Chapter 5
PERSIANS
DISTRIBUTION AND SOCIAL STRUCTUREPersians have always been a minority in Iraq, but for most of classical
and late antiquity they were a ruling minority. Apart from the con-
centration of Persians along the foothills of the Zagros mountains and
the upper reaches of the tributaries of the Tigris, which was merely
an extension of the Persian settlement on the Iranian plateau, the large-
scale Persian immigration into the Mesopotamian plain began with
the rise of the Sas ani an state in the third century A.D. Drawn to the
court at Mada'in, posted as administrators and garrisons to positions
in the western quarter of the empire, or brought in as agricultural
lab or, the Persian presence in Iraq was largely the result of the military,
administrative, and economic requirements of the Sasanians.^1
Unfortunately, there are no reliable figures for the size and distri-
bution of the Persian population in Sasanian Iraq, but it is possible
to approach questions of demographic change by comparing settle-
ment patterns and by noting the shifts in population that included
Persians. The Sasanian policy of establishing an ethnic Persian presence
in the west, implemented by transfers of population, produced a dis-
tinct demographic pattern. Persian soldiers were settled along the outer
edges. of 90uthern and western Iraq as permanent frontier garrisons;
the families of aristocratic Persians were settled in the major cities of
Iraq; and some Persian peasants were settled in the villages of the
Sawad. This movement began in the third century with the settlement
of a perll).anent garrison at Anbar,2 followed by the settlement of
twelve thousand upper-class Persian families ·from Istakhr and Isfahan
at Nasibin when that city was taken from the Romans in A.D. 363.^3
1 The basis of this chapter is the author's article, "The Effects of the Muslim Conquest
on the Persian Population of Iraq," Iran 14 (1976),41-59.
2 Yiiqut, Buldan, Ill, 929.
3 Dinawari, Akhbar ar-riwiil, p. 52; Tabari, Ta'rzkh, I, 843. According to the Nihiiyatu
l-irab twelve thousand Persians from Istakhr and four thousand from Isfahan settled
at Nasibin (Browne, "Nihiiyat," p. 221). In the sixth century Nasibin was still a Persian
city (Hoffmann, Persischer Miirtyrer, p. 83) with Persian notables (Devos, "Sainte Sirin,"
p. 107), and a Persian garrison (Prokopios, Wars, II, xviii). Mar Babai of Nasibin, a
disciple of Abraham of Kaskar in the early seventh century, was a descendant of the
Persians settled at Nasibin by Shiipur II (Chabot, "Chastete," p. 235).