Posted by patriwths on May 14, 2002 at 22:55:51:
In Reply to: Re: Greeks and Persians posted by Jack on May 14, 2002 at 16:47:16:
: May be the (Persian) means non-muslim Iranians(like Assyrians and Chaldaeans) ,and Armenians and Syriacs (Christian Syrians) also live in Iran.
Yes, the persians still exist. The persian empire vas a huge power vacuum after 627, when the emperor Iraklios
finally won a very long struggle against persia. both us and the persians were exhausted
by that war, but we did win and they did lose- their affairs were in much more confusion than ours, and right after that, while
persia was crumbling further in civil wars, the moslem expansion rolled over them and poof, persia dissappeared almost instantly. The last persian king died in central
asia after appealing to the T'ang emperor in china for help, who turned him down)
_anyway_ to make a long story short, the persians as a people were still around, and they pretty quickly converted to
islam, almost the whole place within one generation. When the capital of the caliphate moved to baghdad, much of the persian culture and
government was adopted wholesale by the arabs. persians are not arabs. (before, while the caliphate was ruled from damaskos, the predominant cultural influence on them was greek, and most of their chief officials were greeks as well. They were very new to the role of ruling an empire, and it took them a whiel to get used to it. ex-byzantine officials, who had more religious freedom under the arabs than under the various politics of the church in constantinople during this period, ended up serving the caliphs better than the emperors.. alas!)