The Islamic Conquest of Persia
- 630 CE The Arabs, united by their new faith of Islam, expand into Mesopotamia and a few years later into Khuzestan.
For several centuries, Khuzestan was part of the province of Mesopotamia and ruled by distant caliphs. Over time, most of the inhabitants adopted Islam. The Persian language absorbed thousands of Arabic loanwords and some Arabic syntax. The Persians in their turn had a deep influence on their Arab conquerors.
Khuzestan was a rich part of a thriving empire. The Karun river was dammed, and sugar-cane plantations spread over reclaimed scrublands or marshlands. Many noted Muslim scholars, scientists, artists, poets, and musicians were Khuzestanis.
- 661 - Umayyad caliphs rule from Damascus.
- 750 - Abbasid caliphs rule from Baghdad or Samarra.
- 946 - 1258 The Abbasid caliphs become mere figureheads. Various Buwayhid and Seljuk Turk chieftains rule in the caliph's name, or compete to do so.
The political situation was extremely fluid and the boundaries of the various emirates and sultanates tended to disappear quickly.
In the Umayyad period, large tribes of nomads from the Hanifa, Tamim, and Abd al-Qays tribes crossed the Persian Gulf and occupied some of the richest Basran territories around Ahvaz and in Fars during the second Islamic civil war in 661-665/680-684 (Encyclopædia Iranica, p. 215, under Arab Tribes of Iran).
During the Abbassid period, in the second half of the 10th century, the Assad tribe, taking advantage of quarrels under the Buwayhids, penetrated into Khuzestan, where the Tamim tribe had been inhabiting since pre-Islamic times. However, following the fall of the Abbassid dynasty, the flow of Arab immigrants into Persia gradually diminished, but it nonetheless continued.
Read more about this topic: History Of Khuzestan Province
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