Introduction
ALTHOUGH population groupings ought to provide a suitable frame-
work for the discussion of cultural continuity and change, they also
present the problem of what categories to use. Several kinds of dis-
tinctions and forms of self-identification used in the late Sasanian and
early Islamic periods served as equally valid ways of expressing social
or cultural differences. One, essentially racial, way of identifying peo-
ple was based on the distinction between those with a "red" or ruddy
complexion and those with a "black" or swarthy complexion. This
distinction seems to have been used to express the difference between
the "natives" of lower Iraq, who saw themselves as the darker race,
and "foreigners" such as Romans and Persians who were identified
as the ruddy race.^1 A feeling of antagonism based on this difference
may be reflected by the way Arabic tradition, when it wanted to insult
an-Nu'man ibn al-Mundhir, described him as red, freckled, and short.^2
Religious differences appear to have been equally important because
of the way religion had come to provide well-defined sets of cultural
and social alternatives by the late Sasanian period. However, since the
issues concerning Iraq's religious communities will be treated sepa-
rately, the discussion in this section will be based on a third set of
terms based on ethnic categories. The advantage of approaching cul-
tural continuity from an ethnic point of view lies mainly in the pos-
sibility of identifying cultural traits with such groups and the local
regions where they predominated, in dealing with the influences each
ethnic group exerted on the others, and in the inferences which may
be drawn from population shifts with regard to the availability of
cultural influences in particular places.
The main difficulty in an approach based on ethnic categories lies
in the effects of over two millenia of syncretism in Iraq, which often
makes it impossible to identify a particular cultural trait with anyone
ethnic group. There was a high degree of mutual assimilation brought
about by the mixture of peoples and cultures in both the late Sasanian
and early Islamic periods in Iraq. Although contemporaries used ethnic
categories as the basis for their own cultural labels, one should question
1 Tahari, Ta'rfkh, 11, 530; Ya'qiihi, Ta'Tzkh, 11, 151. See also I. Goldziher, Muslim
Studies (Chicago, 1966), I, 243-44.
2 Ya'qiihi, Ta'rfkh, I, 242. See also Tha'alihi, Lata'if, p. 104.