ARABS: ASSIMILATION AND SOCIAL CHANGEIt is difficult to separate the ethnic aspects of the cultural assimilation
of Arabs in Iraq from socioeconomic issues. The only existing upper-
class tradition was Sasanian high culture, and its adoption was the
consequence of the socioeconomic rise of those Arabs who profited
from the conquest and reaped the rewards of administration after-
wards. But the adoption of this culture by Arabs did not necessarily
begin with the conquest of Iraq, since some of it had penetrated Arabia
in the pre-Islamic period. Arabs used henna in the pre-Islamic period
and the glossy, black Hindi dye was imported to Iran and Arabia at
about the same time in the sixth century.49 However, greater numbers
of Arabs were able to enjoy the material aspects of this culture after
the conquest, when luxuries appear to have been more available among
a population that had not enjoyed them before. Post-conquest con-
ditions enabled a wider distribution of goods, both socially and geo-
graphically. Sugar and silk brocade, for instance, appear to be more
available after the conquest,50 as were newly, inexpensive fabrics such
as cotton. At a time when a robe cost twenty or thirty dirhams, the
mawlii Abii 1-'Aliyya at Basra was able to make a qam"is and a turban
for himself out of ten dirhams worth of Razi cotton.^51 Persian clothing
styles spread to the Hijaz, where 'Ammar ibn Yasir (d. 657) wore
saraw"il in Makka,52 and to Syria and to Egypt.^53 Resistance to the use
of certain material things was due more to their socioeconomic sig-
nificance than to ethnic associations, and was more because they were
luxuries than because they were Persian.
In these circumstances the degree of continuity or change through
cultural transmission is explained largely by reinforcement. Cultural
selections depended on mutual interest or similarity in background.
Assimilation and continuation of local customs by Arab Muslims was
most successful when local Iraqi culture coincided with or was rein-
forced by Arab or Islamic attitudes and practices. This seems also to
have operated in a negative way. Arabs stopped short of formalizing
emerging status differences among themselves, as the Sasanians had
done, because there was nothing in their own background that cor-
responded to such a social order. Cultural continuity through trans-
mission to Arab immigrants was effectively limited by their own re-
sistance to total assimilation, especially among the first generation.
- Mas'iidi, Muruj, I, 309; Tha'alibi, Lata'if, p. 12.
50Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi, 'Jqd, V, 14-15.
51 Ibn Sa'd, Tabaqat, VII(1), p. 82.
52 Baladhurl, Ansab, I, 158.
53 Grohmann, Arabic Papyri, pp. 167-"68.