Religions of Abbasid Iran: Beliefs and Controversies

In this panel, we would like to explore different facets of religious dialogue and interaction that took place between the various religions of Abbasid Iran.  As expected, the political change from the Sasanian to the Islamic empire brought with it a simultaneous change in how each religion and ethnicity viewed its others.  Our panel will seek to further explicate how literature from this time deals with the religious schisms and debates, and what these texts mean for our understanding of religious interaction in Abbasid Iran.  The first paper of the panel deals with Islamic polemics against Manichaean dualism, drawing from an array of Arabic heresiological sources as a backdrop to this specific debate.   The second paper discusses Persian Nestorian physicians who were trained in Hellenistic Syriac traditions, and their relationship to the office of the Caliph.  The third paper will study the history of the shu‘ūbiyyah controversy, a trend in medieval Arabic literature that privileges Byzantine and Persian empires over against Arab civilization. (Panel convenor David Bennett)
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A thematically related, independent fourth paper demonstrates the limits of the influence, which Persian mawali could exercise at the Abbasid court, despite the important positions they held within the administration. 

Chair
name: 
Prof. Michael Cooperson
Institutional Affiliation : 
UCLA
Academic Bio: 
Professor of Arabic Studies, UCLA
Discussant
Name: 
None
Institutional Affiliation : 
None
Academic Bio : 
None
First Presenter
Name: 
David Bennett
Institutional Affiliation : 
UCLA
Academic Bio : 
Ph.D. Student, Iranian Studies, UCLA
Concise Paper Title : 
The Refutation of Dualist Heresies.
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
Manichaeans have inspired a substantial collection of polemical refutations since the time of Augustine. In this paper, I will examine the refutation literature which emerged during the early ‘Abbasid period. Much more than a historical heretical sect, the Manānīyah appear to have exercised a considerable theoretical threat to Muslim theologians: by the 11th Century, they could not have been a major presence in Iraq, yet ‘Abd al-Jabbār (d. 1025 CE) devotes a sizeable chunk of his encyclopedic K. al-Mughnī to a discussion and refutation of dualist views—a chunk comparable to that concerned with arguments against the Christians. Whereas we are accustomed to treating heresies in the first Islamic centuries according to the formulaic taxonomies of later heresiologists such as Shahrastānī (d. 1153), I propose that earlier Mu‘tazilite refutational literature provides a series of snapshots into a developing controversy which spills beyond the limits of polemic: at stake are key concepts in cosmology, concepts still in an indeterminate state among the Mutakallimūn, awaiting satisfactory theological resolution. In the 9th Century, accusations of dualist sympathies had to be evaded or deflected by several major Mu‘tazilites. Thinkers such as Naẓẓām (d. before 845) experimented by adopting certain philosophical positions (on mixture and the nature of the soul) common to dualist heresiarchs: care had to be taken therefore to deny any associated proposition which undermined tawḥīd. Naẓẓām’s “disputes” with dualists have been preserved in the apologetic work of Khayyāṭ (d. 906), and they offer a remarkable landscape of accommodation and condemnation. Championing a materialist doctrine at odds with contemporary kalām atomism and the hylomorphism of the early philosophers, Naẓẓām is clearly borrowing from the natural philosophy of the dualists while simultaneously inveighing against the established principles of such a system. It is this tightrope-act, still evident in ‘Abd al-Jabbār, which I will explore, hoping to illuminate the complicated relationship between the dualists and their critics. I will also show how various dualist sects—Manānīyah, Dayṣānīyah, and Marqūnīyah—effectively became short-hand signifiers of specific materialist concerns even as their members had long disappeared from the intellectual scene.
Second Presenter
Name: 
Awad Awad
Institutional Affiliation : 
UCLA
Academic Bio : 
Ph.D. Student, UCLA Arabic Studies. Modern Representations of the Past in Arab Media.
Concise Paper Title : 
The Intellectual History of Persian Nestorian Physicians in the Early Abbasid Period
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
Persian Nestorian physicians, trained in Hellenized Syriac tradition, played a prominent role in early Abbasid history. An overwhelming amount of information on them, and other physicians, is found in a thirteenth century Arabic work titled ‘Uyun al-Anba’ fi Tabaqat al-Atibba’ by Ibn Abi Usaybi’a (d. 1269/70). The Bakhtishu’ family of physicians is the most famous and is accredited with transferring the Jundishapur school of medicine to Baghdad. It ought to be noted here that some scholars, like Roy Porter, while acknowledging Jundishapur as an intellectual meeting place and crossroads for scholars of various backgrounds, have cast doubt on whether a medical school physically existed. Whatever the case may be, in this paper I propose to address and clarify certain problems on the intellectual history concerning Persian Nestorian physicians. The Bakhtishu’ family lived during a peak in the translation movement where rationalism played a significant role in the fields of medicine, science, theology and philosophy. Christopher Melchert has suggested that opposing parties in early ninth century Islam maybe better classified as rationalists, semi-rationalists and traditionists. I shall argue that this classification may be extended to the Nestorian physicians in this period as a well. I will further examine how the intellectual history of the Persian Nestorian community effected these physicians’ relations with the caliphs, the church, and other court physicians.
Thid Presenter
Name: 
Hassan Hussain
Institutional Affiliation : 
UCLA
Academic Bio : 
Ph.D. Student, History, UCLA
Concise Paper Title : 
Shu‘ūbiyyah and Iranians in Contemporary Arabic Literature
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
The shu‘ūbiyyah controversy refers to a trend in medieval Arabic literature that rejects Arab privilege and ridicules Arab “civilization” as being inferior to that of the Byzantine and Persian empires. The trend was influential enough to attract virulent responses from key figures such as Jāhiz, Ibn Qutaybah and al-Zamakhsharī. However, for the most part, discussions of shu`ubiyyah disappear until the twentieth century. Western scholars such as Goldziher and Gibb viewed the trend as either an example of proto-nationalism or as a dispute over the cultural orientation of the Abbasid Empire, setting off debates among historians and scholars about the true nature of the controversy. However, in addition to modern debates about the nature of the medieval controversy, shu`ubiyyah also reappears in modern Arabic literature referring to contemporary events. This paper will delineate developments in conceptions of shu‘ūbiyyah in contemporary Arabic literature. I argue that while shu‘ūbiyyah in its medieval context debated social privilege in the new Abbasid social order, shu‘ūbiyyah in its modern context has become synonymous with sedition. The term shu‘ūbiyyah is used in contemporary Arabic literature as a rhetorical device to label whoever is considered to be promoting cultural, religious and/or linguistic deviance. As a result various and sometimes conflicting groups have all been labeled as shu‘ūbīs. This paper will present the various conceptions of shu‘ūbiyyah in contemporary Arabic literature and demonstrate how Iranians and Iran in particular configure into understandings of shu`ubiyyah in modern Arabic literature.
Fourth Presenter
Name: 
Najm al-Din Yousefi
Academic Bio : 
Najm al-Din Yousefi teaches History of the Middle East, Islamic Studies, and History of Science at Virginia Tech. Yousefi received his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech’s program in Science and Technology Studies (2009). His Ph.D. dissertation deals with competing discourses of knowledge in early Islamic Iran and the Fertile Crescent. Along with Carol Bier and Elaheh Kheirandish, Yousefi co-edited the September 2008 issue of Iranian Studies, entitled *Sciences,Crafts, and the Production of Knowledge: Iran and Eastern Islamic Lands (184-1153 AH/800-1740 CE).* His article in that issue provides an alternative interpretation of the history of secular sciences in medieval Islam and the question of “decline.”
Concise Paper Title : 
The Early Diwan, Persian Mawali and the Miscarriage of a New Discourse
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
This paper demonstrates that the production of knowledge in the Umayyad and early Abbasid diwan (ca. 60–183 AH/680–800 CE) involved questions of social order and political authority. It is well established that the diwan relied heavily on expert knowledge. This was particularly the case when the Arab conquests of the first/seventh century set out to lay the foundation for a vast empire. The Arabs adopted the administrative systems that were prevalent prior to the conquests throughout the Near East. As such, the Iraqi diwan was managed on the Sasanian model while the Byzantine administrative practices continued in Syria and Egypt. The Persian mawali played a crucial role in managing certain divisions of the Umayyad diwan in Iraq. In that regard, this paper calls attention to the efforts made by some diwan secretaries in constructing a discourse that incorporated elements of Persian ancient wisdom and Islamic/Arabian tradition. The paper highlights such elements in the writings, among others, of ‘Abd al-Hamid ibn Yahya and ‘Abdallah ibn al-Muqaffa‘. The “Mirror for Princes” (mir’at al-muluk) literature produced by these secretaries in the form of translation and/or original composition sought to introduce a political system which derived from both Persian/Greek political wisdom and Islamic/Arabian tradition. These exemplars of early adab promoted a model of government in which the secretary, in his advisory capacity, took the center stage. Viewed from this vantage point, the secretary’s professional interests seem to have taken precedence over the putative interests of the class (i.e., mawali) to which he belonged. This paper concludes that despite the crucial role of the Persian mawali in the Abbasid Revolution, this burgeoning discourse fared poorly with the Abbasid caliphs. For the Abbasid caliphate appears to have preferred to draw its legitimacy from a rival discourse, which relied on the ‘ulama as the spokesmen of Islam and the interpreters of the Qur’an and Sunnah. This alternative discourse had a different vision for social and political order—a vision that, contrary to Ibn al-Muqaffa’s vision, had no interest in deferring the ‘ulama’s legal authority to that of the caliph’s.

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