Editing Openai/690e264c-c9e4-800c-ae44-f3cf949de7b4 (section)

=== Assistant: That’s a very perceptive and loaded question — and yes, you’re recalling an idea that’s been voiced in different forms … ===
That’s a very perceptive and loaded question — and yes, you’re recalling an idea that’s been voiced (in different forms) by several historians and Orientalists, especially from the 19th–20th century. It goes roughly like this:

: 

Let’s unpack what that means — and what’s correct, half-correct, and misleading in it.

==== The term “Mohammedanism” was coined by early European scholars to describe Islam as a cult of the Prophet, analogous to “Buddhism” or “Christianity.” ====
It’s an inaccurate term — Muslims never viewed Muhammad as divine — but in historical analysis, some writers used it to mark the institutionalized, doctrinal phase of Islam that emerged after its Arab tribal period.

So, when a scholar said Islam became Mohammedanism after Persia, they meant:

: 

And Persia was central to that transformation.

==== ### ====
* Rooted in tribal simplicity — community, poetry, and oral piety.
* The Qur’an was central; few hadiths were systematized.
* Law was customary and flexible (ʿurf).
* The Prophet was the Messenger — not yet the model for every detail of life.

===== - Religion became bureaucratized: law schools, theological disputation, isnād verification. =====
* The Prophet’s words and acts (hadith) were codified as the total model (uswa ḥasana).
* Theologians built vast systems of law and belief — an imperial theology.

In short, Muhammad became not just the messenger but the measure —
his life became a textual blueprint for all legal, social, and spiritual norms.

That’s the shift people mean by “from Islam to Mohammedanism.”

==== Persia provided: ====
* The bureaucratic class — scribes, administrators, judges, scholars.
* The intellectual infrastructure — academies, writing culture, legalistic thinking.
* A concept of priestly authority — comparable to the mowbedān, later mirrored by the ʿulamaʾ.

They transformed Islam from a revelatory movement into a scholastic civilization.

In that sense, the Arab revelation was Persianized —
its structure took on Sasanian form, even if its content remained Qur’anic and Arabic.

==== The Prophet’s original message was anti-imperial and anti-priestly — ====
he spoke against intermediaries, formalism, and sacred bureaucracy.

Yet, within 150 years, Islam developed:
* A clerical class (the ʿulamaʾ),
* A ritual law code,
* A court system, and
* A state–religion alliance — all of which resembled what Sasanian Zoroastrianism had before its fall.

So yes, in that ironic historical sense, the Persian Empire was conquered politically but triumphed culturally —
it provided the mold in which Islamic orthodoxy hardened.

==== Versions of this observation appear in: ====
* Philip Hitti, History of the Arabs — “The conquered conquered the conquerors.”
* Ignaz Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien — saw hadith and fiqh as post-prophetic constructions under Persian influence.
* Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Marshall Hodgson — emphasized that “Islam became a civilization” (the Islamicate) after its Persianization.
* Bernard Lewis — noted that “Islam became more Persian than Arab” in administration and theology.

So, while the phrase “Islam became Mohammedanism” sounds polemical today, it originally described that civilizational mutation —
from charismatic revelation to institutional religion.

==== Yes — in a sociological and civilizational sense, that statement captures a real historical transition: ====

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The revelation (Islam) became a system (Mohammedanism) —
and the system, ironically, bore Persian fingerprints everywhere: in law, theology, mysticism, and empire.

Would you like me to show how that same transformation played out in the formation of Sunna and hadith canon — that is, how the Prophet’s sayings became law through Persian scholastic machinery?