Note 11 — Chapter VI · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS IN EUROPE UNDER THE TURKS.
Reading edition
In addition to the causes above enumerated of the rapid spread of Islam in Persia, it should be remembered that the political and national sympathies of the conquered race were also enlisted on behalf of the new religion through the marriage of Ḥusayn, the son of ʻAlī with Shāhbānū, one of the daughters of Yazdagird, the last monarch of the Sāsānid dynasty. In the descendants of Shāhbānū and Ḥusayn the Persians saw the heirs of their ancient kings and the inheritors of their national traditions, and in this patriotic feeling may be found the explanation of the intense devotion of the Persians to the ʻAlid faction and the first beginnings of Shīʻism as a separate sect.11