Persianate Society - Spread of Persianate Culture

Spread of Persianate Culture

The Iranian dynasty of the Samanids began recording its court affairs in Arabic as well as Persian, and the earliest great poetry in "New Persian" was written for the Samanid court. Samanids encouraged translation of religious works from Arabic into Persian. In addition, the learned authorities of Islam, the ulama, began using the Persian lingua franca in public. The crowning literary achievement in the early New Persian language, Shahnameh (The Book of Kings) compiled by greatest of Iranian epic-poet Ferdowsi, presented his Shahnameh to the court of Mahmud of Ghazni (998-1030), was more than a literary achievement; it was a kind of Iranian nationalistic resurrection. Ferdowsi galvanized Persian nationalistic sentiments by invoking pre-Islamic Persian heroic imagery and enshrined in literary form the most treasured stories of popular folk-memory.

Ferdowsi’s Shahnamah enjoyed a special status in Iranian courtly culture as not just a mythical but a historical narrative as well. The powerful effect that this text came to have on the poets of this period is partly due to the value that was attached to it as a legitimizing force, especially for new rulers in the Eastern Islamic world:

In the Persianate tradition the Shahnameh was viewed as more than literature. It was also a political treatise, as it addressed deeply rooted conceptions of honor, morality, and legitimacy. Illustrated versions of it were considered desirable as expressions of the aspirations and politics of ruling elites in the Iranian world. —

The Persianate culture that emerged under the Samanid dynasty rule in Khorasan, in northeast of Persia and borderlands of Turkistan and Turks were exposed to Persianate-Islamic culture; the preparation for the incorporation of the Turks into the main body of the Middle Eastern Islamic civilization, which was followed by the Ghaznavids, thus began in Khorasan; "not only did the inhabitants of Khurasan not succumb to the language of the nomadic invaders, but they imposed their own tongue on them. The region could even assimilate the Turkic Ghaznavids and Seljuks (11th and 12th centuries), the Timurids (14th and 15th centuries), and the Qajars (19th and 20th centuries).

Mahmud of Ghazni the rivals and future hirers of the Samanids ruled over southeastern extremities of Samanid territories from the city of Ghazni. It attracted many Persian scholars, artists and became the patrons of Persianate culture, and as they subjugated Western and Southern Asia, they took with themselves the Persianate culture. Under the Ghaznavid patronage, Persian culture flourished further. Apart from Ferdowsi, Rumi, Abu Ali Sina, Al-Biruni, Unsuri Balkhi, Farrukhi Sistani, Sanayi Ghaznawi and Abu Sahl Testari were among the great Iranian polymaths and poets of the period, supported by the Ghazanavids.

The Persianate culture was carried by succeeding dynasties into Western and Southern Asia, in particular, by the Persianized-Seljuqs (1040–1118), and their successor states, who presided over Iran, Syria, and Anatolia until the 13th century, and by the Ghaznavids, who in the same period dominated Greater Khorasan and India. These two dynasties together drew the centres of the Islamic world eastward. The institutions stabilized Islamic society into a form that would persist, at least in Western Asia, until the 20th century.

The Ghaznavids moved their capital from Ghazni to Lahore in modern Pakistan, which they turned into another centre of Islamic culture. Under Ghaznavids, poets and scholars from Kashgar, Bukhara, Samarkand, Baghdad, Nishapur, Amol and Ghazni congregated in Lahore. Thus, the Persian language and Persianate culture was brought deep into India and carried further in the 13th century. Seljuqs won a decisive battle with the Ghaznavids then swept into Khurasan; they brought Persianate culture westward into western Persia, Iraq, Anatolia, and Syria. Iran proper along with Central Asia became a heartland of Persian language and culture.

As the Seljuqs came to dominate Persia (including Iraq, Syria, and Anatolia), they carried this Persianate culture beyond, and made it the culture of their courts as far west as the Mediterranean Sea. Under Seljuq rule, many pre-Islamic Iranian traditional arts including the Sasanian traditional architecture resurrected, and indulged many of the great Iranian scholars. At the same time, the Islamic religious institutions became more organized and Sunni orthodoxy became more codified.

The Persian jurist and theologian Al-Ghazali was amongst the scholars at Seljuq court who proposed a synthesis of Sufism and sharia, which became a basis of a richer Islamic theology. Formulating the Sunni concept of division between temporal and religious authorities, he provided a theological basis for the existence of Sultanate, a temporal office alongside the Caliphate, which by that time was merely a religious office. The main institutional means of establishing a consensus of the ulama on these dogmatic issues was the Nezāmīyeh, better known as the madrasas, named after its founder Khwajeh Nezam ul-Mulk, the Persian Vizier of Seljuqs. These schools became means of uniting Sunni ulama, which legitimized the rule of the Sultans. The bureaucracies were staffed by graduates of the madrasas, so both the ulama and the bureaucracies were under the influence of esteemed professors at the madrasas.