“Anyone who says that the Prophet is black should be killed”: The ...

fields, including the religious sciences. 211 Iranian scholars would become some of the chief
fashioners of Islamic tradition, and were instrumental in fact in creating a new Arab identity. 212
In this new philopersian environment, the Arabs themselves would become persona non
grata. 213 A violently anti-Arab sentiment was expressed in the Shu#åbiyya literature, most of
whose authors were Persian. 214 A common theme of this literature is Persian cultural superiority
over the Arabs. The deep anti-Arab sentiment displayed in this literature did not spare
MuÈammad’s own clan, the Banå H§shim. Said one Shu#åbÊ poet:
I am a noble of the tribe of Jam-he called in the name of the nation-and I demand the
inheritance of the Persian kings.
Tell all the sons of H§shim: submit yourselves before the hour of regret arrives.
Retreat to the Hejaz and resume eating lizards and herd your cattle
While I seat myself on the throne of the kings supported by the sharpness of my blade and
the point of my pen. 215
The Shu#åbÊ movement, which sought to remodel the whole spirit of Islamic culture on
the model of Sasanian institutions and values, was highly influential at the caliphal court. 216
Sasanian strands were “woven into the fabric of Muslim thought,” including a pronounced antiblack
ideology which, when combined with the anti-Arab sentiment, will have far reaching
consequences for the development of post-Umayyad Islamic tradition in general and the
unity declined visibly. The dissemination of Arabic as a cultural medium, the adoption of Arabic nomenclature by
the islamized non-Arabs and not least the Arab origin of the dynasty were all factors tending to conceal the gradual
disappearance of Arab preponderance in the #Abb§sid central administration.” While their political influence was
reduced, the social or socio-religious prestige of the Arabs remained, Grunebaum notes. It was left to the Iranian
shu#åbiyya to break the Arabs’ cultural monopoly. Ibid. 87. On the shu#åbiyya see below.
211 Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I:104-112, 140, 142.Hugh Kennedy notes that “It is characteristic of this
intellectual activity (of the #Abb§sid period) that it was overwhelmingly conducted by non-Arabs”: “Intellectual Life
in the First Four Centuries of Islam,” in Farhad Daftary (ed.), Intellectual Traditions in Islam (London and
New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2001) 24.
212 Richard W. Bulliet, Islam: The View From the Edge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) 146, 152-
153: “many practices, beliefs, and institutions most characteristic of the period when Islam invented a uniform
identity for itself are rooted in the urban Muslim communities of eleventh-century Iran…the impact of the Iranian
diaspora (also) went beyond institutional changes. It affected the content of religious thought and practice as well…”;
Rina Drory, “The Abbasid Construction of the Jahiliyya: Cultural Authority in the Making,” Studia Islamica 83
(1996): 33-49: “the non-Arab maw§lÊ were the ones who actually constructed Arab identity for the Arab community
through a colossal effort of collecting and organizing knowledge belonging to ‘the Arab (and Islamic) sciences’. (42)”
213 See Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I:138; Drory, “Abbasid Construction,” 34: “the #Abb§sids were notorious for
their infatuation with Persian…sedentary, urban culture while condescending to ‘genuine Arabic’ (i.e. nomadic)
culture.”
214 On the Shu#åbiyya see EI 2 s.v.al-Shu#åbiyya by S. Endwitz; H.T. Norris, “Shu#åbiyya in Arabic Literature,” in
Julia Ashtiany et al (edd.), #Abbasid Belles-Lettres (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 31-47; Roy P.
Mottahedah, “The Su#ûbîyah Controversy and the Social History of Early Islamic Iran,” International Journal
of Middle East Studies 7 (1976): 161-182; H.A.R. Gibb, “The Social Significance of the Shuubiya,” in Studies
on the Civilization of Islam, edd. Stanford J. shaw and William R. Polk (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962): 62-73;
Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I, Chapter Four.
215 al-Tha#§libÊ, Mukhtaßar§t, 272 #314.
216 Gutas, Greek Thought, 29; Drory, “Abbasid Construction,” 43; Lapidus, History, 76-77; Norris, “Shu#åbiyya,”
31; Gibb, “Social Significance,” 66; Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I:137-138.
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