THE SEARCH FOR DYNASTIC CONNECTIONS WITH THE PAST

determinist views that became influential, if not universally acknowledged, in early Islam. In the linguistic and cultural sphere, the Middle Persian or Pahlavi language disappeared as a spoken tongue, and outside certain peripheral areas where Islam was late in penetrating, and outside the surviving Zoroastrian communities, it disappeared as a literary medium. Even amongst the Zoroastrian groups, knowledge of Pahlavi had sharply declined by the end of the tenth century; in 978 we have the composition of Kai Ka'iis b. Kai Khusrau's Zarddusht-ndma, the first Zoroastrian text in New Persian. But the themes of older Persian literature, such as the heroic ones that later reappeared in the numerous poetic epics of the tenth and eleventh centuries, and the themes of polite, urbane, and courtly literature, which reappeared in Arabic literature and in the Arab-Persian Mirrors for Princes, certainly survived to have a very marked influence on the whole course of Arabic and Islamic literature. It is, however, continuity in the governmental traditions of Islamic Iran which concerns us here. The theocratic ruler, as familiar in Persia as in the rest of the Ancient Near East, certainly disappeared. The Abbasid Caliphs came to make their regime increasingly theocratic in atmosphere, assiduously cultivating the ulema as supports of their throne, and adopting honorific titles or alqdb which expressed their dependence on God or which grounded the stability of their rule in His guidance. This exaltation of the Caliph into an Imam or religious leader seems, however, to stem purely from an inner development within the Islamic community. The Abbasids came to power in 750 as ostensible supporters of the claims of the Ahl al-Bait, the Prophet's family. Very soon after the Abbasid revolution, it became clear that Ahl al-Bait was to be interpreted as meaning the descendants of the Prophet's uncle al-'Abbds, and not those of his cousin and son-in-law 'Ali. Hence it became necessary to counteract the claims of the disappointed party of 'Ali, the Shi'a, by an equally vigorous proclamation of an Abbasid claim to divine favour. Professor Bernard Lewis has recently pointed out the messianic implications of the later application of the honorific al-Mansiir to the second Abbasid Caliph Abai Ja'far.1 It is more permissible to discern Persian influence in some of the external trappings of Abbasid rule: the organization of the court on hierarchical lines, with a chamberlain or hdjib guarding the monarch from contact with the masses; the introduction of a harem system, with eunuch attendants and with