PERSIANSby the Islamic state, and were part of the ethnically mixed conditions
in and around the garrison towns where Persian was spoken along
with Arabic and where bilingual Persians and Arabs had always been
able to communicate with each other. The sons of Persian soldiers
served in the Muslim army as mawalt. Persian women and children
introduced Persian domestic organization into Muslim Arab house-
holds as concubines, slaves, and servants. These conditions are re-
flected in the way a ghulam is described as presenting Abii l-'Aliyya
(d. 708), himself a mawla, with the gift of hard sugar (N.P. qand) in
a sealed handkerchief at Basra,167 or by the scene in which the caliph
'An is represented as witnessing the playing of chess (M.P., N.P.
shatranj) in Kufa.^168 At Basra, where Persians practiced the double
sale for the purpose of getting interest, the objection voiced by Mu-
warriq ibn al-Mushamrij al-'Ijli ("I detest the resale with specification
of gain ten-eleven and ten-twelve") quotes the numbers in New Persian
(dah yazdah and dah davazdah).169 Also at Basra, Abii Miisa al-Ash'ari
in 644 is supposed to have had a slave girl named 'Aqila who served
him lunch and dinner in a bowl-something no one else was able to
have.17o
The importance of the dahaqtn in preserving and transmitting Per-
sian customs is indicated by an account of two slave girls belonging
to the highest grade of Persian nobility (Ar. min abna' il-muliik) who
were taken captive at Marv. They were brought to Iraq and turned
over to a dihqan who, regarding it an honor to extend his hospitality
to them, spread out silken cloth for them, served them from golden
dishes, and sent them back to Khurasan.l7l The dahaqtn assumed that
they should treat their Arab masters the same way, but were met with
a good deal of initial Arab resistance to being assimilated into local
society in this way. Most of the accounts of such encounters appear
to be tendentious in one way or another, usually involving early def-
initions of piety, and perhaps egalitarian attitudes, in contradistinction
to aristocratic Persian practices. What seems to have been a real cul-
tural issue for the first century of Islam appears also to have been
further complicated by shu 'ubt and anti-shu 'ubt tendencies in the way
167 Ibn Sa'd, Tabaqiit, VII(1), 83.
168 Ibid., VI, 156. The purpose of this story is to allow' All to express his objections
to the use of images.
169 Ibid., VII(1), 157. In this case an Arab of the tribe of 'Ij\ may be suspected of
combining Christian objections to usury with the Qur'anic prohibition.
170 Tabari, Ta'rtkh, I, 2711.
171 Ibid., I, 3350.