arabic and Persian history writing
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# Arabic and Persian Historical Writing
The most salient element of the sea change during the Middle Period was the increasing linguistic division between the eastern Persian- and the western Arabic-writing worlds. While Arabic retained its predominance in the Maghreb and the central Islamic lands (Egypt, Greater Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Arabian Peninsula), Persian gradually replaced it as the preferred language for historical writing in Iran and further to the east. This ascent of Persian was a slow process that took place over several centuries, starting in the mid-tenth century when centralized Abbasid rule came to an end. The consequent regionalization of political authority led to the formation of a number of Persian and Iranian dynasties, such as the Samanids in Transoxania and Khurasan, the Buyids in Iran and Iraq, and the Ghaznavids whose lands stretched from northern India to Iran. In parallel to these political changes and under the patronage of these new rulers, the Persian literary ‘renaissance’ initiated the gradual demise of Arabic as the lingua franca for historical writing. This divide was not a mere linguistic technicality; rather it initiated the development of two distinct, though initially still closely connected, traditions of historical writing that came to differ in genre and style.