“Amongst these was that an Arab got possession of a bag filled with camphor, and brought it to his companions, who, supposing it to be salt,* put it in the food which they were cooking, and found it lacking in savour, not knowing what it was. Then one who knew what it was saw it, and bought it from them for a ragged shirt worth a couple of dirhams.

“And amongst these was that an Arab of the desert got possession of a great ruby worth a large sum of money, and knew not its value. And one who knew its value saw it and bought it from him for a thousand dirhams. Then afterwards the Arab discovered its value, and his comrades reproached him, saying, ‘Why didst thou not ask more for it?’ He answered, ‘If I had known of any number greater than a thousand, I would have demanded it.’

*

“And amongst these was that one of the Arabs was holding in his hand red gold and crying, ‘Who will take the yellow and give me the white?’ supposing that silver was better than gold.

“Then Yazdigird fled to Khurásán, and his power was ever waning until he was slain there in the year 31 of the Flight [= A.D. 651-2], and he was the last of the Persian kings.”

I have translated this long passage from al-Fakhrí because, in comparatively few words and in a graphic and forcible way, it details the most salient features of the Arab conquest of Persia, though it is summary and sketchy, for the struggle was neither begun nor ended with the fatal battle of Qádisiyya. Early in the war the Muslims sustained a severe defeat at Qussu'n-Náṭif at the hands of Mardánsháh and four thousand Persians (November, A.D. 634), nor did the battle of Nahá-wand, which happened seven years later than that of Qádisiyya, put an end to the resistance of the Persians, who continued to defend themselves in individual localities with a stubbornness which reached its maximum in the province of Párs, the cradle and centre of Persian greatness. In Ṭabaristán, protected by forests and fens, and separated by a wall of mountains from the great central plateau of Persia, the Ispahbads, or military governors of the Sásánian kings, maintained an independent rule until about A.D. 760.

More difficult to trace than the territorial conquest of the Sásánian dominions is the gradual victory of the religion of Muḥammad over that of Zoroaster. It is often supposed that the choice offered by the warriors of Islám was between the Qur'án and the sword. This, however, is not the fact, for Magians, as well as Christians and Jews, were permitted to retain their religion, being merely compelled to pay a jizya or poll-tax; a perfectly just arrangement, inasmuch as non-Muslim subjects of the Caliphs were necessarily exempt both from military service and from the alms (Ṣadaqát) obligatory on the Prophet's followers. Thus in al-Baládhurí's History or the Muslim Conquests (Kitábu futúḥi'l-buldán)* we read (p. 69) that when Yemen submitted to the Prophet, he sent agents to instruct them in the laws and observances of Islám, and to collect the alms of such as adopted it and the poll-tax from such as continued in the Christian, Jewish, or Magian religions. Similarly in the case of 'Ummán he ordered Abú Zayd to “take alms from the Muslims and the poll-tax from the Magians” (p. 77). In Baḥrayn the Persian marzubán and some of his fellow-countrymen embraced Islám, but others continued in the faith of Zoroaster, paying a poll-tax of one dínár for every adult person. “The Magians and Jews,” we read (p. 79), “were averse to Islám, and preferred to pay the poll-tax; and the hypocrites amongst the Arabs said, ‘Muḥam-mad pretended that the poll-tax should be accepted only from the People of the Book, and now he hath accepted it from the Magians of Hajar, who are not of the People of the Book;’ whereupon was revealed the verse, ‘O ye who believe! look to vourselves; he who errs can do you no hurt when ye are guided: unto God is your return altogether and He will make plain unto you that which ye knew not.’”* The treaty concluded by Ḥabíb b. Maslama with the people of Dabíl in Armenia ran as follows: “In the Name of God the Merciful the Clement. This is a letter from Ḥabíb b. Maslama to the people of Dabíl, Christians, Magians, and Jews, such of them as are present and such of them as are absent. Verily I guarantee the safety of your lives, properties, churches, temples and city walls; ye are secure, and it is incumbent upon us faithfully to observe this treaty so long as ye observe it and pay the poll-tax and the land-tax. God is witness, and He sufficeth as a witness.” The Caliph 'Umar, as would appear from a passage in al-Baládhurí (p. 267), had some doubts as to how he ought to deal with the conquered Magians, but 'Abdu'r-Raḥmán b. 'Awf sprang to his feet and cried, “I bear witness of the Apostle of God that he said, ‘Deal with them as ye deal with the People of the Book!’”

Towns which resisted the Muslims, especially such as, having first submitted, afterwards revolted, did not, of course, escape so easily, and, more particularly in the latter case, the adult males, or at any rate those found in arms, were generally put to the sword, and the women and children taken captive. Still it does not appear that the Zoroastrians as such were subjected to any severe persecution, or that the conversion of Persia to Islám was mainly effected by force. This has been very well shown by Mr. T. W. Arnold, professor at the College of Aligarh, in chap. vii of his excellent work The Preaching of Islám (London, 1896, pp. 177-184); he points out that the intolerance of the Zoroastrian priests, not only towards those of other religions, but towards nonconformist Persian sects, Manichæan, Mazdakite, Gnostic and the like, had made them widely and deeply disliked, so that in many Persian subjects “persecution had stirred up feelings of bitter hatred against the established religion and the dynasty that supported its oppressions, and so caused the Arab Conquest to appear in the light of a deliverance.” Moreover, as he further points out, the simplicity and elasticity of Islám, as well as the numerous eschatological ideas which it had borrowed from Zoroastrianism, and the relief which it gave from the irksome disabilities and elaborate purifications imposed by that religion, commended it to many, and it is quite certain that the bulk of conversions were voluntary and spontaneous. After the defeat of the Persians at Qádisiyya, for example, some four thousand soldiers from Daylam (near the Caspian Sea) decided, after consultation, to embrace Islám and join the Arabs, whom they aided in the conquest of Jalúlá, after which they settled in Kúfa with the Muslims;* and other wholesale and voluntary conversions were numerous. Indeed the influx of Persian converts and captives into Arabia caused 'Umar some anxiety, so that, as the historian Dínawarí informs us (p. 136), he exclaimed, “O God! I take refuge with Thee from the children of these captives of Jalúlá!” Nor, in the event, did his anxiety prove baseless; and he himself was struck down by the dagger of one of these Persian captives, named by the Arabs Abú Lúlú'a; a fact which even at the present day is recalled with satisfaction by the more fanatical Persian Shí'ites, who, at least till very lately, used to celebrate the anniversary of 'Umar's death (called 'Umar-kushán) much as Guy Fawkes' day is celebrated in England.

The earliest Persian convert, Salmán, one of the most revered “Companions” of the Prophet, whom the Syrian Salmán the Persian. sect of the Nuṣayrís include in their mystical Trinity denoted by the letters 'A, M, S ('Alí “the Idea,” Muḥammad “the Name,” Salmán “the Gate”),* embraced Islám before its militant days, and, by his skill in military engineering, rendered material service to the Prophet in the defence of Madína. His history, given at considerable length by Ibn Hishám (pp. 136-143), is very interesting; and that eager curiosity in religious matters which led him in his youth to frequent the Christian churches of Isfahán, to flee from his luxurious home and indulgent father, and to abandon the Magian faith in which he was born, first for Christianity and later for Islám, is characteristically Persian. And if Salmán was the only Persian who was included in the honoured circle of the Aṣ-háb or “Companions,” many an eminent doctor of Islám was from the first of Persian race, while not a few prisoners of war or their children, such as the four sons of Shírín (Sírín), taken captive at Jalúlá, became afterwards eminent in the Muhammadan world. Thus it is by no means correct to imply (as is often done by those who take the narrower view of Persian literary history against which I have expressly guarded myself at the beginning of this book) that the two or three centuries immediately following the Muhammadan conquest of Persia were a blank page in the intellectual life of its people. It is, on the contrary, a period of immense and unique interest, of fusion between the old and the new, of transformation of forms and transmigration of ideas, but in no wise of stagnation or death. Politically, it is true, Persia ceased for a while to enjoy a separate national existence, being merged in that great Muhammadan Empire which stretched from Gibraltar to the Jaxartes, but in the intel­lectual domain she soon began to assert the supremacy to which the ability and subtlety of her people entitled her. Take from what is generally called Arabian science—from exegesis, tradition, theology, philosophy, medicine, lexico­graphy, history, biography, even Arabic grammar—the work contributed by Persians, and the best part is gone. Even the forms of State organisation were largely adapted from Persian models. Says al-Fakhrí (ed. Ahlwardt, p. 101), on the organisation of the díwáns or Government offices:* —