Cultural Survey of Sho’ubieh Focusing on Foregrounding and Constructing Narratives

Abstract

Simultaneous with the dominance of the Umayyad dynasty over the political system of Islam, the idea of ​​Arab superiority over non-Muslims got prevalent. The propagation of narratives concerning the racial superiority of the Arabs by the traditionists affiliated to the caliphate caused the reaction of the neo-Muslims, especially the followers of the Sho’ubieh movement, and they aimed to authenticate and restore the national culture in accordance with the essence of true Islam, and negated Umayyad Pan-Arabism by foregrounding and sometimes constructing the narratives. Relying on the descriptive-analytical method, this research is to investigate the why and how of the reaction of Sho’ubieh movement towards the Umayyad approach. The findings of the research indicate that, due to the suffocating dominance of the political system in Umayyad era, Sho’ubieh started foregrounding and sometimes constructing the narratives in an egalitarian challenge to negate Arab supremacy and to gain an independent national identity, and then, the territory of this cultural survey was expanded to other domains of literature, history, commentary, mysticism and the like.

Keywords

• sho’ubieh
• umayyads
• iranians
• arab race
• ethnic conflicts