Perso-Islamic Synthesis Essay

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Pages: 12

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the Islamization of Persia in relation to the Samanid and Buyid Dynasties. The synthesis of Persian culture and Islam was not an immediate result of the Arab expansion into Iran and there is certainly a lack of research on the subject. However, in this essay, I will attempt to explain the contributions of the Samanid and Buyid dynasties to this synthesis with a focus on the attempts of the Samanid Dynasty at centralization and a unified identity through religion, language and culture.
The Islamization of Iran occurred as a result of the Arab conquest of Persia. The institution of a new culture, especially if the new culture is being installed by one less organized or less capable than the culture

The first several years of the Buyid confederation took over much of the areas like Fars and Jibal as well as Kerman, Oman, Jazira, Tabaristan and Gorgan, all from c. 930 to c. 981. However, they experienced a huge decline when they gradually begun braking apart from the local traditions and becoming more of an independent party. Over time, the Buyid confederation had no power within the state. They were simple governors and rulers, however, recognized as having priority in political dealings over the populace.
The Buyid army mostly consisted of Daylamite Iranians who fought in the Turkish war. These soldiers were mostly originally from Zaydi or Fiver Shi’ism. After gaining the power in Iran and Iraq, they got closer to the Twelver Shi’ism and attempted to enforce their particular religious views upon their subject as something they must do and not something they were simply persuaded to follow. During the mid-11th century, they gradually fell in the hands of the Turks. In 1055, Tughrul took away all the Buyids that were positioned near Iraq or in Iraq and only kept the Abbasid caliphate as their ruler. The Buyids are not descendants of Ali, and their doctrine is not based on the mainstream Islam the rest of the continent understood, they were more politically incented.
The dynasty reached the height of its power under Ala ‘al-Dowleh, the great patron of