75

The Būyids or Buwayhids

320–454/932–1062

Northern, western and southern Persia and Iraq

1. The line in Jibāl

(a) The branch in Hamadan and Isfahan

(b) The branch in Rayy

2. The line in Fars (Fārs) and Khūzistān

3. The line in Kirman (Kirmān)

4. The line in Iraq

5. The rulers of the dynasty acknowledged by local chiefs in Oman

Out of the Daylamī dynasties which formed in the Persian world as the ‘Abbāsid grip over the provinces of the caliphate weakened, the Būyids were the most powerful and ruled over the greatest extent of territories. They began modestly enough as commanders in the army of the successful Daylami condottieri, Mardāwīj b. Ziyār, founder of the Ziyārid dynasty (see below, no. 81). The eldest of the three sons of Būya, ‘Ali, held Iṣfahān at the time of Mardāwīj’s assassination, and shortly afterwards seized the whole of Fars, while Ḥasan held Jibāl and Aḥmad held Kirman and Khūzistān. In 339/945 Aḥmad entered Baghdad, and the ‘Abbāsids began a 110-year period of tutelage under Būyid amīrs (who normally held the title in Iraq of Amīr al-Umarā’ ‘Supreme Commander’), during which the caliphate was to reach its lowest ebb. In the third quarter of the tenth century, Mu‘izz al-Dawla Aḥmad’s son ‘Aḍud al-Dawla united under his rule what had originally been the three Būyid amirates, comprising southern and western Persia and Iraq, even extending his power across the Persian Gulf to Oman, where his successors were acknowledged as suzerains by such local chiefs as the Mukramids (see above no. 52); his reign marks the zenith of Būyid power. ‘Aḍud al-Dawla pursued a vigorously expansionist policy, utilising his armies of Daylamī infantry and Turkish cavalry, in the east against the Ziyārids of Ṭabaristān and Gurgān and against the Sāmānids of Khurasan, and in the west against the Ḥamdānids of Jazīra.

However, a patrimonial conception of power, doubtless stemming from the tribal past of the Daylamis, was strong among the various Būyid princes, with tendencies towards fragmentation apparent when strong rule was relaxed. After ‘Aḍud al-Dawla’s death, there was much civil strife within the dynasty. This disunity allowed petty Kurdish and Daylamī principalities to constitute themselves within the Zagros mountains and in Jibāl, and facilitated Maḥmūd of Ghazna’s annexation of Rayy and much of Jibāl from the Būyids in 420/1029. It then left them weakened in the face of incursions of the Turkmen Oghuz and the westward drive of the Seljuq Ṭoghrïl Beg, who was able to arouse orthodox Sunnī religious and constitutional feeling and claim that he was liberating the western lands or Persia and Iraq from Shī‘ī heretics. Baghdad was occupied in 447/1055, but the Būyid prince in Fars retained power for seven more years until his lands were seized by local Shabānkāra’ī Kurds, only to fall into the Seljuqs’ hands shortly afterwards.

Like most of the Daylamīs, the Būyids were Shī‘īs, probably Zaydīs to begin with and then Twelvers or Ja‘farīs. The traditional Shī‘ī festivals and practices were introduced into their territories, and Shī‘ī scholars laboured at the systema-tisation and intellectualisation of Shī‘ī theology and law, previously somewhat vague and emotional in content. This Shī‘ism may have been in part a manifestation of anti-Arab, pro-Iranian national feeling, with which attempts to provide the Būyids with a respectable genealogy going back to the Sāsānids and the adoption of an ancient Persian imperial title like Shāhānshāh may be connected. The Baghdad caliphs’ material power and resources were inevitably circumscribed by their alleged protectors, yet the Būyids made no attempt to extinguish the caliphate and they showed themselves hostile to their rivals in the west, the Ismā‘īlī Fāṭimids. Culturally, the domination of Shī‘ism in the Būyid territories was accompanied by a wide tolerance of other faiths like Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism, allowing their communities to flourish and bringing about a lively intellectual ferment in the various Būyid provincial capitals; this learning was nevertheless essentially Arabic-centred, and the Būyids evinced little interest in or encouragement of the New Persian literary and cultural renaissance which was beginning in the eastern Persian lands.

Justi, 442; Lane-Poole, 139–44; Zambaur, 212–13 and Table Q; Album, 35–6.

EI² ‘Buwayhids’ (Cl. Cahen); EIr ‘Buyids’ (Tilman Nagel).

R. Vasmer, ‘Zur Geschichte und Münzkunde von ‘Omān im X. Jahrhundert’, ZfN, 37 (1927), 274–87.

H. Bowen, ‘The last Buwayhids’, JRAS (1929), 229–45.

S. M. Stern and A. D. H. Bivar, ‘The coinage of Oman under Abū Kālījār the Buwayhid’, NC, 6th series, 18 (1958), 147–56.

H. Busse, Chali fund Groβkönig, die Buyiden im Iraq (945–1055), Beirut and Wiesbaden 1969, with genealogical tables at p. 610.

idem, ‘Iran under the Būyids’, in The Cambridge History of Iran, IV, 250–304.

C. E. Bosworth, in ibid., V, 36–53.