Shu'ubiyya

Shu'ubiyya (Template:Langx) was a social, cultural, literary, and political movement within the Muslim world that sought to oppose the privileged status of Arabs and the Arabization of non-Arab civilizations amidst the early Muslim conquests, particularly under the Umayyad Caliphate.Template:Sfn The vast majority of the Shu'ubis were Persian.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn It was first seriously studied by Hungarian scholar Ignaz Goldziher in the first volume of his work Muslim Studies.Template:Sfn

Terminology

The name of the movement is derived from the use of šuʿūb for "nations" or "peoples" in the Quran:

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Islamic scholars and Quranic exegetes interpret this verse as a declaration of the fundamental equality of all human beings against ethnic, racial, social, cultural, or linguistic differences, with only faith in God serving as a valid measure of a person's value.

In Iran

When used as a reference to a specific movement, the term refers to a response by Persian Muslims to the failed attempt of Arabization of Iran in the 9th and 10th centuries. It was primarily concerned with preserving Persian culture and protecting Persian identity.

In the late 8th and early 9th centuries, there was a resurgence of Persian national identity. This came mainly through the patronage of the Iranian Samanid dynasty. The movement left substantial records in the form of Persian literature and new forms of poetry. Most of those behind the movement were Persian, but references to Egyptians, Berbers and Arameans are attested.

In Al-Andalus (Spain)

Two centuries after the end of the Shu'ubiyyah movement in the east, another form of the movement came about in Islamic Iberia and was controlled by Muwallad (mixed Arab and Iberian Muslims). It was fueled mainly by the Berbers, but included many European cultural groups as well including Galicians, Catalans (known by that time as Franks), Cantabrians, and Basques. A notable example of Shu'ubi literature is the epistle (risala) of the Andalusian poet Ibn Gharsiya (García).

Opposition

Ibn Qutaybah (a Persian scholar) and the Arab writer and scholar Al-Jahiz are known to have written works denouncing Shu'ubist thoughts.

Neo-Shu'ubiyya

In 1966, Sami Hanna and G.H. Gardner wrote an article "Al-Shu‘ubiyah Updated" in the Middle East Journal. The Dutch university professor Leonard C. Biegel, in his 1972 book Minorities in the Middle East: Their significance as political factor in the Arab World, coined from the article of Hanna and Gardner the term Neo-Shu'ubiyah to name the modern attempts of alternative non-Arab and often non-Muslim nationalisms in the Middle East, e.g., Assyrian nationalism, Kurdish nationalism, Berberism, Coptic nationalism, Pharaonism, Phoenicianism. In a 1984 article, Daniel Dishon and Bruce Maddi-Weitzmann use the same neologism, Neo-Shu'ubiyya.

See also

• Islamization of Iran
• Ajam
• Mawali
• Islamistan, movement of non-Arab Islamic unity
• Bashshar ibn Burd, famous Shu'ubi poet
• Islam Nusantara

Sources

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