ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Message Chapter 3: Conditions of Roman and Iranian Empires It is very important to study the following two phenomena in order to evaluate the sacred Islamic movement: The revelation of the Holy Qur'an i.e. the area in which Islam originated and developed. Way of thinking of the people who inhabited the most civilized areas of that age and whose thoughts, manners, morals and civilisations were considered to be the most developed and the best.

History tells us that the most enlightened spots of those times were the Roman and the Iranian Empires. To complete the discussion, it is necessary that we should study the conditions of these two Empires separately, so that it may become possible to make an estimate of the value of the civilisation introduced by Islam. In those days Rome did not enjoy a better position as compared with its rival viz. Iran. Internal strife and continuous external wars with Iran over Armenia etc.

had prepared its people for accepting a revolution. More than anything else, diversity of religious opinions had made these differences much wider. Strife between the Christians and the idolaters did not subside.

When the dignitaries of the Church took reins of government in their hands they pressed their opponents hard and this by itself paved the path for the creation of a dissatisfied minority; and the thing which could be counted to be the great factor for the acceptance of Islam by the Roman nation and warm welcome accorded by them to this movement was the deprivation felt by different groups on account of the harshness of the dignitaries of the Church.

Day after day the awe and power of the Roman Empire was diminishing owing to differences amongst the priests on the one hand and existence of various religious orders on the other. Besides, the white and yellow nations of the north and the east respectively were always very keen to acquire the fertile areas of Europe and at times they did great harm to each other by their mutual warfare. This in itself became the reason for the division of the Roman Empire into two blocs viz.

the eastern bloc and the western bloc. The historians believe that the political, social and financial conditions of Rome in the sixth century were very much disturbed. So much so that they do not consider even the supremacy of Rome over Iran to be an evidence of its military power. They attribute the defeat of Iran to the maladministration of the Iranian Government.