The seventh-century conquests changed political authority across cities and mountain districts later central to Kurdish history. Nisibis, Hamadan and Shahrazur reveal different experiences: an imperial frontier disappeared, armies negotiated and fought over settlements, and existing communities continued under new rulers.

Taq-e Bostan stone relief with three standing figures, radiating headgear at left and a fallen figure beneath their feet
A Sasanian relief at Taq-e Bostan near Kermanshah, photographed by Philippe Chavin in 2006. It illustrates the region’s pre-conquest monumental heritage, not an Arab-conquest battle. © Philippe Chavin · 2006 · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.5.

A region of cities, frontiers and older institutions

The regions affected by the conquests were not a single state corresponding to modern Kurdistan. Nisibis, now Nusaybin, had been a contested Roman-Persian frontier city before passing to Sasanian control in 363. [1] Farther east, the Sasanian reliefs at Taq-e Bostan preserve a different kind of evidence: royal monuments in the Kermanshah landscape. Iran’s UNESCO submission describes two rock-cut iwans and reliefs within a wider archaeological ensemble. [5] These urban, religious and imperial settings matter to Kurdish regional history without making every earlier inhabitant or monument exclusively Kurdish.

Nisibis in 640: the disappearance of an imperial border

Hidemi Takahashi dates the Islamic conquest of Nisibis to 640. With the Roman-Persian border gone, the city gradually lost strategic and commercial importance. Its Christian history did not end with the change of rulers: the East Syriac episcopal succession continued, and later figures included Eliya of Nisibis and Abdisho bar Brikha. [1] Conquest therefore changed the framework in which local institutions operated rather than instantly removing them. Nisibis offers a documented example of political transformation and religious continuity within the same place.

Hamadan and the contested aftermath of Nehavand

Parviz Azkai’s account connects the capture of Hamadan with the Arab victory at Nehavand in the early 640s, while explicitly noting disagreement among the sources over dates. He describes a local ruler, Dinar, negotiating tribute and protection with Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman, followed by renewed resistance and further campaigns. [2] A single battle did not make control permanent. Agreements, governors and repeated confrontations were part of establishing the new order. Exact troop totals and inconsistent calendar conversions in later accounts should not be treated as a secure census or a day-by-day chronology.

Shahrazur: fighting and negotiated terms

Al-Baladhuri’s conquest history gives several transmitted accounts of Shahrazur. In one, Azra ibn Qays fails to take the district while governing Hulwan; Utba ibn Farqad subsequently takes it after fighting. Another report explicitly describes Utba fighting people identified as Kurds and killing many. The neighbouring settlements of as-Samaghan and Darabadh are said to have accepted jizya and kharaj obligations in exchange for protection against killing and enslavement and freedom to travel. [3] Violence and negotiated submission appear together in this source. Its later compilation and differing reports should remain visible; it does not establish how every community responded or provide a reliable total of casualties.

Taxes, provinces and the survival of learning

The Shahrazur chapter also says the district remained attached to Mosul until a later administrative separation at the end of Harun al-Rashid’s caliphate. [3] That later arrangement belongs to the Abbasid period, rather than to a single seventh-century settlement. Religious learning had its own chronology. Adam Becker describes the School of Nisibis as an East Syriac institution partly founded by refugees after Edessa’s school closed in 489. Its rules survive from 496 and 602, and teaching included scripture, interpretation and logic. He notes that evidence becomes sparse after the early seventh century. [4] The school’s earlier flourishing cannot be used to claim either an unchanged institution forever or an immediate disappearance in 640.

Later Kurdish dynasties belong to a later chapter

Kurdish political houses emerged within a regional order that had already undergone centuries of Islamic government. Azkai places Hasanwayh’s expansion around Dinawar and Nehavand in the late 950s, with Sarmāj south of Bisotun as his centre. [2] This was more than three centuries after the first conquests. The distinction gives both periods their proper history: seventh-century campaigns and settlements on one hand, and later local dynastic power on the other. Neither a single unchanging tribal response nor an immediate, uniform religious conversion can be reconstructed from the city and conquest accounts used here.

Sources and further reading

  1. Hidemi Takahashi, Nisibis, Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: frontier history, conquest in 640 and later ecclesiastical succession.
  2. Parviz Azkai, Hamadān vi. History, Islamic Period, Encyclopaedia Iranica XI/6 (2003), pp. 608–612: conquest accounts and Hasanwayhid emergence.
  3. Al-Baladhuri, The Origins of the Islamic State, translated by Francis Clark Murgotten, volume II (Columbia University, 1924), printed pp. 35–36: Shahrazur, as-Samaghan and Darabadh.
  4. Adam H. Becker, Nisibis, School of, Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: foundation, teaching, rules and limits of the surviving evidence.
  5. UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Taq-e Bostan, Tentative List reference 5182, submitted by Iran on 9 August 2007: location and archaeological ensemble.