Shuubiyah

a cultural and political movement among the non-Arab peoples in the Arabian Caliphate that rejected the Arabs’ claims to dominance in the cultural, and sometimes political, life of Islamic countries. The movement, which began in the eighth century, was most active in Iran, where the principal figures were the writer and translator Abu Muhammad Abdallah ibn al-Muqaffa, the historian Hamzah al-Isfahani, and the scholar and encyclopedist al-Biruni. The shuubiyah movement was associated with opposition to the political hegemony of the Arabs or with heretical sects, such as the Shiites and Kharijites; it was especially linked with the effort to revive local literary languages, notably Farsi. The poets Bashshar ibn-Burd and Abu Nuwas introduced Farsi expressions and poems into their works.