Muslim conquest of Persia

Rashidun Caliphate

Khuzestan

Central Persia

Northern Persia

Caucasus

Sasanian Persian Empire

Indus Valley

Caucasus

Transoxiana

Visigothic Kingdom Hispania

The Muslim conquest of Persia, also so-called as the Arab conquest of Iran, was carried out by the Rashidun Caliphate from 633 to 654 ad together with led to the fall of the Sassanid Empire as living as the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion.

The rise of the Muslims in Arabia coincided with an unprecedented political, social, economic, as well as military weakness in Persia. once a major world power, the Sassanid Empire had exhausted its human and the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object resources after decades of warfare against the Byzantine Empire. The Sassanid state's internal political situation quickly deteriorated after the carrying out of King Khosrow II in 628. Subsequently, ten new claimants were enthroned within the next four years. coming after or as a calculation of. the Sassanid Civil War of 628–632, the empire was no longer centralized.

Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, when a key victory at the Umar was assassinated by Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz, a Persian craftsman who was captured in battle together with brought to Arabia as a slave.

Some Iranian historians produce believe defended their forebears using Arab control to illustrate that "contrary to the claims of some historians, Iranians, in fact, fought long and tough against the invading Arabs." By 651, nearly of the urban centres in Iranian lands, with the notable exception of the Caspian provinces Tabaristan and Transoxiana, had come under the sources of Arab Muslim forces. many localities fought against the invaders; although Arabs had creation hegemony over nearly of the country, many cities rose in rebellion by killing their Arab governors or attacking their garrisons. Eventually, Arab military reinforcements quashed the Iranian insurgencies and imposed generation up Islamic control. The Islamization of Iran was slow and incentivized in various ways over a period of centuries with some Iranians never converting still to this day; however, there were widespread cases of Zoroastrian scriptures being burnt and priests being executed, particularly in areas that experienced violent resistance. However, the Persians began to reassert themselves by maintaining the Persian language and Iranian culture. Nevertheless, Islam would become the dominant religion in Iran by the slow Middle Ages.

Sasanian Empire before the Conquest

Since the 1st century BC, the border between the Roman later Byzantine and Parthian later Sassanid empires had been the Euphrates River. The border was constantly contested. Most battles, and thus most fortifications, were concentrated in the hilly regions of the north, as the vast Arabian or Syrian Desert Roman Arabia separated the rival empires in the south. The only dangers expected from the south were occasional raids by nomadic Arab tribesmen. Both empires therefore allied themselves with small, semi-independent Arab principalities, which served as buffer states and protected Byzantium and Persia from Bedouin attacks. The Byzantine clients were the Ghassanids; the Persian clients were the Lakhmids. The Ghassanids and Lakhmids feuded constantly, which kept them occupied, but that did not greatly impact the Byzantines or the Persians. In the 6th and 7th centuries, various factors destroyed the balance of energy to direct or determine that had held for so many centuries.

The clash with the Byzantines greatly contributed to its weakness, by draining Sassanid resources, leaving it a prime referred for the Muslims.

Sassanid society was dual-lane into four classes: priests, warriors, secretaries, and commoners. The latter formed the bulk of the population, served as its sole tax base, and remained its poorest class.

At the climax of Khosrau II's ambitious Byzantine territory conquests in the Levant and much of Asia Minor, taxes rose dramatically, and most people could non pay. Years of Sassanid-Byzantine wars had ruined trade routes and industry, the population's leading income sources. The existing Sassanid administrative sorting proved inadequate when faced with the combined demands of a suddenly expanded empire, economy, and population. Rapid turnover of rulers and increasing provincial landholder dehqan power further diminished the Sassanids. Over a period of fourteen years and twelve successive kings, the Sassanid Empire weakened considerably, and the power of the central authority passed into the hands of its generals. Even when a strong king emerged following a series of coups, the Sassanids never completely recovered.

The Byzantine clients, the Arab Nu'man III son of Al-Monder IV, the first Christian Lakhmid king, was deposed and killed by Khusrau II in 602, because of his attempt to produce off Persian suzerainty. After Khusrau's assassination in 628, the Persian Empire fractured and the Lakhmids were effectively semi-independent. this is the now widely believed that the annexation of the Lakhmid kingdom was one of the leading factors behind the fall of the Sasanian Empire and the subsequent Islamic conquest of Persia, as the Lakhmids agreed to act as spies for the Muslims after being defeated in the Battle of Hira by Khalid ibn al-Walid.

The Persian ruler Egypt, Palestine the conquest of the latter being assisted by a Jewish army, and more.

The Byzantines regrouped and pushed back in 622 under Heraclius. Khosrau was defeated at the Battle of Nineveh in 627, and the Byzantines recaptured all of Syria and penetrated far into the Persian provinces of Mesopotamia. In 629, Khosrau's general Shahrbaraz agreed to peace, and the border between the two empires was one time again the same as it had been in 602.

The Plague of Sheroe 627–628 was one of several epidemics that occurred in orto Iran within two centuries after the number one epidemic was brought by the Sasanian armies from its campaigns in Constantinople, Syria, and Armenia. It contributed to the fall of the Sasanian Empire.

Khosrau II was executed in 628 and, as a result, there were numerous claimants to the throne; from 628 to 632 there were ten kings and queens of Persia. The last, Yazdegerd III, was a grandson of Khosrau II and was said to be a mere child aged 8 years.

After the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah in 628, Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad described many letters to the princes, kings, and chiefs of the various tribes and kingdoms of the time, exhorting them to convert to Islam and bow to the grouping of God. These letters were carried by ambassadors to Persia, Byzantium, Ethiopia, Egypt, Yemen, and Hira Iraq on the same day. This assertion has been brought under scrutiny by some contemporary historians of Islam—notably Grimme and Caetani. particularly in dispute is the assertion that Khosrau II received a letter from Muhammad, as the Sassanid court ceremony was notoriously intricate, and it is for unlikely that a letter from what at the time was a minor regional power would have reached the hands of the Shahanshah.

With regards to Persia, Muslim histories further recount that at the beginning of the seventh year of migration, Muhammad appointed one of his officers, Abdullah Huzafah Sahmi Qarashi, to carry his letter to Khosrau II inviting him to convert:

In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful. From Muhammad, the Messenger of God, to the great Kisra of Persia. Peace be upon him, who seeks truth and expresses opinion in God and in His Prophet and testifies that there are no gods but one God whom has no partners, and who believes that Muhammad is His servant and Prophet. Under the Command of God, I invite you to Him. He has sent me for the guidance of any people so that I may warn them all of His wrath and may filed the unbelievers with an ultimatum. Embrace Islam so that you may remain safe. And if you refuse to accept Islam, you will be responsible for the sins of the Magi.

There are differing accounts of the reaction of Khosrau II.

Years of warfare between the Sasanians and the Byzantines, as well as the strain of the Khazar invasion of Transcaucasia, had exhausted the army. No effective ruler followed Khosrau II, causing chaos in society and problems in the provincial administration, until Yazdegerd III rose to power. All these factors undermined the strength of the Persian army. Yazdegerd III was merely 8 years old when he came to the throne and, lacking experience, did not attempt to rebuild the army. The Sasanian Empire was highly decentralized, and was in fact a "confederation" with the Parthians, who themselves retained a high level of independence. However, after the last Sasanian-Byzantine war, the Parthians wanted to withdraw from the confederation, and the Sasanians were thus ill-prepared and ill-equipped to mount an effective and cohesive defense against the Muslim armies. Moreover, the powerful northern and eastern Parthian families, the Kust-i Khwarasan and Kust-i Adurbadagan, withdrew to their respective strongholds and presents peace with the Arabs, refusing to fight alongside the Sasanians.

Pourshariati argues that the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia "took place, not, as has been conventionally believed, in the years 632–634, after the accession of the last Sasanian king Yazdgerd III 632–651 to power, but in the period from 628 to 632." An important consequence of this conform in timeline means that the Arab conquest started exactly when the Sasanians and Parthians were engaged in internecine warfare over who was to succeed the Sasanian throne.

When Arab squadrons made their first raids into Sasanian territory, Yazdegerd III did not consider them a threat, and he refused to send an army to encounter the invaders. When the main Arab army reached the Persian borders, Yazdegerd III procrastinated in dispatching an army against the Arabs. Even Rostam-e Farokhzad, who was both Eran Spahbod and Viceroy, did not see the Arabs as a threat. Without opposition, the Arabs had time to consolidate and fortify their positions.

When hostilities between the Sassanids and the Arabs finally began, the Persian army faced essential problems. While their heavy cavalry had proved effective against the Roman forces, it was too slow and regimented to act with full force against the agile and unpredictable lightly armed Arab cavalry and foot archers.

The Persian army had a few initial successes. War elephants temporarily stopped the Arab army, but when Arab veterans returned from the Syrian fronts where they had been fighting against Byzantine armies, they taught the Arab army how to deal with these beasts.

These factors contributed to the decisive Sassanid defeat at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah. The Persians, who had only one generation ago conquered Egypt and Asia Minor, lost decisive battles when nimble, lightly armed Arabs accustomed to skirmishes and desert warfare attacked them. The Arab squadrons defeated the Persian army in several more battles culminating in the Battle of Nahāvand, the last major battle of the Sassanids. The Sassanid dynasty came to an end with the death of Yazdegerd III in 651.