Iran in World History

Part of the key to understanding the Arab conquests lies precisely 
in the centrality of raiding in Arab society. While some Arabs in small 
urban settlements like the town of Mecca were involved in trade (and 
this included Muhammad himself), across most of the peninsula the 
desert economy was based on keeping livestock, and just as in Central 
Asia, raiding the herds of others was often necessary for a group’s sur-
vival. In the absence of any central authority, the only form of social 
control was agreements between tribes, and these pacts were constantly 
being renegotiated. Muhammad’s success in uniting all the Arab tribes 
under his leadership was unprecedented—and meant that they could no 
longer raid each other.

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Since raiding was a vital component of the Arab economy, the uni-
fication of the Arab tribes forced them to extend their forays beyond 
the peninsula. In this they were spectacularly successful, thanks to their 
fighting skills and sense of common purpose. The fact that the Byzantine 
and Sasanian empires had been weakened through long wars against 
each other as well as by their own internal struggles surely helped the 
Arab cause, as did the fact that defeated troops often defected to them.
Because the Arabs’ motives were largely economic, they focused 
their energies on conquering established trade routes and commer-
cial centers. The empire they built was initially an urban one; the 
Islamization of the countryside took centuries. When entering a town, 
the Arabs’ first act was generally to appoint their own supervisor of the 
central market (Pers. 
bazaar
), which was the heart of urban activity 
and the principal source of revenue for the state. All business transac-
tions were henceforth supposed to follow Islamic norms. This favored 
Muslim businessmen and served as motivation for non-Muslim mer-
chants to convert.
An additional factor aiding the Arabs’ success was that the inhabi-
tants of many towns—especially in Syria and Mesopotamia—welcomed 
them without a struggle. This is not so hard to understand as these 
lands were inhabited mainly by Semitic peoples, akin to the Arabs, who 
had been subjected to more than a thousand years of abuses by Persians 
and Greeks. The taxes levied by the Arabs were less onerous than those 
extracted by their predecessors, at least at first, and the Arabs did not 
interfere with local affairs as long as their sovereignty was acknowl-
edged. There was little attempt to impose Arab culture—including 
their religion—during this early period. On the contrary, it was the 
Arabs who were increasingly overwhelmed by pressure from their sub-
jects to allow them to join the ruling class, which they accomplished 
by becoming clients (Ar. 
mawali
) of Arab patrons and accepting their 
new religion.
The attempt by Iranian bureaucrats and businessmen to preserve 
their positions by insinuating themselves into the new hierarchy was met 
with suspicion by many among the Arab elites. The Umayyad Caliph 
Mu‘awiyah wrote in a letter to his governor in Iraq: “Be watchful of 
Iranian Muslims and never treat them as equals of Arabs. . . . As far as 
possible they are to be given lesser pensions and lowly jobs.”
2
Although they mistrusted their new subjects, the Arabs’ policy 
of not reinventing the wheel when it came to administering their new 
empire was base on pragmatism. They had no experience in running 
a large, unified state and wisely contented themselves with allowing 

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things to continue as before provided their nominal overlordship was 
respected. In Syria, where the ruling Umayyad family established their 
imperial capital at Damascus, the prior Byzantine administration was 
left largely intact. (In fact, later Muslim writers criticize the Arab 
Umayyads for quickly lapsing into decadent Roman lifestyles.) Within 
the former Sasanian Empire the same held true, and Iranian institu-
tions remained for the most part untouched. Syrian and Persian offi-
cials could hold onto their jobs by finding Arab patrons, with whom 
they cemented ties by marrying each other’s daughters, attending the 
mosque together, and entering into business partnerships.
Both the merchant and artisanal classes, which had been relegated 
to the lowest status in Sasanian society—lower even than farmers, since 
cultivation is seen as a beneficent activity in Zoroastrianism—were rel-
atively quick to seek integration into the new order. Within a matter of 
decades, so many non-Arabs had taken on Arab patronage that they 
came to outnumber the Arabs themselves. (This demographic shift 
within the Muslim community probably occurred early in the eighth 
century.) The emerging majority of non-Arab client/converts, the 
mawali
, were resentful that their reliance on the ongoing support of 
their patrons made them second-class citizens.
Furthermore, historic rivalries and inequalities persisted among the 
Arab clans themselves. A small number of Arab families were favored 
by the Umayyad government with plum jobs and business deals, while 
others, less fortunate, got sent off to staff lonely garrisons in remote 
provinces. Since the Qur’an differentiates among humans only in regard 
to the sincerity of their faith, not only 
mawali
converts but large num-
bers of marginalized Arabs as well came to see Umayyad despotism as 
fundamentally un-Islamic. The collective dissatisfaction of these dis-
possessed groups grew into a mass movement that ultimately changed 
the course of Islamic history forever.
For anyone disaffected by Umayyad rule, a potent rallying force 
was the emerging but still unformed ideology of Shi‘ism. This belief 
emerged from the conviction that Muhammad’s chosen successor, his 
cousin Ali who was also married to Muhammad’s daughter Fatima, 
had been unjustly deprived of the caliphate following the Prophet’s 
death; the Umayyads were therefore usurpers. (The term “Shi‘ism” 
derives from