This post can be read as part of a series of an overview of Iranian history–please refer to my posts of 5.10, 5.11, 5.19, 5.27 and 6.1.
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After the Arab conquest of now Iran in the seventh century, the Persian world, with its great history and traditions, became a mere portion of the Arab Empire, which in its first hundred years was led from Damascus with a general attitude of Arab supremacy over the conquered peoples, despite in many cases such peoples’ richer and more ancient civilizations. While Persian influence grew stronger in the Arab domains during the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad, credit for true Persian revival, it may be said, belongs to the Samanid dynasty (819-999), which ruled over Central Asia and the eastern parts of now Iran from its capital in Bukhara in now Uzbekistan.
The Samanid dynasty, despite its relatively brief reign, is responsible for a considerable portion of historical Iranian culture, including the works of Rudaki, a poet considered a founder of Persian literature (Iran’s Shakespeare, if you will), and Ferdosi, whose epic Shahnameh is the Iliad of Iran. The Samanids also fostered a blossoming of the sciences, including the career of Avicenna [post on Avicenna and other scientists of the era to come].
To finish this post, I wanted to share with you some photographs of my favorite building in Uzbekistan and one of my favorite buildings anywhere–the 10th century mausoleum of Ismail Samani, perhaps the greatest of the Samanid rulers (referenced in my post of 6.3). This building alone of Samanid Bukhara survived the near total destruction of the Mongol conquest, some say because it was covered by sand, and thankfully so.
[Addendum: The post-independence government of Tajikistan, which uniquely of the Central Asian Stans is an Iranian ethnic rather than a Turkic ethnic state, is actively relating its origin back to the Samanids, the Samanid dynasty being perhaps the most brilliant flowering of Eastern Iranian civilization, and now not only does a prominent statue of Ismail Samani stand in a central square in Dushanbe but the Tajik currency is called the Samani. However, the Samanid capital of Bukhara and another Central Asian center of Iranian/Tajik culture, Samarkand, are within the state of Uzbekistan–post on ethnicity in Central Asia to come.]