Iraq

The governor of Basra controlled the provinces which were conquered from that base: Khuzistan (with its capital of Ahwaz in south-west Persia), Fars (the ancient Persis, with Shiraz near the ruins of Persepolis), further east Kirman, then Sistan (with the mountainous area of modern-day Afghanistan), and to the north-west Khurasan with the cities of Tus and Nishapur. The areas governed by Kufa were, apart from Iraq itself and the Jazira, the provinces of Armenia and Adharbayjan in the Caucasus, and Jibal, the west Iranian region with a triangle of cities: Hamadan, Rayy (near modern Tehran) and Isfahan.

But Kufa was also the city of the fourth caliph Ali, the base of his activities against his rivals in the Hijaz, and later the centre of opposition against the Umayyads. The rebellion of the Kharijites, the tribes who had come too late to obtain their fair share of the government’s salaries and endowments from the conquests, was directed first against Ali and then against the Umayyads too. Delegating military power to the governors of Basra and Kufa bound the Iranian provinces to Damascus; but if Iraq fell to the opponents of the régime, the whole east could be lost. The caliph Abd al-Malik, the leading personality of the Umayyad dynasty after its founder Muawiya, and his governor al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf re-established law and order with the help of the Syrian army, centralised military power in a new garrison (Wasit, between Basra and Kufa), streamlined and reformed the administration, which until then had been maintained only by Persian officials, and relaunched a movement of expansion towards the north-east (Khwarazm, Transoxiana).

But the assimilation of the Arabs who had settled in the Iranian east into the landscape, society and economy of the ancient country of Iran was not achieved and the small élite of Arab adminstrators did not view the integration of the Persians who had converted to Islam in a favourable light. In the first half of the eighth century tensions grew and dissatisfied elements embraced the propaganda for a renewal of theocracy under a descendant of the Prophet’s family, until finally the Abbasids (from the line of Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet) managed from Iraq to raise the banner of rebellion in Khurasan. Iran was conquered in a few months; in the year 749 the black banner of revolution was planted in Kufa; soon afterwards (750) the last Umayyad caliph fell in Egypt.

The supremacy of the Arabs outside Arabia was shattered; the empire of Islam continued, but under different auspices. The Abbasids, supported by their followers from Khurasan, introduced a strong Iranian bias into the new capital of Baghdad (founded in 763), in position and in layout a symbolic centre of Abbasid power near the ruins of Ctesiphon. The court etiquette and the administrative hierarchy became stamped with Iranian traditions of political thought which also influenced the division of institutions between government, military and law – a division which caused serious alienation between ruler and ruled. It also showed that the new dynasty could not fulfil its claim to be exercising truly Islamic government over the faithful in true succession to the Prophet and observance of God’s law. In his residence of Samarra (founded 836) with a bodyguard of Turkish slaves to protect him, the caliph became the plaything of opposing political forces. Social unrest and militant heresy shook the country; the greed of the soldiery disrupted the economy. The weakness of the caliphate opened tenth-century Iraq, and in the eleventh century the Jazira and Asia Minor, to forces which were then erupting from Iran and from Central Asia.

When the Mongol invasion had brought the caliphate to an end (1258), Iraq, once the centre of Islamic culture, sank into insignificance. It became a province of the Mongol and Turkish dynasties which ruled it from Iran, was conquered in the sixteenth century by the Íafavids, and was finally incorporated (in 1638) into the Ottoman empire.