42

The Ziyādids

203–409/818–1018

Yemen, with their capital at Zabīd

The founder of this line, Muḥammad b. Ziyād, claimed descent from the great Umayyad governor of Iraq, Ziyād b. Abīhi, but such a connection is speculative. He was appointed by the‘Abbāsid caliph al-Ma’mūn as governor of Yemen, in the hope of restraining Shf I dissent there, and the Ziyādids always recognised the overlordship of Baghdad. Muḥammad’s centre of power was Zabid in Tihāma or coastal lowlands of Yemen, and he managed to extend his authority eastwards into Hadramawt and over some parts of highland Yemen, although the Yu‘firids (see below, no. 43) eventually established themselves in Ṣan‘ā’. The subsequent Ziyādids were threatened by the Yu‘firids and other local potentates, and only with the long reign of Abu ’1-Jaysh Isḥāq did Ziyādid fortunes revive somewhat. The last Ziyādids, whose dates are uncertain, were really fainéants, and in the early eleventh century power passed in Zabīd to their black Habashī slave ministers, one of whom was to found the dynasty of the Najāḥids (see below, no. 44).

Lane-Poole, 90–1; Zambaur, 115; Album, 26.

EI¹ ‘Ziyādis’ (R. Strothmann).

H. C. Kay, Y aman: Its Early Mediaeval History, 2–18, 234ff.

Ramzi J. Bikhazi, ‘Coins of al-Yaman 139–569 A.H.’, 64ff.

G. R. Smith, in W. Daum (ed.), Yemen: 3000 Years of Art and Civilisation in Arabia Felix, Innsbruck n.d. [c. 1988], 130, 138, with a list of rulers.