A literary history of Persia / [Edward Granville Browne].

  • Edward Granville Browne
Date:
[1902-1924]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A literary history of Persia / [Edward Granville Browne]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    dynasty, embraces a period of about five centuries and a half (b.c. 330-A.D. 226). The second, beginning with the Arab invasion and Muhammadan Conquest, which destroyed the Sasanian dynasty and overthrew the Zoroastrian religion, though much shorter, had far deeper and more permanent effects on the people, thought, and language of Persia. “ Hellenism,” as Noldeke says, “never touched more than the surface of Persian life, but Iran was penetrated to the core by Arabian religion and Arab ways.” The Arab con¬ quest, though presaged by earlier events,1 may be said to have begun with the battles of Buwayb and Qadisiyya (a.d. 635— 637), and to have been completed and confirmed by the death of the last Sasanian king, Yazdigird III, a.d. 651 or 652. The end of the Arabian period cannot be so definitely fixed. In a certain sense it endured till the sack of Baghdad and murder of al-Mustacsim bi’llah, the last ‘Abbasid Caliph, in a.d. 1258 by the Mongols under Hulagu Khan, the grandson of Changiz Khan. Long before this, however, the Arab power had passed into the hands of Persian and Turkish vassals, and the Caliph, whom they sometimes cajoled and conciliated, but more often coerced or ignored, had ceased to exercise aught beyond a spiritual authority save in the imme¬ diate neighbourhood of Baghdad. Broadly speaking, however, the revival of the Persian language proceeded pari passu with the detachment of the Persian provinces from the direct control of the Caliph’s administration, and the uprising of local dynasties which yielded at most a merely nominal obedience to the ‘Abbasid court. Of these dynasties the Tahirids (a.d. 820) are sometimes accounted the first ; but they may more truly be considered to begin with the Saffarids (a.d. 867), Samanids (a.d. 874), and Buwayhids (a.d. 932), and to reach their full development in the Ghaznawids and Seljuqs. 1 Notably by the Battle of Dhu Oar in the reign of Khusraw Parwfz (a.d. 604-610).
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