How the Sasanian Empire Was Defeated by Newly Muslim Arabs

How did the Sasanian defeat by newly Muslim Arabs occur? Were external factors more influential or were there internal causes? Did the intertwining of religion and kingship or the Magi's governance play a role in this defeat or not? What about the social and class order of that time? Is it true that Iranians welcomed Islam with open arms as promoted by Muslim clerics, or not? Why do Iranians ponder the details and roots of the Sasanian defeat more than the collapse of the Achaemenids, Seleucids, and Parthians? To what extent should caution be exercised in historical judgments before and after the Sasanian era? In this week's program, we will address these questions with Touraj Daryaee, a historian of the Sasanian period at the University of California, Irvine, and Hossein Kamali, a historian of medieval and post-Islamic Iran at Barnard College, Columbia University in New York. Mr. Daryaee, how did the Sasanian Empire suffer defeat against the newly Muslim Arabs? If you could summarize the situation at the beginning of the discussion. Touraj Daryaee: Well, there are various reasons for this defeat. One is the long wars with Eastern Rome, dating back to Khosrow Parviz, which somewhat weakened the imperial army. I think the fact that the Arabs were able to unite was a significant event. Before that, the Arabs were not united. Suddenly, they became a power that not only overcame the Sasanians but also Eastern Rome and many others. I believe this is one of the very important reasons that we pay less attention to. That is, the strength of the Arabs suddenly uniting as various tribes into a concentrated force. Mr. Kamali, Mr. Daryaee referred to the impact of the long wars between Iran and Eastern Rome, Byzantium, in the early 7th century. What effect did these wars have on the Iranian state's military capabilities? Hossein Kamali: It seems that they had a devastating impact, and the Iranian government incurred significant costs in recruiting and arming the army and managing long wars. But in addition to the prolonged wars, the Sasanian dynasty itself faced instability, and in a short period, there were many successions and internal fractures within the Sasanian system. Of course, the point that Dr. Daryaee mentioned about the unification of various Arab tribes under the banner of the new religion, Islam, was effective and instrumental. It seems that even before the arrival of the Arabs, the Sasanian system was already in decline, and especially cities had fallen into disrepair, as can be seen from the surviving texts from the Islamic period, many regions had suffered destruction and decline in prosperity. Mr. Daryaee, let's return to you. Before the Arab invasion, Mr. Kamali pointed out a point regarding the internal weakening of the Sasanians. From the rebellion of Bahram Chobin to the defeat at Qadisiyyah, several coups and changes occurred at the leadership and kingship level in Iran that might have been responsible for this? Touraj Daryaee: One of the important issues in the late Sasanian period is the weakening of the Sasanian ideology that they had tried to promote for nearly 300 to 400 years. Someone who is from the Sasanian dynasty and has divine grace should only rule over a place called Iran. We see that during the time of Hormizd IV, Bahram Chobin rises against this system, and between that time and the arrival of Shahrbaraz, one of the generals of the Sasanians, a general of Khosrow Parviz, we suddenly see that this ideology has been completely weakened, and a general rises again and claims kingship, staging a coup and sidelining the Sasanian king. I think that during this time, an event occurred where the Iranian army recognized their own generals, and they saw the legitimacy of governance as necessary for them. This type of governance can also be seen in the Roman world in the third century, which is referred to as the 'Barbarization of the Roman army.' This was due to recruiting individuals not from important families who had previously believed in this ideology, but after the reforms of Khosrow Anushirvan, people like the Daylamis, Gilakis, and Kurds were brought into the army, and they regarded their own generals and commanders as the most important individuals to obey, rather than the Shahanshah and Sasanian ideology. Ms. Parvaneh Pourshariati, a historian of the Sasanian period, mentions in her book that there was also a conflict between the remnants of the Parthians and the Sasanians. Is what you are saying within that framework or are those separate reasons? Touraj Daryaee: Dr. Pourshariati's view is very interesting. I think the issue is a bit broader than just the Persian and Pahlavi families having problems with each other. The issue is that around Iran, the spahbods and their armies are not just having problems based on ethnicity, but we see a collapse of ideology where each army considers its own general as legitimate to govern and is willing to mint coins for him. That is why we see so much chaos in the late Sasanian period. Mr. Kamali, sometimes in historiography and sociology, it is said that one of the historical driving forces and reasons that societies undergo transformation is the class system that governs them. Was there a class society (caste) in Iran before the attack of the newly Muslim Arabs, similar to what existed in India? That is, as it is said, Iranians were divided into four distinct classes, and if someone was a priest's son, they remained a mobad, and the mobad also became one. Conversely, if someone was the son of a soldier, they became a soldier as they grew up, and there was no class mobility. To what extent do we have information about this? Hossein Kamali: Yes. Of course, what you mentioned is in the Shahnameh and in Zoroastrian texts. For example, as mentioned in the Shahnameh during the time of Jamshid: 'Those whom you call Katozians according to the customs of their worship,' another group is called Nisarrians: 'They placed a throne upon the earth, and they called them Nisarrians,' and likewise, other classes such as farmers and craftsmen are mentioned in pre-Islamic texts and also in Islamic texts regarding the Sasanian period. However, as researchers have pointed out in recent decades, even in India, the caste issue was not as pronounced as it was in the 19th century. In Iran, we have no reason to consider this description or this statement that we see in texts like the Shahnameh as a reflection of the social situation. The truth is that our knowledge of the social conditions of the Sasanian period is limited for various reasons. Of course, we have coins, and we have readable textual sources, but they mostly reflect the court situation rather than the lives of ordinary people. However, I would like to connect a point that Mr. Daryaee mentioned here and say that even if this rigid system existed ideally at one time, by the late Sasanian period, it seems to have disintegrated and fragmented. As we see in the Sasanian military system, as they said, various local generals had begun to assert their independence, and many of the forces that entered the Sasanian army were no longer from the noble houses and the vasporans. We see the result of this in the conquests of the Islamic period, where a significant number of soldiers and commanders of the Sasanian army joined the Arab forces and participated in the conquests under the title of Aswaran or Asawira, and of course, in return for the service they provided, they gained allegiance with the Banu Tamim tribe. When they settled in the areas of Kufa and Basra, they received Sharf al-Ata from the caliph, which was the highest amount that had been paid in the conquests. At one point, I calculated that the Sharf al-Ata that the caliph paid to the Asawira was comparable to or even greater than the amount that the noble commanders received in the pre-Islamic period. This means that if the social structure was rigid before the Arab invasion, for example, in the 5th century, by the 6th and 7th centuries, nothing remained of it in the form it previously had. Mr. Daryaee, if the class system was not rigid and there was no caste system, can we say that therefore class consciousness also did not develop because the level of social mobility was high? If this is the case, can we conclude that therefore popular uprisings against the upper classes of the Sasanian and the Sasanian government had no place? How did you see these issues in your research? Touraj Daryaee: I think our attention to caste, classes, and the idea that people were dissatisfied and opened their gates to Muslims is somewhat a product of 20th-century historiography, which first emerged in the Soviet Union and the bloc of communist countries that had a strong focus on class society for describing history. These books were translated into Persian and were considered by those studying in Iran, and this view became prevalent among the Iranian people. On the other hand, Muslims, those who came forward with Islamic ideology, such as Dr. Shariati and others, provided reasons for the collapse of the Sasanian class system and government (now it can be said) 'justice and equality.' I think it is more related to this new historiography than to clarify past truths. Yes, if we look at the Byzantine world, it also has a society that is somewhat different, but in the ancient world, this issue of class was not something so strange that would cause a nation to rise up and open their gates, and the stories we hear about the Magi oppressing the people, etc., I think these things are more a narrative and tale and a leftist view regarding the subject. So you see these as just a narrative rather than a sociology of Iran's situation at the time of the Arab invasion? Touraj Daryaee: Yes, absolutely. I completely... If we have a text from that period that specifically addresses the issue of class pressure and a mentality that there is class pressure, then I can change my opinion. But I do not think that the people of Iran failed because there was a class society and pressure on them. Rather, there were other problems in this Sasanian world that led to the collapse of this government. Mr. Kamali, another perspective has narrated that due to the intertwining of the Magi and the Sasanian elite, governance and clergy, there was significant pressure on the people of Iran, and as Mr. Daryaee recounted, he criticized it. Is it as the clerics' propaganda says that Iran welcomed Islam with open arms? Do we have evidence to show this? Hossein Kamali: Regarding the class issue, I find Dr. Daryaee's opinion to be correct and accurate that fundamentally discussing class consciousness or social classes in the pre-modern period has many problems and is somewhat anachronistic, and applying meanings from another era to a time when we at least do not have information about the social status of various groups concerning the means of production as he mentioned that some historians have used. I would like to mention that our understanding of any historical period in general and historical periods that are further away is that today in the 21st century, we ask questions about the causes of the Sasanian downfall, but for example, we do not seek the causes of the downfall of the Parthians, or the collapse of the Achaemenid power, or other dynasties that ruled in Iran; it is evident that there is an issue in the present that is important to us. Our reading of history is in light of the questions that are currently posed to us, and we have no choice but to acknowledge that both the formation of the question and the formation of the answer to it are influenced by our contemporary attachments and desires. The issue of the Arabs coming to Iran with the arrival of Islam is not the same. This should be noted, and the relationship between various Arab tribes and Iran is much older than the arrival of the religion of Islam in the land of Iran. The statements that were previously made that Iranians became Muslims only by the sword or that they welcomed Islam with open arms do not seem to fully align with the historical data we have. Because the conversion of Iranians to Islam was not a phenomenon that occurred within ten or twenty years, but rather took several generations, and in explaining a process that took several generations to take its final form, neither the theory of the sword suffices nor the theory of class pressure and the pressure of the Magi and welcoming the religion of justice with open arms. Other parameters need to be sought, and if there is an opportunity, I would be happy to discuss. We will address the factors you mentioned. But before that, let me ask Mr. Daryaee again how it happened that Iranians did not turn to Christianity or another religion if there was no issue of force and sword? Touraj Daryaee: In fact, studies being conducted today show that Christianity had significant power in Iran from the 6th century and existed since the 4th century. Even the Sasanian monarchy in the 3rd century came to terms with this issue. In the 5th and 6th centuries, we see that even members of the royal family became Christians, and the number of centers where bishops were present in Iran is very high, and we have their seals that we can infer this from, just as we have written sources. In fact, by the late Sasanian period, we can say that not only was Zoroastrianism important, but Christianity had also become quite widespread, and a part of the Sasanian family was likely Christian. This interesting question arises as to why after the arrival of Islam, Christianity had little power in the Iranian plateau for almost two centuries, and it is Islam that replaced both religions. I usually cite the year 1000 as an example. For two reasons. One is that no other sources speak about Zoroastrians other than Zoroastrian texts from the year 1000 onwards, and it also somewhat coincides with the Christianization of Europe.