Possible for Persia to be Arabised?

As we all know what is now Syria and Iraq were not Arabs in ancient times but were Arabised after the Islamic invasion. So why were they Arabised and not Persia. Was it cultural strength or was it because they did not speak a Semetic language?
 
As we all know what is now Syria and Iraq were not Arabs in ancient times but were Arabised after the Islamic invasion. So why were they Arabised and not Persia. Was it cultural strength or was it because they did not speak a Semetic language?

Persian was the prestige culture, so to speak. The Lavant and Mesopotamia had a long history of being ruled by and adapting to external powers (Hellenic then roman in the Levant, Persian in Mesopotamia). The Arabs were another set of conquerors to be adapted to. In Persia, however, after the initial conquest Persian culture gained importance as a symbol of Persian prestige even after the elites had gradually converted to Islam.
 
Indeed, Persian culture was prestige culture.
I even heard that Muslim Golden Era culture was based on Persian culture.
 

katchen

Banned
It was relatively easy to shift from one Semitic language to another. In Syria from Aramaic to Arabic. In North Africa, from Punic to Arabic. (Though the non-Arabic speaking Amazagh Berber did not change their language). Iraqi, from Akkadian to Aramaic to Arabic.The Kurds have kept their language too. Even the small non-Arabic people of the outer Arabic Peninsula like the Salllah on the Yemen-Oman border have kept their language to modern times.
 

scholar

Banned
Persian was the prestige culture, so to speak. The Lavant and Mesopotamia had a long history of being ruled by and adapting to external powers (Hellenic then roman in the Levant, Persian in Mesopotamia). The Arabs were another set of conquerors to be adapted to. In Persia, however, after the initial conquest Persian culture gained importance as a symbol of Persian prestige even after the elites had gradually converted to Islam.
Ironically Persian culture was growing to its height under Islam with the Il Khanate, as this was the first major regime to use Persian as an official language instead of as a language of the masses.
 
It was relatively easy to shift from one Semitic language to another. In Syria from Aramaic to Arabic. In North Africa, from Punic to Arabic. (Though the non-Arabic speaking Amazagh Berber did not change their language). Iraqi, from Akkadian to Aramaic to Arabic.The Kurds have kept their language too. Even the small non-Arabic people of the outer Arabic Peninsula like the Salllah on the Yemen-Oman border have kept their language to modern times.

Yeah, this is the explanation I've heard for the spread of Arabic. Persia wasn't a barrier or an exception, it was just where the Semitic tongues ran out.
 
I'm sure there is an explanation as to why Persia is dubbed as the "China of the Middle East": its culture attracts invading nomad warriors who settle down and assimmilate into the culture of their vassals.
 
Well, all quite good points, but I wouldn't stress excessively the "Semitic" bit. Coptic is not Semitic after all (though it's Afro-Asiatic, it's resemblance with Arabic is pretty remote AFAIK, more than Persian and English for instance) but Egypt Arabized quite thoroughly in time. And the South Arabic languages that survive in Yemen and Oman are Semitic, OTOH.
I would say that the main point is that Persia is huge. Syriac and Coptic were quite prestigious at the time of Arabic conquest (and especially Syriac flourished after it for a while, with Greek's role reduced) but it did not help them much.
Of course, the leap from Aramaic to Arabic is much lesser than to Persian to Arabic, but if the Arabs had been able to settle the Iranian plateau the way they did in Syria, Iranic languages would have been pushed to marginality and Persia could become a largely Arab-speaking place. However, I cannot think any non-ASB way for such a thing to happen.

Another factor is that the Sassanian Empire fell completely to the Arabs. Islam inherited Persian culture wholesale. Persian was not, in terms of cultural policy, a threat, a symbol of a still existing opposing force.
All the above is oversimplistic (there WAS a fierce debate about the viability of a Persian culture within the Arabo-Islamic world) but I hope it helps.
 
Persian was the prestige culture, so to speak. The Lavant and Mesopotamia had a long history of being ruled by and adapting to external powers (Hellenic then roman in the Levant, Persian in Mesopotamia). The Arabs were another set of conquerors to be adapted to. In Persia, however, after the initial conquest Persian culture gained importance as a symbol of Persian prestige even after the elites had gradually converted to Islam.

Indeed, and there was great benefit to be had in adapting a historical center of Middle Eastern civilization as a sort of standard for the entire empire, because that meant that it was then open to Persian administrators, trading, sciences, etc.
 

scholar

Banned
I'm sure there is an explanation as to why Persia is dubbed as the "China of the Middle East": its culture attracts invading nomad warriors who settle down and assimmilate into the culture of their vassals.
Persia was a bit more influenced than China and fell more often, but yes there are a lot of similarities between the two and the power of their cultural assimilation. India is also often brought up as an example, but its a poor one by comparison to either Persia or China.
 
Persia was a bit more influenced than China and fell more often, but yes there are a lot of similarities between the two and the power of their cultural assimilation. India is also often brought up as an example, but its a poor one by comparison to either Persia or China.

Well, it depends on which part of India you mean. Indian cultures tend to vary wildly across India and the South Indian cultures were always way more resilient than the North which was naturally somewhat more Persianised.

South India assimilated everything from Hinduism to Islam.
 
Indeed, and there was great benefit to be had in adapting a historical center of Middle Eastern civilization as a sort of standard for the entire empire, because that meant that it was then open to Persian administrators, trading, sciences, etc.

Yes- IMO the reason that that didn't happen in the Levant and Egypt where Greek administrators and bureaucracy was instead gradually eliminated and replaced was that Rhomaion was still a going concern unlike the completely subjugated Persian Empire. If the House of Sassan had managed to resist, holding on the PErsia itself, say, and the Arabs had instead conquered Anatolia and managed to take Constantinople you might well have seen a major Byzantine/Greek cultural bloc develop within the Dar-al-Islam while Persian influences would have been scoured from Iraq.
 
Yes- IMO the reason that that didn't happen in the Levant and Egypt where Greek administrators and bureaucracy was instead gradually eliminated and replaced was that Rhomaion was still a going concern unlike the completely subjugated Persian Empire. If the House of Sassan had managed to resist, holding on the PErsia itself, say, and the Arabs had instead conquered Anatolia and managed to take Constantinople you might well have seen a major Byzantine/Greek cultural bloc develop within the Dar-al-Islam while Persian influences would have been scoured from Iraq.

That's an idea I toyed with myself, and it has merit, but OTOH, consider that Persia had a massive role in passing the Greek culture into the Arabic context, which happened more or less when the Persian bureaucrats were going west (i.e. under the early Abbasids).
It was pretty complicated and we don't really know even remotely as much as we should about what happened (despite relatively rich documentary material).
 

scholar

Banned
Well, it depends on which part of India you mean. Indian cultures tend to vary wildly across India and the South Indian cultures were always way more resilient than the North which was naturally somewhat more Persianised.

South India assimilated everything from Hinduism to Islam.
That's the point, India isn't homogenous in spite of the common perception and while some assimilation takes place the culture of India changed with each successive wave of conquests. The North, which fell far more often and saw increasingly more movements of peoples, civilizations, and other groups, was much less successful than the south which was rarely outright conquered.
 
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