Alawite Migration to Khorasan during the Abbasid Period and its Impact on the Process of Accepting Islam by the Iranians

The Arab immigrants of the Abbasid period to Iran were mostly Alawites, Sadats and Shiites. The main issue of the present study is to identify and introduce the Alawite immigrants of Khorasan in the Abbasid period until the rise of the Buyids government and the effect of their presence on accepting Islam by the Iranians. The question of this research is, "whether the migration of Alawites to Khorasan in the mentioned period could affect the flow of accepting Islam by the Iranians?" Based on the information available in the historical sources, it is hypothesized that the migration of the Alawites, which continued during the Abbasid period, affected various aspects of life in the areas accepting the migrants. One of these effects studied in the present study is their impact on accepting Islam by the Iranians in different regions. According to various sources, the immigrants were settled in different parts of Iran including Khorasan during the five important historical periods. Out of five groups of immigrants to Iran, only four groups, i.e. Hosseini, Atrafi, Hassani and Abbasi entered this area. The reports on the fifth group, the Hanafis (Mohammadians = children of Muhammad Hanafiyya) is not available. With the presence and establishment of various Alawite groups in cities, villages and remote areas of this land and as a result of their various political, social and cultural activities and interaction with the natives, the ground was gradually prepared for the influence of Islam and its spread among the elite and public classes. Identifying and classifying different Alawite groups in Khorasan in the form of five groups and proposing that migration had become bedrock for sustainable cultural change and transformation are among the objectives of the present study. The time span considered in this research is the period of the beginning of the Abbasid rule until the coming to power of the Buyids in the early fourth century (AH). The research method is descriptive- analytical using the library documents and various sources. In this work, an attempt has been made to display the qualitative results obtained from the sources in a quantitative manner using some graphs.