Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/114

 remodelled on Persian lines, and to Persian influence was due the institution of the wazir or responsible minister at the head of the executive. The title is probably identical with the Old Persian vi-chir or "overseer" (thus Darmesteter: Etudes Iraniennes i. p. 58. note 3.); before this the chief minister was simply clerk (kàtib) or adviser (mushir) and was simply one of the Khalif's attendants who was employed to conduct correspondence, or to give advice when occasion required. In 135 the noble Persian family of Barmecides began to supply wazirs, and these controlled the policy of the Khalifate until 189. From the time of al-Mansur (A.H. 136–158) onwards the Persians began to assert their pre-eminence and a party was formed known as the Shu'ubiyya or "anti-Arab party" of those who held, not only that the alien converts were equal to the Arabs, but that the Arabs were a half savage and inferior race in all respects, contrasting unfavourably with the Persians, Syrians, and Copts. This party produced considerable mass of controversial literature in which free course was given to the general dislike felt towards the Arabs and which reveals the intensity of the contempt and hatred felt towards these parvenus. The Arabs had boasted of their racial descent and had devoted much attention to the keeping of their genealogies, at least in the century immediately preceding the rise of Islam; as they had then only just commenced to count descent in the father's line these genealogies were purely fictitious in so far as they dealt with