Muslim Conquest of Persia
The 7th-century Arab Muslim campaigns that toppled the Sasanian Empire, captured Ctesiphon, and led to the gradual Islamization of Iran.
Read in context →At a glance
- Period
- c. 633–651 CE
- Key battles
- al-Qadisiyya (636), Nahavand (642)
- Outcome
- End of the Sasanian Empire
- Long-term effect
- Gradual Islamization of Iran
Detail
The Arab Muslim conquest of Iran took place in the decades after the rise of Islam, following the attritional weakening of the Sasanian Empire through long wars with Byzantium and internal turmoil. The decisive battles of al-Qadisiyya (636 CE) and Nahavand (642 CE)—which the Arabs called the "Victory of Victories"—shattered organized Sasanian resistance. The last shahanshah, Yazdegerd III, fled eastward and was killed near Merv in 651 CE, ending the Sasanian dynasty with him. The conquest brought a profound transformation: Islam gradually supplanted Zoroastrianism, and Arabic script and vocabulary entered Persian, though this process took several centuries and was uneven. Despite political conquest, the Iranian language and cultural identity endured and later played a central role within Islamic civilization; the pace and nature of the Islamization of Iranian society remain debated among scholars.
Related entities
Also appears in
Sources
- Encyclopædia Iranica, "Conquest of Iran" and "Islam in Iran"
- Richard W. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period
- The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 4