39

The Numayrids

380–c. 474/990–c. 1081

Ḥarrān, Sarūj, Qal‘at fa‘bar and Raqqa

The Numayrids were a line of amīrs who flourished during the late tenth and the eleventh centuries in several towns of Diyār Mudar: briefly at Edessa, more continuously at Harrān, Sarūj, Qal’at Ja’bar and Raqqa. Their name derives from the North Arab tribal group to which they belonged, hence their origins were parallel to those of the Mirdāsids of Aleppo (see above, no. 28). Tribesmen of Numayr were early involved in the fighting in northern Syria and Jazīra as auxiliaries of such powers as the Hamdānids, until Waththāb in 380/990 made himself independent of the Hamdanids at Harrān, from where he conquered other fortresses of the region. The first Numayrids found themselves forced to pay tribute to the Greeks on their western borders, and were unable to hold on to Byzantine Edessa, which they had temporarily captured. As the Fātimids expanded into northern Syria, Shabīb b. Waththāb in 430/1038 recognised the Fātimid caliph al-Mustansir, although after the Fātimid attempt to hold Baghdad, made by Arslan Basāsīrī, failed in 452/1060, the Numayrids probably changed allegiance to the ‘Abbāsids. But the advent of the Seljuqs was fatal for the Numayrids, as for other petty principalities of the region, like that of the Marwānids (see above, no. 37). The names of the last Numayrid rulers in Harrān are unknown to us. Their town fell in the end to the Seljuqs’ allies, the ‘Uqaylids (see above, no. 38), although members of the family were still to be found holding fortresses into the next century.

Zambaur, 138 (vague and inaccurate); Album, 22.

D. S. Rice, ‘Medieval Harrān. Studies on its topography and monuments. I’, Anatolian Studies, 2 (1952), 36–84, with a genealogical table at p. 84.