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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iraq
Index
The power that toppled the Sassanids came from an unexpected
source. The Iranians knew that the Arabs, a tribally oriented
people, had never been organized under the rule of a single power
and were at a primitive level of military development. The
Iranians also knew of the Arabs through their mutual trading
activities and because, for a brief period, Yemen, in southern
Arabia, was an Iranian satrapy.
Events in Arabia changed rapidly and dramatically in the
sixth century A.D. when Muhammad, a member of the Hashimite clan
of the powerful Quraysh tribe of Mecca, claimed prophethood and
began gathering adherents for the monotheistic faith of Islam
that had been revealed to him
(see Religious Life
, ch. 2). The
conversion of Arabia proved to be the most difficult of the
Islamic conquests because of entrenched tribalism. Within one
year of Muhammad's death in 632, however, Arabia was secure
enough for the Prophet's secular successor, Abu Bakr (632-634),
the first caliph and the father-in-law of Muhammad, to begin the
campaign against the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid Empire.
Islamic forays into Iraq began during the reign of Abu Bakr.
In 634 an army of 18,000 Arab tribesmen, under the leadership of
the brilliant general Khalid ibn al Walid (aptly nicknamed "The
Sword of Islam"), reached the perimeter of the Euphrates delta.
Although the occupying Iranian force was vastly superior in
techniques and numbers, its soldiers were exhausted from their
unremitting campaigns against the Byzantines. The Sassanid troops
fought ineffectually, lacking sufficient reinforcement to do
more. The first battle of the Arab campaign became known as the
Battle of the Chains because Iranian soldiers were reputedly
chained together so that they could not flee. Khalid offered the
inhabitants of Iraq an ultimatum: "Accept the faith and you are
safe; otherwise pay tribute. If you refuse to do either, you have
only yourself to blame. A people is already upon you, loving
death as you love life."
Most of the Iraqi tribes were Christian at the time of the
Islamic conquest. They decided to pay the jizya, the tax
required of non-Muslims living in Muslim-ruled areas, and were
not further disturbed. The Iranians rallied briefly under their
hero, Rustam, and attacked the Arabs at Al Hirah, west of the
Euphrates. There, they were soundly defeated by the invading
Arabs. The next year, in 635, the Arabs defeated the Iranians at
the Battle of Buwayb. Finally, in May 636 at Al Qadisiyah, a
village south of Baghdad on the Euphrates, Rustam was killed. The
Iranians, who outnumbered the Arabs six to one, were decisively
beaten. From Al Qadisiyah the Arabs pushed on to the Sassanid
capital at Ctesiphon (Madain).
The Islamic conquest was made easier because both the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid Empire were culturally and socially
bankrupt; thus, the native populations had little to lose by
cooperating with the conquering power. Because the Muslim
warriors were fighting a jihad (holy war), they were regulated by
religious law that strictly prohibited rape and the killing of
women, children, religious leaders, or anyone who had not
actually engaged in warfare. Further, the Muslim warriors had
come to conquer and settle a land under Islamic law. It was not
in their economic interest to destroy or pillage unnecessarily
and indiscriminately.
The caliph Umar (634-44) ordered the founding of two
garrisoned cities to protect the newly conquered territory:
Kufah, named as the capital of Iraq, and Basra, which was also to
be a port. Umar also organized the administration of the
conquered Iranian lands. Acting on the advice of an Iranian, Umar
continued the Sassanid office of the divan (Arabic form
diwan). Essentially an institution to control income and
expenditure through record keeping and the centralization of
administration, the divan would be used henceforth throughout the
lands of the Islamic conquest. Dihqans, minor revenue
collection officials under the Sassanids, retained their function
of assessing and collecting taxes. Tax collectors in Iraq had
never enjoyed universal popularity, but the Arabs found them
particularly noxious. Arabic replaced Persian as the official
language, and it slowly filtered into common usage. Iraqis
intermarried with Arabs and converted to Islam.
By 650 Muslim armies had reached the Amu Darya (Oxus River)
and had conquered all the Sassanid domains, although some were
more strongly held than others. Shortly thereafter, Arab
expansion and conquest virtually ceased. Thereafter, the groups
in power directed their energies to maintaining the status quo
while those outside the major power structure devoted themselves
to political and religious rebellion. The ideologies of the
rebellions usually were couched in religious terms. Frequently, a
difference in the interpretation of a point of doctrine was
sufficient to spark armed warfare. More often, however, religious
disputes were the rationalization for underlying nationalistic or
cultural dissatisfactions.
Data as of May 1988
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