87

The llyāsids

320–57/932–68

Kirman

Muḥammad b. Ilyās was a commander, of Soghdian origin, in the service of the Sāmānid Naṣr II b. Aḥmad (see above, no. 83), who, after the failure of the rebellion of the Amīr’s brothers at Bukhara in 317/929, eventually withdrew southwards to Kirman, where there was something of a power vacuum after the waning of ‘Abbāsid control in southern Persia. There he successfully established himself, fighting off the Daylamī commander Mākān and acting nominally as governor for the Sāmānids but in practice independent. He was compelled by his sons to abdicate after a reign of thirty-six years, but it was at this point that the powerful Būyid Amīr ‘Adud al-Dawla turned his attention to Kirman, and this proved fatal for the short-lived line of the Ilyasids, with Ilyasa‘ driven out to Transoxania. Various Ilyāsids attempted revanches, but Kirman was to remain generally under Būyid control until the advent of the Seljuqs (see below, no. 91, 3).

Sachau, 10–11 no. 14; Zambaur, 216.

EI² ‘Ilyāsids’ (C. E. Bosworth).

C. E. Bosworth, ‘The Banū Ilyās of Kirmān (320–57/932–68)’, in idem (ed.), Iran and Islam, in memory of the late Vladimir Minorsky, 107–24.