Century or so of fighting and campaigning had seen Arab armies achieve victories from the Atlantic Ocean to the Aral Sea, from the Atlas Mountains to the Hindu Kush. Now, however, they had come up against a combination of natural barriers and well-organized states that impeded further progress. Islam would still spread further, but local dynasties, missionaries, and traders would henceforth act as its standard bearers, not Arab armies. This meant that the easy supply of booty dried up, prompting many more fighters to exchange their military gear for civilian garb. The focus on jihad and acquiring territory gave way to building an Islamic empire and forging an Islamic civilization. The conquests had provided the space for Islam to flourish but had not allowed the time for it to develop. Islamic law, science, philosophy, theology, literature, and art were all as yet in their infancy or still unborn. The large array of cultures that were now under Arab rule meant that there were abundant raw materials available for the task, and the increasing number of converts provided willing hands to do the work. The Abbasid revolution in 750 swept away the tight-knit Syro-Arabian elite and its obsession with tribal politics and opened the doors to the cosmopolitan world of Iraq and east Iran/Transoxania. The conditions were perfect for the reshaping of the cultural landscape.
One might legitimately ask if it were inevitable that Islam would be a feature of this new world order. Since around two thirds of the revolutionaries in the Abbasid armies were natives of the lands formerly a part of the Persian Empire, could they not have swept aside the religion that the Arabs had brought if they had chosen to do so? Yet it was in the name of Islam that they rebelled. The rapid downfall of the Sasanian dynasty must have convinced many in Persia that God was on the side of the Arabs and approved of their faith—success is always a powerful argument. What the rebels wanted, therefore, was not to get rid of Islam but to make it more responsive to their needs and more in tune with their culture and to free it from the control of an alien ruling elite in Syria. Some of the native revolutionaries were only superficially Islamized, as we can see from the extreme actions of followers of the Rawandi sect, who acclaimed the caliph Mansur as the messiah and jumped naked or wearing silk garments from city walls in the expectation of the end of days, but there is no reason to doubt their original sincerity and their hope that through Islam they would achieve a better life. Zoroastrianism's stronghold had been in southwest Iran, which had been hit hard by the Arab conquerors and its noble families slaughtered or dispersed, whereas east Iran and Transoxania had been home to many religions. Islam, made attractive by its link to power and the elite, provided a common religious idiom for all the diverse groups of this multi-faith land. Moreover, unlike Zoroastrianism and Christianity, it had no institutionalized clergy or hierarchy, which meant that it was particularly open to newcomers, despite prejudice from some quarters of the Arab population. There were a number of insurrections by Zoroastrian groups, especially in the mountainous regions of Iran, but these were isolated affairs, and their failure only served to confirm that by the late eighth century Islam was already too well established to be uprooted.1
World History
