The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I am closing this discussion as part of a group, consisting of Talk:Muslim conquest of Egypt#Requested move 17 March 2023, Talk:Muslim conquest of Armenia#Requested move 21 March 2023, and Talk:Muslim conquest of Persia#Requested move 17 March 2023, as the moves are comparable, the arguments for each are comparable, and many editors in those discussions referenced their positions in other discussions.

With the exception of Muslim conquest of Egypt, which is closed as moved, these articles are closed as no consensus; editors opposing the move argued that the proposed title is inaccurate and would hinder understanding, while editors supporting argued that the proposed title was the WP:COMMONNAME. Overall, neither position was sufficiently strong to establish a consensus given the comparable levels of support.

Muslim conquest of Egypt differs from these in that the arguments for it were seen as stronger by the participants, as evidenced by P Aculeius's neutral position on that move compared to their opposition on others.

If editors wish to explore these moves in the future they are encouraged to open a multi-move request, which will address some of the raised WP:CONSISTENCY concerns.

For this article alone, there was some support for using Iran over Persia; a separate discussion on moving this article to Muslim conquest of Iran may be informative, and will likely prevent the question of which name shall be used derailing a future discussion on whether to use Arab, Muslim, or Islamic. (closed by non-admin page mover) BilledMammal (talk) 22:19, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Muslim conquest of Persia → Arab conquest of IranArab conquest of Iran – The current title is as distinct minority nomenclature in modern sources. The vastly preferred term, as Ngrams attests, is Arab conquest of Iran (the name which is currently presented as the main alternative name). Indeed, "Arab conquest", as the Ngrams shows, has in fact always been the main term regardless of whether 'Iran' or 'Persia' is used, while 'Iran' has steadily edged out 'Persia' in the last two decades in this particular context. Aside from the general sourcing preference, another good reason for using 'Iran' here is that, despite it generally being referred to as the 'Persia' in a historical context, the Sassanian Empire referred to itself as "Eranshahr" or "Land/Empire of the Iranians", so 'Iran' also holds truer in the context. Google Scholar meanwhile yields 1,190 hits for Arab/Iran, 400 hits for Arab/Persia, 287 hits for Muslim/Persia, and 249 for Muslim/Iran, so again, much the same pattern, with no real divergence in overall prevalence. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:21, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Prefer: "Arab conquest of Persia", since "Persia" tends to be the traditional historical term for the region. पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 12:10, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support "Arab conquest of Iran". Long overdue and WP:COMMON NAME. "Iran" has generally taken over "Persia" in scholarly sources in these past two decades. For example;

• Google Scholar shows 4,300 results for "Sasanian Iran" [1], and 2.230 results for "Sasanian Persia" [2].
• JSTOR shows 6.971 results for "Sasanian Iran" [3] and 3.577 results for "Sasanian Persia" [4].
• Brill Publishers show 2,597 results for "Sasanian Iran" [5] and 1,622 results for "Sasanian Persia" [6]
• Taylor & Francis shows 924 results for "Sasanian Iran" [7] and 509 results for "Sasanian Persia" [8]
• De Gruyter shows 3493 results for "Sasanian Iran" [9] and 2240 for "Sasanian Persia" [10] --HistoryofIran (talk) 12:26, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@HistoryofIran: Your results might be explained by the fact that "Sasanian Persia" as a fixed expression is rather redundant, using two historical terms side-by-side.... a bit like saying "Roman Hispania", to which "Roman Spain" would often be preferred. But when looking at the sheer proximity of the words, Persia tends to be used together with Sasanian (and its spelling variants) more often than Iran with Sasanian. Just for Google Scholar:

• Sasanid+Iran: 5,110, but Sasanid+Persia= 5,630
  
• Sassanid+Iran: 14,700, but Sassanid+Persia: 16,200
  
• Sassanian+Iran: 14,200 but Sassanian+Persia: 16,600
  
• Sasanian+Iran: 24,500, but Sasanian+Persia: 22,500
  

Total of the above in favour of Iran: 58,510 Total of the above in favour of Persia: 60,930.

So, WP:COMMON NAME still seems to favor "Persia" for historical usage (specifically in relation to "Sasanian", "Sassanian", "Sasanid", "Sassanid"), although not by a huge margin... but of course in many cases "Iran" would be used in these results for geographical purposes, or to refer to the modern country (as in "in the area of modern Iran"), so the actual usage of "Persia" to refer to the historical polity is in fact much higher.पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 15:11, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

“Sasanian” is the common spelling in literature, hence why the Wiki article is named that, its original name being “Sassanid Empire”, an outdated spelling. The rest of your claims are not supported by anything, and I could likewise argue that “Persia” is also used to refer to the southern province in Iran. I also wonder why you only used Google Scholar as an example here. There are countless prominent sources which use the name “Sasanian Iran” [11]. And “Arab conquest of Iran” too. It’s not even a competition. I did include numerous sources regarding that in the last RFC, which was a few years ago. The numbers have only heavily increased since. HistoryofIran (talk) 15:28, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't really meant to be a referendum on whether the Sassanian Empire was Persia or Iran or both. But yes, Persia could, in theory, be confused with the little 'Persia' in the sense of Fars Province, so a conquest of 'Persia' could just refer to Fars (and indeed, this page includes a section on just that, the conquest of Fars, which was a granular part of the overall campaign), whereas Iran is a term that more unambiguously and naturally disambiguates to the entire Iranian domain, such as it was at the time. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:18, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think "Persia" is often intended to mean just "Fars Province", which is usually designated as Fars, Persis, or rarely "Persia proper"... For "Arab conquest", "Arab invasion" or "Muslim conquest" the results even clearer. Again, according to Google Scholar:

• "Arab conquest" is used much more often in association with Persia than with Iran:

"Arab conquest"+Iran 10,300, but "Arab conquest"+Persia 16,000

• "Arab invasion" is used more often in association with Persia than with Iran:

"Arab invasion"+Iran 4,300, but "Arab invasion"+Persia 5,200

• "Muslim conquest" too is used more often in association with Persia than with Iran:

"Muslim conquest"+Iran 7,890, but "Muslim conquest"+Persia 9,740

So here again, WP:COMMON NAME seems to favour Persia... पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 16:30, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Iran still more generally has a broader meaning than Persia, just as the Iranian peoples are a broader grouping than the Persians. But this is all getting a little off-track. The thing to note is the Ngrams I began with, which shows the proposed title rising significantly in prevalence over the course of the last two decades - to the point where, in 2019, mentions of the set phrase "Arab conquest of Iran" outweighed the combined mentions of the three closest alternatives. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:47, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose as proposed. "Iran" is a modern term for the modern country. The more historical term is "Persia". So I Support move to Arab conquest of Persia. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:02, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to WP:BLUDGEON this thread, but "Iran" is not just the modern term for the modern country, you yourself admitted to finding out about that back in 2019 [12]. --HistoryofIran (talk) 00:08, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

So I did. You obviously have a better memory than I do. I still think that "Persia" would be better to use in the title of this article though. Rreagan007 (talk) 01:11, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong Oppose. This has been discussed before (e.g. [13]), and remains unconvincing. So I repeat the argument I made then: "it was a "Muslim" conquest, not an Arab conquest. Arabs (Lakhmids) had conquered parts of Persia before, but were themselves defeated and annexed into Persia, well before the Muslim conquest. Indeed, the Muslim conquest of Persia began as an attempt to conquer the Arab parts of Persia. And then it sort of just kept going. The "Muslims" were a movement among peninsular Arabs, yes. But not all Arabs were peninsular Arabs (there were Lakhmid Arabs in Persia, Ghassanid Arabs in Syria). And of course, not all Arabs were Muslims (nor are they today - there are Christian Arabs, etc.). The conquest described in this article is very specifically the Muslim conquest, not the Lakhmid conquest, nor does it involve any non-Muslim Arabs. Changing the title would be very misleading." Walrasiad (talk) 15:29, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  There has only been one Arab conquest of Iran in the sense of conquering it in its entirety in history. That the Lakhmids previously made some forays into and claimed some Sassanid territory is a far cry from a total conquest of their empire, and does not seem particularly likely to cause confusion ... and no such Lakhmid-related page currently exists with which to get confused. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:59, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @Walrasiad: FYI, I've found a journal source that firmly refers to the portion of the Umayyad conquest of Iran devoted specifically to capturing 'Persis' as "The First Arab Conquests in Fārs", with no apparent concern for confusion. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:34, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak oppose. I supported this back in 2019 and it is still probably my personal preference. My view now is that, since we have no other "Arab conquest" article titles, introducing one here will only cause confusion. Arab conquests redirects to Early Muslim conquests. The basis for the Muslim → Arab change affects many pages and I see no hint that it will gain traction. I will re-quote Robert Hoyland's defence of "Arab" from In God's Path, pp. 5–6:

  I will speak of "Arab" conquests rather than "Islamic" conquests. Both terms are to some degree inaccurate, since the conquerors were neither all Arabs nor all Muslims, and the meaning of both terms was in any case evolving in the immediate aftermath of the conquests. Nevertheless, contemporary observers mostly referred to the conquerors in ethnic rather than religious terms, and even if some of the conquerors were not Arabs their descendants often came to think of themselves as such, and so it seems preferable to use the term "Arab," while bearing in mind that we are not talking about a nationalist endeavor nor an immutable racial category. . . Furthermore, if we use the term "Islamic conquests" we cannot distinguish between the many different conquests achieved over the centuries by many Muslim groups (Iranians, Turks, Kurds, Berbers, etc.). This causes much confusion among students, and among quite a few experts too, for it tends to be assumed that the Arabs conquered most or all of the lands that are majority Muslim today, whereas a large proportion of them were actually conquered much later, by local Muslim dynasties, of non-Arab origin, or were Islamized slowly by traders, missionaries, and wandering ascetics.

  The argument for Persia → Iran is weak because, as I said last time, "Iran" as the universal name for Persia has been slow to make its way out of the academy and into the vernacular. Witness our articles on Georgia–Persia relations and Georgia–Iran relations, which are supposedly differentiable. An alternative to both the current title and the proposal is to move this to Fall of the Sasanian Empire, title of an article that was merged into this one since the last RM. Srnec (talk) 15:43, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @Srnec: You seem to agree that 'Iran' has been adopted at an academic level, and that you believe that only the vernacular demurs. Yet here Arab conquest of Iran is already the most prevalent term overall in Google Books, not just in academic sources. In the case of the Sassanids, their reference to their own empire as "Eranshahr" only compounds its validity here. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:29, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I coincidentally found a work that combines both: Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran by Parvaneh Pourshariati (2017). Also interesting on Ngrams. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:47, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: the OP did not alert he opened a parallel discussion at "Muslim conquest of Egypt, nor that there was already an ongoing discussion to move "Umayyad conquest of Hispania" to "Muslim conquest of Spain". Of course, the arguments here will have implications on those two pages. Walrasiad (talk) 15:51, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. The current title is evidently more accurate in terms of Muslims vs. Arabs, and "Persia" is the more familiar name in historical contexts. There is no particularly good statistical argument in the former case, unlike with the Egypt article, where "Arab" predominates by a ratio greater than 2:1, although I don't think there's anything wrong with the current title either (in the case of the Spain article, "Muslim" clearly predominates). Insisting on "Iran" for a country historically known as "Persia" in virtually all English-language writing until the late twentieth century not only introduces an anachronism, but smacks of WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS, as though "Persian" were some sort of ethnic slur that needs to be erased from history—and that alone would would be a good reason to oppose this move, although anachronism is a still better reason. P Aculeius (talk) 16:49, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't think Persian is an ethnic slur, but if we are discussing anachronism, the preference for 'Persia' pre-20th century is exactly that. It is a product of orientalism and the tendency of western writers from the 18th and 19th centuries to go along with the nomenclature of the ancient Greeks, whose writings are the ones responsible for aggrandizing the local origins of the ruling classes of Iranian empires in the province of Persis into the term 'Persian' for the entire polity. That conception is likely here to stay for some time still, but with the geography, it is already Iranian peoples and the Iranian plateau. So the 21st-century correction here is nothing new. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:42, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  No, that's pretty much what you're saying. Blame the Greeks, blame the colonizers, throw in all kinds of anachronisms to claim that the whole sweep of history has done a great injustice out of sheer ignorance and wilful disregard for the truth—and of course, above all, tell everybody else involved in the conversation why they're wrong. But at the end of the day, Wikipedia isn't the place to reveal hithertofore unrecognized truths. P Aculeius (talk) 20:02, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  The proposed title is already the most prevalent one in the 21st century. I'm not defying convention; the convention has already changed. And we don't peddle in truth here, but verifiability. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:19, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  That was my point. Your position is about truth, not verifiability. P Aculeius (talk) 03:05, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't know what point you think you are making, but no evidence has been presented here that counters the Ngrams or Google Scholar evidence for the proposed title being the most prevalent name. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:11, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: To be clear, while I, as the OP, obviously prefer Arab conquest of Iran, I also in principle support Arab conquest of Persia as preferable to the current title - based on the very same evidence presented in the opening comment, which shows, first and foremost, that "Arab conquest" is the perennially more prevalent terminology, regardless of whether Iran or Persia is used. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:24, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment The OP is at it again, starting more related RMs before this one is even finished. He's now opened RMs on Early Muslim conquests and Muslim conquest of Armenia, trying to get their titles changed from "Muslim" to "Arab". He has also has created a new page he titled Arab conquest of Mesopotamia, moving material out this page, while this discussion is still on-going. And once again, he has not notified editors here or on any other on-going discussions that he opened related RMs, forcing them to scramble across pages and repeat the same arguments again. Walrasiad (talk) 01:16, 25 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]