Asawira

The Asawira (Arabic: أساورة‎‎) or Asawirat (أساويرات) were a military unit of the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphate. The military unit consisted of Iranian noblemen, who were originally part of the aswaran unit of the Sasanian army. It was disbanded in 703 by al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf.

The word is the Arabic broken plural form of the Middle Persian word aswār ("horseman"), which in turn is from the Old Persian word asabāra. The Parthian form is asbār.

During the Arab invasion of Iran, the Sasanian king Yazdegerd III (r. 632–651) sent 1,000 cavalrymen under Siyah al-Uswari to defend Khuzestan. These 1,000 men were of ethnic Iranians from Isfahan and region between Isfahan and Khuzestan, and served in the aswaran unit. During the siege of Shushtar (641-642), they defected to the Arabs, and settled in Basra, where they received salary. Furthermore, they also converted to Islam and allied themselves with the Banu Tamim of southern Iraq. However, the story about them converting to Islam is most likely inaccurate, since 15 years later, some members still appear with Zoroastrian names, such as a certain Mah Afridhan.

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