Before 661, the Zoroastrian Iranians and the Muslim Arabs were still in a state of war. Entire regions had to be reconquered and subdued, until the Iranians resigned themselves to Arab rule. It is only with the accession of the Umayyads to the throne that the participation of the Zoroastrians in the political infrastructure of the Islamic world becomes apparent. The enrolment of Zoroastrians in the administration of the country and the attitude of Mu'awiya (661-680), the first Umayyad caliph, towards non-Muslims leads us to believe that the Arabs kept more or less the existing local laws and adopted ‘the Sassanian solution’ towards religious indifference. John bar Penkaye, a Mesopotamian monk of the late 680s noted that ‘there was no distinction between pagan and Christian; the believer was not known from a Jew.’ He even complained about the free activities of heresies. It was in the interest of the Arabs to maintain the previous Sassanian order, and to use the local population for governing the country. Those who were a source of revenue were not to be harmed, as in the past Muhammad had sent a letter to Ala b. Abdallah, urging him to come to terms with the Magians, Jews and Christians of Bahrain so that they would pay taxes and ‘save the Muslims the trouble of work.’ In the first century of Muslim rule, there could have been hardly any Muslim involvement in economic activities in Iran. The Muslim population was composed of Arab military men and some converted Persian soldiers and governors, who had agreed to collaborate with the former. It was incumbent on the towns to bear the tax burden and support the Muslims. The caliph Umar b. al-Khattab, who had led the Arabs in their conquest of Iran, allegedly said: ‘The bedouin who are the original Arabs and the mainstay of Islam (...) not a single dinar should be taken from them, nor even a dirham.’ Umar wished to keep the Arabs as a conquering, military caste who would live on the toil of conquered races; he had also decreed that no Arab could ever be a slave (Source: the Fire, the Star and the Cross).
Iranian Zoroastrians and Longstanding Tradition of Persian Monotheism
