Shu'ubiyya

''Shu'ubiyya'' ( ar, الشعوبية) was a literary-political movement which opposed the privileged status of Arabs within the Muslim community. The vast majority of the Shu'ubis were Persian.

Terminology

The name of the movement is derived from the Qur'anic use of the word for "nations" or "peoples", ''šuʿūb''. The verse (49:13)

O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted.(translated by Saheeh International)

In Iran

When used as a reference to a specific movement, the term refers to a response by Persian Muslims to the growing Arabization of Iran in the 9th and 10th centuries. It was primarily concerned with preserving Persian culture and protecting Persian identity. The most notable effect of the movement was the survival of Persian language, the language of the Persians, to the present day. However, the movement never moved into apostasy and had its basis in the Islamic thought of equality of races and nations.

In the late 8th and early 9th centuries, there was a resurgence of Persian national identity. This came mainly through the patronage of the Sunni 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

Two centuries after the end of the Shu'ubiyyah movement in the east, another form of the movement came about in Islamic Spain and was controlled by Muwallad (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), Calabrians, and Basques. A notable example of ''Shu'ubi'' literature is the epistle ('' risala'') of the Andalusian poet Ibn Gharsiya (Garcia). According to the ''Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature'', however, this epistle was merely of minor importance, and its few exponents tended to repeat clichés adopted from the earlier Islamic East, e.g., Iran.

Opposition

Ibn Qutaybah (a Persian scholar) and Al-Jahiz (an Afro-Arab) 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, Syrian nationalism. In a 1984 article, Daniel Dishon and Bruce Maddi-Weitzmann use the same neologism, ''Neo-Shu'ubiyya''.Daniel Dishon and Bruce Maddi-Weitzmann, "Inter-Arab issues", in: e.g. p.279

Some of these groups, more particularly the Kurds, Assyrians, Yezidis and Mandaeans have been shown to have upheld a distinct identity both before and after the Arab-Islamic conquest of the Near East.

See also

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

References

Sources

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* {{cite journal, last=Mottahedeh, first=Roy, date=April 1976, title=The Shu'ubiyah Controversy and the Social History of Early Islamic Iran, url=https://www.academia.edu/3838976/The_Shuubiyah_Controversy, journal=International Journal of Middle East Studies, volume=7, issue= 2, pages=161–182, access-date=August 4, 2016

Arabization
Ethnic groups in the Arab world
Islam in Iran
Islamic terminology
Religion and race
Culture of the Abbasid Caliphate