Hmmm… when we are at false arguments…
Actually, Shahnama is praised very well beyond just Persian nationalist circles. Perhaps because it’s one of the biggest epics of the time unparalleled across the Islamic world. It is praised also as expression of “Persian revival” – a period when local dynasties took power back from Arabic conquerors. Again, not just by nationalists, but also by historians studying the period. Among other reasons also as amazing source of contemporary culture.
It is also praised by linguists as a work, which has defined “New Persian” language as it evolved after Persia was incorporated into the Caliphate, and after it was heavily influenced by Arabic. Persians did not adopt Arabic language as their own language, although for 2 centuries Arabic became the language of the government. On the other hand, one should not ignore the fact that it was Persian political and governmental tradition which took over the Caliphate with the Abbasid revolution… and actually quite a few Arabic political/governmental terms are loanwords from old Persian, so the influence definitely went in just one direction.
Of course claiming that Persians weren’t in no way influenced by Arabs is a false claim, but it is equally false trying to deny it by claiming that Persians totally adopted Arabic language (which does read as they ceased to use their own, although a man of your erudition probably couldn't have meant it that way). It’s like saying that Germans, Hungarians or English stopped speaking their languages, because all written official records in some period were in Latin.
Oh, I didn't know it read like that!
I was only aiming to respond to the anti-Arab (maybe anti-Muslim) nationalist fervor behind the argument (and various other arguments put on the forums recently). I know that the Shahnameh is a major work for various reasons, but here I only pointed to claims made by Persian nationalists which I found ironic and contradictory as the work is, indeed, a hallmark of Persian revival which does indicate that there was a 'low' period for Persian before it.
As for the ''adoption'', I did not mean to say it replaced Persian at every level and in every way. How else could someone like Ferdowsi even come about and become as important as he did become if there was no Persian base to fall back on? I am sure Salman al-Farsi used Persian when he got back home and that not all the relations between Persians and Arabs were as universally caustic as the poster suggested. I admit, it was rather sloppy wording aimed more at that particular comment and others like it that express that kind of revisionist slant - I did not mean to give an impression that all of Iran turned Arab over night and stayed that way for two centuries or that there weren't instances of persecution for that matter (in case I get hit on that now). Simply put, Arab culture did have a major impact on Iran that was especially felt at the levels of knowledge production and governance (which for CK are probably important).
Most crucially, as I tried to imply by naming the Shahnameh, is the attempt by the author to counter the dominance of Arabic in the region by trying to produce an incredibly long work trying to avoid Arabic loanwords as much as possible.
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