Shu'ubiyya (Arabic: الشعوبية) was a literary-political movement which opposed the privileged status of Arabs within the Muslim community and the Arabization campaigns particularly by the Ummayads.[1] The vast majority of the Shu'ubis were Persian.[2][3]

Terminology

The name of the movement is derived from the Qur'anic use of the word for "nations" or "peoples", šuʿūb.[4] The verse (49:13)

:يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقْنَاكُم مِّن ذَكَرٍ وَأُنثَى وَجَعَلْنَاكُمْ شُعُوباً وَقَبَائِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوا إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِندَ اللَّهِ أَتْقَاكُمْ إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرٌ
O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted.(translated by Saheeh International)

In Iran

When used as a reference to a specific movement, the term refers to a response by Persian Muslims to the growing Arabization of Iran in the 9th and 10th centuries. It was primarily concerned with preserving Persian culture and protecting Persian identity.[5]

In the late 8th and early 9th centuries, there was a resurgence of Persian national identity. This came mainly through the patronage of the Sunni Iranian Samanid dynasty. The movement left substantial records in the form of Persian literature and new forms of poetry. Most of those behind the movement were Persian, but references to Egyptians, Berbers and Arameans are attested.[6]

In Al-Andalus

Two centuries after the end of the Shu'ubiyyah movement in the east, another form of the movement came about in Islamic Iberia and was controlled by Muwallad (mixed Arab and Iberian Muslims). It was fueled mainly by the Berbers, but included many European cultural groups as well including Galicians, Catalans (known by that time as Franks), Calabrians, and Basques. A notable example of Shu'ubi literature is the epistle (risala) of the Andalusian poet Ibn Gharsiya (García).[7][8]

Opposition

Ibn Qutaybah (a Persian scholar) and the Arab writer and scholar Al-Jahiz are known to have written works denouncing Shu'ubist thoughts.

Neo-Shu'ubiyya

In 1966, Sami Hanna and G.H. Gardner wrote an article "Al-Shu‘ubiyah Updated" in the Middle East Journal.[9] The Dutch university professor Leonard C. Biegel, in his 1972 book Minorities in the Middle East: Their significance as political factor in the Arab World, coined from the article of Hanna and Gardner the term Neo-Shu'ubiyah to name the modern attempts of alternative non-Arab and often non-Muslim nationalisms in the Middle East, e.g. Assyrian nationalism, Kurdish nationalism, Berberism, Coptic nationalism, Pharaonism, Phoenicianism.[10] In a 1984 article, Daniel Dishon and Bruce Maddi-Weitzmann use the same neologism, Neo-Shu'ubiyya.[11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Enderwitz 1997, p. 513.
  2. ↑ Enderwitz 1997, p. 514.
  3. ↑ Savant 2013, pp. 51–52.
  4. ↑ Jamshidian Tehrani, Jafar (2014). Shu'ubiyya: Independence movements in Iran. ISBN 978-1500737306., p.3 preface
  5. ↑ Jamshidian Tehrani, Jafar (2014). Shu'ubiyya: Independence movements in Iran. ISBN 978-1500737306., p.49
  6. ↑ Enderwitz, S. "Shu'ubiyya". Encyclopedia of Islam. Vol. IX (1997), pp. 513-14.
  7. ↑ The Shu'ubiyya in al-Andalus. The risala of Ibn Garcia and five refutations (University of California Press 1970), translated with an introduction and notes by James T. Monroe.
  8. ↑ Diesenberger, Max; Richard Corradini; Helmut Reimitz (2003). The construction of communities in the early Middle Ages: texts, resources and artefacts. Brill. ISBN 90-04-11862-4., p.346
  9. ↑ Sami Hanna and G.H. Gardner, "Al-Shu‘ubiyah Updated", Middle East Journal, 20 (1966): 335-351
  10. ↑ Leonard C. Biegel, Dutch: Minderheden in Het Midden-Oosten: Hun Betekenis Als Politieke Factor in De Arabische Wereld, Van Loghum Slaterus, Deventer, 1972, ISBN 978-90-6001-219-2 e.g. p.250
  11. ↑ Daniel Dishon and Bruce Maddi-Weitzmann, "Inter-Arab issues", in: Israel Stockman-Shomron, ed. (1984). Israel, the Middle East, and the great powers. Transaction Publishers. p. 389. ISBN 978-965-287-000-1. Retrieved 2009-11-24. e.g. p.279

Sources

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