The Ne Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran Tradition, Memory, and Conversion [Paperback]

This book focuses on the role of memory and its revision and erasure in the ninth to eleventh centuries.This is the first book-length study in a European language of Iran's conversion to Islam in the ninth to eleventh centuries, with a focus on the historical consciousness of Iranians at that time. It emphasizes the importance of a shared history for groups and traces the remolding of Iranian history and identity that occurred when Iran's heritage was reevaluated in light of Islam. Contra modern nationalists, the book takes issue with depictions of Iran as a timeless entity, instead focusing on the formation of a Persian ethnic identity and the creation of new local loyalties and affiliations.This is the first book-length study in a European language of Iran's conversion to Islam in the ninth to eleventh centuries, with a focus on the historical consciousness of Iranians at that time. It emphasizes the importance of a shared history for groups and traces the remolding of Iranian history and identity that occurred when Iran's heritage was reevaluated in light of Islam. Contra modern nationalists, the book takes issue with depictions of Iran as a timeless entity, instead focusing on the formation of a Persian ethnic identity and the creation of new local loyalties and affiliations.How do converts to a religion come to feel an attachment to it? The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran answers this important question for Iran by focusing on the role of memory and its revision and erasure in the ninth to eleventh centuries. During this period, the descendants of the Persian imperial, religious, and historiographical traditions not only wrote themselves into starkly different early Arabic and Islamic accounts of the past but also systematically suppressed much knowledge about pre-Islamic history. The result was both a new Persian ethnic identity and the pairing of Islam with other loyalties and affiliations, including family, locale, and sect. This pioneering study exaló!