LAUSR

In Arabs and Iranians in the Islamic Conquest Narrative, Scott Savran explores how Muslim historians, writing primarily during the period 750–1050 in both Arabic and Persian, came to terms with and gave meaning to the Arab conquest of Iran. Savran examines these issues through a study of representations of Arab-Sassanian relations in Islamic historical writing. Early on, the author argues for two primary phases of narrative construction that coincide with two periods of identity formation under the ‘Abbasid Caliphate. The first focuses on the creation of a unified Arab identity which Savran argues was constructed in response to the growing influence of Iranian culture on the ‘Abbasid court and society as well as to counter the Shu‘ubiyya “movement.” In this vein, the “Arab versus ‘ajam” discourse found in descriptions of Arab-Sassanian relations embodied “a dialogue between two competing visions of Islamic civilization,” one modeled off the socially stratified absolute monarchies of Near Eastern empires and the other inspired by the austere egalitarianism of pre-Islamic tribal Arabia. The second phase emerged in the late ninth century, at the outset of the “Iranian Intermezzo,” when historians of Iranian descent integrated pre-Islamic Iranian history into a broader Islamic salvific history by which Iranians could – through conversion to Islam and acknowledging the faults of their Sassanian forbearers – rise again to their rightful place at the front of a world empire. In chapters 1 and 2, Savran lays out these arguments along with his theoretical approaches and methodologies. He engages the concept of “collective memory” and emphasizes its role in shaping group identity through the writing of historical narratives, invoking the theories of Maurice Halbwacks and Hayden White. In recent years, questions of memory and identity have become increasingly important to the study of the early and medieval Islamic historical tradition and Savran MESA R o M E S 53 1 2019