hishām (or Ibn Ish.āq
at all), but rather on another telling of Salmān’s story: al-Qāsim b. Fūrak from ʿAbd Allāh
b. Abı̄ Ziyād from Sayyār b. H . ātim al-ʿAnazı̄ from Mūsā b. Saʿı̄d al-Rāsibı̄ from Abū
Muʿādh from Abū Salama b. ʿAbd al-Rah.mān from Salmān; Abū al-Shaykh, T . abaqāt
al-muh.addithı̄n, 1:218 (and n. 1). See also Massignon, Salmân Pâk et les prémices
spirituelles de l’Islam iranien, 13.
54 Abū al-Shaykh, T . abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n, 1:218–20.
55 Ibid., 1:222–3. See also the conclusion to the biography, which returns to Salmān’s
foreknowledge, 1:234–6.
not fit his Is.fahān-focused narrative, as he returns Salmān to Is.fahān

after the Prophet’s death. A witness, Abū al-H . ajjāj al-Azdı̄, reports that
he met Salmān in Is.fahān, in his village, and asked him about the theo-
logical theory of qadar (“the divine decree,” i.e., fate, destiny), which
Salmān explained to him.56 Abū al-Shaykh argues: “In this report there
is evidence that Salmān came to Is.fahān during the reign of ʿUmar b. al-
Khat.t.āb.”57
Accounts of journeys can memorialize, through passage in space, the
elimination of one past and its replacement with another, as occurred in
the biographical tradition, considered above. But there is a double aspect
to most journeys far from home – the pilgrimage to Mecca being a key
example – where travelers not only merge with groups of fellow travelers,
sharing a sense of communion, but also, through juxtaposition with them,
come to appreciate the differences that distinguish them from one another.
From an Iranian perspective, the early biographical tradition presented
an imperfect memory, reflecting only the first aspect. Abū al-Shaykh has
filled out the memory and so offered Is.fahān’s readers an image of their
own double membership in an imagined Muslim community and in an
imagined community centered in Is.fahān.
Emphatic Reiteration
About a generation after Abū al-Shaykh, Abū Nuʿaym al-Is.fahānı̄ com-
posed a biographical dictionary focused on Is.fahān’s religious scholars.
The work consists of a historical introduction followed by biographical
treatments of the Prophet’s companions, and then alphabetically arranged
entries for scholars with ties to Is.fahān. Abū Nuʿaym relies heavily upon
Abū al-Shaykh (to whom he refers as Abū Muh.ammad b. H . ayyān, as he
claims to have heard reports directly from him), but as Jürgen Paul has
noted, Abū Nuʿaym places a “perceptible stress on the good qualities of
the Persians and their merits in contributing to the spread of Islam and
the maintenance of its purity.”58
This emphasis on Is.fahān and Persians comes through in the first
pages of Abū Nuʿaym’s book and subsequently in his biography of
Salmān.59 He starts off by defining his book as treating the illustrious
56 Ibid., 1:228–9.
57 The reason behind this conclusion is obscure but it presumably relates to the lifespan of
Abū al-H. ajjāj al-Azdı̄.
58 Paul, “Isfahan v. Local Historiography,” in EIr.
59 It is also visible in a biography for an unnamed Persian slave girl (ama) in Medina
who was from Is.fahān and had already converted to Islam when Salmān arrived. Abū
Nuʿaym al-Is.fahānı̄, Dhikr akhbār Is.bahān, 1:76–7.
forebears, especially scholars, from “the people of our land, the land
of Is.fahān” (min ahl baladinā balad Is.fahān). He says that he will cite
Hadith reports that were transmitted regarding the excellence of the Per-
sians, non-Arabs (al-ʿAjam), and mawālı̄, and goes on to cite versions
of the Pleiades Hadith over the following nine pages on the authority of
Abū Hurayra and, more unusually, a small number of other companions,
including ʿĀʾisha and ʿAlı̄, who also remembered versions of the Prophet’s
statement.60 As the Prophet’s affection rises to higher levels on Abū
Nuʿaym’s pages, the term “Pleiades” becomes firmly linked to Persians,
who pursued the various goals hypothetically hanging from the Pleaides:
religion (dı̄n), faith (ı̄mān), Islam, and knowledge (ʿilm). They are each
singly possible goals, and collectively add up to a glowing account of the
Persians. The variations create space for commentary, within which Abū
Nuʿaym introduces different ideas. For example, he cites Qurʾan 62:2–
3 and its reference to “others of them who have not yet joined them,”
as well as the statement of Qurʾan 47:38, “If you turn away, He will
replace you with another people, and they will not be like you.” Like
Muslim, cited above, he features reports that refer to Salmān’s people
ambiguously as “some of these men” (rijāl min hāʾulāʾi, in explanation
of Qurʾan 62:2–3), though now these are promptly followed by clarifi-
cation: a further report has Muh.ammad explain Qurʾan 47:38 by strik-
ing Salmān on the thigh and saying: “This one and his people. If religion
were hung from the Pleiades, then men of Persia (rijāl min Fāris) would
seek it.”61
With the Persians firmly identified in the reiterations, Abū Nuʿaym
takes up the theme of their displacement of the Arabs, as in the following
report that he features: “The Messenger of God said: ‘O you mawālı̄, hold
fast to memory [of God]. Verily, the Arabs have abandoned [it]. If faith
were hung from the Throne, there is someone from among you who would
search for it.’”62 In another instance, Abū Nuʿaym repeats a tradition in
which the Prophet mentioned to Abū Bakr that he had a dream in which
some black sheep came to him. Next some white sheep came, and then
there was not a black sheep in sight. Abū Bakr offered an interpretation:
“O Messenger of God! These Arabs are submitting to Islam and becoming
numerous [like the black sheep]. Subsequently, the ʿAjam will convert to
Islam until the Arabs cannot be perceived among them.” Having heard
60 For ʿĀʾisha and ʿAlı̄, see ibid., 1:8.

61 Ibid., 1:2–3.
62 Ibid., 1:6.
Abū Bakr’s analysis, Muh.ammad verified the prediction and the passing
of royal power (mulk) to the ʿAjam.63
In his reiterations of the Pleiades Hadith, Abū Nuʿaym makes more of
Salmān’s Persianness. He also cares more for Salmān’s lineage prior to
his conversion, as – unlike Ibn Hishām, Ibn Saʿd, or Abū al-Shaykh – he
provides Salmān’s full name prior to conversion as either Māhwayh or
Mābih b. Budakhshān b. Āzarjushnas, “from among the descendants of
King Manūshihr,” or as a further alternative, Bahbūd b. Khushān.64 In
his Maʿrifat al-s.ah.āba, Abū Nuʿaym displays a similarly complex sense of
Salmān’s identity as an Is.fahānı̄, a Persian, and a man with roots sunk in
Iran’s pre-Islamic past, implicitly arguing that Salmān’s ancestry is worth
remembering. He begins with his kunya (agnomen):
Abū ʿAbd Allāh. He traced his genealogy to Islam (intasaba ilā al-Islām), and so
he said “Salmān b. al-Islām.” He was one of the first of the people of Persia and
Is.fahān to convert to Islam (sābiq ahl Fāris wa-Is.fahān ilā al-Islām). And it is said
his name before Islam was Mābih b. Būdakhshān b. Mūrsilān b. Bahbūdhān b.
Fayrūz b. Shahrak, from the descendants of Āb al-Malik. He was a Zoroastrian
(majūsı̄), attendant of the fire (qāt.in al-nār). He converted to Islam at the arrival
of the Messenger of God in Medina. And it is said he converted in Mecca before
the hijra.65
The detail regarding Mecca is unusual in reporting on Salmān and would

likely give Salmān further credit as an early believer in and interlocutor
of Muh.ammad.
What can we make of the fact that Persians, as such, seem to com-
mand the interest and loyalty of Abū Nuʿaym in a way that they do not
for Abū al-Shaykh, who makes no mention of the Pleiades Hadith in his
book? Written half a century after its predecessor, Abū Nuʿaym’s text
generally seems to reflect a different stage in the development of Is.fahān
and its scholars, when Persian Muslims were more confident in them-
selves and conscious of their shared history. The comparative maturity
and integration of this community is also reflected in Abū Nuʿaym’s
choice of format, an integrated, alphabetically arranged work, which sub-
ordinates chronology and allowed readers in his day to “look someone
up.”66
63 Ibid., 1:10.
64 Ibid., 1:48.
65 Abū Nuʿaym al-Is.fahānı̄, Maʿrifat al-s.ah.āba, ed. ʿĀdil b. Yūsuf al-ʿAzzāzı̄, 7 vols.
(Riyadh: Dār al-Wat.an li-l-Nashr, 1998), 3:1327.
66 On the difference between works arranged by .tabaqāt versus biographical dictionaries,
see Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 66–74.
Discovering New Information

So far, we have seen how, by reframing content and by emphatic reiter-
ation, Abū al-Shaykh and Abū Nuʿaym raised the profile of aspects of
Salmān’s identity – his Is.fahānı̄ origins and Persian ethnicity. Each tradi-
tionist changed the forms and meaning of the historiographical tradition,
but not its substance. In a third case, which concerns Salmān’s lineage, we
have an apparent attempt to add to the store of memory. Two intriguing
but little studied legal “documents” seem to have entered the Arabic his-
toriographical tradition in Is.fahān and to bear signs of their generation
in Iran, the circulation of traditions between Iranian cities, and the estab-
lishment of networks of Salmān’s descendants.67 They are a document
of clientship (walāʾ) and a testament (was.iyya). I will summarize their
contents based on our earliest source, Abū al-Shaykh.
Shortly after Abū al-Shaykh reports on Salmān’s journey and con-
version, he returns to the moment in the story in which Muh.ammad
purchased Salmān’s freedom. Abū al-Shaykh includes a report claiming
that Muh.ammad dictated a “writing” (kitāb) to ʿAlı̄ b. Abı̄ T.ālib on the
second day of the month of Jumādā al-Ūlā68 and that it was witnessed
by Muh.ammad’s companions, listed as Abū Bakr al-S.iddı̄q, ʿUmar b. al-
Khat.t.āb, ʿAlı̄ b. Abı̄ T.ālib,69 H
. udhayfa b. [Saʿd] al-Yamān, Abū Dharr
al-Ghifārı̄, al-Miqdād b. al-Aswad, Bilāl “the mawlā of Abū Bakr,” and
ʿAbd al-Rah.mān b. ʿAwf. Abū al-Shaykh identifies generations of trans-
mitters running back to Salmān: ʿAbd Allāh b. Muh.ammad b. al-H . ajjāj,
ʿAbd al-Rah.mān b. Ah.mad b. ʿAbbād ʿAbdūs, and Qat.n b. Ibrāhı̄m
al-Nı̄sābūrı̄, the last of whom obtained the document from Salmān’s
descendants, named as Wahb; Wahb’s mother and his father, Kathı̄r;
Kathı̄r’s father, ʿAbd al-Rah.mān; and ʿAbd al-Rah.mān’s grandfather,
Salmān himself.
The document buys Salmān’s freedom from his owner and establishes
a new legal relationship:
Muh.ammad b. ʿAbd Allāh, the Messenger of God, redeems Salmān al-Fārisı̄

by this ransom from ʿUthmān b. al-Ashhal al-Yahūdı̄ [“the Jew”] and the man
67 For lack of an alternative, I employ the term “documents,” while recognizing that it is
problematic for the authority it carries, whereas we are discussing a very likely case of
pseudepigraphy, or the forgery of texts and their ascription to early authorities.
68 “Kataba ʿAlı̄ b. Abı̄ T.ālib yawm al-ithnayn fı̄ jumādā al-ūlā muhājar Muh.ammad.” The
Arabic is clarified by subsequent reporters as indicating that the agreement was dictated
in the first year of the hijra; see al-Khat.ı̄b al-Baghdādı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Baghdād, 1:170. On
muhājar, see Crone, “First-Century Concept of Hiǧra,” 356, 362.
69 It is unusual that ʿAlı̄ is listed as both scribe and witness.
from Qurayz.a,70 by planting three hundred date palms and [paying] forty ounces
(ūqiyya) of gold.71 Therefore Muh.ammad b. ʿAbd Allāh, the Messenger of God,
has absolved the cost of Salmān al-Fārisı̄. Muh.ammad b. ʿAbd Allāh, the Mes-
senger of God, and the ahl al-bayt are his patrons72 and no one [else] has any
claim on Salmān.73
Abū al-Shaykh follows this report with another line through which it was
transmitted, and then a further report to the effect that Salmān had three
daughters: one in Is.fahān – “and a group claims to be her descendants” –
and two in Egypt.74
The second document, a testament, follows shortly afterward in Abū
al-Shaykh’s text. Here the claim seems to be that Salmān had sought
to safeguard the interests of his brother and his brother’s offspring and
that sometime in the past a man in Shı̄rāz named Ghassān had come
forward stating that he was the great-great grandson of the brother, whose
name was Māhādharfarrūkh.75 This Ghassān, the leader of the brother’s
descendants in Shı̄rāz, claimed that a document on bleached leather in
his possession bore the handwriting of ʿAlı̄ and the seals of Muh.ammad,
Abū Bakr, and ʿAlı̄.76 While Abū al-Shaykh states his source for the infor-
mation about Ghassān and the document as “someone concerned with
this affair,” Abū Nuʿaym supplies a chain of authorities leading back to
Ghassān.77
The text of the testament establishes privileges for the offspring. It
begins with the basmala (“In the name of God, the Almighty, the Merci-
ful”); the statement that “this is a writing (kitāb) from Muh.ammad, the
70 Recall the story, narrated above by Ibn Hishām; see also Abū al-Shaykh, T . abaqāt al-
muh.addithı̄n, 1:213. It is not clear, in legal terms, why the document names ʿUthmān b.
al-Ashhal al-Yahūdı̄ since the man from Qurayz.a was Salmān’s last owner according to
the various versions of the story.
71 For possible conversions (they vary regionally), see Hinz, Islamische Masse und
Gewichte, 34–5.
72 Walāʾuhu li-Muh.ammad b. ʿAbd Allāh rasūl Allāh wa-ahl baytihi.
. abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n, 1:224–6. Also, Abū Nuʿaym al-Is.fahānı̄, Dhikr
73 Abū al-Shaykh, T
akhbār Is.bahān, 1:52.
74 He cites ʿAbd Allāh [b. Muh.ammad b. al-H . ajjāj], mentioned above, as well an Abū Bakr
b. Abı̄ Dāwūd. Regarding the daughters, see Massignon, Salmân Pâk et les prémices
spirituelles de l’Islam iranien, 10, n. 5.
75 Abū Nuʿaym: Mābandādhfarrūkh; Dhikr akhbār Is.bahān, 1:52.
77 According to Abū Nuʿaym: al-H . asan b. Ibrāhı̄m b. Ish.āq al-Burjı̄ al-Mustamlı̄ from
Muh.ammad b. Ah.mad b. ʿAbd al-Rah.mān from Abū ʿAlı̄ al-H . usayn b. Muh.ammad
b. ʿAmr al-Waththābı̄. Al-Waththābı̄ says that he saw the record (sijill) – which
he specifies as the Prophet’s agreement (ʿahd) granted to Salmān al-Fārisı̄ – in Shı̄rāz
in the hand of one of Ghassān’s grandchildren. Abū Nuʿaym, Dhikr akhbār Is.bahān,
1:52–3.
Messenger of God;” and clarification that Salmān had asked Muh.ammad

for a testament (was.iyya) for his brother, Māhādharfarrūkh, the people
of his house (ahl baytihi), and his subsequent progeny – those who had
converted to Islam and maintained their religion (man aslama minhum
wa-aqāma ʿalā dı̄nihi).78 “Muh.ammad then continues with a doxology
of five lines, praising the unicity of God, His creation of the world,
His singular role in it, the finitude of life, and the heavenly rewards.
Muh.ammad emphasizes that “there is no compulsion in religion” (Qurʾan
2:256): “he who stays in his own religion, we leave him.” The testament
states:
This is a writing (kitāb) for the people of the house of Salmān (ahl bayt Salmān).
They have God’s protection (dhimmat Allāh) and my protection of their blood
and property where they reside: their plains, mountains, pastures, and springs
will not be treated unjustly nor will they have difficulty imposed on them. For to
whomever, believing men or women, this writing of mine is read, it is obligatory
that he maintain, honor, and treat them [Salmān’s family] with reverence, and that
he not oppose them with harm or anything reprehensible. I have removed from
them [the obligation] to shear the forelocks, the jizya, the h.ashr, the ʿushr, and
the rest of the burdens and payments [imposed on non-Muslims]. In addition,
if they ask of you [something], give it to them. If they seek aid from you, aid
them. If they seek protection from you, protect them. If they misbehave, forgive
them, but if misdeeds are committed against them, defend them. Each year, in
the month of Rajab, they should receive from the public treasury (bayt māl
al-Muslimı̄n) two hundred garments79 and one hundred slaughtered animals.
Verily, Salmān deserves that from us because God, blessed and exalted, has given
Salmān precedence over a great many of the believers. He [God] revealed to
me:80 “Paradise longs for Salmān more than Salmān longs for Paradise.” He is
a man in whom I put my trust and faith, pious, pure, and a sincere advisor to
the Messenger of God (Peace be upon him!) and the believers. Salmān is one of
us, [a member of] the ahl al-bayt. Let no one oppose this testament (was.iyya)
regarding what I have ordered regarding the maintenance and reverence for the
people of Salmān’s house and their descendants, including he who converted to
78 Abū al-Shaykh, T . abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n, 1:231; also in a different edition of Abū

al-Shaykh’s text, edited by ʿAbd al-Ghaffār Sulaymān al-Bindārı̄ and Sayyid Kasrawı̄
H. asan, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1989), 1:59. Versus Abū Nuʿaym:
Mābandādhfarrūkh and man aslama minhum aw aqāma ʿalā dı̄nihi. Dhikr akhbār
Is.bahān, 1:52.
. abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n, 1:232, n. 7. Abū Nuʿaym’s
79 Arabic, h.illa; see Abū al-Shaykh, T
version stipulates two hundred garments in the month of Rajab and a hundred garments
in the month of Dhū al-H . ijja. Dhikr akhbār Is.bahān, 1:53.
80 Abū al-Shaykh: Anzala ʿalayya fı̄ al-wah.ı̄ anna. On the phenomenon of extra-Qurʾanic
revelation, see William A. Graham, Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam: A
Reconsideration of the Sources, with Special Reference to the Divine Saying or H . adı̂th
Qudsı̂ (The Hague: Mouton, 1977).
Islam or maintained his religion (man aslama minhum aw aqāma ʿalā dı̄nihi).81
Whosoever opposes this testimony has opposed God and his Messenger, and will
continue to be cursed all the way up to the Day of Reckoning. Whosoever honors
them has honored me, and will be rewarded by God. And whosoever harms
them has harmed me, and I will be his adversary on the Day of Resurrection: the
Fires of Gehenna will repay him, and I will remove my protection (dhimmatı̄)
from him.
Peace,
[Muh.ammad, the Messenger of God]
The text states that it had been written at the command of the Prophet
in the month of Rajab in the ninth year of the hijra (i.e., 630 CE) in
the presence of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, T.alh.a [b. ʿUbayd Allāh], al-
Zubayr [b. al-ʿAwwām], ʿAbd al-Rah.mān, Saʿd [b. Abı̄ Waqqās.], Saʿı̄d
[b. Zayd?], Salmān, Abū Dharr, ʿAmmār, Suhayb [al-Rūmı̄], Bilāl, al-
Miqdād, “and a group of other believers.”82
Such documents are hardly a rarity in Arabic historiography, and they
are almost always dismissed as forgeries by modern scholars.83 These
two are also likely forgeries, as neither appears to be attested in an
earlier source and they contain manifest anachronisms, including ref-
erences to a hijri dating system in the lifetime of the Prophet (i.e., the
statement that the first document was dictated by Muh.ammad on the
second day of the month of Jumādā al-Ūlā), whereas the tradition widely
holds that this system was introduced during ʿUmar’s reign.84 The first
document reflects classical Islamic law and its notion of walāʾ al-ʿitq as a
tie between a manumitter and a freedman that arises upon manumission
and that entails rights and obligations for each party.85 It refers to the
ahl al-bayt as Salmān’s patrons. Judging by Abū al-Shaykh’s antipathy
to the Shiʿa elsewhere in his book, it is possible, but unlikely, that he has
81 Abū al-Shaykh, T . abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n. 1:233; the Bindārı̄/H. asan edition has here man
aslama minhum wa-aqāma ʿalā dı̄nihi; 1:59 (as in the first instance, mentioned above).
Abū Nuʿaym has here man aslama minhum aw aqāma ʿalā dı̄nihi; Dhikr akhbār Is.bahān,
1:53.
83 For a more credulous view that does not, however, include these documents, see
Muhammad Hamidullah, Majmūʿat al-wathāʾiq al-siyāsiyya li-l-ʿahd al-nabawı̄ wa-
l-khilāfa al-rāshida, 3rd ed. (Beirut: Dār al-Irshād li-l-T.ibāʿa wa-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzı̄ʿ,
1969).
84 As noted by Balūshı̄ for both documents, T . abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n, 1:227 and 233–4;
and regarding the first, al-Khat.ı̄b al-Baghdādı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Baghdād, 1:170–1.
85 Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law, 35–40. On walāʾ, see also Ulrike Mitter,
“Origin and Development of the Islamic Patronate,” in Patronate and Patronage, ed.
Bernards and Nawas, 70–133.
included a document of sectarian origins.86 Its author might have sym-

pathies consistent with what Teresa Bernheimer has termed “ʿAlidism,”
that is, “a non-sectarian reverence and support for the family, as distinct
from ‘Shı̄ʿism,’ the political and religious claims of some of its members
or others on their behalf.”87 The second document also contains anachro-
nisms of a legal nature, with its references to “burdens and payments”
imposed on non-Muslims and gifts to be funded from the public treasury
that seem to anticipate the financial arrangements of the conquest period
and afterward (I consider a story about the origins of hereditary pensions
in Chapter 3).88
Forgery makes the documents no less – and in fact more – informative
of the situation of Salmān’s Iranian descendants (or those who claimed
to be such), at least until Abū al-Shaykh’s day and likely into that of Abū
Nuʿaym, who also elects to transmit both of these reports. Even if it is hard
to believe that Salmān’s purported family, centered on Is.fahān and Shı̄rāz,
gained all of the privileges stipulated in the second document, the text
lays claims to respect and maintenance on the basis of Salmān’s family’s
adjunct membership in the ahl al-bayt. The identity of the forgers is likely
lost to history, although they surely included the beneficiaries; the analysis
of the chains of transmission undertaken by the modern editor, Balūshı̄,
has yielded no more specific fruit.89 Still, Abū al-Shaykh’s decision to
include the documents might well reflect the spirit of the Buyid era and
86 See, for example, in T . abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n, 2:329, Abū al-Shaykh’s description of

a Hadith transmitter who took up with the “Rāfid.a,” denying the legitimacy of Abū
Bakr’s caliphate, and 2:278–9 relating to the error of Shiʿi ideas about ʿAlı̄. Abū
al-Shaykh’s legal affiliation, if he had one, is not known. Though treating Abū al-
Shaykh, Tsafrir lists no madhhab for him. My own light search has been unsuccessful.
Regarding the formation of the classical legal schools and their development, see esp.
Christopher Melchert, The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th–10th Cen-
turies C.E. (Leiden: Brill, 1997) and George Makdisi, “T . abaqāt-Biography: Law and
Orthodoxy in Classical Islam,” Islamic Studies (Islamabad) 32, no. 4 (1993): 379–
83.
87 Teresa Bernheimer, “Genealogy, Marriage, and the Drawing of Boundaries among the
ʿAlids (Eighth–Twelfth Centuries),” in Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies: The
Living Links to the Prophet, ed. Kazuo Morimoto, 75–91 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012),
at 75–6. ʿAlı̄’s quietist son, al-H. asan, for example, figures prominently as a subject in
both works. Abū al-Shaykh, T . abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n, 1:191–4; Abū Nuʿaym, Dhikr
akhbār Is.bahān, 1:44–6, citing Abū al-Shaykh, among others.
88 Though first-century forms of walāʾ may have included non-Muslims (i.e., there may
be a “kernel of truth” in the agreement); see Mitter, “Origin and Development of the
Islamic Patronate,” 80.
89 See esp. T. abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n, 227 and 234.
ʿAlidist sympathies and ideas about Muh.ammad and his companions that
favored Iranian interests.90
Even Salmān’s non-Muslim descendants might fare surprisingly well
in the arrangements. Our evidence is admittedly not vast – here just
the second document. It relieves Salmān’s family of the burdens and
payments imposed on non-Muslims; it presumably therefore has in mind
his non-Muslim descendants. Who should be protected also hinges on
how one reads the Arabic, and this is not straightforward, since in Abū
al-Shaykh’s book, there are references to “he who converted to Islam and
maintained his religion” (man aslama minhum wa-aqāma ʿalā dı̄nihi),
as well as to “he who converted to Islam or maintained his religion”
(man aslama minhum aw aqāma ʿalā dı̄nihi). In the second case, one
could read the Arabic as relating to persons who converted to Islam as
well as to others who kept their prior, non-Muslim faith. Abū Nuʿaym
appears to be satisfied with “or,” and that the brother’s descendants
would be treated well whether or not they have converted to Islam.91
Whereas, in principle, walāʾ entailed breaking former ties, now they might
be strengthened, legitimized, and rewarded with payments, along the lines
of those extended to the Prophet’s companions and their descendants.
The question that must remain open is whether contemporaries
believed the documents to be authentic and whether Salmān’s descen-
dants did enjoy the material and social benefits demanded on their behalf.
Only a short while later in Baghdad, al-Khat.ı̄b al-Baghdādı̄ (d. 463/1071)
uses Abū Nuʿaym’s reporting on Salmān. While expressing doubts about
the document of manumission, he transmits a version of it; the testament
allegedly written for Salmān’s family, however, must have seemed too
far-fetched, as he leaves it out.92 In Damascus, Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 571/1176),
who also uses Abū Nuʿaym as a source, makes the same choice.93 While
al-Khat.ı̄b and Ibn ʿAsākir generally lavish attention on Salmān, Salmān’s
90 Regarding Buyid pretensions, see esp. Wilferd Madelung, “The Assumption of the Title
Shāhānshāh by the Būyids and the ‘Reign of the Daylam (Dawlat Al-Daylam),’” Journal
of Near Eastern Studies 28, no. 2 (1969): 84–108.
91 In texts generally, wa and aw are easily exchanged by scribes. The oral dimensions of
such reports often favored minor changes. The text refers to a written form (as a kitāb)
and its oral circulation (“To whomever . . . this writing of mine is read . . . ”).
92 Al-Khat.ı̄b al-Baghdādı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Baghdād, 1:170–1 (no. 12, “Salmān al-Fārisı̄,” at 163–
71).
93 Ibn ʿAsākir keeps any doubts he may have about the document of manumission to
himself; Taʾrı̄kh Madı̄nat Dimashq, ed. ʿUmar al-ʿAmrawı̄, 80 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-
Fikr, 1995–8), 21:403–4 (no. 2599, “Salmān b. al-Islām,” at 373–460).
brother and his descendants seem to fare poorly here as well as in the
main arteries of Muslim tradition, judging by my searches of electronic
databases of Arabic texts.94
Conclusion
Beginning with prophetic biography and the account of Ibn Hishām, we
have seen how Muslim traditionists found the life and experiences of
Salmān meaningful for relating the history of the Muslim community, its
nature, and its requirements. They presented this community as super-
seding those of Christianity and of the h.anı̄fiyya, with annunciation of
Muh.ammad’s prophethood as a dominant theme, along with the idea
that the Muslim community is a family that commands an exclusive loy-
alty. As Salmān passed through the hands of numerous monks en route
to Muh.ammad, his Persian homeland receded, and likewise, when in
Medina, he joined himself to the Prophet as a devoted follower and left
behind his family.
As a site of memory, Salmān also comes to appear as a mediator
between Iran’s pre-Islamic past and Islamic present, and between Per-
sians and Arabs. Salmān proved useful for Iranians, who inherited much
historical knowledge about him, such as versions of Ibn Ish.āq’s text, but
reworked it by methods that involved putting Is.fahān at the center of
the story, emphatic citation of the Pleiades Hadith, and extension of past
memory. One is particularly struck by the forging of a corporate identity
for Salmān’s descendants in Iran, referred to collectively in the testament
as ahl bayt Salmān, and the sympathies of Salmān’s descendants for ʿAlı̄
and his family in Abū al-Shaykh’s day and likely also in Abū Nuʿaym’s.
Iranians, and Is.fahānı̄s in particular, are offered an antique image that
establishes greater continuity between their pre- and post-Islamic pasts,
an image that also seems to deny rupture within Salmān’s own family,
which might hypothetically reap the rewards of Muslim rule.
I have proposed a periodization and a shift in perspective from the
second half of the third/ninth century onward. Investigations of memory
94 Especially al-Maktaba al-shāmila and al-Jāmiʿ al-kabı̄r li-kutub al-turāth (for details on
both, see the bibliography). In 1925, however, what seems to be a version of the testament
was published along with two other documents by Gushtasp Kaikhusru Nariman; see
the discussion of Jamshedji Maneckji Unvala in his preface to his English translation of
Massignon’s Salmân Pâk et les prémices spirituelles de l’Islam iranien; Salmān Pāk and
the Spiritual Beginnings of Iranian Islām (Bombay: n.p., 1955), i–ii (the book says that
it was published by Unvala himself).
of different topics and texts – courtly traditions, for example – might

yield refinements, though it is likely, and logical enough, that in other
cases the meaning of a Persian identity and Persian origins also changed
with the development of a Persian Muslim society. There were also most
probably disputes on the way to the new views, as the cases of the dı̄wān
and a Persian princess, considered in Chapter 3, suggest.
3
Finding Meaning in the Past
In the generations after Salmān al-Fārisı̄, a small number of high-profile

Iranians were remembered fondly for their early adherence to Islam, the
stalwartness of their faith, and the extent of their accomplishments. A
notable example is al-H . asan al-Bas.rı̄ (d. 110/728), a famous preacher
in Umayyad Basra who was reckoned a member of the “successors”
(tābiʿūn), the generation that came after Salmān and Muh.ammad’s other
companions. Ibn Saʿd (d. 230/845), himself of Basran origins, wrote the
earliest surviving substantial biographical notice on al-H . asan, in which
he mentions stories about al-H . asan’s parents and youth, including that
his father was a man by the name of Yasār who came to Medina as
a captive. Al-H . asan was born during the caliphate of ʿUmar, and one
witness quoted by Ibn Saʿd avers that in his generation, al-H . asan was
the person who, on matters of judgment, most resembled ʿUmar. His
practice of ritual is reported, as are his associations with Muh.ammad’s
companions and members of his own generation. But Ibn Saʿd gives very
1
little sense of al-H . asan as an Iranian. By contrast, al-H . asan turns up
in local histories, where he appears as a mediator between two worlds,
much like Salmān. For example, Qazwı̄n, northwest of modern Tehran,
was an important crossroads and a barrier against frontier territories to
1 Ibn Saʿd, al-T. abaqāt al-kabı̄r, vol. 7, pt. 1, 114–29; Christopher Melchert, “H . asan Bas.ri,”
in EIr (esp. the first para.). Al-H . asan is also called “al-H . asan, the son of the father of
al-H. asan” (al-H. asan b. Abı̄ al-H. asan), reflecting the uncertainty of his lineage (this forms
part of the section’s heading). For an insightful consideration of the shaping of al-H . asan’s
image (that gives light attention to its Persian dimensions), see Suleiman Ali Mourad, Early
Islam between Myth and History: Al-H . asan al-Bas.rı̄ (d. 110H/728CE) and the Formation
of His Legacy in Classical Islamic Scholarship (Leiden: Brill, 2006).
90
Finding Meaning in the Past 91
the north at several key junctures of the caliphate’s history. The author of
a late twelfth/early thirteenth-century local history calls on the memory
of al-H. asan in an act of boundary maintenance as he cites a report in
which al-H . asan explains that Qurʾan 9:123, which directs believers to
fight against those “unbelievers who are near you,” was revealed for the
people of Qazwı̄n.2
As one of the most dramatic events in human history, the conquests
gave rise to a creative mythology that long afterward continued to inspire
generations of traditionists, who recalled the events of the conquests as
they negotiated their own loyalties to the ʿAbbasid state and its successors,
to sect and family, and to region, town, and neighborhood. In this chapter,
I accordingly consider changing perceptions of Iranians from different
vantage points, beginning with a view of the conquests in early Islamic
narratives fashioned mostly in Iraq, and the proposal that memory of
the role played by Iranians began to change in roughly the second half
of the third/ninth century. Then, I get out of Iraq and move on to the
fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries to consider closely two local
histories, of Jurjān and Sı̄stān, and their far more profound shaping of
memory to address local Iranian sensibilities.
Conquest and Kerygma

Much of the history written by Muslims in the third/ninth and fourth/
tenth centuries is deeply kerygmatic in character.3 In these writings,
details serve to historicize theological ideas, as observed a generation ago
by John Wansbrough.4 The conquests, in Arabic futūh. (literally “open-
ings”), represent perhaps the most important proof of Islam as the true
religion, and they formed part of Muslims’ visions of salvation history
already in the early phases of history writing.5 In narratives about the
2 ʿAbd al-Karı̄m b. Muh.ammad al-Rāfiʿı̄, al-Tadwı̄n fı̄ akhbār Qazwı̄n, ed. ʿAzı̄z Allāh
ʿUt.āridı̄, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1987), 1:34. The narrator also features
Salmān and his Iranian genealogy; see 1:70ff.
3 By which I mean to point to its theological, didactic character.
4 Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation His-
tory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), esp. 1–49.
5 Regarding the futūh. in early Islamic thought, see esp. Donner, Narratives of Islamic
Origins, 174–82 (where Donner treats the futūh. as a theme addressing the inception of
Muslim hegemony over non-Muslims and dates the first books discussing the futūh. to
the very end of the first and the beginning of the second century AH); Donner, “Arabic
fath. as ‘Conquest’” (unpublished manuscript); and his recent theory about the origins of
Islam in a “Believers” movement as a form of militant monotheism, Muhammad and the
conquests, one often finds arguments “retrojected into the historical past
in narrative form,” as, for example, in the letters reportedly sent by the
Prophet to invite contemporary rulers, including Heraclius (r. 610–41),
the Negus of Abyssinia, and Khusraw Parvı̄z (r. 591–628), to embrace
Islam.6 Christian traditionists appear to have been familiar with at least
some such narratives, and they formed their own interpretations of the
meanings behind the conquests, which can often help shed light on the
ways in which the early Muslim community chose to recall its conquest
past.7
Regarding Iran, although narratives were often composed with signif-
icant recourse to Sasanian-era historiography, their very structures are
frequently kerygmatic, like accounts of the futūh. generally; they serve to
explain the rapid success of the Arab conquerors as divinely inspired and
as the most logical outcome of the disastrous final years of the Sasanian
Empire. Modern historians have surprisingly often adopted this perspec-
tive, with only a passing glance at the kerygmatic interpretive motives
of traditionists.8 By way of example from an earlier generation, T. W.
Arnold argued that the reigns of the last Sasanian rulers were marked
by “terrible anarchy,” which left Persians ready for a change. Above all,
they were impressed and swayed by Muslim law, which granted them
“toleration.” Christians and Jews – but also “Sabæans” and followers
of “numerous sects in which the speculations of Gnostics, Manichæans,
Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2010), esp. ch. 3, “The Expansion of the Community of Believers.”
6 Lawrence I. Conrad, “Heraclius in Early Islamic Kerygma,” in The Reign of Heraclius
(610–641): Crisis and Confrontation, ed. Gerrit J. Reinink and Bernard H. Stolte, 113–56
(Leuven: Peeters, 2002), at 114–17.
7 See esp. Thomas Sizgorich, “‘Do Prophets Come with a Sword?’ Conquest, Empire,
and Historical Narrative in the Early Islamic World,” American Historical Review 112,
no. 4 (2007): 992–1015. For the issue of intercultural transmission, see esp. Robert
Hoyland, “Arabic, Syriac and Greek Historiography in the First Abbasid Century: An
Inquiry into Inter-Cultural Traffic,” ARAM Periodical 3, no. 1 (1991): 211–33, esp.
223–33; Conrad, “Theophanes and the Arabic Historical Tradition: Some Indications
of Intercultural Transmission,” Byzantinische Forschungen 15 (1990): 1–44 and “The
Conquest of Arwād: A Source-Critical Study in the Historiography of the Early Medieval
Near East,” in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, vol. 1, Problems in the Literary
Source Material, ed. Averil Cameron and Conrad, 317–401 (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press,
1992); Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir, 140ff.
8 See Wansbrough’s comments on positivism and literary analysis, which, for Iran, do
not strike me as dated; Sectarian Milieu, esp. 2. This is not to deny the impressive
results that have been achieved by sensitive mining of our sources regarding Iran; see esp.
Parvaneh Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian–Parthian
Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008).
and Buddhists found expression” – could enjoy “religious freedom” and

exemption from military service simply by paying a light tribute. Com-
pare this situation to the old days, when non-Zoroastrians had suffered
under “the persecuting policy of the state religion.”9 Arnold’s interpreta-
tion thus emphasizes the smoothness of Iran’s transition and the material
interests of Persians. He refutes the views of many earlier scholars that
emphasized conquest violence and the role that coercion played in bring-
ing Iranians over to Islam.
The dramatic collapse of the Sasanian Empire demanded explanation,
which our sources provide by depicting the Arabs as ending a failed
Sasanian state in ways that often support Arnold’s views. They frequently
portray a centrally planned and coordinated Arab assault in the name of
Islam,10 extol the benefits of the caliphate and stable government, and
highlight the bonds of blood and affection between members of the new
and old regimes. Sasanian Iran appears in serious decline, worn down
by its long wars with Byzantium, rebellious populations on its frontiers,
conflict within its ruling house, and the strategic and moral failings of its
rulers. Events were rushing toward the empire’s extinction, which was
written in the stars, predicted by angels, foretold by omens, and even
admitted by Persian kings and generals themselves. The chaotic period
beginning with the death of Khusraw Parvı̄z in 628 CE and ending in 632
receives special attention. As many as ten rulers came and went in this
period, with several simultaneous claims to power being advanced until
637, when Yazdagird III had already been on the throne for some years.11
9 T. W. Arnold, The Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith,
2nd ed. (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2001), 206–10. On the in fact more complicated
issue of tolerance, see Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith
Relations in the Muslim Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 87–
120 (“Is there no compulsion in religion?”). For an explanation that emphasizes the
“material and spiritual bankruptcy of the ruling class” of Iran, see ʿAbd al-H . usain
Zarrı̄nkūb, “The Arab Conquest of Iran and Its Aftermath,” in The Cambridge History
of Iran, 4:1–56, esp. 17.
10 On this view, see especially the skeptical views of Albrecht Noth, “Der Charakter der
ersten großen Sammlungen von Nachrichten zur frühen Kalifenzeit,” Der Islam 47
(1971): 168–99, and Donner, “Centralized Authority and Military Autonomy in the
Early Islamic Conquests,” in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, vol. 3, States,
Resources and Armies, ed. Averil Cameron, 337–60 (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995).
11 Regarding this period, see Frye, “Political History of Iran under the Sasanians,” 170–2;
Robert Göbl, Sasanian Numismatics, trans. Paul Severin (Braunschweig: Klinkhardt &
Biermann, 1971), 54–5 (showing that only five rulers minted coins between Khusraw II
and Yazdagird III); and Touraj Daryaee, Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire
(London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), 34–8.
A central figure of blame was Shı̄rawayh (Shı̄roe), who participated in a

revolt against his father, Khusraw Parvı̄z, and afterward agreed to the
latter’s execution. Christian sources, albeit from their own perspectives,
could go surprisingly easy on him.12 Not so Muslim ones, which say he
killed every brother he could lay his hands on, seventeen “men of good
education, bravery, and manly virtues,” in al-T.abarı̄’s account.13 After a
short time, Shı̄rawayh fell sick, with some traditionists specifying that he,
along with the nobles and great men of Persia, suffered death from the
plague (al-t.āʿūn).14 The third/ninth-century historian al-Yaʿqūbı̄ sums
up his just deserts: “When Shı̄rawayh came to power, he freed all the
prisoners and married his father’s women [i.e., wives and concubines].
He killed seventeen of his brothers unjustly and with wanton aggression.
But his reign did not go well, nor did he enjoy good health. He became
severely ill and died after eight months [in power].”15 Al-T.abarı̄ – having
considered all of Shı̄rawayh’s actions – makes what seems like a serious
understatement: “He was an inauspicious figure for the house of Sāsān.”16
This kerygmatic and teleological perspective was hardwired into many
narratives, even when they made abundant use of Sasanian-era sources.
A particularly striking example is the account of Abū H . anı̄fa al-Dı̄nawarı̄
(d. ca. 281 or 282/894–5), whose Akhbār al-t.iwāl is a history covering
the span from the origins of humanity to the third/ninth century. Al-
Dı̄nawarı̄ gives scant attention to the Prophet’s life or to the early days
of Islam in Arabia, but he pays extensive attention to Sasanian history.
The Prophet’s virtual absence has puzzled some of al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s modern
readers, but it can at least partly be explained by his belief that the
12 See Ignazio Guidi, ed., Chronicon anonymum, in Chronica Minora, Corpus Scriptorum
Christianorum Orientalium 1–2, Scr. Syri 1–2 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1903), 1:15–
39 (Syriac text), 2:15–32 (Latin trans.); I rely on an unpublished English translation of
this text by Sebastian Brock. But see also Theophanes, The Chronicle of Theophanes
Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History, AD 284–813, trans. Cyril Mango and
Roger Scott (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 28–30.
13 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:1060–1; The History of al-T . abarı̄, vol. 5, The Sāsānids, the Byz-
antines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen, trans. C. E. Bosworth (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1999), 398.
. abı̄b, al-Muh.abbar, ed. Ilse Lichtenstädter (Hyderabad: Maṭbaʿat
14 E.g., Muh.ammad b. H
Jamʿiyyat Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1942), 363 (through the transmission of
Abū Saʿı̄d al-Ḥasan b. al-Ḥusayn al-Sukkarı̄, d. 275/888); Ibn Qutayba, al-Maʿārif, ed.
Tharwat ʿUkāsha (Cairo, 1960; repr., Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Mis.riyya li-l-Kitāb, 1992),
665; al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:1061, History of al-T . abarı̄, 5:399.
15 Al-Yaʿqūbı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, 1:172.
16 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:1061; History of al-T. abarı̄, 5:399.
failures of the Sasanians played a large role in Iran’s rapid conquest.17

In his account, the devastation wrought by Shı̄rawayh is immediately
followed by thirty-five pages of conquests and city building. The Prophet’s
life gets only the briefest of mentions during al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s discussion of
Anūshirvān, during whose reign Muh.ammad was born.18 Al-Dı̄nawarı̄
summarizes the linkage of events along the following lines: Shı̄rawayh
killed fifteen of his brothers out of jealous fear before illness overtook
him. He left behind a vacuum at the top of the Sasanian hierarchy that
was filled by children and women, among the latter a daughter of Khusraw
Parvı̄z named Būrān. As a result, Persia’s authority deteriorated: “When
sovereignty came to Būrān, the daughter of Kisrā b. Hurmuz, it got out in
all corners of the world that the land of Persia no longer had a king.” The
grab for the Persians’ land then began, led by men from the Arab tribe of
Bakr b. Wāʾil.19 The Sasanian women bear a large portion of the blame.
Yazdagird, the last Sasanian king, comes to power when the Persians,
now ruled by another woman, Āzarmı̄dukht, recognize their losses: “We
have come to this because of the domination of women over us!”20
The Dı̄wān of ʿUmar

This kerygmatic vision also recognized Persians as participants on the
winning side that changed Iran; traditionists such as Ibn Ish.āq, al-Wāqidı̄
(d. 207/822), Ibn Hishām, Ibn Saʿd, and al-T.abarı̄ exploited Salmān
especially for this purpose.21 As I discuss in more detail in Chapter 6, our
sources often preserve a record of the Arabs’ allies and opponents. But
as with Salmān, we should ask questions of a mnemohistorical nature:
when and in what ways were such narratives adapted to speak to Iranian
Muslims, rather than about them? Who recognized Persians, and possibly
17 On Iranian aspects of al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s book, see esp. Pourshariati, “The Akhbār al-T . iwāl
of Abū H. anı̄fa Dı̄nawarı̄: A Shuʿūbı̄ Treatise on Late Antique Iran,” in Sources for the
History of Sasanian and Post-Sasanian Iran, ed. Rika Gyselen, 201–89 (Bures-sur-Yvette:
Groupe pour l’Étude de la Civilisation du Moyen-Orient, 2010).
18 Al-Dı̄nawarı̄, al-Akhbār al-t.iwāl, 124–5.
19 Ibid., 161–3.
20 Ibid., 173. See Chapter 5, where I continue my discussion of Būrān in early Islamic
kerygma.
21 E.g., Muh.ammad predicts to Salmān at the so-called Battle of the Ditch the Muslims’
future conquest of Syria, the Yemen, and the “White Palace of Kisrā” in al-Madāʾin;
al-Wāqidı̄, al-Maghāzı̄, ed. Marsden Jones, 3 vols. (London: Oxford University Press,
1966), 2:449–50 (al-Wāqidı̄’s al-Maghāzı̄ survives in the recension of Muh.ammad b.
al-ʿAbbās b. H . ayyawayh [d. 382/992], on which see S. Leder, “al-Wāk.idı̄,” in EI ).
2
why? What might narrative choices and differences reveal about shifts
in perspective? The next two cases – those of ʿUmar’s registry and of
Yazdagird’s daughter – give some sense of the complex developments
of memory, particularly in Iraq from the second half of the third/ninth
century onward.
When modern historians trace the origins of administrative practice in
the Muslim territories, they frequently begin with the military register of
the second caliph ʿUmar, which recorded the names of those who had
fought in the conquests in order to facilitate the distribution of pensions
and to regulate the flow of money to and within the military settlements.
The idea was that rather than living off the land, the conquerors would
become a hereditary pensioned class that would survive on tax revenues.22
The origins of ʿUmar’s idea are murky. The term dı̄wān is a Persian loan
word attested in Zoroastrian Middle Persian in the spellings dpywʾn
and dywʾn.23 We also know that the Sasanians had a well-developed
administrative apparatus, which ʿUmar could have adapted to serve his
purposes.24 Still, Gerd-Rüdiger Puin has persuasively argued that the
register in its origins is more an Arab than a Persian institution, and so
too much may be made of the etymology and Sasanians and too little of
the particular circumstances of the Arabs.25 Moreover, the register also
surely benefited from Byzantine precedents, especially when the caliphate
moved to Syria.26
There are a few milestones in the development of memory concerning
ʿUmar’s conception of the dı̄wān. To start, we have a work dealing with
financial administration of the caliphate by one of the founders of the
22 On the workings of the dı̄wān, see esp. Hugh Kennedy, “The Financing of the Military
in the Early Islamic State,” in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, 3:361–78.
23 François de Blois, “Dı̄vān i. The Term,” in EIr. See also Jamāl al-Dı̄n ʿAbd Allāh b.
Ah.mad al-Bashbı̄shı̄, Jāmiʿ al-taʿrı̄b bi-l-t.arı̄q al-qarı̄b, ed. Nus.ūhı̄ Ūnāl Qarah Arslān
(Cairo: Markaz al-Dirāsāt al-Sharqiyya, Kulliyyat al-Ādāb, Jāmiʿat al-Qāhira, 1995),
134. On other early dı̄wāns (e.g., dı̄wān al-khātam), see also A. A. Duri, “Dı̄wān i. The
Caliphate,” in EI2 .
24 This is also an object of memory; see, e.g., al-Yaʿqūbı̄ on Khusraw Anūshirvān in
Taʾrı̄kh, 1:164–5. On the survival of Sasanian administrative theory and practice, see
esp. Michael G. Morony, Iraq after the Muslim Conquest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984), 27ff.
25 Gerd-Rüdiger Puin, “Der Dı̄wān von ʿUmar ibn al-Ḫat.t.āb: Ein Beitrag zur frühislami-
schen Verwaltungeschichte” (Ph.D. diss., Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität,
1970). Cf. M. Sprengling, “From Persian to Arabic,” American Journal of Semitic Lan-
guages and Literatures 56, no. 2 (1939): 175–224. The dı̄wān is also described in Noth’s
discussion of “administration” as a primary theme of the early Arabic historical tradi-
tion; Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 35–6.
26 C. Edmund Bosworth, “Dı̄vān ii. Government Office,” in EIr.
H. anafı̄ school of law, Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798), in which he treats pen-
sions awarded to the early Muslims from the spoils of war. There he
cites the companion Abū Hurayra, who reports that when he came back
from the fighting in Bah.rayn, he brought with him five hundred thou-
sand dirhams, about which he informed the caliph, ʿUmar.27 ʿUmar,
apparently doubting the high figure, sent him away to get some rest, and
told him to return the next day. When Abū Hurayra returned, ʿUmar
asked him whether the money had been acquired in an honest way.
Abū Hurayra assured him that it had been, whereupon ʿUmar addressed
those present, informing them of the spoils and asking them whether they
wished it to be distributed by measuring, counting, or weighing the shares
to be allotted. “One of those present” (rajul min al-qawm) suggested that
dı̄wāns should be established for dealing with pensions (dawwana li-l-nās
dawāwı̄n yuʿ.tūna ʿalayhā). ʿUmar liked this idea and granted to each of
the Muhājirūn five thousand dirhams, to each of the Ans.ār three thou-
sand, and to each of the wives of the Prophet twelve thousand. Abū
Hurayra then proceeds to relate how the Prophet’s wife, Zaynab, redis-
tributed her share.28 The reports on either side of this one make clear
that Abū Yūsuf had no more interest than Abū Hurayra in the identity
of “one of those present” but rather was addressing the relative merits
of the recipients of pensions. Another report, for example, mentions that
ʿUmar granted the wives ten thousand dirhams each, but ʿĀʾisha twelve
thousand.29
By the start of the third/ninth century, if not earlier, we have an ety-
mology for the term dı̄wān that gave it the root meaning of “devil”
(shayt.ān) – from the Persian word dı̄v, “demon” – due, we are told, to
the shrewdness with which the Persian court secretaries conducted their
affairs.30 This theory is attribted to the philologist and courtier al-As.maʿı̄
(d. 213/828) and his teacher, Abū ʿAmr b. al-ʿAlāʾ (d. 154/770–1), but
was widely cited, including by Ibn Qutayba, whose highlighting of this
theory is hardly surprising, given his general reservations about Persian
27 For historical Bah.rayn, see Hugh Kennedy, An Historical Atlas of Islam/Atlas historique
de l’Islam. 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 16b.
28 Abū Yusūf, Kitāb al-Kharāj (Bulaq: al-Mat.baʿa al-Mı̄riyya, 1302/[1884–5]), 26. Loosely
translated by A. Ben Shemesh in Taxation in Islam, vol. 3, Abū Yūsuf’s Kitāb al-Kharāj
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), 71.
29 Shemesh, Taxation in Islam, 3:25. But for a case of Abū Yusūf giving credit to the
Sasanian king Kavādh for ʿAbd al-Malik’s tax policies, see Abū Yusūf, Kitāb al-Kharāj,
49, cited by S. D. Goitein in “A Turning Point in the History of the Muslim State,” in
Studies in Islamic History and Institutions (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966), 165.
30 On the term, see Mahmoud Omidsalar, “Dı̄v,” in EIr.
cultural values in ʿAbbasid society.31 While Ibn Qutayba also quoted

translations of various pieces of Iran’s cultural heritage (especially wis-
dom sayings and stories), his attitude toward it was ambivalent and com-
plicated. One will not find, for example, Sasanian models discussed in
any detail in his manual for court secretaries, written during the caliphate
of al-Mutawakkil (r. 232–47/847–61) and dedicated to the latter’s vi-
zier, Fath. b. Khāqān; in the work, Ibn Qutayba lectures his readers on
Arabic pronunciation, Arab food and drink, and the correct names of
the date palms, horses, and plants of Arabia, but he says nothing about
the Persian administrative or courtly tradition, though one might expect
such lessons in an educational work for courtiers, and we indeed find
them in a subsequent commentary on his manual.32 His book against
the Shuʿūbiyya, Fad.l al-ʿArab (The superiority of the Arabs), and a little-
studied text that survives with it, known as the Tanbı̄h ʿalā ʿulūmihā (An
exposition of their learning), likewise support Franz Rosenthal’s charac-
terization of Ibn Qutayba as “an eloquent spokesman for Arab civilization
and in intellectual makeup [someone] totally committed and assimilated
to it.”33
So far, in discussions of the dı̄wān, there is little sensitivity to or express
pride in a Persian history of administrative expertise.34 Moving forward
in time, we find a version of the Abū Hurayra report repeated, but hardly
in a more satisfying manner. According to the historian al-Balādhurı̄
(d. ca. 279/892), “someone” said to ʿUmar: “O Commander of the Believ-
ers, I have seen these Persians keeping a dı̄wān according to which they
pay the men.” Inspired, ʿUmar had such a register created, and assigned
31 Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, 4 vols. (Cairo: Mat.baʿat Dār al-Kutub al-Mis.riyya,
1925–30), 1:50. See also Mawhūb b. Ah.mad al-Jawālı̄qı̄, al-Muʿarrab min al-kalām al-
aʿjamı̄ ʿalā h.urūf al-muʿjam, ed. Ah.mad Muh.ammad Shākir ([Cairo]: Dār al-Kutub,
1969), 202, and Ibn al-Sı̄d al-Bat.alyawsı̄, al-Iqtid.āb fı̄ sharh. Adab al-kuttāb, ed.
Muḥammad Bāsil ʻUyūn al-Sūd, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmiyya, 1999), 1:139–
40.
32 Ibn Qutayba, Adab al-kātib, ed. Max Grünert (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1900). The com-
mentary, treating the Persian origins of the institution, is that of Ibn al-Sı̄d, al-Iqtid.āb,
1:139–40.
33 Rosenthal, “Ebn Qotayba, Abū Moh.ammad ʿAbd-Allāh,” in EIr; Ibn Qutayba, Fad.l
al-ʿArab wa-l-tanbı̄h ʿalā ʿulūmihā. See also a translation of this work from the Library
of Arabic Literature, The Superiority of the Arabs and an Exposition of Their Learning:
A Translation of Ibn Qutaybah’s Fad.l al-ʿArab wa l-tanbı̄h ʿalā ʿulūmihā, ed. Rid.ā al-
ʿArabı̄, trans. Sarah Bowen Savant and Peter Webb, reviewed by James E. Montgomery
(New York: New York University Press, forthcoming).
34 Similarly, see the section of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-S.anʿānı̄’s Mus.annaf dedicated to the
dı̄wān, 11:99–106 (nos. 20036–49).
to the Muhājirūn payments of five thousand dirhams, to the other com-

panions four thousand, and to the wives of the Prophet twelve thousand.
But a few pages further on in the text, al-Balādhurı̄ quotes another report
that raises a problem with the pensions. When the register was estab-
lished, the Arab Abū Sufyān b. H . arb asked: “Is it a dı̄wān like that of the
Byzantines (Banū As.far)? If you assign pensions to the people, they will
eat by the dı̄wān and neglect business.” ʿUmar responded, “There is no
way out of it, for the booty of the Muslims is abundant.”35
From the fourth/tenth century onward, however, Abū Hurayra’s report
got new legs.36 The vivid recollection of the ʿAbbasid courtier al-S.ūlı̄
(d. 335/947) – whose lineage originated in the territory of Jurjān and
who played a major role in recording the courtly poetic tradition – puts
the report into a wider context with additional details. According to al-
S.ūlı̄, money had begun to flow into the state’s coffers under Abū Bakr
(r. 632–4) with the conquest of Bah.rayn. At that time, Abū Bakr decided
to give ten dirhams to each free man and woman as well as to each slave.
When revenues increased the following year, he increased the allowance to
twenty dirhams. The Ans.ār complained that this system did not recognize
merit (fad.l), but Abū Bakr put them off by asking whether they had
exerted themselves for God and religion, or merely for this world.37 By
ʿUmar’s reign, the revenues from Bah.rayn had risen further, with Abū
Hurayra bringing ʿUmar large sums of money: eight hundred thousand
dirhams in one fetching, five hundred thousand in another. ʿUmar then
asked the people whether he should distribute the money by weighing
it or counting it. Al-S.ūlı̄ continues: “Al-Fayrūzān [a Persian secretary
from Sasanian Iraq] said to him (though it may have been someone else):
‘Verily, the ʿAjam have created a dı̄wān for themselves in which they write
names and what is owed to each one of them.’ So [ʿUmar] authorized the
adoption of the register.”38
35 Al-Balādhurı̄, al-Buldān wa-futūḥuhā wa-ah.kāmuhā, ed. Suhayl Zakkār (Beirut: Dār

al-Fikr, 1992), 496–7 and 501; al-Balādhurı̄, The Origins of the Islamic State,
vol. 2, trans. Francis Clark Murgotten (New York: Columbia University, 1924), 246
and 51.
36 In addition to al-S.ūlı̄’s account, see Ibn ʿAbdūs al-Jahshiyārı̄, Kitāb al-Wuzarāʾ wa-
l-kuttāb, ed. Mus.t.afā al-Saqqā, Ibrāhı̄m al-Abyārı̄, and ʿAbd al-H. afı̄z. Shalabı̄ (Cairo:
Mus.t.afā al-Bābı̄ al-H
. alabı̄, 1938), 16–17 (and the notes therein), and Sprengling, “From
Persian to Arabic,” 177–8.
37 Al-S.ūlı̄, Adab al-kuttāb, ed. Muh.ammad Bahjat al-Atharı̄ (Cairo: al-Mat.baʿa al-
Salafiyya, 1341/[1922–3]), 189–90.
38 Ibid., 190.
Having identified the idea’s origin, al-S.ūlı̄ presses on with more infor-
mation regarding its implementation. He cites a further report accord-
ing to which al-Fayrūzān saw ʿUmar dispatch an expeditionary force and
expressed surprise about ʿUmar’s poor record keeping. He showed ʿUmar
the Persians’ register for recording names and payments, and ʿUmar
subsequently set one up for the Muslims with the agreement of the
Prophet’s companions. ʿUmar recorded the recipients’ names, along with
annual payments due to them, beginning with twelve thousand dirhams
for ʿĀʾisha and ten thousand for the Prophet’s other wives, and five thou-
sand dirhams for ʿAlı̄, members of the Banū Hāshim, and their mawālı̄
who had participated in the battle of Badr, as well as for ʿUthmān, the
Banū Umayya, and their mawālı̄, and for the family of Abū Bakr, includ-
ing T.alh.a b. ʿUbayd Allāh (one of his kinsmen) and Bilāl (one of his
mawālı̄). For himself and for members of the other lineages of Quraysh
who fought at Badr he likewise awarded five thousand dirhams, and
for the Ans.ār who participated at Badr, four thousand. When this last
group objected, he answered them by quoting the Qurʾan (59:8): “For
the poor Emigrants who were driven from their homes and their posses-
sions while seeking merit (fad.l) and approval from God, and who help
God and His messenger. These are the truthful ones.” After the Ans.ār,
the names of persons with less merit were entered, including those who
only joined up at the time of the battle of Uh.ud (three thousand dirhams)
and those who fought only at the conquest of Mecca (two thousand
dirhams).39
In this account, Persians provided the expertise required to recognize
merit, but by al-S.ūlı̄’s day, the registries in fact no longer played a role
in ʿAbbasid administration, having fallen out of use during the reign
of al-Muʿtas.im (r. 218–27/833–42), when the caliph recruited peoples
from the fringes of the empire for his army and built a new capital in
Samarra about eighty miles north of Baghdad on the Tigris. This initiated
what Hugh Kennedy has appropriately called the “divorce of the mili-
tary élite from the rest of society, by origin, language and custom.”40 Still,
memory of the old days remained, and with the ʿAbbasids’ debt to the Sa-
sanians generally accepted, two realities likely informed al-S.ūlı̄’s presen-
tation. First, there was the power of the elite secretarial class (kuttāb) and
39 Al-S.ūlı̄’s account continues with the transfer of the dı̄wān into Arabic during the time
of al-H. ajjāj and ʿAbd al-Malik by the Sijistānı̄ Abū al-Walı̄d S.ālih. b. al-ʿAbd al-Rah.mān
al-Bas.rı̄ in Iraq and by Sirjūn b. Mans.ūr in Syria. Ibid., 198–200.
40 Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from
the Sixth to the Eleventh Century (London: Longman, 1986), 160.
palace servants, many Iranians among them, upon whom the caliphs often
depended when faced with military elites dominated by Turkish groups.
This need for a counterbalance may well have fostered appreciation for
the illustrious Persian origins and character of institutions even among
courtiers of Turkish descent, such as al-S.ūlı̄.41 But this had been the case
already in Ibn Qutayba’s day. More crucially, there was the growing
power of Iranian governorates, such as the Samanids and the Saffarids,
which likely made the ʿAbbasids and their court in Iraq more eager to
claim an Iranian heritage themselves.42 And so, because Persians such
as al-Fayrūzān had always provided advice for caliphs, the ʿAbbasid
caliphate had authentic Iranian roots. Al-Fayrūzān was an appropriate
enough agent, as traditionists knew him in different roles as a servant of
the Sasanian state.43
The case of the dı̄wān might suggest a wider pattern whereby appre-
ciation for and recognition of the Persian heritage and character of the
caliphate and its institutions increased over time, regardless of what the
realities may have been.44 A more obvious example might be the vizier-
ate, the historical development of which overlaps with my chronological
framework.45 Ibn Qutayba, whose career coincided with the increas-
ing strength of the military classes, may well have been dismayed by
challenges to the caliph; surrounded by Persian courtiers, he could urge
the bureaucracy to recognize an Arabic heritage, but he had little clout
with the Turkish soldiers who, within his lifetime, toppled the caliph
al-Mutawakkil (r. 232–47/847–61) and his successors. But his were still
relatively early days in the sufferings of the caliphate, whereas by al-S.ūlı̄’s
time, power had devolved to a considerably greater extent, so it became
41 “The Disastrous Reigns of al-Muqtadir and His Successors,” in Kennedy, The Prophet
and the Age of the Caliphates; Dominique Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside de 749 à 936
(132 à 324 de l’hégire), 2 vols. (Damascus: Institut français de Damas, 1959–60), 1:9–10.
42 Clifford Edmund Bosworth, “The Heritage of Rulership in Early Islamic Iran and the
Search for Dynastic Connections with the Past,” Iran 11 (1973): 51–62.
43 On al-Fayrūzān (or al-Fı̄rūzān), see the index in Parvaneh Pourshariati, Decline and Fall
of the Sasanian Empire. As Sprengling noted, “the better-known and more vivid figure of
Hurmuzān the Mihrjānite” was also proposed; Sprengling, “From Persian to Arabic,”
177–9. On al-Hurmuzān, see Chapter 6; for his portrayal as the source of the infor-
mation, see al-Māwardı̄, Kitāb al-Ah.kām al-sult.āniyya wa-l-wilāyāt al-dı̄niyya, ed. Samı̄r
Mus.t.afā Rubāb (Sidon and Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAs.riyya, 2000), 220, and al-Ahkam
as-Sultaniyyah: The Laws of Islamic Governance, trans. Asadullah Yate (London: Ta-
Ha, 1996), 282.
44 Morony has made this argument; see Iraq after the Muslim Conquest, esp. 27.
45 I am planning a study on this institution from a history of memory perspective. As
narratives about the conquests do not focus on it, I do not treat it in the present chapter.
more attractive to envision an institution running back to a distant Sa-

sanian past and, al-S.ūlı̄ likely hoped, into a distant future.
Yazdagird’s Daughter
Another case for mnemohistory involves a daughter, or even daughters,
of Yazdagird. This case, I believe, is one of contest, where an ostensibly
Iranian site of memory was of interest not just to Iranians. Moreover, it
was likely only meaningful to some Iranians – and to others not at all.
In the second half of the third/ninth century, Ibn Qutayba argued in
his polemic against the Shuʿūbiyya, mentioned above, that a mother’s
ancestry is unimportant in determining nobility: a slave woman can give
birth to a caliph just as well as a wife can. His argument reflected common
ʿAbbasid practice ever since the days of the caliph al-Mahdı̄ (r. 158–
69/775–85) and his beloved al-Khayzurān (a former slave of Yemeni
origins), who bore his heirs, the caliphs al-Hādı̄ (r. 169–70/785–6) and
Hārūn al-Rashı̄d (r. 170–93/786–809). The Shuʿūbı̄s had maligned the
Arabs – believed to be the descendants of Hagar, Abraham’s slave – as
“sons of the unclean woman” (Banū al-lakhnāʾ). In their defense, Ibn
Qutayba mentions the renowned figures ʿAlı̄ b. al-H . usayn b. ʿAlı̄ b. Abı̄
T.ālib, al-Qāsim b. Muh.ammad b. Abı̄ Bakr al-S.iddı̄q, and Sālim b. ʿAbd
Allāh b. ʿUmar b. al-Khat.t.āb, all of whom were born of slaves.46 Each
of the three men has a noble lineage reckoned through the male line, as
their names indicate: each is the grandson of a successor to Muh.ammad,
and the father of each is also well known. They are noble regardless of
who their mothers were.
The first name that Ibn Qutayba mentions, ʿAlı̄ b. al-H . usayn b. ʿAlı̄
b. Abı̄ T.ālib, is the fourth Imam of the Shiʿa, also known as ʿAlı̄ Zayn
al-ʿĀbidı̄n (“Ornament of the Worshippers,” d. ca. 95/713), and here
we have another case of sharpening memory for Persians. In a Shiʿi bio-
graphical dictionary composed in Ibn Qutayba’s day, the Imam’s mother
is a nameless slave (umm walad), and this is also how he depicts her.47
But other sources from his time know her as a daughter of Yazdagird III
who married the Prophet’s grandson al-H . usayn, although her name and
46 Ibn Qutayba, Fad.l al-ʿArab wa-l-tanbı̄h ʿalā ʿulūmihā, 48; see also his al-Maʿārif, 214–
15, where Ibn Qutayba identifies ʿAlı̄ b. al-H . usayn’s mother as a woman from Sind
named either Sulāfa or Ghazāla.
. asan al-Madanı̄ al-ʿAqı̄qı̄ (d. 277/891), Kitāb al-Muʿaqqibı̄n min wuld
47 Yah.yā b. al-H
al-Imām Amı̄r al-Muʾminı̄n, ed. Muh.ammad al-Kāz.im (Qum: Maktabat Āyat Allāh al-
ʿUz.mā al-Marʿashı̄ al-Najafı̄, 2001), 75–9; Ibn Qutayba, Fad.l al-ʿArab wa-l-tanbı̄h ʿalā
ʿulūmihā, 48.
figure 3.1. Shahrbānū. Photo by Wahunam.
the circumstances of her union were in question then and long afterward.
Today it is commonly (though not universally) held among the Shiʿa that
the mother of al-H . usayn’s son ʿAlı̄ Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n was a daughter of
Yazdagird’s named Shahrbānū, whose shrine lies at Mount T.abarak at
Rayy in central Iran (see Figure 3.1).
As Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi has shown, the legend likely began
to take form in the third/ninth century.48 One of the earliest Shiʿi sources
to mention the idea is al-Yaʿqūbı̄, who presents Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n as a man
of nobility and serious character and as a trailblazer because his example
made slave women (imāʾ) popular as mothers. ʿUmar had procured two
daughters of Yazdagird as captives and gave one of them to al-H . usayn,
who named her Ghazāla (of the other we hear nothing). She bore Zayn
48 On the development of her legend and her absence from sources that would likely know
her, see esp. Amir-Moezzi, “Shahrbānū, Dame du pays d’Iran et Mère des Imams: Entre
l’Iran préislamique et le Shiisme Imamite,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 27
(2002): 497–549; abridged version: “Shahrbānū, princesse sassanide et épouse de l’imam
H. usayn: De l’Iran préislamique à l’Islam shiite,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Jan.–Mar. 2002, 255–85; and Amir-Moezzi, “Šahrbānu,”
in EIr.
al-ʿĀbidı̄n, after which everyone wished to have their children borne by

slaves.49
By the late third/ninth century, a few other noteworthy stories had also
developed. We have an account by al-S.affār al-Qummı̄ (d. 290/902–3),
attributed to the fifth Imam of the Shiʿa, Abū Jaʿfar Muh.ammad al-Bāqir
(the son of Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n). During ʿUmar’s reign as caliph, a daughter
of Yazdagird was brought as a captive to Medina. Light radiated from
her face, illuminating the Prophet’s mosque. She upset the caliph with a
Persian expression as she covered her face (thus blocking the light), but
ʿAlı̄ intervened on her behalf, instructing the caliph to let her choose one of
the Muslim men and to make her his booty. ʿUmar agreed and told her to
choose a man, whereupon she put her hand upon the head of al-H . usayn.
ʿAlı̄ then asked her for her name, and she replied “Jahān-shāh” (“King
of the World”). He responded, “No, [let us call you] Shahrbānawayh”
(“Lady of the Land”). He then announced that she would be the mother
of al-H . usayn’s child, who would be “the best person in the world” (khayr
ahl al-ard.).50 As Amir-Moezzi noted, this story is reported among Imāmı̄
Shiʿi narratives about the divine light because from Shahrbānū’s son
onward the Imams were “bearers of a twofold light,” that of the sacred
transmission (walāya) from ʿAlı̄ and Fāt.ima and that of transmission
from Persia’s kings through Shahrbānū.51
At some stage, the fourth Imam acquired a nickname to reflect his
parentage: he was the “offspring of the two elect” (dhū al-khiyaratayn),
because of the nobility of both sides of his family. The name derives
from a Prophetic statement that among God’s creatures there are two
elect (li-llāh min khalqihi [or ʿibādihi] khiyaratān), the first being the
Quraysh, the elect of the Arabs, and the second being the Persians, the
49 Al-Yaʿqūbı̄ also recognizes voices that do not seem to attribute Sasanian ancestry to her,
as he states that it is also said that Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n’s mother was taken captive in Kābul.
Al-Yaʿqūbı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, 2:303. Cf. Ibn Saʿd, al-T . abaqāt al-kabı̄r, 5:156 (where Ghazāla is
identified as a slave and mother of ʿAlı̄ b. al-H . usayn, without any mention of Sasanian
ancestry).
50 Abū Jaʿfar al-S.affār al-Qummı̄, Bas.āʾir al-darajāt fı̄ fad.āʾil Āl Muh.ammad (Qum: T.alı̄ʿat
al-Nūr, 1384 shamsı̄/[2005]), 439 (no. 8).
51 Shahrbānawayh is a variant of Shahrbānū (containing the -wayh ending). Amir-Moezzi
has written extensively on this light; see esp. The Divine Guide in Early Shiʿism: The
Sources of Esotericism in Islam, trans. David Streight (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1994), 29ff. On the special sense of walāya among the Shiʿa as pertaining
to a sacred transmission, see Mawil Y. Izzi Dien and P. E. Walker, “Wilāya,” in EI2 .
For the full connotations of walāya in early Shiʿi thought, see Maria Massi Dakake,
The Charismatic Community: Shiʿite Identity in Early Islam (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 2007).
elect of the ʿAjam (“non-Arabs”). The nickname was transmitted widely,

not just by partisans of the Shiʿa. The Basran philologist al-Mubarrad
(d. ca. 286/900) explains the name and then reports that one of
Yazdagird’s daughters came to ʿAlı̄ amid a hundred other slave girls.
ʿAlı̄ ordered his companions to show her respect and then instructed her
to marry his son al-H . usayn. The woman suggested that instead she should
marry ʿAlı̄ himself, but ʿAlı̄ replied that al-H
. usayn was a youth and there-
fore more deserving of the marriage. The woman accepted, though with
some grumbling. Al-Mubarrad then cites a statement by ʿUmar praising
the children of concubines since they possess both the mightiness of the
Arabs (ʿizz al-ʿArab) and the administrative expertise of the non-Arabs
(i.e., Persians, tadbı̄r al-ʿAjam).52
Why did some Muslims want to believe that al-H . usayn married a
Sasanian princess, and what might the union have meant to those who
wrote about it? Following Amir-Moezzi, I am inclined to see the germs of
a Persian Shiʿi historical consciousness in the first iterations of the story.53
But whereas Amir-Moezzi hypothesizes the importance of the court of al-
Maʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–33) and the Shuʿūbiyya as the primary early
setting for the claim, I would put more emphasis on the later crystalli-
zation of memory and its diffuse set of discursive contexts, a conclusion
that Amir-Moezzi’s own evidence in fact supports (especially regarding
its earliest attestation in the late third/ninth century, after al-Maʾmūn’s
day, and his citation of widely variant reports as late as the sixth/twelfth
century).54 I would also note that Ibn Qutayba, in his polemic against
the Shuʿūbiyya, addresses many a Shuʿūbı̄ claim but has nothing to say
about a Sasanian princess, though he certainly could have raised the
subject when discussing Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n’s mother.
Indeed, meaningful details of the legend differ long after al-Maʾmūn
and the Shuʿūbiyya, among them the name of Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n’s mother,
the ruler during whose reign she was taken captive (ʿUmar, ʿUthmān,
or ʿAlı̄), whether she was a slave or a free woman (probably a slave),
52 He cites as his source al-As.maʿı̄. An explanation of the term “half-breed” (al-hajı̄n)

follows. Al-Mubarrad, al-Fād.il, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzı̄z al-Maymanı̄ (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub
al-Mis.riyya, 1956), 106.
53 Amir-Moezzi writes (“Šahrbānu,” in EIr): “The story is obviously highly charged in
doctrinal, ethnical and political terms. These two pro-Shiʿite and pro-Persian tendencies
are introduced in such a manner that they seem indisociable. One might even say more
precisely that the legend, in its Shiʿism pertains to the H
. osaynid movement and that in its
‘Persianism,’ the most popular version seems to have emerged from radical milieu. All of
this sounds very much like a challenge to a kind of Sunnite arabo-centrist ‘orthodoxy.’”
54 Amir-Moezzi, “Shahrbānū, Dame du pays d’Iran,” esp. 509–11.
and whether she remarried after the death of al-H . usayn (unlikely). Well
past the third/ninth century, Ibn Funduq (d. ca. 565/1169) offers us, in
a lengthy section of his genealogical work treating descendants of the
Prophet’s family, possible answers to these questions, including that she
was a daughter of Yazdagird named Shahrbānawayh, Sulāfa, Ghazāla,
55
Jadā (or Judā?), H. alwa, Salāma, Shāh-Āfarı̄d, or Shahrbānū. In the
seventh/thirteenth century, Ibrāhı̄m Muh.ammad b. Abı̄ Bakr al-Ans.ārı̄
al-Burrı̄ (d. 690/1291) writes:
ʿAlı̄ [Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n] was the best of the Banū Hāshim after ʿAlı̄ and al-H.usayn.
His mother was a Persian of known genealogy. Her name was Sulāfa bt. Yazdagird
b. Shahriyār b. Kisrā Anūshirvān b. Qubādh. Sulāfa was among the best of
women. It is said that she was the aunt of the mother of Yazı̄d al-Nāqis.56 or her
sister. ʿAlı̄ b. al-H
. usayn showed the greatest filial piety to his mother, Sulāfa. He
would never eat with her from the same platter. When he was asked about that,
he said: “I would hate for my hand to take anything her eye had first sought,
and so I be undutiful to her.” He was called Ibn al-Khiyaratayn on account of
the statement of the Messenger of God, “Among God’s servants there are two
elect.” Among the Arabs, His elect are the Quraysh, and among the non-Arabs,
the Persians.57
The surfeit of contradictory details suggests a diffused, not consolidated,

image of Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n’s mother. It also indicates how attractive she
was as a site for a wide variety of ideas, not limited to sectarian loyalties.
Stories that use Yazdagird’s daughters to link al-H . usayn by marriage
. asan ʿAlı̄ b. Zayd al-Bayh.aqı̄, commonly known as Ibn Funduq, Lubāb al-ansāb
55 Abū al-H
wa-l-alqāb wa-l-aʿqāb, ed. Mahdı̄ Rajāʾı̄ and Mah.mūd Marʿashı̄ (Qum: Maktabat Āyat
Allāh al-ʿUz.mā al-Marʿashı̄ al-Najafı̄ al-ʿĀmma, 1410/[1989–90]), 346–52. He also
considers possibilities for the identity of Yazdagird’s daughter’s mother. On this work,
see Kazuo Morimoto, “Putting the Lubāb al-ansāb in Context: Sayyids and Naqı̄bs in
Late Saljuq Khurasan,” Studia Iranica 36, no. 2 (2007): 163–83. Ibn Funduq is better
known for his Tārı̄kh-i Bayh.aq.
56 According to one version of this theory, Qutayba b. Muslim captured in Khurāsān a
granddaughter of Yazdagird, whom he presented to the caliph al-Walı̄d I (b. ʿAbd al-
Malik, r. 86–96/705–15). She bore Yazı̄d III, who became caliph in 126/744. Yazı̄d’s
ancestry was illustrious because he was the descendant of Persian, Byzantine, Turkish,
and Muslim-Arab kings (the significance of his name, al-Nāqis., the “Depriver” or “Defi-
cient,” is another matter). See esp. the explanation of Muh.ammad b. H . abı̄b (d. 245/860),
al-Muh.abbar, 31–2. On this work, see Ilse Lichtenstädter, “Muh.ammad b. H . abı̄b and
His Kitâb al-Muh.abbar,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s., 71, no. 1 (1939):
1–27. Muh.ammad b. H . abı̄b was a student of the genealogist Hishām b. Muh.ammad al-
Kalbı̄. On Yazı̄d’s mother, see also Garth Fowden, Qus.ayr ʿAmra: Art and the Umayyad
Elite in Late Antique Syria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 243–7.
57 Ibrāhı̄m b. Abı̄ Bakr al-Burrı̄, al-Jawhara fı̄ nasab al-nabı̄ wa-as.h.ābuhu al-ʿashara, ed.
Muh.ammad al-Tūnjı̄, 2 vols. (al-ʿAyn: Markaz Zāyid li-l-Turāth wa-l-Taʾrı̄kh, 2001),
2:233.
to the sons of the early caliphs are particularly intriguing and might be
suggestive of the ways in which the Shiʿa developed ideas about the legit-
imacy of the caliphate and its early history.58 The Shiʿi biographer Shaykh
al-Mufı̄d (d. 413/1022), for example, recalls that ʿAlı̄ had appointed one
H. urayth b. Jābir al-H
. anafı̄ in charge of part of the eastern provinces. The
latter then sent two daughters of Yazdagird to him as captives. ʿAlı̄ gave
one daughter, Shahzanān (Shaykh al-Mufı̄d notes the name Shahrbānū
as a variant), to al-H . usayn, and she bore him Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n. He gave
the other daughter, who is not named, to Muh.ammad b. Abı̄ Bakr, and
she bore him al-Qāsim b. Muh.ammad b. Abı̄ Bakr, who was therefore a
maternal cousin of Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n.59 For Shaykh al-Mufı̄d, this union
may have made sense as uniting by marriage ʿAlı̄’s descendants to a line of
Abū Bakr that had reportedly sympathized with ʿAlı̄ in the first fitna.60 By
contrast, another story linking ʿAlı̄, Abū Bakr, and ʿUmar through their
progeny would seem to fit more comfortably in a Sunni milieu, and it is
reported by al-Zamakhsharı̄ (d. 538/1144). Here, we learn that during the
caliphate of ʿUmar, three daughters of Yazdagird were taken prisoner and
brought to Medina. ʿAlı̄ saved them from the marketplace and present-
ed them to al-H . usayn, Abū Bakr’s son Muh.ammad, and ʿUmar’s son
ʿAbd Allāh. The daughters (who are not named) bore Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n,
al-Qāsim, and Sālim b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar.61
The discursive context for many of these legends does likely relate to
the earliest germs of a Persian Shiʿi historical consciousness, as Amir-
Moezzi argues, although given the other possible ways of interpreting the
union, its specifically ethnic (much less “Iranian”) dimension is somewhat
hard to pin down. Al-Dı̄nawarı̄ relates a report that seems to discourage
visions of the marriage of Yazdagird’s daughter into the Prophet’s family –
and also, perhaps, of the ʿAjam (his preferred term) to the Shiʿa. In his
version, during the reign of ʿAlı̄, the people of Nı̄shāpūr rebelled and took
58 Regarding Shiʿi attitudes toward the companions, see Etan Kohlberg, “Some Imāmı̄ Shı̄ʿı̄
Views on the S.ah.āba,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 5 (1984): 143–75.
59 Al-Shaykh al-Mufı̄d, al-Irshād fı̄ maʿrifat h.ujaj Allāh ʿalā al-ʿibād, ed. Muʾassasat Āl
al-Bayt li-Ih.yāʾ al-Turāth, 2 vols. (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa, 1995), 2:137; Shaykh al-Mufı̄d,
Kitāb al-Irshād: The Book of Guidance into the Lives of the Twelve Imams, trans. I. K.
A. Howard (London: Balagha Books, 1981), 380.
60 See G. R. Hawting, “Muh.ammad b. Abı̄ Bakr,” in EI2 .
61 The three men mentioned by Ibn Qutayba, quoted above. Al-Zamakhsharı̄, Rabı̄ʿ al-
abrār wa-nus.ūs. al-akhbār, ed. ʿAbd al-Amı̄r Muhannā, 5 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-
Aʿlamı̄, 1992), 3: 350–1 (no. 32); also, citing al-Zamakhsharı̄, Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt
al-aʿyān, ed. Ih.sān ʿAbbās, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1968–72), 3:266–9, at 267
(no. 422, “Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n”; but cf. his other reports).
as their leader an unnamed daughter of Kisrā from Kābul. The governor

of Khurāsān put down the rebellion and sent her to ʿAlı̄. ʿAlı̄ proposed
that she marry his son al-H . asan, but she refused, suggesting she marry
ʿAlı̄ instead. This he refused on the grounds that he was an old man.
Noting that he was socially on a par with her (anā qurābatuhā), one of
the leading members of the land-owning class of Iraq (dihqāns) offered
to marry her, but ʿAlı̄ decided to let her choose for herself. Al-Dı̄nawarı̄
does not report her decision.62
Views from the “Edge”: Making the Conquests Meaningful

at Home
So far, the perspectives we have considered in this chapter belong to
what Richard Bulliet has helpfully termed “the center,” that is, a view
of history in which the caliphate plays a central part in the narrative.63
They largely originate in the formative periods of Muslim historiography
and reflect the broad historiographical questions and interests of the
major Iraq-based traditionists. Traditionists assigned meaningful roles
to Persians, though only after the passage of some time and then with
some ambiguity. The cases discussed so far – those of the dı̄wān and of
Yazdagird’s daughter – suggest the second half of the third/ninth century
as the start of a new phase. Ideas about the origins of the dı̄wān evolved
within the ʿAbbasid court and among courtiers with strong ties to Iran,
whereas given the widely discrepant versions of the Shahrbānū legend,
I am reluctant to accept the importance of an original ʿAbbasid courtly
context. Instead, I think that we have a more complicated negotiation of
her memory that began in the late third/ninth century and continued over
the course of several centuries. In other words, the metaphorical marriage
of the family of ʿAlı̄ to the Persians was not negotiated in al-Maʾmūn’s
reign but far more gradually, with its final form taking shape after the
period of this study.
As time passed and the composition of reading publics changed to
include more Iranians, works began to take greater account of them.
In the first/seventh and second/eighth centuries, traditionists may have
composed histories focused on localities, but their fourth/tenth- and fifth/
62 Al-Dı̄nawarı̄, al-Akhbār al-t.iwāl, 222.

63 As Bulliet wrote, “The view from the center portrays Islamic history as an outgrowth
from a single nucleus, a spreading inkblot labeled the caliphate.” Richard W. Bulliet,
Islam: The View from the Edge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 8.
eleventh-century counterparts were writing in completely different set-

tings following the amalgamation of the conquering to the conquered,
conversion, and the development of legal, sectarian, and pietistic affili-
ations and institutions.64 In an empire, a group requires a small place to
feel at home. Local histories provided such places in more modest and
localized narratives.
The following two cases are selected for their local perspectives, their
different forms (biographical vs. annalistic), and contrasting attitudes
toward violence – a will to forget versus a will to remember.65 In both
cases, one sees the importance of the conquests to local memory, the
necessity of coming to terms with defeat, and the ways in which memory
served the broader interpretive aims of the traditionist recording the event.
In Bulliet’s terms, they represent “views from the edge,” where for the
traditionists themselves, home was central.
Violence Forgotten: Our Shared History Dating

from the Conquests
Located on the southeastern coast of the Caspian Sea, Jurjān (classical
Hyrcania) played an important role in antiquity as a frontier and a shield
against nomadic populations to the north, as shown by an extensive
defensive wall known, inaccurately, as the Sadd-i Iskandar, or Barrier
of Alexander, which runs eastward from the southeastern corner of the
Caspian Sea for almost 200 km, marked at intervals by forts.66 It took
the Muslims some time in the first/seventh and second/eighth centur-
ies to subjugate the territory, and in the centuries that followed, it was
overshadowed by T.abaristān in the west and Khurāsān in the east. In
the first part of the fourth/tenth century, a rebel from the royal clan of
64 Even the vision of universal histories had grown narrower since al-T.abarı̄; see “ii. Local
history,” in Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 138–42.
65 There is already considerable scholarship on local Iranian historiography, although still
no monograph that considers the myriad issues in its analysis. See the special issue of
Iranian Studies, vol. 33, no. 1/2 (2000), especially Jürgen Paul, “Histories of Isfahan”
and “Histories of Herat.”
66 The wall’s origins are debated; compare Muhammad Yusof Kiani, “Excavations on the
Defensive Wall of the Gurgān Plain: A Preliminary Report,” Iran 20 (1982): 73–9, with
James Howard-Johnston, “The Two Great Powers in Late Antiquity: A Comparison,”
in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, 3:157–226, at 192–4, and again, Kiani,
“Gorgān iv. Archaeology,” in EIr; but see also now Eberhard W. Sauer et al., Persia’s
Imperial Power in Late Antiquity: The Great Wall of Gorgān and Frontier Landscapes
of Sasanian Iran (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2013). The authors find that the wall was
built in the fifth or possibly early sixth century CE. They also propose that a sizable
section in the west is buried under marine sediment.
map 3.1. Jurjān
Gı̄lān by the name of Mardāvı̄j b. Ziyār (d. 323/935) had a throne of

gold and a crown decorated like Khusraw’s made for himself, and he set
out, seeking to conquer Iraq as well as the buildings of al-Madāʾin and
the dwellings and homes of Kisrā. Victorious, he would henceforth be
addressed by the Sasanian era title shāhān-shāh and rule a kingdom that
would survive off and on in Jurjān and T.abaristān until ca. 483/1090.
After his death, power passed to his brother Wushmgı̄r and the latter’s
descendants, the Ziyarids, who in the ensuing decades were involved in
the struggles between the Buyid and Samanid dynasties in northern Iran,
lingering on as tributaries to the Ghaznavids.67
In the first part of the fifth/eleventh century, as the Ghaznavids were
extending their control over the region, a traditionist named Abū al-
Qāsim H . amza b. Yūsuf b. Ibrāhı̄m al-Sahmı̄ (d. 427/1038) composed
a Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān, which consists of a short historical introduction fol-
lowed by an alphabetized collection of biographies of scholars totaling
about 450 pages in the Hyderabad printed edition.68 Al-Sahmı̄ says he
67 Wilferd Madelung, “Assumption of the Title Shāhānshāh by the Būyids,” 87–8; Bos-
worth, New Islamic Dynasties, 166–7.
68 The book is also known as Kitāb Maʿrifat ʿulamāʾ ahl Jurjān, with the printed edition
based on a single manuscript, housed at Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Al-Sahmı̄’s book was
transmitted through oral and written means, and each part of the book carries its own
colophon. These colophons name a transmitter as late as four or five generations after al-
Sahmı̄, in the sixth/twelfth century. See the introduction by ʿAbd al-Rah.mān b. Yah.yā
perceived a need to safeguard memory after seeing how scholars of other

regions did so: “I did not see any of our senior scholars composing works
in remembrance of the ʿulamāʾ of Jurjān or recording histories about
them,” he notes.69 The scholars are shown in a variety of lights: as the
companions of caliphs, as qād.ı̄s (judges) and ascetics, and as dreamers
and travelers. Jurjān emerges as a hub of knowledge, with reports about
the Prophet and the early generations of Muslims being repeated on its
scholars’ authority.
From the entries, one gets a picture of many microcommunities within
Jurjān with their own separate memories, as al-Sahmı̄ speaks of Jurjān’s
villages, markets, and streets and their associations. Take the case of
Sufyān b. Saʿı̄d b. Masrūq al-Thawrı̄ (d. 161/778) as an example. In al-
Sahmı̄’s book, one of Jurjān’s villages is said to have strong connections
to al-Thawrı̄ and his lineage (in other works he is more closely associ-
ated with Kufa).70 A Jurjānı̄ source attests that al-Thawrı̄ was born in
Jurjān, moved to Kufa, and then came back to Jurjān, where he transmit-
ted Hadith.71 Among those who transmitted reports from him was Saʿd
b. Saʿı̄d, “known as Saʿdwayh,” for whom a mosque was built adjacent
to Jurjān’s congregational mosque.72 One Abū Nuʿaym ʿAbd al-Malik
b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Dihistānı̄ al-Bābānı̄ is said to have followed the madh-
hab, or legal school, of Sufyān al-Thawrı̄, suggesting the success of al-
Thawrı̄’s legal views in Jurjān.73 The reputation of another scholar might
be considered in question when al-Sahmı̄ quotes Sufyān al-Thawrı̄ as say-
ing: “I passed by Jurjān when Jawāb al-Taymı̄ was there, so I did not
enter it.”74 More probably, however, as Christopher Melchert suggests,
Sufyān al-Thawrı̄ did not enter because, with Jawāb al-Taymı̄ in it, the
town had no need of his knowledge.75
In terms of affiliations (legal, sectarian, and otherwise), the scholars
of Jurjān were a diverse lot. Many illustrious members of the Shāfiʿı̄
al-Yamānı̄ in al-Sahmı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān (Hyderabad: Osmania Oriental Publications,

1950), alif-kāf-h.āʾ. Whether al-Sahmı̄ can bear credit for the unity of his manuscript is
an open question.
69 Al-Sahmı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān, 4.
70 H. P. Raddatz, “Sufyān al-Thawrı̄,” in EI2 .
71 Al-Sahmı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān, 174–6 (no. 338).
72 Ibid., 176 (no. 340).
73 Ibid., 236–7 (no. 469). On the nascent madhhab of al-Thawrı̄, its followers, and its
presence in the biographical tradition, see Steven C. Judd, “Competitive Hagiography
in Biographies of al-Awzāʿı̄ and Sufyān al-Thawrı̄,” Journal of the American Oriental
Society 122, no. 1 (2002): 25–37.
75 Oral communication, Oct. 2011.
school are mentioned, including a transmitter of al-Sahmı̄’s book (ʿAbd

al-Rah.mān b. al-H . usayn b. ʿAbd al-Rah.mān al-Shāfiʿı̄). When the caliph
Hārūn al-Rashı̄d came to Jurjān, he brought with him Abū Yūsuf. We
are told that Shujāʿ b. S.abı̄h. al-Jurjānı̄, Jurjān’s muh.tasib – a legal official
whose jurisdiction included the markets – prayed behind Abū Yūsuf and
praised his practice of the ritual, which pleased the jurist. Another Jurjānı̄
76
posed him a question about Abū H . anı̄fa. The partisans of Hadith as
sources of law (as.h.āb al-h.adı̄th, juxtaposed with the as.h.āb al-raʾy, or
“proponents of opinion”) are also mentioned, though the as.h.āb al-raʾy
77
are more prominent, likely signifying followers of Abū H . anı̄fa. A Jurjānı̄
traveled with Ah.mad b. H . anbal in the Yemen and was the first person
to bring the H . anbalı̄ legal tradition to Jurjān (az.hara madhhab al-h.adı̄th
bi-Jurjān).78 Numerous ʿAlids made their way to Jurjān, although it is
hard to tell from al-Sahmı̄’s text what, if any, sectarian or political designs
they had. A descendant of ʿAlı̄ and al-H . usayn reports that ʿĀʾisha, the
Prophet’s wife, was asked whom the Prophet had loved best (the Jurjānı̄
connection here seems to be merely that al-Sahmı̄ heard the report in
Jurjān). She replied: “Among the men, ʿAlı̄. As for the women, it was
Fāt.ima.”79 She thus recognized the Prophet’s affection for his family,
the ahl al-bayt.80 In another case, we are told that a descendant of ʿAlı̄
named Muh.ammad b. Jaʿfar came to Jurjān with the caliph al-Maʾmūn
(r. 198–218/813–33) in 203 and died there in the same year; he figures in
long chains of authorities backing up several reports about the Prophet
and ʿAlı̄.81
The first generations of Jurjānı̄s spawned elite descendants. A cer-
tain settler named T.ayfūr is named as a mawlā of the caliph al-Mans.ūr
(r. 136–58/754–75), and the Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān lists several of his children
and his own mawālı̄ who became landowners.82 Scholarship ran par-
ticularly deep in certain families. Al-Sahmı̄ went on the pilgrimage to
Mecca twice with an Abū Saʿd from the Ismāʿı̄lı̄ family, which adhered
to the Shāfiʿı̄ interpretation of Islamic law and features prominently in the
76 Al-Sahmı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān, 177 (no. 341) and 187–8 (no. 367).
77 Jeanette Wakin and A. Zysow, “Raʾy,” in EI2 ; Bulliet, View from the Edge, 110–1.
78 Al-Sahmı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān, 334 (no. 627).
79 Ibid., 171–2 (no. 329).
80 On ʿĀʾisha and her memory among the Shiʿa, see D. A. Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and
the Islamic Past: The Legacy of ʿAʾisha bint Abi Bakr (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994).
82 Ibid., 193–4 (no. 380).
Taʾrı̄kh with twenty biographies of its members.83 A picture of scholarly

vibrancy and connection is maintained right up to al-Sahmı̄’s own day. As
might be expected, al-Sahmı̄’s information on recent scholars is especially
detailed. A jurist (faqı̄h) named Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Sirrı̄ (b. 360/970–1), for
example, was still evidently alive. His father had brought him to Mecca in
384/994–5, and he studied under teachers in Baghdad, Rayy, Hamadhān
and Jurjān.84
As a whole, then, the book integrates many communities and their
distinct experiences into a single account. There is virtually no sense of
conflict between the different groups. Rather, al-Sahmı̄’s picture is one
of improbable equilibrium and concord.85 The introduction to the book
sets the stage by portraying Jurjān as ready and waiting for Islam and
Muslim rule. History starts with prophetic genealogy: al-Sahmı̄ states
that the name Jurjān derives from a descendant of Noah who established
settlements in the area (one Jurjān b. Lud b. Shem b. Noah). He says
nothing more of its history before Islam and moves swiftly on to describe
its conquest in the time of the caliph ʿUmar by Suwayd b. Muqarrin,
who conquered Rayy, Qūmis, and then Jurjān (presumably in the late
630s and early 640s). The ruler of Jurjān, one Ruzbān S.ūl (ancestor to
al-S.ūlı̄, the abovementioned courtier), made an agreement with Suwayd,
according to which the Arabs would receive the jizya and war would
end. Al-Sahmı̄ provides a copy of the treaty86 along with verses regarding
S.ūl’s payment and then lists several companions of the Prophet who came
to Jurjān afterward, among them major protagonists in the conflicts of
the early community: ʿUmar’s son ʿAbd Allāh; ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr,
whose claims to the caliphate were remarkably successful in Arabia and
Iraq but who was ultimately defeated by the Umayyad ʿAbd al-Malik in
73/692; and ʿAlı̄’s two sons, al-H . usayn and al-H. asan.
87
We learn that there was a second conquest in the year 98/716–17

during the rule of ʿAbd al-Malik’s son Sulaymān (r. 96–9/715–17), but
al-Sahmı̄ does not explain why it was necessary to resubjugate the region.
The effort this time was led by Yazı̄d b. al-Muhallab, who stayed for a
83 On the Ismāʿı̄lı̄ family, see Bulliet, View from the Edge, 102ff.
84 Al-Sahmı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān, 185 (no. 360).
85 There are cracks; for an example, see Bulliet, View from the Edge, 111.
86 The treaty mentions Ruzbān S.ūl and “the people of Dihistān and all those of Jurjān.”
Al-Sahmı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān, 4–6 (Sayf b. ʿUmar is named as a source). The text appears
nearly verbatim in al-T.abarı̄’s reporting, also citing Sayf b. ʿUmar as a source; al-T.abarı̄
does not pass on the poem. Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:2658–9.
87 Al-Sahmı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān, 6–8.
year until ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzı̄z, Sulaymān’s successor upon his death,
recalled him from Jurjān. During this year, al-Sahmı̄ reports, Yazı̄d under-
took extensive urban projects, building the city wall and marking out the
boundaries for approximately forty mosques.88 Some pages later, the lo-
cations of Jurjān’s mosques, as established in Umayyad times, are given
in detail. Their names connect their origins especially to the Arab tribes
that played a leading role in the settlement of Jurjān; in cases where a
mosque had acquired a different name in his day, al-Sahmı̄ makes a note
of it.89 As Parvaneh Pourshariati has observed, “the historical memory of
al-Sahmı̄ of the Arab conquest and the short rule of the Umayyads over
Gurgān was extremely vivid” nearly four hundred years afterward.90
But despite the smooth image that al-Sahmı̄ gives of the conquests, we
have every reason to believe that Jurjān was not easily conquered, nor
was it always the epitome of social equilibrium. Rather, al-Sahmı̄ has
carefully collected reports from his predecessors, Sayf b. ʿUmar included,
to stress the orderliness and continuity of the conquests and the gov-
ernment that followed. Regarding the “second” conquest, for example,
al-Sahmı̄ features, well into his book, a biography of a grandson of S.ūl
that contains a story about how S.ūl surrendered to Yazı̄d b. al-Muhallab
and asked to be brought to Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Malik so that he might
convert to Islam. As an account of S.ūl’s conversion, this report was valu-
able to his family, but since it placed the conquest nearly eighty years later
than Sayf b. ʿUmar, al-Sahmı̄ omitted it from the book’s introduction.91
What is more, al-Sahmı̄ leaves out the violence, rebellions, and conflict
that other sources report. So, for example, he does not feature the widely
reported bloody subjugation of the region by Yazı̄d b. al-Muhallab.92
Yazı̄d and the Muhallabid clan were servants of the Umayyad state and
reportedly involved in its complex politics, including disputes with the
notorious governor al-H . ajjāj over the revenues of the provinces, espe-
cially Khurāsān. Yazı̄d had a staunch enemy in al-H . ajjāj and a rival in
Qutayba b. Muslim, who played a leading role in the consolidation and
88 Ibid., 9.
89 Ibid., 16–17.
90 Parvaneh Pourshariati, “Local Histories of Khurāsān and the Pattern of Arab Settle-
ment,” Studia Iranica 27, no. 1 (1998): 54–7.
91 See al-Sahmı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān, 194 (no. 381) for al-T.ayyib b. Muh.ammad b. S.ūl al-
Jurjānı̄. Cf. Bulliet, View from the Edge, 43–4 and 214, n. 10. Al-Sahmı̄ cites in this
entry a work by the Samanid historian al-Sallāmı̄ (fl. mid-fourth/tenth c.). Al-Sallāmı̄’s
works are quoted by other historians but do not survive as independent texts. Bosworth,
“al-Sallamı̄,” in EI2 .
92 E.g., al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, II:1317ff. Also noted by Pourshariati in “Local Histories of
Khurāsān,” 54–5.
expansion of Muslim rule in Khurāsān and Central Asia.93 The ʿAbbasid

era traditionists, al-T.abarı̄ included, report extensively on the Muhalla-
bids, as do later traditionists, such as Ibn Isfandiyār in his history of
neighboring T.abaristān.94
Al-Sahmı̄’s picture, by contrast, is innocent of conflict, presenting
Yazı̄d b. al-Muhallab as a noble, uncomplicated man who undertook
building projects for Jurjān. Al-Sahmı̄’s reports stress Yazı̄d’s generosity
and lack of greed – as if to protest against claims that he seized taxes for
his own benefit. As military ruler (amı̄r), for example, he was visited by
ʿIkrima, an elderly member of the second generation of Muslims, who
appealed for help and was presented with a handsome payment.
Given the challenges that Jurjān must have faced in al-Sahmı̄’s own
day – both from its neighbors and from the various groups residing within
its borders – his reaching into the past for a common history seems
entirely reasonable. For the chaotic world in which he lived, a simple
beginning was preferable. The region’s illustrious early history probably
did seem, as he says, increasingly remote and subject to forgetfulness.
The people of Jurjān needed a reminder of the lineages that held them
together and gave them a sense of membership in and belonging to Jurjān.
The inclusion of so many different groups within the biographical entries
accomplishes this, as does the account of the generations of settlers and
visitors who followed Yazı̄d. And so, following his account of the second
conquest, al-Sahmı̄ details members of the generation that succeeded the
Prophet’s companions who came to Jurjān, the lineage of Yazı̄d, a Hadith
transmitted on his authority, his good deeds, the names of the Umayyads’
governors and the lengths of their stays in Jurjān, the demarcation of
Jurjān’s mosques in Umayyad times, the ʿAbbasids who came to Jurjān,
and the reigns of their governors.
While depicting common origins and minimizing conflict, al-Sahmı̄
has also provided a picture that confirms his readers’ manifestly different
identities. With the pre-Islamic past effaced, they belong to communities
that are defined not only by shared Muslim origins but also by common
lineages that include family, scholarship, and locality from region down
to town, village, and even street and alleyway. Jurjān’s scholars traveled
widely, receiving knowledge from far-flung locales; equally, knowledge
traveled from afar to Jurjān. In this way, very particular identities, as
93 See P. Crone, “Muhallabids,” in EI2 ; Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir, 260ff.

. abaristān, ed. ʿAbbās Iqbāl, 2 vols. in 1 (Tehran: Majlis,
94 Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārı̄kh-i T
[1941]), 1:161ff.; An Abridged Translation of the History of T . abaristán Compiled about
A.H. 613 (A.D. 1216) by Muh.ammad b. al-H . asan b. Isfandiyár, trans. Edward G.
Browne (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1905), 105–9.
map 3.2. Sı̄stān
small places in a big world, are shown to go hand in hand with a Muslim
identity. This emphasis on the particular and the local also helps explain
why al-Sahmı̄ makes little of ethnicity – Arab, Persian, or Turkish – as a
common bond.95 In troubled times, al-Sahmı̄ has therefore negotiated a
vision of the past that unites the Jurjānı̄s.
Violence Remembered: A Plea for Good Rulers

The story of a locality’s conquest often helps explain its subsequent his-
tory. This history may take on a nostalgic hue, as with Jurjān, but the
conquest may also shed light on a troubled history that follows it. In this
next case, a traditionist shows his region’s destiny for Islam and early
devotion to the cause but also depicts the conquests’ ambivalent out-
come, describing how the region’s residents suffered under Umayyad and
ʿAbbasid governors. His audience likely included its present ruling classes.
95 The same may probably be said for other local histories. The prestige of the Arabs that
persisted even in al-Sahmı̄’s day is reflected, however, by a Hadith that al-Sahmı̄ quotes
in his entry for Ah.mad b. Abı̄ Ah.mad al-Jurjānı̄, who transmitted his book (Taʾrı̄kh
Jurjān, 25, no. 10): “The Prophet spoke Arabic well and treated the half-blood with
scorn.”
The region of Sijistān (Middle Persian Sakastān/Sakistān, “Land of the

Sakas,” then in new Persian Sı̄stān) lies south of Khurāsān and straddles
the modern border between Iran and Afghanistan. It was the setting for
some of the most dramatic moments in Persian epic tradition, featuring
the legendary noble warrior Rustam, who tragically slew his son Sohrab
in ignorance.96 During the reign of the caliph ʿUthmān, the Arabs pushed
from neighboring Kirmān across the southern part of the desert known as
the Dasht-i Lūt. and entered Sı̄stān, in 31/651–2 taking the town of Zaranj.
In early Umayyad times, ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr found support in Sı̄stān
for his claims to the caliphate, and in 72/691–2, a Zubayrid governor
of Sı̄stān minted drachms featuring the Muslim shahāda, or statement of
faith, in Pahlavi script – this five years prior to the coinage reform of the
Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik, which began in 77/696–7.97 Under the
Umayyads and ʿAbbasids, Muslim armies passed through Sı̄stān en route
to the virtuous fight against non-Muslims. It was also a notorious home to
Khārijite rebellions and a challenge to govern. The Saffarid autonomous
governate emerged in Sı̄stān in the second half of the third/ninth century
and subsequently ruled a military empire that lasted for nearly 150 years.
In 393/1003, Sı̄stān was folded into the Ghaznavid empire, though a local
line of amirs, known as the Maliks of Nı̄mrūz (Nı̄mrūz being an ancient
name for Sı̄stān), continued to rule into Seljuk times.98
Arabic sources composed outside of the region depict the conquest of
Zaranj as bloody. Under the leadership of al-Rabı̄ʿ b. Ziyād al-H . ārithı̄
the Arabs fought the townspeople for some time and then besieged them.
Finally, the governor overseeing the area’s defense (marzubān),99 known
96 Yarshater, “Iranian National History,” 453–7.

97 On the coins, see Malek Iradj Mochiri, “A Pahlavi Forerunner of the Umayyad Reformed
Coinage,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s., 113, no. 2 (1981): 168–72 and
Stefan Heidemann, “Numismatics,” in The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1,
The Formation of the Islamic World, Sixth to Eleventh Centuries, edited by Chase F.
Robinson, 648–63, 775–9, and plates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010),
654–5. On classes of early Muslim coins in Sı̄stān, see Stuart D. Sears, “The Sasanian
Style Drachms of Sistan,” Yarmouk Numismatics 11 (1999): 18–28.
98 Bosworth, New Islamic Dynasties, 172–3; Hugh Kennedy, The Great Arab Conquests:
How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In (London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 2007), 185–7; see also Bosworth, Sı̄stān under the Arabs: From the Islamic
Conquest to the Rise of the S.affārids (30–250/651–864) (Rome: Istituto italiano per il
Medio ed Estremo Oriente, Centro studi e scavi archeologici in Asia, 1968), 16–18, for
what follows.
99 The title has different senses in the Arabic sources, but it broadly refers to a Sasanian
regional governor with responsibilities that varied at different times and locales, often
including those of a military character; see J. H. Kramers and M. Morony, “Marzpān,”
as Aparvı̄z (Persian for “victorious,” “glorious”), sought a guarantee of

safety so that he might negotiate a peace agreement. Al-Rabı̄ʿ – a “dark
complexioned, broad-mouthed and tall” man – made a chair for himself
out of the bodies of two slain men, and his companions did likewise.
When the marzubān saw al-Rabı̄ʿ, seated in this way, he was terrified and
agreed to turn over one thousand servants, each one bearing a vessel of
gold.100
This story was told in Sı̄stān itself, but the anonymous fifth/eleventh-
century Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān provides a richer account. This Persian-language
work narrates the history of the region from the earliest of times, as a
caliphal province, and then as a subject of the different empires that ruled
Sı̄stān afterward.101 The largest part of the text runs to 448/1062 – about
a generation after the Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān – ending during the reign of the
first of the Maliks of Nı̄mrūz (Tāj al-Dı̄n Abū al-Fad.l Nas.r b. Ah.mad [r.
429–65/1038–73]). Its author worked in a literary environment, and his
book, an early example of Persian prose, mentions a variety of sources.
These include, among others, the Zoroastrian Bundahishn; a now-lost
Kitāb-i Garshāsp by Abū al-Muʾayyad Balkhı̄ (fl. second half of the
fourth/tenth century);102 a work entitled Siyar mulūk al-ʿAjam by Ibn
al-Muqaffaʿ (presumably his version of the Xwadāy-nāmag); Qudāma
b. Jaʿfar’s (d. 337/948) Kitāb al-Kharāj;103 a Kitāb Anbiyā by one
ʿAlı̄ b. Muh.ammad T.abarı̄;104 and the Shāh-nāmah of Firdawsı̄. The
in EI2 , and Ph. Gignoux, “L’organisation administrative sasanide: Le cas du marzbān,”

100 The story traveled. See esp. al-Balādhurı̄, al-Buldān wa-futūḥuhā, 439; Qudāma b.
Jaʿfar, Kitāb al-Kharāj wa-s.ināʿat al-kitāba, ed. Muh.ammad H . usayn al-Zubaydı̄ (Bagh-
dad: Dār al-Rashı̄d, 1981), 393; and Ibn al-Athı̄r, al-Kāmil fı̄ al-taʾrı̄kh, 3:100–2. How-
ever, compare with, among others, Khalı̄fa b. Khayyāt. al-ʿUs.furı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, ed. Suhayl
Zakkār, 2 vols. (Damascus: Wizārat al-Thaqāfa wa-l-Siyāḥa wa-l-Irshād al-Qawmı̄,
1967–8), 197.
101 At one point, the author says of his apparent contemporary, the Seljuk T.ughril
(d. 455/1063), “May God perpetuate his rule!” Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, ed. Malik al-Shuʿarā
Bahār (Tehran: Khāvar, 1935), 373. Throughout this chapter, I also cite Milton Gold’s
translation (Rome: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1976) (here
p. 305), which I have lightly edited.
102 He is also credited with a prose Shāh-nāmah, and scholars of Persian literature have
assumed that the book mentioned in the Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān represented a part of it. See
G. Lazard, “Abu’l-Moʾayyad Balkı̄,” in EIr.
103 That is, the Kitāb al-Kharāj wa-s.ināʿat al-kitāba, cited above. On this work, see Paul L.
Heck, The Construction of Knowledge in Islamic Civilization: Qudāma b. Jaʿfar and
his Kitāb al-kharāj wa-s.ināʿat al-kitāba (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
104 Identification uncertain; the editor, Bahār, does not incline to Muh.ammad b. Jarı̄r
al-T.abarı̄ and introduces other possibilities. Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 9, n. 3.
work provides a detailed picture of Khārijites in Sı̄stān as well as of the

rise and fall of the Saffarids, including the reigns of Yaʿqūb b. al-Layth
al-S.affār (r. 247–65/861–79) and ʿAmr b. al-Layth (r. 265–87/879–900).
As a source, the book has been extensively mined for histories of these
rulers, of the region, and also of Persian letters.105
The book says that al-Rabı̄ʿ was sent to Sı̄stān (here meaning
Zaranj)106 by ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿĀmir, who was a key player in the early
empire’s administration.107 En route, al-Rabı̄ʿ demanded of a local ruler,
“You must show me the road to Sı̄stān.” The ruler replied: “Behold! This
is the way. After you ford the Helmand River, you will see the desert.
After crossing the desert, you will come upon the gravelly area; and from
there, the fortress and outlying districts of the city are visible.”108 Al-Rabı̄ʿ
followed these directions and, once across the river, engaged in a furious
battle with many casualties suffered by both the Muslims and the Sı̄stānı̄s,
but more by the Muslims. The Muslims charged again, whereupon the
Sı̄stānı̄s retreated into the city. At this point, the “Shāh of Sı̄stān,” named
by the Tārı̄kh as Īrān b. Rustam b. Āzādkhū b. Bakhtiyār (rather than
Aparvı̄z), summoned the chief Zoroastrian priest (mūʾbad-i mūʾbadān)
and the nobles of Sı̄stān and said:
This is not a matter that will pass in a day, or a year, or even a thousand years: this
much is clear from our books. [On the contrary] their religion and their earthly
power will last unto eternity. And there is nothing to be gained by killing and
waging war, for no one can alter what is Heaven’s decree. So our solution is to
make peace.109
105 Julie Scott Meisami, Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century (Edin-
burgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 108–40; C. Edmund Bosworth, “Sistan and
Its Local Histories,” Iranian Studies 33, no. 1/2 (2000): 34–5. Bosworth concludes that
the author of the Tārı̄kh was “apparently unaware of the standard, general” sources
for “Eastern Islamic history, such as T.abari, T.abari-Balʿami, Masʿūdi, Sallami, etc.,
or of near-contemporary and contemporary Ghaznavid authors like ʿOtbi, Gardizi,
and Abu’l-Fażl Bayhaqi.” Bosworth, “Tārik-e Sistān,” in EIr. Several studies have
drawn on the book; see especially Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan and
the Maliks of Nimruz (247/861 to 949/1542–3) (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers,
1994); Bosworth, Sı̄stān under the Arabs; Deborah G. Tor, “Historical Representations
of Ya‘qūb b. al-Layth: A Reappraisal,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser.,
12, no. 3 (2002): 247–75; and Tor, “A Numismatic History of the First Saffarid Dyn-
asty (ah 247–300/ad 861–911),” Numismatic Chronicle, 7th ser., 162 (2002): 293–
314.
106 The Tārı̄kh consistently refers to Zaranj as Sı̄stān.
107 H. A. R. Gibb, “ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿĀmir,” in EI2 .
108 Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 80; Gold, 63–4.
109 Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 81; Gold, 64.
The Sı̄stānı̄s agreed with their Shāh, who sent an envoy to al-Rabı̄ʿ with
the following message:
We are not powerless to wage war, for this is a land of brave men and warriors
(pahlavāns). But [for all that], we cannot fight against the Almighty (khudā-yi
taʿallā), and yours is the army of God. We have read in our books about your
appearance and that of Muh.ammad and thus we know that this reign [of yours,
dawlat] will endure for a long time. So the proper thing to do is to make peace in
order that the killing on both sides will cease.110
Al-Rabı̄ʿ agreed to make peace and ordered his army to desist. He gave
orders for the slain to be covered with garments and for a mound to
be made of their bodies, with a place to sit, also composed of bodies,
atop it. Once this was done, al-Rabı̄ʿ climbed upon the mound and sat
down. Īrān b. Rustam arrived with his nobles and the chief mobadh.
They dismounted from their horses and stood, watching al-Rabı̄ʿ, “a tall,
swarthy man, with large teeth and thick lips.” Beholding the gory scene,
Īrān said to his companions, invoking the devil of Zoroastrian cosmology:
“It is said that Ahriman is not visible in the daytime. Behold, Ahriman
became visible, there is no doubt about it!” When an interpreter informed
al-Rabı̄ʿ about the Persian’s remarks, al-Rabı̄ʿ “laughed heartily.” Then,
Īrān greeted al-Rabı̄ʿ but refused to come close to his “dais” (s.adr) because
it was “unclean” (na-pākı̄zih). Instead, he and his companions spread out
some pieces of cloth on the ground, sat down, and proceeded to work
out a deal with al-Rabı̄ʿ that involved Īrān promising to pay one million
dirhams annually to the caliph on behalf of the people of Sı̄stān, and
in the current year to buy a thousand slave girls and in the hands of
each place a golden goblet as a gift for the caliph. This deal was put in
writing, after which al-Rabı̄ʿ climbed down and entered Sı̄stān in complete
safety.111 From there, he moved on to Bust, where he was more forcefully
resisted.
With the added dialogue and details, the Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān presents the
locals’ defeat as foreseen. The Sı̄stānı̄s fight but know the fruitlessness of
their struggle against Muslim occupation. They even make peace because
the invading armies represent the religion that they have been awaiting.
110 Ibid.
111 Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 82; Gold, 65. Although he discusses the conquest under al-Rabı̄ʿ
and cites the Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān as one of his main sources (al-Balādhurı̄ being another),
Bosworth omits this scene from his account. Bosworth, Sı̄stān under the Arabs, 16–
17.
Such a teleology on a local scale is apparent in the first pages of the text, in
which the author describes the merits (fad.āʾil) of Sı̄stān. Sı̄stān’s greatest
claim to superiority derives from the fact that it was the first province in
Persia where Muh.ammad’s “name and his message were talked about by
all, notables and common people alike (khās.s. wa-ʿāmm).”112 A teleolog-
ical vision also underpins the report that Sı̄stān’s founder, Garshāsp –
aware of what history would deliver for his region – laid the founda-
tion stone and orders were given that the city should be constructed to
last for four thousand years.113 Reaching even further back in search of
portents of Sı̄stān’s fate, the Tārı̄kh finds the province singled out already
in prophetic history. When Adam left the island of Ceylon in search of
Eve, he stopped in Sı̄stān.114 When Noah sailed the earth in his ark, he
moored his ship at Sı̄stān, where the dove brought news that the waters
were receding; in the ark, a grateful Noah prayed for Sı̄stān.115 When
Solomon ordered the wind to carry him and his army around the world,
he paused for a meal in Sı̄stān, where he said: “Of all the various places
to which we have traveled, here is the most pleasant. The world today
rests on justice and not on injustice because the people of the world have
become equal through religion.”116
The first eighty or so pages of the Persian text, which cover events up
to and including the conquest, thus provide an overarching prophetic and
Islamic framework for the province’s history. Garshāsp, a figure of eastern
Iranian legend, is identified in Adam’s lineage117 and so is given a place in
prophetic genealogy – whereas in roughly the same period, ʿAlı̄ b. Ah.mad
Asadı̄ T.ūsı̄ (d. ca. 465/1072–3) completed his Garshāsp-nāmah, an epic
poem complementary to Firdawsı̄’s Shāh-nāmah that places Garshāsp
in an Iranian lineage.118 In the Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, Adam’s descendants,
112 Or perhaps the first place anywhere. Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 3; Gold, 2.

113 Ibid.
114 Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 9; Gold, 6 (citing ʿAlı̄ b. Muh.ammad T.abarı̄). Cf. al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh,
I:119ff.
115 Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 9–10; Gold, 7.
116 Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 10; Gold, 7. After mentioning Solomon’s visit, the Tārı̄kh notes: “It was
from this that the Khārijites conceived the difference between ‘the abode of injustice’
(dār-i jawr) and the ‘abode of justice’ (dār-i ʿadl).”
117 “Garshāsp b. Asrat b. Shahr b. Kūrang b. Bı̄dāsb b. Tūr b. King Jamshı̄d b. Nūnjahān b.
Īnjad b. Ūshang (Hūshang) b. Farāwak b. Siyāmak b. Mūsā b. Kayūmarth (Gayūmart),
and Kayūmarth was Adam.” Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 2 and n. 3; Gold, 1.
118 ʿAlı̄ b. Ah.mad Asadı̄ T.ūsı̄, Garshāsp-nāmah, ed. H.abı̄b Yaghmāʾı̄ (Tehran: Kitāb-
khānah-i T.ahūrı̄, 1975). Asadı̄ says in the epilogue to the poem that he completed it in
including Garshāsp, followed the faith of their father, praying “at dawn,
at sunset, and at night”; among them, adultery, sodomy, theft, and unjust
killing were forbidden. They knew the right way to slaughter animals
for eating, gave of their wealth liberally, and were hospitable to guests.
And they did not “marry daughter, sister, or mother.” But the birth
of Muh.ammad represented the most important event for the history of
Sı̄stān, with many of the most important scholars of Islam hailing from
this region. The Tārı̄kh provides a generous list of such scholars, with its
author apologizing that space constraints prevent him from elaborating
on it.119
As for the story about al-Rabı̄ʿ and the mound of bodies, the Tārı̄kh
describes the Sı̄stānı̄s’ terror and also presents their perspective: although
the conquering army brought Islam, the imposing and heartless figure of
al-Rabı̄ʿ seemed a lot like Ahriman, the demon adversary in the cosmology
of the “Good Religion,” as Zoroastrians know their faith. The Sı̄stānı̄s,
we are led to believe, saw events through two lenses simultaneously.
On the one hand, given the region’s deep, antique connections to Islam,
they understood the macrocosmic forces at work. On the other hand, as
Zoroastrians, they perceived the Muslims, by their grotesque behavior,
as taking the place of Ahriman. They stood their ground as Zoroastrians,
avoiding the unclean “dais,” but they surrendered due to their knowledge
of and sympathy for Islam. In effect, although the author does not refer
here to the Sı̄stānı̄s as Muslims, he depicts them as having appreciated
its internal core.120 With al-Rabı̄ʿ atop the mound of bodies, he has also
presented a moving image of their subjugation.
Immediately after the conquests, the Tārı̄kh shows Sı̄stān to have
been home to a dynamic and principled community that included
many ʿulamāʾ, such as the abovementioned al-H . asan al-Bas.rı̄. During
Muʿāwiya’s days, Sı̄stān’s governor was a man who administered with
“justice and equity” and promoted the teaching of the Qurʾan and
exegesis. Because of his virtuous example, many Zoroastrians converted
to Islam. With al-H . asan, the governor set up a treasury with secretaries,
accountants, a collector of taxes, regulators of accounts, inspectors, and
other trustworthy officials, and he also waged war in Bust and Rukhad (a
458/1066. He does have material relating to Adam and prophetic history in his work.
On Asadı̄’s text, see the summaries of scholarship by Franҫois de Blois, “Garšāsp-
nāma,” in EIr and by Bosworth, “Sistan and Its Local Histories,” 33 and 35–6.
119 Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 18–21; Gold, 14–15.
120 See where the author refers to the Sı̄stānı̄s’ Islam before the appearance of Muh.ammad;
Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 38; Gold, 27.
territory in southeastern Afghanistan, around the later city of Qandahār)

against recalcitrant rulers who refused to submit to Muslim rule.121 When
the governor’s successor arrived with orders to kill the Zoroastrians’ chief
priest and to stamp out their fires, the Sistānı̄s successfully defended the
Zoroastrians to imperial authorities in Damascus on the basis of the tol-
eration of the Prophet and the first four caliphs.122 During the struggle
between ʿAlı̄ and Muʿāwiya, they debated in the company of al-H . asan
how to correctly conduct the Friday prayer and the khut.ba, or sermon,
in which the ruler is acknowledged.123
By contrast, the Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān portrays Muslims from outside Sı̄stān
as consistently failing to live up to the ideals of the faith. The internal
problems of the early caliphate are elaborated and the murder of the
Prophet’s grandson al-H . usayn and members of his entourage at Karbala
movingly recalled. As his head is carried back to Syria, the Umayyad party
stays overnight with a Christian monk who reprimands them: “You are an
evil band because if Jesus had had a son, we would have revered him.” The
monk pays a large sum to keep the head in his possession overnight; he
cleanses it and pours a mixture of rosewater, musk, and camphor through
its passages, kisses it, and weeps until morning, whereupon he professes
124
Islam and becomes a client (mawlā) of al-H . usayn. The Sı̄stānı̄s expe-
rience much violence at the hands of rulers from outside the territory,
as well as treachery and extortion. They are shown to be surprisingly
forbearing, as Sı̄stān is placed under the control of different governors.
While a few are virtuous, many squeeze the province for its revenues. The
reign of al-H . ajjāj is particularly trying. For the author of the Tārı̄kh,
the failures of Muh.ammad’s successors seem to explain the origin of
the Khārijites in general and in Sı̄stān in particular. With empathy, he
explains the Khārijites’ case, as he says of them:
The battles that took place among the Muslims, and the things that happened
for which no justification could be found in the Qurʾan or in the traditions of
Muh.ammad, shocked these people. Yet there were more things each day. First,
there was what happened to the Commander of the Believers, ʿUthmān, when
the intimates [of the Prophet] gathered together and denounced him, and matters
121 Bosworth, “al-Rukhkhadj,” in EI2 ; Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 91–2; Gold, 73–4. Regarding al-
H. asan in the Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, see Mourad, Early Islam between Myth and History, 115,
and Bosworth, Sı̄stān under the Arabs, 22–3, 25–6 (emphasizing al-H . asan’s Persian-
ness).
arrived at such a state that he was assassinated. Then the Battle of the Camel
and the killing of T.alh.a and Zubayr, and the killing of other notables on both
sides; then the opposition of Muʿāwiya, the battle of S.iffı̄n, the matter of the two
arbitrations, the simple-mindedness of Abū Mūsā Ashʿarı̄, the duplicity of ʿAmr
b. al-ʿĀs., and the assassination of the Commander of the Believers, ʿAlı̄ b. Abı̄
T.ālib; the rallying of the mob around Muʿāwiya and the deposal of [H . asan b.
ʿAlı̄ and the killing of]125 H.usayn b. ʿAlı̄ and all the children and descendants of
Mus.t.afā [i.e., Muh.ammad] during the reign of Yazı̄d b. Muʿāwiya; followed by
the cutting off of the head of H . usayn and the transporting of the womenfolk of
Mus.tafā, unveiled, to Syria, and the striking with a rod of H . usayn’s mouth and
teeth, which Mus.t.afā had covered with thousands of kisses . . . and other such
things which, were we to mention them all, would prolong the story.126
The Khārijites, we learn, deserted the rulers, having judged that there
should be a limit to such evildoing. The people of Sı̄stān rallied to their
cause when a powerful man by the name of Qat.arı̄ b. al-Fujāʾa, an Arab
noble and prince (az sādāt wa-s.anādı̄d-i ʿArab), sent agents to Sı̄stān
explaining “what evils were being introduced into Islam.”127
The Tārı̄kh’s account of al-Rabı̄ʿ’s conquest, occurring at the very
beginning of what Clifford Edmund Bosworth termed the “historical”
part of the text, thus lays the groundwork for a picture of the early Islamic
state and the way that its rulers dominated the principled people of Sı̄stān.
Accordingly, the well-documented unruliness of Sı̄stān as the home of the
Khārijites is traced to outside causes. The tone of the book changes cor-
respondingly when the author turns to Sı̄stān’s homegrown governors,
the Saffarids, who reigned in the region from 247/861 to 393/1003. Their
route to power is paved by the Khārijite H . amza b. ʿAbd Allāh, “a man
of learning” (ʿālim), who stopped the province’s tax payments to Bagh-
dad once and for all. In an exchange of letters with Hārūn al-Rashı̄d,
H. amza appears as a religiously principled man who accepts no author-
ity save God and the Qurʾan and accuses the caliph’s servants: “They
have taken lives, confiscated property, and committed debauchery, and
other acts which God prohibits man from doing.”128 Yaʿqūb b. al-Layth
125 The bracketed text was added by Bahār.

127 Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 109–10; Gold, 88.
128 H. amza decides against fighting the people of the city of Sı̄stān (Zaranj) when he hears
their morning prayers. He challenges Hārūn al-Rashı̄d’s governor to a fight, but the
latter goes into hiding. H . amza then summons the people and says: “Do not give another
dirham in taxes and goods to the governor, because he will not be able to see to your
safety. I don’t want anything from you, and I shall not take anything from you, because
I shall not remain in any one place.” The Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān then states: “And from that
day to the present, no longer would revenue and tribute arrive in Baghdad from Sı̄stān.
then emerges somewhat further along in the narrative out of a rebellion

born in Bust. His Iranian genealogy shows his illustrious descent from the
Sasanian line and runs all the way back to Gayūmart.129 The ʿAbbasid
rulers are expelled, and then Yaʿqūb turns on the Khārijites and various
other enemies who are plundering Sı̄stān. A golden era follows as Yaʿqūb
levies taxes, establishes governorships, and sets up an administration for
the welfare of the Sı̄stānı̄s. He distributes money to the poor. But most
notably, he fights on behalf of Sı̄stān and Islam, extending the dominion
of Sı̄stān far and wide.130 He receives envoys from throughout the world,
including from Ethiopia and Byzantium.131 The first post-conquest Per-
sian poetry is recited because Yaʿqūb could not understand an Arabic
poem in his honor. A poet praised him after he killed a Khārijite rebel
named ʿAmmār:
Eve gave birth to no one, and Adam sired no one, with a lion’s heart and a
majestic nature such as yours.
You are the miracle of the Prophet of Mecca in deed, in thought, and in word.
And the great day will come when ʿAmmār will proclaim: “I am the one who was
killed by Yaʿqūb.132
Within the book as a whole, Yaʿqūb, and to a lesser extent his brother
ʿAmr, stand out as the only rulers who rule with justice, protect, and
enforce the state’s administration with “the word, the whip, and the
sword.”133 Yaʿqūb, the text affirms, prayed devoutly, gave alms gener-
ously, never cast a licentious glance at women or youths, protected women
Eventually, an agreement was reached whereby the people of the city remained under
the caliph Rashı̄d; the khut.ba continued to be said [in his name], and the khut.ba still
continued to be said in the name of the Banū ʿAbbās. However, the flow of revenue
was cut off.” Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 156–8 and 166; Gold, 123–5 and 133.
130 The caliph al-Muʿtamid (r. 256–79/870–92) recognizes Yaʿqūb’s authority with pat-
ents. When the people of Nı̄shāpūr complain that he has no such patent for Nı̄shāpūr,
he asks its notables: “Has not this sword established the caliph in Baghdad?” When
they reply affirmatively, he continues: “This same sword has also established me here,
thus my patent and that of the caliph are one and the same.” Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 216–23;
Gold, 171–7.
132 Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 212; Gold, 168. On this moment in the Tārı̄kh, see Jerome W. Clinton,
“A Sketch of Translation and the Formation of New Persian Literature,” in Iran and
Iranian Studies: Essays in Honor of Iraj Afshar, ed. Kambiz Eslami, 288–305 (Princeton,
NJ: Zagros, 1998), at 292, esp. n. 10.
from his soldiers, and was attentive to economic prosperity, social peace,
and the relationship of government officials to the people.134
Seen in the context of the book as a whole, then, the story of al-
Rabı̄ʿ’s conquest functions as an originary metaphor through which the
author shows the receptivity of the Sı̄stānı̄s to Islam and critiques the
virtues of those who came from outside the region. Sı̄stān appears as an
ideal place for Islam to flourish, as acknowledged by the prophets and
as evidenced by its early history. The ʿAbbasid state is “founded upon
treachery and deceit,” says Yaʿqūb.135 For the Tārı̄kh the great tragedy is
that the heirs of Yaʿqūb and ʿAmr failed to live up to the Saffarid legacy in
every measurable dimension. The governate’s fall to the “Turks” (i.e., the
Ghaznavids and the Seljuks) is movingly related and follows a fractious
period. The Tārı̄kh’s author laments: “The people fell upon evil days, and
so things have remained, and only Almighty God knows when things will
change.”136
We do not know who wrote the Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, and internal evi-
dence suggests that the text includes additions by later hands. Still, the
part of the book that covers the period from Sı̄stān’s pre-Islamic history
until at least the late 1040s–early 1050s seems to be a single-authored
work, as the text repeats annalistically and with painstaking detail the
political history of the province, especially the comings and goings of its
Umayyad and ʿAbbasid governors, the various revolts, and antagonisms
internal to Sı̄stān.137 The author himself is clearly wearying of the wars
Sı̄stān has suffered.138 It seems that he had in mind an audience knowl-
edgeable about and interested in such elaborate detail; that is, he was
addressing first and foremost Sı̄stān’s present ruling classes, including the
Maliks of Nı̄mrūz. Like dynastic histories and the genre of “mirrors for
princes,” then, the text demonstrates the benefits that come to virtuous
134 See especially a separate section praising the virtues of Yaʿqub in Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān,
263–8; Gold, 209–14. Bosworth’s description of the Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān as “essentially a
secular history” underestimates the book’s prophetic framework as well as this picture,
satisfying to Sı̄stān, of the virtues of Yaʿqūb. Bosworth, “Sistan and Its Local Histories,”
37. Cf. Tor, “Historical Representations of Yaʿqūb b. al-Layth al-S.affār.”
135 “Do you not see what these people [the ʿAbbasids] have done to Abū Salama, Abū
Muslim, the Barmakid clan, and Fad.l b. Sahl, despite the fact that these men served
them well? One should not trust this dynasty!” Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 267–8; Gold, 213.
137 On the text’s composition, see Meisami, Persian Historiography, esp. 131–4. Meisami
identifies three separate authors, distinguished by style and thematic interests, the second
and third continuing the work from 445/1053 on. Cf. Bosworth, “Tārik-e Sistān,” and
Bosworth, “Sistan and Its Local Histories,” 34–5.
138 Cf. Gold, xxvi–xxvii.
administration and the cooperation of the Sı̄stānı̄s with good governance,

and it makes a plea that its current rulers not exploit Sı̄stān. Although
pride is a major factor in the composition of the work, its ends are also
practical: protecting the people of Sı̄stān from rapacious government.139
Comparing our two local histories, there are many points of differ-
ence. The History of Jurjān is written in Arabic and structured largely
by the generations of Jurjān’s ʿulamāʾ; the History of Sı̄stān is written in
Persian, as a chronography attentive to Sı̄stān’s political and military
rulers. In form, the former more resembles biographical dictionaries (the
entries are arranged alphabetically by name), whereas the latter belongs
with annalistic histories. In Jurjān, one sees space up close – the book’s
sense of locality is fine-grained, a good example being the various street
names it provides. In Sı̄stān, the subjects of the book seem to be constantly
on the move, flitting across a landscape dominated by the cities of Zaranj
and Bust. As for the Arab-Islamic conquests, for Jurjān history begins
with them, whereas for Sı̄stān history runs deep into the pre-Islamic
past. Al-Sahmı̄ favors a picture of easy conquest; our Sı̄stānı̄ author
emphasizes scenes of brutality. While both works contain detailed infor-
mation, neither portrayal of the conquests appears more “realistic” than
the other – to use a term sometimes applied to local histories.
Still, there is something common and peculiarly local about these
works. History is read through a lens that places value on early and
enduring loyalty to Islam, that looks for what made a locality special
and unlike its neighbors, that picks out key moments – the conquests
being one – when the locality was transformed in character and in form,
and that acknowledges tensions and conflicts known to readers on the
ground, such as the revolts of the Khārijites in Sı̄stān. There is social
solidarity across neighborhoods and juristic schools and a search for a
less conflictual political order. The way in which each author structures
his work and emplots anecdotes within it does not seem to be accidental,
but rather guided by broader values and ideas – including the ideals of
Islam and the ʿulamāʾ in the case of Jurjān and fair administration in
Sı̄stān – with the result that the works were likely able to appeal to their
readers’ sentiments. As examples of what Bulliet has termed “views from
the edge” (as distinct from the center, focused on the caliphate), both
works attest to memories whose perspective is shaped by the complexity
139 Cf. esp. S. M. Stern, “Yaʿqūb the Coppersmith and Persian National Sentiment,” in
Iran and Islam: In Memory of the Late Vladimir Minorsky, ed. C. E. Bosworth, 535–55
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971).
of local circumstances, in which the conquests serve as a meaningful lieu

de mémoire. The edge becomes the center here, with Jurjān and Sı̄stān
depicted as centers of true Islam as opposed to their many peripheries
where Islam is under threat.
Conclusion
For mnemohistory, the conquests provide a particularly good subject
because they transformed Iran and were remembered for that. Many par-
ticular memories about the Sasanians and their empire, administrative
practices, and family history had the conquests as an ending point, but
they were also a starting point for Muslim Iranians, their heritage, fam-
ilies, and local history. Virtually all genres of Arabic letters treated them
in some regard, although some in more focused fashion. And so one wit-
nesses particular small reports and their repetition across genres, but also
fresh treatments as integral parts of both the grand narratives of Muslim
history and the specific narratives of localities.
The approach of mnemohistory has its limitations, which bear acknowl-
edging in more detail at this juncture. Reading narrative sources for their
peculiarities can seem a lot like eavesdropping on one side of a phone
conversation, with the other party unknown, and possibly not listening.
The size of the pool of speakers would fail to meet any modern scientific
standards meant to minimize margins of error, and it was generated by,
and quite often for, elites, whether in Iraq or in eastern Iran. Arguments
about the chronological development of memory are often based on the
silence of our earliest sources on matters such as Salmān’s Persianness,
the identity of ʿUmar’s informant on the dı̄wān, or the mother of the
fourth Imam. We have a bare fraction of the earliest writings, and far
more for later periods – so it is always possible that third/ninth-century
memories were not inventions. In addition to all of the other normal
problems inherent in interpreting premodern sources composed in lan-
guages not one’s own, there are also important issues relating to texts
and their transmission in the period, which can make assigning agency to
a traditionist, as an author, difficult: the loss of the earliest layers of his-
toriography, especially from the first/seventh century; the “publication”
of books, with lightly noted changes, by a traditionist’s students, often
unrecognized by modern scholars; the passing on of earlier texts in later
texts, where the interests of the later compiler can be hard to know; and
the peculiarities of genres, which require some approaches but do not
allow others to be considered. All of these necessitate some caution when

dating and interpreting individual narratives.
These difficulties acknowledged, if we examine the development of
traditions on a case-by-case basis, we find adjustments to narratives that
appear to take more notice of Iranians over time, sometimes in dramatic
increments, and, in the case of local histories in particular, to rewrite his-
tory to give more texture to the subjective experience and concerns of Ira-
nian readers and audiences. In Jurjān, the conquests retained a kerygmatic
dimension and teleological perspective, with al-Sahmı̄ deftly presenting
his readers with a picture of continuity before and after the conquests
and of improbable equilibrium and concord among its present popula-
tion. A comparison with other Arabic sources treating Jurjān’s conquest
suggests that he has chosen to remember events in a particular way, or
alternatively, to forget the violence and discord that historians such as
al-T.abarı̄ recall. The account in the Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, by contrast, reflects
poorly on the Arab conquerors and justifies the territory’s reputation
for rebellion. Here, too, comparison suggests that its author was up to
something, namely, dramatizing the sufferings of Sı̄stān as an admonition
for its present ruling classes.
In each of the cases considered, memory was not revised overnight and
never conclusively. Rather, it was gradually renegotiated, the product of
many shifts, and always subject to revision in light of contemporary
circumstances. Sometimes, it was built on strong probabilities, as with
the dı̄wān; at other times on what was likely fancy, as with Shahrbānū.
Individual traditionists played an important role, but their works and
particular perspectives should be seen as part of a wider process. Both
grand narratives with their kerygmatic perspectives and local histories
represented and likely shaped collective agreements about the past and
the ways in which Iranians conceived of themselves in relation to the
Muslim community to which they belonged.
part ii
TRADITIONS FOR FORGETTING
I n Part II, we turn our attention to the strategies through which a

variety of traditionists in the third/ninth to the fifth/eleventh centuries
shaped memory of Iran’s past and the immediate concerns their efforts
reflected. As modern scholars have often noted, there is much evidence
that Muslims of this period sought to preserve a record of Iran’s royal
heritage by translating Middle Persian works featuring Iran’s kings into
Arabic or by including excerpts of such works in their own writings.
With the Sasanian dynasty gone, these Muslim traditionists became the
most important custodians of its historical and ethico-didactic literature,
while also taking some interest in the ruling house’s Zoroastrian faith and
scriptures, including the Avesta. ʿAbbasid courtly circles transmitted sig-
nificant quantities of this material, which was developed still further in the
following centuries in Baghdad for the benefit of Buyid and Seljuk rulers
and ruling classes, and in centers of power to the east, such as Samanid
Khurāsān and Transoxiana.1 But while much of the historiographic tra-
dition reflects the success of a “Persian” humanities crystallized around
1 The issue of transmission of Sasanian era materials has been investigated from many
angles. To works already cited in this study, I would add M. Inostranzev, Iranian Influence
on Moslem Literature, pt. 1, trans. G. K. Nariman (Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala Sons,
1918); Sh. Shaked, From Zoroastrian Iran to Islam: Studies in Religious History and
Intercultural Contacts (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995); Muh.ammad Muh.ammadı̄-Malāyirı̄,
Tārı̄kh va farhang-i Īrān dar dawrān-i intiqāl az ʿas.r-i sāsānı̄ bih ʿas.r-i islāmı̄, vols. 1 and 2
(Tehran, 1996–7), translated by Shahrokh Mohammadi-Malayeri as Iranian Civilization
and Culture: Before Islam and Its Impact on Islamic Civilization and Arab Literature
(New Delhi: Manohar, 2012); Ah.mad Tafażżulı̄, Tārı̄kh-i adabiyāt-i Īrān pı̄sh az Islām,
ed. Zhāla Āmūzigār (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Sukhan, 1997).
131
the figure of the king and royal ethics2 as well as a variety of social, polit-
ical, and linguistic revivalist sentiments, there is also substantial evidence
of more complex stances toward Iran’s heritage, including a considerable
degree of ambivalence and anxiety.
The Issue of Perspective

To set the tone for the chapters that follow, it will be useful to consider
a couple of reports passed on late in our period by a man of Arabic
letters and friend of eastern Iranian ruling elites, Abū Mans.ūr al-Thaʿālibı̄
(d. 429/1038). The reports were transmitted in his lexicon of memorable
two-word phrases and clichés, the Thimār al-qulūb fı̄ al-mud.āf wa-l-
mansūb (Fruits of the heart among nouns in construct form), a work
dedicated to reminding readers, or more likely bringing them into the
know, about a variety of topics.3 In an entry for the expression “the
justice of Anūshirvān” (ʿadl Anūshirwān), he reports that Muh.ammad
was born during the reign of Khusraw Anūshirvān (r. 531–79 CE), and
he quotes a Hadith in which the Prophet states: “I was born in the time
of the Just King (al-malik al-ʿādil). As for the rest of the Kisrās, they
were unjust and wicked.”4 Al-Thaʿālibı̄ then explains with a sprinkling
of rhymed prose:
2 Amir-Moezzi, “Shahrbānū, Dame du pays d’Iran,” 517. For the phrase, see a “note by
Professor H.A.R. Gibb” in Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, 2nd ed., 12 vols.
(London: Oxford University Press, 1935), 1:400–2, at 402 (Annex I to I.C (i) (b)). Gibb
wrote about Shiʿism in opposition to “the Persian ‘humanities.’” I thank Dan Sheffield
for suggesting the origin of the expression.
3 Al-Thaʿālibı̄ wrote in Arabic, not Persian, although given his locale and appointments,
he would have been well aware of the development of Persian letters and composed
macaronic poetry with Persian words inserted in the Arabic. Regarding al-Thaʿālibı̄’s
life and works, see esp. Bosworth’s introduction to another of his books, The Lat.āʾif
al-maʿārif of Thaʿālibı̄ (The Book of Curious and Entertaining Information), trans.
Bosworth (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968), 1–31; Mah.mūd ʿAbd Allāh
al-Jādir, “al-Thaʿālibı̄: Nāqidan wa-adı̄ban” (M.A. thesis, Baghdad University, 1974),
esp. pt. 1, “H. ayātuhu wa-thaqāfatuhu”; and Bilal Walid Orfali, “The Art of Anthology:
Al-Thaʿālibı̄ and His Yatı̄mat al-dahr” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2009), esp. ch. 1,
“The Life of Abū Mans.ūr al-Thaʿālibı̄,” and ch. 2, “The Works of al-Thaʿālibı̄.”
4 Abū Mans.ūr al-Thaʿālibı̄, Thimār al-qulūb fı̄ al-mud.āf wa-l-mansūb, ed. Muh.ammad
Abū al-Fad.l Ibrāhı̄m (Cairo: Dār Nahd.at Mis.r, 1965), 178–9 (no. 255). Al-Thaʿālibı̄ also
cites the Hadith in his anthology of poetry in Arabic, Yatı̄mat al-dahr fı̄ mah.āsin ahl al-
ʿas.r, ed. Muh.ammad Muh.yı̄ al-Dı̄n ʿAbd al-H.amı̄d, 4 vols. in 2 (Cairo: Mat.baʿat H.ijāzı̄,
1947), 4:437 (“Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Fad.l b. ʿAlı̄ al-Isfirāʾı̄nı̄”). Other reporters are more
critical of this Hadith’s authenticity; e.g., see Ah.mad b. al-H . usayn al-Bayhaqı̄, Shuʿab
al-ı̄mān, ed. Abū Hājar Muh.ammad al-Saʿı̄d b. Basyūnı̄ Zaghlūl, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār
al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2000), 4:305–6 (no. 5195). Balʿamı̄ quotes the first, but not the
Traditions for Forgetting 133
They would enslave free men and treat their subjects like bondmen, slaves, or
servants; they would treat them as if they were of no consequence. They would
appropriate for themselves the choicest of food, fine clothes, mounts, beautiful
women, choice dwellings, and the advantages of culture. None of their subjects
would dare to cook [the fine dish of] sikbāj,5 to dress in silk brocade, to trot
proudly on their horses (yarkab himlāj),6 to marry a beautiful woman, to build a
spacious house, to instill learning in his children, or to attempt manly virtues.7
By al-Thaʿālibı̄’s lifetime, nearly four centuries had passed since the Sa-
sanians ruled, but their reputation as supporters of an elitist culture lived
on. The entry actually said little that was meaningful about Anūshirvān’s
justice or even about the Sasanians themselves, but far more, by inference,
about the more egalitarian values of the Muslim empire and society that
superseded them.
Al-Thaʿālibı̄ began his career under the last Samanids; he worked at
the court of the Maʾmūnid Khwārizm-Shāhs, who reigned for twenty-two
years (385–408/995–1017) in the region of Khwārizm on the lower Oxus
and in whose court at Gurgānj al-Thaʿālibı̄ seems to have made frequent
appearances; and he finished his very productive literary life under the
Ghaznavids. It was during their reign that he dedicated the Thimār to
a notable from Nı̄shāpūr named Abū al-Fad.l ʿUbayd Allāh b. Ah.mad
al-Mı̄kālı̄ (d. 436/1044–5).8 Despite his eastern locale, placement within
its ruling circles, and possible attention elsewhere to the Persians’ pre-
Islamic history, he was no simple romantic for Iran’s history or legacy, as
the preceding story reveals.9 Nor do I think it accurate to describe him
second, half of the report (“I was born in the time of the Just King”); Tārı̄kh-i Balʿamı̄
(ed. Taqı̄ Bahār and Gunābādı̄), 2:1053.
5 Or sakbāj (Middle Persian, sik, vinegar; bāg, stew). This luxury meat dish of Persian
origin was popular in ʿAbbasid times and featured a vinegar sauce containing aromatics,
including fresh and dry coriander, cinnamon bark, white onions, and Syrian leeks (a vari-
ant was made with fish); Maxime Rodinson, A. J. Arberry, and Charles Perry, Medieval
Arab Cookery (Blackawton, Devon: Prospect Books, 2001), 40, 139, 151–2, 305–6, 482.
6 For the Persian origin of the term himlāj (the rhyme and Persian origins of himlāj being
the likely reasons for al-Thaʿālibı̄’s choice of this horse), see Ibn Manz.ūr, Lisān al-ʿArab,
15 vols. (Beirut: Dār S.ādir, [1955–6]), 2: 393–4.
7 Al-Thaʿālibı̄, Thimār al-qulūb, 178–9.
8 On the Mı̄kālı̄ family, see esp. C. E. Bosworth, “Mı̄kālı̄s,” in EI2 , and idem., The
Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 994–1040 (Edinburgh: Edin-
burgh University Press, 1963), 176 and 179–85.
9 See esp. his Yatı̄mat al-dahr, which displays an intense consciousness of regional
poetic traditions in Arabic, including volume 4 (featuring Jurjān, T.abaristān, Khurāsān,
Transoxiana, and Khwārizm, as well as special treatment of Bukhārā, Bust, and
Nı̄shāpūr). There has been a long-standing debate about whether another work, fea-
turing Persia’s ancient kings – the Ghurar akhbār mulūk al-Furs wa-siyarihim, ed. and
trans. H. Zotenberg (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1900) – can securely be attributed to
as simply following the “well-trodden Arabo-Islamic ways” of figures

such as Ibn Qutayba. 10 Instead – like many Iranians from the third/ninth
century onward – he found himself adjudicating at the trial of a past
empire and its civilization, sympathetic in some regards but critical in
others, and he expressed this in the way he remembered its legacy.
A further report suggests the complexity of cultural and historical
consciousness among brokers of Iran’s past such as al-Thaʿālibı̄. The
report concerns “the Cypress of Bust” (sarwa Bust) and evokes shades of
tragedy. It runs like this: in Khurāsān, within the boundaries of the rural
district of Bust,11 there was an enormous cypress tree of unprecedented
height and width that had been planted in the time of King Yustāsif (the
ruler in Zoroaster’s lifetime).12 It cast a shadow a farsakh (about 6 km)
long and was one of the major points of pride of Khurāsān. More than
once, the ʿAbbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil heard about it, and this made
him want to see it; but he was not able to visit it, so he wrote to his
governor T.āhir b. ʿAbd Allāh ordering him to cut it down, to package
the pieces of its trunk and branches in padding, preserving its leaves, and
to transport the tree on camels to Iraq so that it might be re-erected in his
presence. The caliph’s companions told him of the bad luck that would
result from cutting down the tree, but this only tempted him more. No
intercessor could help the cypress, nor could T.āhir see any option other
than following the order. When the woodcutters arrived to fell the tree,
along with the camels to carry it, the people of the district pledged a
large quantity of money for them to spare it, still to no avail. In refusing
him. Regarding the question, see esp. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Littera-
tur, Suppl., 3 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1937–42), 1:581–2; Rosenthal, “From Arabic
Books and Manuscripts III: The Author of the Ġurar as-siyar,” Journal of the American
Oriental Society 70, no. 3 (1950): 181–2; Bosworth, “al-Thaʿālibı̄, Abū Mans.ūr,” in EI2 ;
and al-Jādir, “al-Thaʿālibı̄,” 114–9 (no. 22). Disputing his authorship on the grounds
of the Ghurar’s Persian contents or al-Thaʿālibı̄’s prominence in Arabic literary circles
seems to me unsound and based on an overly narrow understanding of al-Thaʿālibı̄’s
cultural profile.
10 Cf. Bosworth, The Lat.āʾif al-maʿārif of Thaʿālibı̄, 11–12. Bosworth’s characterization
here of Ibn Qutayba’s corpus and cultural profile underrates his engagement with Iranian
sources, particularly in his ʿUyūn al-akhbār.
11 This is the rural district (rustāq) of Bust, near Nı̄shāpūr, which is not to be confused
with the city of Bust in Sı̄stān, mentioned in Chapter 3. Al-Thaʿālibı̄ specifies the locale
in Bust more precisely as a village named Kashmı̄r. Thimār al-qulūb, 590 (no. 977).
12 Regarding Zoroaster’s mysterious history, much has been written; for a relevant sum-
mary, see W. W. Malandra, “Zoroaster,” in EIr. Regarding the philology behind the
name of Yustāsif (Gushtāsp in the Shāh-nāmah), see A. Shapur Shabazi, “Goštāsp,”
in EIr. For another linking of Yustāsif (as such) and Zoroaster, see, e.g., al-Masʿūdı̄,
Murūj, 2: 398–9 (no. 1402).
Traditions for Forgetting 135
the plea, T.āhir said that he would not be willing to acquiesce under any
conditions, since he could not oppose the order of the Commander of the
Believers.13
The calamity of the loss of the cypress hit the people of the area hard.
They raised a hue and cry, but the trunk was nonetheless wrapped in
padding and transported on three hundred camels to the caliph. A court
poet and onetime companion of the caliph, ʿAlı̄ b. al-Jahm (d. 249/863),
regarded the event as an ill omen for al-Mutawakkil and recited:
An omen for al-Mutawakkil departed by night on its way;

The cypress is traveling, and fate on its way.
It is wrapped only because our Imam [al-Mutawakkil]
Is wrapped with a sword against his children.14
We then hear the conclusion: matters passed as the poet had foreseen, with
al-Mutawakkil dead (his offspring partly to blame) before the cypress
reached him and the poem recited afterward as a reminder of his folly.15
Al-Mutawakkil coveted a great object of Iranian pride, one whose
roots, literally, were sunk in its mythic Zoroastrian past. The con-
sequences were predicted, but this did not stop the vain caliph or his
Iranian protégé. The result was tragic for the people of Khurāsān as well
as for al-Mutawakkil. He may have uprooted the cypress, but he thereby
sealed his own fate and never actually saw the tree. The story provides
an apt metaphor for the failures of the ʿAbbasids to co-opt Iran’s aristo-
cratic past for their purposes and a literary example of the futile efforts of
post-conquest rulers to take down and dismantle the material remains of
Iran’s heritage. Just as in Egypt, with the pyramids, or in Iraq, with Cte-
siphon, a ruler sought to eliminate the vestiges of a past empire at his own
peril.16 The story may have appealed especially to Khurāsānian audiences
13 Al-Thaʿālibı̄, Thimār al-qulūb, 590–1.

14 See also Dı̄wān ʿAlı̄ b. al-Jahm, ed. Khalı̄l Mardam Bey, 2nd ed. (Beirut: Committee
of Arab Manuscripts, n.d.), 167 (no. 76). At one point in time, the poet fell out of the
caliph’s favor and was imprisoned for a year before being released and sent to Khurāsān.
Regarding him, see H. A. R. Gibb, “ʿAlı̄ b. al-Djahm,” in EI2 .
15 Palace intrigues regarding succession preceded al-Mutawakkil’s assassination by Turkish
soldiers; his son, al-Muntas.ir (r. 247–8/861–2), played a role in his downfall. See esp.
H. Kennedy, “al-Mutawakkil ʿAlā ’llāh, Abū ’l-Fad.l Djaʿfar b. Muh.ammad,” in EI2 .
16 Regarding Egypt, see Michael Cooperson, “Al-Maʾmūn, the Pyramids, and the Hiero-
glyphs,” in ʿAbbasid Studies II: Occasional Papers of the School of ʿAbbasid Studies,
Leuven, 28 June–1 July 2004, ed. John Nawas, 165–90 (Leuven: Peeters, 2010). For an
anecdote about the efforts of the ʿAbbasid caliph al-Mans.ūr (r. 136–58/754–75) to take
down the ı̄wān of Kisrā (or the White Palace) at al-Madāʾin, see Savant, “Forgetting
Ctesiphon,” 177–8.
because it showed the punishment for exploitation by the caliph in Iraq;

it is noteworthy, however, that the tree was in fact felled.
What Lies Ahead

In the first part of this study, especially in Chapters 2 and 3, my meth-
odology has been largely stratigraphic, as I have sought to decipher the
gradual process by which Iranians, and Persians in particular, were writ-
ten into a historiographical tradition that was kerygmatic in character and
profoundly shaped by the concerns of its first reporters and audiences.
The past, as imagined, was typically not a new invention, but an incre-
mentally adjusted recreation that in a variety of ways engaged with the
expectations of a reading and listening public. Such reformulations began
while Iranian Muslim audiences were small and were well under way by
the mid-third/ninth century, but they continued in different ways after-
ward, shaping the possibilities for all later generations’ remembrance.
My goal in Part I was to identify the emergence of an affective past. In
Part II, by contrast, my focus is on varieties of disaffection and methods
for the destruction of memory. Returning to a point I made in the Intro-
duction, oblivion is often the product not just of omission but of super-
imposition. To repeat Eco, “mnemonic additions” foster forgetfulness of
the past “not by cancellation but by superimposition, not by producing
absence but by multiplying presences.”17 While in Part II I continue to
identify the historical contexts in which traditionists operated and make
some general observations about the chronological development of ideas
about the past, my main concern is structural: I seek to consider super-
impositions as they occur in narrative form, to describe and classify the
strategies underlying them, and to identify the subjects of erasure. I there-
fore seek to discern patterns in the corpus of traditions, while giving some
consideration to their particular contexts.
17 Eco, “An Ars Oblivionalis? Forget It!” 254–61.

4
Reforming Iranians’ Memories of

Pre-Islamic Times
History prior to the rise of Islam provided a wide canvas on which tra-
ditionists could introduce and develop ideas about Persians and their
past, as well as to press for realignments of loyalties. As a focus of posi-
tive knowledge, these earlier times came with a lighter burden of proof
than subsequent periods, particularly that of the Prophet’s lifetime, in
part because the field was less crowded with scholars and therefore less
encumbered by competing views and demands. As material, it was rich,
as the most antique history generally is, for the choices it offered in time
periods, geographical focus, and themes, and the comparative liberty that
distance in time allowed.
Traditionists approached antique history in a variety of ways. They
chose their material, gave it structure, and inserted it into wider accounts
of the origin and progress of humanity in ways that diminished the
autonomy of Persia’s history. They omitted past knowledge, but also
reduced its autonomy through editorial choices that restructured and
reframed their material. And, through literary devices, they urged their
readers/listeners to respond with sentiments that ranged from affectionate
nostalgia to distrust and anxiety. This chapter identifies three such edito-
rial choices, paying attention to the historical sensibilities and approaches
that underpin them, as well as to the loyalties they reflect and advocate.
These editorial strategies took shape in the third/ninth to fifth/eleventh
centuries, providing patterns for Arabic and Persian historiography after-
ward, and they consist of (1) rewriting a Persian past as a purely local
past, (2) replacing a Persian past with a Muslim past, and (3) raising
doubts about the past. While in some cases reporters might employ the
137
three techniques simultaneously, for analytical purposes it is useful to

consider them separately.
Creating a Local Past

In Chapter 1, I sketched the ways in which al-T.abarı̄ wove Persians into
his History of Prophets and Kings; demonstrated the importance that
he attached to prophets, especially Noah; and discussed the potential
challenge that Iranian views of the past posed in his attempt to place
Muh.ammad and the Muslim community at the center. To illustrate the
respect al-T.abarı̄ granted to Iranian sources but the priority he accord-
ed to Muslim ones, I mentioned his treatment of Gayūmart’s possible
identities: as father to humanity as a whole, as Adam, as one of Adam’s
sons, or as a descendant of Noah. I noted that without committing to any
one view, al-T.abarı̄ shapes his account to show that Persians are born
early, whether at humanity’s inception (with Gayūmart) or more likely
afterward, among Noah’s offspring. Al-T.abarı̄’s treatment of this first,
early stage serves as a central point of his reconciliation of two possible
historical visions: one pre-Islamic and Iranian, the other Islamic.
For al-T.abarı̄ and other traditionists of the period, the problems that
Gayūmart presented mirrored those of Iranian pre-Islamic history as a
whole. Not only did narratives about him flatly contradict those otherwise
known by Muslims, but he came with strong Zoroastrian associations as
well.1 The Pahlavi Bundahishn was completed in the third/ninth century
CE and gives some sense of the ideas that were current among Zoroastri-
ans at the time: Ahura Mazdā created Gayūmart as the sixth creation,
“shining as the sun” and measuring the same in height as in width;2
Gayūmart’s offspring, Masya and Masyānı̄, grew from the earth, fertil-
ized by his sperm, as a single stalk of a rı̄vās (Middle Persian rēbāh/rēbās,
1 Gayūmart has been treated frequently in modern scholarship. Regarding Muslim legends
about Gayūmart, see esp. “Sources islamiques” in Sven S. Hartman, Gayōmart: Étude
sur le syncrétisme dans l’ancien Iran (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckeri, 1953),
130ff.; Shaul Shaked, “First Man, First King: Notes on Semitic-Iranian Syncretism and
Iranian Mythical Transformations,” in Gilgul: Essays on Transformation, Revolution
and Permanence in the History of Religions; Dedicated to R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, ed. S.
Shaked, D. Shulman, and G. G. Stroumsa, 238–56 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987); Mohamad
Tavakoli-Targhi, “Contested Memories: Narrative Structures and Allegorical Meanings
of Iran’s Pre-Islamic History,” Iranian Studies 29, no. 1/2 (1996): 152ff.; Subtelny,
“Between Persian Legend and Samanid Orthodoxy”; and the other sources that follow.
2 Zand-Ākāsı̄h: Iranian or Greater Bundahišn, trans. Behramgore Tehmuras Anklesaria
(Bombay: Rahnumae Mazdayasnan Sabha, 1956), ch. 1a:13 (pp. 24–7).
Reforming Iranians’ Memories of Pre-Islamic Times 139
i.e., rhubarb) plant, before being separated to become a human couple.3

Nine months after they copulated, they produced a male and female
pair, but owing to the “sweetness” of the children, the parents ate them.
Then Ahura Mazdā removed the sweetness of the children, after which
Masya and Masyānı̄ produced six more pairs.4 Given the variance of
this account with Islamic ideas, it is no wonder that many traditionists
wished to forget Gayūmart altogether and begin human history simply
with Adam.5 The concerns of Muslim scholars are reflected in their iden-
tification and description of an Iranian sect bearing Gayūmart’s name,
the Kayūmarthiyya, whether or not such a group existed in reality.6
One common way of dealing with Gayūmart and the challenges of
Iranian historiography more generally was to present them as history for
Persia and not for humanity as a whole. According to this view, Iranian
history was simply a body of knowledge running parallel to those of
other localities such as the Yemen, Egypt, Syria, and the Maghreb, all
ultimately, if implicitly, offering only partial contributions to a universal
narrative of Islam. This relativizing effort could be achieved in a variety
of ways: by giving Persian ideas structural significance and prominence
in wider narratives that synchronized different histories, as al-T.abarı̄
does; by anthologizing Persian history among other histories; and/or by
treating it separately – but stressing its characterization as specifically
“Persian” or, some time after the rise of Persian letters, “Iranian” history.
In all three cases, the strategy’s appeal lay in the ways it seemed to
respect and preserve Persian views, lessen the traditionists’ burden of
achieving consistency, and create space for narrative development. As
3 Zand-Ākāsı̄h, ch. 14:5–10 (pp. 126–9). On this passage, see Ehsan Yarshater, “Iranian
Common Beliefs and World-View,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, 3(1):343–58, at
353.
4 Zand-Ākāsı̄h, ch. 14:31–2 (pp. 132–3) and Hartman, Gayōmart, 45ff.
5 Eventually, even some Zoroastrians came to mention Adam in their accounts of human
origins. See esp. Alan Williams’s The Zoroastrian Myth of Migration from Iran and
Settlement in the Indian Diaspora: Text, Translation and Analysis of the 16th Century
Qes.s.e-ye Sanjān ‘The Story of Sanjan’ (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 56–61 (verses 11–31), 149–50
(commentary).
6 Abū al-Fath. Muh.ammad al-Shahrastānı̄ (d. 548/1153) mentions the sect in Kitāb al-
Milal wa-l-nih.al, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzı̄z Muh.ammad al-Wakı̄l, 3 vols. in 1 (Cairo: Muʾassasat
al-Ḥalabı̄, 1968), 2:38–9. For skeptical views on the existence of the sect, see Richard
Reitzenstein and Hans Heinrich Schaeder, Studien zum antiken Synkretismus aus Iran
und Griechenland (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1926), 237ff., and Shaul Shaked, “Some
Islamic Reports concerning Zoroastrianism,” 45. Cf. Hartman, Gayōmart, 30–1, and
Touraj Daryaee, “The Mazdean Sect of Gayōmartiya,” in Ātaš-e Dorun: The Fire Within,
Jamshid Soroush Soroushian Commemorative Volume, ed. Carlo G. Cereti and Farrokh
Vajifdar, 131–7 ([United States]: 1st Books, 2003).
a way of remembering, however, it introduced perspective to Persian

history, replacing past views that regarded Iranian history as the entire
truth rather than one among several.
Many Muslim scholars showed a keen interest in “comparative chro-
nology” and sought to synchronize different views of the pre-Islamic
past, often giving priority to the Persian view.7 Typically, Persia’s history
is royal history, as in al-T.abarı̄’s History of Prophets and Kings, where,
as I noted in Chapter 1, the traditionist asserts that “a history based upon
the lives of the Persian kings has the soundest sources and the best and
clearest data.”8 His narrative moves in fits and starts because of his duti-
ful citation of his sources and his introduction and consideration of detail,
including genealogies; apart from these elements, it is otherwise tentative
because of his acknowledgment of uncertainty regarding chronology.
Al-T.abarı̄ faced a large issue: what was to be the measure of time
before the adoption of the hijri calendar? At the turn of the fifth/eleventh
century, much further to the east and after Muslims had devoted centuries
of thought to Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage, the problem continued. This is
when the traditionist al-Bı̄rūnı̄ (d. 440/1048) wrote up his own profound
analysis of history, dating, and periodization that showed the past as
linked to the memories of particular communities, including the Persians.
He writes, “Each one of the various peoples in the [world’s] regions has
its own dating system (taʾrı̄kh) by which it reckons, beginning with its
kings, prophets, state reigns, or [other] events that I have already men-
tioned [including natural disasters, such as floods and earthquakes].”9
Al-Bı̄rūnı̄’s knowledge of different dating systems is vast and detailed,
and it includes points such as that the birth of “Jesus, the son of Mary”
occurred in the year 304 of Alexander’s calendar and his ascension in the
year 336.10 He gives generous attention to Persians as one of the world’s
7 Roy Mottahedeh, “Some Islamic Views of the Pre-Islamic Past,” Harvard Middle Eastern
and Islamic Review 1, no. 1 (1994): 20.
8 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:148; for discussion of some Armenian Christian authors’ use of the
regnal years of the Sasanian kings as guideposts, see The Armenian History Attributed
to Sebeos, trans. R. W. Thomson with commentary by James Howard-Johnston, 2 vols.
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), 1:lviii and lxx–lxxi.
9 Abū al-Rayh.ān al-Bı̄rūnı̄, Chronologie orientalischer Völker, ed. C. Eduard Sachau
(Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1878), 13; see also the English translation by Sachau (with
the Arabic pages in the margins): The Chronology of Ancient Nations (London: W. H.
Allen, 1879; repr., Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Legacy Reprints, n.d.).
10 Al-Bı̄rūnı̄, Chronologie, 17. As Muriel Debié notes (personal communication, May
2013), al-Bı̄rūnı̄ likely relies upon a Syriac source, since Syriac authors refer to the
Seleucid era as that of Alexander. The dates, however, are not the usual ones, so it is
great peoples with strong ideas about history before the “reign of Islam”
(dawlat al-Islām).11 Regarding their ideas about the origins of humanity,
he notes that “they have made many strange statements” and launches
into a discussion of Gayūmart and Ahriman, the latter of whom he iden-
tifies with “Iblı̄s,” the term used by Muslims to refer to the devil and
arch-opponent to Adam and humanity. He seems skeptical as he reports
a view that Gayūmart, a first man of sorts, came into existence from
the sweat of God’s brow. Gayūmart’s children were born, meanwhile, in
an equally mythical event: Ahriman devoured Gayūmart, but just as he
reached his testicles, two drops of Gayūmart’s semen fell, fertilizing the
earth, from which two rhubarb (rı̄bās) plants grew, producing Mı̄shı̄ and
Mı̄shānah, who are for the Persians “in the position of Adam and Eve”
(see Figure 4.1). The offspring are also called Malhā and Malhayāna,
whereas the Zoroastrians of Khwārizm call them Mard and Mardāna.12
Al-Bı̄rūnı̄ also reports at length a different view he says he had read in the
Shāh-nāmah of Abū ʿAlı̄ Muh.ammad b. Ah.mad al-Balkhı̄, the sources of
which he lists.13 In this version, Gayūmart’s children came into existence
when God killed him following Gayūmart’s conflict with Ahriman; at his
death, Gayūmart dripped sperm onto Mount Damdādh in Is.t.akhr. From
this spot grew two rı̄bās bushes, which sprouted branches that, after nine
months, yielded Mı̄shı̄ and Mı̄shiyānah (the names as rendered). What
follows is a Zoroastrian version of the Garden of Eden tale, featuring
the couple’s temptation by Ahriman. Al-Bı̄rūnı̄ concludes by mentioning
briefly their children, whose names, he says, occur in the Avesta.14
Histories could be juxtaposed for many different reasons. Consider
the example of the second part of the Persian Nas.ı̄h.at al-mulūk (Counsel
for Kings), attributed to the great Seljuk-era Muslim scholar al-Ghazālı̄
(d. 505/1111), which presents Persian and prophetic history as distinct
but complementary accounts of the past in its treatment of the art of
government.15 Patricia Crone has persuasively argued that while the first
probable that either al-Bı̄rūnı̄ used a source other than the known Syriac chronicles or
the date was corrupted during the transmission process.
11 Al-Bı̄rūnı̄, Chronologie, 102.
12 Ibid.
13 Al-Bı̄rūnı̄’s list is important for the history of Persian epic. On this al-Balkhı̄, see Abolfazl
Khatibi and John Cooper, “Abū ʿAlı̄ Balkhı̄,” in Encyclopaedia Islamica (online ed.;
Leiden: Brill, 2008).
14 Al-Bı̄rūnı̄, Chronologie, 99–100.
15 There is no critical edition of the Nas.ı̄h.a. F. R. C. Bagley has provided what he described
as a provisional English translation based primarily on a Persian edition by Jalāl al-Dı̄n
Humāʾı̄ (Tehran: Majlis, 1315–17 shamsı̄/[1936–9]), to which he gives priority, and
figure 4.1. Ahriman tempts Mishyana. Edinburgh University Library, Special

Collections Department.
part of the Nas.ı̄h.a, “a treatise of the faith,” can safely be attributed to

al-Ghazālı̄, the second part – a Fürstenspiegel (guide for princes) – cannot.
Crone’s argument is based on an examination of the manuscript tradition
as well as a comparison of the two parts, which reveals the second part’s
different outlook, spirit, style, and ways of referring to its author and
reader. As Crone shows, however, the two parts must have been joined
together as early as the second half of the sixth/twelfth century, since
the Arabic translation from that time (al-Tibr al-masbūk fı̄ nas.ı̄h.at al-
mulūk) contains both of them.16 If she is correct (as it seems she is),17 a
forgery nonetheless suggests the contested nature of Iran’s past and the
benefits of attaching ideas about it to a Sunni luminary. At the start of
the second part, the author – for lack of an alternative I will call him
pseudo-Ghazālı̄ – advises his reader that God has honored two classes
of the “sons of Adam” with superiority over the rest of humanity, the
first being prophets and the second being kings. Whereas prophets were
sent to guide men to God, kings were sent to protect men from one
another. To dispute with kings is improper, and to hate them is wrong.18
As Qurʾan 4:59 states: “Obey God and obey the Messenger and those
of you who have authority.” This means that “everybody to whom God
has given religion must therefore love and obey kings and recognize that
their kingship is granted by God, and given by Him to whom He wills.”19
an Arabic edition prepared by H. D. Isaacs (M.A. thesis, University of Manchester,

1956); the first three paragraphs of part 2 (pp. 45–7 in Bagley’s text) are based firstly
on pp. 39–41 of Humāʾı̄’s edition, whereas the portion treating Persian kings – pages
47–53 in Bagley’s text – derives from Isaacs’s text (which is based on a manuscript
held by Oxford’s Bodleian Library). Bagley supplemented Isaac’s text with a Cambridge
Arabic manuscript (Qq. 231); see Ghazālı̄’s Book of Counsel for Kings (Nas.ı̄h.at al-
mulūk) (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), xxvi–xxvii and 47, n. 2, for Bagley’s
explanation of his method. Humāʾı̄ subsequently published a second, revised edition;
Nas.ı̄h.at al-mulūk, 2nd ed. (Tehran: Anjuman-i Āsār-i Millı̄, 1351 shamsı̄/[1972]), 81ff.
for part 2 of the Nas.ı̄h.a (see also 71ff. of his introduction, where he entertains the
question of the second part’s attribution to al-Ghazālı̄).
16 Crone, “Did al-Ghazālı̄ Write a Mirror for Princes? On the Authorship of Nas.ı̄h.at al-
mulūk,” in From Kavād to al-Ghazālı̄: Religion, Law and Political Thought in the Near
East, c.600–c.1100 (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2005), 167–92 (see especially the
chapter’s postscript). Regarding al-Tibr al-masbūk fı̄ nas.ı̄h.at al-mulūk, see the edition of
Muh.ammad Ah.mad Damaj (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-Jāmiʿiyya li-l-Dirāsāt wa-l-Nashr
wa-l-Tawzı̄ʿ, 1987), esp. 171ff. (he relies on different Arabic manuscripts than did
Bagley/Isaacs). Judging by a comparison of Bagley’s text with those of Humāʾı̄ and
Damaj, I believe that the conclusions I draw are reasonable because they pertain to
structure rather than detail.
17 But cf. Naṣr Allāh Pūrjavādı̄, Dū mujaddid: Pazhūhishhā-yi dar bārah-yi Muḥammad
Ghazzālı̄ va Fakhr al-Rāzı̄ (Markaz-i Nashr-i Dānishgāhı̄, 1381/[2002 or 2003]), 414–8.
18 Ghazālı̄’s Book of Counsel, 45; see also Humāʾı̄, Nas.ı̄h.a, 2nd ed., 81–2.
19 Ghazālı̄’s Book of Counsel, 45–6; Humāʾı̄, Nas.ı̄h.a, 2nd ed., 82.
A little further on in his text, pseudo-Ghazālı̄ advises that there are lessons
to be learned from the thousands of years during which the “Magi” ruled,
and he then launches into a more detailed discussion of Persia’s kings.
Adam, the first human, gave birth to two sons, Seth and Gayūmart.
Adam charged Seth with “the preservation of religion and [the affairs of]
the next world,” whereas he charged Gayūmart with the “affairs of this
world and kingship.”20 Pseudo-Ghazālı̄ then enumerates the names of the
Persian kings, beginning with Gayūmart and ending with Yazdagird, the
last Sasanian, and the lengths of their reigns, their qualities, and major
achievements.21 When he has finished with Yazdagird, he states: “After
him there was no other king of their community; the Muslims were
victorious and took kingship out of their hands. Power and dominion
passed to the Muslims, through the benediction of the Prophet.”22
Gayūmart, who once embodied a specifically Zoroastrian, Persian
kingship, thus provides the author a respected point of departure for
history, a history with pedagogical and moral value.23 A generally pos-
itive valuation of this history, and of its continuity with the history of
Islam, is reflected in a Hadith cited by pseudo-Ghazālı̄ toward the start
of the second part of his book, according to which the Prophet recalled
that God instructed the prophet David, himself a king: “O David, tell
your nation not to speak ill of the ʿAjam (ahl-i ʿAjam) for it is they who
developed the universe so that My slaves might live in it.”24 But if in
moral and political terms there is continuity, with the caliphs taking over
from Persia’s kings, the past is otherwise discontinuous, as kingship no
longer belongs to the Magi.
Anthologizing, or preserving Iranian ideas in collections of related
ideas, was perhaps a more common way to give perspective to Persian
views of history. In Chapter 1, I mentioned al-Masʿūdı̄’s reporting on
Persians, Isaac’s children, as an ethnic elect, and I noted that the attempts
he cited were unconvincing at the level of detail and lacked a narrative
to support them. His anthologizing is extensive, perhaps even grasping
all that one could possibly say about the claim. Similarly, but generally
20 Ghazālı̄’s Book of Counsel, 47. Regarding the manuscripts and their treatment of these
sentences and what immediately follows, see also the detailed notes of Humāʾı̄, Nas.ı̄h.a,
2nd ed., 84ff.
21 Ghazālı̄’s Book of Counsel, 47–53; al-Tibr al-masbūk, 175–80.
22 Ghazālı̄’s Book of Counsel, 53; al-Tibr al-masbūk, 180.
23 For the lessons to be learned from the lives of Persia’s kings, see especially the anecdotes
that follow pseudo-Ghazālı̄’s listing of Persia’s kings.
24 Ghazālı̄’s Book of Counsel, 46 and n. 9 on the same page (Bagley translates ʿAjam as
“the people of Persia”); Humāʾı̄, Nas.ı̄h.a, 2nd ed., 82–3.
with less air of controversy, he reports on the world’s peoples, their geog-
raphies, dynastic histories, internal divisions, religions, bits of wisdom,
and the opinions they held on these subjects, including in his purview the
Persians as well as the Chinese, the Turks, the Greeks, the Byzantines,
the Yemenis, the Arabs, and others. He starts his account of Persian dy-
nastic history with Gayūmart, noting that although Persians held many
views on his identity, the bottom line is that he should be considered “the
greatest person of his age,” who summoned the people of that age to
establish kingship, since the masses were given to hating and envying one
another, and to wickedness and enmity. He proceeds to give an account of
“Persia’s first kings” (mulūk al-Furs al-ūlā), their genealogies, the lengths
and chronologies of their reigns, their achievements and inventions,
and their relations with other peoples, especially the Children of Israel.
Throughout one gains a rather generous view into one people’s history
and the narrative elements that supported it. Still, it is a history that
unfolds in a particular time, in a particular place, and in relation to other,
particular peoples. In a word, it is not universal.25
Such anthologizing occurs often, if normally less systematically, across
Arabic historiography when traditionists relate competing views on the
origins of humanity. Its signal characteristic is an apparent detachment
on the traditionists’ part, expressed in the comparative framework into
which Persian history is slotted, citation of sources that do surprisingly
little to support the truthfulness of particular accounts, and occasional
comments indicating the traditionists’ own doubts.
The most emotionally powerful and enduring way to rewrite Persia’s
past as a local one occurs when it is separated out, labeled “Persian”
or, sometimes after the fourth/tenth century in Persian letters, “Iranian,”
and treated as the past of a particular, albeit very special, place. What
Iranians once saw as the account of history becomes their history. The
very effort to translate Pahlavi works into Arabic in late Umayyad and
early ʿAbbasid times already placed Iran’s history in perspective as it was
made available to Muslims at large. Iran’s pre-conquest history appears
notably as the chief subject of five Arabic histories first identified by
Sayyid H . asan Taqı̄zadeh, as well as of the better-known Persian prose
and verse accounts, most famously that of Firdawsı̄.26
25 Al-Masʿūdı̄, Murūj, 1:262–3 (nos. 530–1). See also his Tanbı̄h, 85, and the discussion
of Gayūmart.
26 Regarding the Arabic histories, see Sayyid H
. asan Taqı̄zadeh, “Shāh-nāmah va Firdawsı̄,”
in Hazārah-yi Firdawsı̄ (Tehran: Dunyā-yi Kitāb, 1362 shamsı̄), 43–107 (where his 1920
and 1921 articles on the matter are reprinted); also, V. Minorsky, “The Older Preface
to the Shāh-nāma,” 2:160–2.
The way Firdawsı̄ introduces his work is particularly telling: he refers

to his efforts to recover a body of Persian legend from oblivion. He
describes how he came upon his source material through the assistance
of a dear friend who provided him with a Pahlavi book whose author
had ransacked the earth for legends of ages past.27 He thus asserts the
value of but also the potential loss of and limitations to the knowledge
he relates. Dick Davis has pointed to Firdawsı̄’s employment here of
a topos – the helpful, unnamed friend – and has argued that the poet
was motivated by a need for authentic references that could establish his
own credibility as the best man available to tell Iran’s story at a time
when the new culture of the conquerors seemed to make the survival
of his people’s pre-conquest history doubtful. Davis has also repeated
doubts regarding Firdawsı̄’s employment of a Pahlavi text.28 If Davis is
correct, one can say that citing the unnamed friend and claiming Pahlavi
evidence provided Firdawsı̄ with credentials that showed his account to
be a genuinely Iranian one.
The first pages of the narrative then place Iran and its traditions of
kingship at the center.29 The first human worthy of mention, an Iranian, is
also the world’s first king, Gayūmart, who “invented crown and throne.”
The objectionable details of his birth are omitted, as are his twin offspring.
Siyāmak is presented as his son, with no mention of incest, and the same
goes for Siyāmak’s son Hūshang.30 Gayūmart, who wore leopard skins
and under whom “the arts of life began,” ruled the earth for thirty years
and initiated a line running from his son Siyāmak through the heroes
Jamshı̄d, Farı̄dūn, Manūshihr, and beyond.31
As Firdawsı̄ draws attention to the religious acceptability of his
account – with, for example, statements of praise for Muh.ammad and
ʿAlı̄ and pious declarations about the one true God32 – he also reveals the
27 Abū al-Qāsim Firdawsı̄, Shāh-nāmah, ed. Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh, 8 vols. plus 2 note
vols. (New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 1988–2008), 1:13–14.
28 Davis, “Problem of Ferdowsı̂’s Sources,” 48–51. See Chapter 1 for references to further
works treating Firdawsı̄’s sources.
29 Regarding the Shāh-nāmah’s complex picture of kingship, see esp. the sensitive interpre-
tation of Dick Davis, Epic and Sedition: The Case of Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāmeh (Fayetteville:
University of Arkansas Press, 1992).
30 Firdawsı̄, Shāh-nāmah, 1:21ff.
31 Ibid., 1:21–22; The Sháhnáma of Firdausı́, trans. Arthur George Warner and Edmond
Warner, 9 vols. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1905–25), 1:118–19.
32 Firdawsı̄, Shāh-nāmah, 1:9–11. Regarding Firdawsı̄’s likely Shı̄ʿı̄ orientation, see
Khaleghi-Motlagh, “Ferdowsi, Abuʾl-Qāsem, i. Life,” in EIr. Cf. Nöldeke, Das Ira-
nische Nationalepos, 36–40 (no. 25 in the text).
insufficiency of his account as a world history along Islamic lines. It ne-

glects too much to serve such a purpose, including detailed explanation
of the origins of humanity, all of prophetic history, Arabia’s own his-
tory (treatment of the Yemen notwithstanding), and the lifetimes of the
Prophet and ʿAlı̄.
The sources with which Firdawsı̄ worked may well have viewed their
account as comprehensive. Still, Firdawsı̄ doesn’t show things that way.
Instead, he has nested Iran’s history within a broader, though unexplored
narrative framework that begins with human creation and continues after
the Arab conquests, where his account ends. It is notable that he has
composed his text in such a manner, whatever his choice of material
may have been. While some Zoroastrian ideas may have been carried
over,33 the framework through which they were filtered is important.
The result is the identification of his account as a specifically “Persian” or
even “Iranian” one, given his terminology, within the bounds of Islamic
orthodoxy.34 A Buyid ruler once understandably defined the Shāh-nāmah
as a history of the Persians, versus al-T.abarı̄’s history of Islam.35
In each of these ways, Iran’s history is most often given a positive valu-
ation: as a matter of chronological certainty, for its pedagogical lessons, as
a point of curiosity for filling out the history of the world’s peoples, and/or
as a source of nostalgic pride. At the same time, this history is put into
perspective as that of only a particular people. When inserted into longer
texts, for example, it is accordingly abridged. The result is a diminution
of a universal vision of Iranian, pre-Islamic historiography. With regard
to Gayūmart, memory is reduced to that of kingship, Gayūmart being
the first king, reflecting the widely held view of Iranian prehistory as the
history of royalty. This royal history is contained within, and limited
by, a wider history of humanity, beginning with Adam and ending with
the arrival of Islam – marking the end of Persian history as a separate
point of study. The views represented are labeled Persian, Iranian, or,
often enough, “Magian” or Zoroastrian. Even when the latter descriptor
is used, substantive traces of Zoroastrian belief are erased – Gayūmart’s
33 Including in some form, with regard to creation of the world, in Firdawsı̄’s introduction.
34 Firdawsı̄, Shāh-nāmah, 1:13–14. The term Īrān is employed far more extensively in the
Shāh-nāmah; this is consistent with my point, in the introduction, that the term Īrān
is employed with reference to what, following Nöldeke, Christensen, and Yarshater, is
now commonly labeled Iran’s “national” past; for the scale of usage, see Fritz Wolff,
Glossar zu Firdosis Schahname (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965), and compare “Ērān”
and “Ērānı̄” (pp. 89–91) with “Pārs” and “Pārsı̄” (p. 177).
35 Ibn al-Athı̄r, al-Kāmil fı̄ al-Taʾrı̄kh, 9:261.
case, I propose, being exemplary of traditions as a whole – or, at most,

reported as unbelievable, mythical possibilities.
Making a Muslim Past

In writing about Iran’s earliest history, traditionists had the choice of
where to draw the boundary lines. The previous cases involved a strong
demarcation, distinguishing Iran’s history from others, and so introduc-
ing perspective that allowed readers to view Iranian history from the
outside and promoted awareness of other potentially valid chronologies,
geographical centers, dominant narratives, and lessons to be learned.
Traditionists could also remove such boundary lines, arguing that Per-
sians, as such, had little or no separate past. This occurred most com-
monly when Iran was featured on the wider canvas of Muslim history as
a whole, although it could also happen in other ways that submerged Ira-
nian history. Either way, such narratives emphasize Iran’s involvement in
the dramas of a prophetic past that is shared with other peoples and that
leads directly into a history of Islam and the Muslim community. From
this perspective, the prophetic framework is sufficient for encompassing
the history of Iranians, and knowledge about the latter is accordingly
limited by the scope, literary devices, and arrangement and structure
of the narrative. This could result in extensive omissions as well as the
definition and restriction of themes to those associated with Islam, but
at the same time it could create a vehicle for the surprising survival and
validation of some kinds of historical knowledge, as well as unusual
fusions of vision where traditionists sought to reconcile contradic-
tions.
The best example of this strategy is found in the earliest pages of
Abū H . anı̄fa al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s al-Akhbār al-t.iwāl. The author’s scope here is
limited to a chronology beginning with Adam, in which prophetic his-
tory provides the scaffolding for the histories of other peoples, among
them Arab and Yemeni tribes, Persians (or more precisely, the ʿAjam),
the Children of Israel, Egyptians, Kurds, and Turks. Although told in
unusual ways, the role of antiquity in these first pages is generally to
fill out the prophetic past by supplying further details regarding its key
figures and especially their genealogies, their relations with one another,
their languages, and their geographical settings; by inserting and com-
pletely absorbing episodes from a Persian past into that of the prophets
(and likewise for Yemeni, Arab, and other histories); and by develop-
ing narratives, their motifs, and their morals to illustrate Islamic lessons
about obedience to God, the results of self-aggrandizing and tyrannical

rule, and the moral questionableness of practices such as astrology.36
In genealogical terms, this strategy relies strongly on notions of shared
descent: Persians share the same history as other Muslims because, bio-
logically, they have a respectable share in human origins from Adam.
The same, of course, can be said of the other peoples that al-Dı̄nawarı̄
mentions, such as the Yemenis. Noah and his genealogy play an impor-
tant role in linking Persians to the overall framework: history begins with
Adam, about whom little is said, but it branches out after the Flood,
when Noah’s descendants populate the planet. In these early pages of
al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s book, anyone of note is linked to Noah, with representa-
tives of the various peoples filling each generation of his descendants. In
this scheme, Jamshı̄d – who stays behind in Babylon (ard. Bābil) after
Noah’s children fan out – becomes a grandson of Arpachshad b. Shem
b. Noah, and Noah’s descendants settle Iranian and other regions that
come to carry their names: Khurāsān (Khurāsān b. ʿĀlam), Fārs (Fāris b.
al-Aswar), Byzantium (al-Rūm b. al-Yafar), Armenia (Irmı̄n b. Nawraj),
and Kirmān (Karmān b. Tārah.), as well as the “country of the Hephthal-
ites” (Hayt.al b. ʿĀlam).37 Through the genealogical details al-Dı̄nawarı̄
provides, one can readily see the generations of Noah’s descendants, their
interactions, and their conflicts. For example, he shows that Moses was a
contemporary of the ʿĀdite al-Walı̄d b. Mus.ʿab, the Yemenite al-Milt.āt.,
the Persian Kay Qubādh, and the prophet Shuʿayb.38
While Iranians, and the Sasanians in particular, play a major role
in al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s account as an independent object of knowledge, their
earliest history and its chronologies, genealogies, narratives, and themes
are significantly diminished. Gayūmart is absent. The tale of Persian epic
about Jamshı̄d, al-D . ah.h.āk, and the tyranny suffered by Iran is related
as one of many stories concerning Noah’s descendants. In the story,
Jamshı̄d – the first, after Noah’s son Shem, to consolidate the power of
. ah.h.āk,
rule and to “raise the beacon of kingship” – falls at the hand of al-D
who is identified as a descendant of the Arab branch of ʿĀd, a tribe the
Qurʾan mentions as being destroyed for its rejection of the prophet Hūd,
and whose eponymous ancestor in al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s account was a great-
grandson of Noah.39 Al-Dı̄nawarı̄ relates that after the ʿĀdites multiplied
36 Regarding astrology, see al-Dı̄nawarı̄, al-Akhbār al-t.iwāl, 42.

37 Ibid., 32–3 and 35–6. The names are vocalized following the editor, ʿIs.ām Muh.ammad
. ājj ʿAlı̄.
al-H
38 Ibid., 37 and 47–9.
39 Ibid., 32 and 36.
in the Yemen, they behaved haughtily and insolently like tyrants and were
unruly. The ʿĀdites were ruled by Shadı̄d b. ʿImlı̄q b. ʿĀd b. Aram b. Shem
b. Noah, who dispatched his “nephew” (ibn akhı̄hi) al-D . ah.h.āk b. ʿUlwān
b. ʿImlı̄q b. ʿĀd to Shem’s descendants in Babylon. When al-D . ah.h.āk
arrived, King Jamshı̄d fled from Babylon, but al-D . ah.h.āk pursued him
until he caught him, whereupon al-D . ah.h.āk seized him and killed him with
a saw, gaining mastery over his dominion.40 As al-Dı̄nawarı̄ subsequently
recounts al-D . ah.h.āk’s cruelty to the children of “Arpachshad,” he gives
an unusual version of an etiology common to Persian epic tradition,
explaining the origin of the Kurds among the refugees and thus linking
them as Arpachshad’s children, also, to prophetic history and to Noah.41
The result of al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s approach is the reconfiguration in pecu-
liar ways of assorted Near Eastern materials, including genealogies, nar-
ratives, and their motifs. For a reader familiar with the Bible or with
Firdawsı̄’s Shāh-nāmah, identities are highly confused: the biblical Nim-
rod becomes Farı̄dūn, and his descent from Jamshı̄d is specified along with
his rule over Noah’s descendants, his defeat of al-D . ah.h.āk, and his sub-
sequent reign, during which he (rather than Farı̄dūn as such) parceled out
his territory among his sons, who also ruled over Noah’s descendants.42
The drama spans a similarly perplexing territory, including Arabia, Syria,
Iraq, Babylonia, and Mount Damāwand, and echoes vaguely a variety
of ancient Near Eastern and Iranian legends. One passage of the text
therefore states that after God destroyed the disobedient people of ʿĀd
and their ruler Shaddād (the brother of and successor to Shadı̄d, men-
tioned above), al-D . ah.h.āk’s support became weak, his rule atrophied,
“Arpachshad b. Shem’s descendants” became emboldened against him,
and plague befell his army and those who were with him.43 Al-D . ah.h.āk
went out, seeking aid from his brother Ghānam b. ʿUlwān, whom Shadı̄d
had “made king over the descendants of Japheth.”44 Al-D . ah.h.āk’s sub-
jects, identified again as “Arpachshad b. Shem’s descendants,” seized on
his departure and sent a message to “Nimrod b. Kanʿān b. Jamshı̄d, the
king.”45 Al-Dı̄nawarı̄ continues, including details found in the Persian
epic tradition relating to Farı̄dūn’s and Kāvah’s (rather than Nimrod’s)
conquest of al-D . ah.h.āk, telling his readers that Nimrod and his father
40 Ibid., 36.
41 Ibid., 37–8. Cf. Firdawsı̄, Shāh-nāmah, 1:57.
42 Al-Dı̄nawarı̄, al-Akhbār al-t.iwāl, 39–40, 42, and 44.
43 Ibid., 39.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
were hidden throughout al-D . ah.h.āk’s reign at Mount Damāwand. Nim-

rod came to Arpachshad’s descendants, and they made him king over
them. He then betook himself to Babylonia, where he slew al-D . ah.h.āk’s
supporters and gained mastery over the latter’s dominion. This news
reached al-D . ah.h.āk, who advanced toward his opponents, but Nimrod
overcame him and struck him on the head with an iron rod. Having
heavily wounded him, Nimrod bound him firmly and locked him up in
a cave in Mount Damāwand. Al-Dı̄nawarı̄ concludes the passage on an
upbeat note with the observation that things started then to go well for
Nimrod and the clarification that it is Nimrod whom “the ʿAjam call
Farı̄dūn.”46
Subsequently, al-Dı̄nawarı̄ replaces the world’s division among Noah’s
progeny with a division based on the descendants of Farı̄dūn (Nimrod).
It is Nimrod, rather than Farı̄dūn, his alter ego, who is credited with
fathering Īraj, Salm, and Tūr. Nimrod appointed Salm over “Ham’s de-
scendants” and Tūr over “Japheth’s descendants.” Salm and Tūr envied
their brother Īraj, whom their father assigned authority over them and to
whom he gave his own dominion, since he was younger than they were.
So, according to al-Dı̄nawarı̄, they seized him unawares and killed him.
After this, Nimrod assigned Īraj’s dominion to Manūshihr, Īraj’s son,
and took it away from Salm and Tūr. Then, al-Dı̄nawarı̄ writes, Nimrod
died.47
With origins in the medieval province of Jibāl, it is easy to imagine
al-Dı̄nawarı̄ having access to a wide variety of material from which to
fashion his history, including sources on Nimrod. Dı̄nawar, his home-
town, in which he seems to have spent at least some part of his life, had
strong conquest-era links to Kufa, as well as to other cities within Jibāl,
most notably the commercial center of Hamadhān, also treated in Chap-
ter 1.48 As a whole, Jibāl (which in Arabic signifies “the mountains”) –
including Dı̄nawar as well as Is.fahān, Qum, Hamadhān, and Rayy –
was well-traveled. The major road from Iraq to Khurāsān passed just
46 Ibid., 39–40.
47 Ibid., 44.
48 On al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s little-documented life, see Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ (Irshād al-arı̄b
ilā maʿrifat al-adı̄b), ed. D. S. Margoliouth, 7 vols. (London: Luzac, 1907–13), 1:123–7
(entry for “Ah.mad b. Dāwūd b. Wanand”); Parvaneh Pourshariati, “The Akhbār al-
T. iwāl of Abū H. anı̄fa Dı̄nawarı̄: A Shuʿūbı̄ Treatise on Late Antique Iran,” in Sources
for the History of Sasanian and Post-Sasanian Iran, ed. Rika Gyselen, 201–89 (Leuven:
Peeters, 2010), at 201–8; Charles Pellat, “Dı̄navarı̄, Abū H . anı̄fa Ah.mad,” in EIr; B.
Lewin, “al-Dı̄nawarı̄,” in EI2 .
map 4.1. Jibāl (Media), adapted from Georgette Cornu, Atlas du monde Arabo-
islamique à l’époque classique: IXe –Xe siècles, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983–5),
1:V.
south of Dı̄nawar, which served as a stopping point, and then, crossing

through Hamadhān and Rayy, carried on eastward – skirting mountain
and desert – to Nı̄shāpūr and T.ūs.49
Al-Dı̄nawarı̄ was well respected by his contemporaries in Iraq, and
elements in his biography and book support grouping him with Iraqi
historians of his period.50 But the unusual mixing of identities in this por-
tion of his text suggests the formation of a historical vision not within the
confines of Baghdad but outside of it, namely, along routes such as the
one described above. The biblical Nimrod was known here, but so were
perhaps other remnants of ancient Near Eastern legend, as suggested
49 W. Barthold, An Historical Geography of Iran, trans. Svat Soucek, ed. C. E. Bosworth

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 207–8; Le Strange, Lands of the
Eastern Caliphate, maps 1 and 5; Hugh Kennedy, The Early Abbasid Caliphate: A
Political History (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 26–7.
50 Abū H . ayyān al-Tawh.ı̄dı̄ (d. 414/1023), a man of letters himself, reportedly compared
al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s literary expression and achievements to those of the luminary al-Jāh.iz. and
the geographer and philosopher Abū Zayd al-Balkhı̄ (d. 322/934); quoted by Yāqūt,
Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, 1:123–7. See also Lewin, “al-Dı̄nawarı̄,” in EI2 .
by Nimrod’s descent in al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s account from Shem, rather than

from Ham as in the Bible.51 Many sites in Iraq and Jibāl already had
their own associations with the most antique periods of history, reflect-
ing centuries of local knowledge about major biblical and Persian epic
figures. This knowledge was atomistically captured in works of geography
and their reports on pre-Islamic associations. Read together, the books
present possibilities, for example, relating to the episode in the Qurʾan in
which Abraham is saved from a fire (Qurʾan 21:51–70). It was in Bābil
(Babylon), in Iraq – a Canaanite city – that Abraham was thrown into the
fire. Other suggested locations were on a hill, near Abarqwayh in Fārs, or
perhaps in the town of Kūthā Rabbā, in the vicinity of al-Madāʾin (Ibn
52
H. awqal, fl. fourth/tenth century, seems to favor the city of Bābil).
Why has al-Dı̄nawarı̄ composed his account in this way? The answer
likely lies, first, in a moralizing appeal to an Iranian Muslim audience
that stakes out through narrative means two possible types of rulership
and, more broadly, two ways of being in the world: one of obedience to
God and the other of disobedience. Iran’s rulers and Iranians collectively
have abided both ways, with the implication that both possibilities remain
open. The potential for obedience is demonstrated by the strong leader-
ship of Jamshı̄d. The negative potential is demonstrated by Nimrod, who
behaved poorly toward the end of his life, his crime apparently being that
he became devoted to astrology and brought astrologers from the far ends
of the earth, rewarding them with wealth.53 It is also demonstrated by
Nebuchadnezzar, who is given a Persian genealogy among the mythical
Kayanids. It was Nebuchadnezzar who undid all of the great deeds of
King Solomon, a true supporter of monotheism, who ruled throughout
the lands of Shem’s descendants, including in Iraq and Khurāsān, and
who completed the “mosque” begun by his father, David, in Jerusalem.54
51 See Genesis 10:6–8 and 1 Chronicles 1:8–10. On the legends and their ancient and post-
biblical contexts, see esp. Yigal Levin, “Nimrod the Mighty, King of Kish, King of Sumer
and Akkad,” Vetus Testamentum 52, no. 3 (2002): esp. 354–6; K. van der Toorn and
P. W. van der Horst, “Nimrod before and after the Bible,” Harvard Theological Review
83, no. 1 (1990): 1–29.
52 Ibn H. awqal, Kitāb S.ūrat al-ard. (Beirut: Dār Maktabat al-H
. ayā, 1979), 219 and 259–
60. For consideration of other narratives about Nimrod and the relation between Jewish
and Muslim traditions (without, however, taking al-Dı̄nawarı̄ into account), see Shari
L. Lowin, “Narratives of Villainy: Titus, Nebuchadnezzar, and Nimrod in the H . adı̄th
and Midrash Aggadah,” in The Lineaments of Islam: Studies in Honor of Fred McGraw
Donner, ed. Paul M. Cobb, 261–96 (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
54 Ibid., 60.
After building the mosque, Solomon visited the Kaʿba in Mecca, where he
circumambulated the Kaʿba, clothed it with the traditional cloth known
as the kiswā, sacrificed at it, and remained there for seven days.55 But
Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the mosque (i.e., temple) of Jerusalem, as “he
raised his sword against the Children of Israel, took captive the sons of
its kings and its great men, and tore down the city of Jerusalem.” In his
conquest, “he did not leave a house standing, took to pieces the mosque,
and carried away its gold, silver, and jewels, and likewise the throne of
Solomon.”56
Al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s identification of Nebuchadnezzar as being of Persian
origin is remarkable, not least because the biblical figure has been traced
in modern scholarship to Babylonia of the late seventh/early sixth century
BCE (r. 605–562) and identified as the second Chaldean dynast. Far from
being Persian, the Chaldean dynasty perished in the second half of the
sixth century BCE with the success of an up-and-coming rival, Achae-
menid Persia. Moreover, whereas in the biblical story (2 Chronicles) one
sees God punish the Israelites, a rebellious people, through Nebuchad-
nezzar, al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s Israelites are innocent victims of a military official
in the service of a tyrant. Here, as on many other occasions, al-Dı̄nawarı̄
compresses the generations, since – unlike in the biblical tradition – the
events in question are but one generation removed from Solomon him-
self. Al-Dı̄nawarı̄ thus draws the contrast all the more sharply between
righteous Solomon and the Persians, including Nebuchadnezzar.57
Al-Dı̄nawarı̄ develops this theme of disobedience to and falling away
from God throughout his sections on pre-Islamic history, including in
his depiction of the foundations of Zoroastrianism as representing a fun-
damental break with monotheism that ruined Iran’s ancient ties to true
religion. As patrons, Iran’s kings are blamed. Employing phrasing that
is common to prophetic history and that supports the narrative’s cri-
tique of Zoroastrianism as a whole, al-Dı̄nawarı̄ tells the story of how
Zoroaster, the “leader of the Magi” (s.āh.ib al-Majūs), came to a Kayanid
king, Bishtāsif, as a true heretic, proclaiming, “I am the messenger of God
[sent] to you (innı̄ rasūl Allāh ilayka),” and bringing Bishtāsif “the book
(al-kitāb), which is [still] in the hands of the Magi,” that is, the Avesta.58
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid., 63–4.
57 Al-Dı̄nawarı̄ shares this Persian and Kayanid identification of Nebuchadnezzar with
other Muslim sources, including al-T.abarı̄.
Bishtāsif believed in him (āmana lahu), followed the religion of the Magi,
and brought the people of his kingdom to it, willingly or not. Bishtāsif’s
governor over Sijistān and Khurāsān, the legendary noble warrior Rustam
al-Shadı̄d, was a fellow Kayanid and lamented Bishtāsif’s conversion: “He
left the religion of our fathers, which they inherited the last from the first,
and yearned for a newly created religion.”59 In the events that followed,
Iranians fought among themselves. A grandson of Bishtāsif by the name
of Bahmān, who was married to a descendant of David, “entered into the
religion of the Children of Israel”; he led an effort to rebuild Jerusalem
and returned the throne of Solomon to the city.60 Bahmān’s reversion to
Zoroastrianism afterward, however, speaks volumes about Iran’s poten-
tial for reversion, as he married his own daughter, Khumānı̄, who became
pregnant with a child prior to his death.61
It is also worth noting that al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s approach diminishes doubts
regarding the legitimacy of the extensive material he covers afterward
in the Akhbār, especially regarding the Sasanians. In these later pages,
he draws on an extensive corpus of Iranian historiography regarding the
regime and its rulers, suggesting familiarity with a version of the Xwadāy-
nāmag and Sasanian historiography. This focus on kingship might lead
one to read the pre-Islamic sections of al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s material, as a whole,
as a work primarily on kingship and politics. But while al-Dı̄nawarı̄ does
have a lot to say about these matters, the pre-Islamic sections are not of
one cloth, and were it not for the text’s first pages, his treatment of the
Sasanians might raise greater doubts about his own loyalties. Sasanian
historiography becomes more respectable, in other words, through careful
pruning and manipulation of its own mythic accounts of origins and
frank admissions of the errors of its forebears. The anxiety he likely
feels toward the pre-Islamic legends of Sasanian Iran comes through in
a story he relates much further on in his narrative, in which a spy for
the Sasanian king, Khusraw Parvı̄z, witnesses the rebel Bahrām Chūbı̄n
reading the book of animal fables known as Kalı̄la wa-Dimna. The king
states that he was not afraid of Bahrām until he heard about his devotion
to this book, since the guidance of Kalı̄la wa-Dimna could make a man
like Bahrām clever and dangerous.62
59 Ibid., 66.
60 Ibid., 68.
61 Ibid., 68–9.
62 Ibid., 136–7.
Through his insertion of Iranian figures onto the canvas of prophetic

history, al-Dı̄nawarı̄ therefore fashions a narrative in which local heroes
and villains are just so many figures in a drama common to all Muslims.
Iranians are not authochthons, but rather one branch of a human fam-
ily whose earliest history was determined by major events, including the
Flood, the dispersal and intermingling of the world’s peoples, and the peri-
odic appearance of true religion and righteous government. All peoples
are on the move in this fast-paced account, which, although told from “an
Iranian point of view,”63 does not see Iran in its own, independent terms,
nor present it in a nostalgic or uncritical way. Denying the specificity of
an Iranian history in these ways serves forgetfulness well. By making his
readers forget for the moment that their history and interests were once
distinct from those of other Muslims, al-Dı̄nawarı̄ urges conformity in
the realm of religious practice and obedience to a single God.
Justifying the Manipulation of History

Rewriting Iran’s past as Muslim history naturally brought traditionists
into conflict with those of their sources whose original authors had no
knowledge of Islam. A work of uncertain authorship, the Nihāyat al-
arab fı̄ akhbār al-Furs wa-l-ʿArab, exemplifies this conflict at work. It
also exemplifies, through its rationalization of its authorship, a tendency,
discussed in the first chapters of this book, to heavily filter Iran’s history
and to give pride of place to Iraqi authorities and their interpretations of
Iran’s history.
Mario Grignaschi, who studied the Nihāya extensively, dated it to the
third/ninth century, after the lifetime of its supposed author, al-As.maʿı̄
(d. 213/828). Grignaschi believed that its real author used a source shared
by al-Dı̄nawarı̄.64 He was neither the first nor the last to question the
origins of the Nihāya.65 The text itself claims origins in the reign of Hārūn
al-Rashı̄d (170–93/786–809) from materials of even older provenance
63 Lewin, “al-Dı̄nawarı̄,” in EI2 .

64 Mario Grignaschi, “La Nihāyatu-l-ʾArab fı̄ Aḫbāri-l-Furs wa-l-ʿArab,” pt. 1, Bulletin
d’études orientales 22 (1969): 15–67; also, “La Nihāyatu-l-ʾArab fı̄ Aḫbāri-l-Furs wa-l-
ʿArab et les Siyaru Mulūki-l-ʿAǧam du Ps. Ibn-al-Muqaffaʿ,” Bulletin d’études orientales
26 (1973): 83–184.
65 Theodor Nöldeke believed it to be a poorly executed recension of al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s Akhbār;
Geschichte der Perser und Araber, 475–6. See also Browne, “Niháyatu’l-irab”; Franz
Rosenthal, “From Arabic Books and Manuscripts I: Pseudo-As.maʿı̂ on the Pre-Islamic
Arab Kings,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 69, no. 2 (1949): 90–1; and
Muh.ammad Javād Mashkūr, Tārı̄kh-i siyāsı̄-yi Sāsāniyān (Tehran: Dunyā-yi Kitāb,
1987), 21.
dating to the days of ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 65–86/685–705). Al-As.maʿı̄ is

made to explain that he used to entertain Hārūn with accounts of past
nations and ages. One night, the caliph expressed a desire to see a copy
of a book, the Siyar al-mulūk; it was brought to him, and al-As.maʿı̄ read
out loud to him the first six sections, which began with Noah’s son Shem.
Unsatisfied, Hārūn sent al-As.maʿı̄ off with the following instructions:
O As.maʿı̄, see what was before Shem the son of Noah by way of legends and
events, and set them in their right order, and make mention therein of all such
as ruled from the time of Adam until it came to Shem the son of Noah, which
is the beginning of this book as it is [here] written, king by king and episode by
episode.66
Al-As.maʿı̄ dutifully visited the jurisconsultant Abū al-Bakhtarı̄ and

through him received a copy of Ibn Ish.āq’s Kitāb al-Mubtadaʿ, that is,
the first part of his biography of Muh.ammad, covering the beginnings of
pre-Islamic prophetic history.67 Al-As.maʿı̄ explains that he then wrote a
book using the Kitāb al-Mubtadaʿ as a source for all events prior to and
including Noah’s death:
[The material concerning Adam, Seth, Enoch (Idrı̄s), Noah, and the Flood] was
added at the beginning of the Siyar al-mulūk . . . and we kept it separate therefrom
and constituted it as an introduction to that book (it comprising some ten leaves),
in such a way that the two form a continuous narrative.68
Subsequently, two figures of Umayyad times – ʿĀmir al-Shaʿbı̄ and Ayyūb

b. al-Qirriyya – are identified as the authors of the Siyar al-mulūk portion
of the Nihāya, with the explanation that they completed their work under
the supervision of ʿAbd al-Malik in the year 85 of the hijra (704 CE) with
the aid of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, who is identified as “one of the ulama of the
ʿAjam [Persians] who knew the histories of their kings (siyar mulūkihim),
and was profoundly versed in the knowledge of their affairs, the fruits of
their culture, and the most signal achievements of their wisdom.”69
66 Al-As.maʿı̄ [attr.], Nihāyat al-arab fı̄ akhbār al-Furs wa-l-ʿArab, ed. Muḥammad Taqı̄
Dānish-Pazhūh (Tehran: Anjuman-i Āsār va Mafākhir-i Farhangı̄, 1996), 1; Browne,
“Niháyatu’l-irab,” 197.
67 Gordon Darnell Newby has sought, somewhat controversially, to reconstruct this part of
Ibn Ish.āq’s work using quotations in later sources; see The Making of the Last Prophet:
A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad (Columbia: University of
South Carolina Press, 1989); cf. Lawrence I. Conrad, “Recovering Lost Texts: Some
Methodological Issues,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 113, no. 2 (1993):
258–63.
68 Nihāya, 2; also, Browne, “Niháyatu’l-irab,” 198.
69 Nihāya, 16–17; Browne, “Niháyatu’l-irab,” 199–200.
In this convoluted story, al-As.maʿı̄ maintains that Persian history

could be inserted into prophetic history while remaining intact as a non-
conflictual account. Nonetheless, we have knowledge of Persian history
only indirectly, through multiple mediators vetting it along the way: Ibn
al-Muqaffaʿ, ʿĀmir al-Shaʿbı̄ and Ayyūb b. al-Qirriyya, al-As.maʿı̄, and
finally the Nihāya, the finished product. We are asked to believe that a
book treating Sasanian era historiography – the term siyar al-mulūk here
and generally having such associations – began with Noah’s son Shem –
in other words, that prophetic history was part of Persian history before
Islam. Never mind that Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ thrived a half-century after ʿAbd
al-Malik and so could not have served as a consultant to the caliph.70
However implausible in hindsight, the work’s author must have sup-
posed that his account was believable enough and likewise that he had
explained the provenance of his material in a way that would satisfy his
readers. Hārūn al-Rashı̄d’s role is vaguely reminiscent of his role in the
Arabian Nights, suggesting another dimension to the work and, together
with its anachronism, the possibility that it represented a more “popular”
sort of text than al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s Akhbār, aimed at a learned public less
hung up on the strictures of dating but impressed by the lineage that the
author cites as well as, he must have hoped, the contents of the book itself.
In any case, what one sees here are different phases of writing collapsed
and, likewise, the downplaying of difference, as Iran’s pre-Islamic heri-
tage became part of a Muslim past – a development more probable in the
third/ninth century or later than in the first or second/seventh or eighth.
Raising Doubts about the Past

The previous two strategies involved attempts to place the Iranian past
within larger frameworks or to reformulate it in ways that diminish its
significance as an independent focus of loyalty. The heritage of kingship
receives special attention: kings and their dramas define the arc of history
and link it to the emergence of Zoroastrianism, which was supported
by royal patronage. Yet even when they are unsympathetic, traditionists
using these strategies address Iranian history in ways that acknowledge
local knowledge, even if it must be represented as having been vetted by
the caliph in Baghdad.
Nevertheless, there are also many traditions that reflect less engage-
ment with and respect for Iran’s past, projecting instead a wholesale
70 As noted by Browne, “Niháyatu’l-irab,” 200.

distrust of its legacy, particularly with regard to kingship. These challenge

the moral bases of royal authority, which are presented as being at odds
with those of the caliphs and Islam. They also address the foundations and
practices of Zoroastrianism in terms that present little or nothing of this
heritage as salvageable. In this type of “genealogical thinking,” antique
periods of history become a canvas for expressing concerns about the
past, gratitude for its finitude, and a wish to banish it and the examples
it provides from memory.
Returning to Gayūmart, for example, one sees anxieties expressed
in traditions that depict him as a morally corrupt forefather who, while
responsible for actions typical of world-ruling kings, namely, constructing
cities and protecting their populations, fell away from virtue and obedi-
ence to God. In one tradition that al-T.abarı̄ attributes to non-Persians,
this theme is developed by means of an explanation for how Persians
could possibly think that Gayūmart had originated humanity when he
was father only to the Persians themselves. By this account, Gayūmart
first took control of the mountains of T.abaristān and ruled there and in
Fārs; subsequently, his power grew, and he commanded his children to
take control of Babylon. For various (brief) periods, they ruled over all of
the regions of the earth. Gayūmart built cities and castles, populated them,
and made them prosperous. He also assembled weapons and established a
cavalry. At the end of his life, however, Gayūmart behaved haughtily and
pretended to be Adam, saying: “If someone calls me by any other name, I
shall cut off his head.”71 Also according to al-T.abarı̄’s sources, Gayūmart
married thirty women who produced many offspring, among them his son
Mārı̄ and daughter Māriyāna, parents to Persia’s later kings. The upshot
of the story, reflecting cynical appraisals of Zoroastrian cosmogony, is
that Persia’s kings came into the world through a delusional and corrupt
father.72
This case is indicative of wider efforts by traditionists to write over
Persia’s past by embedding in their narratives negative associations
and incriminating details, along with labels, iconic images, homolo-
gies, and other devices that represented Iran’s past as potentially deeply
antagonistic to Islam. Versions of such traditions circulated widely,
crossing genres and geography, becoming cultural knowledge that was
71 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:147–8; History of al-T

. abarı̄, 1:318–19.
72 Al-T.abarı̄ states that non-Persian scholars believe that Gayūmart was not Adam, but
rather Gomer b. Japheth b. Noah; ibid. Compare a similar passage cited by al-Bı̄rūnı̄
(not discussed above): al-Bı̄rūnı̄, Chronologie, 24.
continuously reproduced, even if an individual traditionist transmitting

such reports had other narrative goals in mind.
Two further examples demonstrate the ways in which negative asso-
ciations and incriminating details were passed on by traditionists even
though they were, in hindsight, ridiculous. They illustrate the deep and
pervasive distrust in some quarters of Iran’s past and particularly its royal
and Zoroastrian heritage.
In the first case, the Qurʾan’s “Pharaoh” was identified as a Persian.
This identification, made by Qurʾan exegetes, reflects how such traditions
could originate and be deemed just credible enough to be passed on. It also
suggests the special capacity of Qurʾan commentary, with its atomistic
structure, to preserve and pass on insinuations.
Exegetes ostensibly addressed the following questions: who was the
Pharaoh mentioned by the Qurʾan and who were his people? Especially
important passages regarding Pharaoh and his family are found in Qurʾan
28. Here the term Pharaoh (firʿawn) occurs in reference to the opponent
of Moses and the Children of Israel. In Qurʾan 28:7–8, it is the family
of Pharaoh (āl firʿawn) that takes in Moses, after his mother, at God’s
command, puts him out. In Qurʾan 28:15, Moses enters an unnamed city
and finds two people fighting, one from his own party (shı̄ʿatihi) and the
other from his enemies. The man from his party appeals to Moses for help
against his opponent. The Qurʾan states that Moses struck the opponent
and made an end of him. Then he (Moses) said: “This is of Satan’s doing.
He is an enemy who clearly leads astray.”73
The twenty-eighth chapter of the Qurʾan does not specify Egypt (Mis.r)
as the location of Pharaoh but otherwise reflects Jewish and Chris-
tian traditions regarding Moses and Pharaoh and their biblical Egyptian
context.74 Most exegetes have placed the chapter in an Egyptian context
and identified Moses’s enemies within it. For example, Qurʾan 28:5–
6 states: “We wished to show favor to those who had been treated as
weaklings in the land, and to make them examples and to make them the
inheritors, and to give them a place in the land, and to show Pharaoh
and Hāmān and their hosts what they feared from them.” Muqātil
73 Regarding Pharaoh in the Qurʾan, see Reuven Firestone, “Pharaoh,” in Encyclopaedia

of the Qurʾān, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, 6 vols., 4:66–8 (Leiden: Brill, 2001–6).
74 Elsewhere in the Qurʾan, the association of Pharaoh with Egypt is strong; see esp.
Qurʾan 10:87–8 and 43:51. See also A. J. Wensinck and G. Vajda (“Firʿawn,” in EI2 ),
who treat this idea of Persian origins as “isolated,” even though the sources would
suggest it circulated more widely than one might expect, in good measure because of the
general strength of the commentarial traditions of Mujāhid and al-T.abarı̄.
b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767) explained that “the land” in the passage refers
to “the land of Egypt,” whereas “their hosts” refers to “the Copts.” The
Copts were taking precautions because the soothsayers (kāhins) had told
Pharaoh that in that year, a child from the Children of Israel would be
born who would later destroy him.75
As early as the end of the first Islamic century, Mujāhid b. Jabr al-
Makkı̄ (d. between 100/718 and 104/722), in commenting on Qurʾan
28:15, identified the party of Moses (shı̄ʿatihi) as the Children of Israel.
Unlike Muqātil, he does not directly identify the opponent, instead offer-
ing the information that “Pharaoh was from Is.t.akhr in Fārs.” Mujāhid’s
statement is known from a recension of his commentary edited by ʿAbd
al-Rah.mān al-T.āhir b. Muh.ammad al-Sūratı̄ (the origins of this recen-
sion have been debated extensively by modern scholars, who view it as
an important case study regarding the possibilities for dating the develop-
ment of early Muslim tradition).76 Mujāhid’s statement is also recorded
by al-T.abarı̄, who treats it as a possibility but gives preference in his
commentary to other traditions that situate Pharaoh in Egypt. Al-T.abarı̄
reproduces Mujāhid’s statement, wa-kāna firʿawn min Fāris min Is..takhr,
75 Regarding Qurʾan 28:15, Muqātil identifies the two fighters as unbelievers, with the
party of Moses referring to the Children of Israel and the enemies to the Copts (al-
Qibt.); Tafsı̄r, ed. ʿAbd Allāh Mah.mūd Shih.āta, 5 vols. ([Cairo]: al-Hayʾa al-Mis.riyya
al-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitab, 1979–89), 3:335–6. Regarding the dating of his tafsı̄r, see esp. M.
Plessner and A. Rippin, “Muk.ātil b. Sulaymān,” in EI2 .
76 The chain of authorities for this report is as follows: ʿAbd al-Rah.mān – Ibrāhı̄m – Ādam
[b. Abı̄ Iyās] (d. 220 or 221/835–7) – Warqāʾ – Ibn Abı̄ Najı̄h. (d. 130 or 131/747–
9) – Mujāhid. Tafsı̄r Mujāhid, ed. ʿAbd al-Rah.mān al-T.āhir b. Muh.ammad al-Sūratı̄
(Doha: Mat.ābiʿ al-Dawh.a al-H . adı̄tha, 1976), 482, on Qurʾan 28:15. For the debate,
see esp. Georg Stauth, “Die Überlieferung des Korankommentars Muǧāhid b. Ǧabrs:
Zur Frage der Rekonstruktion der in den Sammelwerken des 3. Jh. d. H. benutzten
frühislamischen Quellenwerke” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Giessen, 1969); Fred Leemhuis,
“Ms. 1075 Tafsı̄r of the Cairene Dār al-Kutub and Muǧāhid’s Tafsı̄r,” in Proceedings
of the Ninth Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants (Amster-
dam, Sept. 1–7, 1978), ed. Rudolph Peters, 169–77 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981), and the
notes therein (including on p. 171, pertaining to the chain of authorities I cite here),
and by the same author, “Origins and Early Development of the Tafsı̄r Tradition,” in
Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qurʾān, ed. Andrew Rippin,
13–30 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988); Herbert Berg, The Development of Exegesis in Early
Islam: The Authenticity of Muslim Literature from the Formative Period (Richmond:
Curzon, 2000), esp. 73–8 and 115–18, as well as “Competing Paradigms in the Study
of Islamic Origins: Qurʾān 15:89–91 and the Value of Isnāds,” in Method and Theory
in the Study of Islamic Origins, ed. Berg, 259–90 (Leiden: Brill, 2003); and Harald
Motzki with Nicolet Boekhoff-Van Der Voort and Sean W. Anthony, Analysing Muslim
Traditions: Studies in Legal, Exegetical and Maghāzı̄ H . adı̄th (Leiden: Brill, 2010), esp.
249–53.
verbatim, but not his authorities; he knows the first transmitters from
Mujāhid but credits different traditionists afterward. This is interesting
insofar as it suggests the likelihood that the tradition was picked up by
different transmitters of Mujāhid’s work.77 In other words, it had a cer-
tain currency among Qurʾan exegetes, who, as current research broadly
suggests, had at least some latitude to pick and choose from Mujāhid’s
corpus.
The significance of the Persian identification of Pharaoh lies in his
association with all manner of corruptness, an idea that has long and
enduring roots among Muslims. In Iran, when in 1971 ʿAlı̄ Sharı̄ʿatı̄
wished to insult the last Shah of Iran, he labeled him a pharaoh; Sayyid
Qutb (d. 1966) did likewise for Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser.
In the revolution of 2011 in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak’s regime was
labeled a “pharaonic dictatorship” by the opposition figure Mohamad
al-Baradei.78 The identification of Pharaoh as a Persian makes Persia into
the sort of place that could produce a Pharaoh, and it also insinuates a
link between Iran’s ancient rulers and the ruling house of Pharaoh, the
choice of Is.t.akhr being significant as both the Sasanian homeland and a
historic center of Zoroastrianism. It was the fire of Is.t.akhr that was said
to have died out for the first time in a thousand years on the night of
Muh.ammad’s birth. Pharaoh, an opponent of monotheism, would then
hail from a city widely known to have historic associations with Iran’s
last ruling dynasty and with Zoroastrianism as well.79
Mujāhid’s tradition traveled widely. It was displaced from the Qurʾan
verse it originally explained, disconnected from Mujāhid as the source
to whom it was credited, and joined together with other traditions that
originally contradicted it. Whereas in al-T.abarı̄’s text it is presented as a
77 Muh.ammad b. ʿAmr – Abū ʿĀs.im – ʿĪsā – al-H . asan – Warqāʿ (jamı̄ʿan) –

. ārith – al-H
Ibn Abı̄ Najı̄h. – Mujāhid; al-T.abarı̄, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwı̄l āy al-Qurʾān, ed. Ah.mad
ʿAbd al-Rāziq al-Bakrı̄ et al., 10 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-Salām, 2007), 8:6359 (on Qurʾan
28:15).
78 See “Elbaradei urges Mubarak to quit,” al-Jazeera, Jan. 29, 2011; http://www.aljazeera
.com/news/middleeast/2011/01/2011129192633542354.html.
79 Regarding Pharaonic Egypt and its complex legacy, much has been said; see esp. Ulrich
Haarmann, “Regional Sentiment in Medieval Islamic Egypt,” Bulletin of the School
of Oriental and African Studies 43, no. 1 (1980): 55–66, and his “Medieval Muslim
Perceptions of Pharaonic Egypt,” in Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms,
ed. Antonio Loprieno, 605–27 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996); Michael Cook, “Pharaonic
History in Medieval Egypt,” Studia Islamica, no. 57 (1983): 67–103, and the Ph.D.
dissertation of Mark Fraser Pettigrew, “The Wonders of the Ancients: Arab-Islamic
Representations of Ancient Egypt” (University of California, Berkeley, 2004).
marginal possibility, for at least some exegetes it came to have a respect-

ed status as a variant opinion or even as the only information offered.80
In the fifth/eleventh century, al-Māwardı̄ (d. 450/1058), while discuss-
ing a reference to Pharaoh in Qurʾan 50:13, rather neutrally states that
there was a difference of opinion as to who Pharaoh was, and he gives
Mujāhid’s view first.81 Ibn Kathı̄r (d. 774/1373) – admittedly beyond
the purview of my time period – reports amid an explanation of Qurʾan
2:49–5082 that Pharaoh was from Is.t.akhr, and he offers two genealogies
for, as he puts it, “Pharaoh, who was in the time of Moses”: either he
was al-Walı̄d b. Mus.ʿab b. al-Rayyān, or he was Mus.ʿab b. al-Rayyān
himself. Either way, he was a descendant of Noah through ʿImlı̄q b. Lud
b. Aram b. Shem, and his roots were Persian from Is.t.akhr (as.luhu Fārisı̄
min Is..takhr).83
Ancient history generally allowed far greater liberties for invention
than the history of, for example, the early Muslim community. Qurʾan
commentaries could provide a particularly good vehicle for passing on
such views, since traditionists had the burden of searching for details
that could shed light on the allusive history related by the Qurʾan, and
they had recourse to a body of shared tradition that was frequently
recycled. Their labors were circumscribed by the many and rigorous
demands of their genre, whose typically atomistic structure, in which
each verse is explained in turn, could result in an equally atomistic
presentation of historical knowledge. Although the narratives in histo-
ries are also often fragmented by citations of sources, their chronolo-
gical structure arguably puts greater emphasis on narrative consistency,
and therefore plausibility, than do the commentaries.84 By comparison,
. ātim cites Mujāhid for Pharaoh’s origins in Is.t.akhr in Tafsı̄r al-Qurʾān

80 E.g., Ibn Abı̄ H
al-ʿaz.ı̄m: Musnadan ʿan al-Rasūl Allāh wa-l-s.ah.āba wa-l-tābiʿı̄n, 14 vols. (Sidon and
Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAs.riyya, 2003), 5:1531 (no. 8787, on Qurʾan 7:103), 1537 (no.
8813, on Qurʾan 7:121–2), 6:1972–3 (no. 10504, on Qurʾan 10:75), and 2080 (no.
11189, on Qurʾan 11:97); but see also 9:2953–5 (on Qurʾan 28:15).
81 Al-Māwardı̄, al-Nukat wa-l-ʿuyūn: Tafsı̄r al-Māwardı̄, ed. Khid.r Muh.ammad Khid.r,
4 vols. (Kuwait: Wizārat al-Awqāf wa-l-Shuʾūn al-Islāmiyya, 1982), 4:83 (on Qurʾan
50:13).
82 Qurʾan 2:49–50: “And [recall] when We delivered you from the family of Pharaoh who
were afflicting you with evil torment, slaughtering your sons, but sparing your women.
In that there was a great trial for you from your Lord; And when We divided the sea for
you and saved you and drowned the family of Pharaoh as you watched.”
83 Ibn Kathı̄r, Tafsı̄r al-Qurʾān al-ʿaz.ı̄m, 7 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Andalus, 1966), 1:157.
84 See the critique of al-Maqdisı̄ (fl. 355/966), al-Badʾ wa-l-taʾrı̄kh, ed. and trans. Clément
Huart, 6 vols. (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1899–1919; repr., without the translation, Baghdad:
Maktabat al-Muthannā, n.d.), 3:81–2.
with a less focused narrative thread, exegetes could – arguably – introduce

new material more freely.85
In its association of Pharaoh with Persia, the tradition reflects gen-
eral distrust of Iran’s heritage of kingship. Ibn Kathı̄r indiscriminately
casts doubt on the heritage of all Persians when he declares Pharaoh
to have Persian origins. There is also a way in which particular Ira-
nian cities are assigned a negative heritage. For example, one can read
in this light the commentary of al-Samʿānı̄ (d. 489/1096), who, in the
fifth/eleventh century, chose to cite an unspecified “some of them” (ʿan
baʿd.ihim, or “one of them”) as the source for his assertion that Pharaoh
came from Is.t.akhr. Similarly, other traditions put forward Is.fahān or
Hamadhān as Pharaoh’s home.86 The tradition was also helpful to Egyp-
tians. As Ulrich Haarmann has noted, the Qurʾanic Pharaoh represent-
ed the epitome of tyranny and disbelief, and this posed a problem for
Egyptians, requiring strategies to salvage Egyptian regional pride. And
so a host of antique Egyptian virtues (fad.āʾil) were elaborated, monothe-
istic sites such as Joseph’s prison and granary and Jacob’s mosque were
identified, and Pharaoh and his line were even given Iranian, not Egyp-
tian, origins. Haarmann surmises: “One cannot help suspecting a certain
envy directed towards the lucky Iranians who had so much less diffi-
culty in accommodating their own past within the framework of Islamic
doctrine.”87
Contra Haarmann, while the Qurʾan may not have singled out Kisrā as
it did Pharaoh, Iran’s past clearly vexed traditionists, as is also evident in
a second case, in which they passed on negative associations in a fantasy
that associated Zoroastrian fire worship to murder, jealousy, and the
occult. In this case, an incriminating detail gained a foothold in prophetic
history, as featured in Qurʾan commentaries, because it helped to explain
a common theme, that of Adam’s sons and their sacrifices, and drew
a connection between a narrative element in it – sacrificial fire – and
Zoroastrian practice. It was presented as simply one of many details
85 Such innovations might be noticed by specialists in tafsı̄r, but once they entered the body
of exegetical works, they would have staying power; see Walid A. Saleh’s discussion of
the “genealogical” character of Qurʾan commentary in The Formation of the Classical
Tafsı̄r Tradition: The Qurʾān Commentary of al-Thaʿlabı̄ (d. 427/1035) (Leiden: Brill,
2004), esp. 14–16.
86 Mans.ūr b. Muh.ammad al-Samʿānı̄, Tafsı̄r al-Qurʾān, ed. Abū Tamı̄m Yāsir b. Ibrāhı̄m
and Abū Bilāl Ghanı̄m b. ʿAbbās b. Ghanı̄m, 6 vols. (Riyadh: Dār al-Wat.an, 1997),
5:237–8 (on Qurʾan 50:13) and 6:150 (on 79:17–24).
87 Haarmann, “Regional Sentiment,” esp. 56–7.
clarifying ambiguous points in prophetic history, connecting elements

within it, and otherwise producing narrative unity and coherence.
Adam’s son Cain is known by Muslims to have been the first to commit
murder. The Qurʾan refers to the two sons of Adam, their sacrifices,
and God’s acceptance of only one sacrifice. The text joins the two sons’
sacrifices to the murder of one son by the other, without naming either
son, spelling out precisely the relationship between the sacrifice and the
murder, or specifying who murdered whom.88 Traditionists filled out the
narrative: Cain committed the murder out of jealousy for the success of
Abel. Some then extended the story, making Cain the first to worship fire
after his sacrifice failed. According to one report cited by al-T.abarı̄ in his
Taʾrı̄kh, after Cain killed Abel, he fled to the Yemen. Iblı̄s came to him
there and explained that Abel’s sacrifice had been consumed by the fire
because Abel had worshipped and ministered to it. He then instructed
Cain to set up a fire for himself and his progeny, which Cain did, building
a fire temple (bayt nār), and so Cain “was the first to set up and worship
it.”89 Ah.mad b. Muh.ammad al-Thaʿlabı̄ (d. 427/1035) furnishes another
story according to which a blind son of Cain pelted Cain with a stone,
killing him (and then his own son, by an overhard slap).90 Al-Thaʿlabı̄
goes on to note the sinful, merrymaking ways of Cain’s descendants,
who dedicated themselves to music, wine, fire worship, adultery, and
other abominations. For all these sins, Cain’s descendants perished in the
Flood.91
The idea’s originators may well have been Iranian. Accordingly, they
did not need to specify fire worship as a distinctively Zoroastrian practice.
In eighth/fourteenth-century Egypt (again, admittedly beyond the purview
of this study), al-Nuwayrı̄ (d. 733/1333) knows the traditions about Cain
and fire worship; he uses phrasing that is similar to that of al-Thaʿlabı̄ but
88 Qurʾan 5:27–32, on which see Heribert Busse, “Cain and Abel,” in Encyclopaedia of
the Qurʾān, 1:270–2. Compare with the biblical account of the murder in Genesis 4:
1–16 (including 4–5: God “had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his
offering he had no regard”).
89 Al-T.abarı̄ does not name sources for this tradition, choosing instead the formula: “It has
been mentioned that . . . ”; al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:166–7. He does not mention fire temples
or Zoroastrians in his commentary on Qurʾan 5:27–32 (nor does he employ the phrase
bayt nār or bayt al-nār anywhere in his tafsı̄r). Cf. Balʿamı̄, Tārı̄kh-i Balʿamı̄, 1:110–11.
90 Al-Thaʿlabı̄, al-Kashf wa-l-bayān, ed. Abū Muh.ammad b. ʿĀshūr, 10 vols. (Beirut: Dār
Ih.yāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabı̄, 2002), 4:52–3 (on Qurʾan 5:27–32). He introduces the story
with “They said . . . ”
91 Ibid. Al-Thaʿlabı̄ cites Mujāhid here. On Muslim legends about Cain and Abel generally,
see Roberto Tottoli, “Cain and Abel (Qābı̄l wa Hābı̄l),” in EI3 .
clarifies the Persian and Zoroastrian connection for readers less familiar
with the cultural context of fire worship. He recounts that after Cain,
Jamshı̄d was the first of the Persian kings to worship fire; the practice
then spread to Iraq, Fārs, Kirmān, Sijistān, Khurāsān, T.abaristān, Jibāl,
Azarbaijan, Arrān, and the lands of Hind, Sind, and China. In all of these
lands, fire temples were built. In his day, al-Nuwayrı̄ reports, fire worship
had died out in most of these places, except for Hind.92
While Muslims may have been familiar with some details about
Zoroastrian cosmogony, their general ignorance made it possible for
them to entertain such a damning tradition, which inserted a Zoroastrian
practice into prophetic history and washed out alternative earlier Iranian
ideas about fire. Among modern academics, the history of fire worship
in general and the worship of particular fires among Zoroastrians has
been the subject of long, enduring, and perhaps irresolvable debates.93
Whatever the origins of or later Zoroastrian ideas about the practice (in
the Avesta, for example, or the Bundahishn), these Muslims traditionists
took significant liberties.94
Within prophetic history, Cain was available as a strongly defined, even
wooden, figure suitable as a focus for narrative expansion. Traditionists
appear to have put Cain to work committing other transgressions (from a
Muslim point of view) of a particularly Zoroastrian character, mentioning
his wish to marry his own twin sister, rather than his brother’s sister,
evoking, for some traditionists at least, consanguineous marriage.95 In
these traditions, Cain also exposes the body of Abel, “not knowing about
burials.” God sends two crow brothers who fight, the one killing the
other and then covering his dead brother with soil. From this, Cain learns
to bury his brother. Qurʾan 5:31 also mentions a crow, sent to show
92 He does not name his sources. Ah.mad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Nuwayrı̄, Nihāyat al-arab
fı̄ funūn al-adab, 33 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, 1923–2002),
1:105–6.
93 Among the several treatments of this topic, see Mary Boyce, “On the Zoroastrian Temple
Cult of Fire,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 95, no. 3 (1975), 454–65, and
Mark Garrison, “Fire Altars,” in EIr.
94 Compare, for example, the cosmogony in the eighteenth chapter of the Bundahishn
where the text speaks about the fires of Farnbāg, Gushnasp, and Būrzı̄n-mitrō, which
have existed since the original creation when they were formed by Ahura Mazdā; Zand-
Ākāsı̄h, ch. 18:8–9 (pp. 158–9).
95 E.g., reported on different authorities by al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:137–40, 144. On such
practices and perceptions of them, see esp. Bodil Hjerrild, Studies in Zoroastrian Family
Law: A Comparative Analysis (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2003), 167–
203, and Geert Jan van Gelder, Close Relationships: Incest and Inbreeding in Classical
Arabic Literature (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 36–9.
the murderer how to bury his brother’s naked corpse, and quotes the
murderer: “Woe is me. Am I unable to be like this crow, and hide the
corpse of my brother?”96 While the Qurʾanic text does not spell out
Cain’s ignorance, the traditionists do. Their emphasis might suggest an
intention to parody the Zoroastrian practice of exposing the dead. Such
traditions depict Zoroastrian practices in incorrect or distorted ways that
seem mean-spirited because their reporters make little or no contact with
the historical ideas, doctrines, and institutions of Zoroastrianism that
supported them.
In a parallel strategy, when Zoroaster is mentioned, he is made
the author of reprehensible practices. Al-Jāh.iz. reportedly claimed that
Zoroaster required from his companions certain practices, which al-Jāh.iz.
named as ritual ablution with urine, sexual relations with mothers, and
glorification of fires with revolting substances.97 Whatever Zoroastri-
ans’ actual practices, the list suggests al-Jāh.iz.’s disgust, and a similarly
phrased list is also cited by al-Māwardı̄ in an argument against the
law of Zoroaster, who prescribed practices that the traditionist finds
objectionable.98
In promoting such reports, traditionists establish negative genealogies
for Iranian, and especially Zoroastrian, institutions, belief systems, and
practices that pay little heed to indigenous ideas on the same subjects.
Instead, they transport them to foreign narrative contexts. Iranian Muslim
readers may never have subscribed to the ideas that Gayūmart usurped the
role of Adam, Pharaoh was a Persian, or Cain initiated fire worship, but
hearing these reports from some of the most highly respected traditionists
likely created negative associations. One may also wonder at the spirit in
which traditionists traded in such ridiculous claims. Was al-Jāh.ı̄z. express-
ing his distaste for Zoroastrianism by speaking off the cuff, whereas Ibn
al-Jawzı̄ took such statements literally when he quoted him? In any case,
the reporter excluded any substantial knowledge about the custom in
96 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:138–39 and 141.

97 Al-Jāh.iz. is quoted by Ibn al-Jawzı̄ (d. 597/1201) in his great work of H . anbalı̄ polemic,
Talbı̄s Iblı̄s (The Devil’s delusion), ed. Muḥammad Munı̄r al-Dimashqı̄ et al. (Beirut:
Dār al-Rāʾid al-ʿArabı̄, n.d. [198?]), 62; he is also cited by Ibn al-Jawzı̄ in al-Muntaz.am
fı̄ taʾrı̄kh al-mulūk wa-l-umam, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā and Muṣṭafā ʿAbd
al-Qādir ʿAṭā, 18 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1992), 1:412–3. On the use of
bull’s urine (gūmı̄z) for ritual purity as part of Zoroastrian religious praxis, see Boyce
“Cleansing i. In Zoroastrianism,” in EIr, and “Gōmēz,” in EIr.
98 Al-Māwardı̄, Aʿlām al-nubuwwa, ed. Muh.ammad al-Muʿtas.im bi-llāh al-Baghdādı̄
(Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabı̄, 1987), 61.
question, and such unforgettable reports chipped away at residual fond-

ness and loyalty for Iran’s royal and Zoroastrian heritage.
Conclusion
The adoption of Islam by Iranians initiated the formation of a set of
conflicting loyalties that raised doubts about the ruling institutions of
pre-Islamic times and their supporting ideologies, belief systems, and
religious practices, many of which continued to play important roles in
the realms of politics, culture, and society.99 As a result, traditionists were
highly selective in their references and allusions to Iran’s pre-Islamic past
and developed ways of reporting that promoted conformity with their
ideas about a common Muslim society.
The past does not exist on its own terms but rather must be assembled,
this occurring as an act of representation. Representation takes place
within a social framework encompassing agents and their audiences, and
it is made to an audience on behalf of a social entity, its most blatant
forms appearing as propaganda. But Muslims could not write history
however they pleased. The past was not infinitely flexible, but it could
be reworked within certain boundaries. Consensus of this sort generally
heavily circumscribes the work of traditionists. To rephrase Foucault’s
radical statement about authors: culture is the principle of thrift that
constrains the proliferation of meanings.100
Traditions made good use of the pre-Islamic past as they sought to
shape broader understandings about Persians and their history. Details
of this history mattered and were meaningful because they gave Persians
a sense of their own history in relation to that of other Muslims. Editorial
choices on questions such as how humanity began were not accidental,
but rather reflected broader ideas and sentiments. These sentiments were
sometimes nostalgic, but often reflected reservation, anxiety, and distrust.
In working with their materials, traditionists were ingenious in devising
ways to maintain, preserve, and value as “authentic” aspects of Iran’s past
that served their agendas while omitting, reformulating, maligning, and
otherwise suppressing those that troubled them. One way in which they
did this was to represent Iran’s past specifically as “Persian” history, and
99 See, e.g., Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Transla-
tion Movement in Baghdad and Early ʿAbbāsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries)
(New York: Routledge, 1998), esp. Part 2, “Translation and Society,” 107ff.
100 As nicely rephrased by Steven Kemper, The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics
and Culture in Sinhala Life (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 17–18.
to give it structural significance alongside other histories, anthologize it

among them, or treat it separately, but as only part of a wider history
of humanity. In such ways, Iran’s history became neither unique nor
sufficient. For Iranians who thought they had their own separate history
even if only one among others, traditionists showed otherwise, submerg-
ing it in the broader history leading to Islam. In al-Dı̄nawarı̄’s case, the
extensive citation of Iranian details draws attention to Iran’s place in that
history. Traditionists also chipped away at Iranians’ confidence in a heri-
tage of kingship and Zoroastrianism by circulating ridiculous associations
and details that fared surprisingly well against the critical apparatuses of
exegetical and historical studies.
What made these strategies possible, at root, was the common under-
standing that traditionists, in whatever genre they worked, were responsi-
ble for creating narrative coherence by clarifying details, drawing con-
nections in history, acknowledging and, where possible, showing ways
to resolve contradictions – all of these commentatorial tasks giving them
liberty to shape what Muslims knew about the past. To these issues of
narrative coherence, memory, and forgetfulness we turn in greater depth
in Chapter 5, with a discussion of narrative filters and a whole body of
traditions that, as in our third category in this chapter, raised doubts
about the past.
5
The Unhappy Prophet
The internal logic of most great narratives is oppositional and features

conflicts. In the Iliad, we have Achilles versus Hector; in the Sanskrit
Ramayana, the princely Rama versus Ravana; and in the Bible, Moses
versus Pharaoh. Early Muslim narratives were no different and were
structured around profound oppositions: the Prophet versus Abū Jahl
or Abū Lahab; Muh.ammad’s stalwart companion, a slave of Abyssin-
ian background called Bilāl, versus a pagan Meccan named Umayya
b. Khalaf; in the first fitna, the Prophet’s beloved wife ʿĀʾisha and the
Meccan aristocrats T.alh.a and al-Zubayr versus ʿAlı̄, and subsequently
ʿAlı̄ versus Muʿāwiya; and in the second fitna, al-H . usayn versus
Muʿāwiya’s son Yazı̄d, and the Umayyads and their supporters versus
Zubayr’s son ʿAbd Allāh. In narratives about later times, such opposi-
tions continue: most grandly, the Umayyads versus the ʿAbbasids, but
also, on a smaller stage in ʿAbbasid times, al-Amı̄n vs. al-Maʾmūn, and
the latter versus Ah.mad b. H . anbal. Such oppositions, as rooted in histor-
ical realities as they may have been, form part of the spine of all accounts
of the first centuries of Islam. They represent the narrative means by which
the earliest traditionists explained the Islamic kerygma as the bright light
of Islam conquering the forces of darkness, and why – because of the
oppositions among the earliest Muslims – Utopia did not follow.
When they situated Islam on the vast screen of world history, tradition-
ists of the first centuries saw the past in imperial and equally oppositional
terms, with late Sasanian Persia and its rulers cast opposite Muh.ammad
and a small coterie of companions who sought to win Persia over to
Islam and, failing that, to conquer it (or in more theological terms, to
“open” it). The opposition of Muh.ammad’s community to late Sasanian
170
The Unhappy Prophet 171
Persia became part of the Muslim community’s shared imagination and of

a metanarrative underlying and informing numerous tellings and retell-
ings of the past, whereby the unfolding of a meaningful history could
be plumbed by Qurʾan exegetes and scholars of Hadith, collectors of
poetry, genealogies, and anecdotes, and creators of Prophetic biography
and conquest accounts. This opposition added a historical dimension and
depth to the appearance of Islam in history, and through the greatness of
Muh.ammad’s Iranian opponents, it showcased the power of his message
and his early community.
The memory of late Sasanian Persia often fared poorly, to put it mildly,
in this metanarrative, as I have already discussed in Chapter 3. In what
follows, I argue that when traditionists up through the third/ninth and
fourth/tenth centuries created an image of late Sasanian Persia in opposi-
tion to Muh.ammad and Islam, they restricted future generations’ capacity
for memory as they raised profound doubts about its past. This restriction
can be understood in cultural terms as negatively conditioning the expec-
tations of Muslims for knowledge about Iran’s past, especially its late
Sasanian history. It worked through the application of narrative “filters,”
which I identify as (1) labeling, (2) creating homologies, (3) fashioning
icons, and (4) gendering. For each of these filters, I consider narratives,
their oppositions, and the operation of the filter on past memory.
Like this book more broadly, this chapter seeks to put memory of
Iran’s past into a broader context so as to show that it did not arise on
its own, but rather was part of wider developments in which Muslims
took measure of the past and sought to preserve it or, alternatively, to
banish it to oblivion. In either case, the past came into being only insofar
as Muslims molded it. Whereas elsewhere in this study I consider issues
of textual transmission and authority for the same purpose (especially the
importance of memory generated in Iraq to traditionists in later times in
Iran), my efforts here are more structural, as I try to outline a logic to
memory that was primary in the sense of its early development, but more
precisely primary in its impact and importance. In order to suggest some-
thing of the strength and endurance of this metanarrative, I also touch on
how some Muslims today have drawn on surprisingly unnuanced views
of late Sasanian Persia in conflict with the Prophet.
Labeling
I begin with the first narrative filter, “labeling,” and an example that illus-
trates an opposition between Qurʾanic history sanctioned by Muh.ammad
and that sanctioned by Iranian sources. In all cultures, labels can serve
as important memory aids around which ideas cluster. But equally, by
narrowing down the past to a set of associations, they promote oblivion.
The Qurʾanic term jāhiliyya (the era of “ignorance,” jahl) has at vari-
ous points in history fulfilled the latter function, obliterating for many of
its audiences the complexities of pre-Islamic Arabian (especially H . ijāzı̄)
culture and society. It also became a signifier that served constructive
purposes in the late Umayyad and early ʿAbbasid periods. As Rina Drory
persuasively argued, images of a distant, jāhilı̄ pre-Islamic past played
a prominent role in power struggles in the cultural arena and belonged
to an overall project of constructing Arab ethnicity. She noted that in
such struggles, “the pre-Islamic past becomes an icon of ‘Arab’ ethnic
identity. Pre-Islamic poetry, which in classical Arab literature was long
assigned the function of authentically representing the past, becomes a
central prop for that icon, and consequently, a focus of literary atten-
tion and activity.”1 Drory argued that the function of the pre-Islamic
past changed from late Umayyad to early ʿAbbasid times, with attitudes
shifting from its condemnation “as an age of wrong belief, dominated by
conflicting tribal interests and rivalries” to a view of it as a “unified Arab
past, in which the ‘true’ values of Arab ethnic identity were manifested,
and even emphasized as against Persian values.”2
At roughly the same time, other pasts took shape, including Persia’s.
In this process, traditionists applied two labels derived from the Qurʾan
to Persian epic: asāt.ı̄r al-awwalı̄n (“fables of the ancients”) and lahw
al-h.adı̄th (“diverting tales”). The association of the former with Persia is
traced to a dispute between Muh.ammad and a Meccan named al-Nad.r
b. al-H. ārith. In today’s polemics against Islam, the Prophet’s decision to
execute a small number of prisoners after the battle of Badr (2/624) is
cited as evidence of the intolerance of Islam and its Prophet. As one web
writer has asked: “How can Muhammad preach that there is to be no
compulsion in religion [Qurʾan 2:256] and then he puts to death those
who do not obey and believe in him but resist him strongly with eloquent
words?”3 On the other side, defenders of Islam and the Prophet, when
they mention the executions at all, tend to emphasize the Prophet’s benev-
olent treatment of nearly all of the prisoners. Those few who were killed
1 Rina Drory, “The Abbasid Construction of the Jahiliyya: Cultural Authority in the Mak-
ing,” Studia Islamica, no. 83 (1996): 34.
2 Ibid., 35.
3 See answering-islam.org/Muhammad/Enemies/nadr.html (accessed May 8, 2013).
are depicted as an exception, executed for their “unrelenting hostility

towards the Muslims.”4
Al-Nad.r, a Meccan trader opposed to Muh.ammad, was reportedly
among those killed.5 When Ibn Hishām transmitted his biography of
Muh.ammad around the first part of the third/ninth century, based on the
work of his predecessor, Ibn Ish.āq, he mentioned al-Nad.r’s knowledge of
Persia’s past amid a longer discussion of the Prophet’s opponents among
the Quraysh. He relates that the Prophet would sit in an assembly and
recite the Qurʾan, warning his audience of what had happened to former
peoples. Al-Nad.r followed him, speaking about Rustam, Isfandiyār, and
the kings of Persia, and he challenged Muh.ammad to tell a better story:
Muh.ammad’s tales, al-Nad.r charged, were nothing but “fables of the
ancients” (asāt.ı̄r al-awwalı̄n), copied down as were those of al-Nad.r
himself.6 Ibn Hishām tells us that God revealed Qurʾan 25:5–6 in response
to this challenge: “And they say, ‘Fables of the ancients that he has
copied down; and they are dictated to him morning and evening.’ Say,
‘He who knows the secret in the heavens and the earth sent it down.
He is Forgiving and Compassionate.’” God also revealed 68:15: “When
Our signs are related to him, he says, ‘Fables of the ancients,’” as well as
45:7–8: “Woe to every sinful liar, Who hears God’s signs recited to Him,
and then persists in being haughty as though he had not heard them. Give
him the tidings of painful torment.” Ibn Hishām, taking measure of al-
Nad.r’s challenge to Muh.ammad, exclaims: “The liar! The liar!” (al-affāk
al-kadhdhāb).7
With such reporting in mind, the twentieth-century Orientalist D. S.
Margoliouth (d. 1940) and a host of later interpreters, including our
web polemicist, concluded that Muh.ammad had al-Nad.r executed as
punishment for his challenge.8 In criticism of Margoliouth, Muhammad
4 http://islamicresponse.blogspot.com/2008/07/allegation-that-muhammad-killed-poet-al
.html (accessed May 8, 2013).
5 On him, see esp. Ch. Pellat, “al-Nad.r b. al-H 2
. ārith,” in EI , and Claude Gilliot,
“Muh.ammad, le Coran et les ‘contraintes de l’histoire,’” in The Qurʾan as Text, ed.
Stefan Wild, 3–26 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), at 23–4 (and the notes therein).
6 Ibn Hishām, Sı̄ra, 1:358. Regarding this term, which has been intensely discussed by
scholars, see esp. F. Rosenthal, “Asāt.ı̄r al-Awwalı̄n,” in EI2 .
7 Ibn Hishām, Sı̄ra, 1:358. Guillaume lists this exclamation among Ibn Hishām’s “notes”;
see Ibn Hishām, Life of Muhammad, 722 (no. 206).
8 According to Margoliouth, al-Nad.r accepted the challenge to match the Qurʾan in elo-
quence and either versified or put into rhyme the tales of the Persian kings (or perhaps
those of the kings of al-H
. ı̄ra). Margoliouth writes: “These ‘surahs’ he read out at séances
similar to those in which the Prophet published the Koran. The effect of this criticism
Mohar Ali – in a book printed in 1997 in Saudi Arabia by the King

Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qurʾan in collaboration with
the Centre for the Service of Sunnah and Sı̂rah – argued that while al-
Nad.r “did indeed versify the stories of the Persian kings and recite them
at gatherings to distract the people from listening to the Qurʾân,” al-
Nad.r’s composition was far inferior to the Qurʾan: “We do not hear of
anyone falling away from Islam or even relapsing into skepticism about
the Prophet on account of Al-Nad.r’s exhibitions as we hear in connection
with some other incidents like isrâʾ and miʿrâj [the Prophet’s miraculous
journey to Jerusalem and ascension to Heaven].”9 The Prophet could
never have viewed al-Nad.r as a serious rival or executed him for his
storytelling. Had a composition about Persia’s past been at all comparable
to the Qurʾan, Ali surmises, “the Quraysh would have made a hill out of
that mole and would have preserved and transmitted it as a continuing
challenge to the Prophet’s claim.” Rather, “he along with at least another
prisoner were condemned to death for offences other than his alleged
success as a rival composer.”10
Third/ninth- and fourth/tenth-century sources, however, better sup-
port Margoliouth’s view that al-Nad.r was killed for the challenge –
however feeble – he posed to the Prophet and the Qurʾan, much like
the false prophet Musaylima (also commonly labeled al-kadhdhāb), who
was killed during Abū Bakr’s reign.11 Al-Nad.r’s tales become “fables of
the ancients,” versus the Qurʾan recited by Muh.ammad. In electronic
databases, one can readily see the strong association among the words
asāt.ı̄r al-awwalı̄n, al-Nad.r, and Rustam as an indicator of the pervasive-
ness of the label and its application to Persian epic – as in the case of
Ibn Hishām’s text – even if the association is not exclusive.12 By way of
must have been very damaging; for when the Prophet at the battle of Badr got the man
into his power, he executed him at once, while he allowed the other prisoners to be
ransomed.” Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, 3rd ed. (New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1905), 135. Ibn Hishām’s reporting has al-Nad.r taken prisoner at Badr
and killed by ʿAlı̄ without direct explanation; Sı̄ra, 1:643 and 710.
9 Ali, Sı̂rat al-Nabı̂ and the Orientalists, with Special Reference to the Writings of William
Muir, D. S. Margoliouth and W. Montgomery Watt, vol. 1B, From the Early Phase
of the Prophet’s Mission to His Migration to Madinah (Medina: King Fahd Complex
for the Printing of the Holy Qurʾan and Centre for the Service of Sunnah and Sı̂rah,
1417/1997), 772.
10 Ibid. Ali does not identify the offense here, although on pp. 873–4 he names al-Nad.r
among the assassins who tried to ambush the Prophet before his migration to Medina.
11 Claude Gilliot, “Muh.ammad, le Coran et les ‘contraintes de l’histoire,’” 23–4.
12 For a list of such databases, see the bibliography. The term asāt.ı̄r al-awwalı̄n has also
featured in discussions concerning literacy in Mecca during the lifetime of the Prophet
further example, al-T.abarı̄, in his commentary on Qurʾan 8:31,13 cites

reports that lay out the possible nature of al-Nad.r’s challenge to the
Qurʾan.14 According to one report, the Prophet’s companion al-Miqdād
captured al-Nad.r at Badr and was upset that the Prophet planned to kill
him (thus depriving al-Miqdād of the ransom he would otherwise receive).
Muh.ammad justified his order to execute al-Nad.r: “He was saying about
the Book of God what he was saying.”15
Traditionists also frequently identify al-Nad.r’s materials by a second
label: “diverting tales” (lahw al-h.adı̄th), derived from Qurʾan 31:6:
“Among the people are those who buy diverting tales to lead [people]
away from the path of God without any knowledge and to take it in
mockery. Those will have a humiliating punishment.” A connection of
this term to Persia’s epic past also appears at a relatively early stage.
In commenting on this verse and on the words lahw al-h.adı̄th, Muqātil
notes that al-Nad.r is also the person who applied the term “fables of
the ancients” to the Qurʾan. Al-Nad.r had been to the Lakhmid cap-
ital al-H
. ı̄ra and discovered there the story of Rustam and Isfandiyār.
He brought this to Mecca, where he told the people that the Qurʾanic
story of ʿĀd and Thamūd was no more remarkable than the story of
Rustam and Isfandiyār.16 Based on such a body of traditions, the mod-
ern translator and commentator ʿAbdullah Yūsuf ʿAlı̄ commented on the
verse:
Life is taken seriously by men who realise the issues that hang upon it. But there
are men of a frivolous turn of mind who prefer idle tales [lahw al-h.adı̄th] to
true Realities and they are justly rebuked here. In the time of the Holy Prophet
there was a pagan Nad.r ibn al-H . ārith who preferred Persian romance to the
Message of Allah, and turned away ignorant men from the preaching of Allah’s
word.17
and the Prophet’s own illiteracy; see Sebastian Günther, “Illiteracy,” in Encyclopaedia
of the Qurʾān, 2:492–500.
13 Qurʾan 8: 31: “When Our signs are recited to them, they say, ‘We have heard. Were we
to wish, we could say something like this. These are merely the fables of the ancients
(asāt.ı̄r al-awwalı̄n).’”
14 These may also have concerned assertions that the Qurʾan sounded like the Christian
Gospels recited in Persia, or the rhymed prose of the people of al-H . ı̄ra, the capital of
the Persian client state of the Lakhmids, located in Iraq to the southeast of present-day
Najaf. Al-T.abarı̄, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 5:3828–9 (nos. 16030 and 16031, on Qurʾan 8:31).
15 Ibid., 5:3829 (no. 16032, on Qurʾan 8:31).
16 Muqātil, Tafsı̄r, 3:431–2 (on Qurʾan 31:6).
17 The Meaning of the Holy Qurʾān, trans. ʿAbdullah Yūsuf ʿAlı̄, 7th ed. (Beltsville, MD:
Amana Publications, 1995), 1034 (on Qurʾan 31:6), n. 3584.
This picture of al-Nad.r giving the lie to the Qurʾan also made its way
into the bank of reports upon which poet-traditionists in ʿAbbasid times
drew, suggesting the interpenetration of genres of Arabic letters and the
persistence of the memory of al-Nad.r and his audacity. One finds, for
example, ruminations on the fate of a woman named Qutayla, who the
traditionists reckoned was either a daughter or a sister of al-Nad.r. Ibn
Hishām identifies Qutayla as his sister and attributes to her a poem
lamenting his death, which begins:
O Rider, you should hit al-Uthayl

At dawn on the fifth night18 if you are lucky.
Greet a dead man there for me
If noble camels still rush there.
“Greetings from me to you,” and a tear shed,
Some tears flowing, while others are choked up.
Does al-Nad.r hear me when I call him?
How can a dead man, who cannot speak, hear?19
The ʿAbbasid poet Abū Tammām (d. 231–2/845–6) features these verses
(with some differences) in his al-H
. amāsa, and they also passed into that
text’s commentarial tradition.20 In his comment on Abu Tammām’s cor-
pus, al-Marzūqı̄ (d. 421/1030) explains that Uthayl – a spot close to
Medina, between Badr and Wadı̄ al-S.afrāʾ21 – is the locale of al-Nad.r’s
grave. He also spells out that Muh.ammad, who had suffered on account
of al-Nad.r, killed him when he was a prisoner. Al-Nad.r had recited the
accounts of the ʿAjam (akhbār al-ʿAjam), including accounts of the Kisrās
and Caesars, to the Arabs as a challenge to Muh.ammad’s prophethood.
Al-Marzūqı̄ also credits Ibn ʿAbbās with the insight that Qurʾan 31:6 –
“Among the people are those who buy diverting tales” – was sent down
18 The Islamic calendar is based on the moon’s cycles, with a new “day” starting with
the rising of the moon. Dawn marks not the beginning of a “day” but the middle
of one.
19 Ibn Hishām, Sı̄ra, 2:42–3; Life of Muhammad, trans. Guillaume, 360 (I use Guillaume’s
translation only loosely). The Arabic editors as well as Guillaume note that some manu-
scripts make Ibn Hishām, rather than Ibn Ish.āq, responsible for the verses’ inclusion in
the Sı̄ra. I thank Peter Webb for suggestions regarding these lines.
. amāsa, ed. Muh.ammad ʿAbd al-Munʿim Khafājı̄, 2 vols.
20 Abū Tammām, Dı̄wān al-H
(Cairo: Maktabat Muh.ammad ʿAlı̄ S.ubayh., 1955), 1:562–4 (no. 71). Regarding the
verses, see also Th. Noeldeke, Delectus veterum carminum arabicorum (Berlin: H.
Reuther, 1890), 67–8.
21 For more on this spot, see “al-Uthayl,” in Yāqūt, Buldān, 1:121–2; Yāqūt cites Qutayla’s
verses here.
by God from Heaven with respect to al-Nad.r and his purchase of books
22
(kutub) of the Persians, the Byzantines, and the people of al-H . ı̄ra.
With al-Nad.r, we have found a literary counterpart and even opposite
to Salmān, al-Nad.r being someone who brought a source of corruption to
Mecca. A reconciliation between al-Nad.r and the Prophet, or between a
Persian version of history and a Qurʾanic one, seems impossible, whereas
Salmān does successfully bridge a gap between western Arabia and
Persia, especially Is.fahān. In contrast to the redemption of the jāhiliyya
in ʿAbbasid times outlined by Drory, we find ourselves with a signif-
icantly different situation here, as the opposition between Muh.ammad
and al-Nad.r, or between Qurʾanic history and Persian history, becomes
fixed in the commentarial tradition, in Prophetic biography, and in belles-
lettres in the formative periods of these genres, thereby becoming part of
the literary capital of ʿAbbasid and, indeed, all future Muslim societies.
The stark opposition between these two forms of historical memory –
Qurʾanic and Persian – was disseminated in ʿAbbasid era Iraq, where we
know that translations of Persian epic materials circulated. It likely reflects
the perspective of religious elites, exemplified by Ibn Hishām, who, in the
late second/eighth and early third/ninth centuries, could hardly imagine
the creative syntheses of scholars such as Abū H . anı̄fa al-Dı̄nawarı̄ or
al-T.abarı̄ two or three generations later. It is also possible to speculate
that when Iranians such as Firdawsı̄ came to generate works that actu-
ally treated Rustam and Isfandiyār, they ran the risk of being viewed as
latter-day al-Nad.rs by their contemporaries, and that this possibility may
have generated a degree of caution on their part.
Creating Homologies
Homology represents one of the most potent tools of social and cultural
classification through which equivalencies are presented and relationships
created.23 It begins with an orderly correspondence, such as between the
animal world and social groups or between types of positions (pope
and caliph). The nature of the correspondence is structural, although
a genealogy might be provided, as when Vedic tradition speaks about
the origins of the caste system by reference to vivisection of a primeval
. amāsa, ed. Ah.mad Amı̄n and ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn, 4

22 Al-Marzūqı̄, Sharh. dı̄wān al-H
vols. (Cairo: Lajnat al-Taʾlı̄f wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Nashr, 1951–3), 2:963–8 (no. 332); see
esp. 963, n. 1, for a list of further sources in which Qutayla’s poem appears.
23 Regarding homology, see esp. Bruce Lincoln, Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in
Ideology and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 7–12.
man. Homologies are not literally believed nor are they merely compar-
ative; rather, by classification, they exaggerate similarity in pursuit of a
point. Muslim traditionists knew many homologies. The Qurʾan posits
a homology between all monotheisms. The Prophet was the new Moses
or Jesus, and Mecca the new Jerusalem. Similarly, throughout history
various groups have styled themselves, or been styled by others, as
Muhājirūn and Ans.ār, corresponding to the immigrants to Medina and
those who helped them on their arrival.
Up until the advent of the Crusades at the end of the fifth/eleventh
century, Muslim traditionists thought that the Prophet recognized two
other homologies. On the one hand, there were the Muslims, who were
monotheists, as were the Byzantines.24 On the other hand, there were
his Meccan opponents, who were polytheists, as were the Persians. The
main point of the homologies was originally to ennoble the Muslims and
downgrade the Meccan polytheists. With time, however, two shifts in
attitudes changed the nature of the homologies. First, enmity to the Byz-
antines grew, so the link between Muslims and Byzantines was broken.
Second, as awareness of Iran’s past grew among Muslims, they began
to give more attention in the second homology to the Persians; although
the pre-Islamic Meccans were by no means forgotten, the legacy of the
Persians lived on throughout Iran as a vibrant force, whereas the Meccan
polytheists were subjects of the past.
In her historical sketch of reader reactions to the Qurʾan, Nadia Maria
El Cheikh has persuasively shown how the first homology worked based
on a careful reading of a variety of exegetical genres and major commen-
tators from various schools and sects: Sunni, Twelver Shiʿi, Muʿtazilite,
and Sufi.25 Early Muslim sources constructed an image of the Roman
emperor Heraclius (r. 610–41) in their efforts to legitimate the prophetic
mission of Muh.ammad and the new Muslim state. Heraclius became
an “ideal ‘witness’ to the prophet Muh.ammad and to the emerging
umma.”26 He was depicted as pious, politically astute, and upright
and as acknowledging the new faith and the excellence of the Muslim
24 As discussed by Nadia Maria El Cheikh, “Sūrat al-Rūm: A Study of the Exegetical

Literature,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 118, no. 3 (1998): 356–64; see
also El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2004), 24–33, and her “Byzantines, Exegetical Explanations,” in Encyclopaedia
of the Qurʾān, 1:66–9.
25 Regarding the history of “reader reaction” to the Qurʾan, see Andrew Rippin, “Intro-
duction,” in Approaches, ed. Rippin, 1–9.
26 El Cheikh, “Muh.ammad and Heraclius: A Study in Legitimacy,” Studia Islamica, no.
89 (1999): 5.
community. As he was placed on a pedestal, Heraclius was detached

from his unjust and treacherous Byzantine following. Ultimately, how-
ever, though Heraclius knew the truth of Islam, he could not abandon
his privileges, nor withstand the opposition to Islam by Byzantine patri-
cians and dignitaries. The sources maintained a remarkably durable image
of him as recognizing Islam and nearly converting to it himself.27 And
so when traditionists interpreted the Qurʾan, they discovered that the
Qurʾan had predicted the military success of Heraclius and the Byzantines,
as attested in Qurʾan 30:1–5:
(1) Alif, Lām, Mı̄m. (2) The Byzantines (al-Rūm) have been vanquished (3) in the
nearer part of the land; and, after their vanquishing, they shall be victors (4) in a
few years. To God belongs the Command before and after, and on that day the
believers shall rejoice (5) in God’s help; God helps whomsoever He will; and He
is All-mighty, the All-compassionate.
From an early date, exegetes traditionally classified these verses as belong-

ing to the Meccan phase of the revelation28 and as āyāt bayyināt, “a
sign that the Qurʾān is God-sent because of the effective accomplish-
ment of the prophecy.”29 Traditionists explained that the verses were
revealed in Mecca and referred to the wars between Persia and By-
zantium, including the Byzantines’ defeats, beginning in 611 CE, at the
start of Muh.ammad’s mission, and their later victories, after the hijra to
Medina. Commentators up to the fifth/eleventh century, aware in varying
degrees of these events, generally understood there to be an ideological
alliance between the Muslims and the Byzantines. They thus stressed the
Byzantines’ monotheism, the monotheism of the Muslim Meccans, and
the preference of the latter for the Byzantines over the Persians.30 As
El Cheikh notes, in the commentaries “the believers are taken to be the
followers of the Prophet. This reading reflects a positive outlook toward
the Byzantines in the expectation of a later Byzantine victory that will
give the believers reason to rejoice.”31 Over time, changes in attitudes
27 See also, building on El Cheikh’s work, Conrad, “Heraclius in Early Islamic Kerygma,”
113–56. Also, Stefan Leder, “Heraklios erkennt den Propheten: Ein Beispiel für Form
und Entstehungsweise narrativer Geschichtskonstruktionen,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen
Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 151 (2001): 1–42.
28 Cf. Richard Bell, A Commentary on the Qurʾān, vol. 2, Surahs XXV–CXIV (Manchester:
University of Manchester, 1991), 69–70.
29 El Cheikh, “Sūrat al-Rūm,” 357. See also Choksy’s discussion of these verses amid
“Islamic auguries” in Conflict and Cooperation, 49.
30 El Cheikh, “Sūrat al-Rūm,” 360–1.
31 Ibid., 359–60.
toward the Byzantines were reflected in the way Muslim commentators

vocalized the verses’ verbs, and the homology was undone. The early
commentators read the verb “to vanquish” in the second verse predomi-
nantly in the passive voice (the Byzantines were vanquished, ghulibat
al-Rūm), while in the third verse, they read it in the active voice (they
shall be victors, sa-yaghlibūn; both as cited above). This view was dom-
inant until the fifth/eleventh century, when a formerly variant reading
gained in prominence.32 In the variant, which went back to several early
authorities, including ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar (son of the second caliph;
d. 73/693), the first verb was read in the active voice (the Byzantines
were victors, ghalabat al-Rūm, which by 628 they were), while in the
third verse, the verb was read in the passive voice (they will be van-
quished, sa-yughlabūn). The variant produced a very different meaning:
the Qurʾan was now interpreted as predicting the Muslims’ victory over
the Byzantines, rather than the latter’s victory over the Persians.33 Most
importantly, the commentators now denied any “ideological affiliation
between Islam and Byzantium.” Rather than being seen as “People of the
Book,” the Byzantines came to be labeled as polytheists (sing. mushrik,
pl. mushrikūn/mushrikı̄n),34 and several reasons were advanced for why
the Qurʾan states in the fourth and fifth verses that the believers shall
rejoice (“and on that day, the believers shall rejoice in God’s help”).
One of these explanations attributed the rejoicing to the fact that two
factions of polytheists – the Persians and the Byzantines – were battling
one another. Importantly, adjustments made in the fifth/eleventh to the
seventh/thirteenth centuries to this commentarial tradition followed on,
and coincided with, the Muslims’ military weakness and losses of Muslim
territory to the Byzantines and then to the Crusaders.35
Like the homology of Muslims and Byzantines, upon which El Cheikh
focused, that between Persians and Meccans also seems to have developed
as the commentarial tradition evolved, though without the sort of reversal
32 “It is true, however, that the variant reading never stands on its own, but is always
juxtaposed side by side with the traditional one. Working as they were within a tradition,
the commentators reiterated the traditional reading and interpretation. . . . It is because of
this entrenched tradition that the exegetical literature took so long to turn the Byzantines
into an enemy.” Ibid., 363–4.
33 Ibid., 361.
34 For a useful analysis of the term mushrik that addresses its polemical dimensions
in the Qurʾan, see G. R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of
Islam: From Polemic to History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 45–
66.
35 El Cheikh, “Sūrat al-Rūm,” 362–3; also, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, 30–3.
she described in the case of the former. Early on the Persians were homol-
ogized to Meccan unbelievers as opponents of monotheism. Mujāhid
explains in his exegesis that the Qurʾan predicted the eventual success
of Byzantium (al-Rūm) over Persia and the rejoicing of the believers (al-
muʾminı̄n) when God rendered the “People of the Book” (i.e., the Byz-
antines) victorious over the “People of Idols” (ahl al-awthān).36 Muqātil
b. Sulaymān reports that when Persia initially defeated al-Rūm, the news
reached Mecca, and the unbelievers (al-kuffār) rejoiced, taunting the
Prophet’s companions by saying: “Verily, the Persians do not have a book,
and we are on their side (inna Fāris laysa lahum kitāb wa-nah.nu minhum).
They have vanquished the Byzantines, who are a people with a book like
you. We will vanquish you just as Persia vanquished Byzantium.”37
In one widely circulating tradition, Abū Bakr explains the companions’
sympathies in the conflict between Byzantium and Persia to Muh.ammad.
As Ah.mad b. H . anbal reports, Abū Bakr notified the Prophet that the
Muslims felt sympathy for the Byzantines (described as ahl al-kitāb),
whereas the Meccan “polytheists” sympathized with the Persian “idola-
tors” (ahl al-awthān). The Prophet assured Abū Bakr that the Byzantines
would be victorious, a message that Abū Bakr passed on to the Muslims,
who then made a wager with Mecca’s polytheists that their side would
be victorious in five years. When the five years had passed, and there was
still no victory, Abū Bakr went back to the Prophet, who told Abū Bakr
to make it ten years. Within this time period, the Persian idolators were
finally defeated.38
Over time, the Meccan-Persian homology held, but the description of
the nature of the Persians’ unbelief seems to have become more nuanced.
This is in large measure due to the generally accretive nature of the exeget-
ical tradition and the tendency for exegetes to add layers of explanation,
including those of a historical nature. As El Cheikh noted, al-T.abarı̄
features two and a half centuries of Muslim exegesis, citing material of
standard earlier authorities as well as insignificant variants.39 The addi-
tions expand the possible ways of interpreting the Qurʾan, including the
history that lies behind it. For the report about Abū Bakr’s wager, Ibn
36 Mujāhid, Tafsı̄r, 499 (on Qurʾan 30:1–2).

37 Muqātil, Tafsı̄r, 3:406 (on Qurʾan 30:1–2).
. anbal traces the report back to Ibn ʿAbbās. He also cites Saʿı̄d b. al-Jubayr (d. 94
38 Ibn H
or 95/711 or 712), who clarifies that the Qurʾan’s phrasing, “in a few years” (fı̄ bid.ʿi
sinı̄n), indicates a number below ten (proving the Qurʾan was not wrong – victory was
on the way). Ibn H . anbal, Musnad, 4:168 (no. 2495).
39 El Cheikh, “Sūrat al-Rūm,” 358–60.
H. anbal cites Ibn ʿAbbās, and so does al-T.abarı̄, but the latter also cites
another version of it on the authority of ʿIkrima (d. 105/723–4), in which
the Persians remain “idolators” but are also labeled with a technical
term signifying someone who “did not know a scripture” (ummiyyūn).40
They are also called, more simply, Zoroastrians (Majūs). The report
states that the Byzantines and the Persians met in battle in the “nearer
part of the land,” meaning Adhriʿāt, a town south of Damascus, where
the Byzantines were defeated. When the news reached Muh.ammad and
his companions in Mecca, they were troubled, since the Prophet hated
for the fact that the People of the Book from Byzantium (ahl al-kitāb
min al-Rūm) had been defeated by Zoroastrians who did not have a
scripture (al-ummiyyūn min ahl al-Majūs). The unbelievers (kuffār) of
Mecca rejoiced and said to the Muslims: “Verily, you are People of the
Book, and the Christians are People of the Book. We are a people who
do not know a scripture (ummiyyūn), and our brethren (ikhwān) from
the people of Persia have been victorious over your brethren from the
People of the Book. If you fight with us, then we will triumph over
you.” Then God sent down Qurʾan 30:1–5.41 Such phrasing moved the
Persians close to the Meccans, without asserting polytheism. The tradi-
tionists do not trouble themselves with specifying which Persians they
had in mind, although ostensibly the homology relates to imperial Per-
sians, that is, those who were engaged in fighting the Byzantines. What
we seem to have here, then, is a homology between two original opposi-
tions – Muslims versus Meccan polytheists, Byzantines versus Persians –
that becomes strained because the Byzantines, from the fifth/eleventh cen-
tury onward, cannot be reckoned the Muslims’ allies. Given the accretive
nature of the exegetical tradition, the Persian side gets elaborated.42 But
it also might be the case that over the centuries, as more Iranians became
40 The core meaning of ummı̄ in the Qurʾan is problematic. For this sense (which the inter-
pretive context I examine supports), see Sebastian Günther, “Ummı̄,” in Encyclopaedia
of the Qurʾān, 5:399–403, and E. Geoffroy, “Ummı̄,” in EI2 . ʿIkrima is generally iden-
tified as one of the main transmitters from Ibn ʿAbbās, but he does not list him as a
source here. On him, see J. Schacht, “ʿIkrima,” in EI2 .
41 Al-T.abarı̄, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 8:6501 (no. 27697).
42 For a few further examples illustrating how context softens the homology (all on 30:1–
5), see al-Wāh.idı̄, Asbāb al-nuzūl wa-yalı̄hi al-Nāsikh wa-l-mansūkh (Cairo: Maktabat
al-Mutanabbı̄, n.d.), 194–5 and his al-Wajı̄z fı̄ tafsı̄r al-Kitāb al-ʿAzı̄z, ed. S.afwān
ʿAdnān Dāwūdı̄, 2 vols. (Damascus: Dār al-Qalam, 1995), 2:838; al-Qurt.ubı̄, al-Jāmiʿ
li-ah.kām al-Qurʾān, vol. 14 (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Mis.riyya, 1945), 1–7, and Abū
H. ayyān al-Gharnāt.ı̄, al-Bah.r al-muh.ı̄t fı̄ tafsı̄r, vol. 7 (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1983),
160–2.
Muslims, it became harder to speak of Persians in the simplistic terms of

earlier days.
Fashioning Icons
Both labels and homologies can serve as catalysts for memory, insofar
as they provide ways of conceiving of phenomena, but they can equally
restrict memory, when a large body of historical lore, such as that of Per-
sian epic, is summed up prejudicially in a few words, or when the religious
convictions of a territory, Persia, are amalgamated to those of another,
pre-Islamic Mecca. In both cases, the filter limits significations, and inso-
far as a traditionist’s text gained credibility as a normative account, it
creates an obstacle to later generations, who may write from different
and more positive perspectives but are forced to reckon with the past as
their predecessors knew it. In the next case, we consider a different type
of filter in stories that set the Prophet in opposition to Sasanian Iran’s
Khusraw Parvı̄z. These stories appear to juxtapose the Prophet’s author-
ity, underwritten by Islam, with Kisrā’s kingship, or mulk, as an inferior
authority.
In a narrow sense, the term “icon” refers to religious images, but
more broadly the term can connote anything visually memorable. Reli-
gious icons, such as the infant Jesus and his mother, evoke sentiments
of reverence, admiration, and longing for a past and its saints, heroes,
and reformers. The Epiphany and the three kings who recognized the
baby Christ were memorialized in the Gospel of Matthew, and from
Roman times onward they have been vividly portrayed in art and cele-
brated in Christian liturgy.43 The kings also became the focus of legends in
Syriac and Arabic.44 For Muslims, Muh.ammad’s ascension (miʿrāj) to the
heavens, where he reportedly met with past prophets, lived on in iconic
images.
An image can be reckoned iconic if it is visually memorable, but icons
do not require artistic expression nor must they evoke reverence. Stories
43 See Rolf M. Schneider, “Orientalism in Late Antiquity: The Oriental in Imperial and
Christian Imagery,” in Ērān ud Anērān: Studien zu den Beziehungen zwischen dem
Sasanidenreich und der Mittelmeerwelt, ed. Josef Wiesehӧfer and Philip Huyse, 241–78
(Munich: Franz Steiner, 2006), at 247–52.
44 See La Caverne des trésors: Les deux recensions syriaques, ed. and trans. Su-Min Ri, 2
vols., Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (Leuven: E. Peeters, 1987), 2:140–
9 (chs. 45–6), and Minorsky, “Two Iranian Legends in Abū-Dulaf’s Second Risālah,”
172–5.
often create icons that become part of a society’s visual memory rendered
in words. The image can evoke any variety of thoughts or emotions. Think
of the story of Sisyphus and his rock in Greek myth, iconic for the mod-
ern philosophy of existentialism with its tragic sense of absurdity. The
image (Greek, ikon) evokes a conceptual framework that resonates with
a modern audience. Along similar lines, the body of mostly third/ninth-
and early fourth/tenth-century traditions discussed below furnished gen-
erations of Muslims, Iranians included, with memorable images of a
prophet unhappy with the Persians, their kings, and their rejection of
Islam.
Moustapha Akkad’s 1977 film, The Message: The Story of Islam,
opens with three men on horseback riding across a vast expanse of empty
desert. The men, barely visible as the film begins, come into view, their
faces and bodies concealed by white robes and scarves. As day turns to
night turns to day, the horses gallop on. The tempo of the music quickens.
The riders emerge from the sand dunes, each raises a hand into the sky in
a farewell, and they part in three directions. The camera follows one rider
across the desert to a court, that of Caesar (Heraclius). He strides into
the court as dozens of silent courtiers clear a path for him and move close
to hear him. Before this audience, the rider unfurls a scroll and reads to
a bejeweled Caesar:
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

From Muh.ammad, the Messenger of God, to Heraclius, the emperor of Byzan-
tium:
Greetings to him who is the follower of righteous guidance. I bid you to hear
the divine call. I am the Messenger of God to the people. Accept Islam for your
salvation.
An advisor pulls close to the emperor and states: “He speaks of a new
prophet in Arabia.” Before taking the scroll to see it for himself, Heraclius
says sarcastically out of the corner of his mouth: “Was it like this when
John the Baptist came to King Herod? Out of the desert, crying about
salvation?”
The camera dwells briefly on the second rider, who gallops past pyr-
amids to the Patriarch of Alexandria. Then the camera turns to the third
rider, who travels along a shoreline to arrive at a third court. The rider
strides in and reads:
Kisrā, emperor of Persia:

Muh.ammad calls to you with the call of God. Accept Islam for your salvation.
Embrace Islam.
Kisrā – a burning fire on his left and a partially clad slave to either side –
bends down, waves a finger at the rider, and hisses: “You come out of
the desert, smelling of camel and goat, to Persia, where he should kneel?”
Kisrā then rips the letter in two and throws it at the rider.
The camera returns to Heraclius, who says to his visitor: “Muh.ammad,
‘Messenger of God’? Who gave him this authority?” The visitor explains:
“God sent Muh.ammad as a mercy to mankind.” A view of the desert fol-
lows, announcing the film’s title in bright red lettering, naming the leading
members of its cast and production team, and certifying its intellectual
vetting by the University of al-Azhar in Cairo and by the High Islamic
Congress of the Shiat in Lebanon, which have “approved the accuracy
and fidelity of this film.”
For Akkad’s movie, Muh.ammad’s message is a central metaphor. He-
raclius receives it with puzzlement and doubt, Kisrā with scorn. Kisrā’s
reaction anticipates the obstacles to the Prophet’s message shown sub-
sequently in the film and, metaphorically, those occurring through all
times.
For nearly all of Islam’s long history, Muslims have believed that their
Prophet envisioned Islam beyond Arabia’s borders, and that the Prophet
undertook missions to summon the leaders of the empires of his day to
Islam. As part of early Islamic kerygma, Muh.ammad’s messengers bear
witness to Islam as a world religion, much as Jesus sent forth his apostles
to spread the Christian message in new lands.45 As Arnold aptly summa-
rized: “Islam was not to be confined to the Arab race.”46 Old pieces of
parchment and seals have been identified as documentary evidence, gen-
erating considerable public excitement.47 This seems an overly optimistic
reaction given the general state of first/seventh-century sources, contra-
dictions in the later literary record, letters as a commonplace literary
form in the early Islamic historical tradition,48 and a wider Near East-
ern pattern in late antiquity of major Roman and Byzantine historians
45 On which see esp. Conrad, “Heraclius in Early Islamic Kerygma,” 114–17; as Conrad
notes, Ibn Hishām has Muh.ammad discuss Jesus’ use of his disciplines as messengers
amid an account of Muh.ammad’s own messengers; Sı̄ra, 2:606–7.
46 Arnold, Preaching of Islam, 29–30.
47 Muhammad Hamidullah has published extensively on the letters; see esp. “La lettre du
Prophète à Héraclius et le sort de l’original,” Arabica 2, no. 1 (1955): 97–110; “Original
de la lettre du Prophète à Kisrà,” Rivista degli Studi orientali 40 (1965): 57–69 (including
discussion of publicity around the letter in the 1960s); Le Prophète de l’Islam, 2 vols.
(Paris: J. Vrin, 1959), 1:241–5; Majmūʿat al-wathāʾiq, 109–12 (no. 53); Six originaux
des lettres du Prophète de l’islam: Étude paléographique et historique des lettres du
Prophète (Paris: Tougui, 1985).
48 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 76–87.
using letters in dramatic ways.49 Still, whatever the truth, the accounts
create an iconic site of memory that has been rethought many times and
from many different vantage points. The letters have been cited in dis-
cussions of whether the Prophet was illiterate, as most Muslims believe.
They have been cited as establishing a legal precedent: one must summon
one’s enemies to Islam before fighting them. Muh.ammad’s messengers
are today viewed as diplomats, as they were in Akkad’s film: “The spirit
of sympathy, tact and judgment governed the Prophet’s standing instruc-
tions to his envoys who were accredited to numerous cities, communities
and countries to convey his message,” wrote Afzal Iqbal, a twentieth-
century Pakistani diplomat-scholar. “Their directions were to work with
patience and avoid severity, to give good tidings to the people and not
to incite hostility towards their mission.”50 Whatever the vantage point,
Kisrā’s response displeases the Prophet and suggests the inferiority of his
government versus that of the Prophet in Medina.51
Across traditions and genres of Arabic writing, one finds the letters
episode and the stylized response of Kisrā. Traditionists produced reports
that identified a list of companions of the Prophet and the rulers to whom
they were sent with a letter from him. The ruler of Persia was included
as one of two, three, six, or more recipients. In the rather long narrative
account of Ibn Saʿd, on a day in the month of Muh.arram in the seventh
year of the hijra, Muh.ammad sent out six messengers to kings, including
Persia’s, summoning them to Islam with texts that bore his own seal in
three lines:
Muh.ammad
rasūl
Allāh
49 Averil Cameron, Procopius and the Sixth Century (London: Duckworth, 1985), 148–9;
Conrad, “Heraclius in Early Islamic Kerygma,” 125. For an important early skeptical
consideration of Muh.ammad’s letters, see Leone Caetani, Annali dell’Islām, 10 vols.
(Milan: U. Hoepli, 1905–26), 1:725ff; see also R. B. Serjeant, “Early Arabic Prose,” in
Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, ed. A. F. L. Beeston et al., 114–53
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), at 141–2.
50 Iqbal, The Prophet’s Diplomacy: The Art of Negotiation as Conceived and Developed
by the Prophet of Islam (Cape Cod, MA: Claude Stark, 1975), 75–81. See also Afzalur
Rahman, Muhammad: Encyclopædia of Seerah, 7 vols. (London: Muslim Schools Trust,
1981), 1:845–51(“The Letters of the Prophet”) and 885–909 (“A Short List of Letters
of the Prophet”).
51 Regarding the letter to Heraclius, by comparison, see Suliman Bashear, “The Mission
of Dih.ya al-Kalbı̄ and the Situation in Syria,” Der Islam 74, no. 1 (1997): 64–91, and
Conrad, “Heraclius in Early Islamic Kerygma,” 125–30.
Each of the messengers had the ability to speak the language of the people
to whom he was sent. The first three addressees were “the Negus” (the
ruler of Abyssinia), “Caesar” (Emperor Heraclius of Byzantium), and
“Kisrā” (Khusraw Parvı̄z of Persia). The Negus placed Muh.ammad’s
invitation over his eyes, descended from his throne, and sat down on the
earth, humbling himself. Then he “surrendered to Islam and bore witness
to the truth” (aslama wa-shahida shahādat al-h.aqq), stating, “If I were
able to go to him, I would do so.” Afterward, he wrote to the Prophet
confirming his acceptance of Islam.52 Caesar received Muh.ammad’s letter
while in Homs fulfilling an oath he had made – namely, to march barefoot
from Constantinople to Jerusalem should his armies be victorious over
Persia. Caesar sought to persuade his people to embrace Islam, but he
was unsuccessful. When Muh.ammad’s letter was read to Kisrā, the latter
tore it up (mazzaqahu). On hearing this, Muh.ammad said, “May God
tear up his kingdom (mazziq mulkahu).”53
These traditionists connect the Prophet’s statement about Persia to
Qurʾan 34:19: “They said, ‘Our Lord, make the stages of our journey
longer.’ They wronged themselves; and so We made them tales (ah.ādı̄th)
and tore them completely to pieces (wa-mazzaqnāhum kulla mumazzaq).
In that there are signs for everyone who is truly steadfast and grateful.”
In the traditionists’ accounts, the episode and the Qurʾanic rephrasing
typically show that Muh.ammad knew that Kisrā and his kingdom would
be punished for the ruler’s actions. Ibn Saʿd’s version thus continues
with Kisrā writing to Bādhān, his governor (ʿāmil) in the Yemen, and
instructing him to send two men to Muh.ammad so that they might gather
information. Muh.ammad received the men, invited them to Islam, and
then told them to return to him the next day. When they returned the
next day, Muh.ammad clairvoyantly informed them that God, his lord,
had killed the previous night Bādhān’s lord, Kisrā, and given power to
Kisrā’s son, Shı̄rawayh (Ibn Saʿd specifies the time and day of the killing
52 Ibn Saʿd, al-T . abaqāt al-kabı̄r, vol. 1, pt. 2, 15ff. (I provide only the barest outline of
his account). Ibn Saʿd identifies three other recipients among the six: al-Muqawqis, the
ruler of the Copts in Alexandria (regarding whom see K. Öhrnberg, “al-Muk.awk.is,”
in EI2 ); the Ghassanid ruler al-H . ārith b. Abı̄ Shamir (before Islam, the Ghassan-
ids were Arab Christian clients of the Byzantines); and, finally, Hawdha b. ʿAlı̄ al-
H. anafı̄, chief of the Banū H . anı̄fa in the Arabian region of Yamāma (Ibn Saʿd fol-
lows these letters with accounts of the Prophet’s correspondence with Arab tribes).
Regarding al-H . ārith and Hawdha, see The History of al-T . abarı̄, vol. 8, The Victory
of Islam, trans. Michael Fishbein (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997),
98–9.
53 Ibn Saʿd, al-T . abaqāt al-kabı̄r, vol. 1, pt. 2, 16.
according to the hijri calendar). Astonished, Bādhān’s spies returned

home with the news, whereupon Bādhān and the Persian settlers (al-
anbāʾ) in the Yemen, impressed by Muh.ammad’s foreknowledge, con-
verted to Islam.54
As in Akkad’s film, a comparison, however implicit, is often made
between Caesar and Kisrā, with Kisrā acting as a foil to Caesar. Not
surprisingly, Kisrā’s ripping up of the letter features somewhat in com-
mentaries on the opening verses of Sūrat al-Rūm (Qurʾan 30), and here,
if anywhere, one can see the way in which traditions interlock and sup-
port an enduring memory about the Byzantines and the Sasanians and
their respective fates. For example, the Shiʿi exegete Abū al-H . asan ʿAlı̄
b. Ibrāhı̄m al-Qummı̄ (d. 328/939) begins his commentary on the Sūra
with an exchange between Abū ʿUbayda (al-Hadhdhaʾ) and Abū Jaʿfar
(Muh.ammad al-Bāqir, the fifth Imam of the Shiʿa), in which the former
asks the latter about the meaning of the verses. The latter explains that
for these verses there is an interpretation (taʾwı̄l) known only to God and
to those of the Imams who are deeply versed in knowledge (al-rāsikhūn
fı̄ al-ʿilm min al-aʾimma).” The Imam mentions that after the Prophet’s
hijra to Medina, he wrote to the kings of Byzantium and Persia inviting
them to Islam. He recounts the respectful way in which Caesar received
his letter and messenger, in contrast to Kisrā, who tore up his letter and
disdained the messenger. The Imam then launches into an interpretation:
the verses indicate that the Persians defeated the Byzantines, and they –
the Persians – would subsequently be defeated by the Byzantines (as they
were).55
The centrality of Caesar, and by implication Byzantium, in all of
these accounts seems to suggest that the earliest reporting originated in
Umayyad-era Syria, since the rulers’ different reactions to Muh.ammad’s
invitation helped to explain the outcome of the conquests there and in
Byzantium more broadly.56 For example, in a section of his al-Amwāl
dealing with revenue from the conquered territories (al-fayʾ wa-wujūhuhu
54 Ibid., vol. 1, pt. 2, 16; cf. ibid., vol. 4, pt. 1, 139 (this is an entry for ʿAbd Allāh b.
H. udhāfa, the messenger; here ʿAbd Allāh delivers the letter to Kisrā via a governor in
Bah.rayn).
55 Al-Qummı̄, Tafsı̄r, ed. T.ayyib al-Mūsawı̄ al-Jazāʾirı̄, 2 vols. (Najaf: Maktabat al-Hudā,
1387/1967–8), 2:152 (on Qurʾan 30:1–4).
56 For other recent arguments around Umayyad-era origins, see esp. Serjeant, “Early
Arabic Prose,” 142, and regarding Heraclius, Conrad, “Heraclius in Early Islamic
Kerygma,” esp. 116–7 and 130. Both Serjeant and Conrad give priority to Muslim–
Byzantine/Christian encounters as the original context for reports about the letters.
wa-subuluhu), Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām (d. 224/838) treats the

jizya tax and passes on several reports about Muh.ammad’s letters through
which he explains the tax’s original context in Muh.ammad’s day. As in
other reports, Kisrā’s refusal is blunt. One report that Abū ʿUbayd cites
states:
The Messenger of God wrote to Kisrā and to Caesar. As for Kisrā, when he read
the text (al-kitāb), he tore it up (mazzaqahu). As for Caesar, when he read the
text, he folded it, then he put it down. When this reached the Messenger of God,
he said, “As for these [meaning Kisrā], they will be torn up (fa-yumazziqūna). As
for these [the Byzantines], a remnant of them will remain.”57
The different political and fiscal fates of Byzantine and Persian territories
would be linked to the actions of their rulers with respect to Muh.ammad’s
letters.
Dating the origins of any such reporting is a problem, but it does
seem a safe conclusion that by the second half of the third/ninth century
Muslims were confident that their Prophet had written to Kisrā, Caesar,
the Negus, and a handful of other contemporary rulers. It also seems reas-
onably clear that the third/ninth century represented a period of narrative
crystallization. Khalı̄fa b. Khayyāt. al-ʿUs.furı̄ (d. 240/854) lists a variety
of messengers (rusul) sent by Muh.ammad but does not provide narrative
elaboration or treat the messages sent to Caesar and Kisrā as distinct
from, for example, ʿUthmān’s mission to the people of Mecca in the year
58
of al-H. udaybiya (6/628). Such reporting could lead one to suspect that
traditionists added narrative details to an early list of messengers;59 it is
also possible that Ibn Khayyāt. may have extracted names from an existing
body of narrative. In any case, after the third/ninth century, reports about
the letters formed part of the bedrock of Arabic historiography. Notably,
this crystallization took shape before most Iranians – who, hypotheti-
cally, could have nurtured fonder memories of Kisrā’s reaction – likely
had converted to Islam.
57 Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām, al-Amwāl, 2nd ed., ed. Muh.ammad Khalı̄l Harrās
(Cairo: Dār al-Fikr, 1975), 31 (no. 58); see also Abū ʿUbayd, The Book of Revenue
(Kitāb al-Amwāl), trans. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee (Reading: Garnet, 2002), 18–22.
Other reports that he cites supply texts of Muh.ammad’s letters.
58 Ibn Khayyāt. al-ʿUs.furı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, 1:74. Regarding ʿUthmān at the Muslims’ expedition
to al-H 2
. udaybiya, see W. Montgomery Watt, “al-H . udaybiya,” in EI .
59 In support of the existence of such a list, see Ibn Hishām, Sı̄ra, 2:607; al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh,
I:1560.
When it is recalled, the text of Muh.ammad’s letter to Kisrā speaks in

rather general terms of a warning. The contents are reported with remark-
able consistency. The third/ninth-century historian al-Yaʿqūbı̄ provides
an early version of the text of the letter:
In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate

From Muh.ammad, the Messenger of God, to Kisrā, the ruler of Persia (ʿaz.ı̄m
Fāris). Peace be upon him who follows the Guidance (al-hudā), believes in God
and His Messenger, and bears witness that there is no god but God alone, Who
has no partner, and that Muh.ammad is His servant and His Messenger to all
mankind to warn those who are alive, and that the word may be proved true
against the unbelievers.60 So convert to Islam and you shall be safe. If you refuse,
the sins of the Magians (al-Majūs) will be held against you.61
In some traditions, Kisrā is made to tear up the letter and then exclaim:
“He writes this to me, when he is my servant!”62
There are some differences in the reporters’ traditions, for example,
surrounding whether Muh.ammad’s messenger delivered the letter to
Kisrā directly or through one of Kisrā’s governors. After hearing of
Kisrā’s reaction, Muh.ammad states that his kingdom (mulk) would be
ripped up, or, alternatively, his umma.63 The differences do not, however,
detract from the iconic image. The constancy of the reported outcome,
despite the variations, suggests the wider significance of the letters epi-
sode as foreboding and justifying the oblivion of Kisrā and his king-
dom. The condemnation is not applied to Kisrā’s people, the Persians, for
whom redemption is still theoretically possible. Whereas in our previous
examples, of al-Nad.r and Sūrat al-Rūm, blame falls on a space – Persia –
and its past, here the traditions single out a single political ruler, Kisrā
(and the late Sasanian dynasty that he embodies) who memorably is the
ruler most directly opposed to Muh.ammad.
Gendering
The traditions discussed above belong, I argue, to a metanarrative that
explained the success of Muh.ammad, the early community, and Islam
60 See Qurʾan 36:70.

61 Al-Yaʿqūbı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, 2:77. For a list of other sources that provide the text of the letter
and for comparisons, see Hamidullah, Six originaux des lettres du Prophète, 178–80.
62 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:1572; History of al-T. abarı̄, 8:111.
63 Ibn Abı̄ Shayba, Mus.annaf, ed. Mukhtār Ah.mad al-Nadwı̄, 15 vols. (Karachi: Idārat al-
Qurʾān wa-l-ʿUlūm al-Islāmiyya, 1987), 14:337–8 (no. 18476). Here we seem to have
a single letter in three copies, sent to Kisrā, Caesar, and the Negus.
through a set of memorable oppositions: Qurʾanic versus Persian his-

tory, Muslim (and for a time, Byzantine) believers versus Meccan and
Persian unbelievers (even idolators), and the Prophet’s rule by Islam versus
Kisrā’s mere kingship. In the following, final case we even see tradition-
ists narrowing in on a source of blame for late Sasanian Iran’s troubles:
a woman.
The final decades of Sasanian rule were full of conflict, as I have
already outlined. In 622, Heraclius started a counteroffensive, freeing
Asia Minor from Sasanian control and initiating a reversal in the ongoing
Byzantine-Persian wars that saw him advance all the way to Ctesiphon in
the beginning of 628. In February 628, Khusraw Parvı̄z was assassinated,
and his successor, Shı̄rawayh, was forced to conclude a peace agreement
with the Byzantines on terms that saw the Sasanians give up the territ-
ories of Armenia and the western part of Mesopotamia in that year and
Syria, Palestine, and Egypt the following year.64 Persia’s leadership fell
to pieces as Shı̄rawayh reportedly killed nearly all male contenders for
the throne (as already mentioned in Chapter 3). A rapid succession of
leaders followed, culminating in Yazdagird III, the last of the Sasanian
kings, who reigned from 632 until his death in 651.
Among those who governed for a while during these chaotic years was
a daughter of Khusraw Parvı̄z. Muh.ammad reportedly learned of this
woman’s rule and prophesied devastating results. In the Hadith collection
of al-Bukhārı̄, it is reported that “when it reached the Messenger of God
that the Persians had made a daughter of Kisrā their king, he said: ‘No
people shall prosper if a woman rules over them’ (lan yaflah. qawm wa-law
amarahum imraʾa).” Muh.ammad’s witness is named as the companion
Abū Bakra, who provides the statement after saying that it profited him
as advice afterward on the Day of the Camel, when he decided not to
plot with the group led by ʿĀʾisha, the Prophet’s widow, against the
then-caliph ʿAlı̄.65
Variations of Muh.ammad’s statement to Abū Bakra are repeated
in numerous legal and historical texts. The Battle of the Camel often
provides the context for Abū Bakra’s recollection, whereas the text’s
64 Beate Dignas and Engelbert Winter, Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neigh-
bours and Rivals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 44–9, 148–
51.
65 Al-Bukhārı̄, S.ah.ı̄h., 4:376–7 (within the chapter entitled “Kitāb al-Fitan”). A further
citation of the tradition runs along similar lines; it occurs within the “Kitāb al-Maghāzı̄”
chapter of the S.ah.ı̄h., under the heading “The Writing of the Prophet to Kisrā and
Caesar.” S.ah.ı̄h., 3:183–4 (its placement here supporting my point about the interlocking
of traditions).
figure 5.1. Drachma of Queen Būrān, 630 (1 AH). The State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg. Photograph C The State Hermitage Museum/photo
by Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets.
information about Kisrā’s daughter provides a critical context for

Muh.ammad’s statement. The early Hadith authorities who transmit
the report seem to be Basran, which is of interest given the setting of
the Battle of the Camel near Basra.66 The Mus.annaf of Ibn Abı̄ Shayba
includes one version of it in its chapter on the first civil war. Four of the
other major early Sunni collections also cite it: besides al-Bukhārı̄’s S.ah.ı̄h.,
it appears in the Musnad of Ah.mad b. H . anbal; the Sunan of al-Tirmidhı̄
(d. 279/892), and the Sunan of al-Nasāʾı̄ (d. 915/302).67 Al-Tirmidhı̄, for
66 As noted by Mohammad Fadel, “Is Historicism a Viable Strategy for Islamic Law
Reform? The Case of ‘Never Shall a Folk Prosper Who Have Appointed a Woman
to Rule Them,’” Islamic Law and Society 18, no. 2 (2011): 131–76, at 141.
67 See the useful summary of the Hadith sources in Fadel, “Is Historicism a Viable Strategy,”
140–3 and 151–8.
example, reports that Abū Bakra said that when Kisrā died, he heard the
Prophet say: “Whom have they appointed as a successor?” He was told,
“His daughter.” The Prophet then said: “No people shall prosper if a
woman rules over them.” Abū Bakra explains: “When ʿĀʾisha arrived,”
that is, to Basra, “I remembered the statement of the Messenger of God,
and so God safeguarded me by it.”68 That is, he did not side with ʿĀʾisha
against ʿAlı̄. Ah.mad b. H . anbal features the report eight times in his
Musnad. In one of these cases, Abū Bakra reports that the Prophet was
lying down with his head in ʿĀʾisha’s lap when a man came to inform
him that the Persians had lost a battle. Muh.ammad fell to the ground in
prostration to God, then rose, asking the messenger questions, and the
messenger answered them. Among the news that the messenger brought
was that a woman now ruled the Persians. The Prophet declared three
times: “Men are doomed when they obey women!”69
For those promoting patriarchical views, the failure of Persia provided
a credible scenario for the Prophet’s statement. The text – and the author-
ity it carried because of its wide circulation in the early, authoritative
Sunni collections – proved to be useful for advocates of androcentric
ideas, and it is treated accordingly by Ibn al-Jawzı̄ (d. 597/1200), admit-
tedly beyond our time period, who gives the “context” (sabab) of the
Prophet’s statement in this way:
When Shı̄rawayh killed his father, Kisrā, he reigned for only eight months (or it
is said six months). Then he died, and his son Ardashı̄r reigned after him. He
was seven years old. Then he was killed, and Būrān, a daughter of Kisrā, ruled
after him. That reached the Messenger of God, and so he said: “No people shall
prosper if a woman rules over them.”
In what follows, Ibn al-Jawzı̄ explains that prosperity refers to successful

pursuit of one’s goals. Managing one’s affairs to achieve success requires
perfection of judgment, which women lack. The Prophet’s statement
indicates that women must not act as rulers, serve as judges, or contract
their own marriages.70
Today, the Prophet’s statement is commonly cited alongside Qurʾan
4:34, the interpretation of which has been controversial. ʿAbdullah Yūsuf
ʿAlı̄ translated the verse as “Men are the protectors and maintainers of
68 Al-Tirmidhı̄, al-Jāmiʿ al-s.ah.ı̄h., 4:527–8 (within the “Kitāb al-Fitan,” no. 2262).
69 Ibn H. anbal, Musnad, 5:61 (no. 84); see also 5:53 (no. 30), 58 (no. 67), 63 (nos. 103,
106–7), 67 (no. 137), and 68 (no. 147).
70 Ibn al-Jawzı̄, Kashf al-mushkil min h.adı̄th al-s.ah.ı̄h.ayn, ed. ʿAlı̄ H . usayn al-Bawwāb,
4 vols. (Riyadh: Dār al-Wat.an, 1997), 2:16.
women.”71 When, in 2007, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa, said
that Islam does not prevent a Muslim woman from becoming leader of
her country, his opponents cited the Qurʾanic verse, the tradition, and
the case of Persia as evidence of his wrong-headedness. And opponents
of female national leaders in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Indone-
sia have also cited Muh.ammad’s statement and Persia’s failure in sup-
port of their positions. In the United States, when Ingrid Mattson was
named the first female president of the Islamic Society of North America
in 2006, there were some members, though perhaps not many, who also
brought up the Hadith against such a possibility and cited Persia’s prob-
lems. Those sympathetic to women’s struggles for empowerment today
have also highlighted the failure of Persia under its queen, but in their
case, it has served as a specific, and therefore restricted, context in which
to situate the Prophet’s statement. Considering “the authorial voice of
Abū Bakrah in relation to the authorial voice of the Prophet,” Khaled
Abou El Fadl, for example, argues that Abū Bakra “is consistently cast
into the role of the conservative legitimist who defends the traditional
role of men, eschews involvement in politics and is stubborn in adher-
ing to whatever he believes is right.” It is ironic, however, that “many
of the traditions coming through him are highly politicized.” The spe-
cific tradition, considered here, can be “taken as a condemnation of
ʿĀʾisha’s political role.” It is possible, furthermore, that Abū Bakra was
“someone who saw little value in women.” Then, “if that is the case,
is it possible that the Prophet had commented on the developing situ-
ation in Persia by saying, ‘A people who are led by this woman will
not succeed?’ If that is the case, is it possible that Abū Bakrah mis-
heard the statement because he was receiving it through his own sub-
jectivities?”72 Meanwhile, the Egyptian scholar Muh.ammad al-Ghazālı̄
(not to be confused with the luminary of Seljuk times) has argued for
the irrelevance of the tradition, since it applies, in his view, to the
internal turmoil then prevailing in Persia; the Prophet meant only that
Persia was doomed to fall, not that all women were unfit for public
office.73
71 For contemporary debates about this verse, see esp. Amina Wadud, Qur’an and Woman:
Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999), esp. 69–74.
72 Khaled Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women
(Oxford: Oneworld, 2001; repr., 2003), 111–14. Other points of consideration include
the integrity of Abū Bakra (or lack thereof) and his place in the politics of his own day,
amid the conflict between ʿĀʾisha and ʿAlı̄.
73 Muh.ammad al-Ghazālı̄, al-Sunna al-nabawiyya bayn ahl al-fiqh wa-ahl al-h.adı̄th
(Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1989). Discussed by Jonathan
Still, while granting the importance of the tradition for the status of
women at different points in history, for many of the earliest tradition-
ists, women’s place in society was not the point of first concern. They
were not defending patriarchy; they saw no need to do so.74 Instead, they
employed a discourse about gender firstly for the purpose of meditating
on the conflict-ridden history of the early Muslim community (thus the
report’s appearance among other Hadith relevant to the fitna). For this
meditation, the decline of the Sasanians served as a useful point of refer-
ence. They also found Abū Bakra’s report helpful for writing about the
decline of the Sasanians as a subject unto itself. There is often a strong ele-
ment of triumphalism in the second type of recollections, and an interest
in omens forecasting the Sasanians’ decline and fall. Neither of these pre-
occupations have much to do with the question of whether women are fit
to rule (or serve as judges or contract their own marriages). Both concerns
help explain why, for example, al-Bukhārı̄ places versions of Abū Bakra’s
report within the “Kitāb al-Fitan” and “Kitāb al-Maghāzı̄” chapters of
his S.ah.ı̄h., rather than elsewhere in his book.75
Two examples illustrate the usefulness of Abū Bakra’s report for his-
torians’ narratives about the Sasanians and their decline, although one
could cite many more. In the first, found on the penultimate page of
Ibn Qutayba’s al-Maʿārif amid discussion of Persia’s kings, the author
reports that during Būrān’s one-and-a-half-year reign, the kharāj tax was
not collected and wealth (al-amwāl) was distributed between the army
and the nobility – an unfortunate situation from the state’s point of view,
and one that would have been familiar in Ibn Qutayba’s own day, when
the treasury’s resources were being depleted. Ibn Qutayba then repeats a
version of the Prophet’s statement: “A people that entrusts its leadership
to a woman will not prosper.” The greater burden of blame may fall
on Shı̄rawayh and his murderous reign, but the fact of Būrān’s gender
shows just how desperate the situation had become.76 In another case,
al-Masʿūdı̄, in a section of his Tanbı̄h treating the Sasanians, gives the
A. C. Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Oxford:
Oneworld, 2009), 163 and 172, n. 32.
74 Nor did they see a reason to oppose patriarchy by applying the exegetical tools of
Muslim tradition to Abū Bakra’s report, as noted by Fadel, “Is Historicism a Viable
Strategy,” 150–3. Fadel notes that only one of the early Hadith collections, that of al-
Nasāʾı̄, “made an explicit connection between Abū Bakra’s h.adı̄th and qualifications for
political office.”
75 Fadel makes a similar argument; see ibid., 154–5.
76 Ibn Qutayba, al-Maʿārif, 666. Ibn Qutayba also cites the report at the start of his ʿUyūn
al-akhbār (1:1) within its “Kitāb al-Sult.ān”; it would appear that a government ruled
by two amı̄rs is as disastrous as one run by a woman.
precise length of the reigns of the dynasty’s last monarchs – some a mat-
ter of months – before he comes to Būrān, who, he writes, ruled for a
year and six months. Her reign, we learn, was in the second year of the
hijra, and it was during that year that the Prophet learned that she had
been made queen and heard of the partisanship and discord that wreaked
havoc among the Persians. And so the Prophet said, “If a woman runs a
people’s affairs, they will not prosper.”77
For traditionists such as Ibn al-Jawzı̄, the Sasanian era was nearly five
hundred years in the past, and perhaps of limited interest. He could, how-
ever, make good use of it as context to explain the Prophet’s statement.
But what he takes for granted was more than context to other reporters,
particularly of earlier times. For them, it was useful to inject the subject
of Būrān’s gender into their recollections, with a set of expected norms
that supported a damning vision of the past.
Conclusion
By the mid-ninth century, we have in Muslim sources – including proph-
etic biography, Qurʾan commentaries, and works of Hadith – a raft of
interlocking, prejudicial reports that depict Persia’s past as one of idle
tales, polytheists and idolaters, tyrannical and wicked kings, and di-
saster. Epic was trivialized, while Zoroastrianism was defined in terms
unintelligible to any practitioner. Kisrā missed his chance; Būrān had
none. The past has little, if anything, to say to the present – it is finished,
a point emphatically made by the Prophet when he pronounced that no
people shall prosper if a woman rules over them.
This past did not speak for itself, but came into existence as part of a
metanarrative that deeply conditioned the expectations that subsequent
generations had for knowledge about Iran’s history and the sorts of ques-
tions that they asked when confronting it. Built on a set of logically con-
sistent, narrated oppositions – a Qurʾanic versus a Persian past, Muslim
and (for a time) Byzantine believers versus Meccan and Persian un-
believers, and rule by Islam versus rule by mulk (royal power) – tra-
ditions about Iran seemed plausible because they resonated with wider
77 Al-Masʿūdı̄, al-Tanbı̄h, 102–3. See also the account of al-Maqdisı̄; he reports that it was
during the queen’s reign that Persia experienced the defeat at Dhū Qār and the defeat
of the Sasanians by the Arabs – a battle ordinarily dated to the reign of her father. The
Prophet reportedly said about this battle: “It is the first time that the Arabs got the upper
hand of the Persians, and it is through me that God has helped them.” Al-Maqdisı̄,
al-Badʾ wa-l-taʾrı̄kh, 3:172–3; L. Veccia Vaglieri, “Dhū K.ār,” in EI2 .
bodies of memory relating to Iran as well as to the earliest days of Islam,

the Qurʾanic revelation, and the Prophet’s life. This memory helped to
generate a cultural expectation that any past could be jāhiliyya. Accord-
ingly “the justice of Anūshirvān,” which I discussed in the introduction
to Part 2, appears in al-Thaʿālibı̄’s book under a heading advertising
two-word phrases for “the kings of the jāhiliyya” and the “caliphs of
Islam.”78
78 “Fı̄mā yud.āfu wa-yunsabu ilā mulūk al-jāhiliyya wa-khulafāʾ al-Islām”; al-Thaʿālibı̄,

Thimār al-qulūb, 178–9.
6
Asserting the End of the Past
Scholars have often commented upon how the earliest stories about the
conquests glorified the deeds of the Arab victors and were embellished
with details, such as tribal genealogies, that served their descendants
as well. In Chapter 3, I showed that Iranians also played this game.
If there were winners – Arabs and certain Iranians – in the conquests,
there were also losers, whose memory fared less well. Beginning with the
battle of al-Qādisiyya, this chapter explores the ways in which dramatic
and engaging accounts in third/ninth- and fourth/tenth-century histories
tend to transform and diminish the identities of the losing side, namely,
Sasanian soldiers, religious communities, and elite families. While such
persons and institutions were admittedly pushed aside, much conquest
reporting also appears to stretch the truth. The possible reasons for this
ask for investigation.
Motivated to Do God’s Work and Will

Memory of defeat has often played a major role in the imagination of
communities, justifying solidarity, cultural resistance, and, frequently,
violence against their oppressors. Such narratives trade in nostalgia and
call for a return to lost grandeur and pride. The survival of the Jews after
repeated defeats, as recorded in the Hebrew Bible, inspired later national
movements with the lesson that a people’s religious culture could prove
stronger than political and military force. So, too, the sites of loss –
whether battlefields, resting places, sites of ambush, or breached city
walls – often become eternal monuments to brief, yet irreversible moments
198
Asserting the End of the Past 199
figure 6.1. The battle of al-Qādisiyya. From a manuscript of Firdawsı̄’s Shāh-

nāmah, 1614.
C The British Library Board.
of defeat. Even when history validates the victor’s conduct in war, the
loser rarely accepts his motives as just.1
The battle of al-Qādisiyya, which took place in either 636 or 6372 to
the southwest of al-H . ı̄ra, offers an apparent counterexample to such mili-
tary reporting, with Iranian and non-Iranian traditionists alike celebrating
the Persians’ bloody defeat. It was an especially important battle because
it opened the way for the Arab Muslims’ entry across the Euphrates into
the Sasanian heartlands in Iraq and Iran and crushed the Persians, who
were led by the illustrious commander Rustam in the service of Yazdagird
III. Al-Qādisiyya and the death of Rustam have provided high drama for
generations, up to and including our own day, when the story has been
manipulated in the service of a poisonous politics. In 1980, it was the
subject of an eponymous film produced on the eve of the Iran-Iraq war
under the supervision of ʿIzzat Ibrāhı̄m al-Dūrı̄, deputy chairman of Iraq’s
Revolutionary Command Council. During the filming, al-Dūrı̄ stated:
“We are most certainly moving toward decisive battles. Our present posi-
tion forces upon us decisive battles against the enemies so as to open the
arduous road leading to the renewal of our glory and our civilisation.”
A few months later, war broke out. Several Iraqi units carried names
from the original al-Qādisiyya, and Iraqis came to refer to the war as
“Saddam’s Qādisiyya” or “the second Qādisiyya.”3
A large part of the power of the battle as a focus of memory lay in
the evidence it gave of God’s assistance to the Muslims. The account
of the Arab historian Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfı̄ shows the Arabs’ sense of a
religious mission and furnishes an example. He seems to have written
his Kitāb al-Futūh. in the first part of the third/ninth century, though
the hands of later generations are also at work in it.4 The following
1 Although bearing a very different historical consciousness, post–World War II Germans

are an exception. It is no coincidence that World War II and the Holocaust have generated
some of the most stimulating scholarship on memory.
2 Regarding the dates and chronology of, and participants in, the conquests, see esp. Fred
McGraw Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1981); Robinson, “The Rise of Islam”; and Daniel, “The Islamic East.”
3 On the film, entitled al-Qādisiyya (directed by the Egyptian director Salah Abou Saif), see
Ofra Bengio, Saddam’s Word: Political Discourse in Iraq (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1998), 172–5. This film has been available from time to time on YouTube.
4 This frequently studied but little cited text has a complicated history, on which see espe-
cially M. A. Shaban, The ʿAbbāsid Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1970), xvii–xix; Shaban, “Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfı̄,” in EI2 ; Lawrence I. Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham
and His History,” unpublished paper presented at the Sixth International Colloquium on
“From Jahiliyya to Islam” (Institute for Advanced Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem,
Sept. 5–10, 1993); Conrad, “Conquest of Arwād”; and Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir,
is a summary of what he has to say about the battle. We learn that

the Muslims suffered significant losses in their first encounter with the
Persians in Iraq at a site called Jisr (Arabic for “bridge”), located near
al-H. ı̄ra. They were overwhelmed by the Persians’ military strength but
also hurt by their own internal squabbles. But things changed when the
Caliph ʿUmar appointed Saʿd b. Abı̄ Waqqās. in charge of all of the
Muslims in Iraq, saying: “I hope that God will conquer by your hand!”5
The Muslims subsequently approached Yazdagird with an “invitation”
to accept Islam by reciting a profession of the faith or to pay the tax
on non-Muslims (jizya), the third alternative being combat. Their main
agent was a man of high standing among the Arabs named al-Mughı̄ra
b. Shuʿba, who told Yazdagird that Muh.ammad “informed us before his
death of all the lands which God, mighty and glorious, would open by
our hands, and your country and palace were among them.”6 Yazdagird,
not surprisingly, responded unsympathetically: in lieu of the jizya (which,
he learned, would involve a whip being held over the Persians’ heads), he
instructed one of his men to place a load of dirt atop the head of one of
the Arab nobles, with a note for their leader warning that he, Yazdagird,
would be sending someone to bury him and his companions in the ditch
of al-Qādisiyya.7
The fighting was difficult; the Persians greatly outnumbered the
Muslims and possessed not only horses but also elephants. Ibn Aʿtham
reports that Muslim mothers urged their sons to martyrdom.8 Yet, despite
the odds Saʿd and his men persisted, though Saʿd himself could not join
in the fighting owing to unbearable sores on the interior of his thighs that
made riding a war horse impossible. The tide of the battle changed when
a brave former drunk, Abū Mih.jan, rode atop Saʿd’s horse and armed
with his weapons into battle. In the fighting, the Muslims proclaimed
91–3. More skeptically, see Marina Pyrovolaki, “Futūh. al-Shām and Other Futūh. Texts:
A Study of the Perception of Marginal Conquest Narratives in Arabic in Medieval and
Modern Times” (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2009), ch. 3, “Ibn Aʿtham: The
Making of a Historian and the Futūh. al-Islām.” The sections of Ibn Aʿtham’s book that
I treat in this chapter seem to contain early third/ninth-century material, as he gives more
attention than do later chroniclers to the identity of the Persians, whose descendants may
have been more known to him.
5 Ibn Aʿtham, Kitāb al-Futūh., ed. Muh.ammad ʿAbd al-Muʿı̄d Khān and ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
al-Bukhārı̄, 8 vols. (Hyderabad: Osmania Oriental Publications Bureau, 1968–75), 1:168–
73.
6 Ibid., 1:199. After describing the battle of Jisr, Ibn Aʿtham treats exchanges with Byzan-
tium before returning to the situation in Iraq and the battle of al-Qādisiyya.
7 Ibid., 1:200.
8 Ibid., 1:206–7.
their convictions with shouts of “God is most great!” and by declaring,

“Power belongs alone to God, the Almighty, the Great!” By the time the
Muslims had pushed their opponents to the bank of the Euphrates, they
had killed more than ten thousand horsemen and taken a great deal of
booty. They then drove on toward al-Madāʾin. At last, in the vicinity of
the Sasanian capital, one of the Muslims, Hilāl b. ʿAlqama, recognized
Rustam and charged at him:
Rustam shot at him with an arrow and pierced the Muslim’s foot in its stirrup.
The Muslim struck him a blow and knocked him down dead. Then he removed
the arrow from his foot, dismounted to Rustam, and removed the crown (al-
tāj) and whatever else was on Rustam. And he left him dead and despoiled and
mounted his horse.9
Having killed Rustam off in his narrative, Ibn Aʿtham moves on to relate
events at al-Madāʾin and to give an account of the Arabs’ crossing of the
Tigris.
Rustam’s death made for a good story, as can be seen even more vividly
in al-T.abarı̄’s account of the battle, which is far longer than any other
(pieced together from previous reports, it occupies nearly 150 pages in the
Leiden edition of the History).10 Toward the beginning, the Arabs invite
the Persians to Islam or, alternatively, to pay the jizya or to engage in
battle; the Persians, led by Yazdagird and Rustam, either reject the offer
outright, in some reports al-T.abarı̄ features, or give serious consideration
to the Arabs’ invitation, in others. But in the end, they opt for war. Events
unfold until Rustam, hiding in the shade of a mule and its litter, is badly
injured when an Arab, Hilāl b. ʿUllafa, cuts the ropes fastening the mule’s
litter, which collapses onto Rustam’s spine.11 Rustam manages to drag
himself to a nearby canal and to throw himself into it, but before he can
swim to safety, the Arab, in pursuit, wades into the water, grabs Rustam’s
leg, and drags him to the canal’s bank, where he strikes Rustam in the
forehead with his sword, killing him. Al-T.abarı̄ continues:
Then [Hilāl] dragged him farther and threw him at the feet of the mules. He
seated himself on Rustam’s throne and exclaimed, “By the Lord of the Kaʿba,
9 Ibid., 1:212.
10 Al-T.abarı̄ cites Sayf b. ʿUmar (d. 180/796) throughout this portion of his Taʾrı̄kh (he
credits a recension through Shuʿayb b. Ibrāhı̄m and al-Sarı̄ b. Yah.yā). On Sayf and his
Kitāb al-Futūh. al-kabı̄r wa-l-ridda, see esp. Ella Landau-Tasseron, “Sayf b. ʿUmar in
Medieval and Modern Scholarship,” Der Islam 67, no. 1 (1990): 1–26. Toward the end
of his account, al-T.abarı̄ introduces a separate account by Ibn Ish.āq.
11 The names ʿAlqama and ʿUllafa resemble each other in the Arabic script.
I have killed Rustam! Come to me!” Men gathered around him without notic-
ing or seeing the throne, proclaiming, “God is most great!” and calling out
to each other. At this point the polytheists (mushrikūn) lost heart and were
defeated.12
One learns that in the aftermath thirty thousand Persians followed

Rustam’s example, throwing themselves into the canal, with the Arabs
pursuing them up and down its bank, massacring them. On this day, al-
T.abarı̄ writes, the Muslims killed “ten thousand” men, “over and above
those whom they had killed on the previous day.”13 A group of Christians
enquired of Saʿd b. Abı̄ Waqqās.: “O commander, we have seen the body
of Rustam near the gate of your castle, but he had the head of another
man; the blows have disfigured him [beyond recognition].” At this, we
are told, “Saʿd laughed.”14
Al-T.abarı̄’s account is structured as a series of episodes that move
toward Rustam’s death.15 The topos of the call to Islam appears again
and again, as the story repeatedly shows violence as the consequence of
rejecting this “invitation.” Presented as direct speech, it consists of the
options of conversion, payment of the jizya, or war, and it emphasizes
the Arabs’ prior state (the jāhiliyya) as a time of spiritual and physical
deprivation. When Yazdagird comments, “I know of no other nation on
earth that was more miserable, smaller in numbers, and more rancorous
than you,” one of the Arabs even expands his point: certainly, the Arabs
used to eat beetles, scorpions, and snakes; to raid and kill one another as
a religion; and to practice female infanticide – but all of that was before
Islam.16
Like many moments in world history, the battle of al-Qādisiyya opens
itself to interpretation. A century or two after Ibn Aʿtham and al-T.abarı̄,
the Muʿtazilite theologian ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025) – who was born
in Asadābād, a small town in western Iran to the southwest of Hamadhān,
and who spent much of his career in Baghdad and Rayy – offered proofs
12 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:2336–7; The History of al-T . abarı̄, vol. 12, The Battle of al-
Qādisiyyah and the Conquest of Syria and Palestine, trans. Yohanan Friedmann (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1992), 123–4.
14 Ibid., I:2340; History of al-T . abarı̄, 12:127.
15 According to al-T.abarı̄ (from Sayf), this took place at al-Qādisiyya, not outside al-
Madāʾin as in Ibn Aʿtham’s account. For another account of the killing, see al-T.abarı̄,
Taʾrı̄kh, I:2356–7 (from Ibn Ish.āq).
16 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:2240–2; History of al-T . abarı̄, 12:36–9. On this topos, see Noth,
Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 146–67.
for the superiority of Islam over other religions in his Tathbı̄t dalāʾil al-
nubuwwa (Confirmation of the Proofs of Prophecy).17 One such proof
rests on how the Prophet and the Qurʾan had “promised” (waʿada) the
success of Islam and Muslim rule. ʿAbd al-Jabbār begins with a quotation
from the Prophet: “Verily God sent me as a messenger and promised me
that my religion would prevail over all [other] religions and my ruling
power (s.ult.ānı̄) would be victorious over that of Kisrā and Caesar. So
overcome the kings, and my sovereignty and that of my helpers and
followers will surpass that of every king on earth.”18 Qurʾanic verses
follow in support of this prediction: “[It is] He who sent His messenger
with the guidance and the religion of truth to make it prevail over all
religion; God is sufficient witness” (48:28) and “They wish to extinguish
God’s light with their mouths, but God refuses [to do] anything other
than to perfect His light, even though the Unbelievers (al-kāfirı̄n) dislike
that” (9:32). For ʿAbd al-Jabbār, the conquests brought victory over the
Sasanian regime, but more significantly, they heralded the victory of Islam
over other religions (diyānāt); as he states: “It was as [God] said and as
he related.” He goes on to present a lengthy theological argument, in
which, among other matters, he treats objects of Zoroastrian belief. The
history of the conquests supports his case: it fits into a broader narrative
about the inevitable triumph of Islam, which begins with Muh.ammad’s
life, his death, and the so-called “wars of apostasy” (ridda), followed by
the defeat of Persia and reporting on al-Qādisiyya. ʿAbd al-Jabbār recalls
with irony Yazdagird’s statement that he would bury the Arabs in the
ditch at al-Qādisiyya.19
Fred Donner has characterized the conquests in general as a “remark-
able testament to the power of human action mobilized by ideological
commitment as a force in human affairs.”20 Indeed, when the centrality
of the Islamic mission is highlighted, this is what classical authors seem to
show us. The repeated use of the word mushrik, signifying “polytheist,”
to refer to the Persians underscores their rejection of the invitation to
17 Christianity occupies a significant portion of ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s attention in this book, on

which see Gabriel Said Reynolds, A Muslim Theologian in the Sectarian Milieu: ʿAbd
al-Jabbār and the Critique of Christian Origins (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 1–74. See also ʿAbd
al-Jabbār, Critique of Christian Origins: A Parallel English-Arabic Text, ed. and trans.
Gabriel Said Reynolds and Samir Khalil Samir (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University
Press, 2010).
18 ʿAbd al-Jabbār b. Ah.mad, Tathbı̄t dalāʾil al-nubuwwa, ed. ʿAbd al-Karı̄m ʿUthmān, 2
vols. (Beirut: Dār al-ʿArabiyya, 1966), 2:314.
19 ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Tathbı̄t dalāʾil al-nubuwwa, 2:320–1.
20 Donner, Early Islamic Conquests. See also R. Stephen Humphreys, Islamic History: A
Framework for Inquiry, rev. ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 88–9.
Islam through the employment of a Qurʾanic term that exegetes in their

Qurʾan commentaries identified as the Arab polytheists and worshippers
of idols in Muh.ammad’s lifetime.21 Similarly, the term fath., used in
the conquest literature generally, has a primary sense of “opening” but
points to the idea that the “expansion was an act of God’s favor, a divine
blessing bestowed upon His prophet and those faithful Believers who
followed him.”22
It is noteworthy that ʿAbd al-Jabbār spells out in theological terms
what Ibn Aʿtham and al-T.abarı̄ merely described historically, namely,
the victory of Islam over other religions. By contrast, for Ibn Aʿtham and
al-T.abarı̄, the supersession of the Sasanian Empire as a political event
is at least as much an interest, and equally belongs to a fundamentally
kerygmatic interpretation of the conquests as they describe the defeated
throughout as imperial soldiers, and civilian populations and their reli-
gious rituals and beliefs play little or no role in the drama. The identity of
the residents of al-Qādisiyya before the war is not important; afterward,
the term ahl al-Qādisiyya refers to the Arab victors. For historians
writing at the center of the ʿAbbasid Empire, such a perspective fits,
for they would be sensitive to their own place in a sequence of empires.
They do not celebrate the defeat of Persians or ordinary Zoroastrians
as such, but rather the defeat of a past regime and its imperial religion.
A story related by al-T.abarı̄ thus depicts Rustam, on the outskirts of
Kufa, dreaming that ʿUmar entered the Persian camp accompanied by
an angel, who put a seal on the weapons of the Persians, tied them in a
bundle, and handed them to ʿUmar.23
Images of God-given victory and violence endured amid disagree-
ments on the identity of Rustam’s killer, with the phrase “God killed
Rustam,” qatala Allāh Rustam, employed in recognition of uncertainty
on the question, and as various poets vaunted their tribesmen’s valor in
killing Rustam. One of the Muslims who claimed credit, Zuhayr b. ʿAbd
Shams al-Bajalı̄, reportedly boasted:
I am Zuhayr and I am the son of ʿAbd Shams.
I felled by [my] sword the great man of Persia,
Rustam – a man of pride and fine silk.
I obeyed my Lord and satisfied myself.24
21 See my discussion of homology in Chapter 5, as well as Hawting, Idea of Idolatry and

the Emergence of Islam, Chapter 2.
22 Donner, “Arabic fath. as ‘Conquest.’” Regarding a “Believers” movement as a form of
militant monotheism, see Donner, Muhammad and the Believers.
24 Al-Balādhurı̄, al-Buldān wa-futūḥuhā, 302–3.
Such reporting may belong to a much wider pattern of history as told

by the winners, in which the losing side suffers in memory. Still, more
sympathetic visions could emerge and exist alongside those of al-T.abarı̄
and his fellow reporters, especially in works composed under the patron-
age of Iranian dynasties. One senses mild sympathy in Balʿamı̄’s Persian
adaptation of al-T.abarı̄’s work, completed under the Samanid governor-
ate and representing a new phase in memory. There are significant dif-
ferences between Balʿamı̄’s version and al-T.abarı̄’s original, including
the former’s omission of chains of transmission and resolution of some
of the ambiguities in the latter, not to mention its extreme brevity; as
noted in Chapter 1, his text can in no sense be read as a straight trans-
lation of al-T.abarı̄’s History. For this episode, the details that Balʿamı̄
recalls about Rustam’s demise portray the death of an opponent who,
while not a Muslim, is never called a polytheist (mushrik). Yazdagird’s
soldiers, no longer called “polytheists” but generally the “ʿAjam” or,
on occasion, “unbelievers” (sing. kāfir, pl. kāfirān) are put to flight by
the sight of the head of their general raised on a spear.25 More pro-
foundly, in Firdawsı̄’s Shāh-nāmah, the story of Rustam’s death has
shades of tragedy, especially in a letter Rustam was supposed to have
written to his brother on the eve of his death, in which he predicted the
downfall of Persia.26 Rustam is killed by a worthy opponent, the com-
mander Saʿd himself – the latter no victim of illness.27 Von Grunebaum
aptly summarized the contradiction likely experienced by Firdawsı̄ in
recounting these last episodes of his epic, the unexplored future of Iran
lying beyond his pages. As a Persian, Firdawsı̄ was “irremediably humil-
iated by the Sassanian defeat; as a Muslim he should have felt elated
at a development that had brought the true faith to his people and to
himself.”28
25 Balʿamı̄, Tārı̄kh-nāmah-yi T
. abarı̄, ed. Muh.ammad Rawshan, 3 vols. (Tehran: Nashr-i
Naw, 1366shamsı̄/[1987]), 1:451–2. Cf. Chronique de Abou-Djafar-Mo’hammed-ben-
Djarir-ben-Yezid Tabari (an unfortunate title, knowing what we now do about the nature
of Balʿamı̄’s “translation”), trans. M. Hermann Zotenberg, 4 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie
Impériale, 1867–74; repr., Paris: Éditions d’art Les Heures Claires, [1977?]), 3:385–400.
Regarding the Samanids, Balʿamı̄, and translation, see also Travis Zadeh, The Vernacular
Qur’an: Translation and the Rise of Persian Exegesis (London: Oxford University Press,
2012), 302ff.
26 Firdawsı̄, Shāh-nāmah, 8:413ff.
27 Firdawsı̄, Shāh-nāmah, 8:429ff. Cf. also Balʿamı̄, Tārı̄kh-nāmah-yi T . abarı̄, 1:
451–2.
28 G. E. von Grunebaum, “Firdausı̂’s Concept of History,” in Islam: Essays in the Nature
and Growth of a Cultural Tradition (Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Associ-
ation, 1955), 173.
Killing “Polytheists”
In their discussions of al-Qādisiyya, Ibn Aʿtham and al-T.abarı̄ show the
passage of the Sasanian Empire and the victory of Islam but care little
for Iranian society beyond military elites. While Qurʾan commentators,
as discussed in Chapter 5, became more careful in how they identified
pre-Islamic Persians in some contexts, historians of the conquests often
refer to all of the Arabs’ opponents as “polytheists” (mushrikūn) – as if
to erase their religious affiliations. This is the case even when the setting –
a Christian monastery (dayr), for example – would suggest otherwise.
Toward the end of a short seventh-century Nestorian work known as
the Khūzistān Chronicle, we find an account of the Arab conquest of the
region and of Shūsh and Shūstrā, or as Arabs came to know the towns,
al-Sūs and Tustar. The Chronicle was completed, at the latest, by the 680s
and is of interest because its detailed reporting and proximity to the events
can serve as a control against which to compare the later Arabic texts.29
It notes that “at the time of which we have been speaking, when the
Tayyāyē” – that is, the Arabs – “conquered all the territory of the Persians
and Byzantines, they also overran Bēt Hūzāyē, conquering all the strong
towns.” There remained only Sūs and Tustar, which were extremely well
fortified and controlled by the Persian forces commanded by Yazdagird
and one of his generals, called “Hormı̄zdan the Mede” (known in the
Arabic sources as al-Hurmuzān or al-Hurmuzdān). We are told that the
Arabs were led by their general Abū Mūsā (al-Ashʿarı̄, the famed military
leader of the conquests) who built Basra as a settlement for the Arabs, just
as Saʿd, son of (Abū) Waqqās., had built Kufa. When Abū Mūsā went up
against al-Hurmuzān, the latter used delaying tactics until he had collect-
ed an army. He petitioned Abū Mūsā to desist from taking captives and
laying waste to the land, and he promised to send tribute in return. This
arrangement worked for two years, and then al-Hurmuzān, trusting the
strength of his walls, broke the peace by killing the Arabs’ ambassadors,
including Giwargis, bishop of Ulay; he also imprisoned Abraham, metro-
politan of Porath. Al-Hurmuzān sent many troops against the Arabs, but
they were routed, and then the Arabs besieged Sūs, taking it after only a
few days. The Arabs killed all of Sūs’s distinguished citizens and seized
a building called the House of Mār Daniel, taking the treasure that was
29 See the lucid analysis of the Chronicle’s composition and dating by Chase F. Robinson in
“The Conquest of Khūzistān: A Historiographical Reassessment,” Bulletin of the School
of Oriental and African Studies 67, no. 1 (2004): 14–16 (taking into account the history
of scholarship on the Chronicle).
figure 6.2. Susa (Sūs, Iran), tomb of Daniel, 1903–36. Ernst Herzfeld Papers,
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institu-
tion, Washington, DC. Gift of Ernst Herzfeld, 1946. Drawing by Ernst Herzfeld
(D-219).
kept there and that, according to the account, had been preserved on the
king’s orders “since the days of Darius and Cyrus” (see Figure 6.2). The
Arabs also broke open and took a silver chest containing a mummy –
according to many it was Daniel’s, but others held that it belonged to
King Darius. They also besieged Tustar, fighting for two years to take
it. Finally a man from the province of Bēt Qat.rāyē, who lived in Tustar,
befriended someone who owned a house on the walls of the city and
entered into a conspiracy with him. The two of them went to the Arabs,
promising them: “If you give us a third of the spoil of the city, we will
let you into it.” The conspirators dug a tunnel under the walls and let
in the Arabs, who proceeded to spill “blood there as if it were water.”
They “killed the Exegete of the city and bishop of Hormı̄zd Ardashı̄r [Ar.
Sūq al-Ahwāz], along with the rest of the students, priests, and deacons,
shedding their blood in the very [church] sanctuary.” As for al-Hurmuzān,
the Arabs took him alive.30
30 I would like to thank Sebastian Brock for making available to me his unpublished trans-
lation of the Chronicle (I draw from paras. 48–50). This section of the Chronicle is also
translated by Robinson in “Conquest of Khūzistān,” 17–18, from which I have also
Studying the Chronicle, Chase Robinson has found the Arabic tradi-
tion to be surprisingly faithful to several of the facts as reported in the
Nestorian text, such as the principal role played by Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarı̄,
the historicity of a siege, and the role (but not the identity) of a traitor
in securing Tustar’s defeat. Robinson’s comparison also yields broader
insights, including that the conquest traditions that we now have are
generally “composite reconstructions, assembled out of discrete units,
rather than pieces of a now-lost coherent whole.”31 But on one interest-
ing point, only briefly remarked upon by Robinson, there is a significant
difference between the Arabic reporters and the Chronicle: in our major
Arabic sources we do not find recollection of any Christians having been
among the dead at Tustar.32 Of course, the Chronicle, as the work of a
Christian author, might see events through a Christian lens, but it would
seem a reasonable assumption that there were Christian dead at Tustar.
Instead of reference to Christianity, however, one of the main and early
ways that the Arabic traditionists refer to the Tustarı̄s is along ethnic
lines as “non-Arabs” or “Persians,” while their opponents are described
as Muslims or Arabs. And so, at the start of Ibn Aʿtham’s treatment
of the conquest of Khūzistān, he mentions that ʿUmar wrote a letter to
Abū Mūsā asking him to rally his companions and “the people of Basra
and the rest of the Muslims” to go fight the “non-Arabs” (al-aʿājim) at
Tustar, Sūs, Manādhir, and their environs. ʿUmar promised: “Know that
the Muslims are under the protection of God, and that of His creatures,
the Muslim is the most protected by God,” as he entrusted the Muslims
to Abū Mūsā’s supervision and care.33 After a series of events, seventy
or so Muslims sneaked under cover of night into the town, only to find
in the morning that its door was bound with three locks, and the keys
were with al-Hurmuzān. Muslims both inside and outside the walls yelled
“God is most great.” This roused the Persians, including al-Hurmuzān,
benefited. Their translations are based on the text edited by Ignazio Guidi as Chronicon
anonymum. Scholars have made good use of the Chronicle; see esp. Robert G. Hoy-
land, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and
Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1997), 182–9; James
Howard-Johnston, Witness to a World Crisis: Historians and Histories of the Middle
East in the Seventh Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 128–35; and Sa-
vant, “The Conquest of Tustar: Site of Memory, Site of Forgetting,” in Violence in Early
Islamic Thought, ed. István Kristó-Nagy and Robert Gleave (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, forthcoming).
31 Robinson, “Conquest of Khūzistān,” 37. Robinson notes that his comparison supports
the earlier view of Noth; see his Early Arabic Historical Tradition, esp. 5–6.
32 Robinson, “Conquest of Khūzistān,” 33.
33 Ibn Aʿtham, Kitāb al-Futūh., 2:3–4.
his asāwira (elite cavalry), and marzubāns, from their homes and for-
tifications. Amid exclamations of “God is most great,” a fight ensued,
with the Muslims inside fighting while struggling to get the gate opened.
Many of them were killed, leaving only three alive when the last lock
was finally opened and the main force of Muslims rushed in and began
“killing and plundering.” Al-Hurmuzān fled to the town’s citadel with his
retinue and whatever they could carry. With the town now open and its
people scattered, the Muslims took booty, setting aside the allotted share
for the caliph ʿUmar before securing the surrender of al-Hurmuzān.34
Other historians similarly stress the intensity of the fight but write
out Tustar’s Christians. Ibn Khayyāt. al-ʿUs.furı̄ draws together a number
of reports dealing with the length of the Muslims’ siege of Tustar, the
manner by which they entered the town, the role of individual Muslims
and a traitor, the fate of al-Hurmuzān, the division of the booty, and
the prayers missed amid the fighting – but has nothing to say about the
identity of the ahl Tustar.35 The terminology is similarly vague in the
reports passed on by al-Balādhurı̄, who narrates in one report that a
non-Arab man (rajul min al-aʿājim) sought good terms for himself and
his family in exchange for leading the Muslims to a gap in the defenses
of the mushrikı̄n. He focuses his attention especially on al-Hurmuzān
and his supporters, relating that on the battlefield the Muslims killed
nine hundred of al-Hurmuzān’s troops and captured six hundred others,
who were executed.36 From another report, we learn that afterward, Abū
Mūsā also “killed anyone who was in the citadel who did not have a
guarantee of safety,” though he passed al-Hurmuzān on to ʿUmar, who
let him live.37 Al-T.abarı̄, likewise, focuses his attention on the Muslims’
successes and on al-Hurmuzān and the Sasanians – with armies from
Fārs, Jibāl, and Ahwāz – but not the residents of Tustar in recounting
the Muslim victory: “From the day the siege began until the time God
conquered Tustar for the Muslims, al-Barāʾ b. Mālik killed one hundred
adversaries, in addition to those he slew on other occasions.” Among the
Basran fighters, Majzaʾa b. Thawr, Kaʿb b. Sūr, and Abū Tamı̄ma “killed
similar numbers of enemy soldiers.” Among the Kufans there we also
some men who killed a great number of the enemy, including H . abı̄b b.
Qurra, Ribʿı̄ b. ʿĀmir, and ʿĀmir b. ʿAbd al-Aswad. Furthermore, during
34 Ibid., 2:20–3. The Muslims are shown the way by a Tustarı̄.

35 Ibn Khayyāt. al-ʿUs.furı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, 1:138–42.
36 Al-Balādhurı̄, al-Buldān wa-futūḥuhā, 427.
37 Ibid., 426.
the siege, “there were a number of enemies wounded who have to be

added to the numbers killed by them.”38
Christians as such are not the subject of violence in any of these
accounts, nor are they part of the story. That we are witnessing repres-
sion of memory is suggested by al-T.abarı̄’s recollection of the siege and
conquest of Sūs, which denies any use of violence against Christians.
According to the story, the military leader al-Nuʿmān b. Muqarrin,39
before departing from Sūs for Nihāwand, engaged the enemy in combat.
Some monks and clerics (al-ruhbān wa-l-qissı̄sūn) taunted the Muslims
from the city’s battlements: “O Arabs, do not bother, for no one will
conquer this fortress but the Antichrist, or forces that have the Anti-
christ in their midst.” Their shouting, we are told, enraged the Muslims.
An Arab, S.āfı̄ b. S.ayyād, strode to the gate of Sūs and kicked it with
his foot, shouting “Open up,” whereupon it blew open, and as chains
snapped and locks broke, the other gates opened up too. The Muslims
then stormed inside, and the “polytheists” (al-mushrikūn) surrendered
by stretching out their hands and shouting “Peace, peace!” The Arabs
magnanimously agreed to peace even though they had had to enter the
city by force.40 In contrast to the accounts of the taking of Tustar, this
report about the conquest of Sūs preserves the identity of the city’s Chris-
tian inhabitants, perhaps because of the tomb of Daniel and its associ-
ation by Muslims with the “Palace of Shūshān” in the biblical book of
Daniel as well as the possibly greater notoriety and survival of Christians
there.41
Why were Tustar’s Christians not identified? Why did historians such
as al-T.abarı̄ not use the town’s conquest to show, for example, the
superiority of Islam over Christianity? Immersed in the Arabic sources
and accustomed to such terminology across conquest reporting, today’s
scholars of the conquests generally take little notice of the term mushrik,
perhaps because they see it as a polemical term reflecting the Muslims’
fashioning of themselves as monotheists. This is a reasonable reading of
38 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:2553–4; The History of al-T. abarı̄, vol. 13, The Conquest of Iraq,
Southwestern Persia, and Egypt, trans. G. H. A. Juynboll (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1989), 134.
39 Brother to Suwayd and Nuʿaym, who were also active in the eastern conquests; see
Chapter 1, and also al-Sahmı̄, Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān, 4. On this family at the conquests, see
Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, esp. 428–9.
40 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:2564–5; History of al-T
. abarı̄, 13:145–6.
41 Regarding Syriac Christian churches, see “Shuster” and “Suse” in Fiey, Pour un Oriens
Christianus Novus, 133 and 135–6.
the sources, and perhaps even of the Qurʾan’s own usage.42 The term
features prominently in the early numismatic evidence as an important
indicator of the Muslims’ sense of themselves as a community distinct
from others. The Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 65–86/685–705)
issued coins featuring Arabic inscriptions, including Qurʾan 9:33, “[It is]
He who has sent His messenger with the guidance and the religion of
truth, to make it prevail over all [other] religion, even though the poly-
theists (mushrikūn) dislike that.” This verse, known as the risāla verse,
was reused when the ʿAbbasid caliph al-Maʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–33)
reformed the currency. Similarly, Qurʾan 112, which proclaims that God
has no partner, featured on the coinage and on the Dome of the Rock
and has reasonably been read as opposing Christian trinitarianism.43
There was also the Qurʾanic term kufr, or unbelief, which some jurists
interpreted to signify that any non-Muslim religion is like any other.44
In other words, an established vocabulary existed that was employed in
various contexts that often did efface the identity of Christians and other
faith groups. Furthermore, an “elephant in the room” at Tustar was al-
Hurmuzān’s later relationship with ʿUmar, the Caliph’s murder by the
hand of a Persian slave, and the possible guilt of al-Hurmuzān – this
episode bearing on a number of issues, including fitna, or conflict, within
the Muslim community itself and the loyalties of converts to Islam. His-
torians also had other post-conquest axes to grind, such as the spoils and
who should have received credit for the victory. Taking these aspects of
history writing into account, details about the losers hardly mattered.
But in some of the silence, we likely also have another kind of evi-
dence: evidence of the sensitivities of communities in transition, in which
legal-minded scholars, such as al-T.abarı̄, may have felt some discom-
fort with conquest-era violence against People of the Book, which would
partially explain the many references to the topos of the “invitation”
42 See Hawting, Idea of Idolatry, Chapter 2.

43 See Max van Berchem, Matériaux pour un Corpus inscriptionum Arabicarum, part
2, Syrie du Sud, 3 vols. (Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale,
1922–3, 1927), 2:223ff.; Oleg Grabar, “The Umayyad Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem,”
Ars Orientalis 3 (1959): 52ff.; Tayeb El-Hibri, “Coinage Reform under the ʿAbbāsid
Caliph al-Maʾmūn,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 36,
no. 1 (1993): 58–83; Jere L. Bacharach, Islamic History through Coins: An Analysis
and Catalogue of Tenth-Century Ikhshidid Coinage (Cairo: American University in
Cairo Press, 2006), 15–19; Heidemann, “Numismatics,” 656–7 and 659; and Donner,
Muhammad and the Believers, 208–9.
44 See Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam, 54–86 (“Classification of
Unbelievers”).
to Islam.45 This silence deserves more consideration. In the words of

Thomas Sizgorich, the militant devotionalism expressed in our Muslim
sources should likely be read as testimony to a common late antique pat-
tern of ascetic warriors and as memorializing “a koinē of signs, symbols,
and narrative forms with which the other communities of late antiquity
had for centuries contested questions of divine revelation, prophetic legiti-
macy, communal integrity and eruptions of the numinous into the lived
experience of individuals and communities.” Muslim authors partici-
pated in these patterns and in the process “inextricably (and unknow-
ingly) bound their community to a constellation of kindred communities
arrayed from Ireland to Yemen and from the Atlantic coast of Iberia to
eastern Mesopotamia.”46 The late antique world in which Islam emerged
really was one of “pious violence” and “pious warriors,” where militant
devotion to faith was expected, inscriptional propaganda appealed to sol-
diers paid in coinage, and spokespersons for post-conquest communities –
historians included – established boundary lines through narratives that
distinguished Muslims from their neighbors and in which the original
points of conflict became sites of memory.
The problem was that by the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries
the nature of the communities in which Muslims lived had changed enor-
mously – in size, in composition, and also in interconnections with Chris-
tians and Jews, as we know from other types of evidence, including
polemics. Muslims now had real neighbors to consider, so some elements
of the old stories just would not do. Iranian Muslims – like all Muslims –
could not, nor did they wish to, forget the conquests, which had unfolded
on such a vast and significant scale as a sign of God’s blessing. But they
needed to remember them carefully. It was not in their interest to stir up
trouble with Christians, Jews, or Zoroastrians, nor, it should also be said,
to recognize their own ancestors amid the vanquished. This meant rewrit-
ing history to erase the identity of its losers. Such rewriting developed a
vocabulary that presented monotheistic Christians as polytheists and that
45 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 146–67. Robinson broaches the topic well into
his article, when he writes: “That the Islamic tradition says nothing of the killing of local
Christians is to be explained not only by its relative indifference to (and absence of solid
information about) the fate of the conquered, but also by the political circumstances
in which it stabilized. Clearly defined legal rights and peaceful co-existence, the latter
commonly articulated in the Prophetic prohibition of killing monks, are developments
of the post-conquest period” (“The Conquest of Khūzistān,” 33).
46 Thomas Sizgorich, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Chris-
tianity and Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 13.
likely existed well before al-T.abarı̄’s day, but it was maintained thanks
in part to scholars such as al-T.abarı̄, who could have presented history
more along the theological lines of ʿAbd al-Jabbār, in the process ren-
dering explicit the losses to Christians, but chose instead to maintain
the anonymity of the victims. And so, while Muslims continued to elabo-
rate their own convictions through ever longer and more integrated narra-
tives about their ascetic values, God-given strength, and devoted militancy
against all odds, their original opponents faded into a set of meaningless
categories – enemies, polytheists, unbelievers, and so forth.
This willful neglect is also suggested by how historians such as al-
T.abarı̄ write about Zoroastrian sites at the time of the conquests and
afterward. As Iranians converted to Islam, Zoroastrianism suffered a
dramatic decline. Today, Zoroastrians number in the tens of thousands47
in a country dotted with former sites of Zoroastrian ritual.48 The decline
is not – to put it mildly – well documented in our Arabic sources. Even
when scholars have sought to identify the three major fires named in the
Avesta and in Pahlavi literature, the Ādur Farnbāg, Ādur Gushnasp, and
Ādur Būrzı̄n-mitrō, they have often been forced to work by conjecture.
Today, when some documenters of Iran’s Zoroastrian heritage study the
religion’s fate after the conquests, they point to the fear and intimida-
tion wrought by the invading armies, the movement of fires from place
to place, the pillaging of fire temples, and the building of mosques on
their sites. Still, among Muslims, the destruction of fire temples gener-
ated nothing like the literary interest accorded to al-Qādisiyya or Tustar,
nor does history seem to have passed on extensive documentary evidence
from Zoroastrians themselves. For example, scholars of Zoroastrianism
have sought to recover the history of the Ādur Farnbāg (also known in
our sources as the Ādur Farrōbay, Ādur Farra, or Ādur Khurra) near the
ancient city of Dārābgird in the province of Fārs. The fire’s origins could
be traced to Khwārizm and to the legendary figure of Jamshı̄d, and under
the Sasanian Anūshirvān it was reportedly moved to the village of Kāriyān
in Fārs.49 At some point, according to Jamsheed Choksy, it was “divided
47 The Iranian government has estimated that Zoroastrians in the country today number
thirty to thirty-five thousand; Zoroastrian groups in Iran claim to have sixty thousand
adherents. United States Department of State, “July-December, 2010 International Reli-
gious Freedom Report: Iran,” Sept. 13, 2011; http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/
4e734c92c.html.
48 On these, see Schippmann, Die iranischen Feuerheiligtümer.
49 See Schippmann, Die iranischen Feuerheiligtümer, 86–94 (“Kāriyān, Fārs”), document-
ing a much wider variety of reports on this fire. See also A. V. Williams Jackson, “The
into two portions hidden to safeguard against extinguishment by Arab

Muslims.” These protective actions were prescient because in 670 CE
the Umayyad governor of Iraq ordered the temple in Kāriyān razed, but
the flame was restored in Kāriyān and another started at Fasā from the
safeguarded portion of the fire. The threat continued, however, and in
1174 CE, the Kāriyān fire was moved to the nearby village of Sharı̄fābād
“to burn inconspicuously within side chambers of [a] mudbrick ātashgāh
[fire-temple], safe from extinguishment by zealous Muslims.”50 This all
may be true, but not a single source narrates the entirety of this account,
which Choksy has pieced together from different sources. This would
suggest that neither Muslims nor Zoroastrians wished to remember the
events as he relates them. This is not to say that one cannot write a
history of Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews at the time of the con-
quests based on our existing sources, including those in Arabic. Still,
often one will have to read against the grain of the record or even
within it.
Long ago, Ernest Renan noted how problematic historical knowledge
is for modern national solidarity, since it can reveal the violence that
produced the present unity. His point was that nations are not natural
entities that can be defined through objective factors such as shared ethnic-
ity, language, or religion; rather, they come into being through “a series
of convergent facts” and processes, and require a high degree of amnesia
regarding what divided their members in the past. Renan wrote:
The essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common, and
also that they have forgotten many things. No French citizen knows whether he
is a Burgundian, an Alan, a Taifale, or a Visigoth, yet every French citizen has to
have already forgotten (doit avoir oublié) the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, or
the massacres that took place in the Midi in the thirteenth century.51
As Benedict Anderson has noted, Renan’s point might seem straightfor-

ward, but a few moments of reflection will suggest how strange it is that
Location of the Farnbāg Fire, the Most Ancient of the Zoroastrian Fires,” Journal of
the American Oriental Society 41 (1921): 81–106; and Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their
Religious Beliefs and Practices, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2001), 123–4.
50 Among his sources was Ibn al-Faqı̄h’s Kitāb al-Buldān. See Choksy, “Altars, Precincts,
and Temples: Medieval and Modern Zoroastrian Praxis,” Iran 44 (2006): 331, and
Conflict and Cooperation, 97. Cf. Mary Boyce, “Ādur Farnbāg,” in EIr.
51 Ernest Renan, “What Is a Nation?” (trans. Martin Thom), in Nation and Narration, ed.
Homi K. Bhabha, 8–22 (London: Routledge, 1990), 11, edited according to Benedict
Anderson’s better reading of the French in Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities,
199–200.
he expects modern French nationals to have memories of events roughly

three hundred and six hundred years in the past. Nor is the idea of hav-
ing to “have already forgotten” straightforward. Anderson points out
that, “In effect, Renan’s readers were being told to ‘have already for-
gotten’ what Renan’s own words assumed they naturally remembered!”
Instead, “we can be confident that, left to themselves, the overwhelming
majority of Renan’s French contemporaries would never have heard of ‘la
Saint-Barthélemy’ or ‘les massacres du Midi.’”52 Rather, what Renan’s
remarks reveal (consciously or not) is a “systematic historiographical
campaign, deployed by the state mainly through the state’s school sys-
tem, to ‘remind’ every young Frenchwoman and Frenchman of a series of
antique slaughters which are now described as ‘family history.’”53 This
is not a particularly French phenomenon, but rather a characteristic way
of narrating the biography of a nation and its history.
This modern parallel may help us to further understand what our
sources on the Iranian conquest are doing. What might be a modern
phenomenon in its circumstances has precedents throughout history and,
in the case of our period, in the ways in which audiences are repeatedly
reminded of the losers that have passed into oblivion. Renan’s point
regarding the “essence” of a nation – “that all individuals have many
things in common” but also that “they have forgotten many things” –
holds equally with regard to the shared memory of Muslims, including
Iranians. Seen from this perspective, we can, in particular, identify in
narratives of the conquests reminders to “have already forgotten” the
“polytheistic” losers, whose identities are shaped to fit the family history
of Muslims. As traditionists stress the end of eras, the amnesia is selective
and the traces significant. Readers were meant to know the existence but
not the identity of the losers. Were the goal simply oblivion, omission
would have been a better method, as illustrated by the way in which
violence against Zoroastrians and the Ādur Farnbāg is (not) recalled.
The next case, of a family written out of history, represents another
case of a reminder to forget and also illustrates this dual strategy of
memory/forgetting.
52 Anderson queries: “Who but ‘Frenchmen,’ as it were, would have at once understood
that ‘la Saint-Barthélemy’ referred to the ferocious anti-Huguenot pogrom launched on
24 August 1572 by the Valois dynast Charles IX and his Florentine mother; or that ‘les
massacres du Midi’ alluded to the extermination of the Albigensians across the broad
zone between the Pyrenees and the Southern Alps, instigated by Innocent III, one of the
guiltier in a long line of guilty popes?” (Imagined Communities, 200).
53 Ibid., 200–1.
Toppling Noble Families

Memory of the Christian population of Tustar fared poorly among the
historians, who turned the vanquished into polytheists in fashioning their
narratives. Specific references to Iranian families from pre-Islamic times
do, however, survive in the sources, though often with some confusion
in which we can detect manipulation of the record. A good illustration is
the way in which al-T.abarı̄ presents the story of the fall of a prominent
family in Rayy at the time of the conquests, and his likely wish to stamp
out their memory.
In her recent work on the decline and fall of the Sasanian Empire,
Parvaneh Pourshariati has emphasized the alliance structure that support-
ed it, its transformation during the conquests, and the ways in which its
heirs continued under Muslim rule. She provides a deep analysis that
takes good advantage of the Iranian side of our literary sources and the
details about late Sasanian and early Islamic Iran that they provide. By
also giving extensive attention to the onomastic, numismatic, and sigillo-
graphic record, she draws attention to the dynastic families of the Sasani-
ans (Pārsı̄g) in roughly western and southern Iran and of the Parthians
(Pahlav) in northern and eastern Iran, or what she terms the “Sasanian-
Parthian confederacy.”54 She argues that the Sasanian state collapsed
largely because this decentralized and complicated arrangement eventu-
ally failed. Most significantly, perhaps, she has presented a picture of
late Sasanian Iran dramatically at odds with the highly centralized polity
envisioned by Arthur Christensen in the 1930s and widely accepted by
historians of late antique Iran.55
With respect to Rayy, Pourshariati discovers, in large measure through
al-T.abarı̄, an intra-Parthian struggle between the “Parthian dynastic fam-
ily of the Mihrāns” on the one hand and the family of a certain al-Zı̄nabı̄
on the other. The struggle resulted in the toppling of the Mihrān family,
54 Pourshariati defines Pārsı̄g as “from or belonging to the region of Fārs, whence Persian.
By extension, the faction associating itself with the Sasanians,” whereas the Pahlav
are an “ethnic group, originally called Parni or Dahae. Their name is derived from the
Achaemenid term for the region, Parthava, to which they migrated. By extension, Pahlav
or Parthian is also used to refer to the Arsacid dynasty, and related dynastic families
from this region.” Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire, 504.
55 Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire, esp. “Introduction.” Cf.
Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sassanides, but also the review essay of Touraj Daryaee:
“The Fall of the Sasanian Empire to the Arab Muslims: From Two Centuries of Silence
to Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Partho-Sasanian Confederacy and the
Arab Conquest of Iran.” Journal of Persianate Studies 3, no. 2 (2010): 239–54.
figure 6.3. Vahrām (Bahrām) VI (590–91). Collection of Robert Schaaf. Photo

by Thomas K. Mallon-McCorgray.
whose ancestors included Bahrām Chūbı̄n, who had seized power from
the Sasanian house in 590–1 CE (see Figure 6.3).56 Pourshariati considers
the conquest-era downfall of Bahrām Chūbı̄n’s family “one of the most
important transformations that took place in the political structure of
this important region of the Sasanian domains in the wake of the Arab
conquest.”57 The toppling of the Mihrāns, she notes, also resulted in the
promotion of a “likely age-old rival,” the family of al-Zı̄nabı̄.58
Al-T.abarı̄ does show that Rayy fell as a result of internal conflicts. He
reports that al-Zı̄nabı̄ had originally opposed the Arabs, but then had
a change of heart and surrendered, contrary to the wishes of the ruler,
a grandson of Bahrām Chūbı̄n named Siyāwakhsh. Al-Zı̄nabı̄ and the
Arabs contrived a plan to surprise this grandson. First, al-Zı̄nabı̄ secretly
entered the town by a back way with some of the Muslim horsemen,
after which Nuʿaym b. Muqarrin launched a surprise attack at night. The
grandson and his supporters stood firm until they heard, from behind
them in the town, cries of “God is most great!” from the Arab horsemen.
Then the Mihrāns, Siyāwakhsh, and their allies were “put to flight,”
and the Arabs slaughtered their opponents. Al-T.abarı̄ recounts that the
spoils God gave to the Muslims at Rayy were about the same as those at
al-Madāʾin – that is, God was very generous. Al-Zı̄nabı̄ signed a treaty
with Nuʿaym on behalf of the people of Rayy, and Nuʿaym made
56 See esp. A. Sh. Shahbazi, “Bahrām vii. Bahrām VI Čōbı̄n,” in EIr.

57 Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire, 251.
58 Ibid., 252. Also drawing heavily on al-T.abarı̄, see Zarrı̄nkūb, “Arab Conquest of Iran
and Its Aftermath,” 19 (without expressly naming al-T.abarı̄), and Kennedy, Great Arab
Conquests, 176 –7.
him governor with the Sasanian title of marzubān (Persian, marzbān).59

The “family of al-Zı̄nabı̄” subsequently enjoyed the greatest honor. By
comparison, the “family of Bahrām fell from grace.” Nuʿaym even de-
stroyed the area of the town occupied by the family (akhraba Nuʿaym
madı̄natahum), known as the old town, and al-Zı̄nabı̄ gave orders for the
building of the new town of Rayy. The name of Bahrām Chūbı̄n does not
occur again in al-T.abarı̄’s reporting.60
It is somewhat surprising, however, that other historians prior to and
roughly contemporary with al-T.abarı̄ present accounts of Rayy’s con-
quest that mention neither the family of Bahrām Chūbı̄n nor the support
given to the Arabs by al-Zı̄nabı̄. These sources do not seem interested
in the rivalries that Pourshariati describes and may even be ignorant
of them. Al-Balādhurı̄ does make mention of an al-Farrukhān b. al-
Zı̄nabadı̄, whom, he notes, the Arabs know as al-Zı̄nabı̄ (he subsequently
refers to him as Ibn al-Zı̄nabı̄). Al-Balādhurı̄ states, however, that this Ibn
al-Zı̄nabı̄ fought the Arabs at Rayy.61 In al-T.abarı̄’s account, al-Zı̄nabı̄
represents the people of the town in their treaty with the Arabs but is
not much of an advocate for them because he has usurped the power of
the Mihrāns and, in alliance with the conquerors, imposed a treaty on
them. Al-Balādhurı̄’s Ibn al-Zı̄nabı̄, however, takes up the cause of the
local population and sets as a condition of the treaty with the Arabs that
the local people be considered dhimmı̄s (i.e., under official protection so
long as they acknowledge the domination of Islam) and be permitted to
pay the jizya and the kharāj.62 Afterward, al-Balādhurı̄ provides a variety
of reports on Rayy’s conquest and early administration.63
59 Marzaba-hu. As noted in Chapter 3, the term marzubān (the Arabized form of Middle
Persian marzpān or New Persian marzbān) refers to a Sasanian regional governor whose
responsibilities were often military in character; here they seem to be administrative
as well. See Kramers and Morony, “Marzpān,” in EI2 , and Gignoux, “L’organisation
administrative sasanide.”
60 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:2650–1 (where al-T.abarı̄ cites Sayf b. ʿUmar) and I:2653–5 (“They
report [also]”); The History of al-T . abarı̄, vol. 14, The Conquest of Iran, trans. G. Rex
Smith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 21–2 and 24–6; see also vol.
40, Index, by Alex V. Popovkin and Everett K. Rowson (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2007), 102, s.v. “Bahrām VI.” Following al-T.abarı̄, see Ibn al-Athı̄r,
al-Kāmil fı̄ al-taʾrı̄kh, 2:405 and 407.
61 Al-Balādhurı̄, al-Buldān wa-futūḥuhā, 364.
62 Ibid. In later days, these terms denoted poll and land taxes, respectively, but the meaning
of the terms at the time of the conquests is unclear; see Kennedy, Great Arab Conquests,
8 and 19–20.
63 Al-Balādhurı̄ cites Abū Mikhnaf (d. 157/774) as an authority (versus Sayf b. ʿUmar for al-
T.abarı̄). Qudāma b. Jaʿfar (d. 337/948) uses wording very close to that of al-Balādhurı̄;
Qudāma b. Jaʿfar, Kitāb al-Kharāj, 374ff. Qudāma in general relies on al-Balādhurı̄ for
this part of his book; see Heck, Construction of Knowledge in Islamic Civilization, 156.
In his History, al-T.abarı̄ often reports contradictions in the record,

but here he gives no indication of a contradictory record. It seems
that al-T.abarı̄ wanted his readers to know about the success of al-
Zı̄nabı̄ and his family and sought to present the conquest of Rayy in
the clearest way possible. His account seems more concerned with the
losers – that is, the family of Bahrām Chūbı̄n – than with the winners.
In contrast to his lucid treatment of the Mihrāns, al-T.abarı̄’s account
of al-Zı̄nabı̄ and his family, and particularly their names, is confused,
Pourshariati’s careful efforts at reconstruction notwithstanding. As Pour-
shariati herself states: “We ought to have been given more information
about the party to whom the power of the Mihrāns in Rayy was trans-
ferred.”64
The problem with this picture painted by al-T.abarı̄ is that the fam-
ily of Bahrām Chūbı̄n did not go away, as Pourshariati in fact argues
elsewhere.65 The Arabic sources make mention of the family’s descen-
dants, most importantly, the Samanids in Iran and Transoxiana (204–
395/819–1005).66 For the Samanids’ autonomous governorate – widely
regarded for its patronage of Persian letters – descent from Bahrām
Chūbı̄n was useful for claiming an antique genealogy. Bahrām Chūbı̄n
had opposed the Sasanians, which perhaps added to the value of his ped-
igree in the Samanids’ view, whereas for al-T.abarı̄ the family may have
appeared as a long-enduring challenge to ruling authority, Sasanian and
Cf. Ibn Aʿtham, Kitāb al-Futūh., 2:62ff., which supplies an altogether different account
and onomastic record (the manuscripts of Ibn Aʿtham’s text might turn up still more
variety on the Persian side; see 2:66, n. 1).
64 Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire, 252.
65 See esp. Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire, 463–4, and Parvaneh
Pourshariati, “The Mihrāns and the Articulation of Islamic Dogma: A Preliminary Pros-
opographical Analysis,” in Trésors d’Orient: Mélanges offerts à Rika Gyselen, ed. Phi-
lippe Gignoux, Christelle Jullien, and Florence Jullien, 283–315 (Paris: Association pour
l’avancement des études iraniennes, 2009). In a footnote to her Rayy discussion in
Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire, 252, n. 1455, Pourshariati states: “As with all
other significant upheavals in the histories of the dynastic families, however, it is rea-
sonable to assume that these transformations could not have totally destroyed the actual
land-ownership, wealth, and power of the Mihrān family. Pending further research on
precisely how land ownership from those who controlled these lands during the Sa-
sanian period transferred to those who came to control the land under Muslim rule, this
assertion remains conjecture.”
66 E.g., Abū al-Rayh.ān al-Bı̄rūnı̄, al-Āthār al-bāqiya ʿan al-qurūn al-khāliya (Beirut: Dār
al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2000). For the Samanid claim regarding Bahrām Chubı̄n, see
esp. Clifford Edmund Bosworth, “Heritage of Rulership in Early Islamic Iran,” 58;
Meisami, Persian Historiography, 33–4; Peacock, Mediaeval Islamic Historiography,
118–23.
now ʿAbbasid.67 As also with al-Qādisiyya and in many other instances,

Balʿamı̄’s adaptation of al-T.abarı̄’s text suggests a difference of sensibili-
ties. For Balʿamı̄, who wrote directly under the Samanids (he was patron-
ized by al-Mans.ūr b. Nūh., r. 350–65/961–76), al-T.abarı̄’s account of the
conquest of Rayy must have posed a problem. How could he, under the
patronage of this family and serving as its vizier, deny its post-conquest
success – at a time, furthermore, when a rival dynasty, the Buyids, was
asserting its control over Rayy against the claims of the Samanids?68
Yarshater noted that in writing about Bahrām Chūbı̄n’s lifetime, Balʿamı̄
drew on other sources “to amplify T.abarı̄’s account.”69 For Bahrām’s
descendants, Balʿamı̄ relies here on al-T.abarı̄ – he knows Siyāwakhsh as
Rayy’s governor (malik) at the time of the conquest, and his rival as a
dihqān by the name of “Zı̄nı̄, the father of Farrukhān.” But while noting
the elevation of Zı̄nı̄ and his sons and the destruction of the old quarter,
Balʿamı̄ skips al-T.abarı̄’s statement that the family of Bahrām Chūbı̄n
“fell from grace.”70 Al-T.abarı̄’s strategy, stressing the displacement of
the family of Bahrām Chūbı̄n, was no longer an option for Balʿamı̄, ac-
tive under the Samanids, so he improved the story of Rayy’s conquest by a
deft subtraction, even if he could not get around the fact of Siyāwakhsh’s
defeat. He thus weakened a record of events that served the Sama-
nids’ rivals. More profoundly, this divergence suggests that al-T.abarı̄
67 One of Bahrām’s brothers is remembered as not having rebelled and as having stuck
by Kisrā, and a sister (whom Bahrām had married) is said to have reproached Bahrām
for a speech against Kisrā. Do these traditions present a deliberately nuanced view of
the family’s Sasanian loyalties, a view that may have been useful to its descendants?
Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:997–8.
68 In 352/963 Mans.ūr b. Nūh. commissioned Balʿamı̄ to translate al-T.abarı̄’s Taʾrı̄kh.
The Buyid ruler of Rayy, Rukn al-Dawla, had assumed the title of shāhan-shāh, which
appeared on coins of 351/962. Meisami has described this context and argued that
“Balʿamı̄’s detailed treatment of the story of Bahrām Chūbı̄n seems designed to validate
the Sāmānid claim to rule of the East (and in particular of Khurasan, of which Rayy was
considered a part).” Meisami, Persian Historiography, 24, 33–5.
69 Yarshater, “Iranian National History,” 360; cf. the finely nuanced analysis of Peacock,
in Mediaeval Islamic Historiography, esp. “Balʿamı̄’s Reshaping of T.abarı̄’s History”
and “The Contents and Purpose of Balʿamı̄’s Alterations to T.abarı̄’s History” (Pea-
cock does not consider Balʿamı̄’s treatment of the conquest of Rayy). Peacock shows
that while Balʿamı̄ alters the “highly negative portrayal of Bahrām Chaūbı̄n in the
History,” he does not present a picture of Bahrām’s career that is especially romanti-
cized, nor does he make in this passage any reference to Bahrām’s connection to the
Samanid dynasty (whereas he does draw such a connection in the introduction to his
work).
70 Balʿamı̄, Tārı̄kh-nāmah-yi T. abarı̄, ed. Rawshan, 1:523–5; see also Balʿamı̄, Chronique
de Abou-Djafar, 3: 489–91. Cf. al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:2653–5.
and Balʿamı̄ belonged to two distinct phases of coming to terms with the
pre- and early Islamic Iranian past.
A Subversive Memory?
In each of the preceding cases, memory was fashioned by an out-
sider with an interest in glorifying the conquests by showing what they
represented for Islam, for Muslim government and its imperial reach,
or for its elite subjects. Identities were likely written out for reasons of
peace and communal harmony but also for political expediency, to erase
evidence that might fuel a later generation’s ambitions. Through such
manipulation, reporters could alter collective memory. Traditions circu-
lated in works whose audiences could not have judged their veracity – a
reader in either Ibn Aʿtham’s or al-T.abarı̄’s day, in Cairo or Baghdad,
likely had no reason to doubt these works’ versions of the facts concern-
ing the conquest of Tustar or Rayy two or three centuries earlier, nor to
take umbrage at their underlying vision.
Closer to the ground, the past was likely less plastic, as it was harder
to deny the identity of the losing side. Consider the case of Qum, one of
the most important centers today for the Shiʿa and home to the shrine
of Fāt.ima al-Maʿs.ūma (d. 201/816–17), the sister of the eighth Shiʿi
Imam, ʿAlı̄ al-Rid.ā (d. 203/818). Qum does not figure prominently in the
earliest Arabic writings about the conquests. The material record shows
settlement in the region since ancient times, but it was possible, in the
seventh/thirteenth century, for a well-read geographer such as Yāqūt (d.
626/1229) to describe Qum as a city that came into existence only with
Islam (madı̄na mustah.datha islāmiyya), stating, as if for emphasis, that
non-Arabs have no history in it (lā athar li-l-aʿājim fı̄hi).71 By contrast,
we have the Persian-language Tārı̄kh-i Qum and its deep reservoir of
memories about the city’s origins and history before and after the con-
quests. Academic studies on the history of Qum must make use of this
book, which claims to be a Persian version of a twenty-chapter Arabic
text completed by H . asan b. Muh.ammad b. H . asan Qummı̄ in the year
378/988–9 for his patron Ismāʿı̄l b. ʿAbbād (d. 385/995), who was a
literary man in his own right and served as vizier to the Buyid sultans
71 Regarding the material record, see esp. “Qum (Qom), ʿIrāq-i ʿAǧamı̄,” in Schippmann,
Die iranischen Feuerheiligtümer, 415–21, and Andreas Drechsler, “Qom i. History to
the Safavid Period,” in EIr. For Yāqūt’s description, see Yāqūt, Buldān, 4:175–7, s.v.
“Qum.”
Muʾayyid al-Dawla (r. 366–73/977–83 or 984) and Fakhr al-Dawla (r.

373–87/983–97).72 H . asan was a local Imāmı̄ Shiʿi scholar, an Arab of
Yemeni origin, and a descendant of the Ashʿarı̄ family that had ruled
Qum in the past. He was well connected and had a brother who served as
a tax collector.73 No manuscript of his Arabic text survives; all we have
is a Persian version in five chapters, prepared in 805–6/1402–4 by one
al-H. asan b. ʿAlı̄ b. H
. asan b. ʿAbd al-Malik Qummı̄. Although scholars
have treated al-H . asan b. ʿAlı̄ as the book’s “translator,” in its present
form, the ninth/fifteenth-century book may well be the result of different
hands, which should bear on how we read it.74 The way the text, at the
very beginning of the book, presents the role of al-H . asan b. ʿAlı̄ himself
is particularly noteworthy: he is labeled a mufassir and muʾawwil, two
terms suggesting the interpretive dimensions of his work.75
The fourth chapter of the Tārı̄kh-i Qum contains a description of
the Arabs’ takeover of Qum that is remarkable for the degree of vio-
lence it attributes to the Ashʿarı̄ Arabs and for its depiction of them as
chauvinists.76 In this account, the Arabs come to Qum during fractious
times in Iraq under the governorship of al-Hajjāj b. Yūsuf (d. 95/714).
They are led there by Ah.was. b. Saʿd, who had been a supporter of
the failed revolt of Zayd b. ʿAlı̄ b. al-H . usayn b. ʿAlı̄ b. Abı̄ T.ālib (d.
122/740) in Kufa and had been imprisoned by al-Hajjāj (this sequence
involves some confusion regarding dates since Zayd’s rebellion occurred
72 For an important example, see Andreas Drechsler, Die Geschichte der Stadt Qom im
Mittelalter (650–1350): Politische und wirtschaftliche Aspekte (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz,
1999), e.g., 81ff.
73 Tārı̄kh-i Qum, ed. Jalāl al-Dı̄n T.ihrānı̄ (Tehran: Majlis, 1934; repr., Tehran: Intishārāt-i
Tūs, 1982), 11–12, 39, 165; cited by Andreas Drechsler, “Tārik-e Qom,” in EIr.
74 Of the many descriptions of the text (besides those of Drechsler), see esp. those of
C. A. Storey, Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey, vol. 1 (London: Royal
Asiatic Society, 1927–39 and 1953), pt. 1, 348–9 (no. 453), and pt. 2, 1291–2; Ann
K. S. Lambton, “An Account of the Tārı̄khi Qumm,” Bulletin of the School of Ori-
ental and African Studies 12, no. 3/4 (1948): 586–96 and “Qum: The Evolution of
a Medieval City,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s., 122, no. 2 (1990): 322–
39 (esp. 325–6); Ḥusayn Mudarrisı̄ Ṭabāṭabāʾı̄, Kitāb-shināsı̄-yi ās̲ār-i marbūt. bih Qum
(Qum: H . ikmat, 1353 shamsı̄/1974), 10ff. (the author questions whether there ever exist-
ed a complete Persian translation of the book); ʿAlı̄ As.ghar Faqı̄hı̄, “Tārı̄kh-i Qum,” in
Dānish-nāmah-yi jahān-i Islām (online ed.; Tehran: Bunyād-i Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Islāmı̄,
n.d., http://www.encyclopaediaislamica.com); and regarding the episode I discuss here,
Takamitsu Shimamoto, “Some Reflections on the Origin of Qom: Myth and History,”
Orient 27 (1991): 98–100, and Parvaneh Pourshariati, “Local Histories of Khurāsān,”
61–4.
75 Tārı̄kh-i Qum, 2.
76 Tārı̄kh-i Qum, 244–65; it is the second of two sections in this chapter.
77
long after the death of al-H . ajjāj). They settle peacefully in the terri-
tory of Qum, exchanging gifts with the local population. As guests, the
Arabs win the locals’ special trust and additional land when one year,
during Nawrūz celebrations, the area suffers raids from the residents of
Daylam, to the northwest of Qum in the Alburz mountain range, and
the Arabs, under the leadership of Ah.was., repel the invaders. The Arabs
subsequently acquire even more property, administer justice in their lands,
defend Qum from warring Daylamites, and build a mosque, the first in the
territory.78 Speaking to a local landowner named Khurrabandād, Ah.was.
and his brother ʿAbd Allāh pledge:
You are as brothers in religion, foster brothers, and supporters of us. We accept
advice and guidance and are bound with you in a confirmed treaty and a perpetual
covenant. You have come to occupy the place of brothers, fathers, and sons among
us. Neither of us needs to withhold advice, and whatever he owns in this world,
he shares liberally with friends and brothers, so his fortune is evident, and he is
not cheap with it. On our behalf, you are helping, acting as brothers, and advising
sincerely, and you share in our possessions, provisions, and blessings. You have a
right to a share in that. We do not accept the word of anyone who detracts from
or makes accusations about what is your right, and we gird ourselves against
enemies. Both of us charge our sons with [fulfilling] these treaties, agreements,
stipulations, and covenants, and by God – may He be glorified and exalted – we
are hopeful that these [agreements] will result in order and good behavior that
fulfills our rights, and in the confirmation of these stipulations and treaties that
we proclaim. From speech comes action.79
The text goes on to recount how a slave girl belonging to Khurrabandād

told him of a dream in which she saw him in a large garden, the walls
of which had collapsed. A group of people in the garden rebuilt the
walls and placed a building in it. In the middle of the garden, there
were two large cypress trees that fell down, and from the roots of these
sprang many young, green shoots. Khurrabandād explains that the garden
represents the Arabs’ dwellings; the two trees, ʿAbd Allāh and Ah.was.;
and the shoots, their descendants. According to the text, Khurrabandād
knows that the Arabs will soon constitute a great power (dawla). He
shares the happy news with the Arabs themselves.80 Apparently wish-
ing to also secure their own future, Khurrabandād, a local ruler named
77 Compare the start of the first part of Chapter 4 on p. 242. Lambton avoids identifying
Zayd, instead referring to “the ʿAlid rebellion in Kufa”; see “An Account of the Tārı̄khi
Qumm,” 596.
78 Tārı̄kh-i Qum, 250–1.
79 Ibid., 251.
80 Ibid., 252.
Yazdanfādhār,81 and the leaders and nobles of the district ask the Arabs
for a written treaty (kitābı̄ va ʿahd-nāmah). The Arabs agree, and a doc-
ument is created, which all parties sign to their mutual benefit and which
is then stamped with the seal of Saʿd b. Malik.82
So far, so good. Filled with optimism, the Arabs and the ʿAjam (that
is, the Iranians) abide by the treaty at first, but with the passage of time,
the leaders of the ʿAjam die, and their heirs, seeing the Arabs’ prosperity,
reconsider the benefits of the treaty. This is when things begin to go
wrong. The Iranians say to themselves:
If this line (qawm) of Arabs remains mighty and in power (dawlah), they will take
over this district, seize the glory, and take the reins of control out of our hands. If
we do not fix things with them and find an opportunity to despoil them, we will
be ruined and die away.83
The ʿAjam decide to expel the Arabs, and send a message to them saying
so. In the back-and-forth that follows, the Arabs offer to make amends
for any oversights, remind the ʿAjam of the treaty, and stall for time.
The ʿAjam, unbending and increasingly menacing, continue with their
demands, insisting that the Arabs sell them their properties.84 Ah.was. then
conceives a ploy: he sells the Arabs’ properties to the ʿAjam as demanded
but uses the money from the sale to purchase seventy slaves. He assigns
each slave to a village (dı̄h) and its princely residence (sarāy), promising
the slave that if he kills the present owner, he can take the owner’s place.
This the slaves do incognito.85
The story captures the reader’s attention with several twists that lead
toward the conclusion. It thus takes some persuading for Ah.was. to con-
vince his brother ʿAbd Allāh to move to Qum in the beginning, and
subsequently, ʿAbd Allāh suspects Ah.was. of making a bad decision to
come to Qum. Ah.was. proves his sharp acumen when he surprises ʿAbd
Allāh with the heads of seventy village landlords, deposited in a vaul-
ted entrance hall (dihlı̄z) leading into ʿAbd Allāh’s residence, but when
ʿAbd Allāh, while leaving for the dawn prayer, discovers the heads, he
is shocked at the macabre sight. Ah.was. justifies his actions by referring
81 Or perhaps Yazdanfādhār is a title; see Daniel, “The Islamic East,” 463. Cf. Lambton,
“An Account of the Tārı̄khi Qumm,” 596.
82 Tārı̄kh-i Qum, 252–3.
83 Ibid., 253–4; cf. 248.
84 Ibid., 254–5.
85 Ibid., 255–6.
to the broken treaty and notes that God provided him with an oppor-
tunity. ʿAbd Allāh expresses fear of a reprisal. “They will annihilate and
overpower us! What will we do, and what will we say?”86 Ah.was. then
introduces another ploy: he tells ʿAbd Allāh to go immediately to the
mosque and to pray publicly for the Arabs, and then orders all the heads
to be thrown into a pit. As he hoped, when morning comes and the ʿAjam
discover the pit, they are astounded by God’s intervention on the Arabs’
behalf. The Tārı̄kh-i Qum reports: “Some of them became Muslims at
the hands of the Arabs and some of them took shelter with the Arabs.
Others dispersed and scattered to the cities. The district was freed of the
enemies of ʿAbd Allāh and Ah.was., and it became Muslim on account of
them.”87 The story ends here with the conversion of Qum.88
Given the story’s placement in a history whose primary audience was
the residents of Qum, it may seem puzzling that conversion is so intimately
connected to the treachery of the original Iranian population. One might
expect a local history composed by Muslims long after the events in
question to downplay resistance by the indigenous population, as likely
occurred with historians in Jurjān and Sı̄stān. What we seem to have,
instead, is the opposite. The story shows the local people’s treachery: the
children of Khurrabandād and Yazdanfādhār violate an agreement, one
that their fathers had requested. But if one considers the way the Tārı̄kh
represents the actions of the Arabs and the ʿAjam, the Ashʿarı̄ Arabs,
especially Ah.was., come off even worse. Following the poor decisions of
the ʿAjam, the Arabs gain full control, and since “the district was freed
of the enemies of ʿAbd Allāh and Ah.was.,” there could be no further local
resistance. The story describes in ruthless terms the brothers’ strategy of
suppression and Ah.was’s ploy, for example, when he instructs the slaves
to kill the village leaders:
Go and mix with them when they are occupied with drinking and extravagance so
they will not be able to distinguish you from their own people. When you are with
them, you will recognize the chief (raʾı̄s) of each people and find an opportunity
to kill him. Take his head and bring it to me. And if you are in doubt and do
not know which of them is the leader, elder, or chief, kill anyone who gives off a
good scent.89
86 Ibid., 256–7.
87 Ibid., 257.
88 Cf. ibid., 262–3.
89 Ibid., 255–6.
When the text asserts that the slaves carried out their mission without
a single error, it emphasizes the method’s violence: “None of them, in
observing and killing his lord, had made an error, and not one of the
villages’ chiefs escaped death by them.”90
Insofar as conversion of the population results from this ploy, it is
represented as an unintended consequence. The Arabs seem disinterested
in spreading their religion, although they do build a mosque, destroying
a fire temple in the process.91 When Ah.was. sends the slaves off to kill
the village leaders, a local Iranian man, seized by the Arabs, becomes a
mamlūk to Ah.was., claims to be an Arab, and asks Ah.was. for an Arab
name. The request angers Ah.was., who threatens to kill him. The mamlūk
flees, but he then earns the respect of Ah.was. by returning with the heads
of four village leaders. With the other successful slaves, he presents the
heads to Ah.was.. In a symbolic gesture, Ah.was. kisses the man’s head and
says: “You are one of my sons, heirs, and successors. Which name is most
beloved by you, so that I may bestow it on you?” The mamlūk replies:
“Give me the name Shaybān.” The Tārı̄kh-i Qum states: “He made him
a member of his own family and lineage (va az jumlah va as.lān-i khūd
gardānı̄d).”92 But while he is “adopted,” he does not take a particularly
Muslim name, unlike many converts to Islam.
What purposes did such memory serve? For the descendants of the
Ashʿarı̄ Arabs, the story and its annihilation of opposition might stake a
claim for singular authority in a past that, while not heroic, was cleverly
managed and portrayed as the result of events initiated by the conquered
population. That is, the text might represent the winning side’s view. But
there is another possibility. Like many Persian histories, the Tārı̄kh-i Qum
has a complicated provenance and came into existence in Persian centuries
after its composition in Arabic in the late fourth/tenth century. Much
of the text appears genuinely archaic, including Arabic poetry scattered
across its chapters (though absent from this section). A good portion of
the text also provides accounts of the Ashʿarı̄s that, from their perspective
(and from that of the reputed Ashʿarı̄ author), could have been seen as
more edifying in the fourth/tenth century and could comfortably enough
have taken shape then. But there are also features of the text that are
less easily explained, including traces of multiple authors’ involvement,
90 Ibid., 256.
91 Ibid., 251. The text states that they built the mosque on the ancient site of a fire temple.
No objections are mentioned. Cf. 262 (representing another report).
92 Ibid., 256.
such as repetition between its chapters. For example, the first chapter
also treats Ah.was. in the context of his construction of the first mosque in
Qum, apparently for the purpose of outlining how Qum was made into
a district independent of Is.fahān.93 There is also the confusion over dates
within the account narrated here (Zayd’s rebellion occurring after the
death of al-H . ajjāj), and also between the first and second sections of the
fourth chapter, suggesting a varied record and an imperfect attempt to
establish a chronology linking Qum to Kufa. Such ambiguity may reside
in an original Arabic text, owing to the author’s use of multiple sources,
but it seems more likely that what we have in hand is a more composite
text.94 One possibility is that the “translator,” al-H . asan b. ʿAlı̄, took
a more active role than so far generally assumed and pulled together
different pieces of text, including the fourth/tenth-century text he names
but also others, some of later provenance. In the case of the story of
Qum’s conversion retold here, he refers to his sources ambiguously, for
example as “narrators from the Arabs in Qum.”95 Al-H . asan b. ʿAlı̄ may
have composed the text himself, or he may have found it; it may also
represent a write-up of an oral tradition.
Whatever the story’s origins, the account appears to reflect the memory
of a group that was not altogether happy with the outcome of his-
tory; perhaps it comprised members of another, rival Arab lineage, or
Arabs with different ʿAlid loyalties, or non-Arabs in H . asan b. ʿAlı̄’s time
who, while acknowledging the town’s Ashʿarı̄ history, wished to plant
doubts about the integrity of its early Ashʿarı̄ residents.96 In their account,
Ah.was. presents his actions as justified by the non-Arabs’ disloyalty and as
enabled by God’s support, but he hardly comes off as a victim, nor does
the text seem to condone his actions; rather, ʿAbd Allāh’s horror, and that
of the residents of Qum, suggest he has crossed a moral line. Under such
problematic circumstances, the sudden and complete conversion of the
original population (a literary representation of history if ever there was
one) devalues what may well have been a more substantial contribution
made by the Ashʿarı̄s to Qum’s religious heritage.
93 Ibid., 36–7.
94 The Tārı̄kh’s author states that he originally intended to write two books, one on the city
itself and one on the Ashʿarı̄s of Qum; ibid., 12–13. On the sources listed in the book,
see esp. Lambton, “An Account of the Tārı̄khi Qumm,” 587, and Mudarrisı̄ T.abāt.abāʾi,
Kitāb-shināsı̄-yi āsār-i marbūt. bih Qum, 17–31.
95 Tārı̄kh-i Qum, 245, and similarly throughout the story; compare with the first section of
the chapter in ibid., 242 (note also the dating by the ascension and death of Yazdagird).
96 See, for example, ibid., 37.
Conclusion
While our authors embellished the Arab side of the record, they often
passed over the Iranian side with far less care. They were not interested in
the residents of al-Qādisiyya, but rather in those who had won the battle.
Polemical aims partially explain their approach, since a victory over a
“polytheist” enemy made the conquests into a war in the name of religion.
For many believers, the conquests represented edifying tales of the heroic
deeds of the first Muslims, their courage in the face of larger numbers, and
their triumph over a great empire. They accomplished God’s work against
polytheism. That the Sasanians, the enemy, were hardly “polytheists”
mattered little – these accounts were not carefully parsed theological
treatises but epic drama, with a tendency to exaggerate the good and the
bad, the winners and the losers. Such works had room for many themes
and little concern for modern standards of data or evidence. Often they
dramatized issues that are hardly obvious to modern readers, such as
the origins of fitna and division within the Muslim community in the
case of al-Hurmuzān and Tustar. But there was more than such religious
polemic at work. If we look closely at the stories these works tell, we
can discern an underlying wish to assert the end of different pasts: that
of the Sasanians, who make an ignominious departure from the world
stage, but also that of Zoroastrians and Christians. The past, we are told,
is over – even if such writing itself suggests that the legacy of the past
continued to trouble authors three or four centuries afterward.
While Iranians such as al-T.abarı̄ could see bloodbaths as part of a
militant devotionalism, other traditionists viewed the conquests in more
ambiguous terms. Al-T.abarı̄’s Persian interpreter, Balʿamı̄, subverts al-
T.abarı̄’s vision and shows how subsequent generations could wrestle
with their famous predecessors’ texts so as to make memory of the past
support one’s vision of the present. Local historians could also, with
some authority, claim to preserve what was forgotten and, in doing so,
seek to reshape the memory of their audiences. By the ninth/fifteenth
century, it was possible not only to give abundant detail about Qum but
to present in grotesque terms the sort of violence that Ibn Aʿtham and
al-T.abarı̄ had glorified, in the process subverting a dominant theme of
Arabic traditions – the divine hand behind the conquests. In the end, then,
much was forgotten about Sasanian era soldiers, elites, and their families,
but because history writing is accretive, there was often a chance to add
new details and remold memory of the conquests. There could be no final
word or perspective, but only an intermediate view.
Conclusion
Jan Assmann has shown that memory is an ongoing work of “recon-

structive imagination” in which the past is processed and remade.1 A
society’s stories help to generate its sense of itself and furnish it with
truths by which to live. Each generation becomes conscious of itself by
the ways in which it adapts these truths. Without such creative inter-
vention, stories lose their relevance and become material for archives,
not for memory. Memory can be bolstered by archives, but much of
archival material is neither remembered nor memorable. For historians
of memory, one important challenge is to identify socially and cultur-
ally significant memory from the vast corpus of writing about the past
and, connecting it to its likely contexts, to consider the frameworks that
generated it.
This study has proposed that Iran and its conversion to Islam repre-
sent such a framework. In writing about the past, generations of Iranians
engaged with many questions that arose following the conquests, with the
adoption of Islam, and at various stages of history running to approxi-
mately 1100 CE. They proposed answers to these questions, and so, too,
did non-Iranians. How much cultural autonomy would Iranians retain in
their new Muslim “family”? They could be distinct among Muslims but
not separate, as traditionists assert when they insert a prophet such as
Noah into a locality’s history or pepper the preface to the Shāh-nāmah
with references to Muh.ammad and ʿAlı̄. What about changes to the social
fabric of Iran, including the relative positions of Arabs and non-Arabs?
1 Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 14.
230
Conclusion 231
Such concerns are expressed in a myriad of ways, for example, in geneal-

ogies and reports of ancestry, slave or free; in the elevation of Salmān as
a Prophetic companion; in pseudepigraphic texts of a legal nature, pre-
served and cited as evidence for special privileges; and in overstatements
and understatements of the size and power of religious communities. To
what extent were “Islamic” values compatible with pre-Islamic ideals?
While works in the genre of “mirrors for princes” might pass on the
ideals of Ardashı̄r, Khusraw Anūshirvān, and the latter’s famed vizier,
Buzurgmihr, their authors made sure to position this advice carefully,
as for example in the Nas.ı̄h.at al-mulūk attributed to al-Ghazālı̄. Even
the broader questions historians today ask were part of this framework,
especially questions regarding the continuity or rupture that the conquests
represented.
Such a framework became a long-lasting creation, and its impact is
still felt today when modern readers seeking to read “original” and early
sources turn to works such as al-T.abarı̄’s History or the local histories
of Fārs, Is.fahān, Jurjān, Sı̄stān, or Qum. Focusing upon this framework
allows us to see our sources as engaged with a variety of issues and as shap-
ing the possibilities for future remembrance. Within the general sweep of
historiography, the situation of Iranians represented just one inflection,
but it was an important one: many of the key founding moments of
Islam and Muslim rule concerned Iran, and a significant role in shaping
tradition common to all Muslims was played by historians, litterateurs,
and scholars of Qurʾan and Hadith whose knowledge and experience
were acquired in Iranian contexts. The pre-Islamic past, the Prophet’s
life, and the conquests considered in this study might be the most out-
standing instances where inflections of memory occurred, but there are
others that deserve attention from a history of memory perspective but
that I have touched on only lightly, if at all. These include the found-
ing moments of Iranian Muslim dynasties, the shaping of bureaucratic
institutions, the molding of classes of scholars and jurists, and the forma-
tion of sectarian loyalties. A focus on memory might allow us to shed light
on the layers of writing and rewriting about a dynasty such as the Buyids
or about connections between a madhhab and a locale, such as Is.fahān
or Qum. As Iranians adopted Islam in the period from the third/ninth to
the fifth/eleventh century, we should expect the changing nature of loy-
alties to locale, profession, lineage, and ethnie to yield assertions in our
sources about precisely such issues as cultural autonomy, social hierarchy
and privilege, the nature and binding qualities of “Islamic” values, and
the extent to which the present represented a revolutionary break with
the past or, rather, but a moment in the plodding sequence of history.
This is not to suggest that we should always read our sources simply as
expressions of such ideas and loyalties, but particularly when symbolic
moments are summoned forth and displayed, we ought to be awake to
their messages, and to the various layers of writing and rewriting, and
interpretation and reinterpretation.
In terms of hermeneutics, I have considered many case studies or, to
use Nora’s expression, sites of memory. Given the highly complex situ-
ation of Iran in the third/ninth–fifth/eleventh centuries, this is the only
even remotely secure way to approach the diversity of our traditionists’
contexts. One can identify patterns and trends – for example, when tra-
ditionists rewrite Persia’s past as a purely local past or replace it with a
Muslim past – but one could not provide a satisfactory master narrative
outlining a single shift in historical consciousness. Our sources them-
selves, particularly those composed in Iraq under the ʿAbbasids, do often
speak in such metanarrative terms. But as I have argued, much as we may
wish to believe that we are discovering the significance and meaningful-
ness of the past solely through our own diligent study, the sources often
reach across time to guide us, including through their choices of where
to start and stop their stories, how to contextualize the past, and what
to reveal and conceal. Details in narratives are often important signifiers
of broad, interpretive schemes and perspectives, much as this may disap-
point historians today who search for authentic and verifiable residues of
the past, or kernels of truth. The last years of the Sasanians were surely
chaotic, with Khusraw Parvı̄z’s deposition followed by the bloody reign
of his son, Shı̄rawayh. But when traditionists turned this past into nar-
rative, they created a kerygmatic and teleological record, and a memory
by which future generations, as well as historians, have understood the
last Sasanians. Other times, the vision was more parochial, as with Qum,
but no less guiding.
A comparative approach that looks at cases across time, geography,
and genre – such as the story of al-Rabı̄ʿ and the pile of bodies he cre-
ated at the conquest of Sı̄stān, or that of al-Qādisiyya and the fate of
Rustam – shows us how profoundly, and under what widely varying
circumstances, traditionists reconceived the past to take Iranian perspec-
tives into account. When did they begin to do so? I have proposed roughly
the second half of the third/ninth century as a starting point, toward the
end of what Claude Gilliot termed the “imperial period.” The changing
political circumstances, including the increase in local, Iranian patronage
of traditionists, surely played a role, but their importance should not be
Conclusion 233
overestimated; broader cultural forces were at work, as Islam became

deeply woven into the fabric of Iranian societies, as reflected in local
histories and their own narratives about the growth and development
of Muslim communities in new “centers” (to use Bulliet’s term). Texts
before the middle of the third/ninth century seem to have little concern for
the sensibilities of Iranians – Prophetic biography being the best example
(although we have also seen the same for tafsı̄r and early Hadith col-
lections). Persians do appear to some extent in the mapping of peoples
proposed by Ibn al-Kalbı̄, but his central point of focus was Arab tribes.
Ibn Hishām and Ibn Saʿd, both drawing upon the influential work of
Ibn Ish.āq, present Salmān as abandoning Persia, evoking ideas of hijra,
and either joining an Arab companion of the Prophet as a “brother” or
becoming, in a figurative manner at least, a member of the Prophet’s fam-
ily. Neither traditionist pays much attention to Salmān’s Persian roots.
Ibn Saʿd’s interest in al-H . asan al-Bas.rı̄, similarly, lies in myriad aspects
of al-H. asan’s person and career – but only minimally in his family’s
possible Iranian origins. By contrast, one finds only slightly later narra-
tives making much more of Salmān’s Persianness, the Persian origins of
the institution of the dı̄wān, and the Iranian mother of the fourth Imam.
The reconfiguration of memory continued past the period under principal
investigation here, as can be seen in the production of local histories in the
sixth/twelfth, seventh/thirteenth, and eighth/fourteenth centuries, in the
multitude of translations and recasting of works – into Persian as well as
from Persian versions back into Arabic, as occurred with the History of al-
T.abarı̄ – and in the production of commentaries on earlier works, such as
Ibn Qutayba’s manual for court secretaries or the Nahj al-balāgha. These
were developments of a trend initiated in the third–fifth/ninth–eleventh
centuries, when Iranians were written into an Islamic past. Given dis-
crepant views, it is probably in the second half of the third/ninth and the
fourth/tenth centuries that we should locate the first significant struggles
over memory. What followed was a general revamping of memory that
allowed the inclusion of pre-Islamic Iranian characters, themes, and lore,
not as a renaissance but rather as a recognized part of the communities
to which they had always belonged.
Given trends in current scholarship, it also bears stressing that in
the narratives of the third/ninth to fifth/eleventh centuries that I have
examined one finds only weak reference to Īrān as an ongoing concern
and instead, when geography is at issue, more robust references to lo-
calities. Nor is there much of a corresponding idea of “Iranians,” but
rather ideas about local peoples and identities, or Persians as the most
frequently mentioned ethnic affiliation for Iranians. This is the case for
the Arabic sources (the language of the major body of material we have
for the period), but it is also the case for sources in New Persian from
the end of my period, although the Shāh-nāmah, set in pre-Islamic times,
is something of an exception in its employment of “Iran.” Furthermore,
throughout the period from the third/ninth to the fifth/eleventh centu-
ries, the most symbolically weighted events of early Islamic history could
only be remembered with reference to a body of tradition that had its
roots in ʿAbbasid Iraq – whether a traditionist worked in Is.fahān in
the fourth/tenth century or in Sı̄stān in the fifth/eleventh – although tra-
ditionists from locales such as Hamadhān and Shı̄z likely also shaped
recollections in Iraq. The weakness of an Iranian identity, as such, and
the importance of Iraq as a cauldron for memory do make writing about
Iranian identity and memory in the post-conquest period a complicated
affair, but the only alternative is to turn a blind eye to this state of frag-
mentation.
More than forty years ago, Albrecht Noth identified “Iran” as a salient
theme of early historical tradition. By “Iran” he meant “traditions on
the Iranian Sasanian Empire and the precedents which it set for Islam,”
especially as connected to the conquests (futūh.). Iran was the only one
of Noth’s themes that had a regional focus, and it was the last and
most perfunctorily treated in a list that otherwise featured more readily
obvious and staple topics of historical writing, namely, ridda, fūtūh., fitna,
administration, sı̄rat al-khulafāʾ, and ansāb.2 The changing perspectives
and sensitivities of the sources I have examined suggest that Noth put
his finger, if imprecisely, on an early phase of historical writing, when
Iran represented a distinct object of interest, especially in relation to an
“other” group of people, Arabs. Neither Arabia nor the Arabs represent
a theme for him, presumably because they were so present in the material
for his other themes. By the late third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries,
however, and particularly in local histories, Iran and Persians become
far more present within the other themes. The result of this integration
is that, like Arabs, their distinctively Iranian or Persian character can
become invisible.
If in writing about the past groups ask themselves what they must
remember, they also ask themselves what they must forget. The processes
by which Gayūmart became for Iranian Muslims a first king, rather than
a human progenitor, or by which the late Sasanians, Kisrā and Būrān
2 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 26–39, esp. 39.

Conclusion 235
included, came to stand in opposition to prophetic rule, were broadly

political and oppositional in character, involving negotiations that we
occasionally, though too seldom, can discern. It is rare, in fact, that we
can identify objects of erasure, as I have sought to do, for example, in the
case of the Christians at the conquest of Tustar and the family of Bahrām
Chūbı̄n in al-T.abarı̄’s account of the defeat of Rayy.
Far from a passive process, forgetting can be an extremely creative
enterprise, in which members of a society in transition confront sources
of anxiety, such as a former empire, the religion it patronized, and its
elites. Among themselves, they work out what can no longer serve as
a basis for social solidarity, as they substitute one founder for another,
redraw the sacred boundaries of their homeland, or adopt a new chronol-
ogy in which past events of significance can no longer be meaningfully
narrated and so remembered. Much of what I have described follows
the model of a palimpsest, with traditionists writing over the record of
past generations, although I have also tried, where possible, to show
that there were limitations to creativity and that often what we have is
reframings of the past, as with Salmān or the Shāh-nāmah, not wholesale
revision. When the Takht-i Sulaymān and Persepolis acquired associ-
ations to a prophetic history, they became part of a new sacred map.
This map, superimposed upon a fading Achaemenid and Sasanian past,
oriented Iranians spatially and chronologically to a wider Near Eastern –
Syrian, Iraqi, Arabian, and Iranian – landscape and to a progression of
prophets that culminated in Muh.ammad. The topography of Baghdad
excited the interest of generations of its inhabitants, but its shadow as
the caliphal capital occluded memory of Ctesiphon and the Tāq-i Kisrā
a short distance away as ʿAbbasid era chroniclers and poets made the
Sasanian metropolis into an expressive relic. As traditionists transformed
the past into authoritative narratives, filters such as labels, homologies,
icons, and gender narrowed its possibilities or, more precisely, negatively
conditioned the expectations of Muslims for knowledge about Khusraw
Parvı̄z and the late Sasanians in particular. In the end, therefore, modern
historians forming their own narratives must often read against the grain
of their sources, or within it, to try to discern how earlier generations
have assembled the past. In doing so, historians may shape the memory
of their readers through the ways in which they themselves write and
rewrite, and filter and sift, the historical material, but only insofar as they
can persuade their contemporaries that they have created a meaningful
narrative.
Bibliography
Electronic Resources
Electronic database sources have greatly enriched this study because they are
searchable and can aid in tracking the repetition of traditions and in judging how
widely disseminated a report was – a key issue for memory. They also can support
the study of variations in matters of detail, structure, and emplotment, and turn up
traditions in unexpected sources and genres. For a number of reasons, however,
electronic sources can provide only a starting point and cannot replace the printed
editions upon which they are based. In my notes, I cite only the printed editions
that I have consulted. Many of these databases are available on the internet. I
have found particularly helpful the following:
Al-Jāmiʿ al-kabı̄r li-kutub al-turāth al-ʿarabı̄ wa-l-islāmı̄. Produced by al-

Turāth.
Maktabat ahl al-bayt. Produced by Muʾassasah-yi Āyat Allāh al-ʿUz.mā al-
Mı̄lānı̄.
Al-Maktaba al-shāmila. Produced by Muʾassasat al-Maktaba al-Shāmila.
Available at http://shamela.ws.
Primary Sources
ʿAbd al-Jabbār b. Ah.mad (d. 415/1025). Critique of Christian Origins: A Parallel
English-Arabic Text. Edited and translated by Gabriel Said Reynolds and Samir
Khalil Samir. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2010.
———. Tathbı̄t dalāʾil al-nubuwwa. Edited by ʿAbd al-Karı̄m ʿUthmān. 2 vols.
Beirut: Dār al-ʿArabiyya, 1966.
Abū Nuʿaym al-Is.fahānı̄ (d. 430/1038). Dhikr akhbār Is.bahān. Edited by Sven
Dedering. 2 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1931–4.
———. Maʿrifat al-s.ah.āba. Edited by ʿĀdil b. Yūsuf al-ʿAzzāzı̄. 7 vols. Riyadh:
Dār al-Wat.an li-l-Nashr, 1998.
237
238 Bibliography
Abū al-Shaykh al-Is.fahānı̄ (d. 369/979). T . abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n bi-Is.fahān

wa-l-wāridı̄n ʿalayhā. Edited by ʿAbd al-Ghafūr ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Ḥusayn al-
Balūshı̄. 4 vols. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1987–92.
———. T . abaqāt al-muh.addithı̄n bi-Is.fahān wa-l-wāridı̄n ʿalayhā. Edited by ʿAbd
al-Ghaffār Sulaymān al-Bindārı̄ and Sayyid Kasrawı̄ H . asan. 4 vols. in 2. Beirut:
Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1989.
Abū Tammām (d. 231–2/845–6). Dı̄wān al-H . amāsa. Edited by Muh.ammad
ʿAbd al-Munʿim Khafājı̄. 2 vols. Cairo: Maktabat Muh.ammad ʿAlı̄ S.ubayh.,
1955.
Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām (d. 224/838). Al-Amwāl. 2nd ed. Edited by
Muh.ammad Khalı̄l Harrās. Cairo: Dār al-Fikr, 1975.
———. The Book of Revenue (Kitāb al-Amwāl). Translated by Imran Ahsan
Khan Nyazee. Reading: Garnet, 2002.
Abū Yusūf (d. 182/798). Abū Yūsuf’s Kitāb al-Kharāj. Vol. 3 of Taxation in
Islam. Translated by A. Ben Shemesh. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969.
———. Kitāb al-Kharāj. Bulaq: al-Mat.baʿa al-Mı̄riyya, 1302/[1884–5].
ʿAlı̄ b. al-Jahm (d. 249/863). Dı̄wān ʿAlı̄ b. al-Jahm. Edited by Khalı̄l Mardam
Bey. 2nd ed. Beirut: Lajnat al-Turāth al-ʿArab, n.d.
Al-ʿAqı̄qı̄, Yah.yā b. al-H . asan al-Madanı̄ (d. 277/891). Kitāb al-Muʿaqqibı̄n min
wuld al-Imām Amı̄r al-Muʾminı̄n. Edited by Muh.ammad al-Kāz.im. Qum:
Maktabat Āyat Allāh al-ʿUz.mā al-Marʿashı̄ al-Najafı̄, 2001.
Asadı̄ T.ūsı̄, ʿAlı̄ b. Ah.mad (d. ca. 465/1073). Garshāsp-nāmah. Edited by H . abı̄b
Yaghmāʾı̄. Tehran: Kitāb-khānah-i T.ahūrı̄, 1975.
Al-As.maʿı̄ (d. 213/828) [attr.]. Nihāyat al-arab fı̄ akhbār al-Furs wa-l-ʿArab.
Edited by Muḥammad Taqı̄ Dānish-Pazhūh. Tehran: Anjuman-i Āsār va
Mafākhir-i Farhangı̄, 1996.
Al-Balādhurı̄ (d. ca. 279/892). Al-Buldān wa-futūḥuhā wa-ah.kāmuhā. Edited by
Suhayl Zakkār. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1992.
———. The Origins of the Islamic State. Vol. 2. Translated by Francis Clark
Murgotten. New York: Columbia University, 1924.
Balʿamı̄ (d. ca. 363/974). Chronique de Abou-Djafar-Mo’hammed-ben-Djarir-
ben-Yezid Tabari. Translated by M. Hermann Zotenberg. 4 vols. Paris:
Imprimerie Impériale, 1867–74. Reprint, Paris: Éditions d’art Les Heures
Claires, [1977?].
———. Tārı̄kh-i Balʿamı̄: Takmilah va tarjumah-yi Tārı̄kh-i T . abarı̄. Edited by
Muh.ammad Taqı̄ Bahār and Muh.ammad Parvı̄n Gunābādı̄. 2 vols. Tehran:
Zavvāl, 1974.
———. Tārı̄kh-nāmah-yi T . abarı̄. Edited by Muh.ammad Rawshan. 3 vols.
Tehran: Nashr-i Naw, 1366 shamsı̄/[1987–8].
Al-Bayhaqı̄, Ah.mad b. al-H . usayn (d. 458/1066). Shuʿab al-ı̄mān. Edited by Abū
Hājar Muh.ammad al-Saʿı̄d b. Basyūnı̄ Zaghlūl. 9 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub
al-ʿIlmiyya, 2000.
Al-Bı̄rūnı̄, Abū al-Rayh.ān (d. 440/1048). Al-Āthār al-bāqiya ʿan al-qurūn al-
khāliya. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2000.
———. Chronologie orientalischer Völker. Edited by C. Eduard Sachau. Leipzig:
F. A. Brockhaus, 1878.
Bibliography 239
———. The Chronology of Ancient Nations. Translated by C. Eduard Sachau.

London: W. H. Allen, 1879. Reprint, Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Legacy
Reprints, n.d.
Al-Buh.turı̄ (d. 284/897). Dı̄wān al-Buh.turı̄. Edited by H . asan Kāmil al-S.ayrafı̄.
5 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1963–8.
Al-Bukhārı̄ (d. 256/870). Al-Jāmiʿ al-s.ah.ı̄h.. Edited by M. Ludolf Krehl. 4 vols.
Vol. 4 partly edited by Th. W. Juynboll. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1862–1908.
Al-Burrı̄, Ibrāhı̄m b. Abı̄ Bakr (d. 690/1291). Al-Jawhara fı̄ nasab al-nabı̄ wa-
as.h.ābuhu al-ʿashara. Edited by Muh.ammad al-Tūnjı̄. 2 vols. Al-ʿAyn: Markaz
Zāyid li-l-Turāth wa-l-Taʾrı̄kh, 2001.
La Caverne des trésors: Les deux recensions syriaques. Edited and translated by
Su-Min Ri. 2 vols. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Leuven:
E. Peeters, 1987.
Al-Dı̄nawarı̄, Abū H . anı̄fa (d. ca. 281 or 282/894–5). Al-Akhbār al-t.iwāl.
Edited by ʿIs.ām Muh.ammad al-H . ājj ʿAlı̄. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya,
2001.
Firdawsı̄, Abū al-Qāsim (d. 411/1020). Shāh-nāmah. Edited by Djalal Khaleghi-
Motlagh. 8 vols. plus 2 note vols. New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 1988–
2008.
———. The Sháhnáma of Firdausı́. Translated by Arthur George Warner and
Edmond Warner. 9 vols. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1905–
25.
Al-Gharnāt.ı̄, Abū H. ayyān (d. 745/1344). Al-Bah.r al-muh.ı̄t fı̄ tafsı̄r. Vol. 7. Beirut:
Dār al-Fikr, 1983.
Al-Ghazālı̄, Abū H . āmid (d. 505/1111). “Al-Ghazali: Nasihat al-muluk.” Edited
by H. D. Isaacs. M.A. thesis, University of Manchester, 1956.
———. Ghazālı̄’s Book of Counsel for Kings (Nas.ı̄h.at al-mulūk). Translated by
F. R. C. Bagley. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.
———. Nas.ı̄h.at al-mulūk. Edited by Jalāl al-Dı̄n Humāʾı̄. Tehran: Majlis, 1315–
17 shamsı̄/[1936–9].
———. Nas.ı̄h.at al-mulūk. 2nd ed. Edited by Jalāl al-Dı̄n Humāʾı̄. Tehran:
Anjuman-i Āsār-i Millı̄, 1351 shamsı̄/[1972].
———. Al-Tibr al-masbūk fı̄ nas.ı̄h.at al-mulūk. Edited by Muh.ammad Ah.mad
Damaj. Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-Jāmiʿiyya li-l-Dirāsāt wa-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzı̄ʿ,
1987.
H. amza al-Is.fahānı̄ (d. after 350/961). Kitāb Taʾrı̄kh sinı̄ mulūk al-ard. wa-l-
anbiyāʾ. Berlin: Kaviani, 1340/1921 or 1922.
Hishām b. Muh.ammad al-Kalbı̄ (d. 204/819 or 206/821). Ǧamharat an-nasab:
Das genealogische Werk des Hišām ibn Muh.ammad al-Kalbı̄. Edited by Werner
Caskel. 2 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966.
The Histories of Nishapur [Kitāb Ah.vāl-i Nı̄shāpūr]. Edited by Richard N. Frye.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
The Holy Bible. Revised Standard Version. 1974.
Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (d. 328/940). Kitāb al-ʿIqd al-farı̄d. Edited by Ah.mad Amı̄n,
Ah.mad al-Zayn, and Ibrāhı̄m al-Abyārı̄. 7 vols. Cairo: Lajnat al-Taʾlı̄f wa-l-
Tarjama wa-l-Nashr, 1940–53.
240 Bibliography
Ibn Abı̄ al-H . adı̄d (d. 656/1258). Sharh. Nahj al-balāgha. Edited by Muḥammad
Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhı̄m. 20 vols. Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābı̄ al-Ḥalabı̄, 1959–63.
Ibn Abı̄ H . ātim (d. 327/938–9). Tafsı̄r al-Qurʾān al-ʿaz.ı̄m: Musnadan ʿan al-
Rasūl Allāh wa-l-s.ah.āba wa-l-tābiʿı̄n. 14 vols. Sidon and Beirut: al-Maktaba
al-ʿAs.riyya, 2003.
Ibn Abı̄ Shayba (d. 235/849). Mus.annaf. Edited by Mukhtār Ah.mad al-Nadwı̄.
15 vols. Karachi: Idārat al-Qurʾān wa-l-ʿUlūm al-Islāmiyya, 1987.
Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 571/1176). Taʾrı̄kh Madı̄nat Dimashq. Edited by ʿUmar al-
ʿAmrawı̄. 80 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1995–8.
Ibn Aʿtham (d. third/ninth century). Kitāb al-Futūh.. Edited by Muh.ammad ʿAbd
al-Muʿı̄d Khān and ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bukhārı̄. 8 vols. Hyderabad: Osmania
Oriental Publications Bureau, 1968–75.
Ibn al-Athı̄r, ʿIzz al-Dı̄n (d. 630/1233). Al-Kāmil fı̄ al-taʾrı̄kh. Edited by C. J.
Tornberg. 15 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1851–76.
Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummı̄ [al-Shaykh al-S.adūq] (d. 381/991). A Shı̄ʿite Creed: A
Translation of Iʿtiqādātu ʾl-Imāmiyyah (The Beliefs of the Imāmiyyah) of Abū
Jaʿfar, Muh.ammad ibn ʿAlı̄ ibn al-H . usayn, Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummı̄, known
as ash-Shaykh as.-S.adūq (306/919–381/991). Rev. ed. Translated by Asaf A. A.
Fyzee. Tehran: World Organization for Islamic Services, 1982.
———. ʿUyūn akhbār al-Rid.ā. Edited by Mahdı̄ al-Hu.sayn al-Lājūrdı̄. 2 vols. in
1. Najaf: al-Mat.baʿa al-H . aydariyya, 1970.
Ibn al-Balkhı̄ (fl. fifth–sixth/twelfth century). Description of the Province of Fars
in Persia at the Beginning of the Fourteenth Century A.D. Edited and translated
by Guy Le Strange. London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1912.
———. The Fársnáma of Ibnu’l-Balkhı́. Edited by Guy Le Strange and Reynold
A. Nicholson. London: Luzac, 1921.
Ibn al-Faqı̄h (fl. second half of the third/ninth or beginning of the fourth/tenth
century). Kitāb al-Buldān. Edited by Yūsuf al-Hādı̄. Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub,
1996.
———. Mukhtas.ar Kitāb al-Buldān. Edited by Michael J. de Goeje. Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1885.
Ibn Funduq, Abū al-H . asan ʿAlı̄ b. Zayd al-Bayh.aqı̄ (d. ca. 565/1169). Lubāb al-
ansāb wa-l-alqāb wa-l-aʿqāb. Edited by Mahdı̄ Rajāʾı̄ and Mah.mūd Marʿashı̄.
Qum: Maktabat Āyat Allāh al-ʿUẓmā al-Marʿashı̄ al-Najafı̄ al-ʿĀmma, 1410/
[1989–90].
Ibn H. abı̄b, Muh.ammad (d. 245/860). Al-Muh.abbar. Edited by Ilse Lichtenstädter.
Hyderabad: Maṭbaʿat Jamʿiyyat Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1942.
Ibn H . anbal, Ah.mad (d. 241/855). Musnad. Edited by Samı̄r T.āhā al-Majdhūb
et al. 8 vols. Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmı̄, 1993.
Ibn H . awqal (fl. fourth/tenth century). Kitāb S.ūrat al-ard.. Beirut: Dār Maktabat
al-H . ayā, 1979.
Ibn H . azm, ʿAlı̄ b. Ah.mad (d. 456/1064). Jamharat ansāb al-ʿArab. Edited by
É. Lévi-Provençal. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1948.
Ibn Hishām, ʿAbd al-Malik (d. 218/833 or 213/828). The Life of Muhammad:
A Translation of Ibn Ish.āq’s Sı̄rat Rasūl Allāh. Translated by A. Guillaume.
Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1955. Reprint, 1978.
Bibliography 241
———. Al-Sı̄ra al-nabawiyya. Edited by Mus.t.afā al-Saqqā, Ibrāhı̄m al-Abyārı̄,

and ʿAbd al-H . afı̄z. Shalabı̄. 2 vols. Cairo: al-Bābı̄ al-H
. alabı̄, 1955.
Ibn Isfandiyār (d. after 613/1216). An Abridged Translation of the History of
T
. abaristán Compiled about A.H. 613 (A.D. 1216) by Muh.ammad b. al-
H. asan b. Isfandiyár. Translated by Edward G. Browne. Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1905.
———. Tārı̄kh-i T . abaristān. Edited by ʿAbbās Iqbāl. 2 vols. in 1. Tehran: Majlis,
[1941].
Ibn al-Jawzı̄ (d. 597/1200). Kashf al-mushkil min h.adı̄th al-s.ah.ı̄h.ayn. Edited by
ʿAlı̄ H.usayn al-Bawwāb. 4 vols. Riyadh: Dār al-Wat.an, 1997.
———. Al-Muntaz.am fı̄ taʾrı̄kh al-mulūk wa-l-umam. Edited by Muḥammad
ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā and Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā. 18 vols. Beirut: Dār
al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1992.
———. Talbı̄s Iblı̄s. Edited by Muḥammad Munı̄r al-Dimashqı̄ et al. Beirut: Dār
al-Rāʾid al-ʿArabı̄, n.d. [198?].
Ibn Kathı̄r (d. 774/1373). Tafsı̄r al-Qurʾān al-ʿaz.ı̄m. 7 vols. Beirut: Dār al-
Andalus, 1966.
Ibn Khallikān (d. 681/1282). Wafayāt al-aʿyān. Edited by Ih.sān ʿAbbās. 8 vols.
Beirut: Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1968–72.
Ibn Khayyāt. al-ʿUs.furı̄, Khalı̄fa (d. 240/854). Taʾrı̄kh. Edited by Suhayl Zakkār.
2 vols. Damascus: Wizārat al-Thaqāfa wa-l-Siyāh.a wa-l-Irshād al-Qawmı̄,
1967–8.
Ibn Manz.ūr (d. 711/1311–12). Lisān al-ʿArab. 15 vols. Beirut: Dār S.ādir, [1955–
6].
Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889). Adab al-kātib. Edited by Max Grünert. Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1900.
———. Fad.l al-ʿArab wa-l-tanbı̄h ʿalā ʿulūmihā. Edited by Walı̄d Mah.mūd
Khālis.. Abu Dhabi: al-Mujammaʿ al-Thaqāfı̄, 1998.
———. Al-Maʿārif. Edited by Tharwat ʿUkāsha. Cairo, 1960. Reprint, Cairo:
al-Hayʾa al-Mis.riyya li-l-Kitāb, 1992.
———. The Superiority of the Arabs and an Exposition of Their Learning:
A Translation of Ibn Qutaybah’s Fad.l al-ʿArab wa l-tanbı̄h ʿalā ʿulūmihā.
Edited by Rid.ā al-ʿArabı̄. Translated by Sarah Bowen Savant and Peter Webb.
Reviewed by James E. Montgomery. New York: New York University Press,
forthcoming.
———. ʿUyūn al-akhbār. 4 vols. Cairo: Mat.baʿat Dār al-Kutub al-Mis.riyya,
1925–30.
Ibn Saʿd (d. 230/845). Al-T . abaqāt al-kabı̄r. Edited by Eduard Sachau et al. 9 vols.
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1904–40.
Ibn al-Sı̄d al-Bat.alyawsı̄ (d. 521/1127). Al-Iqtid.āb fı̄ sharh. Adab al-kuttāb. Edited
by Muḥammad Bāsil ʿUyūn al-Sūd. 3 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya,
1999.
Al-Is.t.akhrı̄, Abū Ish.āq al-Fārisı̄ (d. mid-fourth/tenth century). Al-Masālik wa-l-
mamālik. Edited by M. J. de Goeje. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1927.
Al-Jāh.iz., ʿAmr b. Bah.r (d. 255/868–9). Al-Bayān wa-l-tabyı̄n. 2nd ed. Edited by
ʿAbd al-Salām Muh.ammad Hārūn. 4 vols. Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjı̄, 1960–1.
242 Bibliography
Al-Jahshiyārı̄, Ibn ʿAbdūs (d. 331/942). Kitāb al-Wuzarāʾ wa-l-kuttāb. Edited

by Mus.t.afā al-Saqqā, Ibrāhı̄m al-Abyārı̄, and ʿAbd al-H . afı̄z. Shalabı̄. Cairo:
Mus.t.afā al-Bābı̄ al-H . alabı̄, 1938.
Jarı̄r b. ʿAt.iyya (d. ca. 110/728–9). Dı̄wān Jarı̄r bi-sharh. Muh.ammad b. H . abı̄b.
Edited by Nuʿmān Muh.ammad Amı̄n T.āhā. 2 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif,
1969–86.
———. Naqāʾid. Jarı̄r wa-l-Farazdaq. Edited by Anthony Ashley Bevan. 3 vols.
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1905–12.
Al-Jawālı̄qı̄, Mawhūb b. Ah.mad (d. 539/1144). Al-Muʿarrab min al-kalām al-
aʿjamı̄ ʿalā h.urūf al-muʿjam. Edited by Ah.mad Muh.ammad Shākir. [Cairo]:
Dār al-Kutub, 1969.
Al-Khat.ı̄b al-Baghdādı̄ (d. 463/1071). Taʾrı̄kh Baghdād. 14 vols. Cairo: Maktabat
al-Khānjı̄, 1931.
Khūzistān Chronicle. Edited by Ignazio Guidi as Chronicon anonymum, in
Chronica Minora, vol. 1–2. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium.
1–2. Scr. Syri 1–2. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1903.
Khūzistān Chronicle. Translated by Sebastian Brock. Unpublished manuscript.
Al-Maqdisı̄, al-Mut.ahhar b. T.āhir (fl. 355/966). Al-Badʾ wa-l-taʾrı̄kh. Edited and
translated by Clément Huart. 6 vols. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1899–1919. Reprint,
without the translation, Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthannā, n.d.
Al-Marzūqı̄, Ah.mad b. Muh.ammad (d. 421/1030). Sharh. dı̄wān al-H . amāsa.
Edited by Ah.mad Amı̄n and ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn. 4 vols. Cairo: Lajnat al-
Taʾlı̄f wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Nashr, 1951–3.
Al-Masʿūdı̄, Abū al-H . asan (d. 345/956). Le livre de l’avertissement et de la revi-
sion. Translated by Bernard Carra de Vaux. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1896.
———. Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʿādin al-jawhar. Vols. 1 and 2. Edited by Charles
Pellat. Beirut: Manshūrāt al-Jāmiʿa al-Lubnāniyya, 1965–6.
———. Al-Tanbı̄h wa-l-ishrāf. Edited by Michael J. de Goeje. Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1893.
Al-Māwardı̄ (d. 450/1058). Al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah: The Laws of Islamic Gov-
ernance. Translated by Asadullah Yate. London: Ta-Ha, 1996.
———. Aʿlām al-nubuwwa. Edited by Muh.ammad al-Muʿtas.im bi-llāh al-
Baghdādı̄. Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabı̄, 1987.
———. Kitāb al-Ah.kām al-sult.āniyya wa-l-wilāyāt al-dı̄niyya. Edited by Samı̄r
Mus.t.afā Rubāb. Sidon and Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAs.riyya, 2000.
———. Al-Nukat wa-l-ʿuyūn: Tafsı̄r al-Māwardı̄. Edited by Khid.r Muh.ammad
Khid.r. 4 vols. Kuwait: Wizārat al-Awqāf wa-l-Shuʾūn al-Islāmiyya, 1982.
The Meaning of the Holy Qurʾān. Translated by ʿAbdullah Yūsuf ʿAlı̄. 7th ed.
Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 1995.
Al-Mubarrad (d. ca. 286/900). Al-Fād.il. Edited by ʿAbd al-ʿAzı̄z al-Maymanı̄.
Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Mis.riyya, 1956.
Mujāhid b. Jabr al-Makkı̄ (d. between 100/718 and 104/722). Tafsı̄r Mujāhid.
Edited by ʿAbd al-Rah.mān al-T.āhir b. Muh.ammad al-Sūratı̄. Doha: Mat.ābiʿ
al-Dawh.a al-H . adı̄tha, 1976.
Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767). Tafsı̄r Muqātil b. Sulaymān. Edited by ʿAbd
Allāh Mah.mūd Shih.āta. 5 vols. [Cairo]: al-Hayʾa al-Mis.riyya al-ʿĀmma li-l-
Kitab, 1979–89.
Bibliography 243
Muslim b. al-H . ajjāj (d. 261/875). S.ah.ı̄h. Muslim. 2nd ed. Edited by Muḥammad
Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqı̄. 5 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1978.
Al-Nı̄sābūrı̄, Abū ʿAbd Allāh H . ākim. Tārı̄kh-i Nı̄shābūr: Tarjamah-yi
Muh.ammad b. H . usayn Khalı̄fah-yi Nı̄shābūrı̄. Edited by Muh.ammad Rid.ā
Shafı̄ʿı̄ Kadkanı̄. Tehran: Āgah, 1375/1996.
Al-Nuwayrı̄, Ah.mad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 733/1333). Nihāyat al-arab fı̄ funūn
al-adab. 33 vols. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dār al-Kutub al-Mis.riyya, 1923–2002.
Qudāma b. Jaʿfar (d. 337/948). Kitāb al-Kharāj wa-s.ināʿat al-kitāba. Edited by
Muh.ammad H . usayn al-Zubaydı̄. Baghdad: Dār al-Rashı̄d, 1981.
Al-Qummı̄, ʿAlı̄ b. Ibrāhı̄m (d. 328/939). Tafsı̄r. Edited by T.ayyib al-Mūsawı̄
al-Jazāʾirı̄. 2 vols. Najaf: Maktabat al-Hudā, 1387/1967–8.
Qummı̄, H . asan b. Muh.ammad b. H . asan (fl. 378/988–9) [attr.]. Tārı̄kh-i
Qum. Trans. [attr.] H . asan b. ʿAlı̄ b. H . asan Qummı̄. Edited by Jalāl al-Dı̄n
T.ihrānı̄. Tehran: Majlis, 1313 shamsı̄/1934. Reprint, Tehran: Intishārāt-i Tūs,
1982.
The Qurʾān. Translated by Alan Jones. Cambridge: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2007.
See also The Meaning of the Holy Qurʾān.
Al-Qurt.ubı̄, Muh.ammad b. Ah.mad (d. 671/1272). Al-Jāmiʿ li-ah.kām al-Qurʾān.
Vol. 14. Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Mis.riyya, 1364/1945.
Al-Rāfiʿı̄, ʿAbd al-Karı̄m b. Muh.ammad (d. 623/1226). Al-Tadwı̄n fı̄ akhbār
Qazwı̄n. Edited by ʿAzı̄z Allāh ʿUt.āridı̄. 4 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-
ʿIlmiyya, 1987.
Al-S.affār al-Qummı̄, Abū Jaʿfar (d. 290/902–3). Bas.āʾir al-darajāt fı̄ fad.āʾil Āl
Muh.ammad. Qum: T.alı̄ʿat al-Nūr, 1384 shamsı̄/[2005].
Al-Sahmı̄, Abū al-Qāsim H . amza b. Yūsuf b. Ibrāhı̄m (d. 427/1038). Taʾrı̄kh
Jurjān. Hyderabad: Osmania Oriental Publications, 1950.
Al-Samʿānı̄, Mans.ūr b. Muhammad (d. 489/1096). Tafsı̄r al-Qurʾān. Edited by
Abū Tamı̄m Yāsir b. Ibrāhı̄m and Abū Bilāl Ghanı̄m b. ʿAbbās b. Ghanı̄m.
6 vols. Riyadh: Dār al-Wat.an, 1997.
Al-S.anʿānı̄, ʿAbd al-Razzāq (d. 211/827). Al-Mus.annaf. Edited by H . abı̄b al-
Rah.mān al-Aʿz.amı̄. 11 vols. Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmı̄, 1970–2.
Sebeos [attr.]. The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos. Translated by R. W.
Thomson with commentary by James Howard-Johnston. 2 vols. Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 1999.
Al-Shahrastānı̄, Abū al-Fath. Muh.ammad (d. 548/1153). Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-
nih.al. Edited by ʿAbd al-ʿAzı̄z Muh.ammad al-Wakı̄l. 3 vols. in 1. Cairo:
Muʾassasat al-Ḥalabı̄, 1968.
Al-Shaykh al-Mufı̄d (d. 413/1022). Al-Irshād fı̄ maʿrifat h.ujaj Allāh ʿalā al-ʿibād.
Edited by Muʾassasat Āl al-Bayt li-Ih.yāʾ al-Turāth. 2 vols. Beirut: al-Muʾassasa,
1995.
———. Kitāb al-Irshād: The Book of Guidance into the Lives of the Twelve
Imams. Translated by I. K. A. Howard. London: Balagha Books, 1981.
Al-S.ūlı̄, Abū Bakr Muh.ammad b. Yah.yā (d. 335/947). Adab al-kuttāb. Edited by
Muh.ammad Bahjat al-Atharı̄. Cairo: al-Mat.baʿa al-Salafiyya, 1341/[1922].
Al-T.abarānı̄, Sulaymān b. Ah.mad b. Ayyūb Abū al-Qāsim (d. 360/971). Al-
Muʿjam al-kabı̄r. 2nd ed. Edited by H . amdı̄ ʿAbd al-Majı̄d al-Salafı̄. 25 vols.
[Beirut: Maktabat al-Tawʿiyya al-Islāmiyya], 1404/1983–[1410/1990].
244 Bibliography
Al-T.abarı̄, Muh.ammad b. Jarı̄r (d. 310/923). Geschichte der Perser und Araber
zur Zeit der Sasaniden aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari. Translated by
Theodor Nöldeke. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1879. Reprint, 1973.
———. The History of al-T . abarı̄. 40 vols. Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1985–2007.
———. Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwı̄l āy al-Qurʾān. Edited by Ah.mad ʿAbd al-Rāziq
al-Bakrı̄ et al. 10 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Salām, 2007.
———. Taʾrı̄kh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk. Edited by M. J. de Goeje et al. 15 vols. in
3 series. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1879–1901.
The Tārikh-e Sistān. Translated by Milton Gold. Rome: Istituto italiano per il
Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1976.
Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān. Edited by Muh.ammad Taqı̄ Bahār. Tehran: Khāvar, 1935.
Al-Thaʿālibı̄, Abū Mans.ūr (d. 429/1038) [attr.]. Ghurar akhbār mulūk al-
Furs wa-siyarihim. Edited and translated by H. Zotenberg. Paris: Imprimerie
nationale, 1900.
———. The Lat.āʾif al-maʿārif of Thaʿālibı̄ (The Book of Curious and Enter-
taining Information). Translated by C. E. Bosworth. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1968.
———. Thimār al-qulūb fı̄ al-mud.āf wa-l-mansūb. Edited by Muh.ammad Abū
al-Fad.l Ibrāhı̄m. Cairo: Dār Nahd.at Mis.r, 1965.
———. Yatı̄mat al-dahr fı̄ mah.āsin ahl al-ʿas.r. Edited by Muh.ammad Muh.yı̄
al-Dı̄n ʿAbd al-H . amı̄d. 4 vols. in 2. Cairo: Mat.baʿat H. ijāzı̄, 1947.
Al-Thaʿlabı̄, Ah.mad b. Muh.ammad (d. 427/1035). Al-Kashf wa-l-bayān. Edited
by Abū Muh.ammad b. ʿĀshūr. 10 vols. Beirut: Dār Ih.yāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabı̄,
2002.
Theophanes. The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near East-
ern History, AD 284–813. Translated by Cyril Mango and Roger Scott.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.
Al-Tirmidhı̄, Muh.ammad b. ʿĪsā (d. 279/892). Al-Jāmiʿ al-s.ah.ı̄h.. Edited by
Ah.mad Muh.ammad Shākir, Muh.ammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqı̄, and Ibrāhı̄m
ʿAt.wa ʿAwad.. 5 vols. Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābı̄ al-Ḥalabı̄, 1937–56.
Al-Wāh.idı̄, ʿAlı̄ b. Ah.mad (d. 468/1076). Asbāb al-nuzūl wa-yalı̄hi al-Nāsikh
wa-l-mansūkh. Cairo: Maktabat al-Mutanabbı̄, n.d.
———. Al-Wajı̄z fı̄ tafsı̄r al-Kitāb al-ʿAzı̄z. Edited by S.afwān ʿAdnān Dāwūdı̄.
2 vols. Damascus: Dār al-Qalam, 1995.
Al-Wāqidı̄, Muh.ammad b. ʿUmar (d. 207/822). Al-Maghāzı̄. Edited by Marsden
Jones. 3 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.
Al-Yaʿqūbı̄, Ah.mad b. Abı̄ Yaʿqūb (fl. second half of the third/ninth century).
Taʾrı̄kh. Edited by M. Th. Houtsma. 2 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1883. Reprint,
Beirut: Dār S.ādir, 1960.
Yāqūt al-H . amawı̄ (d. 626/1229). Irshād al-arı̄b ilā maʿrifat al-adı̄b [Muʿjam
al-udabāʾ]. Edited by D. S. Margoliouth. 7 vols. London: Luzac, 1907–
13.
———. Jacut’s geographisches Wörterbuch [Muʿjam al-buldān]. Edited by
Ferdinand Wüstenfeld. 6 vols. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1866–73.
Al-Zamakhsharı̄, Abū al-Qāsim Mah.mūd b. ʿUmar (d. 538/1144). Rabı̄ʿ al-
abrār wa-nus.ūs. al-akhbār. Edited by ʿAbd al-Amı̄r Muhannā. 5 vols. Beirut:
Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamı̄, 1992.
Bibliography 245
Zand-Ākāsı̄h: Iranian or Greater Bundahišn. Translated by Behramgore

Tehmuras Anklesaria. Bombay: Rahnumae Mazdayasnan Sabha, 1956.
Secondary Sources
Abadal i de Vinyals, Ramón d’. “À propos du Legs visigothique en Espagne.”
Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 5 (1958):
541–85.
Abisaab, Rula Jurdi. Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid
Empire. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
Abou El Fadl, Khaled. Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and
Women. Oxford: Oneworld, 2001. Reprint, 2003.
Ādharnūsh, Ādhartāsh [A. Azarnouche]. Chālish miyān-i Farsı̄ va ʿArabı̄: Sadah-
hā-yi nukhust. Tehran: Nay, 1385 shamsı̄/[2006].
Afsaruddin, Asma. The First Muslims: History and Memory. Oxford: Oneworld,
2008.
Album, Stephen. A Checklist of Islamic Coins. 3rd ed. Santa Rosa, CA: Stephen
Album Rare Coins, 2011.
Ali, Muhammad Mohar. Sı̂rat al-Nabı̂ and the Orientalists, with Special Refer-
ence to the Writings of William Muir, D. S. Margoliouth and W. Montgomery
Watt. Vol. 1B, From the Early Phase of the Prophet’s Mission to His Migration
to Madinah. Medina: King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qurʾan
and Centre for the Service of Sunnah and Sı̂rah, 1417/1997.
Amanat, Abbas, and Farzin Vejdani. Iran Facing Others: Identity Boundaries in
a Historical Perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Amı̄n, Ah.mad. D . uh.ā al-Islām. 3 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabı̄, [1933–6].
Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad Ali. The Divine Guide in Early Shiʿism: The Sources
of Esotericism in Islam. Translated by David Streight. Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1994.
———. “Šahrbānu.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “Shahrbānū, Dame du pays d’Iran et Mère des Imams: Entre l’Iran
préislamique et le Shiisme Imamite.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
27 (2002): 497–549.
———. “Shahrbānū, princesse sassanide et épouse de l’imam H . usayn: De l’Iran
préislamique à l’Islam shiite.” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions
et Belles-Lettres, Jan.–Mar. 2002, 255–85.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991.
Anlezark, Daniel. “Sceaf, Japheth and the Origins of the Anglo-Saxons.” Anglo-
Saxon England 31 (2002): 13–46.
Antrim, Zayde. Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic
World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Arberry, A. J. Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students. Cambridge: Cambridge
Arkoun, Mohammed. The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought. Lon-
don: Saqi Books, 2002.
Armstrong, John A. Nations before Nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1982.
246 Bibliography
Arnold, T. W. The Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of the

Muslim Faith. 2nd ed. Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2001.
Assmann, Jan. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance,
and Political Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
———. Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Azkāʾı̄, Parvı̄z. “Salmān Fārisı̄.” In Dāyirat al-maʿārif-i Tashayyuʿ, edited by
Ah.mad S.adr Ḥājj Sayyid Javādı̄, Kāmrān Fānı̄, and Bahāʾ al-Dı̄n Khor-
ramshāhı̄, 9:262–5. Tehran: Bunyād-i Islāmı̄-yi T.āhir, 1988–.
Bacharach, Jere L. Islamic History through Coins: An Analysis and Catalogue of
Tenth-Century Ikhshidid Coinage. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press,
2006.
Bahrami, Mehdi. “A Gold Medal in the Freer Gallery of Art.” In Archaeologica
Orientalia in Memoriam Ernst Herzfeld, edited by George C. Miles, 5–21.
Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1952.
Barbier de Meynard, C. Dictionnaire géographique, historique et littéraire de la
Perse et des contrées adjacentes. Paris: L’Imprimerie Impériale, 1861.
Barthold, W. An Historical Geography of Iran. Translated by Svat Soucek. Edited
by C. E. Bosworth. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
———. “Zur Geschichte des persischen Epos.” Translated by Hans Heinrich
Schaeder. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 98 (1944):
121–57.
Al-Bashbı̄shı̄, Jamāl al-Dı̄n ʿAbd Allāh b. Ah.mad. Jāmiʿ al-taʿrı̄b bi-l-t.arı̄q al-
qarı̄b. Edited by Nus.ūhı̄ Ūnāl Qarah Arslān. Cairo: Markaz al-Dirāsāt al-
Sharqiyya, Kulliyyat al-Ādāb, Jāmiʿat al-Qāhira, 1995.
Bashear, Suliman. Arabs and Others in Early Islam. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press,
1997.
———. “The Mission of Dih.ya al-Kalbı̄ and the Situation in Syria.” Der Islam
74, no. 1 (1997): 64–91.
Bell, Richard. A Commentary on the Qurʾān. Vol. 2, Surahs XXV–CXIV.
Manchester: University of Manchester, 1991.
Bengio, Ofra. Saddam’s Word: Political Discourse in Iraq. New York: Oxford
Berchem, Max van. Matériaux pour un Corpus inscriptionum Arabicarum. Part
2, Syrie du Sud. 3 vols. Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie
Orientale, 1922–3, 1927.
Berg, Herbert. “Competing Paradigms in the Study of Islamic Origins: Qurʾān
15:89–91 and the Value of Isnāds.” In Method and Theory in the Study of
Islamic Origins, edited by Herbert Berg, 259–90. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
———. The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam: The Authenticity of Muslim
Literature from the Formative Period. Richmond: Curzon, 2000.
Bernheimer, Teresa. “Genealogy, Marriage, and the Drawing of Boundaries
among the ʿAlids (Eighth–Twelfth Centuries).” In Sayyids and Sharifs in
Muslim Societies: The Living Links to the Prophet, edited by Kazuo Morimoto,
75–91. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012.
Blair, Sheila S. “Transcribing God’s Word: Qurʾan Codices in Context.” Journal
of Qurʾanic Studies 10, no. 1 (2008): 70–97.
Bibliography 247
Blois, François de. “Dı̄vān i. The Term.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.

———. “Garšāsp-nāma.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Borrut, Antoine. Entre mémoire et pouvoir: L’espace syrien sous les derniers
Omeyyades et les premiers Abbassides (v. 72–193/692–809). Leiden: Brill,
2011.
———. “La Memoria Omeyyade: Les Omeyyades entre souvenir et oubli dans
les sources narratives Islamiques.” In Borrut and Cobb, Umayyad Legacies,
25–61.
———. “La Syrie de Salomon: L’appropriation du mythe salomonien dans les
sources arabes.” Pallas 63 (2003): 107–20.
———and Paul M. Cobb, eds. Umayyad Legacies: Medieval Memories from Syria
to Spain. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. “ʿAjam.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “Azerbaijan iv. Islamic History to 1941.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “Dı̄vān ii. Government Office.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “Ebn al-Balkı̄.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 994–
1040. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963.
———. “The Heritage of Rulership in Early Islamic Iran and the Search for
Dynastic Connections with the Past.” Iran 11 (1973): 51–62.
———. The History of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz (247/861
to 949/1542–3). Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1994.
———. “Ispahbadh.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. “Mı̄kālı̄s.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. The New Islamic Dynasties: A Chronological and Genealogical Manual.
Rev. ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
———. “Al-Rukhkhadj.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. “Al-Sallamı̄.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. “Sistan and Its Local Histories.” Iranian Studies 33, no. 1/2 (2000):
31–43.
———. Sı̄stān under the Arabs: From the Islamic Conquest to the Rise of the
S.affārids (30–250/651–864). Rome: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo
Oriente, Centro studi e scavi archeologici in Asia, 1968.
———. “Tārik-e Sistān.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “Al-Thaʿālibı̄, Abū Mans.ūr.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Boyarin, Daniel. Review of Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in
Western Monotheism, by Jan Assmann. Church History 67, no. 4 (1998):
842–4.
Boyce, Mary. “Ādur Farnbāg.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “Cleansing i. In Zoroastrianism.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “Gōmēz.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———, trans. The Letter of Tansar. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed
Estremo Oriente, 1968.
———. “Middle Persian Literature.” Handbuch der Orientalistik 1.4.2.1 (1988):
31–66.
———. “On the Zoroastrian Temple Cult of Fire.” Journal of the American
Oriental Society 95, no. 3 (1975): 454–65.
248 Bibliography
———. Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. 2nd ed. London:
Routledge, 2001.
Braude, Benjamin. “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geo-
graphical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods.” William and
Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997): 103–42.
Brockelmann, Carl. Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1943–9.
———. Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. Supplement. 3 vols. Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1937–42.
———. “Al-Māwardı̄.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Brown, Jonathan A. C. Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern
World. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009.
Brown, Stuart C. “Ecbatana.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Browne, Edward G. A Literary History of Persia. 4 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge
———. “Some Account of the Arabic Work entitled ‘Niháyatu’l-irab fı́ akhbári’l-
Furs wa’l-‘Arab,’ particularly of that part which treats of the Persian
Kings.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s., 32, no. 2 (1900): 195–
259.
Bulliet, Richard W. Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in
Quantitative History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.
———. Islam: The View from the Edge. New York: Columbia University Press,
1994.
———. “Al-Māfarrūkhı̄.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Busse, Heribert. “Cain and Abel.” In Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, 1:270–2.
Caetani, Leone. Annali dell’Islām. 10 vols. Milan: U. Hoepli, 1918.
Cameron, Averil. Procopius and the Sixth Century. London: Duckworth, 1985.
Canard, M. “ʿAmmūriya.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Cauthen, Bruce. “Covenant and Continuity: Ethno-Symbolism and the Myth of
Divine Election.” Nations and Nationalism 10, no. 1/2 (2004): 19–33.
Chabbi, Jacqueline. “Abū Nuʿaym al-Is.fahānı̄.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam.
3rd ed.
Choksy, Jamsheed K. “Altars, Precincts, and Temples: Medieval and Modern
Zoroastrian Praxis.” Iran 44 (2006): 327–46.
———. Conflict and Cooperation: Zoroastrian Subalterns and Muslim Elites in
Medieval Iranian Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
Christensen, Arthur. L’Iran sous les Sassanides. Copenhagen: Levin & Munks-
gaard, 1936.
———. Les Kayanides. Copenhagen: Andr. Fred. Høst & Søn, 1931.
———. Les types du premier homme et du premier roi dans l’histoire légendaire
des Iraniens. Vol. 1, Gajōmard, Masjaγ et Masjānaγ , Hōšang et Taχ mōruw.
Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt, 1917.
Clinton, Jerome W. “A Sketch of Translation and the Formation of New Persian
Literature.” In Iran and Iranian Studies: Essays in Honor of Iraj Afshar, edited
by Kambiz Eslami, 288–305. Princeton, NJ: Zagros, 1998.
Conrad, Lawrence I. “Abraha and Muh.ammad: Some Observations Apropos of
Chronology and Literary Topoi in the Early Arabic Historical Tradition.”
Bibliography 249
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 50, no. 2 (1987):
225–40.
———. “The Conquest of Arwād: A Source-Critical Study in the Historiography
of the Early Medieval Near East.” In The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near
East, vol. 1, Problems in the Literary Source Material, edited by Averil
Cameron and Lawrence I. Conrad, 317–401. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press,
1992.
———. “Heraclius in Early Islamic Kerygma.” In The Reign of Heraclius (610–
641): Crisis and Confrontation, edited by Gerrit J. Reinink and Bernard H.
Stolte, 113–56. Leuven: Peeters, 2002.
———. “Ibn Aʿtham and His History.” Unpublished paper presented at the Sixth
International Colloquium on “From Jahiliyya to Islam,” Institute for Advanced
Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Sept. 5–10, 1993.
———. “Recovering Lost Texts: Some Methodological Issues.” Journal of the
American Oriental Society 113, no. 2 (1993): 258–63.
———. “Theophanes and the Arabic Historical Tradition: Some Indications of
Intercultural Transmission.” Byzantinische Forschungen 15 (1990): 1–44.
Cook, Michael. “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition in Early Islam.”
“Voix et Calame en Islam Médiéval,” special issue, Arabica 44, no. 4 (1997):
437–530.
———. “Pharaonic History in Medieval Egypt.” Studia Islamica, no. 57 (1983):
67–103.
Cooperson, Michael. “Al-Maʾmūn, the Pyramids, and the Hieroglyphs.” In
ʿAbbasid Studies II: Occasional Papers of the School of ʿAbbasid Studies,
Leuven, 28 June–1 July 2004, edited by John Nawas, 165–90. Leuven: Peeters,
2010.
———. “Masʿudi.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Cornu, Georgette. Atlas du monde Arabo-islamique à l’époque classique: IXe –Xe
siècles. 2 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983–5.
Coser, Lewis A. “Introduction.” In On Collective Memory, by Maurice Halb-
wachs, translated by Lewis A. Coser, 1–34. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1992.
Crone, Patricia. “The First-Century Concept of Hiǧra.” Arabica 41, no. 3 (1994):
352–87.
———. From Kavād to al-Ghazālı̄: Religion, Law and Political Thought in the
Near East, c.600–c.1100. Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2005.
———. God’s Rule: Government and Islam; Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic
Political Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
———. “Muhallabids.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local
Zoroastrianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
———. Roman, Provincial, and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patron-
ate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Daftary, Farhad. The Ismāʿı̄lı̄s: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1990.
Dakake, Maria Massi. The Charismatic Community: Shiʿite Identity in Early
Islam. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.
250 Bibliography
Dalley, Stephanie. “Gilgamesh in the Arabian Nights.” Journal of the Royal

Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., 1, no. 1 (1991): 1–17.
———. “The Tale of Bulūqiyā and the Alexander Romance in Jewish and Sufi
Mystical Circles.” In Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish
Pseudepigrapha, edited by John C. Reeves, 239–69. Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1994.
Daniel, Elton L. “The Islamic East.” In The New Cambridge History of Islam,
vol. 1, The Formation of the Islamic World, Sixth to Eleventh Centuries,
edited by Chase F. Robinson, 448–505. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010.
———. “Manuscripts and Editions of Balʿamı̄’s Tarjamah-i Tārı̄kh-i T . abarı̄.”
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s., 122, no. 2 (1990): 282–
321.
Daryaee, Touraj. “The Fall of the Sasanian Empire to the Arab Muslims: From
Two Centuries of Silence to Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The
Partho-Sasanian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran.” Journal of
Persianate Studies 3, no. 2 (2010): 239–54.
———. “The Mazdean Sect of Gayōmartiya.” In Ātaš-e Dorun: The Fire Within,
Jamshid Soroush Soroushian Commemorative Volume, edited by Carlo G.
Cereti and Farrokh Vajifdar, 131–7. [United States]: 1st Books, 2003.
———, ed. and trans. Šahrestānı̄hā ı̄ Ērānšahr: A Middle Persian Text on Late
Antique Geography, Epic, and History. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers,
2002.
———. Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire. London: I. B. Tauris,
2009.
Davis, Craig R. “Cultural Assimilation in the Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies.”
Anglo-Saxon England 21 (1992): 23–36.
Davis, Dick. Epic and Sedition: The Case of Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāmeh. Fayetteville:
University of Arkansas Press, 1992.
———. “The Problem of Ferdowsı̂’s Sources.” Journal of the American Oriental
Society 116, no. 1 (1996): 48–57.
Décobert, Christian. Le mendiant et le combattant: L’institution de l’islam. Paris:
Seuil, 1991.
Dignas, Beate, and Engelbert Winter. Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neigh-
bours and Rivals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Donner, Fred McGraw. “Arabic fath. as ‘Conquest.’” Unpublished manuscript.
———. “Centralized Authority and Military Autonomy in the Early Islamic Con-
quests.” In The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, vol. 3, States, Resources
and Armies, edited by Averil Cameron, 337–60. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press,
1995.
———. The Early Islamic Conquests. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1981.
———. Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam. Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.
———. Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writ-
ing. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1998.
Bibliography 251
———. Review of The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near
East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century, by Hugh Kennedy. Speculum 65,
no. 1 (1990): 182–4.
Donohue, John J. The Buwayhid Dynasty in Iraq, 334H./945 to 403H./1012:
Shaping Institutions for the Future. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
———. “Three Buwayhid Inscriptions.” Arabica 20, no. 1 (1973): 74–80.
Drechsler, Andreas. Die Geschichte der Stadt Qom im Mittelalter (650–1350):
Politische und wirtschaftliche Aspekte. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1999.
———. “Qom i. History to the Safavid Period.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “Tārik-e Qom.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Drory, Rina. “The Abbasid Construction of the Jahiliyya: Cultural Authority in
the Making.” Studia Islamica, no. 83 (1996): 33–49.
Durand-Guédy, David. Iranian Elites and Turkish Rulers: A History of Is.fahān
in the Saljūq Period. London: Routledge, 2010.
Al-Dūrı̄, ʿAbd al-ʿAzı̄z. “Dı̄wān i. The Caliphate.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam.
2nd ed.
———. Al-Judhūr al-taʾrı̄khiyya li-l-Shuʿūbiyya. Beirut: Dār al-T.alı̄ʿa, 1962.
Eco, Umberto. “An Ars Oblivionalis? Forget It!” Translated by Marilyn Migiel.
PMLA 103, no. 3 (1988): 254–61.
El Ali, Saleh Ahmad [S.ālih. Ah.mad al-ʿAlı̄]. “Al-Madāʾin and Its Surrounding
Area in Arabic Literary Sources.” Mesopotamia 3–4 (1968–9): 417–39.
———. “Al-Madāʾin fı̄ al-mas.ādir al-ʿarabiyya.” Sumer 23 (1967): 47–65.
El Cheikh, Nadia Maria. “Byzantines, Exegetical Explanations.” In Encyclopae-
dia of the Qurʾān, 1:66–9.
———. Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2004.
———. “Muh.ammad and Heraclius: A Study in Legitimacy.” Studia Islamica,
no. 89 (1999): 5–21.
———. “Sūrat al-Rūm: A Study of the Exegetical Literature.” Journal of the
American Oriental Society 118, no. 3 (1998): 356–64.
El-Hibri, Tayeb. “Coinage Reform under the ʿAbbāsid Caliph al-Maʾmūn.”
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 36, no. 1 (1993):
58–83.
———. Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Hārūn Al-Rashı̄d and the Narra-
tive of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
———. “T.abarı̄’s Biography of al-Muʿtas.im: The Literary Use of a Military
Career.” Der Islam 86, no. 2 (2011): 187–236.
Encyclopaedia Iranica. Edited by Ehsan Yarshater. Online ed. New York, 1996–.
http://www.iranicaonline.org.
Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed. Edited by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E.
Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs. 12 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1960–2004.
Encyclopaedia of Islam. 3rd ed. Edited by Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis
Matringe, John Nawas, and Everett Rowson. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2007–.
Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. 6 vols. Leiden:
Brill, 2001–6.
252 Bibliography
Fadel, Mohammad. “Is Historicism a Viable Strategy for Islamic Law Reform?
The Case of ‘Never Shall a Folk Prosper Who Have Appointed a Woman to
Rule Them.’” Islamic Law and Society 18, no. 2 (2011): 131–76.
Faqı̄hı̄, ʿAlı̄ As.ghar. “Tārı̄kh-i Qum.” In Dānish-nāmah-yi jahān-i Islām.
Online ed. Tehran: Bunyād-i Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Islāmı̄, n.d. http://www
.encyclopaediaislamica.com.
Fiey, Jean Maurice. Pour un Oriens Christianus Novus: Répertoire des diocèses
syriaques orientaux et occidentaux. Beirut and Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1993.
———. “Topography of al-Madaʾin (Seleucia-Ctesiphon area).” Sumer 23
(1967): 3–38.
Firestone, Reuven. “Pharaoh.” In Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, 4:66–8.
Fowden, Garth. Qus.ayr ʿAmra: Art and the Umayyad Elite in Late Antique Syria.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
Fragner, Bert G. “The Concept of Regionalism in Historical Research on Cen-
tral Asia and Iran (A Macro-Historical Interpretation).” In Studies on Central
Asian History in Honor of Yuri Bregel, edited by Devin DeWeese, 341–54.
Bloomington: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies,
2001.
———. Die “Persophonie”: Regionalität, Identität und Sprachkontakt in der
Geschichte Asiens. Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1999.
Friedmann, Yohanan. Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in
the Muslim Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Frye, R. N. “Bāwand.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. “Hamadhān.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. “The Political History of Iran under the Sasanians.” In The Cam-
bridge History of Iran, vol. 3(1), The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods,
edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 116–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983.
Fück, Johann. Muh.ammad b. Ish.āq: Literarhistorische Untersuchungen. Frank-
furt: n.p., 1925.
Gabrieli, F. “Ibn al-Muk.affaʿ.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Garrison, Mark. “Fire Altars.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Geary, Patrick J. Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End
of the First Millennium. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Gelder, Geert Jan van. Close Relationships: Incest and Inbreeding in Classical
Arabic Literature. London: I. B. Tauris, 2005.
Geoffroy, E. “Ummı̄.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Al-Ghazālı̄, Muh.ammad. Al-Sunna al-nabawiyya bayn ahl al-fiqh wa-ahl al-
h.adı̄th. Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1989.
Gibb, H. A. R. “ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿĀmir.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. “ʿAlı̄ b. al-Djahm.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. “The Social Significance of the Shuubiya.” In Studies on the Civilization
of Islam, edited by Stanford J. Shaw and William R. Polk, 62–73. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1962.
Gignoux, Ph. “L’organisation administrative sasanide: Le cas du marzbān.” Je-
rusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 4 (1984): 1–29.
Bibliography 253
Gil, Moshe. “Additions to Islamische Masse und Gewichte.” In Occident and

Orient: A Tribute to the Memory of Alexander Scheiber, edited by Robert
Dán, 167–70. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1988.
Gilliot, Claude. “Creation of a Fixed Text.” In The Cambridge Companion to
the Qurʾān, edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe, 41–57. Cambridge: Cambridge
———. “La formation intellectuelle de Tabari (224/5–310/839–923).” Journal
Asiatique 276 (1988): 203–44.
———. “Muh.ammad, le Coran et les ‘contraintes de l’histoire.’” In The Qurʾan
as Text, edited by Stefan Wild, 3–26. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996.
Gnoli, Gherardo. The Idea of Iran: An Essay on Its Origin. Rome: Istituto italiano
per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1989.
Göbl, Robert. Sasanian Numismatics. Translated by Paul Severin. Braunschweig:
Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1971.
Goitein, S. D. Studies in Islamic History and Institutions. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966.
Goldziher, Ignaz. Muhammedanische Studien. 2 vols. Halle: Max Niemeyer,
1889–90.
———. Muslim Studies. 2 vols. Edited by S. M. Stern. Translated by C. R. Barber
and S. M. Stern. Chicago: Aldine, 1966.
Grabar, Oleg. “The Umayyad Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.” Ars Orientalis 3
(1959): 33–62.
Graham, William A. Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam: A Recon-
sideration of the Sources, with Special Reference to the Divine Saying or H . adı̂th
Qudsı̂. The Hague: Mouton, 1977.
Gray, Louis H. “The Kings of Early Irān according to the Sidrā Rabbā.” Zeit-
schrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 19, no. 2 (1906):
272–87.
Grignaschi, Mario. “La Nihāyatu-l-ʾArab fı̄ Aḫbāri-l-Furs wa-l-ʿArab.” Pt. 1.
Bulletin d’études orientales 22 (1969): 15–67.
———. “La Nihāyatu-l-ʾArab fı̄ Aḫbāri-l-Furs wa-l-ʿArab et les Siyaru Mulūki-
l-ʿAǧam du Ps. Ibn-al-Muqaffaʿ.” Bulletin d’études orientales 26 (1973): 83–
184.
Grunebaum, G. E. von. Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural
Tradition. Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association, 1955.
Günther, Sebastian. “Illiteracy.” In Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, 2:492–500.
———. “Ummı̄.” In Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, 5:399–403.
Gutas, Dimitri. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation
Movement in Baghdad and Early ʿAbbāsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centu-
ries). New York: Routledge, 1998.
Haarmann, Ulrich. “Medieval Muslim Perceptions of Pharaonic Egypt.” In
Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms, edited by Antonio Loprieno,
605–27. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996.
———. “Regional Sentiment in Medieval Islamic Egypt.” Bulletin of the School
of Oriental and African Studies 43, no. 1 (1980): 55–66.
Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Translated by Lewis A. Coser.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
254 Bibliography
Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko. “The Corruption of Christianity: Salmān al-Fārisı̄’s

Quest as a Paradigmatic Model.” Studia Orientalia 85 (1999): 115–26.
Hamidullah, Muhammad. “La lettre du Prophète à Héraclius et le sort de
l’original.” Arabica 2, no. 1 (1955): 97–110.
———. Majmūʿat al-wathāʾiq al-siyāsiyya li-l-ʿahd al-nabawı̄ wa-l-khilāfa al-
rāshida. 3rd ed. Beirut: Dār al-Irshād li-l-T.ibāʿa wa-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzı̄ʿ, 1969.
———. “Original de la lettre du Prophète à Kisrà.” Rivista degli Studi orientali
40 (1965): 57–69.
———. Le Prophète de l’Islam. 2 vols. Paris: J. Vrin, 1959.
———. Six originaux des lettres du Prophète de l’islam: Étude paléographique et
historique des lettres du Prophète. Paris: Tougui, 1985.
Harley Walker, C. T. “Jāh.iz. of Bas.ra to al-Fath. ibn Khāqān on the ‘Exploits of
the Turks and the Army of the Khalifate in General.’” Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society, n.s., 47, no. 4 (1915): 631–97.
Hartman, Sven S. Gayōmart: Étude sur le syncrétisme dans l’ancien Iran. Uppsala:
Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckeri, 1953.
Hawting, G. R. “The Disappearance and Rediscovery of Zamzam and the ‘Well
of the Kaʿba.’” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43, no. 1
(1980): 44–54.
———. The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to
History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
———. “Muh.ammad b. Abı̄ Bakr.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Heck, Paul L. The Construction of Knowledge in Islamic Civilization:
Qudāma b. Jaʿfar and his Kitāb al-kharāj wa-s.ināʿat al-kitāba. Leiden: Brill,
2002.
Heidemann, Stefan. “Numismatics.” In The New Cambridge History of Islam,
vol. 1, The Formation of the Islamic World, Sixth to Eleventh Centuries, edited
by Chase F. Robinson, 648–63, 775–9, and plates. Cambridge: Cambridge
Hinz, Walther. Islamische Masse und Gewichte: Umgerechnet ins metrische Sys-
tem. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955.
Hirschler, Konrad. The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social
and Cultural History of Reading Practices. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2012.
Hjerrild, Bodil. Studies in Zoroastrian Family Law: A Comparative Analysis.
Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2003.
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Horovitz, Josef. “Bulūqjā.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesell-
schaft 55 (1901): 519–25.
———. “Salmān al-Fārisi.” Der Islam 12, no. 3–4 (1922): 178–83.
Howard-Johnston, James. “The Two Great Powers in Late Antiquity: A Compar-
ison.” In The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, vol. 3, States, Resources
and Armies, edited by Averil Cameron, 157–226. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press,
1995.
———. Witness to a World Crisis: Historians and Histories of the Middle East
in the Seventh Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Bibliography 255
Hoyland, Robert G. “Arabic, Syriac and Greek Historiography in the First

Abbasid Century: An Inquiry into Inter-Cultural Traffic.” ARAM Periodical 3,
no. 1 (1991): 211–33.
———. Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian,
Jewish, and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press,
1997.
Huart, Cl. “Selmân du Fârs.” In Mélanges Hartwig Derenbourg (1844–1908),
297–310. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1909.
Humphreys, R. Stephen. Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry. Rev. ed.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Inostranzev, M. Iranian Influence on Moslem Literature. Pt. 1. Translated by
G. K. Nariman. Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala Sons, 1918.
Iqbal, Afzal. The Prophet’s Diplomacy: The Art of Negotiation as Conceived and
Developed by the Prophet of Islam. Cape Cod, MA: Claude Stark, 1975.
Ivanow, W. “Notes sur l’‘Ummu’l-Kitab’: Des Ismaëliens de l’Asie Centrale.”
Revue des études islamiques 6 (1932): 419–81.
Izzi Dien, Mawil Y., and P. E. Walker. “Wilāya.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd
ed.
Jackson, A. V. Williams. “The Location of the Farnbāg Fire, the Most Ancient
of the Zoroastrian Fires.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 41 (1921):
81–106.
Al-Jādir, Mah.mūd ʿAbd Allāh. “Al-Thaʿālibı̄: Nāqidan wa-adı̄ban.” M.A. thesis,
Baghdad University, 1974.
Al-Jazeera. “Elbaradei urges Mubarak to quit.” Jan. 29, 2011. http://www
.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/01/2011129192633542354.html.
Jeffery, Arthur. “Ghevond’s Text of the Correspondence between ʿUmar II and
Leo III.” Harvard Theological Review 37, no. 4 (1944): 269–332.
Judd, Steven C. “Competitive Hagiography in Biographies of al-Awzāʿı̄ and
Sufyān al-Thawrı̄.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 122, no. 1 (2002):
25–37.
Kamaly, Hossein. “Isfahan vi. Medieval Period.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Keall, E. J. “Ayvān-e Kesrā (or T.āq-e Kesrā).” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Kemper, Steven. The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in
Sinhala Life. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Kennedy, Hugh. The Early Abbasid Caliphate: A Political History. London:
Croom Helm, 1981.
———. “The Financing of the Military in the Early Islamic State.” In The Byz-
antine and Early Islamic Near East, East, vol. 3, States, Resources and Armies,
edited by Averil Cameron, 361–78. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995.
———. “From Oral Tradition to Written Record in Arabic Genealogy.” Arabica
44, no. 4 (1997): 531–44.
———. “From Shahristan to Medina.” Studia Islamica, no. 102/103 (2006):
5–34.
———. The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World
We Live In. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007.
———. An Historical Atlas of Islam/Atlas historique de l’Islam. 2nd ed. Leiden:
Brill, 2002.
256 Bibliography
———. “Al-Mutawakkil ʿAlā ’llāh, Abū ’l-Fad.l Djaʿfar b. Muh.ammad.” In

Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from
the Sixth to the Eleventh Century. London: Longman, 1986.
———. “Survival of Iranianness.” In The Idea of Iran, vol. 4, The Rise of Islam,
edited by Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart, 13–29. London: I. B.
Tauris, 2009.
Khaleghi-Motlagh, Djalal. “Ferdowsi, Abu’l-Qāsem, i. Life.” In Encyclopaedia
Iranica.
Khalidi, Tarif. Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994.
———. Islamic Historiography: The Histories of Masʿūdı̄. Albany: State Univer-
sity of New York Press, 1975.
Khalidov, Anas B. “Ebn al-Faqı̄h, Abū Bakr Ah.mad.” In Encyclopaedia
Iranica.
Khatibi, Abolfazl, and John Cooper. “Abū ʿAlı̄ Balkhı̄.” In Encyclopaedia Islami-
ca, edited by Wilferd Madelung and Farhad Daftary. Online ed. Leiden: Brill,
2008.
Kiani, Muhammad Yusof. “Excavations on the Defensive Wall of the Gurgān
Plain: A Preliminary Report.” Iran 20 (1982): 73–9.
———. “Gorgān iv. Archaeology.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Kister, M. J. “Al-H. ı̄ra: Some Notes on Its Relations with Arabia.” Arabica 15,
no. 2 (1968): 143–69.
Kohlberg, Etan. “Some Imāmı̄ Shı̄ʿı̄ Views on the S.ah.āba.” Jerusalem Studies in
Arabic and Islam 5 (1984): 143–75.
Kramers, J. H., and M. Morony. “Marzpān.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Krawulsky, Dorothea. Īrān, das Reich der Īlḫāne: Eine topographisch-historische
Studie. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1978.
———. Mongolen und Ilkhâne: Ideologie und Geschichte; 5 Studien. Beirut:
Verlag für Islamische Studien, 1989.
Lambton, Ann K. S. “An Account of the Tārı̄khi Qumm.” Bulletin of the School
of Oriental and African Studies 12, no. 3/4 (1948): 586–96.
———. “Qum: The Evolution of a Medieval City.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society, n.s., 122, no. 2 (1990): 322–39.
———, and J. Sourdel-Thomine. “Isfahan.” In Historic Cities of the Islamic
World, edited by C. Edmund Bosworth, 167–80. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
Landau-Tasseron, Ella. “Sayf b. ʿUmar in Medieval and Modern Scholarship.”
Der Islam 67, no. 1 (1990): 1–26.
Latham, J. Derek. “Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ, Abū Moh.ammad ʿAbd-Allāh Rōzbeh.” In
Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and Early ʿAbbasid Prose.” In ʿAbbasid Belles-Lettres,
edited by Julia Ashtiany et al., 48–77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990.
Lazard, G. “Abu’l-Moʾayyad Balkı̄.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Lecker, Michael. “The Levying of Taxes for the Sasanians in Pre-Islamic Medina.”
Bibliography 257
Leder, Stefan. “Heraklios erkennt den Propheten: Ein Beispiel für Form
und Entstehungsweise narrativer Geschichtskonstruktionen.” Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 151 (2001): 1–42.
———. “Al-Wāk.idı̄.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Leemhuis, Fred. “Ms. 1075 Tafsı̄r of the Cairene Dār al-Kutub and Muǧāhid’s
Tafsı̄r.” In Proceedings of the Ninth Congress of the Union Européenne des
Arabisants et Islamisants (Amsterdam, Sept. 1–7, 1978), edited by Rudolph
Peters, 169–77. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981.
———. “Origins and Early Development of the Tafsı̄r Tradition.” In Approaches
to the History of the Interpretation of the Qurʾān, edited by Andrew Rippin,
13–30. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.
Leslie, Donald Daniel. “Japhet in China.” Journal of the American Oriental
Society 104, no. 3 (1984): 403–9.
Le Strange, Guy. The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia,
and Central Asia, from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905. Reprint, Boston: Adamant Media,
2006.
Levi Della Vida, G. “Salmān al-Fārisı̄.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Levin, Yigal. “Nimrod the Mighty, King of Kish, King of Sumer and Akkad.”
Vetus Testamentum 52, no. 3 (2002): 350–66.
Lewin, B. “Al-Dı̄nawarı̄.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Lichtenstädter, Ilse. “Muh.ammad b. H . abı̄b and His Kitâb al-Muh.abbar.” Journal
of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s., 71, no. 1 (1939): 1–27.
Lincoln, Bruce. Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Lowenthal, David. The Past Is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1985.
Lowin, Shari L. “Narratives of Villainy: Titus, Nebuchadnezzar, and Nimrod in
the H . adı̄th and Midrash Aggadah.” In The Lineaments of Islam: Studies in
Honor of Fred McGraw Donner, edited by Paul M. Cobb, 261–96. Leiden:
Brill, 2012.
Luria, Aleksandr Romanovich. The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about
a Vast Memory. Translated by Lynn Solotaroff. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
MacKenzie, D. Neil. “Bundahišn.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Macuch, M. “Pahlavi Literature.” In The Literature of Pre-Islamic Iran, compan-
ion volume 1 to A History of Persian Literature, edited by Ronald E. Emmerick
and Maria Macuch, 116–96. London: I. B. Tauris, 2009.
Madelung, Wilferd. “The Assumption of the Title Shāhānshāh by the Būyids
and ‘the Reign of the Daylam (Dawlat al-Daylam).’” Journal of Near Eastern
Studies 28, no. 2 (1969): 84–108.
Makdisi, George. “T . abaqāt-Biography: Law and Orthodoxy in Classical Islam,”
Islamic Studies (Islamabad) 32, no. 4 (1993): 371–96.
Malandra, W. W. “Zoroaster ii. General Survey.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Marashi, Afshin. Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870–1940.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008.
258 Bibliography
———. “The Nation’s Poet: Ferdowsi and the Iranian National Imagination.”
In Iran in the 20th Century: Historiography and Political Culture, edited by
Touraj Atabaki, 93–111. London: I. B. Tauris, 2009.
Margoliouth, D. S. Mohammed and the Rise of Islam. 3rd ed. New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1905.
Marzolph, Ulrich. “Islamische Kultur als Gedächtniskultur: Fachspezifische
Überlegungen anhand des Fallbeispiels Iran.” Der Islam 75, no. 2 (1998):
296–317.
Mashkūr, Muh.ammad Javād. Tārı̄kh-i siyāsı̄-yi Sāsāniyān. Tehran: Dunyā-yi
Kitāb, 1987.
Massignon, Louis. Salmān Pāk and the Spiritual Beginnings of Iranian Islām.
Translated by Jamshedji Maneckji Unvala. Bombay: n.p., 1955.
———. Salmân Pâk et les prémices spirituelles de l’Islam iranien. Tours: Arrault,
1934.
Meisami, Julie Scott. “The Past in Service of the Present: Two Views of History in
Medieval Persia.” “Cultural Processes in Muslim and Arab Societies: Medieval
and Early Modern Periods,” special issue, Poetics Today 14, no. 2 (1993):
247–75.
———. Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
Melchert, Christopher. The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th–10th
Centuries C.E. Leiden: Brill, 1997.
———. “H . asan Bas.ri.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “How H . anafism Came to Originate in Kufa and Traditionalism in
Medina.” Islamic Law and Society 6, no. 3 (1999): 318–47.
———. Review of The History of an Islamic School of Law: The Early Spread of
Hanafism, by Nurit Tsafrir. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 67, no. 3 (2008):
228–30.
Menasce, J. de. “Zoroastrian Literature after the Muslim Conquest.” In The
Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4, The Period from the Arab Invasion to the
Saljuqs, edited by R. N. Frye, 543–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1975.
———. “Zoroastrian Pahlavı̄ Writings.” In The Cambridge History of Iran,
vol. 3(2), The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, edited by Ehsan Yar-
shater, 1166–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Mignan, Robert. Travels in Chaldæa, including a Journey from Bussorah to
Bagdad, Hillah, and Babylon, Performed on Foot in 1827: With Observations
on the Sites and Remains of Babel, Seleucia, and Ctesiphon. London: Henry
Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1829.
Minorsky, Vladimir. Medieval Iran and Its Neighbours. London: Variorum
Reprints, 1982.
———. “Nihāwand.” in Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. “The Older Preface to the Shāh-nāma.” In Studi orientalistici in onore di
Giorgio Levi Della Vida, 2 vols., 2:159–79. Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1956.
Miquel, André. La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du
11e siècle. 2nd ed. 3 vols. Paris: Mouton, 1973–80.
Bibliography 259
Mochiri, Malek Iradj. “A Pahlavi Forerunner of the Umayyad Reformed Coin-

age.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s., 113, no. 2 (1981): 168–72.
Modarressi, Hossein [Ḥusayn Mudarrisı̄ Ṭabāṭabāʾı̄]. Kitāb-shināsı̄-yi āsār-i
marbūt. bih Qum. Qum: H . ikmat, 1353 shamsı̄/1974.
Mohammadi-Malayeri, Mohammad [Muh.ammad Muh.ammadı̄-Malāyirı̄]. Ira-
nian Civilization and Culture: Before Islam and Its Impact on Islamic Civi-
lization and Arab Literature. Translated by Shahrokh Mohammadi-Malayeri.
New Delhi: Manohar, 2012.
———. Tārı̄kh va farhang-i Irān dar dawrān-i intiqāl az ʿas.r-i sāsānı̄ bih ʿas.r-i
islāmı̄. Vols. 1 and 2. Tehran, 1996–7.
Morgan, David. Medieval Persia, 1040–1797. London: Longman, 1988.
Morimoto, Kazuo. “Putting the Lubāb al-ansāb in Context: Sayyids and Naqı̄bs
in Late Saljuq Khurasan.” Studia Iranica 36, no. 2 (2007): 163–83.
Morony, Michael G. “The Age of Conversions: A Reassessment.” In Conversion
and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth
to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi,
135–50. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990.
———. Iraq after the Muslim Conquest. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1984.
Mottahedeh, Roy Parviz. “The Eastern Travels of Solomon: Reimagining
Persepolis and the Iranian Past.” In Law and Tradition in Classical Islamic
Thought: Studies in Honor of Professor Hossein Modarressi, edited by Michael
Cook, Najam Haider, Intisar Rabb, and Asma Sayeed, 247–67. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
———. “Finding Iran in the Panegyrics of the Ghaznavid Court.” Paper present-
ed at the conference “Eastern Iran and Transoxiana 750–1150: Persianate
Culture and Islamic Civilization,” Institute of Iranian Studies, University of
St. Andrews, March 9, 2013.
———. “The Idea of Iran in the Buyid Dominions.” In The Idea of Iran,
vol. 5, Early Islamic Iran, edited by Edmund Herzig and Sarah Stewart, 153–60.
London: I. B. Tauris, 2012.
———. “Some Islamic Views of the Pre-Islamic Past.” Harvard Middle Eastern
and Islamic Review 1, no. 1 (1994): 17–26.
Motzki, Harald. “ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-S.anʿānı̄.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 3rd
ed.
———. “The Mus.annaf of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-S.anʿānı̄ as a Source of Authentic
Ah.ādı̄th of the First Century A.H.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 50, no. 1
(1991): 1–21.
———. “The Role of Non-Arab Converts in the Development of Early Islamic
Law.” Islamic Law and Society 6, no. 3 (1999): 293–317.
———, with Nicolet Boekhoff-Van Der Voort and Sean W. Anthony. Analysing
Muslim Traditions: Studies in Legal, Exegetical and Maghāzı̄ H . adı̄th. Leiden:
Brill, 2010.
Mourad, Suleiman Ali. Early Islam between Myth and History: Al-H . asan al-
Bas.rı̄ (d. 110H/728CE) and the Formation of His Legacy in Classical Islamic
Scholarship. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
260 Bibliography
Nastich, Vladimir N. “Persian Legends on Islamic Coins: From Traditional Arabic

to the Challenge of Leadership.” In The 2nd Simone Assemani Symposium on
Islamic Coins, edited by Bruno Callagher and Arianna D’Ottone, 165–90.
Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010.
Nawas, John A. “A Profile of the Mawālı̄ ʿUlamāʾ.” In Patronate and Patronage
in Early and Classical Islam, edited by Monique Bernards and John Nawas,
454–80. Leiden: Brill, 2005.
Newby, Gordon Darnell. The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of
the Earliest Biography of Muhammad. Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1989.
Newman, Andrew J. The Formative Period of Twelver Shı̄ʿism: H . adı̄th as Dis-
course between Qum and Baghdad. Richmond: Curzon, 2000.
Newman, Barclay M., Jr. “Matthew 1.1–18: Some Comments and a Suggested
Restructuring.” Bible Translator 27, no. 2 (1976): 209–12.
Neyzi, Leyla. “Remembering to Forget: Sabbateanism, National Identity, and
Subjectivity in Turkey.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 44, no. 1
(2002): 137–58.
Nöldeke, Theodor. Delectus veterum carminum arabicorum. Berlin: H. Reuther,
1890.
———. Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden aus der arabi-
schen Chronik des Tabari. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1879. Reprint, 1973.
———. Das Iranische Nationalepos. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1920.
Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les lieux de mémoire.” Trans-
lated by Marc Roudebush. “Memory and Counter-Memory,” special issue,
Representations, no. 26 (1989): 7–24.
———, ed. Les Lieux de mémoire. Vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
Noth, Albrecht. “Der Charakter der ersten großen Sammlungen von Nachrichten
zur frühen Kalifenzeit.” Der Islam 47 (1971): 168–99.
———, with Lawrence I. Conrad. The Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A
Source-Critical Study. 2nd ed. Translated by Michael Bonner. Princeton, NJ:
Darwin Press, 1994.
Omidsalar, Mahmoud. “Could al-Thaʿâlibı̂ Have Used the Shâhnâma as a
Source?” Der Islam 75, no. 2 (1998): 338–46.
———. “Dı̄v.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Orfali, Bilal Walid. “The Art of Anthology: Al-Thaʿālibı̄ and His Yatı̄mat al-
dahr.” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2009.
Özkirimli, Umut. “The Nation as an Artichoke? A Critique of Ethnosymbolist
Interpretations of Nationalism.” Nations and Nationalism 9, no. 3 (2003):
339–55.
Ozouf, Jacques, and Mona Ozouf. “Le Tour de la France par deux enfants: Le
petit livre rouge de la République.” In Les Lieux de mémoire, edited by Pierre
Nora, 1:277–301. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
Paul, Jürgen. “The Histories of Herat.” Iranian Studies 33, no. 1/2 (2000): 93–
115.
———. “The Histories of Isfahan: Mafarrukhi’s Kitāb mah.āsin Is.fahān.” Iranian
Studies 33, no. 1/2 (2000): 117–32.
———. “Isfahan v. Local Historiography.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Bibliography 261
Paul, Ludwig. “The Language of the Šāhnāme in Historical and Dialectical Per-
spective.” In Languages of Iran: Past and Present; Iranian Studies in Memoriam
David Neil MacKenzie, edited by Dieter Weber, 141–51. Wiesbaden: Har-
rassowitz, 2005.
Peacock, Andrew C. S. Mediaeval Islamic Historiography and Political Legiti-
macy: Balʿamı̄’s Tārı̄khnāma. London: Routledge, 2007.
Pellat, Charles. “Dı̄navarı̄, Abū H . anı̄fa Ah.mad.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “Al-Nad.r b. al-H . ārith.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Pettigrew, Mark Fraser. “The Wonders of the Ancients: Arab-Islamic Representa-
tions of Ancient Egypt.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley,
2004.
Planhol, Xavier de. “Fārs i. Geography.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Plessner, M., and A. Rippin. “Muk.ātil b. Sulaymān.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam.
2nd ed.
Pourshariati, Parvaneh. “The Akhbār al-T . iwāl of Abū H
. anı̄fa Dı̄nawarı̄: A
Shuʿūbı̄ Treatise on Late Antique Iran.” In Sources for the History of Sasanian
and Post-Sasanian Iran, edited by Rika Gyselen, 201–89. Bures-sur-Yvette:
Groupe pour l’Étude de la Civilisation du Moyen-Orient, 2010.
———. Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confed-
eracy and the Arab Conquest of Iran. London: I. B. Tauris, 2008.
———. “Local Histories of Khurāsān and the Pattern of Arab Settlement.” Studia
Iranica 27, no. 1 (1998): 41–81.
———. “The Mihrāns and the Articulation of Islamic Dogma: A Preliminary Pros-
opographical Analysis.” In Trésors d’Orient: Mélanges offerts à Rika Gyselen,
edited by Philippe Gignoux, Christelle Jullien, and Florence Jullien, 283–315.
Paris: Association pour l’avancement des études iraniennes, 2009.
Prideaux, Humphrey. The True Nature of Imposture Fully Display’d in the Life
of Mahomet, with a Discourse annex’d for the Vindication of Christianity from
this Charge, Offered to the Consideration of the Deists of the Present Age. 8th
ed. London: E. Curll, 1723.
Puin, Gerd-Rüdiger. “Der Dı̄wān von ʿUmar ibn al-Ḫat.t.āb: Ein Beitrag
zur frühislamischen Verwaltungeschichte.” Ph.D. dissertation, Rheinische
Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 1970.
Pūrjavādı̄, Naṣr Allāh. Dū mujaddid: Pazhūhishhā-yi dar bārah-yi Muḥammad
Ghazzālı̄ va Fakhr al-Rāzı̄. Markaz-i Nashr-i Dānishgāhı̄, 1381/[2002 or 2003].
Pyrovolaki, Marina. “Futūh. al-Shām and Other Futūh. Texts: A Study of the
Perception of Marginal Conquest Narratives in Arabic in Medieval and Modern
Times.” D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2009.
Raddatz, H. P. “Sufyān al-Thawrı̄.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Rahman, Afzalur. Muhammad: Encyclopædia of Seerah. 7 vols. London: Muslim
Schools Trust, 1981.
Reitzenstein, Richard, and Hans Heinrich Schaeder. Studien zum antiken Synkre-
tismus aus Iran und Griechenland. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1926.
Renan, Ernest. “What Is a Nation?” Translated by Martin Thom. In Nation and
Narration, edited by Homi K. Bhabha, 8–22. London: Routledge, 1990.
Retsö, Jan. The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the
Umayyads. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005.
262 Bibliography
Reuther, Oscar. “The German Excavations at Ctesiphon.” Antiquity 3, no. 12

(1929): 434–51.
Reynolds, Gabriel Said. A Muslim Theologian in the Sectarian Milieu: ʿAbd al-
Jabbār and the Critique of Christian Origins. Leiden: Brill, 2004.
Ricœur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and
David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Rippin, Andrew. “Introduction.” In Approaches to the History of the Interpreta-
tion of the Qurʾān, edited by Andrew Rippin, 1–9. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.
Robinson, Chase F. “The Conquest of Khūzistān: A Historiographical Reassess-
ment.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 67, no. 1 (2004):
14–39.
———. “The Ideological Uses of Early Islam.” Past & Present, no. 203 (2009):
205–28.
———. Islamic Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
———. “The Rise of Islam.” In The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1,
The Formation of the Islamic World, Sixth to Eleventh Centuries, edited by
Chase F. Robinson, 173–225. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Rodinson, Maxime, A. J. Arberry, and Charles Perry. Medieval Arab Cookery.
Blackawton, Devon: Prospect Books, 2001.
Roggema, Barbara. The Legend of Sergius Bah.ı̄rā: Eastern Christian Apologetics
and Apocalyptic in Response to Islam. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Rosenthal, Franz. “Asāt.ı̄r al-Awwalı̄n.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. “Ebn Qotayba, Abū Moh.ammad ʿAbd-Allāh.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “From Arabic Books and Manuscripts I: Pseudo-As.maʿı̂ on the Pre-
Islamic Arab Kings.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 69, no. 2 (1949):
90–1.
———. “From Arabic Books and Manuscripts III: The Author of the Ġurar
as-siyar.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 70, no. 3 (1950): 181–2.
———. “The Influence of the Biblical Tradition on Muslim Historiography.” In
Historians of the Middle East, edited by Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt, 35–45.
London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Rubin, Uri. The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muh.ammad as Viewed by the
Early Muslims. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995.
Rubin, Zeev. “H . amza al-Is.fahānı̄’s Sources for Sasanian History.” Jerusalem
Studies in Arabic and Islam 35 (2008): 27–58.
———. “Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and the Account of Sasanian History in the Arabic
Codex Sprenger 30.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 30 (2005): 52–93.
Saleh, Walid A. The Formation of the Classical Tafsı̄r Tradition: The Qurʾān
Commentary of al-Thaʿlabı̄ (d. 427/1035). Leiden: Brill, 2004.
Sauer, Eberhard W., et al. Persia’s Imperial Power in Late Antiquity: The Great
Wall of Gorgān and Frontier Landscapes of Sasanian Iran. Oxford: Oxbow
Books, 2013.
Savant, Sarah Bowen. “The Conquest of Tustar: Site of Memory, Site of Forget-
ting.” In Violence in Early Islamic Thought, edited by István Kristó-Nagy and
Robert Gleave. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming.
———. “Forgetting Ctesiphon: Iran’s Pre-Islamic Past, ca. 800–1100.” In History
and Identity in the Late Antique Near East, edited by Philip Wood, 169–86.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Bibliography 263
———, “Genealogy.” In The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political

Thought, edited by Gerhard Böwering et al., 189–90. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
———. “Genealogy and Ethnogenesis in al-Masʿudi’s Muruj al-Dhahab.” In
Genealogy and Knowledge in Muslim Societies: Understanding the Past, edited
by Sarah Bowen Savant and Helena de Felipe. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2013.
———. “Isaac as the Persians’ Ishmael: Pride and the Pre-Islamic Past in Ninth
and Tenth-Century Islam.” Comparative Islamic Studies 2, no. 1 (2006): 5–
25.
———. “‘Persians’ in Early Islam,” Annales Islamologiques 42 (2008): 73–91.
Schacht, J. “ʿIkrima.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Scheler, Max. Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge. Translated by Manfred
S. Frings. Edited by Kenneth W. Stikkers. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1980.
Schippmann, Klaus. “Azerbaijan iii. Pre-Islamic History.” In Encyclopaedia
Iranica.
———. Die iranischen Feuerheiligtümer. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971.
Schmidt, Eric F. Persepolis. 3 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953–
70.
Schneider, Rolf M. “Orientalism in Late Antiquity: The Oriental in Imperial and
Christian Imagery.” In Ērān ud Anērān: Studien zu den Beziehungen zwischen
dem Sasanidenreich und der Mittelmeerwelt, edited by Josef Wiesehӧfer and
Philip Huyse, 241–78. Munich: Franz Steiner, 2006.
Schoeler, Gregor. Écrire et transmettre dans les débuts de l’Islam. Paris: Presses
universitaires de France, 2002.
———. The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read. Rev. ed.
Translated by Shawkat M. Toorawa. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2009.
Schwartz, Barry. “Collective Memory.” In The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Soci-
ology, edited by George Ritzer. 11 vols. New York: Blackwell-Wiley, 2007.
Sears, Stuart D. “The Sasanian Style Drachms of Sistan.” Yarmouk Numismatics
11 (1999): 18–28.
Serjeant, R. B. “Early Arabic Prose.” In Arabic Literature to the End of the
Umayyad Period, edited by A. F. L. Beeston, T. M. Johnstone, R. B. Serjeant,
and G. R. Smith, 114–53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Serrano, Richard A. “Al-Buh.turı̄’s Poetics of Persian Abodes.” Journal of Arabic
Literature 28, no. 1 (1997): 68–87.
Sezgin, Fuat. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Vol. 1. Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1967.
Shaban, M.A. The ʿAbbāsid Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1970.
———. “Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfı̄.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Shahbazi [Shabazi], A. Shapur [Shahpur]. “Bahrām vii. Bahrām VI Čōbı̄n.” In
Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “Goštāsp.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica.
———. “On the Xw adāy-nāmag.” In Iranica Varia: Papers in Honor of Professor
Ehsan Yarshater, 208–29. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990.
264 Bibliography
———. Persepolis Illustrated. Persepolis: Institute of Achaemenid Research,

1976.
Shaked, Shaul. “Cosmic Origins and Human Origins in the Iranian Cultural
Milieu.” In Genesis and Regeneration: Essays on Conceptions of Origins,
edited by Shaul Shaked, 210–22. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and
Humanities, 2005.
———. “First Man, First King: Notes on Semitic-Iranian Syncretism and Iranian
Mythical Transformations.” In Gilgul: Essays on Transformation, Revolu-
tion and Permanence in the History of Religions; Dedicated to R. J. Zwi
Werblowsky, edited by S. Shaked, D. Shulman, and G. G. Stroumsa, 238–56.
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987.
———. From Zoroastrian Iran to Islam: Studies in Religious History and Inter-
cultural Contacts. Aldershot: Variorum, 1995.
———. “Religion in the Late Sasanian Period: Eran, Aneran, and Other Religious
Designations.” In The Idea of Iran, vol. 3, The Sasanian Era, edited by Vesta
Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart, 103–17. London: I. B. Tauris, 2008.
———. “Some Islamic Reports concerning Zoroastrianism.” Jerusalem Studies
in Arabic and Islam 17 (1994): 43–84.
Shboul, Ahmad M. H. Al-Masʿūdı̄ and His World: A Muslim Humanist and His
Interest in Non-Muslims. London: Ithaca Press, 1979.
Shils, Edward. Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Shimamoto, Takamitsu. “Some Reflections on the Origin of Qom: Myth and
History.” Orient 27 (1991): 95–113.
Shoshan, Boaz. Poetics of Islamic Historiography: Deconstructing T . abarı̄’s His-
tory. Leiden: Brill, 2004.
Sizgorich, Thomas. “‘Do Prophets Come with a Sword?’ Conquest, Empire, and
Historical Narrative in the Early Islamic World.” American Historical Review
112, no. 4 (2007): 992–1015.
———. Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity
and Islam. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.
Smith, Anthony D. Chosen Peoples. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
———. “Chosen Peoples: Why Ethnic Groups Survive.” Ethnic and Racial Studies
15, no. 3 (1992): 436–56.
———. “Ethnic Election and Cultural Identity.” “Pre-Modern and Modern
National Identity in Russia and Eastern Europe,” special issue, Ethnic Studies
10, no. 1–3 (1993): 9–25.
———. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
———. Myths and Memories of the Nation. New York: Oxford University Press,
1999.
———. The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and
Nationalism. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000.
———. “The ‘Sacred’ Dimension of Nationalism.” Millennium: Journal of Inter-
national Studies 29, no. 3 (2000): 791–814.
Sourdel, Dominique. Le vizirat ʿabbāside de 749 à 936 (132 à 324 de l’hégire).
2 vols. Damascus: Institut français de Damas, 1959–60.
Spellberg, D. A. Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of ʿAʾisha
bint Abi Bakr. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Bibliography 265
Sprengling, M. “From Persian to Arabic.” American Journal of Semitic Languages

and Literatures 56, no. 2 (1939): 175–224.
Stausberg, M. “The Invention of a Canon: The Case of Zoroastrianism.” In Can-
onization & Decanonization: Papers Presented to the International Conference
of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR) Held at Leiden 9–
10 January 1997, edited by A. van der Kooij and K. van der Toorn, 257–77.
Leiden: Brill, 1998.
Stauth, Georg. “Die Überlieferung des Korankommentars Muǧāhid b. Ǧabrs:
Zur Frage der Rekonstruktion der in den Sammelwerken des 3. Jh. d. H. be-
nutzten frühislamischen Quellenwerke.” Ph.D. dissertation, Universität
Giessen, 1969.
Stern, S. M. “Yaʿqūb the Coppersmith and Persian National Sentiment.” In Iran
and Islam: In Memory of the Late Vladimir Minorsky, edited by C. E. Bosworth,
535–55. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971.
Storey, C. A. Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey. Vol. 1, pts. 1–2.
London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1927–39 and 1953.
Subtelny, Maria. “Between Persian Legend and Samanid Orthodoxy: Accounts
about Gayumarth in Bal‘ami’s Tarikhnama.” In Ferdowsi, the Mongols and
Iranian History: Art, Literature and Culture from Early Islam to Qajar
Persia, edited by Robert Hillenbrand, A. C. S. Peacock, and Firuza Abdullaeva.
London: I. B. Tauris, 2013.
Szombathy, Zoltan. “The Nassâbah: Anthropological Fieldwork in Mediaeval
Islam.” Islamic Culture 73, no. 3 (1999): 61–108.
Tafazzoli, Ahmad [Ah.mad Tafażżulı̄]. Tārı̄kh-i adabiyāt-i Īrān pı̄sh az Islām.
Edited by Zhāla Āmūzigār. Tehran: Intishārāt-i Sukhan, 1997.
Tai, Hue-Tam Ho. “Remembered Realms: Pierre Nora and French National
Memory.” American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (2001): 906–22.
Taqı̄zadeh, Sayyid H. asan. “Shāh-nāmah va Firdawsı̄.” In Hazārah-yi Firdawsı̄,
43–107. Tehran: Dunyā-yi Kitāb, 1362 shamsı̄.
Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad. “Contested Memories: Narrative Structures and
Allegorical Meanings of Iran’s Pre-Islamic History.” Iranian Studies 29, no.
1/2 (1996): 149–75.
———. “Historiography and Crafting Iranian National Identity.” In Iran in the
20th Century: Historiography and Political Culture, edited by Touraj Atabaki,
5–21. London: I. B. Tauris, 2009.
Toorawa, Shawkat M. Ibn Abı̄ T . āhir T
. ayfūr and Arabic Writerly Cul-
ture: A Ninth-Century Bookman in Baghdad. London: RoutledgeCurzon,
2005.
Toorn, K. van der, and P. W. van der Horst. “Nimrod before and after the Bible.”
Harvard Theological Review 83, no. 1 (1990): 1–29.
Tor, Deborah G. “Historical Representations of Yaʿqūb b. al-Layth: A
Reappraisal.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., 12, no. 3 (2002):
247–75.
———. “A Numismatic History of the First Saffarid Dynasty (ah 247–300/
ad 861–911).” Numismatic Chronicle, 7th ser., 162 (2002): 293–314.
Tottoli, Roberto. “Cain and Abel (Qābı̄l wa Hābı̄l).” In Encyclopaedia of Islam.
3rd ed.
266 Bibliography
Treadwell, Luke. Buyid Coinage: A Die Corpus (322–445 A.H.). Oxford: Ash-
molean Museum Oxford, 2001.
Trevor-Roper, Hugh. “The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of
Scotland.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and
Terence Ranger, 15–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Tsafrir, Nurit. “The Beginnings of the H . anafı̄ School in Is.fahān.” Islamic Law
and Society 5, no. 1 (1998): 1–21.
———. The History of an Islamic School of Law: The Early Spread of Hanafism.
Cambridge, MA: Islamic Legal Studies Program and Harvard University Press,
2004.
United States Department of State. “July-December, 2010 International Religious
Freedom Report: Iran.” Sept. 13, 2011. http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/
4e734c92c.html.
Utas, Bo. “The Pahlavi Treatise Avdēh u sahı̄kēh ı̄ Sakistān or ‘Wonders and
Magnificence of Sistan.’” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 28
(1980): 259–67.
Van Bladel, Kevin. The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Varisco, Daniel Martin. “Metaphors and Sacred History: The Genealogy of
Muhammad and the Arab ‘Tribe.’” “Anthropological Analysis and Islamic
Texts,” special issue, Anthropological Quarterly 68, no. 3 (1995): 139–56.
Vaziri, Mostafa. Iran as Imagined Nation: The Construction of National Identity.
New York: Paragon House, 1993.
Veccia Vaglieri, L. “Dhū K . ār.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Wadud, Amina. Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s
Perspective. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Wakin, Jeanette, and A. Zysow. “Raʾy.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Wansbrough, John. The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic
Salvation History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Watt, W. Montgomery. “Al-H . udaybiya.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
———. “Ibn Hishām.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Weinrich, Harald. Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting. Translated by Steven
Rendall. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.
Wensinck, A. J., and G. Vajda. “Firʿawn.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Williams, Alan. The Zoroastrian Myth of Migration from Iran and Settlement
in the Indian Diaspora: Text, Translation and Analysis of the 16th Century
Qes.s.e-ye Sanjān ‘The Story of Sanjan.’ Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Wolff, Fritz. Glossar zu Firdosis Schahname. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965.
Yamamoto, Kumiko. The Oral Background of Persian Epics: Storytelling and
Poetry. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
Yarshater, Ehsan. “Iranian Common Beliefs and World-View.” In The Cambridge
History of Iran, vol. 3(1), The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, edited
by Ehsan Yarshater, 343–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
———. “Iranian National History.” In The Cambridge History of Iran,
vol. 3(1), The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, edited by Ehsan Yar-
shater, 359–477. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Bibliography 267
Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim. Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory. Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1996.
Young, James E. Foreword to Oblivion, by Marc Augé. Translated by Marjolijn
de Jager. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
Zadeh, Travis. Mapping Frontiers across Medieval Islam: Geography, Transla-
tion, and the ʿAbbāsid Empire. London: I. B. Tauris, 2011.
———. “Of Mummies, Poets, and Water Nymphs: Tracing the Codicological
Limits of Ibn Khurradādhbih’s Geography.” In ʿAbbasid Studies IV: Occa-
sional Papers of the School of ʿAbbasid Studies, edited by Monique Bernards.
Forthcoming: Gibb Memorial Trust.
———. The Vernacular Qur’an: Translation and the Rise of Persian Exegesis.
London: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Zarrı̄nkūb, ʿAbd al-H. usayn. “The Arab Conquest of Iran and Its Aftermath.”
In The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4, The Period from the Arab Invasion
to the Saljuqs, ed. R. N. Frye, 1–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1975.
———. Dū qarn sukūt. Tehran: Jāmiʿah-yi Lı̄sānsı̄yahā-yi Dānishsarā-yi ʿĀlı̄,
1330 shamsı̄/[1951]). 2nd ed., Tehran: Amı̄r Kabı̄r, 1336 shamsı̄/[1957].
Zetterstéen, K. V. “Djalal al-Dawla.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed.
Index
Note: References to maps are given in bold.
Abadal i de Vinyals, Ramón d’, 60 Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām, 189

Abarqwayh, 153 Abū Yūsuf, 97, 112
ʿAbbasids, 6, 101, 135, 170 ʿĀd and Thamūd, 175
ʿAbd Allāh b. Saʿd, 224, 225–26, Adam, 39, 121, 139, 144
228 descent from, 32–33, 121
ʿAbd al-Jabbār, 203–4 as Gayūmart, 42
ʿAbd al-Malik (caliph), 7, 157, 170, ʿĀdites, 149–50
212 Ādur Būrzı̄n-mitrō, 214
ʿAbd al-Rah.mān b. ʿAwf, 82, 85 Ādur Farnbāg, 214–15
Abou El Fadl, Khaled, 194 Ādur Gushnasp, 55, 57, 214
Abraham, 38n21, 51, 153 Ah.mad b. H . anbal, 170, 181, 192, 193
as ancestor to Muh.ammad, 32–33 Ahriman, 120, 122, 141
as ancestor to Persians, 43, 47–49 Ahura Mazdā, 138
as prophet and monotheist, 33–34, 49, Ah.was. b. Saʿd, 223–27, 228
63, 65 ʿĀʾisha, 97, 100, 112, 170, 191–93
Abraham (metropolitan of Porath), 207 ʿAjam, 107
Abū al-Bakhtarı̄, 157 as counterpoint to Arabs, 80, 105
Abū Bakr, 82, 85, 99, 100, 181 as non-Arabs, 9n18, 70, 80, 148, 176,
Abū Bakra, 191–93, 194 209
Abū Dardāʾ, 67 as Persians, 9n18, 99, 144, 206, 225–26
Abū Dharr al-Ghifārı̄, 72, 82, 85 Akkad, Moustapha, 184
Abū al-H. ajjāj al-Azdı̄, 79 Alexander the Great, 58, 77
Abū Hurayra, 70, 97, 99 ʿAlı̄ b. Abı̄ T.ālib, 13, 67, 100, 124, 170
Abū Jaʿfar (Muh.ammad al-Bāqir), 188 on Persians, 52
Abū Mih.jan, 201 and Salmān, 61, 67, 71n30
Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarı̄, 124, 207, 209 and Shahrbānū, 104–5, 107–8
Abū Nuʿaym al-Is.fahānı̄, 75, 79–81 as witness, 82, 83
Abū al-Shaykh al-Is.fahānı̄, 75, 76–77, 82, ʿAlı̄, ʿAbdullah Yūsuf, 175, 193
85 Ali, Muhammad Mohar, 173–74
Abū Sufyān b. H . arb, 99 ʿAlı̄ b. al-Jahm, 135
Abū Tammām, 176 ʿAlı̄ Zayn al-ʿĀbidı̄n, 102–4, 106
269
270 Index
ʿĀmir al-Shaʿbı̄, 157 Baradei, Mohamad al-, 162

Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad Ali, 103, 105 Basra, xx, 192, 207
ʿAmmār b. Yāsir, 72, 85 Battle of the Camel, 191
ʿAmr b. al-Layth al-S.affār, 119, 125 Battle of the Ditch, 67
Āmul, xx, 39, 110 Bāwandids, 39n24
Anderson, Benedict, 24, 215–16 belonging, 3, 31, 65, 115
Ans.ār (helpers), 6, 67, 178 Bernheimer, Teresa, 86
pensions of, 97, 99, 100 Bible, 37n16
anthologizing, 144–45 Bilāl, 82, 85, 100, 170
Aparvı̄z, 118 Bı̄rūnı̄, al-, 140–41
Arabian Nights, 6 Bishtāsif (king), 154–55
Arabs Blair, Sheila, 73n35
as ethnic elect, 50–51, 52 Borrut, Antoine, 15
genealogy of, 33, 38 Brock, Sebastian, 208n30
as identity, 12, 172 Brockelmann, Carl, 41n27
replaced by Persians, 80–81 Buddhists, 27, 93
tribes of, 33, 38, 51 Buh.turı̄, al-, 1, 13–14
Ardashı̄r, 9n20, 59, 193, 231 Bulliet, Richard, 4–5, 76, 108
Armenia, xix, 149 Bundahishn, 118, 138, 166
Armstrong, John, 60 Būrān, 95, 191–93
Arnold, T. W., 92, 185 Burāq, 59
Arpachshad, descendants of, 33, 149, 150 Burrı̄, al-, 106
Asadı̄ T.ūsı̄, ʿAlı̄ b. Ah.mad, 121 Bust (city), xxi, 116, 120, 122, 125
asāt.ı̄r al-awwalı̄n, 172–75 Bust (rural district), 134
Ashʿarı̄s of Qum, 223, 226, 227, 228 Buwayh, Ah.mad b., 7
As.maʿı̄, al-, 97, 156–57 Buyids, 6, 7–8
Assmann, Jan, 16–17, 230 Buzurgmihr (vizier), 231
astrology, 149, 153 Byzantine Empire, xix, 6, 96, 149
Avesta, 35, 131, 141, 154, 166 Byzantines, 99, 188
Ayyūb b. al-Qirriyya, 157 genealogy of, 38
Azarbaijan, xx, 55–56 as monotheists, 178–81, 182
Āzarmı̄dukht, 95
Caesar, 48–49, 176. See also Heraclius
Babylon (Bābil), Babylonia, xx, 42, 55, Cain and Abel, 165–67
150–51, 153 Chaldeans, 154
Bādhān (Sasanian governor), 187–88 Children of Israel, 148, 154, 155, 161
Badr, battle of, xix, 100, 172 as kin to Persians, 38, 49
Bahār-i Khusraw, 13 See also Jews
Bahmān, 155 Choksy, Jamsheed, 4n7, 214–15
Bahrām Chūbı̄n, 155 Christensen, Arthur, 217
family of, 218–19, 220–21, 235 Christianity, in story of Salmān, 63–65, 75,
Bahrām b. Mihrān Is.fahānı̄, 45 77
Bah.rayn, xix, 99 Christians, 92, 123, 204n17
Balādhurı̄, al-, 210, 219 European, genealogies of, 37
Balʿamı̄, 206, 221–22 oblivion of, 27, 207, 209–11, 213–14,
sources of, 45 235
Balkhı̄, Abū ʿAlı̄ Muh.ammad b. Ah.mad as People of the Book, 182
al-, 141 as source of historical knowledge, 36,
Balkhı̄, Abū al-Muʾayyad, 45, 118 92, 94
Balūshı̄, ʿAbd al-Ghafūr, 86 clientage (walāʾ), 68, 82, 85, 86n88, 87
Banū Hāshim, 100 coinage, 7–8, 117, 212
Index 271
companions (s.ah.āba), 6 Fārs-nāmah, 57, 231

conquest of Mecca by Muslims, 100 fath., futūh. (opening, conquest), 205, 234
conquest of Persia by Arabs, 6, 91, 92–93 Fayrūzān, al-, 99, 101
kerygmatic interpretations of, 91–95, Firdawsı̄, 146n32, 177, 206
120–21, 129, 203–5 Shāh-nāmah, 35, 46n46, 46n49, 118,
treaties in, 113, 219 145–47
conversion fires, Zoroastrian, 55, 57, 78, 164–66,
to Islam, 5, 17, 66, 68 214–15
to Persianness, 17 fitna (civil strife), 107, 170, 212, 234
to Zoroastrianism, 154–55 fit.ra (state of nature), 31, 60
Copts, 161. See also Christians Flood, story of, 37, 38, 41, 149
Crone, Patricia, 141 forgery of documents, 85–86. See also
Ctesiphon, xix, 2, 13, 21–22, 61, 235 pseudepigraphy
cultural memory, 17n41 forgetting
Cypress of Bust, 134–35 as failure of memory, 21
need for, 215–16
D
. ah.h.āk, al-, 42, 56, 149–51 reasons for, 22–24, 235
Daniel, Elton, 45 strategies of, 137
Daryaee, Touraj, 11n25 as superimposition, 24, 136, 235
Davis, Craig, 37n18 France, collective memory of, 20–21,
Davis, Dick, 146 215–16
Daylamites, xx, 110, 224 Furs, 9, 10n23, 11, 38, 69. See also
Debié, Muriel, 140n10 Persians
dhimmı̄s (protected people), 219
Dhū al-Qarnayn, 40, 77 Garshāsp, 121–22
dihqāns (landed gentry), 63, 108, Gayūmart, 40, 41, 146, 159
221 children of, 42, 138–39, 141, 159
Dı̄nawar, xx, 151–52, 152 as first king, 57, 145, 146, 147
Dı̄nawarı̄, al-, 94, 148, 152, 177 relationship to Adam, 42, 144, 159
disobedience to God, 153–54, 159 in Zoroastrian myth, 138, 141
dı̄wān (pension register), 86, 96–100 genealogies, 31–54
etymology of, 96, 97 prophetic, 32–33, 36, 121
Donner, Fred, 47n50, 91n5, 204–5 uses of, 32, 38, 53
Drory, Rina, 172 Ghassān (descendant of Salmān’s brother),
Dūrı̄, ʿIzzat Ibrāhı̄m al-, 200 83
Durkheim, Émile, 18 Ghassanids, 187n52
Ghazāla. See Shahrbānū
Eco, Umberto, 24, 136 Ghazālı̄, Abū H
. āmid al-, 141
Egypt, xix, 160–61, 164 Ghazālı̄, Muh.ammad al-, 194
El Cheikh, Nadia Maria, 178, 179, 181 Ghaznavids, 7, 117, 126, 133
election, 49–50 Ghurar akhbār mulūk al-Furs
of Arabs, 50–51, 52 wa-siyarihim, 133n9
of Arabs and Persians, 104, 106 Gibb, H. A. R., 28
Ērān, 9–10. See also Iran, Iranians Gilliot, Claude, 72, 232
Giwargis (bishop of Ulay), 207
Farı̄dūn, 40, 150–51 Gnoli, Gherardo, 9
Fāris, 9, 11, 52, 69, 71n29. See also Goldziher, Ignaz, 27
Persians Gomaa, Ali, 194
Fārs, xx, 11, 49, 57, 58, 149 Grignaschi, Mario, 156
meaning of, 9, 10n23 groups as loci of collective memory, 19–20,
See also Persia 115
272 Index
Grunebaum, G. E. von, 206 Ibn ʿĀmir, ʿAbd Allāh, 119

Ibn ʿAsākir, 87
Haarmann, Ulrich, 164 Ibn Aʿtham, 200, 205
Hādı̄, al- (caliph), 102 Ibn Bābawayh, 71
Hagar, 52, 102 Ibn al-Balkhı̄, 57
H. ajjāj, al- (governor), 114, 123 Ibn al-Faqı̄h, 55, 57
Halbwachs, Maurice, 18–20 Ibn Funduq, 106
Ham (son of Noah), 37, 38, 151 Ibn Hishām, 66, 173, 177
Hamadhān, xx, 6, 54–55, 151, 152, 164 Ibn Isfandiyār, 115
Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko, 65n11 Ibn Ish.āq, 66, 77
H. amza b. ʿAbd Allāh, 124 Kitāb al-Mubtadaʿ, 44, 157
H. amza al-Is.fahānı̄, 44, 46 Ibn al-Kalbı̄, 31n1, 43, 57
H. anafism Ibn Kathı̄r, 163
in Is.fahān, 76 Ibn Khayyāt. al-ʿUs.furı̄, 189, 210
in Jurjān, 112 Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, 56, 157–58
H. anbalism in Jurjān, 112 Siyar al-mulūk, 35, 44, 46, 118
h.anı̄f (true monotheist), 65 Ibn Qutayba, 52, 71n29, 105, 134, 195
H. ārith b. Abı̄ Shamir, al-, 187n52 attitudes toward Persians, 97–98
Hārūn al-Rashı̄d (caliph), 102, 112, Ibn Saʿd, 66, 67, 90
156–57 Ibn ʿUmar, ʿAbd Allāh, 68, 113, 180
H. asan, al-, 113, 124 Ibn al-Zubayr, ʿAbd Allāh, 113, 117, 170
H. asan al-Bas.rı̄, al-, 90–91, 122 icons, 183–90
Hawdha b. ʿAlı̄ al-H . anafı̄, 187n52 identities
Hephthalites, 55, 149 confused, 150
Heraclius, 178–79, 191 erased, 207, 209–14, 221, 235
invited to Islam by Muh.ammad, 92, overlapping, 11–12, 18, 115
184–85, 187 role of past in, 17, 24–25, 172
hijra, 66 idolators (ahl al-awthān), 181
Hilāl b. ʿAlqama (ʿUllafa), 202–3 ijtihād (independent judgment), 41
H. ı̄ra, al-, xx, 175n14 invitation to Islam, 185–86, 201, 202, 203,
histories, local, 56–57, 108–9, 127 213
history Iqbal, Afzal, 186
Iranian accounts of, 34–36, 41–43, Iran, idea of, 9–10, 34, 233
138–39 Iran, Iranians
Islamic vs. Iranian, 40, 45, 138, 147 meaning of terms, 9–11, 147n34
limits to rewriting of, 168, 222, 235 use of terms, 233–34
national vs. religious, 36 See also Persia; Persians
prophetic, 41, 43, 148, 158 Iran as historical theme, 234
Qurʾanic vs. Persian, 177 Iran before Islam
universal vs. local, 139–40, 145, 147 dearth of memories about, 22
homologies, 177–83 traditionists’ attitudes toward, 158, 159,
H. udhayfa, 67, 82 168, 196
Hurmuzān, al-, 48–49, 101n43, 212 Īrān b. Rustam b. Āzādkhū b. Bakhtiyār,
at the conquest of Tustar, 207–10 119–20
H. usayn, al-, 113, 123, 124 Īrān-shahr, 9–11
and Shahrbānū, 102–5 Iraq as source of memory, 7, 32, 36, 57,
Hūshang, 40, 42–43, 57, 146 177, 234
Isaac, 34
Iblı̄s, 141, 165 as ancestor to Jews, 33
Ibn ʿAbbād, Ismāʿı̄l, 222 as ancestor to Persians, 43, 47, 48–49,
Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿAbd Allāh, 38 51–53
Index 273
Is.fahān, xx, 151, 152 Kayūmarthiyya, 139

as birthplace of Pharaoh, 164 Kennedy, Hugh, 100
as birthplace of Salmān, 77, 78–79 kerygma, 91–95, 120–21, 129, 170, 203–5
eponymous founder of, 55 kharāj tax, 195, 219
history of, 73–77 Khārijites, 117, 119, 121n116, 123–25
Isfandiyār, 173, 175 Khat.ı̄b al-Baghdādı̄, al-, 87
Ishmael, 33, 34 Khid.r, al-, as ancestor to Persians, 40
as ancestor to Arabs, 32 Khurāsān, xxi, 71n29, 110, 134
descent from Hagar, 52 eponymous founder of, 149
Islam Khurrabandād, 224–25
in contemporary Iran, 3 Khusraw Anūshirvān, 2, 77, 132, 231
origins of, 5–6, 39 Khusraw Parvı̄z, 93, 155, 191
in pre-conquest Iran, 122, 126, 127 daughter of, 95, 191–93
Islamic law, 92 invited to Islam by Muh.ammad, 92,
Ismāʿı̄lı̄s and Salmān, 61 187–90
Ispahbadhs, 49 Khūzistān, xx, 207. See also Tustar
Is.t.akhr, xx, 2, 48–49, 58, 58–59 Khūzistān Chronicle, 207
as birthplace of Pharaoh, 161, 162, 163 Khwārizm-Shāhs, 133
Is.t.akhrı̄, Abū Ish.āq al-, 59 kings, as honored by God, 143
ı̄wān (throne hall), 2, 13, 135n16 kingship in Iranian history, 34, 140, 144,
147
jāhiliyya (pre-Islamic times), 172, 177, origins of, 145, 159
197, 203 traditionists’ attitudes toward, 43, 131,
Jāh.iz., al-, 46, 51, 167 159, 164, 183
Jalāl al-Dawla (Buyid ruler), 8 kinship as principle of social organization,
Jamshı̄d, 40, 149, 153 31
and al-D . ah.h.āk, 149–50 Kirmān, xxi, 149
as first king, 149 Kisrā, 13, 48–49, 176
as originator of fire worship, 166, 214 daughter of, 95, 108, 191–93
and Persepolis, 58–59 invited to Islam by Muh.ammad, 184–85,
Japheth (son of Noah), 37, 38, 151 186–90
Jarı̄r b. ʿAt.iyya, 48, 51 See also Khusraw Anūshirvān; Khusraw
Jayy, xix, xx, 73 Parvı̄z; Yazdagird III
Jerusalem, xix, 57, 153–54, 155, 178 Kufa, xx, 207
Jesus, 56n89, 140, 178, 185 Kurds, 148, 150
genealogy of, 32 Kūthā Rabbā, 153
and Salmān, 65, 78
Jews, 27, 73, 92, 198, 213 labels as aids to memory and forgetting,
genealogy of, 51, 53 171–77
as source of historical knowledge, 36, lahw al-h.adı̄th (diverting tales), 175, 176
40 Leo III the Isaurian, 61n1
in story of Salmān, 63, 75, 82 lieux de mémoire. See sites of memory
See also Children of Israel light, divine, 104
Jibāl, xx, 54, 152, 151–53 lineages, 38, 115. See also genealogies
Jurjān, xx, 110, 109–16 loyalties, 3, 17, 60, 158
conflicting, 66, 168
Kaʿba, 47, 154 to Islam, 3, 66, 88, 127, 212
kadhdhāb (liar), 173, 174 Luria, Alexandr Romanovitch, 22
Kāriyān, xx, 58, 214
Kay Qubādh, 40, 149 Madāʾin, al-, 2, 13–14, 22, 202
Kayanids, 155 Māfarrūkhı̄, al-, 76
274 Index
Magians. See Zoroastrianism Muhājirūn (emigrants), 6, 67, 178

malik al-mulūk (king of kings), 8. See also pensions of, 97, 99
shāhān-shāh Muhallabids, 115
mamlūk (slave), 227 Muh.ammad, 2, 5–6, 178
Maʾmūn, al- (caliph), 112, 212 annunciation of prophethood of, 63–64,
Manicheans, 27, 92 65, 78
Mans.ūr, al- (caliph), 135n16 displeased with Persians, 184, 189
manumission, 85 family of, 31, 124
Manūshihr, 40, 43, 53, 151 genealogy of, 32–33
Manushkhūrnar b. Manūshkhūrnak b. letters to other rulers from, 92, 184–90
Wı̄rak, 53 statements about female rulers by,
Mardāvı̄j b. Ziyār, 110 191–94
Margoliouth, D. S., 173 statements about Persians by, 11, 52–53,
marzubāns (Sasanian regional governors), 69–71, 144
117–18, 210, 219 and tolerance, 172
Mashı̄ and Mashyāna, 40, 42, 138–39, wives of, 97, 100
141, 159 Mujāhid b. Jabr al-Makkı̄, 161–62
Masʿūdı̄, al-, 9n18, 47, 54, 144 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, 161
Mattson, Ingrid, 194 Mūsā b. ʿĪsā al-Kisrawı̄, 46
mawālı̄ (clients), 31, 68, 80, 123 Musaylima, 174
Māwardı̄, al-, 8, 163 Mutawakkil, al- (caliph), 101, 134–35
Mecca, xix, 154, 178
pre-Islamic Persian pilgrimage to, 47–48 Nabat (al-Nabat.), 38
Meisami, Julie Scott, 45, 46n46, 126n137, Nad.r b. al-H . ārith, al-, 172–77
221n68 narratives, study of, 16, 17
Melchert, Christopher, 67, 111 Nas.ı̄h.at al-mulūk, 141–43
memory, 3–4 Nawas, John, 68n20
lack of reliability of, 21 Nebuchadnezzar, 153–54
reshaping of, 15, 129, 136, 222, 230 Negus of Abyssinia, 92, 187
as socially constructed knowledge of Newman, Andrew, 72
past, 19–20 Nihāwand, xx, 54–55, 152
techniques of, 14–15 Nihāyat al-arab fı̄ akhbār al-Furs
merit, 99, 100 wa-l-ʿArab, 156–58
vs. noble birth, 68, 69 Nimrod, 1, 150–51, 153
Message: The Story of Islam, The (film), sons of, 151
184–85 Nı̄shāpūr, xix, xxi, 6, 110, 152
Mignan, Robert, 1 Noah, 42, 55, 121
Mihrāns, 217–19, 220n65 as ancestor to Muh.ammad, 33
Miqdād b. al-Aswad, al-, 72, 82, 85, 175 as ancestor to Persians, 37–39, 149
miʿrāj (Muh.ammad’s ascension to as ancestor to Pharaoh, 163
Heaven), 174, 183 as father to world’s peoples, 37–38, 149
mnemohistory, 16–17, 95, 128–29, 230 Nöldeke, Theodor, 156n65
monuments, ascription of Islamic Nora, Pierre, 20, 232
associations to, 32, 57–59 Noth, Albrecht, 234
Moses, 149, 178 Nuʿaym b. Muqarrin, 218–19
as ancestor of Children of Israel, 38 Nuʿmān b. Muqarrin, al-, 211
in European history, 16–17 Nuwayrı̄, al-, 165
vs. Pharaoh, 160
Muʿāwiya, 124, 170 orality, 15
Mubarrad, al-, 105
Mughı̄ra b. Shuʿba, al-, 201 Pahlav, 11, 217
Index 275
pahlavāns (warriors), 120 Rabı̄ʿ b. Ziyād al-H

. ārithı̄, al-, 117–18,
Pārsı̄g, 217 119–20
Parthians, 217 Rāmhurmuz, xx, 78
past, shared, 18, 115, 129, 216 Rayy, xix, xx, 6, 110, 151, 152
Patriarch of Alexandria, 184, 187n52 conquest of, 217–20
Paul, Jürgen, 76, 79 religious tolerance, 93, 123
Peacock, Andrew, 45 Renan, Ernest, 215–16
pensions, 68, 97, 98–100 representation, in writing history, 168
People of the Book (ahl al-kitāb), 181, 182, Ricœur, Paul, 19, 21
212 Robinson, Chase, 209, 213n45
Persepolis, xx, 58, 58–59, 235 Rosenthal, Franz, 41
Persia, 8–11 Rukhad, 122
Persian Muslim culture, 18 rulership, types of, 153–54
Persian Muslim self-awareness, 18, 81 Rustam (of Persian epic tradition), 117,
Persians 155, 173, 175
genealogy of, 38, 40, 47, 149 Rustam (Sasanian commander), 200,
as identity, 12, 17–18, 72 202–3, 205–6
meaning of term, 8–11
piety of, 69–71, 79–80 Sabians, 48n54, 92
as polytheists, 178, 180–83, 204, 229 Saʿd b. Abı̄ Waqqās., 2, 201, 203, 207
replacing Arabs, 80–81 and Salmān, 69
sensitivity to, 73, 98, 178, 213 as witness, 85
Pharaoh as Persian, 160–64 Saʿd b. Malik, 225
Pleiades Hadith, 69–71, 80 Saʿd b. Saʿı̄d, 111
polytheists (mushrikūn), as label, 180, 204, Sadd-i Iskandar, 109, 110
206, 207, 211–12, 229 Saffarids, 6, 101, 117, 119, 124, 126
Pourshariati, Parvaneh, 217–18, 220 S.āfı̄ b. S.ayyād, 211
prophets, 33–34, 143 Sahmı̄, al-, 110, 112, 115–16
pseudepigraphy, 82n67, 143. See also harmony in reporting of, 113–15,
forgery of documents 129
Puin, Gerd-Rüdiger, 96 Taʾrı̄kh Jurjān, 110–16, 127, 231
Saʿı̄d b. Zayd, 85
Qādisiyya, al-, battle of, xx, 200–3 Sālim b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar b.
Qāsim b. Muh.ammad b. Abı̄ Bakr, al-, al-Khat.t.āb, 102
102 Salmān al-Fārisı̄
Qat.arı̄ b. al-Fujāʾa, 124 as author of the Qurʾan, 61n1
Qazwı̄n, xx, 90–91, 152 biography of, 62–64, 77–79, 81
Qudāma b. Jaʿfar, 118 descendants of, 82, 84, 86–87
Qum, xx, 6, 72, 151, 152, 222–26, 228 as member of ahl al-bayt, 67, 83, 86
Qummı̄, ʿAlı̄ b. Ibrāhı̄m al-, 188 modern views on, 61
Qummı̄, al-H . asan b. ʿAlı̄ b. H
. asan, 223, as opposite of al-Nad.r, 177
228. See also Tārı̄kh-i Qum purported manumission contract of,
Qummı̄, H . asan b. Muh.ammad b. H . asan, 82–83, 87
222–23. See also Tārı̄kh-i Qum purported testament for family of,
Qurʾan commentaries, 163–64 83–85, 87
Qurʾan vs. asāt.ı̄r al-awwalı̄n (fables of the and Shiʿism, 71–72
ancients), 173–75 Samʿānı̄, al-, 164
Quraysh, 100, 104 Samanids, 6, 101, 220–21
Qutayba b. Muslim, 114 S.anʿānı̄, ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-, 69
Qutayla, 176 Sarah (wife of Abraham), 52
Qutb, Sayyid, 162 Sāsān, 1, 47, 48, 58
276 Index
Sasanian Empire, xix, 6, 96 Sūratı̄,ʿAbd al-Rah.mān al-, 161

as counterpoint to Muh.ammad and Sūs, xix, xx, 152, 207–8, 211
Islam, 170–71 Suwayd b. Muqarrin, 113
fall of, 93–95, 187–89, 217
Muslim views on, 133, 155 T.abarı̄, ʿAlı̄ b. Muh.ammad, 118
sayyids/sharı̄fs (Muh.ammad’s T.abarı̄, Muh.ammad b. Jarı̄r al-, 39, 43–44,
descendants), 31 177, 221
Schoeler, Gregor, 77 on the battle of al-Qādisiyya, 202, 205
Seljuks, 6, 126 on the conquest of Rayy, 220
Serrano, Richard, 13, 14 on the conquest of Sūs, 211
Seth (son of Adam), 144 originality of, 40–41
Shadı̄d b. ʿImlı̄q b. ʿĀd, 150 on Persian genealogy, 32, 39, 43, 138
Shāfiʿism on Pharaoh, 162
in Is.fahān, 76n44 sources of, 44, 45
in Jurjān, 111, 112 Taʾrı̄kh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, 35, 46, 231
shāhān-shāh (king of kings), 7, 9, 110 T.abaristān, xx, 57, 110, 109–10
Shahrbānū, 102–8 T.āhir b. ʿAbd Allāh (governor), 134–35
Shahrestānı̄hā-ı̄ Ērān-shahr, 11n25 Takht-i Sulaymān, 58, 235
Sharı̄ʿatı̄, ʿAlı̄, 162 T.alh.a b. ʿUbayd Allāh, 85, 100, 124, 170
Shem (son of Noah), 37, 149, 157, 158 Tāq-i Kisrā (Arch of Khusraw), 1–2, 22,
as ancestor to Muh.ammad, 33 235
as ancestor to Nimrod, 153 Taqı̄zadeh, Sayyid H . asan, 145
as ancestor to Persians, 41 Tārı̄kh-i Qum, 222–28, 231
descendants of, 38 Tārı̄kh-i Sı̄stān, 127, 231
Shiʿism, 67 Tawh.ı̄dı̄, Abū H . ayyān al-, 152n50
vs. ʿAlidism, 86 Taymı̄, Jawāb al-, 111
Persian, 12, 105, 107 Thaʿālibı̄, al-, 132–34, 197
and Salmān, 71–72 Thaʿlabı̄, al-, 165
and Shahrbānū, 102–5, 107 Thawrı̄, Sufyān al-, 111
Shı̄rawayh, 94, 187, 191, 193 Tour de la France par deux enfants, 20
Shı̄rāz, xx, 56, 58 tradition, 3
Shı̄z, xx, 56n89 “invented”, 10n20, 24
Shuʿūbiyya, 28, 52, 98, 102, 105 traditionists, 4, 13, 128, 129
Sijistān. See Sı̄stān attention to Persia by, 73, 109, 140
Sı̄stān, xxi, 116, 116–28, 129 creative use of sources by, 167–69
sites of memory (lieux de mémoire), 20–21, editorial choices of, 137, 147, 148, 168
128, 186, 213, 232 traditions (reports about the past), 4,
Siyāmak, 146 12–13
Siyāwakhsh, 218, 221 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 24
Sizgorich, Thomas, 213 Tsafrir, Nurit, 76
slaves as mothers, 52, 102–4, 105 Turks, 39, 148
Smith, Anthony D., 49–50, 60 T.ūs, xxi, 152
Solomon, 57–59, 121, 153–54 Tustar, xx, 48–49, 152
as ancestor to Persians, 40, 49 conquest of, 207–10
throne of, 154, 155
sources, 3, 7, 14 Uhud, battle of, 100
Arabic as language of, 7, 35, 131 ʿUmar b. al-Khat.t.āb, 69, 105, 201, 209
limitations of, 27, 35–36, 128–29 as creator of dı̄wān, 96–97, 98–100
Sūdān, 39 and al-Hurmuzān, 210, 212
Suhayb al-Rūmı̄, 85 and Shahrbānū, 103, 104
S.ūl, Ruzbān, 113, 114, 116n95 as witness, 82, 85
S.ūlı̄, al-, 99, 100–1, 102, 113 Umayyads, 6, 100, 170
Index 277
ummiyyūn (people lacking a scripture), 182 Yazdagird III, 40, 144

unbelievers (kuffār), as label, 206, 212 and chaotic end of Sasanian Empire, 93,
Uthayl, 176 95, 191
ʿUthmān, 85, 100, 123 daughter of, 102–8
at al-Qādisiyya, 201, 203
viziers, 6, 101 at Tustar, 207
Yazdanfādhār, 225
Wahb b. Munabbih, 38–39 Yazı̄d b. Muʿāwiya, 124
walāʾ (clientage), 68, 82, 85, 86n88, 87 Yazı̄d b. al-Muhallab, 113, 114–15,
walāya (sacred transmission), 104 116n95
Wansbrough, John, 91 Yazı̄d III (caliph), 106n56
White Palace, 22, 95n21, 135n16 Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim, 21
women Young, James, 23
as rulers, 95
as slave mothers, 51–52, 102–4, 105 Zamzam, Persian origins of name, 48
Wonders and Magnificence of Sı̄stān, 36 Zaranj, xxi, 116, 117–18, 119
Wushmgı̄r b. Ziyār, 110 Zı̄nabı̄, al-, 217–20, 221
Ziyarids, 110
Xwadāy-nāmag, 34–35 Zoroaster, 55, 134, 154, 167
difficulties establishing text of, 22, 35, 46 Zoroastrian historiography, 36, 41–43,
as source for al-Dı̄nawarı̄, 155 138–39, 141
as source for al-T.abarı̄, 44 Zoroastrianism
in contemporary Iran, 3, 214
Yahūdiyya, 73 conversion to, 154–55
Yaʿqūb b. al-Layth al-S.affār, 119, 124–26 decline of, 214–15
Yaʿqūbı̄, al-, 94, 103 Muslim traditionists’ interest in, 27, 131,
Yāqūt al-H
. amawı̄, 222 147, 159, 214
Yarshater, Ehsan, 221 Zubayr b. al-ʿAwwām, al-, 85, 124, 170
Yazd, xx, 57, 152 Zuhayr b. ʿAbd Shams al-Bajalı̄, 205
Titles in the Series
POPULAR CULTURE IN MEDIEVAL CAIRO Boaz Shoshan
EARLY PHILOSOPHICAL SHIISM: THE ISMAILI NEOPLATONISM
OF ABŪ YAʿQŪB AL-SIJISTĀNĪ Paul E. Walker
INDIAN MERCHANTS AND EURASIAN TRADE, 1600–1750 Stephen
Frederic Dale
PALESTINIAN PEASANTS AND OTTOMAN OFFICIALS: RURAL
ADMINISTRATION AROUND SIXTEENTH-CENTURY
JERUSALEM Amy Singer
ARABIC HISTORICAL THOUGHT IN THE CLASSICAL PERIOD Tarif
Khalidi
MONGOLS AND MAMLUKS: THE MAMLUK–ĪLKHĀNID WAR,
1260–1281 Reuven Amitai-Preiss
HIERARCHY AND EGALITARIANISM IN ISLAMIC THOUGHT
Louise Marlow
THE POLITICS OF HOUSEHOLDS IN OTTOMAN EGYPT: THE RISE
OF THE QAZDAĞLIS Jane Hathaway
COMMODITY AND EXCHANGE IN THE MONGOL EMPIRE: A
CULTURAL HISTORY OF ISLAMIC TEXTILES Thomas T. Allsen
STATE AND PROVINCIAL SOCIETY IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE:
MOSUL, 1540–1834 Dina Rizk Khoury
THE MAMLUKS IN EGYPTIAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY Thomas
Philipp and Ulrich Haarmann (eds.)
THE DELHI SULTANATE: A POLITICAL AND MILITARY HISTORY
Peter Jackson
EUROPEAN AND ISLAMIC TRADE IN THE EARLY OTTOMAN
STATE: THE MERCHANTS OF GENOA AND TURKEY Kate Fleet
REINTERPRETING ISLAMIC HISTORIOGRAPHY: HĀRŪN
AL-RASHĪD AND THE NARRATIVE OF THE ʿABBĀSID
CALIPHATE Tayeb El-Hibri
THE OTTOMAN CITY BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: ALEPPO, IZMIR,
AND ISTANBUL Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters
A MONETARY HISTORY OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE Şevket Pamuk
THE POLITICS OF TRADE IN SAFAVID IRAN: SILK FOR SILVER,
1600–1730 Rudolph P. Matthee
THE IDEA OF IDOLATRY AND THE EMERGENCE OF ISLAM:
FROM POLEMIC TO HISTORY G. R. Hawting
CLASSICAL ARABIC BIOGRAPHY: THE HEIRS OF THE PROPHETS
IN THE AGE OF AL-MA’MŪN Michael Cooperson
EMPIRE AND ELITES AFTER THE MUSLIM CONQUEST: THE
TRANSFORMATION OF NORTHERN MESOPOTAMIA Chase F.
Robinson
POVERTY AND CHARITY IN MEDIEVAL ISLAM: MAMLUK EGYPT,
1250–1517 Adam Sabra
CHRISTIANS AND JEWS IN THE OTTOMAN ARAB WORLD: THE
ROOTS OF SECTARIANISM Bruce Masters
CULTURE AND CONQUEST IN MONGOL EURASIA Thomas T. Allsen
REVIVAL AND REFORM IN ISLAM: THE LEGACY OF MUHAMMAD
AL-SHAWKANI Bernard Haykel
TOLERANCE AND COERCION IN ISLAM: INTERFAITH
RELATIONS IN THE MUSLIM TRADITION Yohanan Friedmann
GUNS FOR THE SULTAN: MILITARY POWER AND THE WEAPONS
INDUSTRY IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE Gábor Ágoston
MARRIAGE, MONEY AND DIVORCE IN MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC
SOCIETY Yossef Rapoport
THE EMPIRE OF THE QARA KHITAI IN EURASIAN HISTORY:
BETWEEN CHINA AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD Michal Biran
DOMESTICITY AND POWER IN THE EARLY MUGHAL WORLD
Ruby Lal
POWER, POLITICS AND RELIGION IN TIMURID IRAN Beatrice
Forbes Manz
POSTAL SYSTEMS IN THE PRE-MODERN ISLAMIC WORLD Adam J.
Silverstein
KINGSHIP AND IDEOLOGY IN THE ISLAMIC AND MONGOL
WORLDS Anne F. Broadbridge
JUSTICE, PUNISHMENT AND THE MEDIEVAL MUSLIM
IMAGINATION Christian Lange
THE SHIITES OF LEBANON UNDER OTTOMAN RULE, 1516–1788
Stefan Winter
WOMEN AND SLAVERY IN THE LATE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Madeline Zilfi
THE SECOND OTTOMAN EMPIRE: POLITICAL AND SOCIAL
TRANSFORMATION IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD Baki
Tezcan
NON-MUSLIMS IN THE EARLY ISLAMIC EMPIRE: FROM
SURRENDER TO COEXISTENCE Milka Levy-Rubin
THE LEGENDARY BIOGRAPHIES OF TAMERLANE: ISLAM AND
HEROIC APOCRYPHA IN CENTRAL ASIA Ron Sela
LAW AND PIETY IN MEDIEVAL ISLAM Megan H. Reid
THE ORIGINS OF THE SHI‘A: IDENTITY, RITUAL, AND SACRED
SPACE IN EIGHTH-CENTURY KUFA Najam Haider
POLITICS, LAW, AND COMMUNITY IN ISLAMIC THOUGHT: THE
TAYMIYYAN MOMENT Ovamir Anjum
THE POWER OF ORATORY IN THE MEDIEVAL MUSLIM WORLD
Linda G. Jones
ANIMALS IN THE QUR’AN Sarra Tlili
THE LOGIC OF LAW MAKING IN ISLAM: WOMEN AND PRAYER
IN THE LEGAL TRADITION Behnam Sadeghi
EMPIRE AND POWER IN THE REIGN OF SÜLEYMAN: NARRATING
THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY OTTOMAN WORLD Kaya Şahin
WOMEN AND THE TRANSMISSION OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE
IN ISLAM Asma Sayeed

The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran Tradition, Memory, and Conversion by DR Sarah Bowen Savant

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran Tradition, Memory, and Conversion by DR Sarah Bowen Savant

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran Tradition, Memory, and Conversion by DR Sarah Bowen Savant

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What is the book about?

What is the book about?

What historical periods does the book cover?

What historical periods does the book cover?

The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran

Tradition, Memory, and Conversion

How do converts to a religion come to feel an attachment to it? The

Sarah Bowen Savant is a historian of religion and an Associate Professor

Published titles are listed at the back of the book.

Tradition, Memory, and Conversion

SARAH BOWEN SAVANT

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

part i traditions for remembering

part ii traditions for forgetting

0.1. Relief figure of an individual dressed in a kaftan page xxii

Although this book is not a revision of my Ph.D. dissertation (which I

special mention, as do now five cohorts of our students from across

I would like to thank Annales Islamologiques for permission to use in

Marigold Acland of Cambridge University Press supported this proj-

Worries were at my stopping place, so I turned

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European travelers who came upon

The Line of Enquiry

3 Oscar Reuther, “The German Excavations at Ctesiphon,” Antiquity 3, no. 12 (1929):

integral to processes of cultural and social change. By “tradition” I mean

The great conversion experience that fundamentally changed world history by

Iran in the First Centuries of Islam

8 Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, 4.

and the Ghaznavids (366–582/977–1186), to name but three.12 While

do little as pre-Islamic symbols such as Sasanian winged crowns entered

dispersal.16 Scholars have traced the ambiguous usage of the geograph-

“Persian” one, and this imperfectly, in different ways at different times.26

historical proposition may rise or fall depending on “rational and empir-

It was not disgraced by the robbery of carpets

28 For Shils’s point regarding historical truth, see Tradition, 89–90.

Al-Buh.turı̄ profited from the patronage of several ʿAbbasid caliphs, but he

and transmitted orally in support of ritualized prayer, but also Hadith,

seek to distinguish history from myth, mnemohistory seeks to identify a

especially the Persians’ heritage of imperial rule as an elite class and

Halbwachs, memory is knowledge about the past that individuals acquire

World War I, it was a nostalgic institution. The book eventually slipped

so prodigious that he found himself incapable of functioning in society.59

existence and is freed for rebirth.62 Medieval Europeans explained the

of Salmān discussed in Chapter 2: Iranians are increasingly given credit

framework as they have sought to identify Shuʿūbı̄ partisans, their moti-

TRADITIONS FOR REMEMBERING

Prior Connections to Islam

This chapter traces the importance of genealogical representation dur-

The Origins of the Idea of Ethnogenesis

descend – in parallel to Jewish prophets, who descend from Abraham’s

was transmitted to the earth.”7 The Qurʾan therefore refers to Abraham

Iran, companion volume 1 to A History of Persian Literature, ed. Ronald E. Emmerick

speak of Zoroastrian historiography, elements of Iranian national and

When Muslims tried to account for Persians in prophetic history, they

The Inheritance of Noah

The Accommodation of al-T

23 Al-T.abarı̄, Taʾrı̄kh, I:211.

his book, al-T.abarı̄ presents a wealth of possible ways in which Persians

Rosenthal went so far as to assert that “the most remarkable aspect of