The Arab World

Originally posted by Reginmund  ... With this in mind, calling Al-Andalus a largely Berber project is reasonable when you consider how the initial conquest was conceived by Berbers and how Al-Andalus was ruled by Berbers for over half the time it existed. Lastly, the Ming dynasty was not foreign but on the contrary represented a restoration of Han Chinese rule. But maybe you were thinking of the Qing?

Certainly. But Arabs conquered the Berbers first, before the invasion of Spain started.

Edited by pinguin - 20-Nov-2008 at 13:38

Originally posted by Zagros There was no nation in Islam except Arab, they only took exception to non-Arabic because they were racist that is why all the work by Iranian scientists and others was written in Arabic because they weren't allowed to publish in their native tongue.  This is the reason why so many other nations under Arab rule faded and mashed with the Arab.  So when the fallacy is spread by Islamo-philes that Islam is a-national, so to speak, it's simply bullshit - Islam is uni-national: Arab.

Arabian was the lingua franca until the move to Baghdad and the eventual infusion of Persian as the lingua franca of arts and sciences, which did not happen overnight. No racism there because otherwise there would have been a huge Arabization project as well. The Ottoman Empire had a Ottoman dialect of Turkish that "all" aristorcats and writers spoke, why? for standardization purposes, and Persian remained one as well. Sort of the French of the Balkans and Middle East. Bosnian writers in the 1500s and up to the 20th largerly wrote in Persian (and Turkish), then translating back to Bosnian, was that racism? no not necessarily just a medium to spread your word to more readers and a bit of esteem as well.

Islam is not Arab in any sense of the word, when you look at the early state there were functionaries from all backgrounds near Arabia. Thus no your deduction is more a recent anti-Arab sentiment that is found among a lot of Persians, which should moreso be directed at the idiots who you let run Persia for 20 some years rather than Islam.

Yes the Umayyad were largerly pro-Arab (no matter the religion) because they were Arabs *schock,* but that situation difussed rather early, by the 700s that simply did not work anymore. The Empire was too expanse and too diverse for that system to work effectively, nor was it an Islamic principle either. Thus by the time of the Abbasids you get an infusion of Persian and Persian artists, etc..

The reason so many other nations faded was due to the fact that the Holy Land and lands surrounding were a highly contested area. They passed hands several times. And the lingua franca of the region changed a few times.

You still have your Kurds in Iraq though (ala Salah ad Din who was clearly distinguishable from Arab even centureis after Arab rule was instilled).

Another reason was that it brought tax revenue. A solider could be non-muslim and he would not have to pay tax either, but by refusing their want of service the Ummayyads made a good size profit through taxation. They had enough tribal soldiers ( of all faiths coincidentally) who could fight for the meanwhile. When the area of control spread and new nations came to challenge you see the introduction of Turkish soldiers to fill the ranks. Not to mention the middle classes did not have a want for joining the service when the Empire standardized and became highly prosperous.

A paralel to that is the Roman Empire. The Empire grew - citizenship expanded - they have their early stories of comsopolitian founding of Rome, but no mistake about it in 500bc you had to be a citizen and it wasn't as easy to have the full rights bestowed upon you.

To add, even in the earliest days of the Umayyad period the Greek influence was high, why?... well because that area's aristocratic population helped govern this new state as they had the experience. Coincidentally the taxations that were there before stayed, the administration stayed, what changed was that the various Christian sects were able to practice free without Constantinople deeming them heretics and having the means to change their religious view.

Originally posted by Zagros Of course it mattered. It's always mattered otherwise Ferdowsi would never have bothered and we'd all be speaking Arabic.

Sorry Zagros, if a persons ethnic identity was their major identity then Ferdowsi wouldn't have needed to write anything at all. Irani nationalism has always been very strong, but it has also, always been backed up by a national religion. The only period when Iran did not have a national religion (Arab Invasion - Shah Safavi) there was no nation of Iran. So whether religion, ethnicity, or nationality was the dominant provider of identity, Iran has always had a unique identifier.

Even Ferdowsi living in the period when there was no Iran was Shia. Ferdowsi is also someone who probably did identify with ethnicity at a time when most identified by religion. He himself was trying to change what people identified as - if he didn't think there was a problem with Irani national identity then why write what he did? There are plenty of people now who use religion as their identifier when ethno-national identifiers are predominant, not once have I heard people swap the word Persian for Shia (eg, Persian Lebanese)

Originally posted by Reg Upon reading medieval primary sources there can be no doubt that there was a concept of race. A very loose and undefined concept of a race but a concept nonetheless, usually thrown around by writers wishing to create distance to an other.

Precisely. So why argue over rigid racial division when in their own time they were loose and undefined.

Originally posted by Zagros There was no nation in Islam except Arab, they only took exception to non-Arabic because they were racist that is why all the work by Iranian scientists and others was written in Arabic because they weren't allowed to publish in their native tongue.

That is just silly. Arabic was the lingua franca. If you wrote in Persian, then the Greeks couldn't understand, if you wrote in Greek, then the Indians couldn't understand. I bet most Iranis now publish their work in English.

This is the reason why so many other nations under Arab rule faded and mashed with the Arab.

No its not and you know it. It is the confusion between race & religion that caused it. When an Egyptian converted, he became the social equal of the Arabs, and for many purposes indistingusiable. So he was called Arab when he was not.

Originally posted by Es Bih Yes the Umayyad were largerly pro-Arab (no matter the religion) because they were Arabs

No. They were pro-Quraesh, or at least Ansar. They didn't favour their race, they favoured their family.

Umayyids were pro-arab and that was obvious. I am gonna agree with es_bih in that issue.

Second paragraph is BS.

What is the BS in it?

Nice to see you here again, Fizzil. 

Originally posted by Beylerbeyi As to most scholars being Persians, we should see things in perspective. Iran had thousands of years of written civilisation. The Arabs who created the Caliphate, however, used to be desert nomads.

The Arabs who created the Caliphate were a complex group stemming from both the sedentary and nomadic/Bedouin peoples of Arabia. The Bedouins contributed as mobile light cavalry auxiliaries; raiding, skirmishing and supporting the flanks of the infantry. Those in administrative positions however, were to the extent of my knowledge exclusively from sedentary stock, from the Hejaz and the Meccan Quraysh clan in particular. The seafaring Arabs of the eastern Arabian coast contributed the least to the conquest, although they supported the conquest of Fars logistically.

Originally posted by Beylerbeyi In this aspect, Persians are like Greeks, Arabs are like the Romans and Turks are like the Germanic peoples in the Middle East.

Aye, if you compare with the late Roman Empire this analogy works almost too well, makes one suspect there is a higher consciousness behind it engineering parallel patterns.

There were four "Persian" languages in the Sassanid empire two of them died out and two evolved into modern Persian and Kurdish languages and dialects.

If Persians decided to ditch their old language and adopt a more poetic and more earthly than the middle Pahlavi Persians then it isn't the fault of the Arabs.

There you go again, what is more poetic and earthly supposed to mean?  It wasn't adopted, Arabic was forced onto Iranian administrative centres and spread like a contagion from there. 

Ferdowsi said:   Much toil have I endured these long thirty years, I have reawakened the Ajam to Persian.

It seems like the Persians were keen to get rid of Arabic since they endorsed Ferdowsi's reediscovery of their heritage so.