Palestinian Kurds

The Persian roots of Muslim scholars is one of the most exaggerated myths that got popularised. Most of the claimed scholars came from Arab tribes who RESIDED in Khorassan and hence took the names of the cities they lived in. The Persianification of Islamic history was detected and debunked by Allama Dr. Naji Ma'ruf. In his book “The Arabness of Scholars Attributed to Non-Arab Lands,” the scholar Dr. Naji Ma‘ruf set out to challenge a widely repeated narrative about Islamic intellectual history. He originally planned the work as a ten-volume project, but passed away after completing only three volumes. In this work, he responds to the Shu‘ubiyya, currents that sought to diminish the role of Arabs, and directly refutes the famous claim of Ibn Khaldun that “most bearers of knowledge in Islam were non-Arabs, except for a rare few.” Ma‘ruf argues the opposite: that the majority of scholars were in fact Arabs or of Arab origin, even if they were associated with regions like Persia, Khurasan, or Central Asia. He criticizes later figures such as Haji Khalifa, who transmitted this claim in Kashf al-Zunun and expanded upon it without proper attribution, as well as modern writers like Jurji Zaydan, Ahmad, Philip Hitti, and other orientalists who repeated the same idea without relying on statistical analysis or examining the actual genealogical origins of scholars. According to Ma‘ruf, many scholars labeled as “non-Arab” were only identified by their place of residence, while in reality they traced back to Arab tribes. His work is an attempt to correct what he sees as a long-standing misunderstanding by highlighting the Arab roots of many figures traditionally attributed to non-Arab lands. Here is a completion of the Arab scholars attributed to Persia as shown in the 1st Volume of the book: