Muslim Conquest of Persia - Historiography and Recent Scholarship

Historiography and Recent Scholarship

When Western academics first investigated the Muslim conquest of Persia, they only had to rely on the accounts of the Armenian Christian bishop Sebeos, and accounts in Arabic that were written some time after the events they describe. The most significant work was probably that of Arthur Christensen, and his L’Iran sous les Sassanides, published in Copenhagen and Paris in 1944.

However recent scholarship, both Iranian and Western, has begun to question the traditional narrative. Parvaneh Pourshariati, in her Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran, published in 2008, provides both a detailed overview of the problematic nature of trying to establish exactly what happened, and a great deal of original research that questions fundamental facts of the traditional narrative, including the timeline and specific dates.

Pourshariati's central thesis is that contrary to what was commonly assumed, the Sassanian Empire was highly decentralized, and was in fact a "confederation" with the Parthians, who themselves retained a high level of independence. Despite their recent victories over the Byzantines, and the threat of the Byzantines being forced to become a client-state of the Sassanians, the Parthians unexpectedly withdrew from the confederation, and the Sassanians were thus ill-prepared and ill-equipped to mount an effective and cohesive defense against the Muslim invaders. Moreover, the powerful northern and eastern Parthian families, the kust-i khwarasan and kust-i adurbadagan, withdrew to their respective strongholds and made peace with the Arabs, refusing to fight alongside the Sassanians.

Another important theme of Pourshariati's study is a reevaluation of the traditional timeline. Pourshariati argues that the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia "took place, not, as has been conventionally believed, in the years 632–634, after the accession of the last Sasanian king Yazdgird III (632–651) to power, but in the period from 628 to 632."

An important consequence of this change in timeline means that the Arab aggression took place precisely when the Sassanians and Parthians were engaged in internecine warfare over who was to succeed the Sassanian throne.