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The Ṣaffārids

247–393/861–1003

Centre of their power in Sistan, with an empire extending at times into Persia and eastern Afghanistan

1. The Laythid branch

2. The Khalafid branch

The Ṣaffārid brothers derived their name from their founder Ya‘qūb’s trade of coppersmith (saffār). Under Ya‘qūb and ‘Amr, their native province of Sistan became the centre of a vast but transient empire which covered almost all Persia except for the north-west and the Caspian region and which stretched to the frontiers of India. In the ninth century, Sistan was much disturbed by social and sectarian unrest; it had long been a refuge area for various malcontents and schismatics fleeing eastwards through Persia, including the Khārijīs, defeated and dispersed by the Umayyad governors. It may be that Ya‘qūb had been a Kharījī himself; the nucleus of his forces lay in the bands of local vigilantes defending the cause of Sunnī orthodoxy in Sistan, but his troops came to include many former Kharījīs also. With this army, Ya‘qūb expanded eastwards to Kabul (Kabul), then a pagan region on the fringe of the Indian world, and overturned the native dynasty there. In the west, he attacked the Ṭāhirids (see above, no. 82) in 259/873, wresting from them their capital Nishapur and ending their governorship over Khurasan. He was bold enough to invade Iraq and mount an attack on the heart of the caliphate itself, but this was halted on the banks of the Tigris in 262/876.

Whereas the Ṭāhirids and Sāmānids (see above, nos 82, 83) represented the interests of religious orthodoxy and the social status quo, the Ṣaffārid chiefs were plebeian in origin and proud of it, and they openly proclaimed their contempt for the ‘Abbāsids. Thus they effectively demolished the ‘caliphal fiction’ whereby provincial governors and rulers derived legitimacy for their authority from an ostensible act of delegation by the head of the Islamic community. ‘Amr b. al-Layth was recognised by the ‘Abbāsid ruler as his governor in several Persian provinces and, eventually, in Khurasan. However, not content with these extensive territories, ‘Amr coveted Transoxania also, which had been nominally under Ṭāhirid oversight. But the actual holders of power there, the Sāmānids, proved more than a match for the Ṣaffārids; ‘Amr overreached himself and was disastrously defeated. Being a personal creation of military conquerors, the Ṣaffārid empire lost its Khurasanian provinces, and in the early tenth century, after a series of weaker, ephemeral amīrs, passed temporarily under Sāmānid control.

Despite this severe check, the Ṣaffārids were to revive, and it is clear that they to some extent represented the interests and aspirations of the people of Sistan from whom they had sprung. From 311/923, the Ṣaffārids reappear as local rulers in Sistan and adjacent regions. The two amirs of this line, from a collateral branch of the family, achieved widespread reputations as Maecenases and, in the case of Khalaf b. Aḥmad, as a scholar in his own right. In 393/1003, the aggressive and expansionist Mahmūd of Ghazna (see below, no. 158) incorporated Sistan into his empire, an event which the patriotic anonymous author of a local history, the Ta’rlkh-i Sīstān, regards as a disaster for the land.

It should be noted that the convenient division of the Ṣaffārids into ‘Laythids’ and ‘Khalafids’ corresponds to the ‘first line’ and ‘second line’ in Zambaur’s listing of the Ṣaffārids, but that his third and fourth lines have no demonstrable connection with the Ṣaffārid ruling house; for these, the so-called Maliks of Nīmrūz, see below, no. 106.

Justi, 439; Lane-Poole, 129–30 (ignores all but the very first Ṣaffārids); Sachau, 11 no. 16; Zambaur, 199–201 (see the remarks above); Album, 32.

EI² ‘Ṣaffārids’ (C. E. Bosworth).

Milton Gold (tr.), The Tārikh-e Sistān, Rome 1976.

C. E. Bosworth, ‘The Ṭāhirids and Ṣaffārids’, in The Cambridge History of Iran, IV, 106–35.

idem, The History of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz (247/861 to 949/1542–3), Costa Mesa CA and New York 1994, 67–361, with genealogical tables at pp. xxiii-xxiv.