Iraq after the Muslim Conquest - Michael G. Morony

INTRODUCTION

comparative scholarship, and a tendency to forget that they were all
part of the same society. As a result specialists in each religion tend
to know less than they should about the others. One of the main
objectives here will be to point out the common features and themes
among all of them.
The use of ethnic and religious categories for the purpose of dis-
cussion has both advantages and problems. These are the categories
provided by our sources and are important reflections of the contem-
porary outlook and of contemporary identities. Ethnographic changes
were as significant for cultural change as religious conversion was for
continuity (because converts preserved some of their former religious
background). Glick's suggestion that the use of ethnic stereotypes is
typical of societies in which different groups are competing for power^20
appears to be applicable to Iraq in this period, although it might be
suggested that the same is true of religious stereotypes, especially under
the last Sasanians. However, Glick's model of an ethnically stratified
society21 does not seem to apply to early Islamic Iraq at all, as we
shall see. The main disadvantage of using ethnic and religious cate-
gories is that they emphasize ethnic and religious differences. Such a
framework for discussion is not entirely satisfactory because it masks
the features common to different ethnic and religious groups in the
kind of mixed, pluralistic society that existed in Iraq.

TEXTUAL AIDS

The ethnic and religious diversity of Iraq in the late Sasanian and
early Islamic periods is reflected in the linguistic diversity of the written
materials. In the interest of precision, technical terms and proper names
will normally be transliterated in the form in which they occur in the
text being cited. The language to which such terms belong will be
identified by abbreviations as follows:

A. Aramaic

Ak. Akkadian

Ar. Arabic

Av. Avestan

Gr. Greek

Heb. Hebrew

20 Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain, p. 183.

21 Ibid., p. 178.

L. Latin

M. Mandaic

M.P. Middle Persian

N.P. New Persian

Syr. Syriac