Jihad in Persia 2
- From: "Robert Houghton" <robert45@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:11:43 -0600
Series:
Zoroastrian Genocide
Author:
Jahanian, Dr. Daryoush
The Arab invasion of Iran in 630 A.D. and its consequences have never
been researched impartially, because they always carry religious sentiments.
It is taught and popularized that the Arabs brought Islam to Iran, and the
Iranians being frustrated by their government,[by] the strict religious code
interfering with their daily life and the established Sasanian's caste
system, embraced Islam's message of equality and brotherhood. This view
however is not only far from the historical evidences but contradicts the
basic human instincts. The fact is that people on the whole do not give up
their original tenets and traditions easily to adhere to the new one. Even
the primitive Arabs did not abandon their old religion that [simply] as
there were several religious wars (Ghazvah) in which many of the
nonbelievers were massacred. The Arab conquest not only did not eliminate
the caste system, but soon Iranians found themselves part of the two new
castes, slaves and Mavali. The mass of Iranian women, children and captured
men were sold in the Arabian markets and even those who converted to Islam
did not receive freedom. They were called Mavali or the liberated slaves,
who were mostly deprived of basic rights, could not ride horses or carry
weapons and at times being part of the asset were given away as gifts. The
mass enslavement of Iranians was so rampant that in a story that Shiites
made to relate the family of Imam Ali to the Sasanians, even the daughter of
Yazdgard, Shahrbanou was sold as slave in Medina market to Imam Ali who gave
her to his son, Imam Hussain to marry. By this narrative the Shiites believe
that Imam Hussein's descendants are blood related to the Sasanians.
The cultural calamity was disastrous. Books were burned, scholars
slain and schools and libraries were destroyed because the invaders regarded
the Koran as the last book that nullified the existing ones. Iran in a short
period of time fell from a global power and world's center of science to an
illiterate and backward country that could never stand on her feet. For
centuries afterwards until the time of Safavid dynasty at the turn of the
fifteenth century it was not even a country under one flag.
.
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