Social Relations
Patrick Clawson states that "The Iranians chafed under Umayyid rule. The Umayyids rose from traditional Arab aristocracy. They tended to marry other Arabs, creating an ethnic stratification that discriminated against Iranians. Even as Arabs adopted traditional Iranian bureaucracy, Arab tribalism disadvantaged Iranians." Contemporary Islamist thinker Morteza Motahhari writes:
- "If we pay a little attention to the prejudice and discrimination practised by some of the caliphs with regard to their attitude towards their Arab and non-Arab subjects and to Ali ibn Abi Talib's defence of the criteria of Islamic equality and impartiality concerning Arabs and non-Arabs, the truth of the matter will become completely clear."
Despite the message of equality embedded in the new religion of Islam, the Arab conquerors, according to many historians, formed "a ruling aristocracy with special rights and privileges, which they emphatically did not propose to share with the mawali". Some rulers, such as Hajjaj ibn Yusuf even went as far as viewing the Mawali as "barbarians", implementing harsh policies such as branding to keep the subjects in check.
The case of Hajjaj is particularly noteworthy as many reports have come down to us from his racial policies and iron tactics in governing the provinces. And yet many skeptics point to the fact that some of these reports were written by Abbasid era writers who may have had a skewed view of their predecessors.
However Hajjaj was not the only case of cruelty against the Mawali. The non-Iranian appointee of the Caliph in Isfahan for example cut off the heads of any of the Mawali who failed to pay their taxes, and Ibn Athir in his al-kāmil reports that Sa'id ibn al'Ās killed all but one person in the port city of Tamisah, during his incursion to Gorgan in the year 651CE.
Such tumultuous conditions eventually were responsible for the rise of the Shuubiyah movement, and the rise of Persian nationalist tendencies in the 10th century with the emergence of the Samanids.
Read more about this topic: Islamization Of Iran
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