Persian Empire
Deep Dive 10 min read

Persian Influence on Islam: Court, Bureaucracy, Literature, and Science

The Arab conquest of the Sasanian Empire in the seventh century CE is one of the great turning points of world history, but the conquest did not erase Persian civilisation. The new Islamic state that emerged on the ruins of the Sasanian and Byzantine empires inherited a vast Persian cultural, administrative, and intellectual infrastructure, and the fusion of that Persian inheritance with the Arab religion of Islam produced the civilisation of the medieval Islamic world. I think the older “the Arabs conquered and absorbed Persian civilisation” picture is too simple, and the more recent “the Iranians actively reshaped Islam” picture is closer to the truth. The reality was a long negotiation between Arab conquerors, Persian bureaucrats, Iranian converts, and the new religion, and the negotiation produced a synthesis that was neither side’s original.

The first port of call is Marshall Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam (3 vols., 1974), Hugh Kennedy’s The Great Arab Conquests (2007) and The Armies of the Caliphs (2016), and the contributions in the New Cambridge History of Islam. For the Persian side, Ehsan Yarshater’s edited Cambridge History of Iran vol. IV, the relevant entries in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, and the work of Maria Subtelny, Sunil Sharma, and Nile Green for the Iranian side, the working references. Ziva Vesel’s work on the early Islamic art, and Hossein Ziai’s work on Persian philosophy, are the starting points for the specialist literature. Patricia Crone’s Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran (2012) is the indispensable counter-view: Crone, in my reading, takes the late antique Iranian context too seriously for the tastes of the older generation of scholars, but she is right that the textbook “Arab conquest replaced Persian institutions” narrative is too clean. The recent work of Michael Cooperson on the Abbasid caliphs and of Paul Cobb on the early Persian-Arab entente has added important nuance.

Court ceremony and the caliphal institution

The most visible of the Persian inheritances in Islam was the caliphal court. The Sasanian court, with its elaborate hierarchy of officers, its long protocol of approach to the throne, its royal robes, its jewelled regalia, and its ritualised ceremony, was a major model for the early Islamic court. The Umayyad caliphs of Damascus, while still essentially Arab tribal rulers, adopted some Sasanian ceremonial elements, including the bayt al-mal (treasury), the diwan (register), and the jund (standing army). The Abbasid caliphs, in particular, took the Sasanian model much further.

The new Abbasid capital of Baghdad, founded in 762 CE by the caliph al-Mansur, was consciously modelled on the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon, on the opposite bank of the Tigris. The round city of al-Mansur, with its concentric walls, its four gates, its central palace, and its surrounding barracks, was an explicit imitation of the Sasanian royal city; the round form itself is sometimes attributed to the Sasanian model, though other precedents exist. The Abbasid caliphs adopted the Sasanian title of shahanshah (king of kings) for ceremonial use, the Sasanian regalia of the takht (throne), the taj (crown), and the farr (divine glory), and the Sasanian ceremony of prostration (proskynesis) before the monarch. The black colour of the Abbasid banners, the alwiya, has been read as a deliberate echo of the Sasanian Derafsh Kaviani (the legendary royal standard of pre-Islamic Iran), though the link is debated: the black banners were also associated with the Abbasid revolution’s mourning for the Prophet’s family.

The Abbasid vizier, the chief minister of the caliphate, was a Persian office. The word vizier itself is Arabic, but the institution was modelled on the Sasanian vuzurg framadar, the chief minister of the Sasanian shah. Many of the most important viziers of the early Abbasid caliphate, including the Barmakid family, were of Persian origin, and the Barmakids in particular, who served the caliphs from 754 to 803 CE, were major patrons of Persian culture, translation, and learning. The Barmakid support for the translation of Sanskrit, Greek, Syriac, and Middle Persian texts into Arabic was one of the foundations of the Islamic Golden Age. The Barmakids fell from power in 803 under Harun al-Rashid, but the institution they served — the Persianate Islamic court — survived them.

Bureaucracy, fiscal administration, and the Persianate state

The Sasanian administrative model was adopted, with modifications, throughout the Islamic world. The basic unit of administration remained the diwan, the register of soldiers, taxpayers, and lands, and the Sasanian diwan system, which had been inherited from the Achaemenid satrapal system, was the model for the diwan of the caliphate. The Arabic word diwan is itself a borrowing from Middle Persian divan, originally a register or account book, and the institution of the diwan as a fiscal-administrative office was a major Persian contribution to Islamic governance.

The Sasanian land-tenure system, in which the king was the ultimate owner of the land and the dihqans (local notables) were the effective administrators of the rural districts, was also retained in Islamic Persia. The iqta system of land grants, which became a major feature of medieval Islamic governance from Spain to India, was a direct descendant of the Sasanian suyurghal and the Achaemenid doreus. The bayt al-mal, the public treasury, was a Sasanian institution, and the miri (state-owned) category of land in Islamic law was a continuation of the Sasanian principle that all land belonged ultimately to the shah.

The fiscal administration of the early caliphate was, in many provinces, simply the Sasanian fiscal system with Arabic names. The kharaj (land tax), the jizya (poll tax on non-Muslims), and the zakāt (alms tax) of the Islamic state were adaptations of Sasanian taxes, and the assessment of the kharaj in Iraq, Egypt, and Iran continued to follow Sasanian methods for centuries. The Sasanian bist-hazari, a 20,000-dirham fiscal unit, gave its name to the office of the amil in the Islamic fiscal system, and the Sasanian hamrah, the chief of police, was the model for the Islamic shurta and the Ottoman subashi.

Persian literature and the birth of New Persian

The Persian literary tradition was one of the great cultural inheritances of the Islamic world. The Arab conquerors of Iran brought their own language and their own literary tradition, but the majority of the population of the new Islamic state in the east was Persian-speaking, and Persian literature, in its Middle Persian and New Persian forms, continued to flourish even after the Arab conquest. The translation of Middle Persian texts into Arabic in the eighth and ninth centuries — including the Khwatay-namak, the Middle Persian epic of the pre-Islamic Iranian kings, the Bundahishn, the Zoroastrian encyclopaedia, and the Denkard, the Zoroastrian compendium of doctrine — was a major element in the formation of the Arabic literary and historical tradition.

The translation of the Middle Persian Khwatay-namak into Arabic, as the Siyar al-Muluk and similar works, was the basis of the Arabic historical and political literature on pre-Islamic Persia. The famous Siyar al-Muluk of Ibn al-Muqaffa (d. c. 757), the great Abbasid translator and writer, was a major work of political theory that brought Sasanian and Persian political thought into the Arabic tradition. The Qabusnameh of Kai Kāʾus ibn Iskandar, the Ziyarid ruler, was composed c. 1082–1083 CE, and is a Samanid-era mirror for princes; the Siyasatnameh of Nizam al-Mulk (1018–1092), the great Seljuk vizier; and the Akhlaq-i Nasiri of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201–1274) were all major works of Persian political philosophy that shaped Islamic political thought for centuries.

The birth of New Persian, written in a modified Arabic script, in the ninth and tenth centuries, was a major event in the history of the Persian language. The Samanid dynasty of Transoxiana (819–999 CE), in particular, was a major patron of New Persian literature, and the chancery of the Samanid state, under officials such as Bal’ami, was the model for the new literary register. The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi (940–1020), the great epic of the Persian kings, was a Samanid-era composition that became the founding text of Persian national identity and one of the great poems of world literature. Ferdowsi’s explicit aim, in composing the Shahnameh, was to preserve the Persian language, the Persian heroic tradition, and the Persian national memory in the face of Arabic cultural hegemony, and the success of his project was so total that the Shahnameh became, and remains, the central text of Persian literature.

The Persian literary tradition was enormously influential in the wider Islamic world. The Persian ghazal and qasida traditions, the Persian prose styles, the Persian literary conventions of the sabk-i hindi and the sabk-i iraqi, and the Persian mystical tradition of Sufism all became models for literary production in Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Pashto, Kurdish, and many other languages. The Samanid, Ghaznavid, Seljuk, Timurid, Safavid, and Mughal courts all patronised Persian literature, and the great poets of the Persianate world — Rudaki, Ferdowsi, Unsuri, Farrokhi, Anvari, Khaqani, Nizami, Sanai, Attar, Rumi, Saadi, Hafez, and Jami — were read in every literate society from the Balkans to Bengal.

Persian science, medicine, and philosophy

The Persian contribution to Islamic science, medicine, and philosophy was substantial. The Sasanian Academy of Gondeshapur, founded in the third century CE and continuing to function until the ninth, was a major centre of Greek, Indian, Syriac, and Middle Persian learning, and the translation of Greek scientific and medical texts into Pahlavi and Syriac at Gondeshapur was a major step in the transmission of ancient learning to the Islamic world. When the Abbasid caliphs established the Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) in Baghdad in the early ninth century, they consciously imitated the model of Gondeshapur, and the Abbasid translation movement, in which Greek, Indian, Syriac, and Middle Persian texts were translated into Arabic, was the foundation of the Islamic Golden Age.

The Persian scientists, philosophers, and physicians of the Islamic period are among the greatest in history. Ibn Sina, or Avicenna (980–1037 CE), the author of the Canon of Medicine and the Book of Healing, was a Persian from Bukhara whose medical and philosophical works were the medical and philosophical textbooks of European and Islamic universities for centuries. Biruni (973–1048 CE), a Persian from Khwarezm, was one of the greatest polymaths of the Islamic world, whose work on astronomy, mathematics, mineralogy, pharmacology, history, and comparative religion set the methodological bar for empirical research in the Islamic world. Razi, or Rhazes (864/865–925 CE), a Persian from Ray, was the author of the Comprehensive Book of Medicine, the largest medical encyclopedia ever written by a single author, and the first to describe smallpox and measles as distinct diseases. Omar Khayyam (1048–1131 CE), a Persian from Nishapur, was the author of the Rubaiyat, the famous quatrains, and of major works on algebra, geometry, and the reform of the Persian calendar.

The philosophical tradition of the Islamic world, while expressed largely in Arabic, was deeply influenced by Persian thought. The Islamic reception of Greek philosophy, in particular, was mediated by Persian thinkers, and the great Islamic philosophers — al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd — were in continuous dialogue with the Persian philosophical tradition. The Ismaili philosophical tradition, the Ismaili works of the Buyid and Fatimid periods, the Ikhwan al-Safa (Brethren of Purity), and the philosophical Sufism of Ibn Arabi, Mulla Sadra, and the Persian Sufi tradition all drew on Persian philosophical concepts.

Persian art and architecture in the Islamic period

The Persian influence on Islamic art and architecture was profound. The Sasanian models of monumental architecture, rock-cut reliefs, stucco decoration, silver plate, silk textiles, and miniature painting were the foundations of the Islamic artistic tradition, and the Islamic art of the caliphate, the Samanid, Ghaznavid, Seljuk, Ilkhanid, Timurid, and Safavid periods is, in significant part, a continuation of the Sasanian tradition. The claim that the great mosques of the Islamic world — the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Great Mosque of Damascus, the Great Mosque of Córdoba, the Great Mosque of Isfahan, the Blue Mosque of Istanbul — “all show strong Sasanian influence” is, however, an overstatement. The Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque of Damascus are Umayyad and show strong Byzantine influence; the Sasanian influence is much more visible in the eastern Islamic world, particularly in the mosques of Isfahan and the later Safavid buildings. Oleg Grabar’s The Formation of Islamic Art (1973) makes the careful distinction.

For further reading

  • Hodgson, Marshall. The Venture of Islam (3 vols., 1974).
  • Kennedy, Hugh. The Great Arab Conquests (2007) and The Armies of the Caliphs (2016).
  • Yarshater, Ehsan, ed. The Cambridge History of Iran vol. IV (1975) and vol. V (1983).
  • Subtelny, Maria. Timurids in Transition (2007).
  • Sharma, Sunil. Mughal Government and Administration and his work on Persian literature in India.
  • Green, Nile. The Love of Strangers (2017).
  • Vesel, Ziva. Her work on the Persian elements in early Islamic art.
  • Ziai, Hossein. Knowledge and Illumination (1990) and his edition and translation of Mulla Sadra.
  • Crone, Patricia. Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran (2012).
  • Tor, Deborah. Sovereignty and Rebellion: The White Huns and the Sasanian Empire (2014).
  • Cooperson, Michael. Al-Mansur, the Second Abbasid Caliph (2022, with the earlier Classical Arabic Biography).