ABSTRACT
In the anthology Diyāre āftāb Habibullāh ‘Abbāsi treats the history of the Arabs of Arabkhane (‘Abbāsi 1999: 31–35). He first quotes two Iranian sources: The Iranian Geographical Dictionary, which claims that the Arabs came to the area during Nadir Shah in the eighteenth century and Bahāristān by Ayatullah āyāti Birjandi, who asserts they came from Khuzistan during the Safavids or during Nadir Shah. Habibullāh ‘Abbāsi rejects the claims for several reasons, on the grounds that they have no tangible support for their assertions, and that there are other conclusive indications pointing at much earlier times. He actually proposes that the Arabs came from the Basra area in Iraq during the first centuries of the Islamic era. He points to the presence of castles and cemeteries in the area that are more than a thousand years old. Further, their own widespread oral traditions speak of their being in the area for at least a thousand years. Also, personal names, such as Dair Aql and Bōrghān, have been transmitted through the years and are originally place names in the Basra area. Another indicator is their dialect itself, which is not similar to the Khuzistani dialect. His evidence is their many old words, expressions and proverbs, of which many are not understood in common speech today, but are known from older written sources.
