The Typology of Studies on the Shu'ubiyyah in the Contemporary Era (the West, the Arab World, and Iran)

An analysis of the nature of the Shu'uabiyyah movement is one of the fields of the study investigated by scholars of Islamic history, Iranian studies, and the history of literature. Therefore, a vast amount of research has been conducted in books, articles, and dissertations in different languages, which have focused their attention on the study of the Shu'uabiyyah movement. However, each group of scholars has come to a different conclusion on this movement's nature, depending on whether they have viewed Shu'uabiyyah from the perspective of history, literature, or the political ideology of the time. The present study investigates the typology of studies on Shu'uabiyyah in the contemporary era, which can be divided into three different areas, namely the West, the Arab world, and Iran. This typology is not based solely on geographical and ethnic issues but rather on scholars' different views and interpretations of the movement presented in the fields mentioned above. Western scholars regard the Shu'uabiyyah movement as a purely literary one and limit it to an intellectual movement presented in texts. Many Arab scholars have faced the movement at both scientific and political-ideological levels because it was anti-Islamic in the early centuries. In the first level, Arab scholars have attempted to provide a historical explanation of the movement, whereas, in the second level, they have associated it with the changes in the contemporary Middle East and Iranians' role in regional politics. Iranian-based studies on the Shu'uabiyyah movement in the Persian language are the last category. From the beginning, Iranian-based studies have been influenced by translations provided by the Western and Arabic worlds, and except in very few cases, they have failed to understand the various dimensions of the movement.