ʿARAB i. Arabs and Iran in the pre-Islamic period

As two of the most prominent ethnic elements in the Middle East, Arabs and Iranians have been in contact with each other, and at times have had their fortunes intertwined, for some three millennia. Herodotus (3.5) relates how in the 6th century B.C. the Achaemenid Cambyses marched against Egypt through northern Arabia after making a transit agreement with the local Arab ruler, probably one of the kings of Leḥīān in the northern Ḥeǰāz and how in the following century Xerxes employed camel-mounted Arab archers in his forces. The honored position of Arabs as “allies” of the Persian empire is also indicated in Achaemenid sculptured reliefs at Persepolis (E. F. Schmidt, Persepolis III, Chicago, 1969, pp. 112f.). On the northern fringes of Arabia at least, and in the Syrian Desert region, the world empires contending for mastery in western Asia—the Greeks, Romans, and then Byzantines on one side and the Achaemenids, Parthians, and Sasanians on the other—traditionally sought the alliance of local Arab chiefs and enrolled their tribesmen as frontier auxiliaries (the Greek symmachoi and Roman limitane i).

In the period after Alexander the Great, the policy of his Seleucid successors aimed at extending their authority over Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf in order to control the sea routes and to benefit from the commerce of the Gulf ports and South Asia: several centuries earlier, Darius (522-486 B.C.) had sent the Greek navigator Scylax of Caryanda on an exploratory voyage round the coasts of the Arabian peninsula. In 205-204 B.C. the Seleucid Antiochus III the Great sailed from his base at Seleucia on the Tigris along the southern shores of the Gulf as far as Chattene and the port of Gerrha. Gerrha, probably situated in what was later Qaṭīf opposite Bahrain island, was an entrepot for exotic imports from India and the aromatics of South Arabia, the Arabia Odorifera of the ancients. Aramaic and Greek inscriptions of this period from the Qaṭīf coastlands and from the island of Failaka off modern Kuwait testify to this Seleucid interest in the Gulf and its commercial potential.

After 129 B.C., with the decay of the Seleucid empire, a predominantly ethnically Arab principality arose in Lower Iraq, based on a settlement on the lower Tigris banks named Charax of Hyspaosines. While the founder, Hyspaosines, bore a purely Iranian name, he is described as king of the Arabs in that region, and he ruled over what must have been a predominantly Arab population in the district of Characene or Mesene (later Arabic, Maysān), even though the cultural language there, as in all Mesopotamia, was doubtless Aramaic. In central Iraq, the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon became a center for the spread of Iranian influence over the whole region.

In northern Iraq, another Arab principality was established by the middle of the 1st century B.C. at Hatra (Ar. al-Ḥażr), one of a crescent of Arab kingdoms situated along the northern fringe of the Syrian Desert as far west as Palmyra and Emesa. The more westerly kingdoms, eventually went down before the advancing Romans; those in the east came under considerable Parthian political and cultural influence, so that even certain of the early rulers of Edessa bore Iranian names. Hatra remained the firm ally of the Parthians in their epic struggle with Rome; among its rulers were three with the typically Arsacid name of Sanatrūk, while the “king of the Arabs” (Aramaic, malkā ḏī ʿAraḇ) in the 1st century A.D. had the Parthian name of Vologases. Much more than a caravan city, Hatra had an important shrine for sun worship that attracted rich votive offerings. Hatra’s fortunes declined with those of its Arsacid patrons, and it was occupied and plundered by the Sasanian Šāpūr I (A.D. 241-72, the Sābūr-al-ǰonūd of later Arabic historians). In later Islamic lore Hatra became an example of the fleetingness of human achievement and earthly prosperity, but its memory lived on, and the pre-Islamic poet al-Aʿšā began a famous qaṣīda with praise of the former al-Ḥażr.

The Sasanians, once they had become masters of Ctesiphon, continued the ancient Seleucid policy of involvement in the Gulf region to which was added, in the 6th century, intervention in South Arabia as well (see below). The founder of the Sasanian dynasty, Ardašīr I (d. A.D. 240), secured the head of the Gulf and the districts of Ahvāz and Maysān, with new settlements established at Sūq al-Ahvāz and Karḵ Maysān, and then, according to Ṭabarī (I, p. 820), drove southward into Bahrain. It is possible that Gerrha was sacked, for Ardašīr seems to have built a new settlement called (?) Fīrūz Ardašīr, on the site of earlier Chatta.

Not surprisingly, these imperialist designs provoked an Arab reaction. During the early years of the reign of Šāpūr II (A.D. 309 or 310-79), Arabs crossed the Gulf from Bahrain to the Ardašīr-ḵorra littoral of Fārs and raided the interior. In retaliation, Šāpūr led an expedition through Bahrain, defeated the combined forces of the Arab tribes of Tamīm, Bakr b. Wāʾel, and ʿAbd-al-Qays, and advanced temporarily into Yamāma in Central Naǰd. Frontier defenses were set up in Lower Iraq against the Bedouins, including a trench and rampart (the ḵandaq Sābūr of the Arabic historians); wells were blocked up, and Arab captives were harshly treated (whence Šāpūr’s name in the Arabic sources, Sābūr Ḏu’l-aktāf “he who pierces or dislocates shoulders”). Following the ancient Persian practice of mass population resettlement, the Sasanians carried off tribesmen of Taḡleb, Bakr b. Wāʾel, and Ḥanẓala and implanted them in Kermān and Ahvāz.

It is possible that a recently discovered settlement on an island off the northern tip of the Musandam peninsula in northern ʿOmān, a site commanding the sea route through the narrow Straits of Hormoz, may date from this time. Certainly, ʿOmān was regarded as a key region for the Persian policy of hegemony throughout the Gulf. Geographically separate from the plains of eastern Arabia and geologically more akin to the Zagros mountain region of southern Persia, ʿOmān has often been linked culturally and even politically with Persia. Already, Šāpūr I—on the evidence of the Naqš-e Rostam inscription—claimed ʿOmān (Pers. Mazūn) as part of his empire. In later times, some degree of control was certainly established. Persian officials and garrison troops settled in the coastal plain and also on the cultivable slopes of the Jabal Aḵżar; their administrative center of Rostāq permanently implanted a Persian name in ʿOmān. Relations between these Persian colonists and the indigenous Azd Arabs of the interior were normalized during Ḵosrow Anōšīravān’s reign (A.D. 531-79) by a treaty that gave the Āl Jolandā paramountcy, as tributaries and auxiliaries of Persia, over the Arabs of ʿOmān. It is possible, though not proven, that the Persians developed agriculture extensively there and introduced the system of qanāts to convey water for irrigation from the mountain slopes.

Persian control over central and northern Mesopotamia was exercised through the Arab dynasty of the Lakhmids, who had their court and their capital at al-Ḥīra (Aramaic Ḥērṯā “fortified encampment”) near the later Muslim garrison of Kūfa. Ḥīra was a creation of the Tanūḵ Arabs; the antiquarian Ebn al-Kalbī (d. 204/819 or 206/821) situates its founding in the reign of Ardašīr I after the Sasanians had taken over Iraq from the Parthians, but it is equally probable that its growth was a slower, more gradual process. At all events, Ḥīra became essentially an Arab town, strategically situated as the starting point for caravan traffic westward across the Syrian Desert. Although Syriac was the learned and hieratic language for its population, a large proportion of whom were Nestorian Christians, famed for their literacy (the so-called ʿEbād “devotees” of Arabic sources), ethnically they must have been Arab. The Lakhmid rulers themselves, the Manāḏera or Naʿāmena of Arabic sources, remained pagan and strongly attached to the culture and traditions of the Arabian Desert; only at the very end of the dynasty did al-Noʿmān III (ca. A.D. 580-602) become Christian. The great Bedouin poets of the Jāhelīya frequently sought the patronage of the Lakhmid kings (see Lakhmids).

In general, the Lakhmids remained faithful Sasanian vassals, holding the northwestern fringes of the desert against pressure from the Byzantines and their Arab Ghassanid allies and against incursions from the Bedouins of Naǰd. The Sasanian prince Bahrām V, known as Bahrām Gōr (r. A.D. 421-39), grew up at the court of Ḥīra under the tutelage of al-Monḏer I al-Noʿmān I al-Aʿwar, and eventually gained the throne in Ctesiphon with Lakhmid help against the Persian nobles who had killed his brother Šāpūr. Other regroupings and alliances took place outside the usual pattern. Thus the evidence of the famous proto-Arabic al-Namāra inscription from southern Syria commemorating the death in 328 of the “king of all the Arabs” Emro ’l-Qays al-Badʾ b. ʿAmr b. ʿAdī shows that this potentate, who governed the North Arab tribes as far as the Ḥeǰāz, on behalf of the Sasanians, had at the end of his life transferred his allegiance to the Byzantines. Yet on the whole, the Lakhmid kings of the 5th and 6th centuries bore a substantial share of the fighting against the Byzantines over control of the Syrian Desert fringes. Thus, al-Noʿmān II was heavily involved in the Byzantino-Sasanian warfare and scored a victory against the East Romans at Ḥarrān in 502.

The 6th century is the best-documented period of Lakhmid history. Al-Monḏer II (A.D. 503-54) was delegated by the Sasanian emperors—shortly after 531, according to Ṭabarī—to rule over much of northern and eastern Arabia, including Bahrain, ʿOmān, Yamāma, Naǰd, and the Ḥeǰāz as far west as Ṭāʾef. Some degree of Persian influence appears to have been exercised as far northwest as Yaṯreb (Islamic Medina) through the agency first of the local Jewish tribes of al-Nazīr and Qorayẓa and then, in the second half of the 6th century, by a Lakhmid tax collector. Al-Monḏer III managed to survive the powerful bid for control over northeastern Arabia made early in his reign by the rival chief of Kenda, al-Ḥāreṯ b. ʿAmr, who for three years (525-28) actually occupied Ḥīra itself; in revenge, al-Monḏer largely extirpated the ruling house of Kenda. In 531 he played a leading role in the Persian campaign that culminated in the victory over Byzantium at Callinicum on the Euphrates; he was eventually killed in a battle with the Ghassanids near Qennasrīn, probably the Yawm-al-ḥīār of the Arabic sources.

The extent of Persian political influence over the Lakhmid royal family can be seen in the name of one ruler, Qābūs b. al-Monḏer III (A.D. 569-73), arabized from Kāvūs, a typically Iranian epic name. Among the Lakhmids’ troops are mentioned the ważāʾeʿ, described as Persian cavalrymen sent to Ḥīra by the emperor for a year’s tour of duty. The Arabic poets who thronged the Lakhmid court at Ḥīra and who also visited Ctesiphon had at least some exposure to Persian culture and its technical vocabulary; the 9th-century critic Ebn Qotayba says of the great Jāhelī poet Maymūn b. Qays al-Aʿšā’s fondness for using Persian words, “al-Aʿšā used to visit the court of the kings of Persia, and because of that, Persian court words abound in his poetry” (Ketāb al-Šeʿr wa’l-šoʿarāʾ, ed. M. J. de Goeje, Leiden, 1900, pp. 136-37).

The end of the Lakhmids’ independence seems to be connected with their attempts to through off a Persian tutelage that had become irksome. Al-Noʿmān III b. al-Monḏer IV (A.D. 580-602), the first Christian Lakhmid king, eventually quarreled with Ḵosrow II Aparvēz, who deposed and killed him. This weakening of the Lakhmid bulwark against nomadic pressure from the interior of Naǰd may well have contributed to the Arab Muslim breakthrough into Iraq and Bahrain some thirty years later, just as the victory of Bedouins of Bakr b. Wāʾel and Šaybān over the Persians and their allies at Ḏū Qār near Kūfa sometime between 604 and 613 demonstrated to the Arabs the deterioration of Persian defenses in that quarter.

Finally, the 6th century witnessed strenuous attempts to extend Persian power into South Arabia as well as into the north and east of the peninsula. Long before this, there had been diplomatic contacts; a Sabaean inscription from Maʾreb mentions an embassy from the Himyarite king Šammar Yohaṛʿeš of Yemen and Hadramaut (later 3rd century A.D.) to the Persian twin capitals of Ctesiphon and Seleucia. In the 6th century, the Sasanians were able to take advantage of the decline of Himyarite central power and political fragmentation in Yemen, together with the confessional discords exacerbated by Ethiopian attempts to support the indigenous South Arabian Christian community. The Yemenite ruler Ḏū Nowās, a convert to Judaism, seems to have been encouraged in his persecution of the Christians of Naǰrān (the latter traditionally and, it now seems, correctly identified with the Koranic (Aṣḥāb al-oḵdūd “Companions of the trench”) by the anti-Christian and pro-Persian Lakhmid al-Monḏer III, even though the latter could supply no material help for that distant corner of Arabia. The opportunity for direct Persian intervention in South Arabia did not come until about 570, when the rule of the Ethiopian-backed governor in Yemen, Masrūq b. Abraha, provoked a Yemeni uprising under Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan, who appealed first to the Lakhmids, and then directly to Ḵosrow Anōšīravān. Although South Arabia was remote from Persia itself, Anōšīravān was tempted by the prospect of extending Persian influence along the southern coast of Arabia and controlling the Gulf of Aden, thereby blocking Byzantine trade up the Red Sea. An expeditionary force under the Persian general Vahrēz fought its way to the Yemeni capital, Ṣaṇʿā, expelled the Ethiopians, and eventually installed Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan’s son Maʿdīkareb as a Persian vassal ruler. A colony of Persian officials and soldiers settled in Yemen, and their Muslim descendants formed the group of the Abnāʾ in early Islamic times.

It is improbable that centuries of contacts between the Arabs and Persians, above all in eastern Arabia, should not have left behind some legacy in the fields of thought and culture, but such a legacy is not easy to quantify or to evaluate. In centers like Ctesiphon the Arabs acquired some familiarity with the externals of Persian life—the impressive buildings, the court ceremonial, the military institutions like the mailed, heavily armed cavalrymen, the ceremonies and practices of Zoroastrianism,—yet these had no penetrating effect on society within the Arabian peninsula. The Lakhmid kings, with their circles of Bedouin poets and their alliances with the tribesmen of the interior seem to have been quintessentially Arab rulers rather than largely persianized ones. The most lasting result of Arab-Persian contacts in these centuries was an influx of Persian words into the classical ʿarabīya, especially those with religious and cultural references; as early as the Namāra inscription we find the Middle Persian tāg (crown) borrowed into Arabic; subsequent borrowings are discernible in the Jāhelī poets and in the Koran itself, where they were evaluated by later Muslim philologists concerned with the moʿarrabāt.

ʿARAB ii. Arab conquest of Iran

During the first two centuries of the Muslim era (7th-8th centuries A.D.) the Sasanian state and much of the east Iranian region in Central Asia were conquered by the mostly Arab armies of the early Islamic state. The accounts of this conquest are often contradictory, the exact course of events unclear, precise dates for even major events elusive, and the size of the armies difficult to determine. Persian forces appear to have outnumbered Muslim armies at key battles such as Qādesīya and Nehāvand; they fought bravely, contested the Muslim advance fiercely, and attempted to throw off tribute arrangements afterwards. The fall of the Sasanians has been attributed to the class and religious strife in their society, the absence of popular support for an elitist regime, conflict among the nobles, dynastic instability, and the cost of the recent, long, and unsuccessful war with the Byzantines. The ultimate success of the Muslims has also been explained by their organization and determination, the effect of their faith on their morale, their ability to recruit and co-opt forces as they expanded, and their greater mobility.

The Sasanian position in the Arabian peninsula had been based on a system of military colonies and tribal alliances in the Yemen, ʿOmān, and Bahrain; it collapsed when their defeat by the Byzantines left them unable to support their garrisons and Arab protégés. The death of Ḵosrow II, June, 628 coincided with the treaty of Ḥodaybīa between Moḥammad and the Meccans, which was followed by a four-year succession crisis that enabled the Muslims to build up their own alliances. Persian agents in the peninsula, abandoned by the Sasanians and challenged by local rivals, were attracted to the rising Islamic state at Medina, especially after Mecca fell to Moḥammad in 8/630. The Persian governor at Ṣaṇʿāʾ became a Muslim and acknowledged Moḥammad, who confirmed him as his agent in the Yemen. The marzbān at Haǰar in Bahrain also converted to Islam and recognized Moḥammad, as did the Arab protégés of the Sasanians in Bahrain and ʿOmān. Zoroastrians in these two areas were allowed to pay tribute.

When Moḥammad died in 10/632 the Persians ( abnāʾ ) of Ṣaṇʿāʾ remained loyal but faced two local Arab opposition movements. Their leader, Fīrūz was appointed Muslim agent there after they helped kill al-Aswad, but Qays b. Makšūḥ drove them out of Ṣaṇʿāʾ. A Muslim army sent by Caliph Abu Bakr defeated Qays, pacified the Yemen, and proceeded to Ḥażramawt, leaving Fīrūz to hold Ṣaṇʿāʾ. At the same time, the Zoroastrians of Bahrain withheld tribute, joined the local Arab movement in support of the Lakhmid ruler there, and besieged the pro-Muslim Arabs of the ʿAbd-al-Qays. An army sent by Abū Bakr under al-ʿAlāʾ al-Ḥażramī defeated this movement and began the real conquest of Bahrain; about the same time the rebels were defeated in ʿOmān.

After the defeat and death of Mosaylema in the Yamāma in Rabīʿa I, 12/May-June, 633, Ḵāled b. al-Walīd marched north through eastern Arabia to join forces with Muslim elements of the Banū ʿEǰl and Šaybān who were raiding the Sawād of Iraq. At the battle of Ḏāt al-Salāsel between Bahrain and Obolla, Ḵāled’s army met and defeated Sasanian frontier forces under Hormoz. This victory enabled Ḵāled to penetrate the lower line of Sasanian frontier defenses near the coast and invade Maysān, where he defeated the survivors of Hormoz’s army and reinforcements from al-Madāʾen at the battle of Maḏār in Ṣafar, 12/March-April, 633. Ḵāled then turned west, going to the north of the swamps to Walaǰa in the territory of Kaskar, where he was joined by some of the local ʿEǰl and ambushed and defeated a combined Persian and Arab army. Continuing west to Zandavard and Hormozǰerd, he reached the Euphrates at Ollays, where he defeated local Persians and Christian Arabs under Jābān.

Ḵāled’s maneuver through lower Iraq brought him to the vicinity of Ḥīra behind the line of Sasanian defensive positions along the middle Euphrates. Defeating the cavalry of the marzbān of Ḥīra, Ḵāled joined forces with al-Moṯannā b. Ḥāreṯ of the Šaybān and invested Ḥīra. After the marzbān fled to al-Madāʾen, the notables of Ḥīra arranged terms of tribute with Ḵāled in the summer of 12/633. Ḵāled is also said to have imposed an annual tribute on Anbār after the Persian garrison evacuated. When he defeated a force of the Sasanians’ Christian Arab auxiliaries from the tribes of Bakr, ʿEǰl, Taḡleb, and Namer at ʿAyn al-Tamr, the Persian garrison evacuated, and the town and its fortress fell to the Muslims. But while Ḵāled was occupied with the conquest of Dūmat al-Jandal, Persian forces joined by Arabs of Taḡleb and Namer reinforced the line of strongholds west of ʿAyn at-Tamr south of the Euphrates. Ḵāled’s forces took these positions in detail from east to west, slaughtered the Persian and Arab garrisons, captured their dependents, and finished by defeating a combined force of Persians and Arabs of Eyād, Namer, and Taḡleb at the end of this line at Ferāż on 15 Ḏu’l-qaʿda 12/21 January 634. Ḵāled then returned to Ḥīra, made tribute arrangements for much of the central Sawād, and left for Syria in the spring of 13/634 after placing al-Moṯannā in charge of Ḥīra.

Ḵāled’s raid on Iraq in 12/633 destroyed most of the Sasanian fortifications along the desert border, crippled their Arab allies, and triggered a major Sasanian effort to recover the Sawād and restore its border. In 10/632 the enthronement of a youthful (aged sixteen or twenty-one) grandson of Ḵosrow II as Yazdegerd III ended the succession crisis, but the defense of the Sawād was largely undertaken by other members of the royal family, such as Narsī, and members of the Persian high nobility to protect their own property. Rostam organized the Sasanian recovery of the Sawād and coordinated the activities of Narsī and Jābān, who raised local resistance in the provinces of Kaskar and Beh-Qobāḏ. After the death of Abū Bakr in 13/634 the local arrangements made with the Muslims were terminated all along the Euphrates; the Muslims were driven out, and al-Moṯannā withdrew to Ḵaffān.

ʿOmar’s first concern was to deal with the Byzantine counterattack in Syria, but he sent Abū ʿObayd with 1,000 men to reinforce al-Moṯannā and take command of the Iraqi front. Abū ʿObayd invaded the Sawād and defeated local Persian forces under Jābān at Namāreq, under Narsī below Kaskar, and under Jālīnūs in Bārūsmā, but he retreated across the Euphrates to Marwaḥa before a relief force with elephants under Bahman Jāḏūya from Babel. Ambushing Abū ʿObayd from the opposite bank of the Euphrates, the Persians inflicted a disastrous defeat on the Muslim forces at the Battle of the Bridge in Šaʿbān, 13/October, 634. The Persians were prevented from following up this victory by factional strife at al-Madāʾen. About the same time, al-ʿAlāʾ b. al-Ḥażramī completed the conquest of Bahrain.

After the Battle of the Bridge, ʿOmar sent contingents from several Arab tribes under Jarīr b. ʿAbdallāh al-Baǰalī to reinforce al-Moṯannā, who was also joined by local Christian Arabs of Namer and Taḡleb. Mehrān, son of Mehrbandāḏ of Hamadān, who was sent to Ḥīra to deal with this buildup of Arab forces on the Iraqi frontier, crossed the Euphrates on a bridge of boats and attacked their camp at Noḵayla on the Bowayb canal, most likely in the fall of 14/635. Al-Moṯannā and Jarīr defeated the Persians, and inflicted heavy casualties, Mehrān among them. The victory at Noḵayla/Bowayb left the Sawād virtually undefended; the remaining Persian border posts along the desert frontier were taken, and Muslim raiding parties fanned out over the Sawād. Destructive raids by al-Moṯannā and his lieutenants pillaged villages, markets, and encampments from Kaskar to Anbār.

To prevent the Persians from sending aid or mounting a counterattack from the direction of Maysān and Ḵūzestān ʿOmar sent ʿOtba b. Ḡazwān with a few hundred men to create a diversion in lower Iraq toward the end of 14/635. From his camp at the deserted frontier post of Ḵorayba, in the spring of 15/636, ʿOtba’s force attacked and conquered al-Obolla, Forāt, Abar-Qobāḏ, and Dast-e Maysān, defeating and killing the marzbān at the battle of Maḏār. As success attracted Arab tribesmen to this front, the encampment at Ḵorayba grew into the garrison city of al-Baṣra.

In 15/636 ʿOmar sent Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ to Iraq with an army of between 6,000 and 10,000 men. Al-Moṯannā died shortly after his arrival, and Saʿd took command of all the forces on the Euphrates front. He was met by a major Persian force with thirty elephants under Rostam, who advanced across the Euphrates and camped at Qādesīya behind the defensive line of the Nahr al-ʿAtīqa. The Muslim forces in the Sawād fell back and regrouped under Saʿd at the fortress of ʿOḏayb and the nearby village of Qādes to await reinforcements from Syria. After the two armies had faced each other for four months, the Persians were defeated in a fierce three-day battle, with heavy casualties on both sides, probably in Jomādā I, 16/June, 637. The battle of Qādesīya, which was decided by the arrival of the Syrian reinforcements and the death of Rostam, was a decisive victory for the Muslims and a military disaster for the Persians. The Persians were totally routed, and fugitive Persian soldiers were pursued and killed in the villages, reed thickets, and river banks. Some 4,000 Iranian soldiers (the Ḥamrāʾ) joined the Muslim army at Qādesīya, shared equally in the booty, and participated in the subsequent campaign; the fate of the Sawād was settled. As the survivors of Qādesīya headed for al-Madāʾen, the Sasanian garrisons in the eastern Jazīra were evacuated. Contingents in advance of the main Muslim army spread out across the Sawād in systematic pursuit of the remnants of the Persian army, which they prevented from regrouping. Local notables, such as Bestām, the dehqān of Bors, assisted the victors. The Persians tried to gather their forces and make a stand at Bābel but were defeated and rescattered by the Muslim vanguard under Zohra b. ʿAbdallāh b. Qatāda, who also drove them out of Sūra and Kūṯa. During this march Muslim soldiers began to equip themselves with the weapons, armor, and horses of the fallen Persians.

As Saʿd approached al-Madāʾen, the garrison at Sābāṭ was slaughtered, although Šīrzāḏ, who joined Saʿd there, built twenty mangonels for his use at the siege of Vēh-Ardašīr. The Muslims besieged al-Madāʾen for two or three months or for over a year. After an attempt to defend Vēh-Ardašīr the Sasanian garrison evacuated it, crossed to the east bank of the Tigris, and cut the floating bridge behind them. The Muslims surprised the Sasanians by fording the Tigris and besieged the eastern half of al-Madāʾen. At the fall of Vēh-Ardašīr Yazdegerd III lost his nerve, sent his dependents to Ḥolwān, left Mehrān of Ray and Naḵīrǰān to evacuate the royal treasure, and fled from al-Madāʾen with his courtiers. Persian soldiers and nobles began to escape from the city, and in the confusion thousands of Persian horsemen are said to have been captured. Saʿd entered the nearly deserted city, captured most of the royal treasure, accepted the surrender of the people in the White Palace and at Rūmīya in return for tribute, and quartered the Muslim army there.

Toward the end of 16/635 two Muslim columns advanced north and east from al-Madāʾen. One moved up the Tigris under ʿAbdallāh b. Moʿtamm and took Takrīt with the help of Arabs of Namer and ʿEǰl in the town who went over to the Muslim side during the siege. The other, under Hāšem b. ʿOtba, pursued the Persian refugees and soldiers along the road to Ḥolwān with a vanguard of 12,000 men, including the Ḥamrāʾ. The Sasanian rearguard under Ḵorrazād, Rostam’s brother, entrenched their baggage and dependents at Ḵāneqīn and attempted to cover the retreat, but Hāšem defeated them with heavy losses at Jalūlāʾ. A flying column including Ḥamrāʾ under Qaʿqāʿ b. ʿAmr pursued the survivors to Ḵāneqīn, where every fighting man who could be caught was killed, and their women, children, and property were captured. When he heard of the defeat at Jalūlāʾ and the death of Mehrān of Ray at Ḵāneqīn, Yazdegerd abandoned Ḥolwān and headed for Ray, leaving a holding force at Ḥolwān under Ḵosrowšonūm. In the last major engagement of this campaign Qaʿqāʿ routed the forces of Ḵosrowšonūm at Qaṣr-e Šīrīn and occupied Ḥolwān, which he garrisoned with some of the Ḥamrāʾ. Soon afterward the Persians who had fled from al-Madāʾen were allowed to return upon agreeing to pay tribute, and the Muslim army evacuated and settled at Kūfa. By 17/638 Kufan forces had conquered Māsabādān and Mehraǰānqaḏāq in the western Jebāl.

The fall of Iraq had serious consequences for the subsequent conflict because it had been the most important part of the Sasanian empire. The capital at al-Madāʾen had been the apex of their administrative system, and Iraq had provided about one-third of their annual tax revenues. In addition, they lost the royal treasure, substantial military forces that perished defending Iraq, and the leadership of many high-ranking nobles. The Muslims now held these resources and were assisted by former members of the Sasanian army and administration who had defected. By 20/641 the organization of the military dīvān at Baṣra and Kūfa provided regular support for Muslim soldiers; by the 640s, Muslim armies based in Iraq were as well organized, provisioned, and equipped as the Sasanians themselves.

The next phase of the conflict opened in Ḵūzestān, where Hormozān organized an active defense, raiding Dast-e Maysān and Maysān, but was driven out in 18/639 by forces from Baṣra and Kūfa and had to deal with risings by Arab Bedouins on the border of Ḵūzestān and by the Kurds of Fārs. Yazdegerd sent his vanguard of several hundred heavy cavalrymen (asvārān, asāwera) under Sīāh al-Oswārī from Isfahan towards Eṣṭaḵr. Increasing his force along the way Sīāh turned westward from Fārs into Ḵūzestān and reinforced the garrisons there. Against stiff resistance the conquest of Ḵūzestān was undertaken by Basran forces under Abū Mūsā al-Ašʿarī. Hormozān’s troops were garrisoned separately in the fortified cities of Ḵūzestān, and Abū Mūsā besieged them one at a time. Hormozān was driven out of Sūq al-Ahvāz and fled to Šūštar, where Abū Mūsā besieged him for eighteen months to two years with Kufan reinforcements, while Rām-Hormoz surrendered on terms. In 19/644, al-ʿAlāʾ b. al-Ḥażramī attacked Fārs by sea from Bahrain; he reached Eṣṭaḵr but was beaten back to the coast by the marzbān of Fārs. Šūštar fell to Abū Mūsā in 21/642 with the help of a Persian, who arranged to open the gates in return for his own security. Hormozān held out for a while in the citadel but finally surrendered and was sent to Medina. Afterward, Sūs and Jondīšāpūr were besieged and fell, and Basran forces entered the southern Jebāl. Sīāh and his asāwera surrendered, joined the Muslims, and settled in Baṣra. In 20/641, Kufan forces under ʿOtba b. Farqad marched up the Tigris, took Nineveh on terms, founded Mosul across the river, and conquered the districts along the Tigris and Greater Zāb as far as western Azerbaijan.

By 21/642 Yazdegerd had raised a major army in the Jebāl and sent it to Nehāvand to block any Muslim advance from that direction and possibly to retake Iraq. The threat that this army seemed to pose to Muslim positions it Iraq led ʿOmar to combine the Kufan and Basran forces under al-Noʿmān b. ʿAmr b. Moqarren al-Mozanī and to send them against the Persians with reinforcements from Syria and ʿOmān. The course of the battle fought at Nehāvand in the summer of 21/642 is difficult to reconstruct in tactical terms. As usual, it is said to have lasted several days, to have resulted in heavy casualties on both sides, including al-Noʿmān and the Persian general Mardānšāh, son of Hormoz, and to have been decided by a ruse or by the arrival of the Muslim reinforcements.

The Muslim victory at Nehāvand was a second military disaster for the Sasanians; it secured Iraq and Ḵūzestān for the Muslims, ended any concerted resistance in the Jebāl, and opened the Iranian plateau to the Muslims. Yazdegerd fled to Isfahan and then to Eṣṭaḵr. During 22-23/643-44 Kufan and Basran forces broke up and fanned out over western Iran to deal with local resistance. Several places in the Jebāl were claimed as conquests by both the Kufans and the Basrans before and after Nehāvand. Some places, such as Hamadān and Ray, were taken and retaken several times. Ḥoḏayfa b. al-Yamān accepted the surrender of the town and district of Nehāvand from its lord, called Dīnār, who was captured during a sortie; he arranged to pay tribute in return for protection for the walls, property, and houses of the people there. One Kufan force took Hamadān on similar terms and headed for Ray. The territory of Ray was taken from the marzbān, possibly with the help of a local notable called Farroḵān, on terms similar to Nehāvand. A tribute of 500,000 dirhams was imposed on Ray and Qūmes; in return the fire temples were not to be destroyed nor the people killed or enslaved. Another Kufan force took Qazvīn in 24/644, and from there Ḥoḏayfa b. al-Yamān marched west to Azerbaijan, where he defeated the marzbān, took the capital of Ardabīl, and imposed a tribute of 100,000 dirhams. According to the terms made by Ḥoḏayfa, the people were not to be killed or taken captive; they would be protected from the Kurds, and their fire temples would not be destroyed. The people of Šīz were allowed to keep their fire temple and to perform their dances at religious festivals.

Meanwhile Basran forces under the general command of Abū Mūsā conquered and garrisoned Dīnavar and may have taken Māsabādān and Mehraǰānqaḏāq. In 23/644 one Basran force conquered the urban centers of Jayy and Yahūdīya at Isfahan, where the defense organized by the ostāndār failed due to internal divisions among the garrison and people. The terms arranged by the pāḏḡōspān provided for the usual payment of tribute in return for security for lives and possessions. A number of Persian notables became Muslims, while others emigrated to Kermān. Other Basran units took Kāšān by force, captured and garrisoned a village at Qom, raided the two towns of Ṭabasayn in Qūhestān that controlled the approach to Khorasan, and raided Šīrǰān and Bam in the territory of Kermān.

The other main thrust of Basran forces after Nehāvand was southeastward from Ḵūzestān into Fārs, initially to deal with resistance organized among the Persians and Kurds of Ḵūzestān by Fīrūz. Abū Mūsā himself defeated these forces at Bayrūḏ in 23/643-44, pacified the countryside, and invaded Fārs to support ʿOṯmān b. Abi’l-ʿĀṣ, who had crossed from Bahrain. ʿOṯmān established a base at Tawwaǰ, and he or his brother, al-Ḥakam, defeated and killed the governor of Fārs near Rīšahr. Tribute was imposed on Eṣṭaḵr, Arraǰān, Dārābīerd, and Fasā, and al-Ḥakam was left in charge.

After the death of ʿOmar in 23/644, many of the places in Azerbaijan, the Jebāl, and Fārs that had been conquered in the two years after Nehāvand withheld tribute and had to be retaken. The second wave of Muslim expansion under ʿOṯmān (24-35/644-56) secured strategic control and tribute to support the military establishment in Iraq, provided booty to satisfy latecomers to the garrison cities, and served to occupy and direct the energies of the Muslim soldiers. A new tribute of 100,000 dirhams was imposed on Hamadān, while the former urban centers at Isfahan and Ray were destroyed, and Muslim garrisons and masǰe ds were established in new settlements at both places. A garrison of 500 men supported by land grants was settled at Qazvīn, for defense against the Daylamīs. Beginning in 25/645-46 Kufan forces under al-Walīd b. ʿOqba campaigned in the two frontier districts (ṯoḡūr) of Ray and Azerbaijan. Each year, one-quarter of the 40,000 soldiers in Kūfa campaigned, 4,000 in Ray and 6,000 in Azerbaijan. Al-Walīd raised the tribute of Azerbaijan to 800,000 dirhams per year and sent advance forces to raid Mūqān, Ṭālešān, and Armenia for booty and captives. From about 30/650, when Saʿīd b. al-ʿĀṣ was governor of Kūfa, the northern frontier was stabilized. Al-Ašʿaṭ b. Qays al-Kendī completed the pacification of Azerbaijan; a Muslim garrison and masǰed were established at Ardabīl, and raids were made against the Daylamīs in Gīlān, Gorgān, and Ṭabarestān, but little new territory was occupied.

The main concerns of the Muslims in the Jebāl and Azerbaijan were strategic security and tribute. Direct control was exercised by garrisons at a few key former Sasanian urban administrative centers. The original arrangements of tribute in return for security for the inhabitants and their children and property tend to be schematized in Arabic literature but probably reflect the general circumstances. Tribute is represented as tax in this literature and tended to be raised after rebellions. The countryside was controlled indirectly, if at all, through local authorities who were willing to collaborate. The Muslim advance in the north does not seem to have gone beyond former Sasanian territory, and by the 650s there was a permanent frontier there, from which the Muslim forces engaged in raids and defense against Kurds, Daylamīs, and Khazars.

Yazdegerd had made his way to Eṣṭaḵr and tried to organize a base for resistance in the province of Fārs, where tribute was withheld after the death of ʿOmar. The real conquest of Fārs and the remainder of the Sasanian empire to the east was undertaken by ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĀmer b. Korayz, the governor of Baṣra (29-45/649-55). The Basran army was composed mainly of Arabs of the tribe of Tamīm and the Banū Solaym clan of the ʿAbd-al-Qays. The 1,000 asāwera who had settled at Baṣra and become allies of Tamīm fought in the vanguard. In a single, hard-fought, and sometimes destructive campaign, Persian resistance in Fārs was crushed by 30/650. Dārābīerd was surrendered by its herbaḏ, but Eṣṭaḵr put up stiff resistance, although Yazdegerd had moved to Gūr (Fīrūzābād). The walls of Eṣṭaḵr were destroyed by mangonels, and some 40,000 defenders are said to have perished in the fighting, which left Eṣṭaḵr ruined and eliminated the last significant Sasanian military force and many noble families. Afterward Gūr fell quickly; Kāzerūn and Sīrāf were occupied, and Yazdegerd fled to Kermān, pursued by a Basran force that perished in a snowstorm at Bīmand.

Impecunious and arrogant, with a large retinue to support, Yazdegerd alienated the marzbān of Kermān and left for Sīstān just ahead of another Basran force, which defeated and killed the marzbān in heavy fighting. Having lost the support of the governor of Sīstān by demanding tax arrears, Yazdegerd headed for Marv. Nevertheless, in 30/650-51 or 31/651-52 ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĀmer sent force to Sīstān under Rabīʿ b. Zīād al-Ḥāreṯī, who took Zāleq, Karkūya, Haysūn, and Nāšrūḏ on terms and besieged Zarang, where the marzbān, notables, and Zoroastrian chief priest, surrendered after heavy fighting outside the town. Rabīʿ imposed an annual tribute of 1,000 slave boys bearing 1,000 golden vessels and garrisoned Zarang with his force. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĀmer headed for Khorasan with the main Basran force and sent Moǰāseʿ b. Masʿūd to complete the conquest of Kermān. The fall of the main towns of Sīrǰān, Jīroft, Bam, and Hormūz caused considerable disruption in Kermān, and many people fled to the mountains or Makrān where they were aided by the Kōfīčīs/Qofṣ, or to Sīstān, Khorasan, or overseas. Their abandoned houses and lands were divided among the Arabs, who settled there and paid tithes (ʿošr) on them.

The struggle for Khorasan in 31/651 involved attempts by local officials and notables to secure autonomy, complicated by the intervention of the Hephthalites of Bāḏḡīs and Herat and by the Muslims. Māhūya, the marzbān of Marv, resented Yazdegerd’s financial demands and allied with Nēzak Ṭarḵān, the Hephthalite ruler of Bāḏḡīs, who helped him defeat Yazdegerd’s followers. Yazdegerd was killed by a miller as he fled from Marv, and his son Pērōz took refuge in China. About the same time ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĀmer sent his vanguard under al-Aḥnaf b. Qays with Tamīmī Arabs and 1,000 asāwera via Ṭabasayn, where he reestablished peace terms, conquered Kūhestān (whose people were aided by Hephthalites from Herat), and imposed a tribute of 600,000 dirhams on the province. Ebn ʿĀmer and his lieutenants conquered the districts in the territory of Nīšāpūr, defeated Hephthalites from Herat who came to aid the Iranians, and besieged the capital at Abaršahr for a month. Let into the city by the commander of one of its quarters, the Muslims besieged the marzbān in the citadel until be agreed to a tribute of 700,000 or one million dirhams for the entire province. Afterward local notables arranged terms at Nasā for 300,000 dirhams and at Abīvard for 400,000 dirhams, while Saraḵs was taken by force. The kanārang or marzbān of Ṭūs arranged to pay a tribute of 600,000 dirhams.

Ebn ʿĀmer dealt with the Hephthalites next, sending a force against Herat, where the ruler agreed to a tribute of one million dirhams for Herat, Bāḏḡīs, and Pūšang. Māhūya at Marv then secured peace for a tribute of one million dirhams or one million dirhams and 100,000 ǰarīb-measures of wheat and barley and the quartering of Muslims in local houses. From Marv Ebn ʿĀmer sent al-Aḥnaf b. Qays with 5,000 men to invade Ṭoḵārestān in 32/652. His force of 4,000 Arabs and 1,000 Iranian Muslims accepted terms of 300,000 dirhams for the district of Marv-al-rūd from the garrison in the fortress but besieged the town, where the fighting was bloody until the marzbān arranged a tribute of 60,000 or 600,000 dirhams and a mutual defense agreement. With heavy fighting and many casualties, al-Aḥnaf then repelled a force of 30,000 men from Gūzgān, Ṭālaqān, and Fāryāb, plus people from Čaḡānīān, defeated the survivors, and conquered Gūzgān. Taking Ṭālaqān peacefully and Fāryāb by force, he reached the capital at Balḵ, where the people made peace for 400,000 or 700,000 dirhams; he raided Ḵᵛārazm unsuccessfully and rejoined Ebn ʿĀmer. In the winter of 32/653 Ebn ʿĀmer returned to Baṣra, leaving 4,000 men to hold Marv.

Ebn ʿĀmer’s campaign brought the border to the Oxus river and imposed tribute in eastern Iran, but he left only small holding forces at Nīšāpūr, Marv, and Zarang. Local officials and notables regarded tribute as a temporary expedient to secure their own positions, sometimes, against local rivals, with Muslim military backing and may have tried to play off the Muslims against the Hephthalites. Led by Qāren and an army of 40,000 men, who were supported by the people of Kūhestān, Herat, and Bāḏḡīs, they took advantage of Ebn ʿĀmer’s departure with most of his army to withhold tribute. The Muslims were driven out of Nīšāpūr, and Nēzak took Balḵ. The garrison at Marv survived until 33/653-54, when Ebn ʿĀmer sent Ebn Ḵāzem, who defeated and killed or captured Qāren. The same year the people of Zarang expelled the Muslim garrison, and Ebn ʿĀmer sent ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān b. Samora, who besieged the marzbān, doubled the tribute, and campaigned eastward with a force of 6,000 men, taking the region from Roḵḵāǰ to Zamīndāvar, Bost, and Zābol by 35/656.

While the Muslims were preoccupied with their own conduct during the first civil war (35-41/656-61), most of Iran slipped out of their control, and there may have been restoration attempts by members of the Sasanian royal family in Ṭoḵārestān and Nīšāpūr. With tribute turning into taxes, the reestablishment of Muslim control combined reconquest with the suppression of revolt against the governors and protégés of the Islamic state. The Hephthalites of Bāḏḡīs, Herat, and Pūšang withheld tribute, as did Nīšāpūr; the people of Zarang overthrew their Muslim garrison, while Arab Bedouins raided the towns of Sīstān on their own. ʿAlī’s instructions for local notables to turn over their tribute to Māhūya at Marv in 36/656-57 provoked a rebellion against the latter in eastern Khorasan that was not suppressed until after ʿAlī’s death. After Ṣeffīn, when ʿAlī was busy with Kharijite revolts in Iraq and Fārs, widespread tax revolt broke out in the Jebāl, Fārs, and Kermān in 39/659; the tax collectors were driven out, and Zīād b. Abīhi was sent to suppress it. The rebels at Eṣṭaḵr were crushed, and Zīād pacified Fārs and Kermān. ʿAlī also managed to send a force that retook Nīšāpūr.

Eastern Iran was reconquered under Moʿāwīa. Campaigns reopened in 41/661 when Ebn ʿĀmer again became governor of Baṣra and its eastern dependencies and sent ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān b. Samora, who reconquered Sīstān, retook Zarang, and attacked the Zonbīl, or king, of Zābolestān, retaking Bost and al-Roḵḵaǰ and entering Kabul after a siege. Al-Mohallab attacked the Qofīčīs and marched through Baluchistan toward Sind. But after Ebn Samora was dismissed in 44/664, the Zonbīl resisted Muslim control until about 53/673, when he agreed to pay a tribute of one million dirhams. Ebn ʿĀmer’s lieutenants also pacified eastern Khorasan, destroyed the Buddhist temple of Nawbahār at Balḵ and retook that city, and collected tribute from Herat, Pūšang, and Bāḏḡīs again in 43/663. Zīād, who succeeded Ebn ʿĀmer at Baṣra in 45/665, reorganized and consolidated Muslim government in Khorasan; in 47/667 his governor raided Ḡūr, taking captives and booty. In 51/671 Zīād settled a permanent garrison of 50,000 Arabs of Tamīm and Bakr from Baṣra and Kūfa at Marv, which became the main center for defense and expansion on the northeastern frontier. Āmol was raided in 53/673, but an attack on Ṭabarestān was turned back with heavy Muslim losses. Raids across the Oxus began in 54/674, when ʿObaydallāh b. Zīād, governor of Khorasan, devastated the Bukhara oasis, took Rāmetīn and Paykand, defeated a Turkish relieving army, and imposed a tribute of one million dirhams on Bukhara. The next governor of Khorasan, Saʿīd b. ʿOṯmān, crossed the Oxus in 56/676, defeated an army of Soghdians, Turks, and people from Keš and Nasaf, entered Bukhara and raided Samarkand with Bukharan allies. The citadel of Samarkand surrendered after a hard-fought three-day siege. Saʿīd imposed a tribute of 700,000 dirhams, took forty or eighty noble youths as hostages, and then took Termeḏ peacefully. Salm b. Zīād also campaigned beyond the Oxus under Yazīd I (61-64/680-83), when several thousand more Arabs of Azd were settled at Marv. Salm is said to have returned to Bukhara and Samarkand, fought the Soghdians, and imposed a tribute of 400,000 dirhams on Ḵᵛārazm. But the army his brother Yazīd led against the Zonbīl from Sīstān in 61/681 was defeated with heavy losses.

The outbreak of the second Muslim civil war at Moʿāwīa’s death in 61/680 ended expansion in the east for twenty-five years, and after the death of Yazīd in 64/683 order collapsed in Khorasan and Sīstān. Arab tribes fought among themselves; Mūsā b. ʿAbdallāh b. Ḵāzem established a rebel Arab enclave at Termeḏ, the rulers of Central Asia withheld tribute, Hephthalites raided Khorasan, and the Zonbīl attacked Sīstān but was defeated and killed in 661/685. From 72/691 the governors of ʿAbd-al-Malek (65-86/685-705) reestablished order in Khorasan and Sīstān, but the new Zonbīl turned back one Muslim army in 74/693-94 and massacred another in 78/697. In 79/699 Ebn al-Ašʿaṯ mounted a systematic campaign to occupy the Zonbīl’s territory with a network of garrisons, officials, and communications but was provoked by al-Ḥaǰǰāǰ’s impatience with his slow progress to rebel and march back with his army to Iraq where he was defeated. Raids across the Oxus were resumed under al-Mohallab (d. 82/702) with little success, although Mūsā was defeated and killed at Termeḏ by 85/704.

Muslim expansion to the east of the Sasanian territory, where they faced local Hephthalite, Soghdian, and Turkish forces, was more difficult. After the collapse of the western Turkish state in the mid-7th century this region was politically fragmented among many small states jealous of their independence, with entrenched local interests, military traditions, and nominal Chinese backing. Rulers such as Nēzak and the Zonbīl defended themselves effectively, paid tribute when forced, and took advantage of Muslim conflicts. Muslim forces were relatively small at first and likely to be outnumbered by local coalitions; although able to impose tribute on separate cities, by leaving the native elite intact they faced communal rebellions. As conditions of a semi-permanent frontier developed in the later 7th century, fighting grew increasingly bitter and destructive, raids produced little more than booty and slaves, while growing Muslim forces concentrated in the east suffered from increasing tribal and factional conflicts. Under al-Walīd I (86-96/705-15), Qotayba b. Moslem, al-Ḥaǰǰāǰ’s governor of Khorasan, began the mass recruitment of local non-Arabs to swell the size of armies for conquest and to offset tribal Arabs in the army, and coopted the fighting ability of native rulers’ forces as allies. Beginning in 86/705 Qotayba made annual campaigns across the Oxus with a Muslim army enlarged with conscripts and mawālī from Khorasan, Nēzak’s forces from Bāḏḡīs, and the dahāqīn of Balḵ. Qotayba took Paykand in 87/706, took Rāmetīn and defeated a Soghdian and Turkish force relieving Bukhara in 88/707, and took Bukhara itself in 90/709; there he imposed a tribute of 200,000 dirhams, quartered a Muslim garrison in the city, and installed Ṭoḡšāda, son of the ḵātūn of Bukhara as a Muslim protégé. That winter Nēzak led the princes of Ṭoḵārestān in rebellion but was defeated, captured, and killed in 91/710. Qotayba forced the Zonbīl to pay tribute in 92/711, took and garrisoned Ḵᵛārazm in 93/712, and used levies from Ḵᵛārazm and Bukhara and a unit of noble Bukharan archers to attack Samarkand, where Ḡūrak surrendered after his Soghdian and Turkish allies were defeated. A Muslim garrison was left in the citadel to collect the tribute. To eliminate the Soghdians and Turks Qotayba took Šāš, invaded Farḡāna, and reached Esfīǰāb by 95/714 but was killed in an army mutiny in Farḡāna after the death of al-Walīd in 96/715.

Qotayba’s method of using local levies and installing garrisons secured Central Asia for about ten years. His successor, Yazīd b. al-Mohallab conquered Gorgān with Khorasanian recruits in 98/717 but was unsuccessful in Ṭabarestān. Muslim control in the east began to relax again under ʿOmar II (99-101/717-20), when the Zonbīl stopped paying tribute, because of factional and tribal conflict among the Muslim ruling elite, the collection of ǰezya from converts complicated by the presence of large numbers of non-Arabs in the army, the desire of the Soghdian princes to avoid paying tribute, and the rise of the powerful Torgeš state among the Turks in the Ili basin in 98/716. In the 720s the Torgeš intervened on behalf of the Soghdians and led a counteroffensive against the Muslims. By 103/722 Saʿīd b. ʿAmr al-Ḥarašī had restored control over Soḡd, but in 106/724 Moslem b. Saʿīd was defeated disastrously by the Torgeš in Farḡāna when the Arabs of Azd in his army deserted, and in 108/726 the Zonbīl annihilated a Muslim army from Sīstān. Asad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qaṣrī was more successful raiding Ḡaṛčestān and Ḡūr in 107/725-26. From 110/728 to 113/731 the Torgeš allied with the Soghdian princes and a descendant of Yazdegerd III called Ḵosrow to drive the Muslims out of Central Asia. The fighting was fierce but indecisive, and the Muslims managed to hold Samarkand. In 113/723 Hešām settled a new garrison of 20,000 Iraqis at Marv and posted the former garrison to defensive posts on the frontier. In 116/734 the garrison of 4,000 men in Gūzgān rebelled under al-Ḥāreṯ b. Sorayǰ of Tamīm; they were joined by the Arab garrison at Marv-al-rūd and by Hephthalites at Gūzgān, Fāryāb, and Ṭālaqān but were defeated by the new garrison from Marv, so al-Ḥāreṯ went to join the Torgeš. In 119/737 the Torgeš defeated the Muslims north of the Oxus, crossed the Oxus, and invaded Khorasan but were defeated by the Arabs and Hephthalites at Kārestān. The Torgeš state collapsed after the death of the khan in 120/738, and by 123/741 Naṣr b. Sayyār, the governor of Khorasan, had reconquered Central Asia as far as Šāš and Farḡāna with an army that included 20,000 Soghdian conscripts. Control of Central Asia was finally secured by the Muslim victory over the Chinese on the Talas river in 133/751.

The Muslim conquest of Iran meant the eclipse of Iranian monarchic traditions except to the extent that these were adopted by Muslim Arab rulers and the loss of political support for Zoroastrians. However, Sasanian soldiers and local notables who defected to the Muslims, possibly as a consequence of local conflicts, secured a position in the new regime. Notables who survived by virtue of agreements they made for tribute during the conquest collected it in their own districts. In the east such tribute arrangements had the effect of establishing protectorates but had to be constantly reimposed. Only the major centers were occupied, and some regions, such as Gīlān, Ṭabarestān, Ḡūr, Zābolestān, Baluchistan, and Makrān, were never permanently controlled. Ṭabarestān was finally conquered under al-Manṣūr by 144/761. The conquest had the effect of driving west Iranians eastward as refugees or of bringing them there as part of the Muslim forces, thus establishing the roots of Persian culture in eastern Iran. East Iranians were taken west as captives to Iraq, Syria, and Arabia, and as Muslims Iranians dispersed throughout the Islamic Empire as far as North Africa.

The conquest also brought Muslim Arab settlers to Iran, initially as garrisons to ensure the payment of tribute, and tended to concentrate them in frontier regions. Because the conquest of most of Iran turned out to be permanent, Islam eventually spread among Iranians, and Arabic became the language of religion, literature, and science in Iran. In this respect the Muslim Arab conquest marks a major turning point in the history of Iran.

ʿARAB iii. Arab settlements in Iran

Arab settlements in Iran proliferated after the wars of conquest that destroyed the Sasanian empire. Though it is difficult to trace accurately their extent and development, they certainly were critical in making the effects of the conquest long term rather than transient and in facilitating the symbiosis of Iranian and Arab cultures within a mutual Islamic context.

The history of Arab colonization in Iran (understood here to be equivalent to the territorial limits of the Sasanian empire) has been clouded to a great degree by the inherent biases and limitations of the sources and three fundamental misconceptions arising from them. First of all, the term “Arabs” did not denote only the desert tribesmen and peoples of the remoter areas of the Arabian peninsula. It must also be understood to include a number of Arabic-speaking sedentary or semi-nomadic people living within or in near proximity to the two major pre-Islamic empires of the Middle East. Second, this Arab presence in Iran clearly did not begin with the Arab destruction of the Sasanian empire. For centuries, Iranian rulers had maintained contacts with Arabs outside their borders, dealt with Arab subjects and client states in Iraq, and settled Arab tribesmen in various parts of the Iranian plateau. Third, it follows that the “Arab” conquests and settlements were by no means the exclusive work of Arabs from the Ḥeǰāz and the tribesmen of inner Arabia. The Arab infiltration into Iran began before the Muslim conquests and continued as a result of the joint exertions of the civilized Arabs (ahl al-madar) as well is the desert Arabs (ahl al-wabar). Unfortunately, some modern authorities have exceeded even the traditional sources in exaggerating the role of the latter and minimizing the role of the former in the inspiration, conduct, and exploitation of the Arab-Muslim conquests.

Just as these conquests differed in nature and effect from region to region, the Arab settlements in Iran varied greatly from one area to another. Some parts of Iran took so long to subjugate and control (Daylam, Ṭabarestān, the Hephthalite principalities on the eastern periphery of Iran) that the Arab, as opposed to Muslim, settlement in them was negligible and need not be considered here. The situation in Iraq (used here to denote the area from Mosul to Baṣra) was fundamentally different from that found on the Iranian plateau. Beyond that, there were significant differences in the cases of western Iran (the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Media), southern Iran (Fārs, Kermān, and Sīstān), and eastern Iran (greater Khorasan and Transoxiana).

Iraq. In the Iraqi zone of settlement, the ethnic Iranians constituted only a minority of the existing population and seem to have been largely confined to a narrow social elite. A substantial Arab presence before the conquest included the Christian Taḡleb tribes in the environs of Hatra in the north, a series of tribes (Tanūḵ, Kenda, Ṭayy and Šaybān) around Ḥīra in central Iraq, and still other tribes (ʿEǰl, Tamīm, ʿAbd al-Qays) near Obolla in the south. There were also tribesmen of Bakr b. Wāʾel and Tamīm in Ḵūzestān and Fārs prior to the arrival of the Arab Muslim armies. This Arab population was anything but homogeneous: Some were clearly sedentary while others were nomadic; some fought on behalf of the Sasanians (Taḡleb, Eyād) while others (Lakhmid notables, Šaybān, Bakr b. Wāʾel) began struggling against the Sasanians after the destruction of the Lakhmid vassal state and had already won a celebrated, if limited, victory at Ḏū Qār (ca. 604?). Some local Arabs led by al-Moṯannā b. Ḥāreṯa al-Šaybānī helped to direct the attention of the nascent Muslim state towards Iran by converting to Islam and negotiating with Medina for support in their anti-Sasanian moves. During the wars of conquest, the fighting in Iraq was the most intense and sustained of any of the campaigns on the eastern front. As a result, most of Iraq was taken by conquest and therefore differed in legal status from much of the Iranian plateau (where numerous areas arranged treaties of capitulation).

The rich agricultural lands of Iraq made it a choice area for Arab settlement after the Sasanian collapse. In fact, the desire to wrest these lands from the Iranian aristocracy may have provided a prime motive for the aggressiveness of the local Arabs. Accounts of this early period of the conquests often contrast the “poverty” of the Arabs with the riches of the Iranians, and the major Iranian landlords are almost invariably said to have been killed or dispossessed and expelled. In the immediate wake of the Arab-Muslim victories, many of the Arabs attempted to seize lands for themselves; throughout the period of the conquests the term “emigrant” (mohāǰer) was used almost synonymously with “warrior.” Caliph ʿOmar (13-23/634-44) discouraged such excesses. Even though the region was taken by conquest, the people were generally granted protected (ḏemm ī) status and not enslaved; steps were taken to keep peasants on the land, and the state, rather than the soldiers, took title to as much of it as possible. To prevent the Arabs from dispersing to private estates, ʿOmar ordered them to congregate in new camp cities or “emporiums” (qayrawān) and paid them stipends from the state treasury. The two most famous of these camp cities were Kūfa and Baṣra. By most accounts, Baṣra was founded by ʿOtba b. Ḡazwān in 14/635 and settled primarily by Arabs of the tribes of Tamīm, Bakr, and Azd. Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ founded Kūfa, probably in 17/638. The original Arab population is reported by Balāḏorī to have been 20,000. No one tribe or group of tribes dominated Kūfa, but in contrast to Baṣra it was home to a high proportion of companions of the Prophet Moḥammad (i.e., Hejazi Arabs). Within a generation Kūfa reportedly had 80,000 households (with 60,000 soldiers) and Baṣra had 120,000 households (80,000 soldiers), representing total populations of perhaps, 300,000 and 500,000 respectively. Since it is almost inconceivable that so many people could have migrated from Arabia, they must have included many migrants from the Iraqi countryside.

In any case, the most striking feature of Arab settlement in Iraq was the concentration of large numbers of Arabs in a few urban centers. Large Arab garrisons were also established at Ḥadīṯa and Mosul, but they may have been substantially reduced or replaced by non-Arab “clients” (mawāl ī); it is also possible that the importance of Mosul as a third camp city in Iraq has been neglected in the extant sources. Much later, the Omayyad governor Ḥaǰǰāǰ b. Yūsof founded yet another city, Wāseṭ, in the heart of the Sawād and garrisoned a number of his Syrian troops there. From almost the beginning of the conquests, the Arabs were joined by segments of the local population, especially members of the Iranian cavalry ( asāwera and small landholders ( dehqān s), who converted to Islam and accepted the status of mawālī, or “clients” of Arab tribes to hold on to their property or position. It was not long before they too began to congregate in the new cities. These trends, along with the destruction of the local Iranian aristocracy and the presence of a substantial Semitic population, may explain why the Arab cultural influence in Iraq remained relatively undiluted and the area eventually ceased to be “Iranian” in any meaningful sense of the term.

Northern Iran. Information about Arab colonization in northwestern Iran is very sketchy, but the general pattern is clear. After the battle of Nehāvand, some Arab troops, mostly from Kūfa and apparently on their own initiative, fanned out through Azerbaijan. They left behind small colonies of troops and tax officials (usually numbering only a few hundred men) at a number of towns, including Ḥolwān, Dīnavar, Ray, Hamadān, Qazvīn, and Ardabīl. Other troops pushed into Armenia and the Caucasian provinces and established garrisons at towns such as Dabīl. The closest parallels to the Iraqi camp cities were the large garrisons at Isfahan (primarily in the suburb of Jayy), Barḏaʿa, Qālīqala, where as many as 8,000 troops were maintained to prevent the territory from being retaken by the Byzantines, and Bāb al-Abwāb (Darband), where some 24,000 Syrian troops were reportedly stationed to resist Khazar invasions. Many of these troops may have eventually returned to their homes, but in the case of some of the smaller garrisons the sources explicitly state that the Arabs were given grants of land (and/or pensions from the treasury), built homes and mosques, and settled down on a permanent basis in the area (see, e.g., Balāḏorī, Fotūḥ, pp. 197-98, 322, 329).

Since this part of Iran included many groups of nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes (Kurds, Daylamites, Khazars), the central government also often encouraged groups of nomadic rather than sedentary Arabs to migrate there, in order to play off one tribe group against another. As late as the eighth century, the ʿAbbasids attempted to strengthen their hold on the region by encouraging a new influx of Arab colonists from Baṣra as rivals to the earlier settlers (see Yaʿqūbī, II, p. 446). While this policy was not particularly successful, it may help explain the special importance of pastoralism in the development of west Iranian society and history.

In addition to this “official” form of colonization, there was also a great deal of important but apparently unauthorized settlement by land-hungry individuals or tribes which was facilitated by the relative weakness (or disinterest) of the central government in the area. Balāḏorī (Fotūḥ, p. 329) notes that the families of Arabs who had settled in Azerbaijan (presumably in the military colonies) were eager to move there. When they arrived, they attempted to seize landed estates for themselves. In some cases, they purchased land; more often, the Iranian villagers gave up title to their lands and became the tenants of the Arab families in the hope of obtaining protection from other invaders or avoiding exploitation by the government’s tax agents. Various Arab tribal families are thus known to have come into control of lands or “castles” around Dastabā, Karaǰ, Hamadān, Māḏarān, Marand, Urmia, Narīz, Tabrīz, Barza, Sarāt, and Isfahan. One result of this phenomenon was the appearance of a host of virtually autonomous petty dynasties founded by Arab colonists, such as the families of Rawwād al-Azdī (Tabrīz), Abū Dolaf al-ʿEǰlī (near Hamadān), Baʿīṯ b. Ḥalbas al-Rabaʿī (Marand), and Abū Dolaf al-Šaybānī (Naḵǰavān).

As a dependency of the politically turbulent city of Kūfa this portion of Iran was also settled by a number of political dissidents and their families. The best documented example of this is the city of Qom, which was extensively settled by pro-ʿAlid Arabs from the tribe of Ašʿar and Maḏheǰ as well as various Talebid notables following the failure of al-Moḵtār’s revolt in Kūfa. In addition to these pro-Shiʿite groups, some Kharijite tribesmen from the Jazīra also took refuge in Azerbaijan. Their main stronghold seems to have been in the area of Baylaqān. There are also reports of tribesmen and townsmen fleeing from Iraq to Azerbaijan to escape taxation and misgovernment; these groups tended to roam the mountains and countryside, where they caused considerable turmoil.

Though it is difficult to estimate the size of the Arab population in western Iran, it was probably small and was dispersed irregularly throughout the region, with no significant concentrations except perhaps the garrison at Darband and the settlements around Qom and Isfahan. Under such circumstances, the Arabs assimilated Iranian culture fairly rapidly (for example, speaking Persian instead of Arabic), but they preserved their separate ethnic identity. When Yaʿqūbī (Boldān, pp. 269f.) visited the region, he reported finding such Arab communities in Saymara, Ḥolwān, Dīnavar, Qazvīn, Nehāvand, Karaǰ, Qom, Ray, and especially Isfahan (where Arabs retained their tribal affiliations with Ṯaqīf, Tamīm, Żabba, Ḵozāʿa, Ḥanīfa, and ʿAbd-al-Qays).

Islamization, the most obvious aspect of the Arab cultural impact on the Iranian population, seems to have developed somewhat differently in western Iran than in other areas of the plateau, perhaps because of the rather “missionary” oriented attitudes of the Kufans. Iranian notables in several places converted in order to avoid the indignity of paying the poll tax from which they had previously been exempt. The people of Qom originally harassed Arab Muslim worshipers there, but were soon won over to Islam themselves. Ašʿaṯ b. Qays is supposed to have made a register of the Arabs in Azerbaijan and ordered them to proselytize the Iranians. Abū Noʿaym al-Eṣbahānī, (Dekr aḵbār Eṣbahān, ed. S. Dedering, Leiden, 1934, I, p. 75) reports that Arabs migrated to Isfahan to teach the “people” (presumably not just the Arabs) about religious duties and the traditions of the Prophet. Some reports allege that by the time of ʿAlī’s caliphate, “most” of the population of Ardabīl and Qazvīn had become Muslim (Balāḏorī, Fotūḥ, p. 328). It is tempting to assume (but very difficult to prove) that the significant proto-Shiʿite presence in western Iran is not unrelated to the subsequent strength of Shiʿite Islam in this region.

Southern Iran. The situation in southern Iran was not dissimilar to that in the northwest except that Basran rather than Kufan troops provided the balk of the colonists. As in all other cases, the initial settlements took the form of military garrisons. One of the first and most important of these was Tawwaǰ (Tavvaz), settled after its conquest by the ʿAbd-al-Qays and other tribes from the Gulf area (Ṭabarī, I, pp. 2694-95; Ebn al-Balḵī, p. 135; Balāḏorī, Fotūḥ, p. 386). Other garrisons were probably maintained at Eṣṭaḵr, Shiraz, Kermān, Bost, and Zaranǰ. This form of settlement was again followed by other types of colonization. Some Arab families took the

opportunity to gain control of private estates. One family from the tribe of Tamīm is known to have held land and “castles” in the environs of Fasā. Balāḏorī (Fotūḥ, p. 392) reports that other Arabs took possession of the homes and lands of Zoroastrians who had fled Kermān and became peasants there. There was also an influx of nomadic tribesmen, described as Kharijites or impoverished marauders (ṣaʿālīk) into the more remote areas, especially in Sīstān. The central government often had more trouble controlling these groups than in governing the local population. Perhaps because of Sīstān was remote and much of the Arab population was heterodox, these Arabs seem to have been absorbed into the local population fairly quickly and to have virtually disappeared as a distinct ethnic community by the beginning of the fourth/tenth century.

Eastern Iran. Whereas Arab settlement in western and southern Iran tended to be relatively small, scattered, sporadic and unorganized, the colonization of eastern Iran was both extensive and systematic. Tribesmen of Bakr b. Wāʾel were established in Qohestān and garrisons of troops were certainly quartered at Nīšāpūr and Marv (and probably Herat and Balḵ) following the campaigns of ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĀmer. Later, garrisons numbering from a few hundred to four or five thousand men were maintained in many towns on a more or less permanent basis. (These, however, were not necessarily purely Arab in composition: Balāḏorī, Fotūḥ, p. 407, states that the forces of Aḥnaf b. Qays in Ṭoḵārestān comprised 1,000 mawālī as well as 4,000 Arabs.) These early colonists were soon joined by successive and ever larger waves of new troops. Unlike the independent settlers in western Iran, these new arrivals in Khorasan had the backing of the government for their colonization of the area. This policy can be explained in part as an effort to relieve the surplus population pressures (and to get rid of political troublemakers) in the Iraqi camp cities, and also as a means of defending the Khorasani frontier and dealing with remaining pockets of fierce resistance to the Arabs in areas such as Bāḏḡīs. At least as early as 45/665 the governor ʿOmayr b. Aḥmar had encouraged Arabs to settle in Marv. In 51/671, the governor Rabīʿ b. Zīād is said to have sent 50,000 Kufans and Basrans with their families to settle in Khorasan. Ten years later, several thousand more Arabs, mostly Azdī tribesmen, were posted to Marv by Salm b. Zīād. In 112/730 Jonayd b. ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān sent 20,000 Arabs (half from Baṣra and half from Kūfa) to Khorasan. At the time of Qotayba b. Moslem’s governorship (1st/early 8th cent.) there were 40,000 Basran, 7,000 Kufan, and 7,000 non-Arab Muslim troops in Khorasan, the Arabs coming from the tribes of Bakr, Tamīm, ʿAbd-al-Qays, and Azd (Balʿamī, Chronique IV, p. 211; Balāḏorī, Fotūḥ, p. 423). Although the evidence is open to different interpretations, it suggests that throughout most of the Omayyad period there were frequent movements of new Arab soldiers and colonists to Khorasan and that the Omayyads tried to keep a force of 40,000 to 50,000 Arab warriors (moqātela) in Khorasan at all times. Because of the distance from Iraq and the attractiveness of the country, large numbers of these soldiers acquired lands in villages throughout Khorasan, married local women or brought their families from Iraq, and settled permanently in the province. The repeated infusions of fresh troops were intended to replace these losses and at the same time bolster the authority of the central government. This in turn implies that the Arab population in Khorasan must have been huge in comparison to that in western Iran. Even if the primary component of the Arab colony in Khorasan was limited to just the 50,000 families settled there by Rabīʿ b. Zīād, the total Arab population would have to be estimated at close to a quarter of a million people.

One consequence of this influx of large numbers of Arabs into Khorasan was an outbreak of “tribal” rivalries (ʿaṣabīya) involving antagonistic competition for territory and influence between the earlier colonists, many of whom had become assimilated to the Iranian population, and the new arrivals. It is possible that the decision of Qotayba b. Moslem to build up an army of Arab and Iranian troops and to invade Transoxiana may have been motivated in part by the desire to defuse this situation by encouraging cooperation between the Arabs and their Iranian counterparts, reducing the need for new levies of soldiers from Iraq, and opening up new areas for settlement. One certain result of Qotayba’s campaign was the establishment of new Arab colonies in Transoxiana in the areas as remote as Farḡāna and Šāš. The problem of conflict between the established colonists and the new arrivals never disappeared and was one factor contributing to the eventual collapse of the Omayyad government in Khorasan at the time of the ʿAbbasid revolution.

Exactly where in Khorasan such large numbers of Arabs chose to settle remains controversial. M. A. Shaban (The Abbasid Revolution, Cambridge, 1970) has argued that the settlers were at first exclusively and always predominantly concentrated in the Marv oasis. There is no doubt that Marv was required by its treaty of capitulation to provide quarters for Arab forces, that it was always the site of the largest Arab military garrison in Khorasan, and that large numbers of Arabs settled in the surrounding villages but there is solid evidence that the Arab population was in fact diffused throughout the entire province. Of necessity there were Arab garrisons in cities other than Marv immediately after the conquest. Ebn ʿĀmer himself is known to have stayed in Nīšāpūr and to have built a mosque there (presumably for use by Arab residents), and there was also a garrison maintained from an early date at Ḵom near Balḵ. Because of frequent rebellions in outlying areas, these garrisons soon appeared in virtually every town of any consequence in Khorasan: Among the known garrisons, for example, were those of Būšanǰ, Ṭalaqān, Jūzǰān, Āmol, Marv-al-rūd, Termeḏ, and Nasā. From incidental details mentioned in the historical sources and other information (such as accounts of burial places of notable religious traditionists), it can be deduced that many of the warriors established permanent homes in these places, as well as in Marv. In the important case of the Arab families sent to Khorasan by Rabīʿ b. Zīād, Balāḏorī explicitly noted that they were settled in numerous colonies on the Iranian side of the Oxus, not just in Marv. Consequently, it is not surprising that Yaʿqūbī (Boldān, p. 280) reported finding groups of Arabs, still claiming tribal affiliation with Ṭayy, Tamīm, Azd, and others in most towns in Khorasan and much of Transoxiana. Over time, many of these outlying localities came to be dominated by virtually autonomous Arab leaders, often with backing from the Iranian population, while support for the central government was limited more and more to the recently arrived moqātela in the garrisons of Marv and Nīšāpūr. This, too, was a factor in the ʿAbbasid revolution which, contrary to Shaban’s arguments, involved a reaction of these peripheral areas and their leaders against the forces of the central government in Marv.

The original Khorasani response to the Arab presence was one of indifference, probably inspired by the reasonable assumption that the Arabs, like most barbarian invaders, would soon go away. When that did not happen, and the Arabs insisted on payment of taxes and tribute as specified at the time of the conquests, indifference changed to hostility and there were revolts in many part of Khorasan (in fact, all over the Iranian plateau). Ironically, these revolts probably contributed to the decision to encourage large scale emigration to Khorasan. The basic cause of friction, however, was economic rather than ethnic, stemming from opposition to taxation rather than hatred of Arabs. The Arab settlers and the Iranians soon found that they had many common interests and concerns.

In this respect Arab settlement in Khorasan constituted an intermediate pattern between those found in Iraq and in western Iran: As in Iraq, the numbers of Arabs involved were quite large, but instead of being concentrated in a few urban camp cities they were, as in western Iran, dispersed throughout the area. They relied heavily on the Iranian aristocracy, which had survived largely intact in Khorasan, to assist them in matters of taxation and administration and soon came to accept the Sasanian example of statecraft, taught to them by the Iranian dehqāns, as normative. Because of the common dangers on the Khorasani frontier, Iranians and Arabs overcame their initial antipathy and cooperated extensively in military operations. The Arab population in Khorasan was not comprised of hordes of Bedouins from Arabia or just professional warriors. In addition to the military garrisons, the Arabs included merchants, artisans, religious scholars, landlords, peasants, beggars, vagabonds, and bandits. It was natural that in time these groups blended in with their Khorasani counterparts. This development was no doubt facilitated there, as elsewhere, by the process of religious conversion, which is especially difficult to trace in Khorasan but was certainly well underway by the time of the ʿAbbasid revolution. The special circumstances in Khorasan, which integrated Arabs and Iranians into a common social fabric, facilitated the assimilation of Iranian culture by the Arabs (see the classic account in J. Wellhausen, The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall, trans. M. Weir, Calcutta, 1927, pp. 492-97) and the gradual acceptance of much of Arab culture, above all the religion, by their Iranian subjects and peers. It was no accident that this distinctive flowering of Perso-Islamic civilization reached its fullest development in Khorasan.

ʿARAB iv. Arab tribes of Iran

1. General. Since ancient times Iranians and Arabs have lived in neighboring areas. During the Sasanian period several large Arab tribes, including the Tanūk, the Asad, the Nezār, the Bakr, the Tamīm, and the Taḡleb, moved into the Fertile Crescent and established their grazing grounds on the western fringes of the Persian empire (W. Caskel, “al-ʿArab,” EI² I, pp. 528). Further Arab tribes were forcibly moved into the Persian hinterland because of their predatory activities in the Persian Gulf: Šāpūr II (r. A.D. 309-79), after a punitive expedition across the Gulf early in his reign, transplanted several clans of the Taḡleb to Dārzīn (Daharzīn) near Bam, several clans of the ʿAbd-al-Qays and Tamīm to Haǰar (the Kūh-e Hazār region) southeast of Kermān, several clans of the Bakr b. Wāʾel to Kermān, and several clans of the Ḥanẓala to Tavvaz, near present-day Dālakī in Fārs (Ṯaʿālebī, Ḡorar, p. 529). The Lakhmids (q.v.), a powerful Arab dynasty that emerged in Ḥīra, were vassals of the Sasanians, and their nation acted as a shield against incursions from Arabia (see G. Rothenstein, Die Dynastie der Laḫmiden in al-Ḥīra, Berlin, 1899).

Arab victories in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt during the caliphate of ʿOmar (13-23/634-44) precipitated a mass movement of tribes from all parts of the Arabian peninsula to these frontier areas, where booty was plentiful. ʿOṯmān (r. 24-35/644-56) shrewdly harnessed this vast human tide to carry out a series of well-planned campaigns along the coast of North Africa, on the southern reaches of the Byzantine empire, and into the heartland of the already moribund Persian empire. Expeditions were launched from Kūfa into the Caspian provinces and from Baṣra into Khorasan and Sīstān. The surrender of Marv in 31/651 completed the conquest of Sasanian Persia.

The Arabs originally had not planned to settle in their Persian colonies. In the spring they launched new expeditions from their bases in Baṣra and Kūfa to raid regions that had not yet concluded peace treaties with them; in the fall they returned to Iraq with their booty and with treaties guaranteeing the newly subjugated territories’ yearly tribute to the Arab state. Only a garrison of 4,000 would remain behind, quartered in the Marv oasis, to secure the continued loyalty of the inhabitants of northeastern Persia to their new masters. This system broke down during the reign of Moʿāwīa I (r. 41-60/661-80), when an acute population problem in Iraq and growing unrest in the garrison towns of Baṣra and Kūfa led Zīād b. Abīhi, the governor of the eastern provinces, to send some of the excess population of Iraq to Khorasan. Accordingly, the military expedition that reached northeastern Persia in summer, 47/667 remained there, and in 52/672 Zīād relocated some 50,000 Arab families from Baṣra and Kūfa in that area. An additional group of Arab immigrants reached Khorasan in 63/683. Among those transplanted from Iraq were substantial parts of the Tamīm and Qays tribes from the Dīār Możar and of Dīār Bakr, the Azd and ʿAbd-al-Qays tribes, from the Dīār Rabīʿa (M. A. Shaban, Islamic History: A New Interpretation, A.D. 600-750, Cambridge, 1971, pp. 66, 67, 84-88; B. Spuler, “al-ʿArab,” EI² I, pp. 529). According to Balʿamī, when Qotayba b. Moslem, the conqueror of Transoxiana, was governor of Khorasan in the early 80s/700s, the garrison of that province comprised 40,000 warriors from Baṣra and more than 47,000 from Kūfa. The Basrans included 10,000 Tamīm, 10,000 Azd, 7,000 Bakr, and 4,000 ʿAbd-al-Qays (Chronique IV, p. 211).

The settlement of Arab fighting men and their families in Khorasan also furnished the manpower necessary for expansion into Inner Asia. However, the transplantation of clans from all the major tribal groups in Baṣra and Kūfa made it inevitable that the intertribal feuds and rivalries that were undermining the stability of the Omayyad regime would spread to Khorasan. In fact, they were magnified there, and the province quickly became the storm center of the Kingdom. For the authority of the central government was almost nonexistent, and survival meant constant struggle with natural forces, such as snowstorms, to which the Arabs were unaccustomed, as well as with unpacified Iranian and Turkish elements of the local population (cf. J. Wellhausen, The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall, tr. M. G. Weir, Calcutta, 1927, pp. 397-491). It is not surprising that the revolution that toppled the Omayyad dynasty in 132/750 started in Khorasan.

The Arabs who immigrated to Khorasan settled both in the towns and in the countryside. As time passed they gradually intermarried with the local inhabitants, most of whom were Iranians, and shed their cultural identity; most of the Arabs in Abū Moslem’s army spoke Persian (Spuler, EI² I, p. 530).

Although Khorasan remained the principal focus of Arab colonization in Persia during the Omayyad period, Arab settlers established themselves in other Persian provinces is well. During the second Islamic civil war (6l-65/680-84), large groups of nomads from the Ḥanīfa, Tamīm, and ʿAbd-al-Qays tribes crossed the Persian Gulf and occupied some of the richest Basran territories around Ahvāz and in Fārs, and other tribes followed them. But later the Azd and their allies, who had sided with Baṣra, defeated them, and they were forced to retreat into the arid wastes of Kermān and Sīstān (Shaban, Islamic History, pp. 97-98).

By 77/696, Arabs from the tribes of Rabīʿa and ʿEǰl were residing in Hamadān (R. N. Frye, “Hamadhān,” EI² III, pp. 105). The population of Qazvīn seems to have been mainly Arab in the mid-3rd/9th century (A. K. S. Lambton, “Ḳazwīn,” EI² IV, pp. 859). Qom too became a predominantly Arab town: The Banū Asad moved to the Qom region during the revolt of Moḵtār b. Abī ʿObayda (67/687); a branch of the Qays tribe, which formed part of the army of ʿAbd-al- Raḥmān b. Moḥammad b. Ašʿaṯ, sought refuge there when their commander was defeated in the course of his uprising against Ḥaǰǰāǰ (85/704). It was soon joined by a branch or the ʿAnaza, and in 94/712-13, by the Ašʿarīs of Kūfa, who were fleeing persecution because of their Shiʿite beliefs (Ḥasan Qomī, Tārīḵ-e Qom , ed. S. J. Ṭehrānī, Tehran, 1313 Š./1934-35, pp. 38, 240f.; A. A. Faqīhī, Tārīḵ-e maḏhabī-e Qom, Qom, 1350 Š./1971-72, pp. 40-44). Some of the Tamīm established themselves in Jay (today Isfahan; Tārīḵ-e Qom, p. 264). In about 146/763, the Arab governor of Ṭabarestān, Abu’l-ʿAbbās Ṭūsī, settled garrisons of Arab and Iranian Muslims in more than forty towns and strategic locations in the province but most of these were massacred in 166/783 during an uprising led by Vendād Hormozd of the house of Qārenvand (W. Madelung, “The Minor Dynasties of Northern Iran,” in Camb. Hist. Iran IV, pp. 200-202).

During the ʿAbbasid period many more Arabs moved into the eastern caliphate, especially into southern Persia. In the second half of the 4th/10th century a group of the Asad, taking advantage of quarrels under the Buyids, penetrated into Ḵūzestān, where a group of Tamīm had been living, perhaps since pre-Islamic times (Caskel, E I ² I, p. 528). The Buyid ruler ʿAżod-al-dawla (r. 338-72/949-83) is said to have moved some Syrian Arabs to Tavvaz, in western Fārs, where a group of ʿAbd-al-Qays also settled (G. Le Strange, Lands, p. 259; W. Caskel, “ʿAbd-al-Ḳays,” E I ² I, p. 73). Meanwhile, more Arab tribes were crossing the Persian Gulf and establishing themselves on Persia’s southern littoral. Among these, the Moẓaffar occupied an area south of the Šāpūr river, the Zohayr pitched their tents around the port of Sīrāf, and the ʿOmāra took over a stretch of seacoast east of the island of Qays (Le Strange, Lands, pp. 256, 257). Some of the newcomers made their way inland. According to tribal legend, the ancestors of the ʿArab Jabbāra and ʿArab Šaybānī of eastern Fārs moved there during the ʿAbbasid period (P. Oberling, Field notes, 1957). Moreover, by the 4th/10th century most of the population of the town of Māhān, near Kermān, had become Arab (Le Strange, Lands, p. 307).

Following the fall of the ʿAbbasid dynasty, the flow of Arab immigrants into Persia gradually diminished, but it nonetheless continued. In late 929/1522-23, Shah Esmāʿīl Ṣafawī gave lands in Khorasan and Fārs to refugees from the Ottoman empire, including a group of Ḡazālī Arabs (G. Sarwar, History of Shāh Ismāʿīl Ṣafawī, Aligarh, 1939, p. 93). At the end of the 16th century the Kaʿb tribe settled down in Ḵūzestān (J. R. Perry, “The Banū Kaʿb: An Amphibious Brigand State in Khūzistān,” Le monde iranien et l’Islam I, 1971, p. 133). During the succeeding centuries many more Arab tribes moved from southern Iraq to Ḵūzestān; as a result, Ḵūzestān, which until recently was called ʿArabestān, became extensively arabized. The Shaikhs of the Kaʿb tribe and later those of the Moḥaysen were for two centuries the most powerful chieftains of southwestern Persia and enjoyed near-complete independence by playing the Ottomans, the Persians, and the British against one another in a clever game of political intrigue. The last of the great tribal chieftains of Ḵūzestān, Shaikh Ḵaẓʿal of Moḥammara, was forced to surrender his semi-independent realm to Reżā Shah in 1924 (see Perry, “The Banū Kaʿb,” pp. 131-52; J. G. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, ʿOmān, and Central Arabia, Calcutta, 1915, I, pp. 1625-1749; G. N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, London, 1892, II, pp. 322-26; D. N. Wilber, Riza Shah Pahlavi, Hicksville, N.Y., 1975, pp. 86-91, 100, 123, 126).

Recent estimates of the Arabic-speaking population of Iran range from 200,000 (H. H. Vreeland, ed., Iran, New Haven, 1957, p. 44) to 650,000 (S. I. Bruk, Naselenie Peredneĭ Azii, Moscow, 1960, p. 27). According to the November, 1956 census, there were then approximately 380,000 Arabic speakers (J. Behruz, Iran Almanac, Tehran, 1963, p. 555; but Iranian censuses are often unreliable, especially as regards ethnic minorities).

In present-day Iran there are still many families and tribes whose Arab origin can be traced. According to H. L. Rabino, the following Lorī-speaking tribes of the Pīš(-e) Kūh region in Lorestān are of Arab origin: The Selsela group of tribes, the Delfān group, the Sagvand tribe of the Bālā Gerīva group, and the Āzādbaḵt and Kūmānī clans of the ʿAmala (Les tribus du Louristan, Paris, 1916, pp. 12, 15, 19, 27, 28; see also Kayhān, Joḡrāfīā II, pp. 62-67; H. Īzadpanāh, Āṯār-e bāstānī o tārīḵī-e Lorestān II, pp. 182-86, 249-59, 296-99). In the Pošt(-e) Kūh region of Lorestān, the Ṣayfī and Malḵatāvī tribes, which dwell in the baḵš of Mehrān, are said to be of Arab origin, but there is very little information about them (Rabino, Les tribus, p. 42; Razmārā, Joḡrāfīā-ye neẓāmī-e Īrān: Pošt Kūh, Tehran, 1320 Š./1941, p. 20). In the early 1900s, there was a third tribe of Arab origin in the Pošt Kūh, the Gāvīs (Rabino, p. 42), but today only a ruined village by that name remains in the baḵš of Mehrān (Razmārā, Farhang V, p. 392).

J. Malcolm wrote that there are some Arab tribes in Kurdistan and that “several of the principal Kurdish chiefs boast a descent from Arab families (History of Persia, London, 1815, II, p. 207). J. P. Ferrier described the Jāfs of Kurdistan as Arabs (Voyages en Perse, etc., Paris, 1860, p. 13), but B. Nikitine strongly disagrees, arguing that they are Kurds (Les Kurdes, Paris, 1956, p. 172). In his list of the tribes of Kermānšāh, Rabino mentions only one Arab tribe, the Samara, which he describes as a “small group of 100 families of Shiʿite sayye ds which came from Baghdad a little over a century ago and established itself in the plain of Māhīdašt” (“Kermanchah,” Revue du monde musulman 38, March, 1920, p. 36). But place names, such as ʿArabābād, ʿAraboḡlū ʿArabšāh, ʿArabša, ʿArablang and ʿArablū in Kurdistan (Razmārā, Farhang V, p. 297) suggest at least a past association with Arab tribes.

There are not many Arabs in Azerbaijan, although there are more villages with names relating to Arabs than in Kurdistan (see Razmārā, Farhang IV, pp. 329-30). Two tribes of the Šāhsavan tribal confederacy of Mešgīn and Ardabīl have names that suggest Arab descent: The ʿArablū and the Sayyedlar (P. Oberling, The Turkic Tribes of Iranian Azerbaijan, New York, 1961, pp. 18, 24). There is also a small clan of the Qarāpāpāq tribe of western Azerbaijan by the name of ʿArablū (ibid., p. 75). However, all these groups have become thoroughly Turkicized and now speak Āḏarī.

According to H. L. Rabino, a few Arabs were brought to eastern Māzandarān by Āqā Moḥammad Khan Qāǰār (r. 1193-1212/1779-97); they are said to have introduced buffaloes into the province (Māzandarān and Astarābād, London, 1928, p. 13). There are also sayyeds in Gorgān and Fenderesk (ibid., pp. 76, 82).

There are several groups of Arabs in central Persia. In the late 1890s, A. Houtum-Schindler wrote that certain families of Qom and Kāšān call themselves Arabs, “but have now very little Semitic blood” (Eastern Persian Irak, London, 1896, p. 48). In his list of the tribes of the Tehran region (see below) M. Kayhān included six of Arab origin: ʿArab Ḥāǰǰī Āqā Solṭānī (700 families), ʿArab Kotī (600 families), ʿArab Mīšmast (q.v., 200 families), ʿArab Ḥalwāʾī (250 families), ʿArab Ṣaḥnānī (150 families), and ʿArab Kūškalī. These tribes, which spoke Persian, had their summer quarters in the mountains north of Tehran and their winter quarters on the flatlands south of the capital (Joḡrāfīā II, pp. 111-12). Further south, there is a tribe of the Haft Lang branch of the Baḵtīārī tribal confederacy by the name of ʿArab; it has two sections (tīra), Kangarīz and Awlād-e ʿAlī Beg (ibid., p. 73). According to J. M. Jouannin, in the early 1800s there was an Arab tribe by the name of Ardestānī that lived in the Ardestān area, midway between Kāšān and Nāʾīn, and comprised some 6,000 individuals, but the name of this tribe does not appear on any other list of the tribes of central Persia. (See A. Dupré, Voyage en Perse, Paris, 1819, II, pp. 466-67).

Khorasan has a large Arab population. Many Arabs have settled down near Šāhrūd, where the inhabitants are designated as ʿArab o ʿAǰam (Arabs and Iranians). By 1292/1875 they had intermarried so extensively with Iranians and even Turks that the three groups were “undistinguishable in feature and language” (C. M. MacGregor, Narrative of a Journey through the Province of Khorassan, London, 1879, p. 141). This is undoubtedly the tribe which Jouannin called Basṭāmī and which was said to comprise some 12,000 to 15,000 individuals in the early 1800s (Dupré, Voyage II, p. 466).

Further east, there are Arabs in the dehestān of Taḥt-Jolga, west of Nīšāpūr (Razmārā, Farhang IX, pp. 84, 267), and there is a tribe by the name of Īl-e ʿArab in the dehestān of Kandaklī, west of Saraḵs. According to C. E. Yate, the Arabs of Saraḵs were moved there in 1874 (ostensibly from some other area in Khorasan); in the 1890s, they numbered some 150 families (Khurasan and Sistan, London, 1900, p. 34), and in the 1940s, 240 families (K. Gūdarzī, “ʿAšāʾer-e Īrān,” 1327 Š./1948, p. 41). In the 1950s there were still two villages in that district in which Arabic was spoken (Razmārā, Farhang IX, pp. 309, 350).

In addition there are Arabs around both Toršīz (Kašmar) and Torbat-e Jām, most of whom are ʿArab Mīšmast. In the 1890s, the Arabs of Torbat-e Jām totaled some 4,000 families, all of whom made their living from agriculture (Yate, Khurasan and Sistan, pp. 36-37). There are also Arabs in the vicinity of Torbat-e Ḥaydarī, between Toršīz and Torbat-e Jām; according to local tradition, they are the descendents of some 1,000 Arab families that Nāder Shah transplanted to Khorasan. In the 1950s some of them still spoke Arabic (Farhang IX, p. 86).

Further south, a large group of Arabs resides in the vicinity of Tūn (Ferdows). Jouannin called these Arabs Tūnī and estimated their number at upwards to 20,000 (Dupré, Voyage II, p. 466). Lady Sheil called them “Arab-e Reigoonee.” She estimated their number at 7,000 houses and tents and indicated that they spoke Persian (Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia, London, 1856, p. 400). Some Arabs dwell in the dehestān of Zīr Kūh, between Qāyen and the Afghan border; according to Yate, this tribe is an offshoot of the Ḵozayma tribe that was forced to move from Arabia to Khorasan during the reign of Hārūn al-Rašīd (r. 170-93/786-809). One of the leaders of this prosperous tribe, Mīr ʿAlam Khan, became amir of Qāyen towards the end of the 17th century. His son, Mīr Maʿṣūm Khan, is said to have been in the service of Nāder Shah, and his grandson, Mīr ʿAlam Khan II, is claimed to have been the man who blinded Šāḵroḵ, the grandson of Nāder Shah, at Mašhad in 1161-62/1748. During the years that followed, Mīr ʿAlam Khan greatly extended his sway, proclaiming himself amir of Khorasan, but he was defeated and put to flight by Aḥmad Shah Abdālī (A. Golestāna, Moǰmal al-tawārīḵ, ed. M. Rażawī, Tehran, 2356 [1356 Š.]/1977, passim). His descendants continued to serve as amirs of Qāyen for several generations; one of them, Mīr ʿAlī-Akbar Khan, was appointed governor of Sīstān in 1891 (Yate, pp. 65, 66). Lady Sheil estimated the number of Arabs in the Qāyen region at 12,000 houses and tents (Glimpses, p. 400). In the 1330s Š./1950s, Arabic was still spoken in three villages in the area (Razmārā, IX, pp. 227, 345, 418). Finally, most of the inhabitants of the dehestān of ʿArabḵāna (pop. 10,598 in 1951), southwest of Bīrǰand, are Arab. According to Razmārā, these Arabs were moved there from Ḵūzestān by Nāder Shah (ibid., p. 266). In the 1920s they were described as “extremely impoverished,” many of them being employed as coolies in Bīrǰand (W. Ivanov, “Notes on the Ethnology of Khurasan,” The Geographical Journal 67, January-June, 1926, p. 156). In the 1950s Arabic was still spoken in eighteen villages in the dehestān of ʿArabḵāna, and in two villages in the neighboring dehestāns of Nahārǰānāt and Nehbandān (Razmārā, IX, pp. 55, 92, 105, 115, 118, 121, 129, 133, 136, 147, 158, 171, 197, 349, 356, 373, 405).

G. N. Curzon asserted that the Tīmūrī who live in northwestern Afghanistan and in the rural districts (baḵ š) of Jannatābād, Torbat-e Jām, Ṭayyebāt, and Kᵛāf on the Persian side of the Afghan border, are of Arab origin, Tīmūr-e Lang (Tamerlane) having “deported them from their native country in a rage because they had plundered his mother when on a pilgrimage to Mecca” (Persia and the Persian Question I, p. 199). But Yate’s argument that they were Turks whom Tīmūr transplanted from Syria to Balḵ and who later moved to Afghanistan and Khorasan (Khurasan and Sistan, p. 38) seems more plausible.

In Sīstān, the Mīr ʿArab and Sayyed tribes are of Arab origin. In the 1930s, the Mīr ʿArab comprised some 40 families, whereas the Sayyed comprised some 200 families. The Sayyed claim descent from the prophet Moḥammad through his grandson Ḥosayn (H. Field, Contributions to the Anthropology of Iran, Chicago, 1939, pp. 246-47). According to Jouannin, the Sīstānī tribe is of Arab origin (Dupré, Voyage II, p. 466), but this is disputed by H. W. Bellew (From the Indus to the Tigris, London, 1874, p. 248).

There are numerous Arab tribes in Ḵūzestān, all of which still speak Arabic. The most important ones at the turn of the century included: (1) north of Ahvāz: the Āl-e Kaṯīr tribe between the Karḵa river and the Šoṭayṭ branch of the Kārūn river (8,000 people, according to J. G. Lorimer, Gazetteer II, pp. 121, 994-97); the Banū Lām tribe between the Iraqi border and the Karḵa river south of Šūš (ca. 45,000 people; pp. 121, 1081-85); the ʿAbd-al-Ḵān tribe around Ḵayrābād on the Karḵa river, some 70 km northwest of Ahvāz (no number indicated); the Salāmāt tribe east of the Gargar river between Haddām and Āb-e Gonǰī (1,600; pp. 123, 1652-53); the Bayt-e Saʿd tribe on both banks of the Dez river above the territory of the ʿAnāfeǰa, around Mīānāb and on the left bank of the Gargar river (14,100; p. 123); the ʿAnāfeǰa tribe on the lower course of the Šoṭayṭ, on the banks of the Dez river close to its mouth and on the right bank of the Kārūn river (5,000; pp. 71-73, 119); the Ḥamayd tribe in an area stretching from the Kārūn river to Raḡeyva, south of the territory of the ʿAnāfeǰa (6,000; pp. 120, 620-21); the Āl-e Bū Rawāya tribe around Ḡoreyba on the Karḵa river, some 35 km northwest of Ahvāz (700; p. 122); the Banū Ṭorof tribe on the southern loop of the Karḵa river, as well as most of the marshy area watered by the Karḵa west of Kūt Nahr Hāšem (20,000; pp. 124, 1909-11); the ʿEkreš tribe between Howayza and Ahvāz, and around Sayyed ʿAbbās and Zovīya on the Kārūn river, north of Ahvāz (5,000; pp. 120, 758-59); the Ḥardān tribe around Dūb-e Ḥardān and Čārṭāq, west of Ahvāz, and on the right bank of the Kārūn river, north of that city (2,500; pp. 120, 637-38); and the Zarqān tribe around Garāna and Ṯedīn, northeast of Ahvāz, and in a tract east of Ways (1,500; pp. 124, 1937-38). (2) South of Ahvāz: the Banū Sāla tribe in a twenty-mile-long territory stretching from Howayza to Šayḵ Moḥammad, southwest of Ahvāz, and part of the Karḵa-Tigris marshland (15,000; pp. 123, 1654-55); the Bāvīya tribe in the dehestān of Bāvī, south of Ahvāz (20,000; II, pp. 119, 293-96), the Banū Tamīm tribe in an area from Howayza to Ahvāz and toward the south as far as Qāǰārīya on the Kārūn river (10,000; pp. 123, 1858); the Āl Ḵamīs tribe in an area southwest of Rāmhormoz (2,500; pp. 121, 1017-18); the Moḥaysen tribe in a large area between the Iraqi border and the Kārūn river, from the territory of the Banū Tamīm in the north all the way to the Šaṭṭ al-ʿArab and the northwestern half of Ābādān island in the south (12,000; pp. 122, 1249-53); the Banū Kaʿb tribe in a large area stretching from the Šaṭṭ al-ʿArab and the southeastern half of Ābādān island to Bandar Maʿšūr (55,000; pp. 121, 947-62); the Šarīfāt tribe along the left bank of the Jarrāḥī river near Ḵalafābād (1,000; pp. 123, 1757); and the Qanawātī tribe around Bandar Maʿšūr and Hendīān to the east of the territory of the Banū Kaʿb (5,250; p. 122). (For additional information on the tribes of Ḵūzestān, see Field, Contributions, pp. 184-99; J. Qāʾem-maqāmī, “ʿAšāyer-e Ḵūzestān,” Yādgār 1, 1323-24 Š./1945, no. 7, pp. 18-24, no. 10, pp. 19-26; 2, 1324-25 Š./1946, no. 4, pp. 58-68, no. 8, pp. 22-28; 3, 1325-26 Š./1947, no. 1, pp. 71-74, no. 3, pp. 40-47, no. 5, pp. 8-12, no. 9, pp. 10-12, no. 10, pp. 26-37; M. Żarrabī, “Ṭawāyef-e Mīānāb,” FIZ 10, 1341 Š./1962-63, pp. 394-407; 11, 1342 Š./1963-64, pp. 281-92; Military Report on Arabistan, Area no. 13, Simla, 1924; Great Britain, Naval Intelligence Division, Persia, Oxford, 1945, pp. 379-80.) According to Kayhān, (Joḡrāfīā II, pp. 90-92), a large part of the urban population of Ḵūzestān is also Arab.

There are Arab tribes all along Iran’s southern littoral; the most important are the Domūḵ, Roʾūsa, ʿAmrānī, ʿObaydelī, Āl-e Ḥaram, Āl-e ʿAlī, Marzūqī, and Qawāsīm. The Domūḵ, a branch of the Dawāsīr tribe of Bahrain, inhabit seven villages in the dehestān of Čāh Kūtāh between Borāzǰān and Būšehr. In the early 1900s, they comprised some 150 households (Lorimer, Gazetteer II, pp. 351, 383-88). The Roʾūsa inhabit fourteen villages in an area extending from 11 km northwest of Ḵormūǰ to beyond the mouth of the Mūnd river. In the early 1900s, they numbered some 1,500 individuals (ibid., pp. 369-77). The ʿAmrānī live in the village of Bardestān, northeast of Dayyer, and in four other villages northwest of Bardestān; they are said to have emigrated from the neighborhood of Sūq-al-šoyūḵ, in Iraq. In the early 1900s, they numbered some 600 individuals (ibid., pp. 369-78). The ʿObaydelī live in the seaport of Čīrū and on Hendarābī island, in the dehestān of ʿObaydelī on the Šībkūh coast. They claim to be a branch of the Aḥmada tribe and to be related to the ʿAbda Šammar tribe of Naǰd. In the early 1900s, they numbered some 1,500 individuals (ibid., pp. 355, 1784). The Āl-e Ḥaram settled down around Bīdḵūn, on the Šībkūh coast, long ago and built the seaport of ʿAsalūya; in the early 1900s, they numbered some 2,000 individuals and dwelled mostly in ʿAsalūya and nearby Nāyband. They claim to be a branch of a tribe called Rażīya and to have come from the vicinity of Mecca in the 18th century, but it is more likely that, like most of their Arab neighbors, they emigrated from ʿOmān (ibid., pp. 177-78, 1293-94, 1783, 1786, 1787; Fasāʾī, II, pp. 291-92, 330-31). The Āl-e ʿAlī, a branch of the Āl-e ʿAlī tribe of ʿOmān, live in the small seaports of Tāvūna, Čārak, and Dovvān, and on Qays island, on the Šībkūh coast west of Lenga. In the early 1900s, they numbered some 3,500 individuals (ibid., pp. 62, 354-55, 493, 1782). The Marzūqī live in the small seaports of Moḡū, Ḥasīna, Kondorān, and Bostāna, in the dehestān of Marzūqī west of Lenga; they claim to be a branch of the ʿAǰmān tribe of Naǰd. In the early 1900s, they numbered some 1,800 individuals (ibid., pp. 1248-49, 1783). The Qawāsem, a branch of the Qawāsem tribe of ʿOmān, live in the small seaports of Bostāna and Dovvān, in the dehestān of Marzūqī (ibid., pp. 493, 1091, 1548; Fasāʾī, II, p. 332). Many Banū Kaʿb and Banū Tamīm have also settled down on the north shore of the Persian Gulf; there are Banū Kaʿb in the dehestāns of Līrāvī, Rūd-Ḥella, and Angālī (ibid., pp. 81, 11O4, 1105, 1595, 1598) and Banū Tamīm in the dehestāns of Ḥayāt Dāwūd, Šabānkāra, Rūd-Ḥella, and Angālī (ibid., pp. 81, 82, 699, 701, 1122, 1595-98, 1688-90), and there is a dehestān by the name of Tamīm midway between Būšehr and Bandar ʿAbbās (Razmārā, Farhang VII, p. 54). Finally, much of the urban population on that shore is of Arab origin; in the early 1900s, 43 percent of the population of the port of Lenga was Arab (ibid., p. 1097). Most of the Arabs of Iran’s southern littoral speak Arabic along with Persian.

In the Fārs hinterland, there is a large Arab tribe, the Īl-e ʿArab of the Ḵamsa tribal confederacy. Its two branches, the ʿArab Jabbāra and the ʿArab Šaybānī, have their summer quarters in the dehestāns of Bavānāt, Qonqorī, and Saṛčahān, northeast of Shiraz, and their winter quarters in an area stretching all the way from Sarvestān to Fūrg and Lārestān, in southeastern Fārs. In the 1940s, the tribe comprised some 11,100 families (Great Britain, Naval Intelligence, Persia, p. 375; Fasāʾī, II, pp. 311-12). The Īl-e ʿArab speak a mixture of Arabic, Persian, and Lori (O. Garrod, “The Nomadic Tribes of Persia To-Day,” Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 33, 1946, p. 44; for additional information, see Fasāʾī, II, p. 312; A. G. Tumansky, “Ot Kaspiĭskago morya k hormuzdskomu prolivu i obratno,” Sbornik mater. po Azii, 65, 1896, pp. 76-81; A. T. Wilson, Report on Fars, Simla, 1916, pp. 45-47; G. Demorgny, “Les réformes adininistratives en Perse: les tribus du Fars,” part 1, Revue du monde musulman 22, March 1913, pp. 103-5; Field, Contributions, pp. 213-14; M. S. Ivanov, Plemena Farsa, Moscow, 1961, pp. 53-55, 87, 97, 98, 153). Two formerly independent Arab tribes in Fārs province, the Bahāʾ-al-dīnī and the Šīrī, have by now been absorbed by larger groups, the first by the Qašqāʾī tribal confederacy and the second by the Arab tribe of the Ḵamsa tribal confederacy. Jouannin mentions an Arab tribe by the name of Āqāḵānī which, in the early 1800s, comprised some 20,000 individuals (Dupré, Voyage II, p. 467), but no other source mentions this tribe.

There are several Arab tribes in Kermān province. In the Sīrǰān region dwell the ʿAṭāʾallāhī. Once numerous, they totaled some 6,000 individuals in the early 1800s (ibid.), but by the 1930s they had dwindled to a mere 100 families (Field, Contributions, p. 234). In the Bardsīr (Mašīz) region are the ʿArabḵānī Sorḵī, who numbered some 250 families in the 1930s (ibid., p. 235), and three Badūʾī tribes: the Badūʾī-e Kūh-e Panǰī, the Badūʾī-e Qalʿa Sangī, and the Badūʾī-e Ḥāǰǰī Kākāʾī, each of whom numbered approximately 100 families in the 1930s (Kayhān, Joḡrāfīā II, pp. 93-94). In the Pārīz region are the ʿArab-e Ḥāǰǰī Ḥosaynī who, in the 1920s, numbered some 200 families (G. Stöber, Die Afshār: Nomadismus im Raum Kermān, Marburg, 1978, p. 279), and a fourth group of Badūʾī that comprised some 60 families in the 1930s (Field, Contributions, p. 235). Some of the Arabs of Kermān province still spoke Arabic in the 1930s (Kayhān, loc. cit.). Jouannin cites an Arab tribe by the name Kermānī that comprised some 7,000 or 8,000 individuals in the early 1800s (Dupré, Voyage II, p. 466-67), but no other source mentions them.

There are Arabs in Makrān and Persian Balūčestān, but because of intermarriage with the Baluchis they have lost most of their Arab cultural traits. The Rend, who live around Pīšī and Mand on the Pakistani border, for example, claim to be of Arab origin and to have come from Aleppo, but already in the early 1900s they were described as “to all intents and purposes Baluchis” (Lorimer, Gazetteer II, p. 1590). The Kalmatī, who are related to the Rend, are also of Arab origin (ibid., p. 1135). P. M. Sykes claimed that Jadgāl and the Gūrgīǰ are of Arab origin (Ten Thousand Miles in Persia, London, 1902, p. 97) but this was disputed by Lorimer (II, p. 1134).

See also ʿAšāyer.

2. The Arabs of Tehran Province. Sedentary peasants and some 19th-century travelers have given the name ʿAraba to the majority of semi-nomadic tribes in the Tehran region. The Arabs seem to have established themselves long ago near the capital, as is shown by the existence of a dehestān to the south of Varāmīn (Jalīlābād) named Behnām-e ʿArab. In winter families of the tribe are dispersed among several villages to the south of Varāmīn, in the Šahrīār plain and further east as far as Eyvān-e Key. In summer they gather in a number of small encampments of two to five tents, once of black goat hair but now made of cotton or nylon. With the expansion of the capital, the ethno-cultural characteristics and means of subsistence of these stockbreeders have been destroyed. Formerly numerous in the upper valleys of Karaǰ and of the Jāǰrūd, they were the first to be affected by the curbs on pasturing introduced since 1965 to check upstream erosion of the barrages. Their present summer quarters are in the high valley of Ṭālaqān, in Lārīǰān, and in the mountains of the Damāvand (B. Hourcade, “Les nomades du Lar face aux problèmes de l’expansion de Teheran,” Revue de géographie de l’est 1-2, 1977, pp. 37-51). About a hundred families still undertake short pastoral migrations, sometimes with dromedaries.

Sedentary peasants and a number of 19th-century travelers have mistakenly given the name ʿAraba to a heterogeneous amalgam of tribal fractions, Arab in origin but Persian-speaking, who were deported at different times to the environs of Tehran. Some of them (the Bāqerī) call themselves Baḵtīār of Shiraz and could be a splinter of the Ḵamsa deported by Karīm Khan Zand. The Mīšmast (see ʿArab Mīšmast) are the best known splinter group, moved under Moḥammad Shah Qāǰār (see A. K. S. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia, Oxford, 1953, pp. 158f.; J. R. Perry, “Forced Migrations in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Iran,” Iranian Studies 8/4, 1975, pp. 199-215; M. Bazin, La vie rural dans la région de Qom (Iran Central), Paris, n.d. [1974]) from Ḵūzestān to Fārs, and later to the neighborhood of Qom and Tehran. These are probably the “arabes de Chouchtar” mentioned by Chodzko in 1835 (“Une excursion de Téhéran aux pyles caspiennes en 1835,” Nouvelles annales de voyages 13, 1850, pp. 280-308).

There is also another Arabic-speaking tribe in the region of Tehran, that of the Kotī. Up to the middle of the 20th century this tribal group, originating from Shiraz, wintered in the region of Sīāḥ Kūh near Eyvān-e Key, but it is now dispersed among several villages to the east of Varāmīn. Some 300 families still move to summer pastures in the upper valley of the Lār, but most of them no longer possess any livestock and are simply shepherds in pay of the army. Several families have settled down on hill slopes in the Damāvand region (see Anti Alborz).

ʿARAB v. Arab-Iranian relations in modern times

Modern Iran’s relations with the Arab states began during the inter-war period. Since Iran was preoccupied with the consequences of prolonged Anglo-Russian rivalry and domination and the lack of centralized government, the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of modern Turkey and new Arab states following World War I changed Iran’s regional environment without affecting its foreign relations in any major way (R. K. Ramazani, The Foreign Policy of Iran, 1500-1941, Charlottesville, 1966, pp. 82-107). The military coup of Reżā Khan (1921) and his accession to the throne (1925) resulted in sufficient governmental capacity to conduct foreign affairs effectively. Reżā Shah’s good-neighbor policy addressed three major problems with Iraq (for the historical background during the Ottoman period, see ibid., pp. 117-215, 258-66): (1) The migration of Kurdish tribes that had been taking refuge in Iraq to escape Reżā Shah’s central control was regulated by an agreement signed in 1932 (Royal Institute of International Affairs, Survey of International Affairs, 1934, London, 1935, pp. 184-85). (2) In a case before the League of Nations, Iran claimed for its citizens the same capitulatory privileges enjoyed by British nationals in Iraq; the dispute was eventually resolved outside the League and became moot once Iran and Iraq abolished capitulatory privileges for all foreign powers (League of Nations Official Journal, 1924, pp. 1345-46, 1598). (3) Most important, ancient border disputes between the Ottoman and Persian empires revived around the location of the boundary line in the Šaṭṭ al-ʿArab ; Iraq claimed de jure control over the whole body of the river while Iran insisted that the frontier should follow the thalweg (course of the main channel) according to the principles of international law. The dispute was referred to the League of Nations but resolved independently with a bilateral treaty signed on 4 July 1937 (League of Nations Official Journal, 1935, pp. 196-97; League of Nations Treaty Series, CXC, pp. 256-58). Four days later, Iran and Iraq joined with Afghanistan and Turkey in the Saʿdābād Pact, which was probably intended to deter the perceived threat of Italy to the Middle East; if there were similar designs to resist pressures from Moscow, the alliance had no effect, since the Soviet Union invaded Iran in 1941.

The dynamics of Arab-Iranian relations since the end of World War II reflect dramatic changes in the international, regional, and domestic environments of Iran and the Arab states; they can be surveyed in five distinct phases.

(1) The shah’s return to power after the overthrow of the Moṣaddeq government in 1953 resulted in far-reaching foreign policy changes. The Iranian dispute with Iraq over the terms and implementation of the 1937 treaty had been dormant, while amicable relations had been maintained with Egypt, where Prime Minister Moṣṭafā Naḥās hailed the crusade of Moṣaddeq against the British during the oil nationalization crisis. With the rise of Jamāl ʿAbd-al-Nāṣer, the monarchies in Iran and Iraq perceived a common threat to their rule at home and influence in the Middle East. Rebuffed by Nāṣer, United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles persuaded the “Northern Tier” states of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Pakistan to join an alliance against the Soviet Union (R. K. Ramazani, The Northern Tier: Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey, Princeton, 1966). Iran and Iraq also perceived this alliance as a coalition against Egypt (just as Turkey and Pakistan saw it as a coalition against Greece and India, respectively).

Both the “Arab Cold War” and the “Arab-Iranian Cold War” paralleled Soviet-American competition for power and influence in the Middle East (see M. Kerr, The Arab Cold War, 1958-1967, 2nd ed., London, 1967; Ramazani, The Persian Gulf: Iran’s Role, Charlottesville, 1972). The pan-Arab “revolutionary” Nāṣer regime led the so-called “progressive” Arab states against “reactionary” Arab regimes: Syria and Yemen joined Egypt against Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. At the same time, the shah’s close ties with the United States, and especially his “discrete entente” with Israel, embittered his relations with Nāṣer (M. G. Weinbaum, “Iran and Israel: The Discreet Entente,” Orbis 18/4, 1975, pp. 1070-87). Although the shah’s regime supported the Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal Company and denounced the 1956 invasion of Egypt by Britain, France, and Israel, it joined the Suez Canal Users’ Association that was opposed by Egypt. Iran regarded free and uninterrupted navigation through the canal of “vital importance;” seventy-three percent of its imports and seventy-six percent of its exports were transported through it (for details, see U.S. State Department, The Suez Canal Problem, July 26-September 22, 1956, Washington, D.C., 1956, pp. 127-30).

Iran’s relations with Syria fared no better. The close relations of Damascus and Cairo with Moscow and of Tehran with Washington were not the only sources of the Arab-Iranian Cold War; the shah’s reassertion of Iran’s old claim to Bahrain in 1957 also contributed to it. Amid mutual denunciation, Damascus claimed Bahrain as part of the “Arab nation,” while Tehran regarded it as a “fourteenth province” (Ramazani, The Persian Gulf: Iran’s Role, Charlottesville, 1973, 2nd printing, p. 45).

(2) The 1958 Iraqi revolution intensified the Arab-Iranian Cold War. The shah’s regime perceived the destruction of the monarchy in Baghdad, the withdrawal of Iraq from the Baghdad Pact (thereafter the Central Treaty Organization), the friendly overtures of the Qāsem regime to Moscow, and its tolerance of the Iraqi communists as ominous signs of the twin threat of Arab revolution and Soviet communism. The shah’s previous concern with Cairo and Damascus as centers of revolution and Soviet influence shifted primarily to Baghdad. The Baghdad-Tehran antagonism revived the old Šaṭṭ al-ʿArab dispute in 1959. President Qāsem, who repudiated the 1937 treaty on grounds of undue British pressure to sign, regarded the whole river as subject to Iraqi control. Iran revived its historical claim that the boundary line should be the main course of the river channel (ibid., pp. 42-45; idem, Iran’s Foreign Policy, 1941-1973, pp. 399-407). Except for a few military skirmishes, the conflict did not extend beyond a mutual show of naval and air power in the Persian Gulf. After ʿAbd-al-Salām ʿĀref came to power in 1963, the relations of the two countries began to improve; ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān ʿĀref, who took power in 1966, held a summit meeting with the shah in Tehran, but the basic differences remained unresolved.

Tehran’s relations with Cairo and Damascus also deteriorated alter 1958. President Nāṣer broke diplomatic relations with Iran in 1960, ostensibly because of the shah’s reference in an interview to Iran’s previous de facto recognition of Israel. Psychological warfare between the two countries deepened at a time when Tehran’s relations with Moscow were at their lowest ebb since the departure of Soviet troops from Iran in 1946. The failure of Iran and the USSR to conclude a long-term non-aggression pact in 1959, coupled with Iran’s signing of a bilateral defense agreement with the United States in the same year deeply embittered Soviet-Iranian relations (Ramazani, Iran’s Foreign Policy, 1941-1973, pp. 253-324). The greater the antagonisms with Moscow and the revolutionary Arab regimes, the more useful Israel appeared to Tehran as a regional strategic asset. The Iraqi revolution intensified the Arab-Iranian Cold War particularly in the Persian Gulf. Egypt and Syria sought to extend their power and influence into the Gulf to counter Iraqi and Iranian ambitions and British hegemony. Iran’s concern with the extension of Arab revolutionary propaganda and activity centered at the time not only on the trucial states of the Gulf, but also on its oil-rich province of Ḵūzestān, which in 1965 the Syrian regime called “an integral part of the Arab Homeland” (Ramazani, The Persian Gulf: Iran’s Role, Charlottesville, 1973, 2nd printing, p. 49).

(3) The third phase of Iran’s postwar relations with the Arab states was marked by three major events: the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, the British decision, announced the following year, to withdraw its forces from the Gulf by 1971, and the 1968 Baʿthist coup in Iraq. In their wake, while the cold war between Iran and a few Arab states continued, relations with others began to improve. Contrary to a generally held view, the amelioration of relations between Tehran and Cairo began before and not after Nāṣer’s death. This change can be attributed to the decline of his power following the 1967 defeat. As seen from Tehran, the Israeli victory diminished the Nāṣer regime’s prestige and power in the Middle East and forced Cairo to terminate Egyptian military intervention in Yemen and revolutionary propaganda and activities elsewhere in the Arabian peninsula. The perceived change in Egyptian strategy after the “War of Attrition” with Israel from war to peaceful diplomatic means, the cooling of Cairo-Moscow relations, and Nāṣer’s acceptance of the Roger Peace Plan induced the shah’s regime to improve relations with Cairo. Diplomatic relations were resumed before Nāṣer’s death, and there was further rapprochement with the presidency of Anwar al-Sādāt, particularly after the expulsion of Soviet forces from Egypt in 1972 (Ramazani, “Emerging Patterns of Regional Relations in Iranian Foreign Policy,” Orbis 18/4, 1975, pp. 1043-69).

Britain’s decision to withdraw its forces from the Persian Golf prompted the shah’s regime to strengthen Iran’s friendly ties with the region’s conservative Arab states. Solidly supported by the United States government, which did not wish to fill the power vacuum left by the British, the shah sought to maintain regional security, collectively with other Gulf states if possible and unilaterally if necessary (Ramazani, “Iran’s Search for Regional Cooperation,” Middle East Journal 30/2, 1976, pp. 173-86). The shah’s principal objective was to protect his own regime from perceived domestic and external threats, which, as he saw them, were equally directed against the stability and security of Iran and the Persian Gulf. To this end, the shah’s regime removed the two major obstacles to strengthening ties with conservative Arab states: The old dispute with Riyadh over the continental shelf boundaries was swiftly settled by mutual agreement in October, 1968, and was followed by the shah’s state visit to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; the dispute with Britain over Bahrain was settled through the United Nations secretary-general in 1970 (Ramazani, “The Settlement of the Bahrain Dispute," Indian Journal of International Law 12/1, 1972, pp. 1-14). When Bahrain officially declared its independence in 1971, Iran was the first country to recognize it.

While these settlements helped improve Iran’s position in the region, the landing of Iranian forces on three small Gulf islands known as Abū Mūsā and the two Tumbs in 1971 intensified Arab suspicion of Iran’s ambitions. The emirate of Sharjah claimed sovereignty over Abū Mūsā, despite a prior agreement in favor of the Iranian landing there; the emirate of Raʾs-al-Ḵayma never reached an agreement with Iran on the two Tumbs. Suspecting collusion between Iran and Britain, Iraq broke diplomatic relations with Iran and through the Arab League tried to persuade other Arab states to do the same (Ramazani, The Persian Gulf: Iran’s Role, pp. 56-68). Although Arab states complained to the United Nations and demanded the withdrawal of Iranian forces, Cairo’s new friendship with Tehran prevented the League from taking any other action.

The announcement of the impending British withdrawal from the Gulf coincided with the Baʿthist coup in Iraq, which further aggravated Tehran’s relations with Baghdad. The previous Shah-ʿĀref summit understandings were aborted, and the old Šaṭṭ al-ʿArab dispute reemerged with unprecedented bitterness. In 1969 the al-Bakr regime declared the river an “integral part” of Iraq, attempted to check the vessels moving up the river, ordered ships flying the Iranian flag to lower it, and threatened to use force if its demands were not met. Iran retaliated by declaring the 1937 treaty null and void and, in defiance of Iraqi demands, escorted merchant ships with naval vessels and jet fighters (ibid., pp. 42- 45). Neither side wished to go beyond the threat and show of force at the time, but the tensions between them, already aggravated by the Iranian military presence on the three islands and the rupture of diplomatic relations by Iraq, reached a new height in 1972, when Baghdad signed a comprehensive friendship treaty with Moscow.

(4) The principal catalyst of an improved fourth phase of Arab-Iranian relations was the October, 1973 war, which, from Iran’s standpoint, reduced the strategic importance of Israel and increased Arab power and influence. Relative Arab success in the war, the resulting surge of Arab self-confidence, a new, favorable American attitude toward moderate Arab states, Egypt’s progressively reduced dependence on Moscow and reorientation toward the West, the diplomatic isolation of Israel and the weakening of its domestic political and economic strength, and the prospect of the reopening of the Suez Canal reinforced Iran’s earlier positive disposition toward Egypt and other moderate Arab states. These growing sympathies found concrete expression in the 1973 war (in the 1967 war, its aid had been more symbolic than material): In addition to providing medical aid (as it had in 1967), Iran sent pilots and planes to Saudi Arabia, permitted the overflight of Soviet civilian planes carrying military equipment to Arab states, and disallowed the transfer of Jewish volunteers from Australia to Israel via Tehran (Ramazani, “Iran and the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Middle East Journal 32/4, 1978, pp. 413-28; idem, “Emerging Patterns of Regional Relations,” pp. 1043-69).

Backed up with new oil revenues, Iran’s dollar diplomacy first of all favored the like-minded Sādāt regime. In 1974 Tehran signed a billion-dollar economic agreement with Cairo and made other promises for reconstructing Port Said, widening the Suez Canal, and participating in joint Egyptian and Arab ventures and multinational projects to construct an oil pipeline from Suez to Port Said. As expected, Iran provided aid to such friendly monarchies as Jordan and Morocco, but even the less moderate Syrian regime was not overlooked: Damascus was promised $150 million worth of credits for joint ventures.

Far more important was Iran’s changing attitude toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. From the signing of the first Sinai agreement in November, 1973, to the end of his regime in 1979, the shah totally endorsed the Egyptian peacemaking efforts. This policy was usually compatible with the American position, but not always—Tehran sided with Cairo and criticized Henry Kissinger for the breakdown of negotiations in March, 1977—and the shah’s position clashed increasingly with that of the Israeli government. As early as the end of the 1967 war Iran had consistently called upon Israel to withdraw its forces from Arab territories; after 1973 the shah called for the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces in spite of the contrary American position. Regarding the Palestinian problem, Iran voted in 1947 with Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen against the partition of Palestine and favored the minority plan for a federated Palestinian state. Afterwards, it consistently supported “the legitimate rights of the Palestinians,” in both the earlier sense of repatriation and the subsequent one of self-determination; it endorsed the 1974 Rabat Conference formula recognizing the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, favored the participation of the PLO in United Nations deliberations, and considered PLO participation in the peacemaking process essential. The shah’s regime also denounced Israeli settlement policies on the West Bank, regarded the Begin negotiating position as “intransigent,” and opposed Israeli control of non-Jewish holy places in Jerusalem.

The most dramatic change in Arab-Iranian relations during the fourth phase took place in the Persian Gulf area. The further strengthening of ties with Saudi Arabia after the assassination of King Fayṣal, the agreement with ʿOmān for the joint patrol of the Strait of Hormoz, and greater improvement of relations with the Union of Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait contributed considerably to improved Arab-Iranian relations in the Gulf area, especially within the context of Tehran’s cooled relations with Tel Aviv and reapprochement with Egypt and Syria.

The sudden settlement of the ancient Šaṭṭ al-ʿArab dispute between Iran and Iraq surpassed all other conciliatory developments. As a result of the active mediation of Algeria, Tehran and Baghdad agreed on 6 March 1975 to settle all outstanding differences. The agreement was impressive because war between the two countries had seemed imminent, and especially because there had been centuries-old Ottoman and Iraqi opposition to the principle of thalweg in determining the boundary line in the Šaṭṭ al-ʿArab. In return for Iraqi acceptance, Iran promised to relinquish its support of the Kurdish rebellion in Iraq (which had been extended first with covert American aid but after 1974 without it; see New York Times, 26 January 1976). Yet, the Šaṭṭ al-ʿArab dispute remained more a symptom than the source of the Iran-Iraq conflict; the basic power rivalry between the two neighboring states was not resolved in 1975.

(5) The fifth and latest phase in Iran’s relations with the Arab states began with the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79. The domestic conditions of Iranian society rather than external circumstances continue to be the main factor behind Iran’s foreign policy. While the revolutionary forces opposed to the shah’s regime clearly sought to eradicate perceived American domination in Iran, the influence of the United States had been more a function of the shah’s domestic politics than of American imposition. He invited and cultivated American support for his regime as soon as he ascended the throne in 1941, long before the American-backed coup in 1953, and he continued to do so long afterwards as well (Ramazani, Iran and the United States: The Patterns of Influence, New York, 1982; idem, “Who Lost America? The Case of Iran,” Middle East Journal 36/1, 1982, pp. 5-21).

Just as the shah’s reliance on the United States had far-reaching implications for his regional policies, the hostility of the revolutionary regime toward America, especially alter the seizure of the United States Embassy (4 November 1979), has been reflected in Iran’s relations with regional states, including the Arab countries. During the shah’s regime, America’s regional friends were perceived to be Iran’s friends as well; since its downfall the opposite has generally been true. Today, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia are regarded as enemies of revolutionary Iran, while Syria, Libya, and South Yemen are considered friends. The regime’s hostility toward Iraq is attributed in part to Baghdad’s collusion with Washington in the invasion of Iran, yet Iran’s friendly relations with such “pro-American” states as Pakistan and Turkey demonstrate that the Ḵomeynī regime selects its allies according to pragmatic considerations as well as ideological predisposition.

Today, as in the historical past, Iran’s relations with the Arab world center on the Gulf states, though the revolution has interjected a new ideological factor into the traditional power rivalry. The Iraqi invasion of Iran (22 September 1980), followed by the Iranian counterinvasion of Iraq (13 July 1982), has resulted in an unprecedented war between the two states; as always, the conflict is attributed to disputes over land and river boundaries. Before its full-scale attack, Iraq revived its historical claim of sovereignty over the entire Šaṭṭ al-ʿArab and charged that Iran had failed to relinquish certain Iraqi frontier lands in return for Iraq’s acceptance of the thalweg as the river boundary line under the 1975 accords. In fact, the start of the war by Iraq and its continuation by Iran reflected basic power and ideological conflict. Ṣaddām Ḥosayn resorted to military force at a moment when Iran appeared to be weakened by revolutionary chaos and Western economic sanctions occasioned by the hostage crisis. Ṣaddām Ḥosayn’s Baʿthist, socialist, and secularist ideology clashed with Ḵomeynī’s militant Islamic millenarian beliefs; his aspirations to power in the Gulf region collided with Ḵomeynī’s vision of an Islamic world order spearheaded by Iranian power.

Iran’s relations with the other Arab states of the Gulf region have generally been marked by cold-war conflicts also shaped by power and ideological rivalries. The fear of the export of the Iranian Revolution has concerned conservative Arab states in varying degrees, with Saudi Arabia emerging as the primary opponent in the Arab-Iranian cold war. Ideologically, Ḵomeynī’s “mostażʿaf” Islam (Islam of the meek) is opposed to the “mowaḥḥed” Islam (unitarian Islam) of the House of Saʿūd; Ḵomeynī’s revolutionary Islam is as much in conflict with the Saudis’ conservative Islam as it is with the Baʿthists’ secularism. Likewise, Iran’s quest for power in the Gulf region has clashed as much with Saudi Arabia’s bid for hegemony in the west coast of the Persian Gulf as it has with that of Iraq throughout the Gulf region.

In May, 1981 Saudi Arabia led the formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in order to contain the spread of the Iranian Revolution and the effects of the Gulf war in particular (Ramazani, “The Gulf Cooperation Council: A Search for Security,” in W. L. Dowdy and R. B. Trood, eds., The Indian Ocean, Perspectives on a Strategic Arena, Durham, N.C., forthcoming). The creation of the GCC partly reflected a longstanding search for regional cooperation; more importantly, it represented the desire of the House of Saʿūd and other Arab leaders in the area to resist the Carter Doctrine pressures for positioning United States military equipment in the area in anticipation of a possible showdown with the Soviet Union over the security of Gulf oil supplies (Ramazani, “The Genesis of the Carter Doctrine,” in G. S. Wise and C. Issawi, eds., Middle East Perspectives: The Next Twenty Years, Princeton, 1981, pp. 165-80). Despite the anticommunist and anti-Soviet stance of Saudi Arabia and, in varying degrees, of other GCC states, none wished to get caught in the superpowers’ competition.

The underlying conflict between Riyadh and Tehran has manifested itself in a variety of ways, several times in bitter quarrels over the function of pilgrimage in Islam. Iran has insisted dogmatically that ḥaǰǰ is a “religio-political” occasion, and hence Iranian pilgrims have the right to engage in political activities, which they have done. Saudi Arabia has adamantly limited the ḥaǰǰ to a matter of “religious ceremony” and on occasions of conflict, has expelled Iranian pilgrims from the country.

The positions of Iran and Saudi Arabia are also diametrically opposed in their attitudes toward the United States and Israel. Iran has joined the ranks of the so-called “rejectionists,” opposing the “special relationship” between Saudi Arabia and the “Great Satan.” It also rejects any Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative, such as the Fahd, Regan, or Fez plans; the Ḵomeynī regime insists that the conflict with Israel must be settled by force, since diplomacy cannot result in the establishment of a Palestinian state and the “liberation of Jerusalem.”