Iranian Revival after Post Conquest Trauma as Reflected in Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s Oeuvre The purpose of this paper is to analyze the ambiguous relationships between conquerors and vanquished, Arabs and Persians, men of power and political intellectuals, as well as Islam and Dualist religious thought. This analysis will be focused on the writings attributed to the eighth-century k?tib Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ and on the and biographical accounts about him. Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s oeuvre and personal destiny reveal the dialectic of submission, revolt and mutual integration, which shaped the intellectual history of the early centuries following the Islamic conquests. It is well-known that the Persian Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s writings lie at the foundations of early Arabic prose. Yet, the contents of his works are equally important for our understanding the history of political, religious and legal thought in the early ‘Abbasid period. The proposed paper demonstrates that all of Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s works (among them historical writings, tales, aphorisms, political epistles and translations) formed an educational program for the cultivation of a social elite in the ‘Abbasid era. This paper reveals that Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s creative contribution lies in the way in which he adapted and transformed ancient Persian wisdom to respond to the political questions of his day. I argue that, contrary to the opinions expressed in most of the scholarly literature, the contradictions between different writings attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ do not invalidate their authenticity, inasmuch as they reflect the complex and contentious social, ethnic and religious contexts in which these texts were written. Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ is the representative par excellence of in the Persian kutt?b (scribes, secretaries), who were often maw?l? (converts to Islam “adopted” by an Arab family, clan or tribe) but also zan?diqa (“heretics” with dualist ideas). My analysis on Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s writings also addresses the influence of the Zandaqa on the Mu‘tazila. Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s and other Persian authors translated Middle Persian historiographical works into Arabic. As a result, S?s?nian history was introduced into Islamic universal histories. I argue that this inclusion of Persian history into Islamic sources helped Persian Muslims to integrate in Islamic society while maintaining their distinct identity. My research is based on all available primary sources on Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, including the writings attributed to him as well as quotations and reports of later authors. From these latter sources, the proposed paper will draw from writings by al-J??i?, Ibn al-Nad?m, al-Bal??ur?, ‘Abd al-Jabb?r al-Q???, al-B?r?n? and Ibn Qutayba.

In western and Islamic intellectual traditions, the foreigner appears as someone who can introduce ideas from elsewhere and challenge us to reconsider our political theories. After all, Plato’s myth of the metals was Phoenician, Rousseau’s lawgiver came from elsewhere, and medieval Arabic models of kingship were derived in large part from ancient Persian models of rule. I analyze foreigners at the Abbasid court to understand their role in the history of Arabic thought. I am interested in how these foreigners drew upon their heritage to achieve power. To do so, I focus on the works of one particular Persian secretary named Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ who worked in the early Abbasid dynasty. I suggest that Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s life (and his identity as a Persian, mawl? and Muslim) can help us understand how a foreigner was able to draw upon his Persian heritage to achieve power. In this paper, I analyze Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s Risala fi'l-sahaba to reveal how he introduced a particular model of the just world (i.e. an Abbasid “circle of justice”), through which he welded models of Persian, authoritarian rule to the needs of the nascent ‘Abbasid dynasty. I show how Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ delineates a “circle of justice” in the early Abbasid context, by writing a letter (known as the Risala fi'l-Sahaba) to the nascent Abbasid caliph. The term “circle of justice” represents a hierarchical social order, in which a divinely inspired king places men in particular social classes (namely: that of the military, tax collectors, and the agricultural class). Justice, here, connotes a balance between social classes that facilitates political order and agricultural prosperity. The structure of the circle is reminiscent of ideal accounts of the social structure of Sasanian Iran, a society esteemed for its order in medieval Arabic sources. I argue that in the Risala fi'l-sahaba, Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ offers a blueprint that the caliph can use to build an Abbasid “circle of justice.” I analyze the polity that Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ outlines, in which his caliph (portrayed in the style of a Sasanian sacral king) will govern as the shadow of God on earth and will place men in their respective ranks. In the end, this paper reveals how Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ invoked the “circle of justice” to create a gateway between Persian, Zoroastrian antiquity and Islamic modernity – a gateway that served to transform Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s own position from a secretary to something of a political founder.

From today's perspective, Khosrow II's victories against Byzantium was a disaster, because not only all his conquests were wiped out within a decade or so, but his costly campaigns had ultimately exhausted the Sasanian empire and paved the way for a relatively minor, but determined, army of Arab Bedouins to conquer Iran. However, from the perspective of the years 618-620, the conquest of Byzantium territories all the way to Egypt, in conjunction with a successful campaign against the Turks on the eastern frontiers, vouched for an unparalleled achievement that could even eclipse the victories of his illustrious forefathers, namely Shapur I and Shapur II. It therefore stands to reason that Khosrow II did embark on such a commemorative project, and I shall try to prove that the Taq-e Bostan cave-monument was precisely carved for this purpose. The project must have been accompanied by a propaganda slogan that defined the limits of his empire as stretching "from India to the Nile," for this is the main theme of the monument, and as a slogan, it was absorbed into Persian memory to eventually reemerge under the Mongol dynasties of Iran, as both Nasir-od-din-e Tusi and Rashidoddin Fazlollah make use of it in praise of the Il-Khanid empire.

Our main research interest lies in the realm of Persian influence brought by Umayyad occupation and government in the Iberian Peninsula, especially in the area of Catalonia in the period spanning between the seventh and eleventh centuries. In this area, successive political rulers—Visigothic, Islamic, Carolingian and, finally, Catalan—relied on a wide range of taxes and a varied spectrum of fiscal procedures. Fiscal systems were intimately tied to the peculiarities of the political power or social organization they served. However, when political regimes changed, not always homogenously, the result was a cumulative stratigraphy of taxes. Our purpose is to underline the evidence for the common use of the fiscal term “tasca” in late Latin private documents from this area, and to sugest its correspondance with the Sassanid taxation concept of "tasq". As historiography has proven, the Persian practice of the tasq payement was borrowed by early Umayyad administration in the Jazirah and Sawad, and considered as a general rate of kharaj in early Islamic administrative practices. We will evaluate the coincidence, phonetic and semantic, of the Catalan word "tasca," occuring in Carolingian and Catalan documents with the term tasq, as used under Sassanian rule, and registered in the first agreements of kharaj elaborated by the earliest administrative Islamic tradition. We suggest that the etymology of the Catalan word arises from ancient roots recorded in Persian fiscal contexts. We sugest, too, that the word was introduced simultaneously with introduction of the Islamic practice of kharaj after the Umayyad conquest of the Northern areas of the Iberian Peninsula. In conclusion, we will suggest that this unexplored example is suggestive of broader possibilties of cultural transfter from East to West with the expansion of Muslim rule. It is also interesting to note that the Catalan word tasca was use to refer to taxation practices in the Pyrenees until the eighteenth century and is still used in the Catalan language to refer to a job, duty or obligation.