106

The Maliks of Nīrnrūz

421–c. 949/1030–c. 1542

Sistan

1. The Naṣrids

2. The Mihrabānids

Zambaur considered that these Maliks of Nīmrūz (an ancient name for Sistan which was revived and became increasingly used at this time) formed third and fourth lines of the earlier Ṣaffārids (see above, no. 84). However, the anonymous author of the almost contemporary local history, the Ta’rīkh-i Sīstān, considered that the true Ṣaffārids came to an end with the Ghaznawid occupation of his province in 993/1003. From the pages of his continuator(s) and from those of the other, later, local history of Sistan, Malik Shāh Ḥusayn’s Iḥyā’ al-mulūk, it is clear that we are now dealing with two entirely separate lines of Maliks, the Naṣrids and the Mihrabānids, with no apparent connections with earlier rulers; both must have stemmed from the local landowning families of Sistan.

The Naṣrids rose to power as discontent in Sistan with alien Ghaznawid rule increased in the early decades of the eleventh century. Content with only a local authority, the Naṣrids skilfully exchanged Ghaznawid suzerainty for that of the incoming Seljuqs, and during the twelfth century the Maliks at times provided troop contingents for the Seljuq armies. They also managed to ward off incursions by the Ismā’īlīs of neighbouring Quhistān. To Tāj al-Dīn II Abu ’1-Faḍl Naṣr is attributed the building of the fairly recently-collapsed Mīl-i Qāsimābād in Sīstān. Towards the end of the twelfth century, Sistan fell under the shadow of the Ghūrids (see below, no. 159), then in the early thirteenth century briefly under that of the Khwārazm Shāhs, but the appearance of the Mongols in Sistan in 619/1222 and the resultant destruction there spelt the end for the Naṣrids.

The first Mihrabānids were vassals of the Mongol Great Khāns and then of the Il Khānids, whose protection, in return for tribute, they needed against the expansionist policies of the Kart Maliks of Herat (see below, no. 139) and against the depredations of anarchic, plundering bands of Turco-Mongol freebooters, such as the Negüders or Nīkūdārīs. The Mihrabānids were, in any case, rarely free from internal challenges by members of rival leading families of Sistan. For these Maliks, the Iḥyā’ al-mulūk (see above) becomes virtually the only source after c. 718/c. 1318, for Sistan now began to sink into the obscurity and the social and economic decline which have characterised it until recent times. This decay was aggravated by the ravages at the end of the fourteenth century of Tīmūr and his troops, with devastation to Sistan’s irrigation system. The province was tributary to the Tīmūrids of Herat and then under pressure from the Aq Qoyunlu (see below, no. 146), and finally passed into the Ṣafawid orbit. The last decades of the Mihrabānids are obscure, but the increased threat to the Ṣafawids’ eastern frontiers from the Özbegs seems to have persuaded Shāh Ṭahmāsp I to appoint his own Qïzïl Bash amīrs over Sistan. Because of the paucity of source material, both literary and numismatic, much in the succession and genealogical connections of the Mihrabānids still remains obscure.

Justi, 439 (the Naṣrids only); Zambaur, 200–1 (sketchy and unreliable); Album, 50.

EI² ‘Sīstān’ (C. E. Bosworth).

C. E. Bosworth, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz (247/861 to 949/1542–3), 365–477, Costa Mesa CA and New York, 1994, with genealogical tables at pp. xxv–xxvi.