How Iran Got Religion

Last issue, we began a three-part look at Iranian history, starting with ancient Persia. Today, we turn our clocks back "only" 2,300 years, to a time when the ancient warring empires that succeeded Persia tried to make peace.

It's true. When Alexander the Great conquered ancient Iran in 330 BC, the mighty Macedonian tried to arrange a marriage between the victors and the vanquished--literally. In 324 BC, Alexander and 80 of his top officers tied the knot with Persian brides. He also gave generous dowries to 10,000 other soldiers who got hitched with local gals.

No one knows how long those marriages lasted, but for the next 500 years, Greek and Persian traditions mixed, as first the Seleucid Greeks and then the Parthians ruled Iran. Divorce didn't come until AD 224, when the governor of the province of Persis (ancient home of the Persians) overthrew his overlords and established the Sassanid dynasty.

Sassy Sassanids

The Sassanids tried hard to weed out Greek influence and return to Persian roots. They also made Zoroastrianism--which dated back to the ancient Persians but was not their faith--the official state religion.

Zoroastrians believe the world is locked in an ongoing battle between good and evil, so it's a safe bet the Sassanids saw their archenemy, the Byzantine Romans, as evil. The two empires warred continually from the 3rd to the 7th century, alternately seizing and conceding each other's territory.

Then, in the mid-7th century, Islam's Arabic armies arrived on the scene and beat them both up--in part because they were exhausted from fighting each other. The Sassanid dynasty fell for good in 651, and Iran became part of the Muslim caliphate, a religious and political empire that eventually stretched from Spain to India.

May I Add Umayyads?

From 661 to 750, caliphs from the Umayyad clan ruled the Muslim world from their capital in Damascus. The Umayyads learned economic and administrative policymaking from the conquered Persians. In return, they delivered Islam, which began to win converts all over Iran. The Umayyads offered relative religious tolerance to all who accepted their rule, but social, legal, and good old-fashioned financial incentives helped make the religion of Allah attractive to Zoroastrians.

In 750, Abbasid caliphs overthrew the Umayyads and moved the capital of all Muslimdom from Damascus to Baghdad. For a time, Iran enjoyed an Abbasid cultural and economic boom. But by the end of the 9th century, only an echo of that boom remained, and a variety of homegrown, smaller dynasties assumed increasing control in regions across Iran.

Islam, however, remained a major unifying force. By the 10th century, Muslims likely made up a majority in Iran--though back then, most Iranian Muslims followed orthodox Sunni Islam. Shia Islam, the most common denomination in Iran today, was prevalent only in certain regions.

Khans Come Calling

In the 11th century, Turkish tribes began moving in on Iranian lands. One of them, the Seljuks, even conquered the local kings and established a short-lived dynasty--though a secret Shia sect, the Ismailis, effectively maintained an independent state around Tehran.

Neither the Seljuks nor the Ismailis, however, proved a match for Genghis Khan's Mongols, who arrived in Iran in the early 13th century. Initially, the Mongols ruled Iran brutally, and their hostility toward Islam fueled Muslim militancy. But after a few generations, the Khans themselves converted to Islam and conditions in Iran improved.

Send in the Safavids

Another fearsome conqueror, Timur (a.k.a. Tamerlane) overran Iran in the late 14th century, but the empire he built collapsed after his death in 1405. For the next hundred years, a variety of Mongols, Uzbeks, and others ruled various Iranian regions.

Among those local rulers were the Safavids, leaders of a militant order that adopted Shia Islam sometime in the mid-15th century. In 1502, the Safavids proclaimed their leader "shah," or king, of Iran and seized control of the country.

Under the Safavids, Iran became a theocracy, with Shia Islam as the new state religion. The state didn't hesitate to promote the Shia cause, either--through proselytizing and, in some cases, outright force. In the coming decades, a large majority of Iran's Muslims became Shias. Meanwhile, the new shah and his successors--who enjoyed both secular and sacred authority--began to lay the foundation of the modern Iranian state. We'll retrace that state's rise tomorrow.