A literary history of Persia

EFFECTS OF THE REVOLUTION 247his return to fill the earth with justice. Others held that theImdmate passed to his daughter Fatima. A certain Ishaq " theTurk " xescaped into Transoxiana after the death of AbuMuslim, whose ddH [missionary, or propagandist] he claimedto be, and maintained that his master was concealed in thecity of Ray. Later he pretended to be a prophet sent byZoroaster, who, according to him, had not ceased 'to live."Of the Khurramisor Khurram-diniyya, whose essential tenets168-172 supra),appear to have been those of Mazdak (see pp.we continue to hear for another century, andThl am " the more or less serious revolts in Persia headeddiniyyl.by the pseudo-prophets Sinbddh the Magian(A.D. 754-5), Ustddhsis (A.D. 766-768), Yiisuf al-Barm andal-Muqanna' "the veiled Prophet of Khurasan" (A.D. 777-780),'All Mazdak (A.D. 833), and Babak (A.D. 816-838) were inmost cases associated with the memory of Abu Muslim.If it did nothing else, however, the revolution which placedthe 'Abbdsids on the throne entirely altered the status of thePersians, who at once rose from the position of a despised andslighted subject-race to the highest and most influential officesand commands. It was their swords which won the victoryfor the House of 'Abbas, whom al-Birum, not without goodreason, calls "a Khurasanf, an Eastern dynasty "; 2 and itmaytruly be said that Qadisiyya and Nahdwand were avenged onthe banks of the Zab. The fall of the Umayyads was the endof the purely Arabian period.31As explained in the Fihrist (p. 345) he was called " the Turk " onlybecause he carried on his propaganda in the Turkish lands.3Chronology of Ancient Nations, Sachau's transl., p. 197.3See the text (pp. 69-70) and translation (pp. 31-32) of the remarkablepoem given by Von Kremer in his Streifzuge. The Arab poet bitterlycomplains of the haughty arrogance assumed by the Persian and Nabatheanmawltis, or " clients," who were formerly so humble.