CONCLUSIONHowever, the bonds of a religious communal identity were effec-
tively limited by their dependence on those who followed religious
professions and by their dependence on the communication of the
outlook and forms of a religious identity to the other members of the
community by those leaders whose authority and status depended on
their acceptance. The distinctions built up by religious leaders tended
to be broken down by the ordinary faithful in their everyday relations
with the members of other religions, especially through commerce and
participation in each other's religious festivals. The tendency for the
leadership of religious communities to develop in terms of male dom-
ination signifies important social changes.
None of these religious communities should be viewed as monolithic
or static either in size or in social composition. The appearance of
solidarity and doctrinal and social conformity was shattered by fac-
tionalism, political quarrels over authority and leadership, and the
formation of sectarian subdivisions. The major communal categories-
Magians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Manichaeans-all contained
subgroups distinguished from each other by details of doctrine and
ritual. The historic dynamic of communal formation seems to have
involved two consecutive processes: the formation of major communal
identities and institutions, followed by the separation of dissenting
subgroups. Once the communal pattern was established, internal con-
flicts tended to produce fragmentation which led to the formation of
subgroups as new communities. Although the timetables were different
in each case, the sectarian fragmentation of society in Iraq had less to
do with Islamic definitions and requirements than with the maturation
of internal conflicts.
At the risk of being overly schematic, the combined processes of
continuity and change might be summarized as cultural lag or over-
lapping, transmission assisted by contact, communication, and rein-
forcement, and changes brought by the conquerors because some as-
pects of their own tribal background received an Islamic sanction.
Some of the changes were permanent: the Islamic faith, and the even-
tual predominance of the Arabic language. In other respects, the con-
quest only interrupted developments which were taking place in the
late Sasanian period. It seems almost paradoxical that as time passed
the situation in Islamic Iraq came to approximate more and more the
situation under the last Sasanians, and that the changes which were
wrought by the second {itna and the MarwanI restoration actually
marked the integration of an entire set of administrative and religious