فصلنامه تاریخ فرهنگ و تمدن اسلامی
پیاپی 15 (تابستان 1393)

The subject of “Ummah” and “Islamic Ummah” has mostly been taken into account within a social science approach and less focused on from a cultural and civilizational perspective. With an analytic-descriptive approach and referring to the Ummah’s components, this study intends to explicate the concept and role of the Ummah in the process of Islamic civilization construction and also to represent that what capabilities and capacities this theory has in cultural enrichment and civilization construction. It is obvious that “Madinat ul-Nabi” and the period of growth and prosperity of the Islamic civilization are its historical form and also foundation of its analysis. Deep social coordination and integrity, idealization for social changes and identity-developing functions are among the findings of this study which are included in cultural and civilizational capabilities and capacities of these teachings. For this paper, it is known that “creating common ideas”, congruency in wills and thoughts of nations”, “dropping the public rituals”, “negating the tribal, social, racial and ethnic limitations” and “simultaneous homogenizing and discriminating” are among the identity-developing functions and capabilities of the teachings of the Islamic Ummah.

From the beginning of the seventh century, because of the political, economic, and social problems induced by Mongols’ invasion to Iran, Iranians’ massive immigration to India was begun. With the rise of the Safavid government and strength-gaining of Gurakani Empire in India, a large number of Iranian people (including Shiite judges) immigrated to India who were appointed to important (judicial) positions by Gurkani kings. The question to which we are going to seek an answer is investigation of the role of Iranian judges in promotion of Twelve Imami Shi’ism in Gurkani period of India. The geographical scope of the study is the northern region of the Indian subcontinent including the cities such as Delhi, Kashmir, Lucknow and Lahore in today Pakistan in which some Shiite people are settled now. It seems that these immigrants were successful in their mission in different ways such as being occupied for key positions and applying the received authority out of them, training apprentices, and writing various works in jurisprudential, theological fields. The result of this analytic-descriptive research indicates that entrance of Shia religion to India has been carried out by some Shia scholars.

“Parvanegi” was an outstanding position in Seljuks’ organization of Rome (473-707 AH) which took a lofty position only in this government and for a while it had a position beyond the power of all other positions of governmental organizations. The governing situation on bureaucracy of the Seljuks of Rome led to emergence of lots of complexes and fusions regarding the duties and authorities of Parvanegi in relation to the rest of positions. For this, fewer significant studies have been conducted about the duties and authorities in Parvanegi. Firstly, adopting an analytic-descriptive method and using the organized historical researches and resources, this paper intends to analyze Parvaneh and parvanegi literally and after that, providing a brief report about the term of Parvaneh in bureaucracy of the other Muslim governments it enters into the main discussion and finally, analyzes the parvanegan and their duties, authorities and functions to deal with the position of parvanegi among the other positions in the era of Seljuks of Rome.

Birth-recording is a branch of Islamic historiography founded by Imams’ companions after politico-ideological changes in the second century. Imams’ companions have written various books with fine various topics within prophetic and Ahl ul-Bayt tradition. But despite of the presented experience in prophetic tradition, they did not compile a comprehensive tradition of all of the Imams of their own era. Although among these works there may be found some cases of birth-recording comprehensive in terms of time and including all Imams, they lack an all-embracing biography of them. Analyzing the birth of Imams was taken into account in this field and gradually began to be organized and promoted. As a result, various functions and approaches were emerged among which we can refer to an independent branch called “death-recording”. At first, these two branches were conducted side by side but death-recording had taken acceleration and had undergone its own evolution until Ibn Khallakan provided a turning point by writing the book Vafyat ul-A’yan. This paper intends to analyze the historical emergence, expansion and evolution of the birth-recording of the Imams’ companions as well as its internal changes and causes of the approach.

The conquest of Iran by Muslims may be counted of those problems not being completely investigated. One may meet many questions in the field. One of the questions is the reason why of the early fall of Sassanid government and Iranians` confrontation with it. This study attempts to analyze this problem in a new perspective. The paper assumes that in addition to political and economic reasons, a kind of public mentality and belief on the two parties have had effects on the status and speed of the conquest. Re-reading the historical texts and using an analytico-descriptive method, the paper intends to reconstruct the mental attitudes of those involved in the conquest, although more attention has been paid to the Iranian part. It is shown that how metaphysical beliefs have generated more or less motivations in this event.

Since centuries ago, the subject of prophet’s succession has been discussed by Muslims and, in the meantime, Shi`ism has proposed strong and accurate religious text-based reasons in favor of Ali’s succession. To oppose this belief and the validity of Ghadir, the opponents of Shi’ism say: “if it is so that thousands of the companions were present in Gadir and heard the prophet`s speech of Ali`s succession after the death of the prophet, why did not one out of thousands come to protest against usurpation of Ali’s right”. Referring to the historical and, to some extent, the sources of Hadith as well as managing, political, military, cultural, and economic aspects, the paper analyzes the reasons of the success of the founders of Saqeyfah for occupying the prophet’s succession.