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6 - The Saffārid Dynasty: A Power outside the ʿAbbāsid Structure
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 December 2023
Summary
Abstract
The establishment of the Saffārid dynasty, which took its structural resources not from the caliph's approval but military power, posed a severe challenge to the legitimacy of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate and provided the prelude to greater independence for the subsequent Iranian dynasties. Yaʿqub-e Leys came to power when he had neither received a mandate from the caliph nor could rely on his genealogy to hope for the attention of the people of Sistān and other parts of Iran. Instead, Yaʿqub managed the power in Sistān's military, including the ʿAyyārs and the Khwārejites. However, his defeat against the ʿAbbāsids in Deyr al-ʿĀqul and then his brother ʿAmr's defeat against the Sāmānids turned the Ghaznavid rule into a local but ineffective dynasty in the region's power structure.
Keywords: Saffārid dynasty, Yaʿqub-e Leys, Sistān, ʿAyyārs
Yaʿqub, an Activist with Military Legitimacy
While the Tāherids and Sāmānids, by obeying the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, developed their power structures in Khorāsān and Mā Varā al-Nahr, some Iranian amirs, without serving the ʿAbbāsid caliph and only by relying on military force, were able to establish new dynasties in Iran. The establishment of the Saffārid dynasty was the beginning of the way for the Iranian amirs to create political structures independent of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate. The Saffārid government founded its structure on military force and far from the ʿAbbāsid power framework. By questioning the caliph's religious legitimacy, it provided the ground for the reproduction of successive Iranian local governments. The social changes brought about by the Saffārid dynasty paved the way for Iranian agents to take a different path to power from the Tāherids and Sāmānids and gradually gain a greater share of it.
Unlike the rule of the Tāherids and Sāmānids, which had been formed with the ʿAbbāsid caliph's approval, Saffārid rule was shaped in Sistān in the dust of conflicts among different rivals, none of whom had any mandate from the caliph. The historians’ accounts of the formation of the Saffārid government detail a number of conflicts before Yaʿqub eventually, after many years of co-operation and struggles with different amirs (such as Sāleh ibn Nazr and Derham ibn Nazr) and with a coalition of different religious and intellectual groups (namely, the Khārejites and the ʿAyyārs), was able to come to power in Sistān.
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- Social Change in Medieval Iran 132-628 AH (750-1231 AD)The Perspectives of Persian Historiography, pp. 129 - 140Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2023