That this widespread conversion was not due to force or violence is evidenced by the toleration extended to those who still clung to their ancient faith. Even to the present day there are some small communities of fire-worshippers to be found in certain districts of Persia, and though these have in later years often had to suffer persecution, [698] their ancestors in the early centuries of the Hijrah enjoyed a remarkable degree of toleration, their fire-temples were respected, and we even read of a Muhammadan general (in the reign of al-Muʻtaṣim, A.D. 833–842), who ordered an imām and a muʼadhdhin to be flogged because they had destroyed a fire-temple in Sughd and built a mosque in its place. [699] In the tenth century, three centuries after the conquest of the country, fire-temples were to be found in ʻIrāq, Fārs, Kirmān, Sijistān, Khurāsān, Jibāl, Ādharbayjān and Arrān, i.e. in almost every province of Persia. [700] In Fārs itself there were hardly any cities or districts in which fire-temples and Magians were not to be found. [701] Al-Shahrastānī also (writing as late as the twelfth century), makes mention of a fire-temple at Isfīniyā, in the neighbourhood of Baghdād itself. [702] In the face of such facts, it is surely impossible to attribute the decay of Zoroastrianism entirely to violent conversions made by the Muslim conquerors. The number of Persians who embraced Islam in the early days of the Arab rule was probably very large from the various reasons given above, but the late survival of their ancient faith and the occasional record of conversions in the course of successive centuries, render it probable that the acceptance of Islam was both peaceful and voluntary. About the close of the eighth century, Sāmān, a noble of Balkh, having received assistance from Asad b. ʻAbd-Allāh, the governor of Khurāsān, renounced Zoroastrianism, embraced Islam and named his son Asad after his protector: it is from this convert that the dynasty of the Sāmānids (A.D. 874–999) took its name. About the beginning of the ninth century, Karīm b. Shahriyār was the first king of the Qābūsiyyah dynasty who became a Musalman, and in 873 a large number of fire-worshippers were converted to Islam in Daylam through the influence of Nāṣir al-Ḥaqq Abū Muḥammad. In the following century, about A.D. 912, Ḥasan b. ʻAlī, of the ʻAlid dynasty on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, who is said to have been a man of learning and intelligence and well acquainted with the religious opinions of different sects, invited the inhabitants of Ṭabaristān and Daylam, who were partly idolaters and partly Magians, to accept Islam; many of them responded to his call, while others persisted in their former state of unbelief. [703] In the year A.H. 394 (A.D. 1003–1004), a famous poet, Abu’l Ḥasan Mihyār, a native of Daylam, who had been a fire-worshipper, was converted to Islam by a still more famous poet, the Sharīf al-Riḍā, who was his master in the poetic art. [704]