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 Umayyads.[1] The vast majority of the Shu'ubis were Persian.[2][3] The movement was first seriously studied by Ignaz Goldziher (d. 1921) in the first volume of his work Muslim Studies.[4]
Terminology
The name of the movement is derived from the Qur'anic use of the word for "nations" or "peoples", šuʿūb.[5]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)
When used as a reference to a specific movement, the term refers to a response by PersianMuslims to the failed attempt of Arabization of Iran in the 9th and 10th centuries. It was primarily concerned with preserving Persian culture and protecting Persian identity.[6]
In the late 8th and early 9th centuries, there was a resurgence of Persian national identity. This came mainly through the patronage of the 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.[7]
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).[8][9]
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.[10] 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.[11] In a 1984 article, Daniel Dishon and Bruce Maddi-Weitzmann use the same neologism, Neo-Shu'ubiyya.[12]
^Enderwitz, S. "Shu'ubiyya". Encyclopedia of Islam. Vol. IX (1997), pp. 513-14.
^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.
^Leonard C. Biegel, Dutch: Minderheden in Het Midden-Oosten: Hun Betekenis Als Politieke Factor in De Arabische Wereld, Van Loghum Slaterus, Deventer, 1972, ISBN978-90-6001-219-2 e.g. p.250
