Dehqan

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dehqān (also Dihqān , Middle Persian Dahigān ) is the historical name for local aristocratic landowners in the late ancient Sassanid Empire and in early Islamic Persia.

After the reforms of the Persian king Chosrau I in the middle of the 6th century, this group represented the military and fiscal foundation of the Sassanid Empire. As a relevant social group, they first appear in late Sassanid and later in neo-Persian and early Islamic sources. This smaller landed nobility should not be confused with the high nobility, who also and above all had much larger land holdings. Chosrau I. assigned the Dehqāns an important and also hereditary function in dealing with local tasks, especially in collecting taxes, whereby the peasants had to follow their instructions. Dehqāns thus represented a local state administration on which the king could rely.

In the course of the Arab expansion , the importance of the Dehqāns increased, as they were often the only political actor at the local level after the collapse of the Sassanid Empire. In the sources, they appear as important contacts for the (initially barely developed) Arab Empire administration in the areas of the former Sassanid Empire. Some of them concluded contracts or agreements with the Muslim conquerors. They were still responsible for collecting taxes, as well as for maintenance work and the cultivation of the land.

At the same time, however, the Dehqāns also cultivated their Persian cultural heritage, which was essentially shaped by Sassanid traditions. In this context, they acted as the central Persian cultural mediator towards the new Muslim masters, which in some cases left a strong impression on them. Not a few subsequent Arab rulers (partly also on a local level) appeared to the splendor of the Sassanid Empire as a model (see Samanids and Abbasids ). They also preserved many older Persian stories of various kinds. These in turn flowed into subsequent generations in the Iranian cultural area. The Persian national epic Shāhnāme of Firdausi can hardly be imagined without this mediating activity, which Dehqāns often cites as its source.

In the 11th century, they increasingly lost influence before they disappeared as a politically relevant social group. In later times this term was simply used to refer to farmer / farmer in Persian-speaking countries.

literature

  • Aḥmad Tafażżolī: Sasanian Society. New York 2000, p. 38ff.
  • Aḥmad Tafażżolī: Dehqan . In: Encyclopædia Iranica . Volume 7 (1996), pp. 223-226.