Attention Prashant: The Arab invasion of Persia and the recent change in the paradigm of "What Really Happened"

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Feb 20, 2018 at 09:08

Prashant you wrote:

>Why did Muslims attach Persia?

I suspect you mean Why did the Arabs invade Persia? Notice that Islam did not exist in 633 CE

Well I will paraphrase Patricia Crone's reason for the Arab invasions: She believes that al-Futuh al-Islamiyya (Arab invasions) Persia included were inspired by the simple fact that the Arabs loved to loot and their God and their prophet encouraged them to invade, loot and enslave the infidels Do we need any more reason?

However, if you are interested in the answer to the question: What really happened in Persia? Then you need to know that the narratives provided by the Muslim Mu'arekheen (historians) are late and tendentious (they were written almost 3 centuries after the Arab invasion) and they are full of topoi and schemata. And later historians seem to know more about what really happened in Iran. The timeline does not make sense And the extant literary sources written by non Muslims (eg: Sebeos) don't help that much

In the past 15-20 years there has been a real change in our understanding of what really happened in Persia starting in 628CE or some 4 years before the death of Muhammad

So here is a very brief timeline of the very long war between Persia and the Greeks: It started in 616 CE and the Greeks initially lost the war However, in 622 CE the tide of war turned against the Persians where they lost battles in Upper Mesopotamia and it was down hill for them until they were finally were expelled from Egypt in 628-629 CE This war left both Persia and the Greeks almost bankrupt and weak. And Arab historians believed that the "weakness" of both the Greeks and the Persians helped the invading Arabs (it is hard to believe because think of USSR during the brutal Second World War being on the verge of collapse following the German invasion but they were able to turn the tide of the war in their favor So there is no reason to accept such claim by the Muslim historians)

The recent change came about from examining the extant literary evidence as well as a trove of coins that helped to establish a new timeline and explain what really happened.

Parvaneh Pourshariati's excellent book addresses what really happened and provides a new timeline and here is a link to the book "Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran"

https://www.amazon.com/Decline-Fall-Sasanian-Empire-Sasanian-Parthian/dp/1784537470/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519133304&sr=

Here is a very brief introduction to this great work:

1. The line of demarcation between the Greeks and the Persians was the Euphrates

2. The Arab tribes that lived in Mesopotamia conducted many raids against Persia long time before the rise of what was to become Islam

3. Sasanid Persia was in actual fact a very decentralized confederacy between the Sassanians and the Parthians

4. However, during the long war between Persia and the Greeks the Parthians withdrew from the confederacy with the Sassanians and made peace with the local Arab tribes in Mesopotamia This was indeed the reason for the decline and fall of the Sassanians and their empire and the eventual invasion of Iran by the Arabs

5. Pourshariati moves the timeline of the Arab invasions to 628 CE-632 CE instead of 633 CE as we are told by Muslim historians

6. And this makes perfect sense that the Arab tribes and their raids of Iran for a very long time became a full blown invasion and conquest because the Sassanian empire was weak because of the breakdown in their confederacy with the Parthians

7. It also makes one wonder that the Arab tribes were expecting to do the usual: Raid loot rape and run back to the other side of the Euphrates and end of story but this time the Arabs stayed

8. So when did the Arab invasion of Persia start? It really started as early as 628CE

If you wish to view the Persian coins that helped in establishing the timeline check Karl-Heinz Ohlig: "Early Islam A Critical Reconstruction Based on Contemporary Sources" It should be available at amazon

So in short what was meant to be the usual raids by Mesopotamian Arabs became: Futuh Bilad al-'Ajam (Persia)

But again the Islamic Historical Tradition is the biggest literary fraud in the history of mankind

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".