Arab-Persians

Arab-Persians

الفرس العرب (Arabic) فارس-عرب‌ها (Persian)
Members of the prominent Al-Sadr family, which originates from modern-day Lebanon. They are variously of Arab, Persian, and Arab-Persian descent.
Total population
~7 million[1][2][3][4]
Regions with significant populations
West Asia
Languages
Arabic, Persian, Achomi, etc.
Religion
Shia Islam (majority) Sunni Islam (minority)

Arab-Persians (Arabic: الفرس العرب; Persian: عرب های پارسی) are people who are of mixed Arab and Persian descent. Historically, inter-ethnic marriages between Arabs and Persians have been common in Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, and Bahrain, as well as in Lebanon and Syria, albeit to a lesser extent.

In pre-Islamic Arabia, there were many Arabs who lived in the cultural sphere of Persia and thus used Persian as their written language. They were referred to as Persian Arabs (Arabic: العرب الفرس Al-‘Arab al-Furs).^[5] At the time of the Sasanian Empire, there was a notable Arab-Persian community called Al-Abnaʾ (الأبناء, lit. 'the sons'). The term referred to any person who was born to an Arab mother and a Persian father amidst the Aksumite–Persian wars; it was especially common for Persian soldiers to intermarry with local Arab women during this time, as the Sasanian army had been garrisoned throughout South Arabia in order to repel the Aksumite Empire from the region.

Salman the Persian was, during the rise of Islam, one of Muhammad's companions. He was an ethnic Persian from Ramhormoz. Originally a Zoroastrian, he had become a Christian by the time he met Muhammad in the city of Yathrib.^[6] After befriending Muhammad, he converted to Islam, becoming one of the most prominent non-Arab companions.

Following the Arab conquest of Persia, Persians, in turn, began to use Arabic as their written language alongside Persian. Many famous Muslim scientists and philosophers during the time of the Abbasid Caliphate were ethnic Persians who wrote their scholarly works in Arabic while continuing to write literary works and poetry in Persian—famous examples are Avicenna and Khayyam.^{[7][8][9][10][11]}

The term “Arab-Persian” is rarely used as a self-appellation. Most tend to identify as either Persian or Arab, and consider themselves to be members of only one ethnic group, but at the same time being aware of their mixed background. For many, the most important factor determining their identity is the sovereign state in which they live or from which their recent ancestors came from.

Ethnic Arabs and Arabic speakers live alongside Persians primarily in the Khuzestan, Bushehr, Hormozgan, and Khorasan regions of Iran. Intermarriages exist between Iranian Arabs and Iranian Persians.^[12][13] Over 1 million Iranian Sayyids are of Arab descent but most are Persianized, mixed and consider themselves Persian and Iranian today.^[14] The majority of Sayyids migrated to Iran from Arab lands predominantly in the 15th to 17th centuries during the Safavid era. The Safavids transformed the religious landscape of Iran by imposing Twelver Shiism on the populace. Since most of the population embraced Sunni Islam, and an educated version of Shiism was scarce in Iran at the time, Ismail imported a new group of Shia Ulama who predominantly were Sayyids from traditional Shiite centers of the Arabic-speaking lands, such as Jabal Amel (of southern Lebanon), Syria, Bahrain, and southern Iraq in order to create a state clergy. The Safavids offered them land and money in return for loyalty.^{[15][16][17][18][19]}

Persian migration into Bahrain goes back to the days of the Sassanid and Achaemenid Persian empire, though in modern times there has been a constant migration for hundreds of years.^[20] There has always been a migration of Persian-speaking Shi'a into Bahrain.^[21]

In 1910, the Persian community funded and opened a private school, Al-Ittihad school, that taught Persian, besides other subjects.^[22] In the Manama Souq, many Persians were clustered in the neighborhood of Mushbir. However they resettled in other areas with the development of new towns and expansion of villages during the reign of Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa. Today, a significant number is based in Muharraq's Shia enclaves and Bahrain Island's modernized Shia towns.

In the 1970s, Saddam Hussein exiled between 350,000^[23][24] to 650,000 Shia Iraqis of Iranian ancestry (also called Ajam).^[25] Iraqi Persians follow Shia Islam. Persians have a long history in Iraq, predating the Arab conquest of the 7th century.^[26]

Arab-Persian mixes are actually common among Lebanese Shias, many Iranians in Lebanon and Lebanese people in Iran ended up intermarrying and settling. Many notable Shia Muslims from Lebanon are mixed with Persian.^[27]

In Syria, a small community of Arab-Persians exists in the Alawite/Nusayri-majority areas, mostly in Latakia and Tartus, with the rest being in Damascus.^[28]

• Arab-Berber
• Mixed marriage
  • Multi-ethnic people