Did you know?

This is taken from the excellent book Eternal Iran, by Patrick Clawson and Michael Rubin. The book provides a wonderful overview of Iranian history from centuries back to the present. I'll do a review of it at some point, but for now, this paragraph caught my eye.

While the Abbasids brought greater prosperity to the Iranians, ethnic tensions continued to strain the Islamic Empire. The caliphs were Arab, and Arabs continued to claim a priviliged position within the world of Islam. After all, God had chosen to reveal the Qur'an in Arabic, not in Persian. While the Abbasids remained in power for more than 500 years, their peak came within a century, under the rule of Harun al-Rashid (786-809). It was duringn his reign that the famous tales of One Thousand and One Nights, stories like "Aladdin", "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", and "Sinbad" were first written. Harun, though, was intensely paranoid and intolerant of religious minorities. He originated the practice--revived by the Nazis more than a millenium later--of requiring Jews to wear yellow patches.