37

The Marwānids

372–478/983–1085

Diyār Bakr

The Marwānids of Diyār Bakr, Khilāt and Malāzgird were Kurdish in origin. The founder Bādh was a Kurdish chief who seized various strongholds on the frontiers of Armenia and Kurdistan; taking advantage of the decline of Būyid influence there after ‘Adud al-Dawla’s death in 372/983 (see below, no. 75), he took over Diyār Bakr from the Hamdānids (see above, no. 35), held Mosul for a time and even threatened Baghdad at one point.

His nephew al-Hasan b. Marwān firmly based the dynasty in the captured towns of Mayyāfārīqln and Āmid, but it was his younger brother Nasr al-Dawla Ahmad, Ibn Marwān, who ruled for over fifty years and who raised the Marwānid principality to a height of splendour and affluence. The strategic position of Diyār Bakr, commanding as it did the routes from Syria and Anatolia to Iraq and the east, meant that Ibn Marwān needed a skilful diplomatic policy to survive between powerful neighbours, all struggling for influence in the area. He recognised the ‘Abbāsid caliph at the outset, but he also had the Fātimids as neighbours in northern Syria; Fātimid cultural influence was strong in his domains, and he may for a while have acknowledged the Fātimid caliph al-Mustansir (see above, no. 27) as his suzerain. Before this, he had been forced for a time to pay tribute to the ‘Uqaylids of Mosul (see below, no. 38) and in 421/1030 to cede to them Nisībīn. Reigning as he did over a numerous Christian population in Diyār Bakr, he had amicable relations with the Byzantines, and the Emperor Constantine X Ducas used Ibn Marwān’s good offices to get the captured Georgian prince Liparit freed by the Seljuq sultan Toghrïl. The Oghuz nomads and their flocks were ejected from Diyār Bakr in 433/1041–2, and Toghrïl himself did not appear there until 448/1056, when Ibn Marwān became his vassal. Within his lands, such towns as Āmid, Mayyāfāriqīn and Hisn Kayfā enjoyed much prosperity under Marwānid rule and there was a vigorous cultural life; the local historian of Mayyāfāriqīn, Ibn al-Azraq, describes how Ibn Marwān lightened taxes and carried out many public and charitable works there.

On his death in 453/1061, his territories were divided between his sons Nasr and Sa’id, but the power of the Marwānids was now waning. The cupidity of the caliphal vizier Fakhr al-Dawla Ibn Jahīr (who had previously been in Ibn Marwān’s service) was now aroused; although the Marwānids had done the Seljuqs no harm, Fakhr al-Dawla and his son ‘Amīd al-Dawla secured permission from the sultan, Malik Shah, to invade the Marwānid lands with a Seljuq army. In 478/1085, after stiff fighting, the attackers were victorious and the Marwānid principality was incorporated in the Seljuq empire. The last Marwānid, Mansūr b. Nasr, lived on in Jazīrat Ibn ‘Umar for another decade or so, but over the next centuries Diyār Bakr was to be predominantly under the control of Turkmen dynasties and to become increasingly Turkicised.

Lane-Poole, 118; Zambaur, 136; Album, 21.

EI² ‘Djahīr (Banū)’ (Cl. Cahen), ‘Marwanids’ (Carole Hillenbrand), ‘Nasr al-Dawla’ (H. Bowen).

H. F. Amedroz, ‘The Marwānid dynasty at Mayyāfāriqln in the tenth and eleventh centuries A.D.’, JRAS (1903), 123–54.