The Lost Treasures Persian Art. Vladimir Lukonin

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      One immediate consequence of the Arab conquest of Iran was an influx of Arabs settling in many cities or setting up military camps which soon became cities. This Arab immigration was on a mass scale; in the 10th century, for example, the Arab population already constituted a majority in the city of Qum.

      The second consequence was the spread of Islam and of Arabic. During the first two centuries of Islam in the territory of Khurasan, the religion of the Arabs underwent an intensive process of transformation into the religion of the entire Caliphate, whilst the language of the Koran and various Arab tribes developed into an Arab literary language; in all of this the Persians, who had converted to Islam, played no small part. It was here that Shi’ism, one of Islam’s most important movements, developed, and in particular its extreme faction, Ismailism, and other doctrines that were to serve as rallying points for many national uprisings.

      Thus during the early Islamic period (under the Umayyad Caliphate), Khurasan was a stronghold of Islamic science and Arab literature. It was here too, in Khurasan, that the anti-Umayyad rising began, instigated by Abu Muslim, leader of a political and religious party supporting the Abbasid family.

      The common people were widely involved in the rising: peasants, craftsmen, and also the Khurasan dihqans, descendants of the Sassanian nobility. There were also Muslims and Zoroastrians amongst the rebels. Having established themselves on the caliph’s throne, the Abbasids were naturally quick to settle with all the dissatisfied. One of the consequences of the Abbasid victory was a complete “Iranisation” of the Caliphate. The Abbasids offered a number of high positions in the state to the Iranian nobility that had helped them to seize the Caliphate. The state system of their Caliphate followed the Sassanian pattern.

      There was yet another important consequence of the change of power. Before the Abbasid age the Islamic community of Iran had consisted primarily of Arabs and only afterwards of Persians converted to Islam, who were considered as clients (mawali) of the Arab families and tribes and did not possess equal rights with true Arabs. The Abbasids ended this division and in the same period many dihqans, who had preserved or even raised their social status, adopted Islam. This Iranian elite did a great deal for Islam.

      The supporters of the Iranophile cultural movement, the so-called Shuubiyya, wrote their works in Arabic. This movement flourished especially in Khurasan under the Abbasids, and despite the fact that it inculcated into an Islamic culture the pre-Islamic ideas, traditions and customs of Sassanian Iran, in objective terms it led to the enrichment and widening of Islam itself and to a rejection of the provincial narrowness of Muslim culture. In the court of the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun (813–833 CE) translation in particular blossomed: works of many types were translated into Arabic – ethical and didactic (andarz), historical (numerous “Histories of the Kings of Fars” linked to the Khwataw-namak cycle), literary (such as Kalila and Dimna) and many others. At the same time scientific tracts and parts of religious and philosophical books were translated. It is interesting to note that at approximately the same period a Zoroastrian orthodoxy, that was not in any way prohibited by Islam, held power in Fars; basic Zoroastrian works such as the Denkart were written here. In honour of the arrival of al-Mamun in Marv (809 CE), a certain Abbas-i Marwazi delivered the first verses in the Modern Persian language.

      These were all the first steps of the “Persian Renaissance” leading to a flowering of Modern Persian literature by the 10th century and, in the final analysis, to that of the Iranian cultures of Firdawsi, Nizami, Sa’di and Hafiz.

      The creation of Modern Persian literature was also a factor of the utmost importance for medieval Persian art, for it was this which was to serve as the basis of figurative art. The essential preconditions already existed.

      The illustrative quality and the variety of forms within late Sassanian art, the rich artistic traditions of wall-painting in eastern Iran and Central Asia and the no less rich traditions of Christian art in the eastern provinces of Byzantium, etc. But before discussing what happened to Persian art in the early Middle Ages, it is necessary to know something of the “Persian Renaissance” which flourished in eastern Iran, mainly during the rule of its Samanid dynasty – a line of Iranian nobles who claimed descent from the Sassanian general and usurper Varahran Chobin.

      Modern Persian literature began as courtly literature. At that period the demotic language in the whole of Iran, Khurasan and Central Asia had for a long time been Dari, or what was to be Modern Persian. The Arabs themselves promoted the spread of Dari over a vast territory and its transformation into a language of communication between different ethnic groups; they used it to communicate with the local population in Iran, Khurasan and Central Asia.[19] The adoption of Arabic script (more convenient than Middle Persian or Sogdian) СКАЧАТЬ