Shuʿūbīya

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The Shuʿūbīya ( Arabic الشعوبية, DMG aš-Šuʿūbīya ) describes a Persian national movement in the 8th and 9th centuries, whose followers questioned the Arab superiority.

terminology

The term "Shu'ubiya" goes back to Sura 49, verse 13 of the Koran , which speaks of associations (Shu'ub) and tribes (Qaba'il).

You people! We created you (by letting you descend from a male and a female), and we have made you into associations and tribes so that you know each other (due to the genealogical relationships). (But do not be too pretentious about your noble descent!) The noblest among you is the one of you who is most pious. God knows and is well informed (about everything). This sura was and is often used by Muslims to prevent prejudice and violence between individual groups.

The term Shu'ubiya was already in use before the 9th century, when the Kharijites rejected the privileges and superiority of the Koreans as leaders of the Ummah .

The followers of the Persian Shu'ubiya in the 8th / 9th centuries. Century probably also referred to themselves with the term. He therefore had no discriminatory intention. The followers of the Persian Shu'ubiya reinterpreted the above sura. The traditional Arabic interpretation assumed that both schu'ub and kaba'il refer to groups that differ from one another in their genealogy . In contrast, the followers of the Schu'ubiya took the interpretation that schu'ub refers to a group with a territorial definition.

Form of movement

The majority of the movement was made up of Persians, but tradition has also given us Coptic, Aramaic and Berber supporters. The followers translated ancient Greek literature and promoted literature and poetry in the Persian language. They wanted to show that their ancestry and traditions were more elegant than those of the Arabs. In addition, diatribes were published and theories put forward to emphasize the nobler origins of the Persians. Among other things, it was claimed that Arabs are inferior to the Persians, since their Arab ancestors can be traced back to Ibrahim's son and his slave Hagar , while Persians are descended from the legitimate son Isaac.

Origin and reasons for the movement

The Shu'ubiya was probably not aimed at the destruction of Islamic rule, but rather an expression of a growing Persian national consciousness. The aim was to promote non-Arab, especially Persian elements and influences in the Islamic ruled area.

A large part of the followers of the Shu'ubiya belonged to the class of the civil servants who went back to the Sassanids . After the conquest of the Persian territories, the Arabs took over the Sassanid administrative structures, so that the officials retained their privileges. Despite or perhaps because of it, they had to endure discrimination and abuse during the rule of the Umayyads . The Abbasid Resistance used and promoted these tensions and the competition between Arabs and Persians for their goals. After the Abbasid overthrow, the Abbasids granted the Persians absolute equality as long as they followed Islam and wrote their writings in Arabic.

This development strengthened the Persian national consciousness. At the same time, however, the Persian officials also felt threatened. The world was changing and the social boundaries became much more permeable. It was now also possible to reach an office for which someone would not have been suitable from birth. This increasing Arab influence in their sphere of activity and the increased importance of Arab literature and poetry threatened the privileges of the old Persian civil servant class. For these reasons, many joined the Shu'ubiyas to emphasize their noble roots.

Meaning of the Shu'ubiya

The evaluation of the Shu'ubiya is difficult nowadays, as there are no longer any original sources and all knowledge about the Shu'ubiya comes from secondary Arabic sources. For this reason there is no uniform scientific evaluation.

According to some scholars, such as the French linguist G. Lecomte, the importance of the Shu'ubiya was overrated because it had no central programs or guides. For Lecomte it represented more of a diffuse anti-Arab tendency. The Iran expert and Harvard professor Roy Mottahedeh refers to it and raises the question of why the Shu'ubiya, if insignificant from today's perspective, provoked strong reactions on the Arab side at the time Has. These reactions showed that the Shu'ubiya had a very strong meaning for the Arabs of their time.

According to the Scottish Islamic scholar HAR Gibb , there were various, partly indirect reactions to the Shu'ubiya on the Arab side:

  1. The concept of adab, which included studying pre-Islamic texts and integrating them into Islamic theology
  2. The Mu'tazila , which propagates strict monotheism and emphasizes reason as a source of knowledge
  3. The establishment of the bait al-hikma academy (House of Wisdom), in which Greek texts were translated into Arabic that were used to argue against dualistic heresy.

There is broad consensus that the Shu'ubiya made a decisive contribution to the fact that the Persian language was preserved to this day.

Individual evidence

  1. Sura 49. The chambers: The Koran, p. 907 (cf. Sura 49, 13) (c) Verlag W. Kohlhammer
  2. See Enderwitz, S. "al- SH UʿŪBIYYA." Encyclopaedia of Islam
  3. See Mottahedeh, p. 163
  4. See Gibb, HAR, pp. 70-71

literature

  • Susanne Enderwitz: al- SH UʿŪBIYYA In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Brill, suffering. Vol. 9, p. 513; Brill Online, 2010
  • Roy Mottahedeh: The Shu'ubiyah Controversy and the Social History of Early Islamic Iran. International Journal of Middle East Studies 7 (2). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1976, pp. 161-182
  • Bertold Spuler : Iran in early Islamic times. Academy of Sciences and Literature. Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1952
  • Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb : Studies on the Civilization of Islam. Beacon books on world affairs, ed. William R. Polk. Beacon Press, Boston 1962