Persian Arab

For Arabs settled in Iran, see Iranian Arabs.

Persian Arab generally refers to people who are of both mixed Arab and Persian ethnic or cultural background, which is common in some parts of Iraq and Iran.

History and current situation

In pre-Islamic times, there were many Arabs who lived in the cultural sphere of Persia and used Persian as their written language. These are referred to as Persian Arabs (in Arabic العرب الفرس Arab al-Furas).

One of Prophet Muhammed's early followers and disciples, Salman Al-Farsi, was Persian.

After the rise of Islam and the Arab conquest of Persia, Persians, in turn, began to use Arabic as their written language alongside Persian. Many famous Muslim scientists and philosophers during the time of the Abbasid caliphate were ethnic Persians who wrote their scholarly works in Arabic while continuing to write literary works and poetry in Persian - famous examples are Avicenna and Khayyam.

Self-identification

The term Persian Arab is rarely used as a self-appellation. Most tend to identify more strongly as either Persian or Arab and consider themselves to be members primarily of one ethnic group, but at the same time being aware of their mixed background. For many the most important factor determining their identity is the sovereign state in which they live or from which their recent ancestors came from.

In Iran

Ethnic Arabs and Arabic speakers living primarily in the Khuzestan province of Iran.^[1][2] Some of them self-identify as Iranian Arabs, Persians or just Ahvazis (see Ahvaz), and consider their mother tongue to be Arabic, though almost all are bilingual in Persian and many may have a better command of written Persian than written Arabic, since the medium of education at schools in Iran is Persian. Some Arabs (e.g. those of the Khamseh clans) even use Persian as the first language.^[2]

See also

• History of Arabs in Afghanistan
• Jābir ibn Hayyān
• Abu Nuwas

References