Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World: Iranian Tradition and Islamic Civilisation 1784532398, 9781784532390

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
In Memoriam
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Contributors
Maps
Preface, by A.C.S. Peacock and D.G.Tor
1 The Importance of Khurasan and Transoxiana in the Persianate Dynastic Period (850–1220)
2 The Spread of Ḥanafism to Khurasan and Transoxiana
3 The khāṣṣa and the ‘āmma: Intermediaries in the Samanid Polity
4 Content versus Context in Samanid Epigraphic Pottery
5 A Venture on the Frontier: Alptegin’s Conquest of Ghazna and its Sequel
6 Finding Iran in the Panegyrics of the Ghaznavid Court
7 Khurasani Historiography and Identity in the Light of the Fragments of the Akhbār Wulāt Khurāsān and the Tārīkh-i Harāt
8 The Life and Times of ‘Amīd al-Mulk al-Kundurī
9 Local Lords or Rural Notables? Some Remarks on the ra’īs in Twelfth Century Eastern Iran
10 The Ghurids in Khurasan
Index

Citation preview

A.C.S. Peacock is Reader in Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews, and holds a PhD in Oriental Studies from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of The Great Seljuk Empire (2015) and Early Seljuq History: A New Interpretation (2010), and is the co-editor of The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (2012) and Ferdowsi, the Mongols and the History of Iran: Art, Literature and Culture from Early Islam to Qajar Persia (2013). D.G. Tor is Assistant Professor of Medieval Middle Eastern History at the University of Notre Dame, and holds a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. She is the author of The Great Seljuq Sultanate and the Formation of Islamic Civilization: A Thematic History (forthcoming) and Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry and the ‘Ayyar Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World (2007), and the editor of The ‘Abbāsid and Carolingian Empires: Comparative Studies in Civilisational Formation (forthcoming, 2016) and a co-editor of The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 2: The Medieval Period (2018).

I.B.Tauris & BIPS Persian Studies Series Series ISBN 978 1 84885 203 7

Series Editor Vanessa Martin

Editorial Board

C. Edmund Bosworth, Robert Gleave, Vanessa Martin The I.B.Tauris / BIPS Persian Studies Series publishes scholarly works in the social sciences and humanities on Iran. Such works include: original research monographs, including biographies and suitably revised theses, specially planned books deriving from conferences, specially commissioned multi-authored research books, academic readers and translations. 1 The Practice of Politics in Safavid Iran: Power, Religion, Rhetoric Colin P. Mitchell 978 1 84511 890 7 2 The Ilkhanid Book of Ascension: A Persian-Sunni Prayer Manual Christiane Gruber 978 1 84511 499 2 3 Hafiz and his Contemporaries: A Study of Fourteenth-Century Persian Love Poetry Dominic Brookshaw 978 1 84885 144 3 4 The Ornament of Histories: A History of the Eastern Islamic Lands AD 650−1041 The Original Text of Abū Sa‘īd ‘Abd al-Hayy Gardīzī Tranlsated and Edited by C. Edmund Bosworth 978 1 84885 353 9 5 The Safavid Dynastic Shrine: Architecture, Religion and Power in Early Modern Iran Kishwar Rizvi 978 1 84885 354 6 6 Iran Between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism: The Constitutional Revolution of 1906 Vanessa Martin 978 1 78076 663 8 7. Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World: Iranian Tradition and Islamic Civilisation Edited by A.C.S. Peacock and D.G. Tor 978 1 78453 239 0

Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World Iranian Tradition and Islamic Civilisation Edited by A.C.S. Peacock and D.G. Tor

Published in 2015 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright editorial selection © 2015 A.C.S. Peacock and D.G. Tor Copyright individual chapters © 2015 C. Edmund Bosworth, Minoru Inaba, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Hillenbrand, Louise Marlow, Christopher Melchert, Roy Mottahedeh, Jürgen Paul and A. C. S. Peacock The right of A.C.S. Peacock and D.G. Tor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Institute of Persian Studies 7 Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. ISBN: eISBN:

978 1 78453 239 0 978 0 85772 946 0

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

In Memoriam C. Edmund Bosworth and Berenike Walburg

CONTENTS List of Illustrations viii In Memoriam x Acknowledgements xii Abbreviations xiii Contributors xiv Maps xvi Preface, by A.C.S. Peacock and D.G.Tor xix   1 The Importance of Khurasan and Transoxiana in the Persianate Dynastic Period (850–1220)

1

D.G. Tor

  2 The Spread of Ḥanafism to Khurasan and Transoxiana

13

Christopher Melchert

  3 The khāṣṣa and the ‘āmma: Intermediaries in the Samanid Polity

31

Louise Marlow

  4 Content versus Context in Samanid Epigraphic Pottery

56

Robert Hillenbrand

  5 A Venture on the Frontier: Alptegin’s Conquest of Ghazna and its Sequel

108

Minoru Inaba

  6 Finding Iran in the Panegyrics of the Ghaznavid Court

129

Roy Mottahedeh

  7 Khurasani Historiography and Identity in the Light of the Fragments of the Akhbār Wulāt Khurāsān and the Tārīkh-i Harāt 143 A.C.S. Peacock

  8 The Life and Times of ‘Amīd al-Mulk al-Kundurī

161

Carole Hillenbrand

  9 Local Lords or Rural Notables? Some Remarks on the ra’īs in Twelfth Century Eastern Iran

174

Jürgen Paul

10 The Ghurids in Khurasan

210

C. Edmund Bosworth

Index 222 vii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

0.1

0.2

0.3

5.1

Figures The Iranian World, c. 388/998 (reproduced from C. E. Bosworth, ‘The political and dynastic history of the Iranian world, ad 1000– 1217)’ in J.A. Boyle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol V: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods (Cambridge, 1968) p. 2 © Cambridge University Press, 1968, reproduced with permission) The Ghaznavid Empire at its greatest extent, c. 421/1030 (reproduced from C. E. Bosworth, ‘The political and dynastic history of the Iranian world, ad 1000–1217)’ in J.A. Boyle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol V: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods (Cambridge, 1968) p. 21 © Cambridge University Press, 1968, reproduced with permission) The Seljuq Empire at the death of Malikshah (485/1092) (reproduced from C. E. Bosworth, ‘The political and dynastic history of the Iranian world, ad 1000–1217)’ in J.A. Boyle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol V: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods (Cambridge, 1968) p. 104 © Cambridge University Press, 1968, reproduced with permission) The Eastern Islamic world in the tenth century. Plates

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10

Bowl, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington (57.34) (after Atıl, Ceramics). Dish, Paris, Louvre (A.O. no. AA.96) (after Roux, L’Islam). Bowl, Doha, Museum of Islamic Art (P0.1031.2009). Dish, Doha, Museum of Islamic Art (P0.877.2008). Plate, Almohad, 12th century, Murcia (Centro Municipal de Arqueología de Murcia) (after Caviró, Cerámica). Bowl, Doha, Museum of Islamic Art (430.2006). Bowl, Tehran, Riza ‘Abbasi Museum (53–348) (after Ghouchani, Inscriptions). Plate, Manises, Rotterdam, Historisch Museum (after Du Ry, Art). Bowl, Doha, Museum of Islamic Art. Bowl, Doha, Museum of Islamic Art (1055.2010).

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List of Illustrations 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 4.17 4.18 4.19 4.20 4.21 4.22 4.23 4.24 4.25 4.26 4.27 4.28 4.29 4.30 4.31 4.32 4.33 4.34

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Bowl, formerly Khalili Gallery (after Fehérvári and Safadi, 1400 Years of Islamic Art). Bowl, Doha, Museum of Islamic Art (P0.143.2000). Dish, Doha, Museum of Islamic Art (P0.24.1999). Fragment, Doha, Museum of Islamic Art (P0.1002.2009). Vase, Momtaz Gallery (after Momtaz, Islamic Art). Bowl, Momtaz Gallery (after Momtaz, Memories). Jug, Sarikhani collection. Bowl, Doha, Museum of Islamic Art (P0.414). Bowl, Tehran, Iran Bastan Museum (no.21169) (after Du Ry, Art). Bowl, Doha, Museum of Islamic Art (P0.686.2007). Bowl, Tehran, Riza ‘Abbasi Museum (53–348) (after Ghouchani, Inscriptions). Money jar with Chinese inscription, Changsha ware, 858 A.D. (courtesy of Dr Anita Chung). Inscribed Cizhou wares, 14th century (Cixian Museum) (courtesy of Dr Anita Chung). Bowl, owner unknown (after Ghouchani, Inscriptions). Samanid epigraphic ware: Kufic alphabet (after Bol’shakov, ‘Nadpisi’, 1958). Samanid epigraphic ware: ‘ceramic cursive’ alphabet (after Bol’shakov, ‘Nadpisi’, 1958). Folio 15b from a fragmentary 7-part Qur’an, 11th century, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, QUR 89A (after Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition). Folio from a Qur’an copied in Isfahan in 383/993, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, KFQ 90 (after Déroche, The Abbasid Tradition). Bowl, Tehran, Riza ‘Abbasi Museum (53–41) (after Ghouchani, Inscriptions). Dish, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington (54.16) (after Atıl, Ceramics). Bowl, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (40.170) (after Ghouchani, Inscriptions). Bowl, Tehran, Riza ‘Abbasi Museum (53–369) (after Ghouchani, Inscriptions). Plate, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington (52.11) (after Atıl, Ceramics). Samanid epigraphic ware: typical prompts (after Bol’shakov, ‘Nadpisi’, 1958).

Table 5.1

Ghazna/Ghaznīn in the early Islamic sources.

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In Memoriam: Clifford Edmund Bosworth (1928–2015) and Berenike Walburg (1984–2012)

This volume is dedicated to the memory of two individuals, of very different ages and life stages, but who were both an integral part of the original conference and, in Edmund Bosworth’s case, this volume: Clifford Edmund Bosworth was one of the most distinguished and prolific scholars of his time. After taking a 1st class degree in Modern History at St. John’s, Oxford, he completed an M.A. in Middle Eastern Languages (1956) and a PhD (1961) at the University of Edinburgh. Following a stint as a lecturer in Arabic at the University of St. Andrews (1956–1965), he joined the University of Manchester, in which he served as Professor of Arabic Studies from 1967–1990. During this time, he also joined the editorial board of, and composed an astonishing number of entries for, the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, overseeing the completion of the project. In many of the fields he researched, ranging from the Saffarids and Ghaznavids to the Ghurids, he was the trailblazer, whose work opened up that area of research to subsequent scholarly exploration. Characteristically, Edmund was the only contributor to this volume who had published research on every single dynastic period that falls within its purview. His work was invariably meticulous, comprehensively researched, and judicious, and will surely be read for many years to come. He was also a generous and courteous colleague, a good friend and correspondent, and a supportive mentor to younger scholars, whom he treated as full equals of his very eminent self. For the editors, he was an integral and essential participant in any conference, and his death is a blow to us personally. He is deeply missed, but we are grateful for the privilege of having known him. Berenike Walburg was a graduate student of the University of St Andrews who was killed in a road traffic accident in Aberdeenshire on Saturday 1 December 2012. At the time of her death, Berenike was a matter of months away from submitting her doctoral thesis, which was focused on the nature and development of x

Note

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international trade across Central Asia, the Near East and the Caucasus between 600 and 900 CE. Berenike was a very talented young scholar. Her research was characterised by great clarity of thought, a mastery of detail and a willingness to challenge long-held assumptions. While still a doctoral student, she had come to the attention of the wider scholarly community and impressed all who encountered her. Anyone prepared to undertake both a month of archaeological investigation at Merv in Turkmenistan and a week of intensive advanced Classical Armenian at the Welcome Library in London must have great resilience and total dedication to their field. In recognition of her scholarship and high standing in the academic world, the University of St Andrews awarded Berenike a posthumous doctorate in June 2013. Berenike was known personally to many of those who attended the conference convened at the University of St Andrews in March 2013 under the title Eastern Iran and Transoxiana, 750–1150 from which this volume of essays stems. She contributed to its organisation and had been invited to deliver a paper. It is therefore appropriate that this volume should be co-dedicated to her memory.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume is based on discussions at a conference convened by the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews in March 2013 under the title Eastern Iran and Transoxiana, 750–1150. We are extremely grateful to those institutions whose financial support made the conference and the resulting volume possible: the British Institute of Persian Studies, the Iran Heritage Foundation, the Honeyman Foundation, the Medieval Institute of the University of Notre Dame, the School of History of the University of St Andrews, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The editors would also like to express their gratitude to Dr Paul Churchill for his assistance both in organising the conference and in editing the volume. We are also grateful to the British Institute of Persian Studies for agreeing to include this volume in its publication series and to Ali Ansari for his efforts to secure its passage through the press. A.C.S. Peacock D.G. Tor

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ABBREVIATIONS

EI 2 Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition, 12 vols plus indices (Leiden, 1960–2005) EI 3 Encyclopaedia of Islam, third edition (Leiden, 2007–) EIr Encyclopaedia Iranica (London and Costa Mesa, 1982–; online edition www.iranicaonline.org)

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CONTRIBUTORS

C. Edmund Bosworth (†2015) was Emeritus Professor of Arabic Studies, Manchester University. He was British editor of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, editor of two volumes of the UNESCO History of the Civilizations of Central Asia, and contributor to the New Cambridge History of Islam and the Cambridge History of Iran. His books include works on pre-modern Arabic literature, on the history of the medieval Iranian world and Central Asia, and studies of European travellers, explorers and interpreters of the Middle Eastern lands and Inner Asia. Carole Hillenbrand, OBE, FBA, FRSE, is Professor Emerita of Islamic History at the University of Edinburgh and Professor of Islamic History at the University of St Andrews. Her books include The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999), and Turkish Myth and Muslim Symbol: The Battle of Manzikert (Edinburgh, 2007). Her new book, Islam: A Historical Introduction, was published by Thames and Hudson in January 2015. Robert Hillenbrand, FBA, Professor Emeritus of Islamic Art, Edinburgh University, and currently Professor of Art History at St Andrews University, has published 9 books, co-authored, edited or co-edited a further 12 books, and published some 170 articles. He has been Slade Professor at Cambridge and has held visiting professorships at Princeton, UCLA, Bamberg, Dartmouth College, New York, Leiden, Cairo and Groningen. His interests focus on Islamic architecture (especially in Iran and Umayyad Syria), book painting and iconography. Minoru Inaba is Professor of the Department of Oriental Studies, Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University. He specialises in the pre- and early Islamic history of Afghanistan and adjacent regions. Recent publications include: Coins, Art and Chronology II: Indo-Iranian Borderlands, 2010 (co-editor); ‘Sedentary rulers on the move: The travels of the early Ghaznavid sultans’, in D. Durand-Guédy (ed.), Turko-Mongol Rulers, Cities and City Life, (2013); and ‘Arab soldiers in China at the time of An-Shi rebellion’, Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, 68, (2011). Louise Marlow teaches at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She received her undergraduate degree from Cambridge University and her doctoral degree from xiv

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Princeton University. Her research concentrates on Arabic and Persian mirrors for princes and the pre-modern history of western Asia and Iran. Her book Wisdom and Politics in Tenth-Century Iran is forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press. Christopher Melchert has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz, a master’s from Princeton University, and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, all in History. He has published two books, The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law (1997) and Ahmad ibn Hanbal (2006), and close to fifty articles. Since 2000, he has taught at Oxford, currently covering the fields of hadith, Islamic law, and early Sufism. He aspires to be a scholar on the pattern of his master, George Makdisi. Roy Parviz Mottahedeh is the Gurney Professor of History at Harvard University. He has written extensively on the history of the Middle East in the tenth and eleventh centuries C. E. His publications include Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society, The Mantle of the Prophet, and Lessons in Islamic Jurisprudence. He has written numerous articles on the social, intellectual and political history of the Middle East from the 7th century to the present. Jürgen Paul is Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. His research field is the medieval history of Iran and Central Asia, in particular the pre-Mongol period. He has a special interest in forms of local rule and in relations between local and imperial rule in Seljuq and postSeljuq Iran. Recent publications include ‘Sanjar and Atsız: Independence, lordship, and literature’ in Jürgen Paul (ed.), Nomad Aristocrats in a World of Empires, (Wiesbaden, 2013), pp. 81–129; ‘Where did the dihqāns go?’, Eurasian Studies 11 (2013), pp. 1–34; ‘Khidma in the social history of pre-Mongol Iran’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 57/3 (2014), pp. 390–420. A.C.S. Peacock is Reader in Middle Eastern Studies at the School of History, University of St Andrews. His research focuses on the medieval history and historiography of the eastern Islamic lands. Main publications relevant to Central Asia include Mediaeval Islamic Historiography and Political Legitimacy: Bal‘amī’s Tārīkhnāma (London, 2007); Early Seljūq History: A New Interpretation (London, 2010); The Great Seljuk Empire (Edinburgh, 2015). D.G. Tor is a member of the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on the history of the central and eastern Islamic lands from the Abbasid Revolution to the Mongol invasions. Current work pertaining to Khurasan and Persianate Central Asia includes ‘God’s Cleric: Fuḍayl b. ‘Iyāḍ and the transition from Caliphal to Prophetic Sunna’, in Islamic Cultures, Islamic Contexts: Essays in Honor of Professor Patricia Crone, ed. Behnam Sadeghi, Asad Q. Ahmed, Adam Silverstein, and Robert Hoyland (Leiden, 2014); ‘The political revival of the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate: al-Muqtafī and the Seljuqs’, (under review); ‘The religious history of Rayy in the Seljuq period’, Der Islam 94:1 (forthcoming 2017); and editing the Islamic and Near Eastern sections of the medieval volume of The Cambridge World History of Violence (Cambridge, forthcoming 2018).

Figure 0.1  The Iranian World, c. 388/998 (reproduced from C. E. Bosworth, ‘The political and dynastic history of the Iranian World, ad 1000–1217)’ in J.A. Boyle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol V: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods (Cambridge, 1968) p. 2 © Cambridge University Press, 1968, reproduced with permission)

Figure 0.2  The Ghaznavid Empire at its greatest extent, c. 421/1030 (reproduced from C. E. Bosworth, ‘The political and dynastic history of the Iranian World, ad 1000–1217)’ in J.A. Boyle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol V: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods (Cambridge, 1968) p. 21 © Cambridge University Press, 1968, reproduced with permission)

Figure 0.3  The Seljuq Empire at the death of Malikshah (485/1092) (reproduced from C. E. Bosworth, ‘The political and dynastic history of the Iranian World, ad 1000–1217)’ in J.A. Boyle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol V: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods (Cambridge, 1968) p. 104 © Cambridge University Press, 1968, reproduced with permission)

PREFACE A.C.S. Peacock and D.G. Tor

The ‘Iranian Intermezzo’ or ‘Persian Renaissance’ in the tenth century, when much of the eastern Islamic world was ruled by ethnically Persian dynasties, has long been recognised as a period of key importance for the formation of Islamic civilisation, both in political and cultural terms. Politically, it saw the effective break-up of the political control of the Abbasid Caliphate and the emergence of successor states such as the ethnically Iranian Samanids, Saffarids and Buyids. Culturally, it witnessed the emergence of New Persian as a literary and administrative language and an ever more explicit regard for the pre-Islamic Iranian past, most famously signalled by the composition of the masterpiece of Persian literature, Firdawsī’s Shāhnāma. Yet the origins of these phenomena remain little understood, and their influence on later, ethnically Turkish but culturally Persianate dynasties such as the Ghaznavids and Seljuqs has yet to be fully explored. Moreover, much of the research on this period has focussed specifically on Shi‘ism and the Buyid dynasty that ruled in Iraq and western Iran. Yet Islamic Central Asia – the provinces known as Khurasan and Transoxiana (Arabic Mā Warā’ al-Nahr), or collectively the mashriq, comprising, roughly speaking, modern eastern Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – constituted the bulwark of Sunnism, and were making their greatest contribution to its formation. In short, the focus on tenth-century Shi‘ism has somewhat blinded historians to the larger significance and cultural continuity of the Persianate dynastic period in the eastern Islamic world; as a result, we still lack a broad understanding of why so many of the major cultural and religious developments of this period should have originated in Khurasan and Transoxiana, apparently so distant from the heartlands of both the Caliphate and the Sasanian Empire. This volume aims to explore the origins and nature of Sunni Iranian cultural and political florescence, and to shed led on one of the most formative yet unexplored eras of Islamic history. The cultural and political developments in Khurasan and Transoxiana during this period had an impact upon a wide range of fields, and this is reflected in the essays in this book. The significance of the period can be found in virtually every area of historical inquiry. Geopolitically, the region first gave rise to the Abbasid Revolution, provided the troops for its success, and supplied the military slaves xix

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and auxiliaries that led to its political dissolution. From the second part of the ninth century, Persianate dynasties formed the mainstay of Islamic military might for the ensuing 400 years. During the period of Persianate dynastic hegemony, the Muslim religion spread into Turkic Central Asia and Muslim rule expanded deep into Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Militarily and politically, Persianspeaking dynasties held sway over the Islamic heartland, from India to Egypt. From the eleventh century, as a result of the political reunification of the Islamic heartlands under Persianate Seljuq rule, the traditional Islamic conception of the Caliphate as the sole legitimate universal political authority for Sunnis was challenged, thus leading to a sea change in Sunni political theory and the writing of the classic works of this genre, as well as to a deadly rivalry between the new Sultans and the Abbasid caliphs. In the linguistic and literary sphere, the Sunni Persianate dynastic period was characterised by the cultural dominance of the Persian-speaking court, thus bringing about the literary flowering of the classical Persian language and its acceptance as the second primary Islamic language of high culture. This development in turn led to the writing of many of Islamic civilisation’s greatest works of poetry, philosophy, biography, history, belles-lettres, and religion in Persian. Culturally, these dynasties presided over, and in many cases helped further, the formation of much of classical Islamic civilisation. In the religious sphere, most of the normative Sunni religious developments and texts came into being during this period, ranging from the compilation and canonisation of the six Sunni books of ḥadīth to the fostering and spread of the madrasa, and the promulgation and mainstreaming of Sufism. Despite its seminal importance, this period in the eastern Islamic world has remained one of the most obscure and neglected in Islamic history. The standard survey of political history remains Barthold’s Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, published in English in 1928 but originally defended as a dissertation in St Petersburg in 1900.1 However, the work remains in print and is widely cited, signifying the sluggish pace of scholarship – or at least, the fact that even where Barthold’s conclusions have been superseded, revisionist scholarship in Russian has remained inaccessible to western audiences; and even in the west scholarship on specific aspects of the period has not always been widely disseminated. Nonetheless, in many areas considerable progress has been made. Barthold can now usefully be supplemented by the History of Civilizations of Central Asia, vol. IV, the Age of Achievement (1998, 2000), edited by Asimov and Bosworth,2 which brings together more recent Russian, Central Asian and Western scholarship, and there are also important monographs on the Ghaznavid dynasty by Bosworth,3 and on the major Khurasani city of Nishapur by Bulliet,4 as well as an increasing volume of research on the Saffarids5 and the Seljuqs.6 Paul has also contributed an important study of the social, military and political dynamics of the period.7 However, research on the Islamic east has tended with these exceptions to focus primarily on the early Abbasid period, owing to the importance of Khurasan in the Abbasid state and the role of Khurasanis there.8 There exists only one previous

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volume of essays devoted to surveying some of the major features of the period of the Persian Renaissance, D. S. Richards’s Islamic Civilisation 950–1150.9 That volume, however, while it was a good beginning to the study of at least part of this period, adopted a different intellectual approach from the present work, in that it did not differentiate between the Shi‘ite ‘‘Irāqayn’ on the one hand, and the culturally cohesive world of Sunni Khurasan and Transoxiana on the other. The Richards volume, originally meant to be a promising beginning for further exploration of the period, has never been followed up; it has therefore remained an indispensable part of the literature for the past forty years, by default. Our aim in this volume is to produce a more up-to-date, fuller, and more comprehensive volume of essays by many of today’s leading scholars, focussed upon the Eastern Iranian world of Khurasan and Transoxiana, which formed intellectually and culturally the Sunni heartland, from the emergence of the first ethnically Iranian dynasties in the mid ninth century to the eve of the Mongol invasions. The volume explores a broad spectrum of subjects touching upon the religious, social, cultural and political history of the region during the relevant period, many of them never previously addressed. One reason for the comparative lack of research on Khurasan and Transoxiana in this period is the problematic source base. While for the Ghaznavid dynasty – which has received the most detailed monograph treatment – we do have some contemporary Arabic and Persian chronicles, for most dynasties of the period we are reliant on scattered information in a disparate array of sources.10 There is no extant dynastic history of the Samanids, Saffarids, or Ghurids; and even for the Seljuqs, the works that have come down to us were composed in the west of their domains and often leave events in Central Asia in obscurity. Thus while scholars of the Buyids (for instance) have at their disposal detailed contemporary chronicles such as that of Miskawayh, for the eastern Islamic world the situation is much more challenging for the scholar. So poorly attested is the Qarakhanid dynasty that dominated Transoxiana in the twelfth century, for instance, that numismatics has been the major source for reconstructing its history and the sequence of its rulers.11 As a result, studies based purely on the fragmentary evidence of chronicles and focussing on political history are always likely to be of limited efficacy in improving our understanding of the period. A wider range of sources and approaches is needed, and this volume aims to give a sampling of these. Our contributors accordingly draw on sources ranging from Arabic biographical dictionaries to mirrors for princes, from local chronicles to poetry, and from hagiographies to art historical evidence such as ceramics, to shed light on the cultural, religious and political transformations of the period. The volume opens with an essay by D.G. Tor which outlines in more detail the significance of Khurasan and Transoxiana in the medieval Islamic world and surveys the political history of the region in the period, providing a context for the following chapters. We then proceed to Christopher Melchert’s discussion of a formative aspect of the region’s Sunni character, the emergence in Central Asia

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of the Ḥanafi Sunni madhhab (law school). Melchert examines the relationship between the spread of Hanafism and Abbasid state sponsorship, and the local factors in Khurasan and Transoxiana that might account for its acceptance there. The next two essays examine aspects of cultural history under the Samanids, the foremost of the ethnically Iranian dynasties to dominate the region after the dissolution of direct Abbasid rule. Louise Marlow’s chapter constitutes an in-depth exploration of what one mirror for princes, the Naṣīḥat al-Mulūk, reveals about rulership, social status, hierarchy, and function, and the means by which rulers ‘bridge[d] the chasm between the ruler and the population’ in the Samanid realms. Robert Hillenbrand then turns to examine Samanid epigraphic pottery, widely regarded as one of the high points of Islamic art as a whole. This article details the context of this pottery in other contemporary ceramics and metalwork, and problems of dating and authenticity; identifies the various ways in which these ceramics were revolutionary, how they relate to non-epigraphic wares and what heritage they bequeathed to later potters; and, finally, highlights the intentions behind the choice of texts and suggests what kinds of models might have inspired these wares. As such, it offers insights into Samanid social as well as artistic history. With Minoru Inaba’s chapter, we turn to the origins of the first of the Turkish states that succeeded the Samanids – the Ghaznavids. Alptegin, the effective founder of the Ghaznavid state, had started his career as a soldier in Samanid service; Inaba examines the circumstances that allowed him to carve out his polity in Ghazna in the south of modern Afghanistan, exploiting the frontier status of the region in order to establish and expand political power and rule. Roy Mottahedeh’s contribution examines the Ghaznavids’ interpretation of the idea of Iran they had inherited from the Samanids, as illustrated by Ghaznavid court poetry. Mottahedeh considers the works of the panegyrists who served the Ghaznavid Sultans Maḥmūd (reg. 387/997 – 421/1030) and Mas‘ūd (reg. 421/1030 – 432/1040) in order to gain insight into the ideologies and the courts of both rulers. The essay focuses on two particular issues: how these poets understood the word ‘Iran’, and also how they themselves viewed the role of the panegyrist. It concludes with some general observations about Persian panegyric poetry. The question of identity also forms the theme of A.C.S. Peacock’s chapter, which examines a recently discovered twelfth century local history of Herat that also incorporates significant sections of a lost Samanid history of Khurasan, the Akhbār Wulāt Khurāsān attributed to al-Sullāmī. Peacock argues that these texts suggest that for many, Khurasan in fact provided a more meaningful focus of identity than the idea of Iran, the popularity of which was restricted more to the elite court audience discussed by Mottahedeh. Carole Hillenbrand’s essay, meanwhile, focuses on a key personality in the transition from Ghaznavid to Seljuq rule, the neglected figure of the first Seljuq Sultan Ṭughril’s vizier ‘Amīd al-Mulk Kundurī. Hillenbrand offers a reassessment of this important but overlooked character, showing how Kundurī, born into a Khurasani landowning family, was able to serve as both a cultural and political

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broker for the new Turkish ruler, facilitating the establishment of Seljuq rule not just in Khurasan, but further west in the Abbasid lands. The Seljuq period also forms the focus of Jürgen Paul’s essay, an attempt to understand the social and political history of twelfth century Khurasan, which also sheds light on conditions under the Seljuqs’ successors in the east, the Khwarazmshāh dynasty. Paul examines the various functions of the individuals described in the sources by the term ra’īs (pl. ru’asā’). The ra’īs could be variously the head of the representatives of a particular school of law (madhhab) in a given locality (such as the ra’īs of the Shāfi‘īs at Marw); or, secondly, the effective governor of a larger town or city, who generally held an appointment deed from the regional or imperial ruler, and who tended to form regional dynasties of ru’asā’; or, thirdly, rural ru’asā’ and their attendant fiscal, military, and social functions. The article also examines the relations of the ru’asā’ to their overlords and to their constituencies in the villages or small towns; and their relations to other locally powerful figures. Thus the ra’īs also might play a role as a sort of power broker, negotiating relationships between local communities and imperial powers. The volume concludes with an essay by Edmund Bosworth, examining the history of the Ghurid dynasty – which, together with that of the Khwarazmshāhs, was the last of the great eastern Sunni Persianate dynasties before the coming of the Mongols – under its two greatest rulers, the brothers Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad (r. 558–99/1163–1203), and Mu‘izz al-Dīn Muḥammad (r. 569–602/1173–1206). Bosworth shows how the Ghurids, originally from a remote region of Afghanistan, but founders of an empire that spread over much of Khurasan and northern India, propagated a strongly Sunni identity through inscriptions on their architectural monuments and through their support for the Abbasid Caliphs. The essays in this volume illustrate both the progress that has been made in recent years and the amount that remains to be done. Our corpus of sources has expanded somewhat (although not dramatically) since Barthold was writing, especially as historians have learned to use a more diverse array of texts in a more sophisticated manner – Paul, for instance, shows the utility of combining archaeological evidence with materials drawn from hagiographies as well as chronicles to draw a picture of social life. With the end of the Soviet Union, modern archaeological methods have started to be applied to some of the major cities and sites of the period, in particular the great city of Marw, although the situation in Iran and Afghanistan is more problematic owing to the difficulty of conducting fieldwork.12 Closer collaboration among historians, scholars of literature and intellectual life, and specialists in material culture can shed unexpected light on many features of the age and to a degree compensate for the lack of chronicles. Yet there is still more that can be done in terms of publishing relevant written source materials. It is only very recently, in 2004, that the major Ghaznavid history, ‘Utbī’s al-Yamīnī, was published in an adequate edition.13 The collection of Seljuq chancery documents, the Aḥkām-i Salāṭīn-i Māḍī, used by Paul, is only partially accessible through the selections published by Barthold in the companion volume of texts which accompanied his Turkestan and still awaits full publication.14 The discovery

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of the fragments of the twelfth century history of Herat (at the time of writing still unedited and only available in facsimile) and the recent reconstruction of the Akhbār Wulāt Khurāsān, both discussed by Peacock, suggest there are more texts waiting to be discovered, edited, or reconstructed. And as Marlow shows, much can be done with a sophisticated analysis of those texts we do have: her evidence is based on a text wrongly thought to come from eleventh century Iraq, but which Marlow shows is tenth century Khurasani. Moreover, despite considerable progress in individual areas, plenty of dynasties still await their historian – most egregiously the Samanids and the Khwarazmshahs, two major Khurasani states that have not yet been the subject of a satisfactory monograph in any western language.15 In time, we hope, this picture will change; and we hope that this volume will play a part in encouraging future research by presenting a picture of the state of the field at the current time, showing both the importance of Khurasan and Transoxiana in this period, and the possibilities their study offers to researchers for understanding more generally the Islamic world. The complex interplay between Iranian and Islamic elements that our contributors illustrate in the history of Khurasan in the period was to shape decisively the political and cultural contours of Islamic civilisation more generally. Notes

  1 W. Barthold, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion (London, 1928; 3rd ed. 1968).   2 M.S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth (eds), UNESCO History of Civilizations of Central Asia, vol: IV, The Age of Achievement, A.D. 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century, Part One: The Historical, Social and Economic Setting (Paris, 1998); Part Two: The Achievements (Paris, 2000).  3 C. E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 994–1040 (Edinburgh, 1963).   4 Richard Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur: A Study in Medieval Islamic Social History (Cambridge, MA, 1972); see also his ‘Medieval Nishapur: A topographic and demographic reconstruction’, Studia Iranica 5 (1976), pp. 67–89.   5 D.G. Tor, Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry, and the ‘Ayyār Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World (Würzburg, 2007); C. E. Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz (247/861 to 949/1542–3) (Costa Mesa, 1994).   6 See A.C.S. Peacock, The Great Seljuk Empire (Edinburgh, 2015) for an overview of recent scholarship.    7 Jürgen Paul, Herrscher, Gemeinwesen, Vermittler: Ostiran und Transoxanien in vormongolischer Zeit (Beirut, 1996).   8 For example, Elton Daniel, The Political and Social History of Khurasan under Abbasid Rule 747–820 (Minneapolis, 1979); Étienne de la Vaissière, Samarcande et Samarra. Elites d’Asie central dans l’empire Abbasside (Louvain, 2007); Étienne de la Vaissière (ed.), Islamisation de l’Asie central. Processus locaux d’acculturation du VIIe au XIe siècle (Louvain, 2008).   9 D.S. Richards (ed.), Islamic Civilisation 950–1150 (Oxford, 1973). 10 For a survey of historiography in the period, see Julie Scott Meisami, Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century (Edinburgh, 1999); Charles Melville (ed.), Persian Historiography (London, 2012). 11 Boris Kochnev, Numizmaticheskaya Istoriya Karakhanidskogo Kaganata (991–1209) (Moscow, 2006).

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12 For an overview of recent archaeological work at Marw in our period see Tim Williams, ‘The city of Sultan Kala, Merv, Turkmenistan: Communities, neighbourhoods and urban planning from the eighth to the thirteenth century’ in Amira K. Bennison and Alison L. Gascoigne (eds), Cities in the Pre-modern Islamic World: The Urban Impact of Religion, State and Society (London, 2007), pp. 42–62. 13 al-‘Utbī, al-Yamīnī fī sharḥ Akhbār al-Sulṭān Yamīn al-Dawla, ed. Iḥsān Dhunūn al-Thāmirī (Beirut, 2004). 14 Aḥkām-i Salāṭīn-i Māḍī. MS St Petersburg, Institute for Oriental Manuscripts, C-816; partially published in V.V. Bartol’d, (ed.), Turkestan v Epokhu Mongoloskogo Nashestviya. Chast’ 1: Teksty (St Petersburg, 1898). 15 For the Samanids, the main work remains Luke Treadwell’s DPhil Thesis (‘The Political History of the Samanid State’, University of Oxford, 1991); for the Khwarazmshahs, see İbrahim Kafesoğlu, Harezmşahlar Devleti Tarihi (485–618/1092–1221) (Ankara, 1956); Z.M. Buniyatov, Gosudarstvo Khorezmshakhov-Anushteginidov, 1097–1231 (Moscow, 1986).

Bibliography

Asimov, M. S. and C. E. Bosworth (eds), UNESCO History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. IV: the Age of Achievement, A.D. 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century, Part One: The Historical, Social and Economic Setting (Paris, 1998); Part Two: The Achievements (Paris, 2000). Barthold, W., Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion (London, 1928; 3rd ed. 1968). Bartol’d, V. V. (ed.), Turkestan v Epokhu Mongoloskogo Nashestviya. Chast’ 1: Teksty (St Petersburg, 1898). Bosworth, C. E., The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 994–1040 (Edinburgh, 1963). Bosworth, C. E., The History of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz (247/861 to 949/1542–3) (Costa Mesa, 1994). Bulliet, Richard, The Patricians of Nishapur: A Study in Nedieval Islamic Social History (Cambridge, MA, 1972). Bulliet, Richard, ‘Medieval Nishapur: A topographic and demographic reconstruction’, Studia Iranica 5 (1976), 67–89. Buniyatov, Z. M., Gosudarstvo Khorezmshakhov-Anushteginidov, 1097–1231 (Moscow, 1986). Daniel, Elton, The Political and Social History of Khurasan under Abbasid Rule 747–820 (Minneapolis, 1979). Kafesoğlu, İbrahim, Harezmşahlar Devleti Tarihi (485–618/1092–1221) (Ankara, 1956). Kochnev, Boris, Numizmaticheskaya Istoriya Karakhanidskogo Kaganata (991–1209) (Moscow, 2006). Meisami, Julie Scott, Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century (Edinburgh, 1999). Melville, Charles (ed.), Persian Historiography (London, 2012). Paul, Jürgen, Herrscher, Gemeinwesen, Vermittler: Ostiran und Transoxanien in vormongolischer Zeit (Beirut, 1996). Peacock, A. C. S., The Great Seljuk Empire (Edinburgh, 2015). Richards, D. S. (ed.), Islamic Civilisation 950–1150 (Oxford, 1973). Tor, D. G., Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry, and the ‘Ayyār Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World (Würzburg, 2007). Treadwell, W.L., ‘The Political History of the Samanid State’, Unpublished DPhil thesis, Oxford, 1991.

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al-‘Utbī, al-Yamīnī fī sharḥ Akhbār al-Sulṭān Yamīn al-Dawla, ed. Iḥsān Dhunūn al-Thāmirī (Beirut, 2004). de la Vaissière, Étienne, Samarcande et Samarra. Elites d’Asie central dans l’empire Abbasside (Louvain, 2007). de la Vaissière, Étienne (ed.), Islamisation de l’Asie central. Processus locaux d’acculturation du VIIe au XIe siècle (Louvain, 2008). Williams, Tim, ‘The city of Sultan Kala, Merv, Turkmenistan: Communities, neighbourhoods and urban planning from the eighth to the thirteenth century’ in Amira K. Bennison and Alison L. Gascoigne (eds), Cities in the Pre-modern Islamic World: The Urban Impact of Religion, State and Society (London, 2007), pp. 42–62.

1

THE IMPORTANCE OF KHURASAN AND TRANSOXIANA IN THE PERSIANATE DYNASTIC PERIOD (850–1220) D.G. Tor

While Islam may have begun in Arabia, the civilisation that it fashioned during its classical period, over the succeeding six centuries, was by no means an Arab – let alone an Arabian – artefact. Among the many different ethnic groups and peoples that contributed to the cultural, political, religious and literary formation of this new civilisation, none played a greater role than the inhabitants of the Persianate cultural world.1 The vital contribution of the Persianate world – its people, dynasties, individuals, and religious and intellectual movements – to Islamic civilisation has been and remains, however, one of the most understudied areas of Islamic history: there exists no published monograph, for instance, on the Samanid dynasty, despite its realm having been the major political, religious, military, and intellectual centre of Sunnism during the tenth century;2 and only now are the first monographs appearing and being written on the Seljuq period in its entirety.3 During the centuries under consideration here, the Persianate world included, geographically, not only the former lands of the Sasanian Empire (roughly, the Iranian plateau, and the lands adjacent to the western and southern shores of the Caspian Sea), but also the then-culturally Persianate lands of Central Asia (most of which have become, today, both linguistically and ethnically Turkic), the area stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Tien Shan mountains, and the areas of the Indian subcontinent conquered by Muslims.4 During the Umayyad period, Khurasan and Iranian Central Asia were still very much in the process of being conquered and colonised.5 Even in these years, though, Khurasan already began to play a seminal role in the religious, political, and intellectual development of the Islamic oecumene.6 However, the region fully came into its own as one of the leading centres of Islamic civilisation with the advent of the Abbasid Revolution. There are two factors which aided in this process. First, immediately after the Revolution, the political history of western Central Asia was decided by the famous showdown between the Muslim and Chinese armies at 1

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Talas in 751, a battle that finally determined to which empire and cultural world the region would belong, at least until the modern era;7 and, second, the peculiar significance and centrality of Khurasan to the Abbasids themselves. It was, of course, Khurasan that served as the cradle of the Abbasid Revolution, which broke out in Marw, in Central Asia, and by 750 had overthrown the Umayyad Dynasty.8 The Abbasid armies were composed of Khurasanian troops, both Arab and Persian;9 and, after the Revolution, the new elite of the empire, known as the abnā’ al-dawla or abnā’ al-da‘wa, were Khurasanis by origin.10 Indeed, throughout the early Abbasid period, the new ‘service aristocracy’ was manned largely by Khurasanis and their descendants,11 and included some of the most famous and revered vizieral and military families in Islamic history, such as the Barmakids, the Sahlids, and the Ṭāhirids, who ran, protected, and expanded the Islamic empire. One of the more notable aspects of this Khurasani influence in the late eighth and early ninth centuries was not merely that it grew, but also that it grew steadily more Central Asian. This can be seen in many different areas, perhaps most strikingly in caliphal lineage itself. Al-Ma’mūn was the first caliph with a Khurasanī mother,12 and basically re-enacted (and consciously claimed to be re-enacting) the original Khurasanian Abbasid Revolution during the Fourth Fitna,13 while attempting to make it more definitively Khurasanian – his propaganda emphasised his Khurasani origins,14 and al-Ma’mūn even, throughout the first years of his reign, relocated the capital of the empire from Baghdad to Marw.15 Al-Ma’mūn’s half-brother and successor, al-Mu‘taṣim, was the son of a Sogdian woman,16 and during his reign Central Asians from the Khurasanī Transoxianan provinces became ever more prominent. Most notably, under this caliph the army became gradually more Central Asian, so that in al-Mu‘taṣim’s day, the preponderance of prime army units were recruited amongst Central Asians, either free (e.g. regiments such as the Ushrūsaniyya and Farāghina, and the Shākiriyya guard corps, which was a Sogdian institution borrowed wholesale17) or slave (the famous ghilmān corps for which this caliph is primarily remembered by subsequent medieval Muslim historians);18 and the most powerful figures during his reign were Iranian and Turkic Central Asian commanders, both slave and free, most prominently the hereditary prince of Ushrūsana, who is referred to in the Arabic sources by his Central Asian title of Afshīn.19 The importance of Khurasan and its Persianate Central Asian dependencies is also reflected in the developing political organisation of Abbasid rule, from the Revolution until the time at which the provinces went their own autonomous way in the 860s. Although at the outset of Abbasid rule, Khurasan briefly enjoyed a special, virtually autonomous status under its governor Abū Muslim, this arrangement proved too threatening to central authority. Yet the attempt over the following decades to treat Khurasan, together with its Transoxianan dependencies, as just another province also proved unworkable, as witnessed by the many revolts there over the ensuing decades.20 Khurasan was simply far too big, too rich, and too important to be treated as merely another province.

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3

It was partly to address the Khurasani problem that Hārūn al-Rashīd devised his ultimately disastrous succession solution, with his son al-Ma’mūn, son of the Khurasani mother, anointed virtually autonomous governor of the province and its dependencies.21 Al-Ma’mūn subsequently tried two different solutions to the Khurasanian-Transoxianan problem: First, by relocating the capital itself to Khurasan, to the city of Marw in what is today Turkmenistan; then, after Abbasid family opposition forced him to return the rule of the empire to Baghdad,22 in his awarding special governing arrangements and a hereditary role in Khurasan to the Tahirids, who became powerful stadtholders on the scale of famous Umayyad governors such as Ziyād b. Abīhi and Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf, and whose rule continued for four generations until they were swept away by the first of the autonomous Persianate dynasties, the Saffarids.23 Finally, when Abbasid rule collapsed in the mid-ninth century, Khurasan and its Central Asian dependencies gained permanent autonomy from the Caliphate, thus opening the astoundingly brilliant three centuries, stretching from the midninth until the mid-twelfth centuries, during which this part of the Persianate lands became the seat of the leading political and military powers of the Sunni world, thus inheriting the role formerly played by Iraq, and assuming primacy, not only in the political, military, and economic spheres, but also in the cultural, religious, and intellectual life of the Islamic world east of North Africa. Indeed, even after the cultural debacle accompanying the Seljuq downfall of the mid-twelfth century, the succeeding Persianate dynasties of the eastern Islamic lands, most notably the Ghurids and the Khwarasmshahs, continued to hold military and political sway until the coming of the Mongols. Throughout this era, Khurasan-Transoxiana undoubtedly constituted the heart of the Sunni Islamic world. First of all, the dynasties based here – the Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids and Seljuqs – provided a military and political bulwark against non-Sunni groups, whether Infidel, Kharijite or Shi‘ite, of which the biggest challenge throughout most of this era was Shi‘ism in its various manifestations, whether in the form of Fatimid anti-caliphate, Buyid amirate, or Zaydī imamate.24 The Sunni Persianate dynasties were also the prime bearers of the banner of jihād in this period, presiding over the first large-scale conversion of Turkish Central Asia to Islam in the mid-tenth century; and, under the Ghaznavids, completing the conquest of Afghanistan and achieving a breakthrough, after centuries of stalemate, in the conquest of India, including the Punjāb and Kashmir.25 But their significance extended far beyond the political and military. For one thing, these were also the wealthiest areas of the Sunni lands; in the tenth century, much of this wealth flowed not just from agriculture, manufacturing, and mining within Khurasan and Transoxiana, but also from Samanid control of the entry of slaves into the Islamic world from the Central Asian steppes, and of the northern trade routes with Europe, particularly Viking Europe.26 Under the Ghaznavids, similarly, enormous wealth flowed in from slaves and plundered treasures from their Indian conquests.27

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More importantly, and partly as a result of the flourishing economic condition of these areas, during the first three centuries of the Persianate Dynastic Period Khurasan and Transoxiana constituted the religious, cultural, and intellectual heart of the Islamic world as well. In virtually every area, from the natural sciences – in which Khurasan nurtured the likes of al-Fārābī, al-Bīrūnī, and Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) – to the religious sciences – ranging from five of the six authors of the canonical Sunni books of ḥadīth at the outset of this period,28 to great legal scholars, theologians and Sufi saints such as al-Qushayrī, Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī, al-Ghazālī, and Aḥmad-i Jām in the latter part of it – to art and architecture,29 this time and place was astonishingly, brilliantly fecund, producing many of the finest works of classical Islamic civilisation. The dazzling efflorescence of medieval Khurasan and Persianate Central Asia came to an abrupt end, however, due to political disaster. First, in 1141, Islamic Central Asia fell to the Qara Khitai, in the first of the great Infidel steppe invasions, and was temporarily detached from the rest of the Islamic world, while Khurasan remained unconquered under the Great Seljuq Sultan Sanjar.30 In 1153, however, a greater evil overtook Khurasan: Sultan Sanjar was taken prisoner in battle by a group of newly-arrived Oghuz Turks; he remained a prisoner for three and a half years,31 and Khurasan lay leaderless and defenceless before the rather thorough program of spoliation upon which the Oghuz then embarked: During these years of Sanjar’s captivity, the physical and intellectual infrastructure of Khurasan was destroyed. The thoroughness of this disaster was due to two particular factors. First, as Turkmen nomads fresh off the steppe, these Oghuz bands had little or no interest in the norms and practices of settled society. Had the Oghuz killed Sanjar, another king could have taken his place and restored order. Had they themselves aspired to rule, they could have taken over Khurasan in much the same manner as the original Seljuq invaders and their Turkmen tribes had done. But these particular bands of Oghuz apparently did not aspire to the settled model of territorial rule; rather, their main goal seems to have been to engage to the greatest extent possible in that favourite nomadic activity from time immemorial: plunder. The ensuing years of unbridled pillage and rapine resulted in the complete ruination of Khurasan. Second, the Khurasan intellectual and cultural elite, the ulema, had been so closely associated with Seljuq rule32 that the Seljuqs’ political enemies identified them with the Seljuq regime to such a degree that they poured their wrath upon the ulema alongside government functionaries.33 Accordingly, after the downfall of Sanjar in 1153, when the Oghuz went on their rampage in Khurasan, they, too, classed the ulema together with government officials, targeted them, and exterminated them wholesale.34 In the elegiac words of one source: the [Oghuz] killed them with torture; palates and mouths which had for so many years been the revealers of the Shar‘ī sciences and the founts of religious ordinances, they [viz., the Oghuz] stuffed with earth [until they died].35

The Importance of Khurasan and Transoxiana

5

The result of this wholesale slaughter of the clerical class was, unsurprisingly (at least for the denizens of the age that has witnessed the similar results produced by the actions of groups such as the Khmer Rouge), the destruction of intellectual and cultural life in Khurasan. The medieval authors themselves were aware of the permanent damage that had been wrought, and their descriptions, long ignored by modern scholars, foreshadow the similar depictions of the Mongol devastation of the early thirteenth century.36 A sampling of the descriptions of this ruin should suffice: The Oghuz during that time wreaked desolation upon the world and held lawful for themselves the property, lives, and privities of the Muslims. In all Khurasan there did not remain a village that was not destroyed by their oppression.37 In Nishapur alone, the Turkmen are said to have killed 30,000 people,38 and a river of blood flowed in the streets.39 Indeed, the destruction there was so severe that, according to one passage reminiscent of the Lamentations of Jeremiah: ‘no one recognised his own quarter and house, and those places where the familiar mosques and madrasas of religious knowledge and assemblies [had stood]… were become pastures for sheep and hiding places for wild beasts and serpents…’40 Of the capital, Marw, the Saljūqnāma relates that after three solid days of looting by the Oghuz, ‘in all the city nothing remained except the stuffing of cushions and mattresses... and that also they [then] took. Most of the people of the city they took captive.’41 By the time Sanjar escaped three years later, he returned to a realm that is described having been too desolated to reconstitute. In the succinct description of one account of Sanjar’s return from captivity, ‘since the Sultan’s life was drawing to a close, the dynasty’s rule [dawla] was finished, and the realm destroyed, this was of no profit.’42 Sanjar is explicitly described as having realised his realm was no longer capable of sustaining the infrastructure of kingship, certainly not on the former scale of prosperity and resulting cultural productivity: … For he saw that the treasury was empty, his dominions destroyed, the populace driven away and the army non-existent…Care and spiritual thought were joined with human weakness, and it ended in an illness which was his final illness …43 In the pithy summation of one source: ‘Khurasan was destroyed with the death of Sanjar b. Malikshāh.’44 In fact, it was destroyed during the preceding years of rampant riot and despoliation. The result was that by the end of the 1150s, the role of Khurasan had shifted: From having been the centre of realms and the seat of culture of the entire mashriq for over three centuries, it became instead a politically unsettled subordinate province, over the possession of which forces from the periphery – namely the

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Khwarazmshahs, whose power was based upon the steppes around the Aral Sea and, at the opposite border, the Ghurid sultans, whose might drew on the resources of India – fought. The Ghurid sultans appeared to be winning that battle until their political collapse in 1206, resulting in the victory of the Khwarazmshahs in the contest for Khurasan. This triumph of the Khwarazmshahs was shortlived, however; in less than fifteen years, Chingiz Khān and his hordes arrived and remade the political and demographic map of the Persianate world. Khurasan was never again to be the political, military, economic and cultural centre of the Islamic lands. Notes

The author is grateful to the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the National Endowment for the Humanities for funding this research, and to Michael Cook for reading and commenting upon it. 1. This is here defined as the areas where an Iranian language and Persian culture were dominant. 2. The fine study by Luke Treadwell (W. L. Treadwell, ‘The Political History of the Sāmānid State’, Unpublished DPhil Thesis, Oxford, 1991) has never been published; and Richard N. Frye’s Bukhara: The Medieval Achievement (Costa Mesa, California, 1997) is a popular work, not a scholarly monograph. 3. A.C.S. Peacock, The Great Seljuk Empire (Edinburgh, 2015); D.G. Tor, The Great Seljuq Sultanate and the Formation of Islamic Civilization: A Thematic History (Cambridge, forthcoming). 4. See e.g. Richard N. Frye, The Heritage of Central Asia (Princeton, 1996); W. Barthold, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 3rd edition, tr. Minorsky, C. E. Bosworth, ed (London, 1968), passim. 5. On this process see H.A.R. Gibb, The Arab Conquests in Central Asia (1923), passim; Elton Daniel, ‘The Islamic east,’ in Chase Robinson (ed.), The New Cambridge History of Islam. Volume I: The Formation of the Islamic World, Sixth to Eleventh Centuries (Cambridge, 2010), esp. pp. 448–468. 6. For example, Khurasanis played a preponderant role in the rise of the Ahl al-ḥadīth proto-Sunni movement in late Umayyad times, see D.G. Tor, Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry, and the ‘Ayyār Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World (Würzburg, 2007), Chapter 2; on growing ‘Persian’ importance generally in the Umayyad period, Patricia Crone, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 7–11. 7. For a clear yet succinct explication of the complex geopolitical situation in this area in the mid-eighth century, see Peter Golden, Central Asia in World History (Oxford, 2011), Chapter 4, especially pp. 58–61. 8. On the well-established role of Khurasan in the Revolution see Julius Wellhausen, The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall, tr. M.G. Weir (Calcutta, 1927), chapters 8 and 9 (pp. 397–566); Moshe Sharon, Black Banners from the East. The Establishment of the ‘Abbāsid State – Incubation of a Revolt (Leiden, 1983). 9. For discussions of the ethnic composition of the Abbāsid army, both before and after the Revolution, see Roy Mottahedeh, ‘The ‘Abbāsid Caliphate in Iran,’ in R.N. Frye (ed.), Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. IV: From the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 59–63; Elton Daniel, ‘Arabs, Persians, and the advent of the ‘Abbāsids reconsidered,’ Journal of the American Oriental Society cxvii (1997), pp. 542–548; Amikam El‘ad, ‘The ethnic composition of the Abbasid revolution: A reevaluation of some recent research,’ Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam xxiv (2000), pp. 246–326.

The Importance of Khurasan and Transoxiana

7

10. Note that this does not necessarily mean that they were ethnically Iranian; thus, the controversy regarding the relative percentage of ethnic Iranians versus ethnic ‘Arabs’ (keeping in mind that, so long as descent was in the male line, someone with only, say, one Arab paternal great-great-grandfather would have defined himself as ‘Arab’, despite being a native Persian speaker) amongst the Khurasani supporters of the Revolution is irrelevant here (on this subject vide. e.g. Elad, ‘Transition’ and idem, ‘The armies of al-Ma’mun in Khurasan (193/809–202/817–18): Recruitment of its contingents and their commanders and their social-ethnic composition,’ Oriens xxxviii (2010), pp. 35–76). On the abnā’, see Patricia Crone, ‘‘Abbāsid abnā’ and Sāsānid cavalrymen,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society viii (1998), pp. 1–19 and John P. Turner, ‘The abnā’ al-dawla: The definition and legitimation of identity in response to the Fourth Fitna,’ Journal of Oriental and African Studies cxxiv (2002), pp. 1–22. 11. In Crone’s words (Patricia Crone, Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (Cambridge, 1980), p.  66): ‘They held a virtual monopoly on the offices most intimately associated with the fortunes of the dynasty. In Baghdad they commanded the caliph’s personal troops…held the leadership of his personal guard…and commonly enjoyed the privilege of guarding his private seal. In the provinces they held a large number of military commands and governorships; and above all, they supplied the governors of Khurāsān.’ 12. From Bādhghīs; see Wilferd Madelung, ‘Was the Caliph al-Ma’mūn a grandson of the sectarian leader Ustādhsīs?’ reprinted in Studies in Medieval Muslim Thought and History (Farnham, Surrey, 2013), Article XX. 13. On which see Albert Arazi and ‘Amikam El’ad, ‘“L’Épître à l’Armée”. Al-Ma’mūn et la seconde Da’wa,’ Studia Islamica lxvi (1987), pp. 27–70 and lxvii (1988), pp. 29–73. 14. Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Ta’rīkh al-Rusul wa’l-Mulūk (Beirut: 1989), reprint of the Leiden edition, ed. M.J. de Goeje, iii, p. 774. 15. This attempt to re-enact – correctly, this time around – the ‘Abbāsid Revolution did not work out very well; see D.G. Tor, ‘An historiographical re-examination of the appointment and death of ‘Alī al-Riḍā,’ Der Islam lxxviii/1 (2001), pp. 103–128. 16. Noted by Étienne la Vaissière, Samarcande et Samarra: Élites d’Asie central dans l’empire Abbasside (Paris, 2007), p. 169. 17. On the institution of Chākar see la Vaissière, Samarcande et Samarra, pp.  65–75. In Peter Golden’s words (Central Asia in World History, pp. 53–4): ‘To guard themselves, Sogdian rulers and high nobles had their own chākar units, highly trained elite soldiers, whom they supported, educated, and even fictively adopted to ensure their loyalty.’ 18. E.g. Ḥamdallāh b. Abī Bakr Aḥmad Mustawfī Qazwīnī, Tārīkh-i Guzida, ed. ‘Abd al-Ḥusayn Nawā’ī (Tehran, 1362/1983f), p. 316. 19. See W. Barthold and H. A. R. Gibb, ‘Afshīn’, EI2; de la Vaissière, Samarcande et Samarra, pp. 39–40. 20. On which see e.g. Elton Daniel, The Political and Social History of Khurasan under Abbasid Rule 747–820 (Minneapolis, 1979) and Patricia Crone, The Nativist Prophets, pp. 79–190. 21. Pace Tayeb El-Hibri, ‘Harun al-Rashid and the Mecca Protocol of 802: A plan for division or succession?’ International Journal of Middle East Studies xxiv (1992), pp.  461–80 which argues that, in contrast to the explicit testimony of the primary sources, al-Ma’mūn was in reality supposed to have filled in Khurāsān merely a subordinate role as marcher-lord, parallel to that of his brother al-Mu’tamin on the Byzantine frontier, and that the primary sources are therefore tendentious in their citation of the Mecca Protocol (p. 462: ‘The equivalence in the specific military functions of al-Ma’mun and al-Mu’tamin thus reflected a similarity of subordination towards the central authority’). El-Hibri does not take into consideration, however,

8

22. 23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World the peculiar status and importance of Khurāsān, amply borne out during the reign of al-Ma’mūn and thereafter; nor does he explain why the important pilgrimage and ratification of the Protocol in the Ka‘ba included only al-Amīn and al-Ma’mūn; if the latter were to be on an equal footing with al-Mu’tamin, why was al-Mu’tamin not there as well? The obvious answer would be that al-Ma’mūn’s prominent participation reflected his correspondingly far more important role, exactly as the primary sources portray it, and that his position resembled al-Amīn’s far more than it resembled that of any absent brother. On this episode see Tor, ‘An historiographical re-examination.’ On Tahirid rule see C. E. Bosworth, ‘The Ṭāhirids and Ṣaffārids,’ in R. N. Frye (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. IV: From the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 90–115; for the end of Tahirid rule, the Saffarid takeover, and early Saffarid rule generally, see D.G. Tor, Violent Order, chapters 3 through 6. Leading much of this period to be termed the ‘Long Shi‘ite Century’, explained by Marshall Hodgson (The Venture of Islam. Vol. II: The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods [Chicago, 1974], p. 36) as follows: ‘The age of Fāṭimid and Būyid pre-eminence in some of the central lands of Islamdom has been called “the Shī‘ī century” because of the prominence of Shī‘īs then in various capacities.’ See e.g., among many others, D.G. Tor, ‘The Islamization of Central Asia in the Sāmānid era and the reshaping of the Muslim world,’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies lxxii (2009), pp. 272–299; and C. E. Bosworth, ‘The early Ghaznavids,’ R.N. Frye (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. IV: From the Arab Invasions to the Saljuqs (Cambridge, 1975), esp. pp. 166–80. See the articles in Thomas Noonan, The Islamic World, Russia and the Vikings, 750–900: The Numismatic Evidence (Aldershot, 1998); Tadeusz Lewicki, ‘Le commerce des Samanides avec l’Europe orientale et centrale à la lumière des trésors de monnaies coufiques,’ in Dickran K. Kouymjian (ed.), Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, Epigraphy and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles (Beirut, 1974), pp. 219–233; Michael Mitchiner, ‘Evidence for Viking-Islamic trade provided by Samanid silver coinage,’ East and West xxxvii (1987), pp. 139–150; and Melanie Michailidis, ‘Samanid silver and trade along the fur route,’ Medieval Encounters xviii (2012), pp. 315–338. Thus Bosworth notes (C. E. Bosworth, ‘Maḥmūd of Ghazna in contemporary eyes and in later Persian literature,’ Iran iv (1966), p.  88): ‘From the temple of Somnath alone, Maḥmūd is said to have carried off 20 million dinars’ worth of plunder, and the precious metals thus gained were used to beautify the palaces and public buildings erected in the capital Ghazna and elsewhere. They also enabled the Sultans to maintain a high standard of gold and silver coinage, thereby facilitating trade and commerce across the Ghaznavid empire. In regard to slaves, ‘Utbī says that they were so plentiful after the Kanauj campaign of ’ 1018, when 53,000 captives were brought back, that slave merchants converged on Ghazna from all parts of eastern Islam and slaves could be bought for between two and ten dirhams each.’ On Sebüktegin as devoted jihadist see Abū’l-Sharaf Nāṣir b. Ẓafar Jarfadhqānī, Tarjama-i Tārīkh-i Yamīnī, ed. Ja‘far Shi‘ār (Tehran, 1345), 20; Ḥamdallāh Mustawfī Qazwīnī, Tārīkh-i Guzīda; Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlallāh, Jāmi‘ al-Tawārīkh, ed. Ahmed Āteş (Ankara, 1957), i, pp. 6, 11. Ibn Māja, the exception, hailed from Qazwīn. On which see e.g. Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Art and Architecture (London, 1999, chapter 4); idem. (ed.), The Art of the Saljuqs in Iran and Anatolia (Costa Mesa, 1994). On the conquest of Transoxiana see Michal Biran, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 35–46. See s.v. D.G. Tor, ‘Sanjar, Aḥmed b. Malekshāh,’ EIr. Thus by Sanjar’s time even serving as viziers in his administration; e.g. the cleric Shihāb al-Islām ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Ṭūsī, whom Sanjar hauled ‘out of the corner of the madrasa’

The Importance of Khurasan and Transoxiana

33.

34. 35. 36.

37. 38.

9

in order to appoint him to the vizierate (Ghiyāth al-Dīn b. Humām al-Dīn Khwānd Mīr, Dastūr al-Wuzarāʾ, ed. Sa‘īd Nafīsī, (Tehran, 1317/1938f.), p. 189, corroborated by Nāṣir al-Dīn Munshī Kirmānī, Nasāʾim al-Asḥār min laṭāʾif al-akhbār dar tārīkh-i wuzarā, ed. Mīr Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥusaynī Urmawī, Tehran 1338/1959, pp. 58–59). Other clerical viziers include ‘the ‘ālim Naṣīr al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. al-Muẓaffar b. Abī Tawba al-Khwārizmī,’ described in his eulogy as having been ‘a master of and expert in the jurisprudence of the legal school of Imām Shāfi‘ī’(Kirmānī, Nasāʾim al-Asḥār, pp.  69–72; al-Fatḥ b. ‘Alī b. Muḥammad al-Bundārī, Zubdat al-Nuṣra wa-nukhbat al-‘uṣra, ed. M. Th. Houtsma in Recueil de textes relatifs à l’histoire des Seljoucides, Vol. II: Histoire des Seldjoucides de l’Irâq (Leiden, 1889), p. 268, who lists him under the nisba of ‘al-Marwazī’, mentions only his close relations with the clerics, without, however, noting the fact that he himself was also an ‘ālim). C. E. Bosworth (‘The political and dynastic history of the Iranian world A.D. 1000–1217,’ in J. A. Boyle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. V: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, (Cambridge, 1968), p. 154) notes that ‘many members of the religious institution, which was closely linked with the established order, were put to death.’ This is the case even prior to the Oghuz; after Sanjar’s defeat at the battle of Qaṭwān in 1141, the Khwārazmshāh seized and imprisoned Abū’l-Faḍl al-Kirmānī, the leader of the Ḥanafites, together with ‘a group of the fuqahā‘’, because of their identification with Sanjar’s rule (Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam fī Taʾrīkh al-umam wa l-mulūk, ed. M. ‘A. ‘Aṭā (Beirut, 1412/1992), xviii, p. 17. See D.G. Tor, ‘The religious history of Rayy in the Seljuq period,’ Der Islam xciv (2017), forthcoming. Ẓāhir al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī, Saljūqnāma, ed. A. H. Morton (Chippenham, 2004), p. 65; Mīrkhwānd, Tārīkh Rawḍat al-ṣafā (Tehran, 1339/1920f.), iv, p. 318. Nīshāpūrī, Saljūqnāma, p. 65. The level of destruction visited upon the eastern Islamic world at this time by Oghuz frenzy, while lamented in detail in the sources, has been largely ignored or discounted by modern researchers; vide e.g. R. W. Bulliet, Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World History (New York, 2009); his chapter on the Seljuqs (pp. 96–126) does not cite any Seljuq primary source on the Oghuz destruction. C. E. Bosworth (‘The political and dynastic history of the Iranian world,’ p. 154), maintains, regarding the wholesale killing of the clerics: ‘Even so, the sources may well exaggerate the numbers of those killed,’ citing the figures named by Köymen and by later medieval Islamic sources. However, this position fails not only to give due weight to the virtually contemporaneous reports, which should be given more credence than those of later writers, but also to take into account the fact that for every famous named figure killed there were probably dozens, possibly hundreds, of lesser clerics similarly eliminated. Bulliet’s statistical table in Cotton, Climate and Camels (p.  139) of the geographical origin of religious scholars named in the biographical works is highly revealing in this respect: the decline in numbers hailing from anywhere in Iran (not just Khurāsān) between 1146 and 1196 is precipitous. Moreover, it is impossible to infer anything about the level of destruction at this time based upon substantially later descriptions of Khurāsānī towns: Yāqūt, for instance (Yāqūt, Mu‘jam al-Buldān, (Beirut, n. d.), v, pp. 112–17) describes Marw, which he visited in the year 1216f (see Claude Gilliot sv ‘Yāḳūt,’ EI2), as flourishing, but he of course had no basis of comparison and could not judge Marw of 1216 as compared to Marw of, say, 1140; and in any case one would expect some level of recovery sixty years later: the fact that Dresden and Hiroshima do not look like wastelands in the second decade of the twenty-first century does not mean that they were not such in 1945. Mustawfī Qazwīnī, Tārīkh-i Guzīda, p. 452. Ṣibt Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt al-Zamān fī ta’rīkh al-a‘yān, ed. K.S. al-Jubūrī (Beirut, 1434/2013), xiv, p. 29.

10

Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World

39. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. al-Niẓām al-Ḥusaynī al-Yazdī, al-‘Urāḍa fī l-ḥikāya al-Saljūqiyya (Baghdad, 1979), ii, pp. 106–7. 40. Nīshāpūrī, Saljūqnāma, p. 66. 41. Ibid, p. 63. 42. Mustawfī Qazwīnī, Tārīkh-i Guzīda, p. 452 43. Nīshāpūrī, Saljūqnāma, pp.  67–68; in greater detail, al-Yazdī, al-‘Urāḍa fī al-ḥikāya al-Saljūqiyya, ii, p. 112. 44. Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Ḥusaynī, Akhbār al-Dawla al-Saljūqiyya, ed. M. Iqbāl (Beirut, 1984), p. 196.

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Tor, D. G., ‘The religious history of Rayy in the Seljuq period,’ Der Islam, xciv/1 (2017), forthcoming. Tor, D. G., Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry, and the ‘Ayyār Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World (Würzburg, 2007). Treadwell, W. L., ‘The Political History of the Samanid State’, Unpublished DPhil Thesis, Oxford, 1991. Turner, John P., ‘The abnā’ al-dawla: The definition and legitimation of identity in response to the Fourth Fitna’, Journal of Oriental and African Studies cxxiv (2002), 1–22. de la Vaissière, Étienne, Samarcande et Samarra: Élites d’Asie central dans l’empire Abbasside (Paris, 2007). Wellhausen, Julius, The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall, tr. M.G. Weir (Calcutta, 1927). Yāqūt, Mu‘jam al-Buldān (Beirut, n.d.). al-Yazdī, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. al-Niẓām al-Ḥusaynī, al-‘Urāḍa fī l-ḥikāya al-Saljūqiyya (Baghdad, 1979).

2

THE SPREAD OF ḤANAFISM TO KHURASAN AND TRANSOXIANA Christopher Melchert

Nurit Tsafrir has traced the spread of Ḥanafi law from Kufa to the cities of Iraq, Fars, Egypt, and North Africa.1 As for its spread to Khurasan and Transoxiana, the leading studies begin with a book (originally a doctoral dissertation) by Muḥammad al‑Mudarris, which draws on various biographical sources to list the jurisprudents of Balkh in north-eastern Khurasan (some of them emigrants from Balkh to other places, not all of them demonstrably Ḥanafi) before reviewing problems from the Ḥanafi legal literature over which there are opinions peculiar to men from Balkh.2 An article by Wilferd Madelung traces especially the association of Ḥanafism with political Murji’ism and its early hold on Balkh.3 Berndt Radke summarises Mudarris and Madelung’s leading source, Faḍā’il Balkh (on which more below).4 Josef van Ess very systematically surveys Murji’ism throughout Khurasan.5 Eyyup Said Kaya has published a chapter discussing the three centres of Iraq (actually mainly Baghdad), Balkh, and Bukhara, touching only lightly on the eighth and ninth centuries.6 Most recently, Arezou Azad has published a book-length survey of Faḍā’il Balkh, including remarks on the jurisprudents it describes, although minimising their affiliation with any formal Ḥanafi institution.7 The first object of this essay is simply to extend Tsafrir’s sketch to Khurasan and Transoxiana. The evidence of biographical dictionaries The earliest biographical source to identify Ḥanafiyya is that of Ibn Saʽd (d. 230/845). These are the eight men he identifies with Abū Ḥanīfa:8 Abū Yūsuf (d. Baghdad, 182/798; vii/2, pp.73–4 vii,330–1); Asad b. ʽAmr al-Bajalī (d. Kufa? 190/805–6; vii/2, p.74 vii, p.331); ʽĀfiya b. Yazīd al-Awdī (d. after 170/786; vii/2, p.74 vii, p.331); Muḥammad al-Shaybānī (d. near Ray, 189/804–5; vii/2, p.78 vii, p.336–7); Yūsuf b. Abī Yūsuf (d. Baghdad, 192/808; vii/2,78–9 vii, p.337); al-Ḥusayn b. Ibrāhīm b. al-Ḥurr (d. Baghdad, 216/831–2?; vii/2,87–8, vii, p.348); 13

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Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World Bishr b. al-Walīd al-Kindī (d. Baghdad, 238/853; vii/2, p.93 vii, p.355–5);  and al-Naḍr b. Muḥammad al-Marwazī (d. 183/800; vii/2, p.105 vii, p.373).

These are all from the section on Baghdad except for the last, who is Khurasani. An early biographical source from within the Ḥanafi school is the account of the qadi al-Ḥusayn b. ʽAlī al-Ṣaymarī (d. 436/1045) appended to his biography of Abū Ḥanīfa himself. He does not mention al-Naḍr b. Muḥammad or, indeed, any other Khurasani adherents. However, regional biographical dictionaries do mention other Khurasani adherents of the Ḥanafi school. Al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī’s (d. 405/1014), Tārīkh Naysābūr, is the most important of these. Although now lost except for fragments and a Persian abridgement (little more than a list of names), it is often quoted in Mamluk-era biographical dictionaries, of which the most important for the purposes of this study is Ibn Abī l-Wafā’ (d. 775/1373), al-Jawāhir al-muḍiyya.9 Also significant is Faḍā’il Balkh, of uncertain authorship, completed in Arabic in 610/1214, extant only in Persian translation.10 It offers stories not found in other sources, although few additional names. Less full but the very earliest extant Ḥanafi biographical dictionary is ‘Abdallāh b. Muḥammad al-Sa‘dī Ibn Abī l-‘Awwām’s (d. 335/946–7?) Faḍā’il Abī Ḥanīfa, whose section on Abū Ḥanīfa’s adherents includes a sub-section on the people of Rayy and Khurasan.11 Of about ninety followers of Abū Ḥanīfa, as identified by Ibn Abī l-Wafā’, who died in the second half of the second century H. (roughly 768–816), the overwhelming majority were Iraqi but ten were Khurasani; of 130 who died in the first half of the third century H. (roughly 816–65), 23 appear to be Khurasani or Transoxianan. It appears from his coverage of the school that Ḥanafism was first introduced to Marw and Balkh at about the same time by students of Abū Ḥanīfa himself. Early figures in Marw are the following: Abū Ḥamza Muḥammad b. Maymūn al-Sukkarī (d. 168/784–5?), quoted as relating legal theory of Abū Ḥanīfa.12 Al-Jāmi‘, Abū ‘Iṣma Nūḥ b. Abī Maryam al-Marwazī (d. 173/789–90), qadi of Marw at his death, by one account called ‘al-Jāmi‘’ because he learnt jurisprudence from Abū Ḥanīfa and Ibn Abī Laylā.13 Al-Naḍr b. Muḥammad al-Marwazī (d. 183/799–800), who learnt jurisprudence from Abū Ḥanīfa.14 Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Faḍl b. Mūsā al-Sīnānī (d. Rāmāshāh, 192/808?), who related hadith of Abū Ḥanīfa.15 Tawba b. Sa‘d b. ‘Uthmān (fl. 170/786–7), qadi of Marw, who learnt jurisprudence from Abū Yūsuf.16 Abū Yazīd ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. ‘Alqama al-Sa‘dī al-Marwazī (d. 201–10/816– 26?), ‘one of the aṣḥāb of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan, sighted in ra’y and ḥadīth, a pious man.’17 Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm b. Rustam (d. Nishapur, 211/826?), who learnt jurisprudence from Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan.18

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These are all directly connected to Iraq. Abū ‘Iṣma and al-Naḍr b. Muḥammad were both accused of Murji’ism, confirming that there was some connection between irjā’ in theology and Ḥanafism in law.19 Madelung associates the Murji’a first of all with an early political doctrine, refusal to condemn either ‘Alī or ‘Uthmān, but his explanation for Murji’ prevalence in Transoxiana and Khurasan is rather a later theological doctrine, that one is either a believer or not, hence no less a one if one omits ritual works – convenient in a land of recent converts.20 On the other hand, Abū ‘Iṣma is also said to have been hard on the Jahmiyya, so not everything that animated the Ḥanafi school of Iraq likewise prevailed among the Ḥanafiyya of Khurasan.21 Wakī‘ (b. al-Jarrāḥ, Kufan, d. 197/812?) identified al-Faḍl b. Mūsā as an exemplar of orthodoxy (ṣāḥib sunna).22 However, neither Ibn Sa‘d nor al-Bukhārī mentions any connection with Abū Ḥanīfa, so his adherence specifically to Ḥanafi law is in doubt.23 Early figures in Balkh are the following: Abū ‘Alī ‘Umar (‘Amr) b. Maymūn b. Baḥr b. al-Rammāḥ (d. Balkh, 171/787– 8), qadi, who learnt jurisprudence from Abū Ḥanīfa.24 Abū Muḥammad Wasīm b. Jamīl (d. Balkh, 182/798–9), immigrant from Basra, who related hadith of Abū Ḥanīfa.25 Abū ‘Alī Shaqīq b. Ibrāhīm al‑Balkhī (d. 194/809–10), famous renunciant, disciple to Abū Yūsuf, before whom he read Kitāb al-Ṣalāt.26 A significant source of biographical information in al-Bakrī (d. Khwārizm, 568/1172– 3), Manāqib al-Imām Abī Ḥanīfa.27 Salm b. Sālim (d. Mecca? 194/810?), Murji’ renunciant brought to al-Raqqa and imprisoned by Hārūn.28 Abū Muṭī‘ al-Ḥakam b. ‘Abd Allāh b. Maslama b. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Balkhī (d. 199/814?), qadi, who related al-Fiqh al-Akbar from Abū Ḥanīfa himself.29 Abū Mu‘ādh Khālid b. Sulaymān (d. Balkh, 199/814), disciple to Abū Ḥanīfa alongside Abū Muṭī‘ and Abū Yūsuf.30 Also related hadith of Sufyān al-Thawrī and Mālik.31 Abū ‘Iṣma ‘Iṣām b. Yūsuf b. Maymūn (d. Balkh, 210/825–6?), who learnt jurisprudence from Zufar, Abū Yūsuf, ‘Āfiya, and one other of the aṣḥāb of Abū Ḥanīfa.32 Shaddād b. Ḥakīm (d. 210/826?), qadi, a disciple to Zufar.33 Abū Sakan Makkī b. Ibrāhīm (d. 215/829), ṣāḥib to Abū Ḥanīfa.34 Abū Sa‘īd Khalaf b. Ayyūb (d. 215/830?), among the aṣḥāb of Muḥammad al-Shaybānī and Zufar, also said to have learnt jurisprudence from Abū Yūsuf and Ibn Abī Laylā.35 Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Yūsuf b. Rustam al-Mākiyānī (d. 239/853?), brother to ‘Iṣām and Muḥammad, who learnt jurisprudence from Abū Yūsuf.36 Again, they are all connected directly to Iraq. Madelung alleges that ‘Balkh… became the chief centre of Ḥanafite learning in the east. In other towns of eastern

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Khurasan and Transoxiana, the school of Abū Ḥanīfa also found an early foothold though it did not gain immediately such predominance.’37 This seems possible but uncertain, first from lack of evidence that Ḥanafism initially spread to the rest of Khurasan from Balkh, secondly from evidence of non-Ḥanafi ulema in Balkh as in other centres.38 Ibn Abī l-Wafā’ names two in the next generation who studied under Abū Muṭī‘: Abū l-Faḍl ‘Abd al-Mu’min b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-‘Āṣimī (n.d.)39 and Abū Muḥammad al-Qāsim b. Zurayq (d. 201/816–17).40 The most important Ḥanafi of Balkh in the second half of the ninth century seems to have been Muḥammad b. Salama (d. 278/891–2), who learnt jurisprudence from Abū Sulaymān al-Jūzajānī (d. 204/819–20?), a prominent student of Muḥammad al-Shaybānī’s, and Shaddād b. Ḥakīm (d. 210/826?).41 The latter was active in Balkh, but so far as can currently be ascertained the former taught in Iraq, so knowledge from Iraq still distinguished the important scholar. This stated, Balkhi jurisprudents outnumbered those from other cities who contributed to the Ḥanafi legal tradition well into the tenth century, as documented from al-Sarakhsī below. Abū Muṭī‘ and Khalaf b. Ayyūb were said to be Murji’a.42 Salm b. Sālim was imprisoned for his outspoken advocacy, and Ibn Abī l-Wafā’ may have claimed him for the school simply on the assumption that a Murji’ from Balkh must have been Ḥanafi in law, since no source that I have discovered names any direct connection to Abū Ḥanīfa, although Abū Ḥanīfa’s rival Sufyān al-Thawrī is often mentioned among Salm’s shaykhs. Ibn Ḥibbān alleges that Ibrāhīm b. Yūsuf outwardly adhered to Murji’ism but inwardly to the Sunna, presumably an indication of how prevalent was Murji’ism in Balkh.43 On the other hand, Ibrāhīm b. Yūsuf is quoted as disallowing even to abstain from pronouncing that the Qur’an is increate, which, like Abū ‘Iṣma’s opposition to the Jahmiyya, goes against the prevailing theological trend among the Ḥanafiyya of Iraq.44 Early figures in Nishapur are the following: Abū ‘Umar Ḥafṣ b. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. ‘Umar al-Balkhī (d. 199/815), qadi, who related hadith of Abū Ḥanīfa.45 Abū Sa‘īd Ashraf b. Muḥammad (n.d.), qadi, among the aṣḥāb of Abū Yūsuf.46 Abū ‘Alī (or al-Ḍaḥḥāk) al-Jārūd b. Yazīd (d. 206/821–2?), ṣāḥib to Abū Ḥanīfa.47 Abū Sulaymān Ḥammād b. Sulaymān b. al-Marzubān (d. 201–10/816– 26?), who in his old age learnt jurisprudence from (tafaqqaha ‘inda) Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan.48 Abū Sahl Bishr b. Abī l-Azhar Yazīd (d. 213/828), qadi and renunciant, who learnt jurisprudence from Abū Yūsuf; an immigrant from Kufa.49 Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥasan b. Ayyūb al-Ramjārī (n.d.), who learnt jurisprudence from Abū Yūsuf.50 Abū Muḥammad ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Umar b. Maymūn al-Rammāḥ (d. 234/849), qadi, who learnt jurisprudence from his father (d. Balkh, 171/787–8), who learnt jurisprudence from Abū Ḥanīfa.51

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Abū Muḥammad Naṣr b. Ziyād b. Nahīk (d. 236/850?), qadi, who learnt jurisprudence from Muḥammad al-Shaybānī.52 Aḥmad b. Ḥājj al-‘Āmirī (d. 237/851–2), who learnt jurisprudence from Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan.53 Abū l-Qāsim Sahl b. Bishr b. al-Qāsim (d. 239/853–4), qadi, who learnt jurisprudence from his father.54 Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥusayn b. Bishr b. al-Qāsim (d. 242/856–7?), qadi, who learnt jurisprudence from his father.55 Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥasan b. Bishr b. al-Qāsim (d. 244/858–9), qadi, who learnt jurisprudence from his father and al-Ḥasan b. Ziyād al-Lu’lu’ī.56 Here was no apparent connection between Ḥanafism and Murji’ism. ‘Abdallāh b. ‘Umar b. Maymūn al-Rammāḥ strongly opposed the doctrine that the Qur’an was create, defiantly walking out of a session (presumably in Baghdad between 212/827 and 218/833) at which the caliph was present behind a screen.57 Ḥafṣ b. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Balkhī was the son of an earlier qadi for Nishapur appointed by Qutayba b. Muslim (governor of Khurasan 86–96/705–15?). After some time, Ḥafṣ repented and withdrew from the judgeship.  There must have been some presumption that he was suitable to be appointed qadi in the first place. Assuming he took up Ḥanafi law, it presumably reflects some preference for Ḥanafi law on the part of the Abbasids who appointed him qadi. With Sahl, al-Ḥusayn, and al-Ḥasan the sons of Bishr, we evidently have the beginning of a local Ḥanafi tradition, not directly dependent on Iraq. However, it is unclear what sort of law was taught by their father Bishr b. al-Qāsim (d. 215/830–1), since his biographies mention no Ḥanafi teacher.58 Indeed, the Nishapuran Ḥanafi tradition remains obscure in the later ninth century. Al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī describes Abū Naṣr al-Labbād (d. 280/893–4) as ‘the shaykh of ahl al-ra’y in his time and their ra’īs (chieftain)’, but we do not know the name of his teachers in law.59 Similarly, he says of ‘Alī b. Mūsā b. Yazīd (or Yazdād; d. 305/917–18), ‘the imām (leader) of ahl al-ra’y in his time’ and of the qadi ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. al-Ḥusayn b. Khālid (d. 309/921), ‘the imām of ahl al-ra’y in his time without contest’, yet we do not know the name of their teachers in law, either.60 This is not surprising, considering the nature of schools of law at this point: the guild schools with boundary enforcement mechanisms were yet to come, so that learning jurisprudence was still somewhat like learning hadith, with no set curriculum and depending on multiple teachers.61 The fourth great city of Khurasan was Herat, where I have found just one Ḥanafi who died in the first half of the third century hijri: Abū Ja‘far Furāt b. Naṣr al-Quhunduzī al-Harawī (d. 236/850–1), who learnt jurisprudence from Abū Yūsuf and also related the books of Muḥammad al-Shaybānī.62

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An odd story is told of the introduction of Ḥanafism to Sarakhs. Khārija b. Muṣ‘ab (d. 168/785), alleged to be a Murji’, apparently collected hadith in Iraq and Medina. According to an Abū Ma‘mar al-Hudhalī, ‘The partisans of ra’y would go to the questions (masā’il) of Abū Ḥanīfa and create asānīd for them from Yazīd b. Abī Ziyād from Mujāhid from Ibn ‘Abbās. Then they put them in his books and he would relate them.’63 The story may indicate that later traditionalists were puzzled to see hadith supporting Ḥanafi positions transmitted by Khārija b. Muṣ‘ab, whom they were inclined to respect. It usefully reminds us that there were more advocates of Ḥanafi doctrine about, such as these anonymous partisans of ra’y, than are named in the extant biographical literature. Some Ḥanafiyya are on record in other places in the Northeast: ‘Abd al-‘Azīz b. Khālid al‑Yazīdī (d. 180s/797–806), disciple to Abū Ḥanīfa, qadi for Tirmidh.64 Abū Muqātil Ḥafṣ b. Salm al‑Samarqandī (d. 208/823–4?), who transmitted Abū Ḥanīfa (attrib.), Kitāb al-‘ālim wa-l-muta‘allim, a Murji’ creed, notable for ignoring hadith, also sometimes said to have related hadith of Abū Ḥanīfa.65 Abū Ḥafṣ Aḥmad b. Ḥafṣ al-Kabīr (d. Bukhara, 217/832), who learnt jurisprudence from Muḥammad al-Shaybānī.66 Sawra b. al-Ḥasan al-Alūzānī (n.d.), among the aṣḥāb of Muḥammad al‑Shaybānī.67 Abū Isḥāq Ismā‘īl b. Sa‘īd al-Shālanjī (d. Astarabadh? 230/844–5?), who learnt jurisprudence from Muḥammad al-Shaybānī.68 Al-Shālanjī is said to have repented late in life of adherence to ra’y and written a Kitāb al-Bayān systematically refuting the opinions of his teacher, al-Shaybānī.69 Ibn Abī l-Wafā’ also names two Ḥanafiyya of the next generation who studied under Abū Ḥafṣ al-Kabīr: Ḥātim b. Naṣr b. Mālik b. Sam‘ān al-Ghujdawānī (n.d.)70 and Abū ‘Abd Allāh b. Abī Ḥafṣ al-Kabīr (d. 274/888).71 This indicates some local tradition of Ḥanafism, likewise the assertion that the chieftaincy of the Ḥanafiyya of Bukhara devolved on Abū Ḥafṣ al-Kabīr, then on his son.72 Abū Ḥafṣ is said to have had the famous traditionalist Muḥammad b. Ismā‘īl al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870) expelled from Bukhara for giving an inane fatwā (declaring that it created a marriage bar for two infants to drink the milk of the same animal), presumably around the time al-Bukhārī, only 15 or 16, left with his brother for the pilgrimage in 210/825–6.73 The evidence of hadith collections and law books Secondly, I have looked at transmitters of hadith from Abū Ḥanīfa who appear in al-Khwārizmī (d. 665/1266–7?), Jāmi‘ al-Masānīd.74 This is a synthesis of fifteen earlier compilations of hadith related from Abū Ḥanīfa. In a sample of 381 reported isnāds, 21 transmitters from Abū Ḥanīfa (6 per cent) are Khurasani. Khurasanis make up a similar proportion of transmitters from transmitters, although the very

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large number of unknowns at this level makes comparison with other regions difficult. Still, this is a smaller percentage of Khurasanis than in the list of Abū Ḥanīfa’s adherents as identified by Ibn Sa‘d (13 per cent) and of second-century Khurasanis (11 per cent) and earlier third-century (18 per cent) as identified by Ibn Abī l-Wafā’. These Khurasani Ḥanafiyya made it into the biographical tradition to a greater extent than into the hadith or legal literature of the school. As another indication of how important different individuals were to the Ḥanafi legal tradition, we might observe the number of citations collected in an index to the massive Mabsūṭ of al-Sarakhsī (d. 483/1090–1?).75 To some extent, citations in the legal literature act as a control on early identifications with Ḥanafism in the biographical literature. For example, Abū Ḥamza, named above for having related a legal principle of Abū Ḥanīfa (mainly giving priority to hadith from the Prophet, staying within the range of Companion opinions, and feeling free to disagree with the Followers), seems to have been mainly a renunciant and traditionalist. However, al-Sarakhsī never cites him, so he must be characterised as an outside observer of the Ḥanafi tradition, not a significant participant. Placing the leading contributors to the Ḥanafi tradition in chronological order, we obtain the following (going down to four or more citations in the whole Mabsūṭ): Abū Ḥanīfa (d. Baghdad, 150/767), 2015 citations Zufar (d. Basra, 158/774–5), 446 Abū Yūsuf (d. Baghdad, 182/798), 1792 Asad b. ‘Amr al-Bajalī (d. Kufa? 190/805–6), 16 Muḥammad al-Shaybānī (d. near Ray, 189/804–5), 1795 Yūsuf b. Khālid al-Samtī (Basran, d. 189/805), 4 al-Ḥasan b. Ziyād al-Lu’lu’ī (active in Kufa and Baghdad, d. 204/819–20), 218 Abū Sulaymān al-Jūzajānī (Baghdadi, d. 204/819–20?), 37 al-Ḥasan b. Abī Mālik (Baghdadi, d. 204/819–20), 15 Abū ‘Iṣma ‘Iṣām b. Yūsuf (d. Balkh, 210/825–6?), 8 Ibrāhīm b. Rustam (d. Nishapur, 211/826), 16 Mu‘allā b. Manṣūr (Baghdadi, d. 211/826–7), 12 Abū Ḥafṣ al-Kabīr (Nishapuran, d. Bukhara, 217/832), 39 Bishr b. Ghiyāth al-Marīsī (Baghdadi, d. 219/834–5?), 23 ‘Īsā b. Abān (d. Basra, 220/835?), 44 Muḥammad b. Samā‘a (d. Baghdād, 233/847–8), 77 Muḥammad b. Shujā‘ al-Thaljī (Baghdadi, d. 266/880?), 19 Muḥammad b. Salama (Balkhi, d. 278/891–2), 8 ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz, Abū Khāzim (d. Baghdad, 292/905), 4 al-Ṭaḥāwī (d. Old Cairo, 321/933), 69 al-Ḥākim al-Shahīd al-Marwazī (d. 334/945), 28 Abū l-Ḥasan al-Karkhī (d. Baghdad, 340/952), 52 Abū Ja‘far al-Hinduwānī (Balkhi, d. Bukhara, 362/973), 14 Abū Bakr al-Jaṣṣāṣ al-Rāzī (d. Baghdad, 370/981), 25

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Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World Muḥammad al-Maydānī (Bukharan, fl. first half fourth/tenth cent.), 17 Abū Zayd al-Kabīr, Aḥmad b. Zayd (Iraqi, fl. first half fourth/tenth cent.?), 6

The impression gained from frequency of citation is of some decline of importance from the late second/eighth century (the Spearman rank correlation coefficient is 40), which is to say a preference for citing earlier authorities. There is also a strong early predominance of Iraqis (ten of the first thirteen names are Iraqi, nine of the second, but 99 per cent of all citations in the first thirteen, down to 65 per cent in the second). No one is named from North Africa or Fars, and only one from Egypt. Here, then, is a chronological list of Khurasanis cited by Sarakhsī (this time going down to two or more citations): Abū ‘Iṣma ‘Iṣām b. Yūsuf (d. Balkh, 210/825–6?), 8 Ibrāhīm b. Rustam (d. Nishapur, 211/826), 16 Khalaf b. Ayyūb (Balkhi, d. 215/830–1?), 2 Abū Ḥafṣ al-Kabīr (Nishapuran, d. Bukhara, 217/832), 39 Muḥammad b. Salama (Balkhi, d. 278/891–2), 8 Muḥammad b. al-Naḍīr (al-Naḍr? Nishapuran, d. 291/903–4), 2 Abū Naṣr Muḥammad b. Sallām (Balkhi, d. 305/917–18), 2 Aḥmad b. ‘Iṣma, Abū l-Qāsim (Balkhi, d. 326/938), 3 Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (Samarqandi, d. 333/944–5), 2 al-Ḥākim al-Shahīd al-Marwazī (d. 334/945), 28 ‘Abdallāh b. al-Ḥasan (Ḥusayn) the qadi (Balkhi, d. 357/967–8), 2 Abū Ja‘far al-Hinduwānī (Balkhi, d. Bukhara, 362/973), 14 Muḥammad al-Maydānī (fl. Bukhara, first half fourth/tenth cent.), 17 Ibn Abī Muṭī‘, al-Mu‘tamid b. Muḥammad (Nasafi, d. 430s/1039–49), 3 Shams al-A’imma al-Ḥalwānī (Bukharan, d. Kishsh, 449/1057–8?), 4 Balkh seems indeed to be the most important centre until the later tenth century (e.g. we observe six Balkhis, just three Nishapurans), when Transoxiana seems to take over. Up to Muḥammad b. Salama, they all learnt Ḥanafi jurisprudence directly from Iraqi teachers. Muḥammad b. al-Naḍr is identified by al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī as an adherent of Ḥanafism, but no source records his teacher in law.76 Similarly, many teachers of hadith are named for Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad, al-Ḥākim al-Shahīd, but no particular teacher of jurisprudence.77 Aḥmad b. ‘Iṣma learnt jurisprudence from Abū Ja‘far al-Hinduwānī.78 Abū Ja‘far al‑Hinduwānī himself, Muḥammad b. ‘Abd Allāh b. Muḥammad, learnt jurisprudence from Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Sa‘īd al-A‘mash (d. Marw, 318/930–1), once said to have learnt jurisprudence in turn from Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Iskāf (d. 336/947–8); but al-Iskāf is also said, more plausibly, to have taught Abū Ja‘far al-Hinduwānī directly.79 Our knowledge of how Ḥanafism spread in Khurasan is still very slight, then, even for the earlier tenth century. Muḥammad al-Maydānī is probably to be identified as a contemporary of al-Hinduwānī’s whose formation is completely unknown.80 Nothing is said in our sources of how

The Spread of Ḥanafism to Khurasan and Transoxiana

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Ibn Abī Muṭī‘ learnt jurisprudence, either.81 We are told that Shams al-A’imma al-Ḥalwānī (or Ḥalwā’ī) learnt jurisprudence from Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥusayn b. al-Khaḍir al-Nasafī (Bukharan, d. 424/1033), of whom we hear in turn only that he learnt jurisprudence in Baghdad.82 The Ḥanafi guild school of law crystallised only with the teaching of Abū l-Ḥasan al-Karkhī in Baghdad (d. 340/952) and the spreading out of his students.83 Alternatives to Ḥanafism One might have expected the predominant school of law in Khurasan to be whatever was predominant in Basra. The conquest of Khurasan had been organised from Basra, and there is much evidence of Basran influence on the development of religion in Khurasan. Of those Followers (tābi‘ūn) in Nishapur, identified by al-Ḥākim as coming from outside Khurasan, eight are from Basra, one each from Kufa and Mecca. It must be borne in mind that this is from the severe abridgement; the original is likely to have mentioned more. However, it is consistent with the section on the Followers and later men in Ibn Sa‘d’s section on Khurasan, of whom five are identified as coming from outside: four from Basra, one from Sijistan. The jurisprudence most likely to have dominated in Khurasan might then have been some Basran variety, such as the Basran Mālikism embraced by some of the ninth-century Abbasids, notably al-Muwaffaq (d. 278/891). In fact, Khurasani Mālikism is completely absent from Ibn Sa‘d. Significant quantities of hadith were related of Mālik by Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā (d. 226/840?) in Nishapur and Qutayba b. Saʽīd (d. 240/854) near Balkh, but along with much hadith from others.84 Al-Qāḍī ‘Iyāḍ names 156 aṣḥāb to Mālik, only three of them from Khurasan: Ibn al-Mubārak, Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā, and Qutayba b. Sa‘īd.85 Māliki legal opinions were related in Khurasan, such as this from Sahl b. ‘Ammār (d. Nishapur, 267/880–1?):86