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The Heritage of Rulership in Early Islamic Iran and the Search for Dynastic Connections with the Past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

C. E. Bosworth*
Affiliation:
Department of Near Eastern Studies, Manchester University, England

Extract

The question of the continuity of rulership and governmental structures between the Sāsānid and early Islamic periods merits detailed study, but has not yet received it; yet it is evident to the most superficial observer that this continuity was in many spheres a close one. Obviously, there was a violent change in the field of established religion and cult; the state church of Zoroastrianism was overthrown and the new faith of Islam introduced. Yet even here, it is not impossible to discern some elements of continuity. Islam could conceivably be viewed as a new, purified form of Zoroastrianism brought by a new prophet. Allāh and Iblīs could be equated with Ahūra Mazda and Ahriman; there was a common belief in a creation story, in a resurrection, heaven and hell, and in angels and other spirits; both religions had the practices of worship and prayer and sacred texts; and the fatalistic aspects of Zurvanism, the form that Zoroastrianism took in the later Sāsānid period, was not unlike the determinist views that became influential, if not universally acknowledged, in early Islam.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1978

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References

Notes

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18. Jūzjānī, op. cit., I, 319-20, 324 ff., trans. I, 311-16, cf. Bosworth, art. cit. Jūzjānī may be depending here on Fakhr-i Mudabbir's genealogical work, the Shajara-yi ansāb-i Mubārakshāhī, on which see Storey, C. Persian Literature: A Bio-bibliographical Survey (London, 1937- ), I/2, 1165.Google Scholar

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21. Cf. Sachau, E.Zur Geschichte und Chronologie von Khwârazm,Sitzungsber. der Wiener Akad. der Wiss., Phil.-Hist. Cl., LXXIII (1873), pp. 475-506Google Scholar; Tolstov, S. P. Auf den Spuren der altchoresmischen Kultur (Berlin, 1953), pp. 207 ff.Google Scholar; and Bosworth, Encyclopaedia of Islam2, Articles “Khwārazm” and “Khwārazm-Shāhs.“

22. Isḥāq, Ibn Sīrat Rasūl Allāh, ed. Wüstenfeld, F. (Göttingen, 1859-60), I, 192Google Scholar, trans. A. Guillaume (Oxford, 1955), p. 136.

23. It is pointed out by H. Massé (Encyclopedia of Islam2, Art. s.v.) that it is only in the tenth century that anecdotes about Buzurgmihr derived from popular tradition begin to appear in Islamic adab literature.

24. Cf. Richter, G. Studien zur Geschichte der älteren arabischen Fürstenspiegel (Leipzig, 1932), pp. 33 ff.Google Scholar

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31. Cf. idem, The Heritage of Persia (London, 1962), p. 251.Google Scholar

32. See Burgel, J. C. Die Hofkorrespondenz ˓Aḍud ad-Daulas und ihr Verhältnis zu anderen historischen Quellen der früuhen Būyiden (Wiesbaden, 1965), pp. 22Google Scholar, 157-8, Ibn al-Athīr, op. cit., IX, 312-13.

33. Mas˓ūdī, Murūj adh-dhahab, IX, 19-30Google Scholar; Ibn al-Athīr, op. cit., VIII, 144-5, 226; Minorsky, V.La domination des Dailamites,” in Iranica/Bīst maqāla-yi Minorsky (Tehran, 1964), pp. 17-18, 24.Google Scholar

34. al-Āthār al-bāqiya, p. 39.

35. Trans. Levy, R. A Mirror for Princes (London, 1951), pp. 2-3.Google Scholar

36. School of Oriental and African Studies, London MS 26386.

37. Barthold, V. Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion (London, 1928), p. 240.Google Scholar It was also under Aḥmad b. Ismā˓īl that Arabic was once more made the language of official correspondence.

38. Ibid., pp. 209-210.

39. Mas˓ūdī, Murūj adh-dhahab, II, 233Google Scholar; an-Nadīm, Ibn Fihrist, ed. Flügel, G. and Roediger, J. (Leipzig, 1871), p. 305Google Scholar; Bīrūnī, al-Āthār al-bāqiya, p. 39; Ibn al-Athīr, op. cit., VII, 191; Nöldeke, T. Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sassaniden (Leiden, 1879), pp. 474-8Google Scholar, Excursus 6.

40. Ibn al-Athīr, op. cit., XI, 155, cited in Barthold, op. cit., p. 234.

41. See Bosworth, Sīstān under the Arabs, from the Islamic Conquest to the Rise of the Ṣaffārids (30-250/651-864) (Rome, 1968), pp. 2-4.Google Scholar

42. See idem, The Armies of the Ṣaffārids,BSOAS, XXXI (1968), 535-6.Google Scholar The Ta'rīkh-i Sīstān (on which see n. 44, below) is an exception to the hostility of the historical sources towards the Ṣaffārids.

43. After his victories in northern afghanistan, Ya˓qūb's court poets eulogized him in Arabic verses. But Ya˓qūb angrily complained that these were incomprehensible to him, and got the head of chancery, Muḥammad b. Waṣīf, to write some verses in Persian. Cf. Lazard, G. Les premiers poètes persans (IXe-Xe siècles) (Tehran and Paris, 1964), pp. 200-2.Google Scholar

44. Ed. Malik ash-Shu˓arā’ Bahār (Tehran, 1314/1935), pp. 200-2.Google Scholar

45. He is said to have commissioned a grand Koran commentary, comprehending all previous ones, and running to one hundred volumes; not surprisingly, this mammoth work is no longer extant.

46. Yāqūt, Irshād al-arīb, I, pp. 322-3.Google Scholar We owe the unearthing of these verses, and a detailed exposition of their significance in the context of the Shu˓ūbiyya controversies and the expansionist policy of the first Ṣaffārids, to the acute mind of the late Dr. S.M. Stern, see his Ya˓ūb the Coppersmith and Persian National Sentiment,” in Iran and Islam, in Memory of the Late Vladimir Minorsky, ed. Bosworth, (Edinburgh, 1971), pp. 535-55.Google Scholar

47. Sebüktigin's Pand-nāma is given in the Majma˓ al-ansāb of the fourteenth-century historian Muḥammad b. ˓Alī Shabānkāra'ī, which has not yet been published. The Pand-nāma was, however, excerpted and translated by Nazim, M.The Pand-Nāmah of Subuktigīn,JRAS (1933), pp. 605-28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, see especially pp. 610-14, 621-3. Another etymology for Barsghān is given by Kāshgharī, Dīwān lughāt at-Turk, trans. Atalay, B. (Ankara, 1939-41), III, pp. 417-18Google Scholar, facs. f. 625.

48. Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, I, pp. 225-6Google Scholar, trans. I, pp. 67-70.

49. Cited in Tha˓ālibī, Yatīmat ad-dahr, ed. Muḥ. Muḥyī ad-Dīn ˓Abd al-Ḥamīd (Cairo, 1375-7/1956-8)', IV, p. 396-7.Google Scholar

50. Cf. Bosworth, Encyclopedia of Islam2 Art. “Ilek-Khāns.”

51. Barthold, V. Histoire des Turcs d'Asie Centrale (Paris, 1945), pp. 70, 84.Google Scholar

52. Dīwān lughāt at-Turk, trans. I, 55.

53. See the discussions of Seljuq origins in Cahen, C.Le Malik-Nameh et l'histoire des origines seljukides,Oriens, II (1949), 41 ff.Google Scholar, and Bosworth, The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran 994-1040 (Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 219 ff.Google Scholar