paul, jürgen, history of herat
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The histories of HeratJürgen Paul aa Professor of Islamic Studies, Institut für Orientalistik, Martin‐Luther‐Universität,Halle‐Wittenberg
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Iranian Studies, volume 33, numbers 1-2, Winter/Spring 2000
Jürgen Paul
The Histories of Herat
THE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY IS PERHAPS THE BEST KNOWN AND COMMONESTtype of local history at least for the pre-Mongol period of Iranian history. It iswell known that for quite a few Iranian cities, just as for cities, towns, andregions in other parts of the Islamic world, dictionaries of this type were writtenfrom the third/ninth to the seventh/thirteenth century. Until the seventh/thir-teenth century, the standard language for this literary genre was Arabic even innon-Arabic-speaking countries. Later, starting with the seventh/thirteenth cen-tury, some of the works were translated into Persian. But the translators did notlimit themselves to a more or less truthful rendering of the original text, buttook many liberties with it. Thus, because of the often important changes intro-duced by the translators, it seems more appropriate to speak of Persian versionsor adaptations rather than translations.
In the first part of this article the books belonging to this genre known tobe extant are presented, with a brief look at their translations. In the second partthe histories of Herat are analyzed. Some of the ways to use biographical dic-tionaries as a source for Islamic history, beside those discussed by Humphreys,1
are given. A full review of the possible approaches one can employ, however, isoutside the scope of this study, and in any case could not be restricted to workswritten for Iranian cities alone.
Local Iranian histories—biographical dictionaries
Wadad al-Qadi has traced the development of the biographical dictionary as aliterary genre in Islarnicate civilization in a recent survey article.2 For her,locality is one of several modes of restricting the scope of such works; one ofthe central points in her argument, in fact, is that biographical dictionariesrestricted by locality must be distinguished from a general type. General diction-aries are found from very early times and include entries on individuals frommany different professions, not only Islamic scholars, but also poets, scientists,military and political leaders, and so on. Biographical dictionaries organizedaccording to locality are generally relatively late, appearing, as al-Qadi states,only by the fourth/tenth century. As the first example of a local work, she cites
Jürgen Paul is Professor of Islamic Studies, Institut für Orientalistik, Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle-Wittenberg
1. R. Stephen Humphreys, Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry, revisededition (London, 1995), 187ff.
2. W. al-Qadi: "Biographical Dictionaries: Inner Structure and CulturalSignificance," in George N. Atiyeh, ed., The Book in the Islamic World: The WrittenWord and Communication in the Middle East. (Albany: State University of AlbanyPress. 1995), 93-122. For local histories, see more particularly 107-108.
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Narshakhi's well-known History of Bukhara? However, the Persian text wehave today (we do not have the original Arabic version) is not a biographicaldictionary, a genre most helpfully defined by al-Qadi herself in the same article.4
The first works that can be considered biographical dictionaries restricted to asingle place were almost certainly written in the fourth/tenth century, but are notextant today. For Khurasan, for instance, the oldest (datable) source used inFada'H-i Balkh was written by a man who lived around 300/912;5 for Marw,the oldest work is attributed to an author who died in 268/891.6 There are someother works that predate Narshakhi by several generations, but since they are alllost, we cannot be altogether sure if they were indeed biographical dictionaries.
The first Arabic biographical dictionary written for an Iranian city to havecome down to us is probably the work on Isfahan written by Abu'l-Shaykh (d.349/960-1, thus probably older than Narshakhi).7 But in the case of Isfahan, itis practically certain that even this author had his predecessors, and that amongthe texts he used as sources were books we would class as biographical diction-aries, for example, the work of Ibn Manda (d. 301/913-4).8
3. This work has a rather complicated (but not untypical) history. See Richard N.Frye's introduction to the translation in The History of Bukhara (Cambridge, Mass.,1954). The most frequently quoted edition is Muhammad Narshakhi, TarTkh-iBukhara, ed. Ridawi (Tehran, 1939). The original version was dedicated to Nasr b .Nuh, Samanid amir, in 322/934. This is—according to al-Qadi—the first certain datewe can establish for a local biographical dictionary. Narshakhi's work has beenstudied in detail by O. I. Smirnova ("Istoriia Bukhary Narshakhi: K istorii slozheniiateksta i o zadachakh ego izdaniia," Kratkie Soobshcheniia Instituta Narodov Azii 69(1965): 155-79) who also gives information on the biographical sections notincluded in the versions that have come down to us.
4. It is not a dynastic history either, even if dynastic elements are evident. It isastounding that this very early text should differ from most of what followed in beingso close to what we would term a "local history:" local perspective, local events anddevelopments, traditions, and so forth.
5. Bernd Radtke, Theologen und Mystiker in Hurasan und Transoxanien,"Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft (ZDMG) 136 (1986): 537.
6. Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Uteratur 2nd edition 3 vols.(Leiden, 1943-49); 3 Supplements (Leiden, 1937-42) (hereafter GAL); Fuat Sezgin,Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums vol. 1 (Leiden, 1967) (hereafter GAS). Theoldest local history on Marw is mentioned in GAS 1: 351.
7. Abu Muhammad cAbdallah b. Muhammad b. Jacfar b. Hayyan, known as Abu 1-Shaykh: K. tabaqat al-muhaddithin bi-Isfahan wa'l-waridin 'alayha. Two editions werepublished almost simultaneously: cAbd al-Ghafur cAbd al-Haqq al-Husayni al-Balushi,4 vols. (Beirut, 1407/1987-1412/1992); cAbd al-Ghafur Sulayman al-Bundari withSayyid Kasrawi Hasan, 2 vols (Beirut 1409/1989). The edition in four volumes ispreferred because of its better manuscript basis. See also the announcement anddiscussion by Nasrullah Purjavadi, "Qadimtarin tarikh-i Isfahan," and "Chap-i digar-ikitab-i AM Dl-Shaykh," Nashr-i Danish 10 (1368/1950): 36-39, 48-49.
8. See F. Rosenthal, "Ibn Manda," El2 3: 863-64. al-Balushi, in his introductionto the edition of Abu'l-Shaykh, seems to take for granted that Ibn Manda wrote a cityhistory of Isfahan. The work is also mentioned in the city history of Qazwin (seebelow) written in the seventh century; Ibn Manda's book thus seems to havecirculated—or at least been known—down to the Mongol conquest. On the histories
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Thus, al-Qadi's thesis that the biographical dictionary in its local form orig-inated in lesser centers of Islamic learning located at the periphery of the Islamicworld, and that it was a means of cultural reassertion, occurring jointly with thecontemporaneous process of Abbasid regionalization, must be reexamined, withher datings corrected.9 The first books of this genre were certainly written in thethird/ninth century; we do not know, however, what their scope or size was. Lithe case of Isfahan, many scholars of hadith are reported to have written theirmashyakha (a list in which they recorded from whom they had heard hadith),and, though this has to remain a conjecture, it would not be at all surprising ifone of the roots of writing local biographical dictionaries lay there.
Continuing with Isfahan, we find a good example of the style in which localbiographical dictionaries were compiled in Abu Nucaym's Dhikr akhbar Isfa-han.10 Like many other books of this kind (which was larger than Abu'l-Shaykh's book), in his introduction the author provides us with the foundationlegends and myths surrounding the origin of the city; the history of the city'sconquest by the Arabs; some curious sights and customs found in the region;various details of its climate, topography, notable buildings; and so on, some-times borrowing from historical or geographical writings, but relying predomi-nantly on oral tradition (e.g., foundation legends). In later biographical diction-aries, this format was adopted almost automatically and was evidently accepted asthe best way to highlight the things in which the people of a given place tookpride (mafakhir oxfada'il)}1
We do not know whether Idrisi (d. 405/1015) wrote this type of introductionfor his history of Samarqand, K. al-kamalfi ma'rifat al-rijal (bi-Samarqand),12
of Isfahan, see Nurit Tsafrir, T h e beginnings of the Hanafi school in Isfahan,"Islamic Law and Society 5 (1998): 1-22. I have dealt with this group of sources in apaper presented to the Oxford seminar on "The Shici century in Iranian history" (May1998).
9. W. al-Qadi, "Biographical Dictionaries," 107. Apart from that, it is highlydebatable whether Bukhara was a "less central Islamic cit[y]" in the fourth/tenthcentury. Bert Fragner for one thinks that Bukhara perceived itself as an equal ofBaghdad and more important than other cities like Damascus or Cairo and that themain axis of the Abbasid caliphate ran from Baghdad to Bukhara during the Samanids'heyday. See B. Fragner: Die "Persophonie". Regionalitat, Identitat und Sprachkon-takt in der Geschichte Asiens (Berlin and Halle, 1999), 45-46.
10. Ed. Sven Dedering (Leyden, 1931), 2 vols. Abu Nucaym died in 430/1038, butthe last entries in his work are from the 410s.
11. None of the works written for Isfahan are included in GAS, although bothextant works fall into the period covered; the lost works are not discussed either asthey are in other cases, such as Marw. For a typology of local histories such asbiographical dictionaries and their introduction, see also the first part of ParvanehPourshariati's contribution to this volume.
12. For a discussion of Samarqandi histories, see J. Weinberger, T h e authorshipof two twelfth century Transoxanian biographical dictionaries," Arabica 33 (1986):369-82. I overlooked this article when preparing my own "Histories of Samarqand,"Studia Iranica 22 (1993): 69-92. Out of a larger body of texts, two fragments survivewhich belong to two different versions of a work which itself has a complex history;Idrisi's contribution is the oldest layer of the extant fragments.
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the basis of the "Arabic Qandiyyah." It is quite possible that he did, because onthe one hand, such introductions were quite common, and on the other, in amuch later Persian work, there is a chapter which might be traced to Idrisi'stime.13 The extant fragments of the "Arabic Qandiyyah" also include materialoriginally written for Nasaf (a town smaller than Samarqand and roughly corres-ponding to present-day Qarshi) by Mustaghfiri (d. 432/1041).14 Idrisi also wrotea shorter work on his home town, Astarabad.15
Idrisi must have been a much admired author of biographical dictionaries,and it is possible that further research will reveal that his books served as a kindof model for subsequent authors.16 Sahmi,the author of the Ta'rikh Jurjan, forone seems to have closely followed the style set by Idrisi, and quite possiblyknew Idrisi personally since he died only 16 years after Idrisi.17
The main body of the famous "Histories of Nishapur" also is datable toIdrisi's period. Muhammad b. cAbdallah al-Bayyic al-Naysaburi, known as al-Hakim al-Naysaburi, author of Ta'rikh Naysabur, died in the same year as Idrisi(405/1015-6). The work, however, is extant only in a very terse abridgement"which amounts to little more than an index to the original multi-volume dic-tionary."18 As with other city dictionaries, a continuation was written in thesixth/twelfth century.19
13. This work is the "Persian Qandtya", written most probably some time in thelater sixteenth century. See my "Histories of Samarqand" cited above. The editionprepared by I. Afshar represents only one of the two versions known (Tehran,1344/1955).
14. See the articles on Samarqand quoted previously, and Mustaghfiri's entry inGAS.
15. Published as an appendix to Hamzah b. Yusuf al-Sahmi, Ta'rikh Jurjan, ed.Nizam al-Din (Haydarabad, 1967), 466-500; new edition ed. Muhammad cAbd al-Mucid Khan (Beirut, 1407/1987), 510-548: "I saw what Abu Sacd cAbd al-Rahman b .Muhammad al-Idrisi al-Astarabadi had composed as a history [biographical diction-aiy) especially on the people [ulama] of Astarabad to the exclusion of all others,"510. But Idrisi does not seem to have written a "History of Jurjan" (as one wouldexpect from Hajji Khalifa and GAS). The works by Sahmi and Idrisi are frequentlyconfused: see the discussion of this confusion in the introduction to Mucid Khan'sedition of Sahmi, 19-20.
16. He is mentioned in the Ta'rikh Jurjan just quoted (old edition, 219; newedition, 260) and in the Ta'rikh Baghdad (vol. 10, 302f.). His fame may be gatheredalso from the fact that his death in 405 is mentioned by Ibn al-Athir together with theTa'rikh Samarqand. (Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi'l-ta'rikh (Beirut, 1965) 9: 252 (year405).
17. Ta'rikh Jurjan. This work has remained practically untapped down to thepresent day in spite of its relatively early date of publication. It is not mentioned inGAS, and in GAL, it is included under the rubric "local history" whereas other worksof the same type are described under "hadith." Idrisi was an important source forSahmi: see the index of the Mucid Khan edition s.v. cAbd ar-Rahman b. Muhammad al-Idrisi.
18. R. Bulliet, "A Quantitative Approach to Medieval Muslim BiographicalDictionaries," Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient (JESHO) 13(1970): 196. The work itself was edited in facsimile together with its continuation byR. Frye (London, 1965); the introduction also includes remarks on the history of the
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The latest book of this type preserved in the original Arabic is one writtenon Qazwin, the K. al-tadwin fi dhikr ahl al-cilm bi-Qazwln by Abu'l-QasimcAbd al-Karim al-Rafici M which has entries down to the end of the sixth/twelfth century.
Thus, the local biographical dictionary was a well-established literary genrethroughout Iran, but particularly in eastern Iran, at the turn of the fourth/fifth-tenth/eleventh century, even if much of what was originally written seems tohave been lost. Only a few quotations survive from the books on Bukhara andother cities in Transoxiana and Khurasan.21 The genre is older than that, how-ever—the earliest works should be dated to the second half of the third/ninth cen-tury—and it seems to have flourished with continuations and compilations untilthe Mongol conquest. To the best of my knowledge, no more local biographicaldictionaries were written after that in Iran, at least not in the Arabic language.
It should be noted that, as far as Iranian cities are concerned, the local bio-graphical dictionary is very unevenly covered in both GAL and GAS. GAL some-times hesitates whether to put a given text under hadith or under "city histories;"for example, the Tarikh Jurjan is listed under "city history,"22 whereas AbuNucaym's work on Isfahan is listed under "hadith." GAS is clearly incomplete:all the works on Isfahan are missing even though at least two of them were writ-ten before 430/1038; Tarikh Jurjan is also missing, although it is noted inGAL. Likewise, all the works written on the "History of Nishapur" are absentfrom GAS.
As noted above, some local histories which may originally have been con-ceived as biographical dictionaries are extant only in their Persian translations.First, the city history of Qum should be mentioned. This is not a biographicaldictionary, to be sure, and even the Arabic original probably never was one: what
text itself and its transmission (10—16). al-Hakim's work is not mentioned in GAS,either.
19. Published in the volume edited by Frye. The author, cAbd al-Ghafir al-Farisi,died in 529/1134-35. There is an abridgement of this latter work, al-Muntakhab minal-siyaq li-ta'rikh Naysabur, by Ibrahim b. Muhammad b. al-Azhar al-Sarifini, editedby Muhammad Ahmad cAbd al-cAziz (Beirut, 1407/1989).
20. Edited by cAzizallah al-cUtaridi in 4 vols. (Haydarabad, 1984-45). R.Mottahedeh worked from the Istanbul manuscript, Ko|u§lar 1007. See his"Administration in Biiyid Qazwin," in D. S. Richards, ed., Islamic Civilization 950-1150 (Oxford, 1973), 33-45.
21 . See the list in GAS. Ghunjar, the author of a city dictionary on Bukhara(frequently quoted by Samcani) likewise died in the early fifth/eleventh century(412/1021). Smirnova raises the question whether Ghunjar's work was instrumentalin the deletion of biographical material from the extant versions of Narshakhi. (SeeO. I. Smirnova, "Istoriia." The histories of Marw above all have been lost, but couldprobably be in part reconstructed on the basis of Abu Sacd cAbd al-Karim al-SamcaniKitab al-Ansab, ed. Yamani, 13 vols. (Haydarabad, 1962-82). See also the lateredition of cAbdallah cUmar al-Barudi in 5 vols (Beirut, 1408/1988). Samcani's workis not a book on genealogy, but a real biographical dictionary according to al-Qadi'scriteria ("Biographical dictionaries," 96). al-Qadi only discusses dictionariesarranged by first names (asma1), not by ansab and kunan.
22. GAL l:333f.
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is extant—and perhaps this is all that was ever written—is five out of twentychapters, and we do not know whether the remaining fifteen chapters were meantto form a biographical dictionary. The original Arabic version must have beenwritten towards the end of the fourth/tenth century, since its author died in406/1015. The Persian version which has come down to us dates to theninth/fifteenth century.23 The Tarikh-i Qum thus may be counted as part of aboom in local-history writing, whether biographical or not, that is a discernibletrend starting around 400/1000.
The only work extant for the city of Balkh is also not quite a biographicaldictionary, even if the bulk of its material is biographical in nature.24 There areonly 70 biographies in it, and they are arranged chronologically, not alphabeti-cally. Whereas a preference for large numbers of entries seems to characterizeother works of this genre,25 this does not seem to have been the case here. Theoriginal Arabic version was written in 610/1214, only a few years before thecity's destruction during the Mongol conquest The Persian translation was maderelatively soon after that, in 676/1278.26
The histories of Herat
The city of Herat, now in western Afghanistan, has attracted scholarly attentionabove all for the Timurid period, the ninth/fifteenth century.27 For earlier periods
23. Hasan b. Muhammad b. Hasan Qummi, Kitab ta'rikh Qumm (original version);Hasan b. cAli b. Hasan b. cAbd al-Malik Qummi (translation), ed. Sayyid Jalal ad-DinTihrani. On the work, see A.K.S. Lambton, An account of the Tarikhi Qumm,"Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS) 12 (1948): 586-96.Her more recent "Qum: The evolution of a medieval city," Journal of the Royal AsiaticSociety {JRAS) (1990): 322-39, does not address the text itself, but uses it largelyfor the earlier periods. See the very detailed analysis of this work, its contents andhistory, in Andreas Drechsler, Die Geschichte der Stadt Qum im Mittelalter (650-1350) (Berlin, 1999).
24. Radtke compares Fada'il-i Balkh to the great dictionaries concerningDamascus and Baghdad in that after an introduction on topography, in the main part,biographies follow ("nach einer topografischen Einleitung folgen im HauptteilBiografien," ("Theologen," 536). This is generally correct. However, Radtke fails todistinguish between biography and biographical dictionary.
25. Mottahedeh notes that in the dictionary on Qazwin, there are approximatelythree thousand entries - "a surprisingly large number of entries for a relatively smalltown" ("Administration," 33). Balkh of course was much larger than Qazwin.
26. Abu Bakr b. cAbdallah . . . Waciz-i Balkhi (original author); cAbdallah Muham-mad b. Muhammad.. . Husayni Balkhi (translator), Fada'il-i Balkh. For the historyof the text and a summary of the biographies, see Radtke, Theologen." See also AbuTalib Mir cAbidin, Balkh dartartkh wa adab-ifarsi and U. Berndt's master's thesis,Stadtgeschichten von Balkh. Die Entwicklung der persischen Lokalge-schichtsschreibung dargestellt am Beispiel der Fada'il-i Balh und Tarih-i Sahr-i Balh(Halle, 2000)
27. There is a vast literature on Timurid Herat. On geography, see T. Allen. Onsocial history and "history of notables" as well as religious history, see MariaSubtelny's numerous works. For the end of Timurid dominion over Herat and thebeginning of Safavid rule, see the works of Maria Szuppe. For even later periods, see
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in the city's history, scholarly works are few and far between. If I am not mis-taken, there is no published monograph on the immediate predecessors of theTimurids in Herat, the Kart (or Kurt) rulers.28 The Mongol conquest of the cityand its immediate aftermath have only very recently been studied in somedetail.29 The pre-Mongol history of Herat has yet to be written, and this periodforms the focus of the present study.
During the approximately four and a half centuries prior to the Mongolinvasion of Central Asia, Herat never or almost never was the center of anempire; "never" if the notion of capital city is implied, "almost never" if we takeinto account that the center of an empire may not have been a (capital) city, butsimply the place where the ruler and his retinue were present at a given moment.The city always retained the status of provincial center. Marw, Nishapur, Ghaz-nin, Samarqand, Bukhara have all known their moments of imperial splendor inthe pre-Mongol period, but for Herat, these moments were yet to come. This isof special interest since Herat provides details of provincial life distant from thecourt.
Works written in Arabic
We know that several works of local history on Herat were written during thepre-Mongol period. Katib Chelebi cites five of them by the following authors:(1) Abu Ishaq Ahmad b. Yunus [Yusiif?] al-Bazzaz al-Hafiz, d. 234/848; (2)Ahmad b. Muhammad [b.] Sacid al-Haddad (no date given); (3) Abu Rawh Isa al-Harawi, d. 544/1149-50; (4) Abu Nasr cAbd al-Rahman b. cAbd al-Jabbar al-Qaisi al-Hafiz (no date given); and (5) al-Shaikh Thiqat al-Din cAbd al-Rahmanal-Fami, wa-huwa awwal man sannafa fihi30 (no date given).
N.N. Tumanovich, Gerat v XVI-XVIII vekakh (Moscow, 1989). In contrast, however,for the pre-Mongol history of Herat there is only Heinz Gaube, "Innenstadt undVorstadt. Kontinuitat und Wandel im Stadtbild von Herat zwischen dem 10. und dem15. Jahrhundert," in Giinter Schweizer, ed., Beitrdge zur Geographie orientalischerStadte und Markte (Wiesbaden: TAVO, 1977), 213-41, and his focus on the evolutionof the city's architectural shape. It thus offers little information on political andsocial affairs. Gaube states that Herat did not play an outstanding political role, butwas very prosperous, according to the geographical sources of the fourth/tenthcentury. Gaube used no biographical dictionaries for his study.
28. They are more or less systematically treated in J. Masson Smith, The Historyof the Sarbadar Dynasty 1336-1381 (The Hague, 1970). Some specific aspects(notably relations with Central Asia) are analysed in Jean Aubin, "Le Khanat deCagatai," Turcica 8 (1976): 16-90.
29. Mohsen Zakeri, "The cAyyaran of Khurasan and the Mongol Invasion," inCharles Melville, ed.. Proceedings of the Third European Conference of IranianStudies (Wiesbaden, 1999), 269-76. See also Jiirgen Paul, "L'invasion mongolecomme "revelateur" de la society iranienne," in Denise Aigle, ed., L'Iran face a ladomination mongole (Tehran, 1996), 39-53.
30. Katib Chelebi (Hajji Khalifa), Kashf al-iunun. 1: column 309. The quotation atthe end could mean that he was the first to arrange his material alphabetically (notaccording to generations or classes as had been common practice in the firstcenturies).
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This list necessitates some qualifications based on entries appearing in otherbiographical sources. The name of the best-known author, Fami, for example, isgiven as Abu [Nadr] cAbd al-Rahman b. cAbd al-Jabbar b. cUthman al-Fami inSamcani.31 In Subki it is given as Abu Nasr cAbd al-Rahman b. cAbd al-Jabbarb. cUthman b. Mansur.32 Subki also mentions that Fami's laqab was Thiqat al-Din. Finally, Isfizari calls him Thiqat al-Din Shaykh cAbd al-Rahman-i Fami33
and adds that he has written a book on ancient Herat. Thus, it seems obviousthat the number of authors who wrote on pre-Mongol Herat should be reduced tofour if the last two persons named in the list are one and the same.
As for the others, the name of the first author cited by Chelebi is given[somewhat differently] by Sezgin as Abu Ishaq Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Yasinal-Harawi al-Haddad, with the obituary date as 3S4.34 This date seems better ifone takes into consideration the dates given for Abu Ishaq's teachers on the onehand and those who transmitted from him on the other.33 Safadi names theauthors of two local histories of Herat among his sources, Fami and a person hecalls Abu Ishaq al-Bazzaz, without giving the latter's complete name or hisdates. Safadi knows, by the way, neither an Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Yasin (asmentioned by Dhahabi) nor an Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Sacid (as mentioned byKatib Chelebi).36 On the other hand, a person called Ahmad b. Muhammad b.Sacid Abu Ishaq al-Harawi is mentioned in Dhahabi; this man is said to havetransmitted an unreliable (forged?) hadith in Samarqand during the 350s/960s.37 Itis thus altogether possible that the two first authors on the list quoted are the
31 . Samcani, Ansab, 10: 143. Sam'ani does not mention that Fami is the author ofa work on the history of Herat. Since the two were contemporaries and since Samcanidoes not give a date for Fami's death (he begins by "He was bom in" but omits thedate), this could be explained by the simple fact that Fami's work had not yet beenpublished. This conclusion is corroborated by the fact that Samcani nowhere seems toquote Fami.
32. Subki, Tabaqat al-shafi'iya (Cairo, 1386/1967) 7: 105f. Subki is quoting hismaster Dhahabi as having said that Fami's work was incomplete, wa-laysa ta'rikhahubi-mustawcab.
33. Muhammad Isfizari, Rawzat al-jannat fl awsaf madinat Harat (Tehran,1338/1959) 1: 42.
34. GAS 1: 351, no. 3.
35. See Muhammad b. Ahmad Dhahabi, Tadhkirat al-huffaz (Haydarabad, 1375/1955) 3: 93. The same author also gives the earlier date, however, see his Mizan al-i'tidal, 1: 70 (no. 565).
36. Khalil b. Aybak Safadi, al-Wafi bi'l-Wafayat, vol. 1, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul,1930), 48. Fami has an entry in Safadi vol. 18, ed. Fu'ad Sayyid, 155), withreferences to other dictionaries. Safadi's main source in this case seems however tohave been Subki. See also vol. 7, ed. Ihsan Abbas (Wiesbaden, 1969) and vol. 8, ed.Mohammed Yousef Najm (Wiesbaden, 1971), containing the men named Ahmad.Since the authors in question are not found under their given names, it would be purechance if one came across a quotation from their works in Safadi's giganticcompilation.
37. Muhammad b. Ahmad Dhahabi, Mizan al-ictidal, ed. A. N. Jamici (Cairo,1325/1907), 1: 65, no. 531.
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same, which, if so, would reduce the number of local histories written on pre-Mongol Herat to only three.
As for the third book on Katib Chelebi's list, it is hard for the time being totell what status should be ascribed to it. Subki mentions Abu Rawh amongthose who transmitted hadith from Fami; in this respect, Subki classes AbuRawh alongside Samcani.38 He does not credit him with a work on local history,however.39 '
Thus, we cannot decide at present whether we can start with two or threeworks written on the local history of Herat. But it is certain that all works dis-cussed so far belonged to the same literary genre: local biographical dictionarieson the ulema who made their home or taught hadith at one time or other in thecity, including people renowned for extraordinary piety, with some occasionalwomen mentioned either in the text itself or in a separate section.
Later authors, especially those of the great compendia written in the Mam-luk dominions in the seventh/thirteenth, eighth/fourteenth, and ninth/fifteenthcenturies, often quote the sources for their entries. It seems reasonable to suggestthat this should hold true for earlier compilers as well. Above all, numerous quo-tations from Abu Ishaq (first on the Chelebi list above) should occur not only inSamcani's compilation, but in the works of later authors as well. Samcani, how-ever, appears not to have seen Abu Ishaq's book, and does not even mention AbuIshaq.40 In other works like Samcani's, there are only brief citations, sufficientenough to determine that the work in question really existed and that it was abiographical dictionary.41
Works written in Persian
To the two or three works written in Arabic—all of them biographical diction-aries—some books written in Persian should be added. The oldest of these, stem-
38. Subki, Tabaqat, 7: 105-6.
39. A possible explanation for this would be that Katib Chelebi knew Fami's bookin a riwaya going back to Abu Rawh. Even a copy made by Abu Rawh could be quotedas a separate work if the copyist had taken such liberties with the text as werecommon even in the world of hadith.
40. He is included neither under Bazzaz nor under Haddad nor under Harawl. For theHeratis, Samcani seems to rely above all on his personal acquaintances and, for earliergenerations, on the work of cAbdallah al-Hakim on Nishapur. Generally speaking, itis hard to resist the impression that ulema from Transoxiana are better served bySamcani since he has made extensive use of works on Samarqand, Bukhara, and Nasaf(by Idrisi, Ghunjar, and Mustaghfiri in that order, see the entries on thecorresponding authors in GAS). It is therefore tempting to conclude that in Sam'ani'sday, none of the works on Herat had yet gained wide circulation. Anotherexplanation—in the case of Abu Ishaq—may be that this author apparently did notenjoy a very good reputation, see Dhahabi, MTzan, 1: 70 and Tadhkira, 3: 93 .Dhahabi's ultimate source in this evidently was Idrisi: qala'l-Idrisi kana yahfuzusami'tu ahla baladihi yat'anuna fthi la yardawnahu, "Idrisi said: He knew the Qur'anby heart. I heard his fellow townsmen denigrate him. They did not accept him [as atransmitter of hadith]."
41 . GAS, 1: 351.
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ming from the eighth/fourteenth century, is the Tarikh-namah-i Harat writtenby Sayfi;42 the next dates to the ninth/fifteenth century.43 Both books belong toan altogether different literary genre, being essentially dynastic in outlook.44
Sayfi is concerned mostly with the history of the muluk Kart, the dynasty hewas writing for, whereas Isfizari gives more details for earlier periods eventhough his focus is on Timur and the Timurids. For both, the paragons of theIslamic sciences no longer occupy center stage.
To the two works just mentioned, another complex of sources must beadded. These belong to yet another strand of local history, namely, guides for pil-grims visiting the tombs and shrines of "holy" men and women. This collectionof sources, comprising three separate texts, is called Risala-yi mazarat-i Harat.The first text in the collection, which is the only one of interest to this paper,goes down to the Timurid period.45 This literary genre [of guide books] is char-acterized by biographies which border on hagiography. Most of the entries aredevoted to saintly persons venerated in the region. Often, the tombs and shrinesare described in some detail. The focus otherwise is on the protocol, that is, theright time and method of making a visit. The texts are clearly directed at piouspersons performing ziyarat or else specialists acting as guides to such persons.The text on Herat seems to be one of the earliest specimens of this genre in theregion.46
Sayfi provides some information on his sources. Among the authors hequotes, Fami seems to be the only one on the list established by Katib Chelebi.This is the case with the Rawzat, as well. Although Sayfi cites two Arabicworks among his sources—namely by the imam Abu Ishaq Ahmad b. Yasin andThiqat al-Din Shaykh cAbd al-Rahman-i Fami—only the second author is actu-ally referred to in the text of his book. Both Sayfi and Isfizari provide the foun-dation Iegend(s) for Herat, of which there are several versions, not all of themcompatible with one another,47 Isfizari further quotes some prophetic traditionspraising Herat over neighboring towns. Such traditions were quite common in
42. Sayfi Harawi, Tarikh-nama-yi Harat ed. M. Z. Siddiqi (Calcutta 1944). For afirst approach to this very valuable, but nearly unstudied work, see Lawrence Potter,The Kart Dynasty of Herat: Religion and Politics in Medieval Iran (PhD diss.,Columbia University, 1992) and Mohsen Zakeri, "The 'Ayyaran of Khurasan."
43. Isfizari, Rawdat al-jannat.
44. See the brief remarks in A.K.S. Lambton, "Persian local histories," in B. S.Amoretti and Lucia Rostagno, Yadnama in memoria di Alessandro Bausani (Rome,1991), 230.
45. The collection was compiled and edited by Fikri-yi Saljuqi (Kabul, n.d.) Thefirst text is called Maqsad al-iqbal-i sultaniya and the author calls himself AmirSayyid cAbdallah al-Husayni macruf bi-Asil al-Din Waciz-i Harawi. The other twotexts refer to much later periods.
46. In the case of Samarqand, for instance, local "historical" writing seems to haveevolved at a somewhat slower pace. The "Persian Qandiyya" which dates to the secondhalf of the tenth/sixteenth century is not fully a guide for pilgrims; that stage isachieved only with the "Samariyya" written in the nineteenth century. See myHistories of Samarqand" for a discussion of this. For Balkh, see Ulrike Berndt,Stadtgeschichten von Balh.
47. Sayfi, 25; Isfizari, 1: 142. Fami is further mentioned in Sayfi, 142.
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the introductions to biographical dictionaries.48 Elsewhere, Sayfi relies on Famifor information from the pre-Mongol period, especially for a list of governors forthe entire Samanid period49 plus some very brief accounts of events.50 We mayconclude from this, thatFami's book was still extant in the ninth/fifteenth cen-tury, but that it almost certainly was the only Arabic source still available toTimurid-era and later authors; and if reference is made to them in later works, wemay surmise that they are quoted via Fami.
In the later "guides for pilgrims," no reference is made to pre-Mongol Arabicbiographical dictionaries. For biographies (or hagiographies) from this period,the most prominent source is the compilation on sufis' lives by cAbdallahAnsari.51
Thus, from the undoubtedly large body of local biographical dictionarieswritten for pre-Mongol Herat, we have at our disposal only a few small frag-ments, drawn almost certainly from the introduction to Fami, transmitted by theauthors of more dynastically oriented Persian works from the Kartid and Timuridperiods. Because only individual quotations can be ascertained in the later biogra-phical compilations, there is insufficient material to allow for quantitative orother investigation.
In sum, what remains from all this literature is hardly impressive. But thisdoes not mean we have to abandon these fragments. Instead, it is possible tomake something of these fragments in order to find out what the situation mayhave been in Herat from the Samanid fourth/tenth century down to thesixth/twelfth century, shortly before the Mongol invasion.
Histories of Herat — histories of notables
It has often been said that local historiography is of special interest since itoffers a deeper view of society; that the authors knew their little worlds, and thatthey wrote from a vantage point well away from the court and its influences.Their perspectives, although in some respects narrower than that of authors of
48. Isfizari, 1: 87, 94.
49. The list occurs at the beginning of the part devoted to "history" in a narrowersense, 1: 378-87. At the end of this list, the author remarks that up to this point,Fami has been transmitting a text by Abu cUbaid-i Mu'addib. He adds that there isanother version (riwaya) in the book of Abu Ishaq al-Haddad; however, he does notgive this version. If he did know it, it may have come down to him through Fami.
Abu cUbaid Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Abi cUbaid al-cAbdi al-Mu'addib al-Harawi isknown to Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat al-acyan, 1: 79 (no. 35) who mentions him ashaving authored a Kitab al-gharibayn. No work connected with local history isattributed to this author. Lists of governors are not unique to this author; there isanother list, for instance, in the Tarilch Jurjan.
50. Isfizari, 2: 49-55. It thus seems that both books, Fami's and before him AbuIshaq's, consisted not only of biographical notices, but also had an introduction aswas current in this literary genre; fada'il were common stuff in these introductions.Short notices on events are not so frequently encountered, there is, however, asection on hawadis. in Ibn Funduq, TarXkh-i Bayhaq.
51 . cAbdallah Ansari, Tabaqat al-suflya. This work is sometimes called Tabaqat-imashayikh-i Hardt in our source.
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general (or imperial) history, may by the same token, yield insights into theparochial world of towns and even individual quarters. In the case of Herat, thisinterest is further enhanced by the fact that the city was to achieve imperialgrandeur only in the post-Mongol period, as the center of a regional state firstunder the muluk Kart in the fourtheenth century, and, later on, as the brilliantcenter of Timurid imperial culture in the fifteenth century. Before (and after)these two centuries, Herat was a provincial town. Its provincial character shouldin itself be sufficient reason to encourage efforts to uncover all we can of thecity's history. Moreover, we are spared the risk of getting lost in the labyrin-thine minutiae of dynastic history.
The general theme of the following section is the relationship between aprovincial town or city and a central government. This relationship should per-haps not be discussed as a case of urban autonomy, which tends to put too muchstress on formal and legal arrangements.32 The issue is not "urban autonomy"vs. "pure submission to the ruler." The city of Herat certainly was not "autono-mous" if we are take this expression in its original meaning. There was no pos-sibility, and in fact no concept, of the city or of any body in the city debatingand passing laws; there was no municipality and no senate. On the other hand,Herat's inhabitants were neither without rights nor without influence. In thesources, we come across town dwellers (should we call them citizens?), above allnotables,53 who were in the habit of looking after their own affairs as well as
52. This is of course an allusion to Max Weber's "gesatzte Regeln." Withouttaking issue here with the way Weber viewed Islam and Muslim history, we shouldkeep in mind that he had set out to explain why the scientific, industrial, and politicalevolution characterizing European modernity took place in the West (and nowhereelse). This made him take the Western evolution as a model and developmentselsewhere as aberrations (to grossly oversimplify). In order to achieve this, heproceeded—perhaps a little too quickly—to compare the West and the East on aphenomenological level. But it is important to compare the functioning of societiesafter having studied them on their own terms. The much debated question of "urbanautonomy" is not a fit subject of comparison as long as we have no real understandingof how a town interrelated with the central government, the surrounding countrysideand so on, and above all, how it functioned intra muros, how social action andactivity was organized. I do not hesitate to say that, in spite of real progress in thelast decades, we are still far from such an understanding. For a debate of Max Weber'sview of Islam and the "Islamic city" see my "Max Weber und die islamische Stadt"(forthcoming).
53. I prefer not to use "patricians" because this evokes "plebeians" on the otherside, and thus tends to produce a binary opposition along what could be interpreted asa class divide. Also, because "patricians" is too closely associated with ancientRoman history, I cannot imagine a way of dissociating the term from that context.Bulliet himself introduced it only tentatively. The term "notables" to denote a givensection of urban society was introduced into scholarship on Muslim societies by A.Hourani in "Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables" first published in W. R.Polk and R. L. Chambers, Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East (Chicago,1968) and reprinted in 1981 in A. Hqurani, The Emergence of the Modern MiddleEast: Collected Papers. Besides the discussion in Richard Bulliet, The Patricians ofNishapur (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), and his "Local Politics in Eastern Iran under theGhaznavids and Seljuqs, "Iranian Studies 11 (1978): 35-56, mention must be made ofIra M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge, 1988) with further
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those of the city without asking whether they were legally entitled to do so.Often they were driven by sheer necessity: the State, the central government, theruler and his retinue (or whatver we may call their counterparts) were much toofar away and frequently too weak to cope with dangerous situations arising justoutside the city walls, more often than not in the form of a hostile army.
In the case of Herat, our methodological choice is greatly constrained by thefragmentary character of what remains of the local historiographical tradition.Here, we will simply add these fragments to other available sources mostly fromgeneral historiography, especially the work of Ibn al-Athir. The study isinformed, however, by what has been learned in the study of other cities of eas-tern Iran. To summarize very briefly, previous studies have shown that in manyIranian cities (and cities in other parts of the Muslim world as well) there wasindeed a group who acted as spokesmen for the city as a whole, conducting talkswith the central government, haggling over taxes and the like. These people, thecity notables (such terms as a'yan in Arabic, buzurgan, mihtaran in Persian andothers were used) were by no means a clearly delimited socio-economic group.The history of these families can be traced in the biographical dictionaries up toa point, and that is indeed what has been done in a number of cases, the mostprominent example being Bulliet's Patricians of Nishapur, a painstakinglydetailed quantitative analysis of the biographical entries yielding family and otherties, as well as hereditary alliances and hostilities between families. The schoolof law as a vehicle for promoting family interests has also been an importantissue.54 Another approach has been to take seriously the seemingly meaninglessepithets included in most of the entries and this has lent new insight into thedevelopment of intellectual and spiritual currents.55 These are but two examplesof what can be done with the biographical dictionary as a source for the socialand intellectual history of the medieval Muslim world. Quantitative methodshave been used in other contexts as well on the material offered by the biogra-phical dictionary.56
There is much to be done in this field and other cities should certainly beexamined—though in the case of Herat, there are no viable options because ofthe scarcity of material. It can safely be assumed, however, that the possibilitiesinherent in general historiography for the study of local history have by nomeans been fully exploited. It should be possible to shift their historical per-spective from imperial/central to local.
references to his earlier work, and of Boaz Shoshan, "'The Politics of Notables' inMedieval Islam, " in Asian and Arican Studies 20 (1986): 179-215. I have myselfdiscussed the "politics of notables" extensively in my Herrscher, Gemeinwesen,Vermittler: Ostiran und Transoxanien in vormongolischer Zeit (Beirut/Stuttgart,1986).
54. As a recent example, see N. Tsafrir, "The Beginnings of the Hanafi school."
55. See Jacqueline Chabbi, "Remarques sur le developpement historique desmouvements ascetiques et mystiques au Khurasan," Studia Islamica 46 (1977): 5-77.
56. For a discussion of these attempts, see Humphreys, Islamic History (thepassage quoted in note 1 above).
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The Seljuq conquest and other examples
How did the city behave when it was useless to appeal to the centralgovernment? A look at the way the Heratis responded to the Seljuq conquest ofKhurasan will serve as a first example. During the final stages of Ghaznavid ruleover Khurasan, many towns and cities were left to act according to their ownjudgement for all practical purposes. Thus, the notables of Herat went out tomeet the Seljuq commanders when they first appeared outside the city gates inorder to come to some arrangement with them. Some time later, when theGhaznavid Mascud succeeded in regaining control over much of the province, thenotables chose to leave the city. This might be explained by the fact that in itsstruggle for the city against the Seljuqs, the Ghaznavid army behaved very muchas if it was on enemy territory. The notables of Herat thus had no reason toremain loyal to the Ghaznavids.57
When the Seljuqs defeated Mas'ud at Dandanaqan in 432/1040, they met withlittle resistance to further occupation of Khurasan. Most cities opened their gateswithout even token resistance.58 Apparently, immediately after the Seljuq vic-tory, Prince Bayghu entered Herat.59 But when the Heratis learned about a victorywon by the Ghaznavid Sultan Mawdud (who succeeded Mascud after the latter'sassassination by the leaders of his army), they rose in revolt and drove the Sel-juqs out of town.60 The following events are related not by Ibn al-Athir, but byour only source for this event, Fami, as reported in Isfizari. Fami says that afterthis victory over the Turks, there was disorder in the city until the shaykh andra'Ts Abu Muhammad b. cUsm b. Abi'l-0Abbas al-cUsmi "took control andbegan to usurp power in the city and the region without being legitimized by a
57. See Abu'1-Fadl Bayhaqi, Tankh-i Bayhaqi (Tehran 1324/1955), 588, but seethe following note for a general appreciation of this source's biases.
58. This had already been the case before the final disaster. Events at Nishapursome years before Dandanaqan are particularly well documented in a passage in Bay-haqi, translated by C. E. Bosworth in The Ghaznavids (Edinburgh, 1963), 252ff.However, there might be reason to read this passage with more caution for it shouldnot be taken at face value. It is presented as the reproduction of a letter written by afaithful servant of Mascud's court to his sultan. In his letter, he gives an account ofthe city's surrender to the Seljuqs. The notables had held a meeting where they hadfinally decided not to resist the Turkish onslaught. They knew that they could notexpect any help from the Ghaznavid governor who had already left together with thegarrison. The octagenarian qadi Sacid then said that on principle,- the city should notresist: Subjects are not expected to intervene in military affairs, the city's master isMascud, and it is his task to defend it. If he is unable to do so, the citizens shouldaccept the new rule. This report must be read in the context of the whole book; as isgenerally known, Bayhaqi wanted to show that Mascud was responsible for the loss ofKhurasan.
59. Ibn al-Athir, 9: 483. Also Isfizari, 1: 387ff. The Ghaznavid garrison waspractically non-existent. This conclusion was reached already by Laugier deBeaurecueil, Khwadje 'Abdullah Ansari (396-481 H/1006-1089), mystique hanbalite(Beirut, 1965), 85. His conjecture is supported by the simple statement in Isfizarithat Herat was defenseless after Dandanaqan, 1:388 (quoting Fami).
60. Ibn al-Athir, 9: 488. This cannot be taken to mean that this was a pro-Ghaznavid movement; this would not fit with the Heratis' previous behavior.
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permit or investiture from the sultan."61 Soon after, he was killed in battle alongwith the Ghaznavid commander of a neighboring fortress. His brother Rafic
succeeded him, only to be killed in turn by his own lieutenant. The Seljuqsreturned every year, but were unable to take the city and they could only laywaste the region. Finally, the Heratis, weakened by hunger, were unable to holdout and had to surrender. Their fierce and proud resistance is affirmed by Ibn al-Athir, who reports that in 434/1042-3, Toghril himself laid siege to the city"because its inhabitants had, up to that point, stubbornly persisted in defendingtheir town and recognizing Mawdud b. Mascud. But even against him [Toghril],the Heratis defended themselves, despite the havoc wrought in the region."62 It isimpossible to tell how long this situation persisted. In 456/1064, Alp Arslandrove his uncle Bayghu out of Herat; the latter must thus have entered the citysometime before.63
In short, Herat was able to resist the Seljuqs for several years without assis-tance from the outside by relying only on its own forces. They were led by men,some of whom sprang from a prominent family of local notables. It is not at allsurprising that these leaders are called "usurpers" in the sources. According toprevailing theories of kingship, their power was illegitimate. This does not seemto have mattered to the citizens of Herat who remained loyal to them during along siege. Even if it was common fear of the "Ghuzz" (the Seljuqs) that boundthe Heratis to their leaders, as is suggested by Ibn al-Athir, the fact of their loy-alty in itself is remarkable enough.
What is more, this situation perhaps was more common in the region thanit may seem to modern readers who may be used to the autonomy/submissiondichotomy discussed above.
A second example illustrating the relationship between a provincial city andthe central government takes us back to Samanid times. We are told that in306/918-9 Ahmad b. Sahl was to take his post as governor of Herat.64 But
61.1sfizari, 1:, 388 (dated 432/1040-1). [...] barkhast wa bi manshur wa mith&laghaz-i taghallub nihad wa bar shahr wa wilayat mustawli shud. The Usmi family isrepresented by Abu cAbd Allah b. Abi Dhul al-Usmi in Samcani. This is Muhammad b .al-cAbbas b. Ahmad [...] al-Dabbi al-Usmi, a noted hadith transmitter and prominentscholar. He is given the title ra'Ts. He died in Safar 378 (late-May 988) Kitab al-Ansab 4: 204-6. This al-Usmi is probably a forebear of the Abu Muhammadmentioned by Fami. It is evident from Samcani that the al-Usmi family hadlandholdings. This representative of the family allegedly spent all the tithe (,'ushr)due from these holdings on charity so that most of the city's paupers were being fedby him. This Bu cAbdallah-i Bu Dhul is also mentioned in Ansari, Tabaqat al-suftya,597 as ra'Ts-i Harat, as watt and as "father of the Heratis" (pidar-i Harawigan). Thetitle ra'Ts does not necessarily denote an official position in my view. See myHerrscher, Gemeinwesen, Vermittler.
62. Ibn al-Athir, 9: 506.
63. Ibn al-Athir, 10: 34. See also Isfizari, 1: 388-89. No date is given forBayghu's occupation of Herat.
64. Ahmad b. Sahl came from an old family of Iranian noblemen from the Marwoasis. Soon after his appointment to Herat, he rebelled against his Samanid overlordswho "had made promises which they did not keep afterwards." The history of hisrevolt is retraced in Ibn al-Athir, 8: 117-118. See also C. E. Bosworth, "Ahmad b .
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because it was not enough simply to be appointed by the amir, the central ruleror overlord, in order to be accepted, the new governor was obliged to lay siege tothe city for 20 days. After he and his immediate successor had departed, "theHeratis [elected] cAbd al-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Shah as amir, who held thisposition for one year and fifty days."65 Some years and several governors later,"the people of Herat chose Abu cAmr b. Sacid b. 'Abdallah b. cUsm al-Dabbi asamir,"66 but we are not told how long his tenure lasted. From Ibn Hawqal, wesee that the inhabitants of Herat (probably the notables) did not readily submit tothe governors sent by the Samanid ruler, who was based a long way from Heratin Bukhara. They drove out the governor Muhammad b. al-Jarrah with whomthey obviously had quarrelled, and when he left town, it appears that he tooksome notables as hostages. Later, what was seen as a revolt on the part of theHeratis was quelled with blood.67
The list of governors transmitted by Isfizari gives the impression that theSamanids never held absolute control over the city which had become one of themost important places in the crucial province of Khurasan. The notables haddecisive influence, were able to choose their own governors and close the citygates to governors appointed by the Samanid ruler if these appointees were notto their liking; they even fought them and concluded treaties with them to endsieges.68
Military resources: local militias
What military resources did the local notables have at their disposal as cityleaders? Was there a kind of urban militia or a general military service required ofthe able-bodied male population in times of need, or were there professionalsoldiers? It is inconceivable that a city could have acted so independently if it hadbeen defenseless.
Sahl b. HaSem," in EIr 1: 643-44 and my study The State and the Military: The Sama-nid Case (Bloomington, IN: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1994).
65. Isfizari, 1: 384.
66. Ibid. Both quotations are taken from the list of governors Isfizari transmitsfrom Fami who in turn had it from Abu eUbaid-i Mu'addib. I have not been able totrace the elected persons, but the nisba "Dabbi" is also given to one of the leadingfamilies in Herat, the Usmis (see note 61). The genealogy given for therepresentative of the family in Samcani does not help in identifying these two amirs.
67. Ibn Hawqal, Abu 1-Qasim, Kitab al-masalik wa'l-mamalik, (Leiden, 1892), 2:437-38. Isfizari dates this event 341/952-3 (1: 385-86. Ibn Hawqal visited Herat in357/968 (Z.V. Togan, "Herat," Islam Ansiklopedisi, 5: 430-31) and found the wallsdestroyed by order of the Samanid ruler.
68. Strained relations between the central government and its appointees on theone hand and the notables of Herat on the other are alluded to in a brief reference incUtbi/Jurfadhaqani: Abu cAli Simjur and Fa'iq, two military commanders with all thefeatures characterizing warlords, went to Herat "in order to save this city from itsstubborn resistance and to take the regional army with them," see Tarjuma-yi tarikh-iYamlni, (Tehran, 1334/1955), 105.
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First of all, there were the city walls, impressive structures in the case ofHerat69 But to hold out in a siege over several months or through intermittentsiege warfare over several years, walls were not enough. Men were needed, menwho knew how to fight.
The sources are not very forthcoming on this matter. There are only a few bitsof information if we look only at the city of Herat; but there is more infor-mation if we extrapolate from research done on other regions of eastern Iran. Thefirst likely group of fighting men mentioned in the sources is the cayyars.10 Anumber of them (the source gives their number as fourteen) were killed in anuprising during the reign of Nasr b. Ahmad (301-331/914-943).71 Such groupswere very common in Sistan province72 and active also in Khurasan and Trans-oxiana.73 Another instance of a "civilian" group in Herat armed and involved inmilitary activities is found in Zayn al-akhbar which reports that the Heratisappointed Abu cAli Simjur "commander of the militias of Nishapur, Herat, and
69. It is perhaps significant that the Heratis, in their foundation legends, did notascribe the building of their formidable walls to some king, not even a mythical onesuch as one of the well-known empire builders of Iranian mythical history. Insteadthey ascribed them to the designs and strategems of a "notable" woman, thus to alocal initiative. From the very beginning, the city walls are thus seen to serve as adefense against "unjust" rulers, and more particularly against the (always or typically)greedy taxation policy of the central government. External enemies are notnecessarily the main concern. It should be noted that rulers not residing in a city aremore prone to tear down its walls than to repair them.
70. The early Islamic history of this group is now presented in Mohsen Zakeri,Sasanid Soldiers in Early Muslim Society. The Origins of 'Ayyaran and Futuwwa(Wiesbaden, 1995). For the decisive role 'ayyar groups had in Herat in the periodimmediately following the Mongol conquest, see Zakeri, "The cAyyaran of Khurasanand the Mongol Invasion. "
71 . Isfizari, 1:385. The Risala-yi mazardt-i Harat would lead one to believe thatthere were cayyar groups always active.. In the time of Abu Muslim, a woman lived inHarat called Bibi Sitti. "At the beginning of her [mystical] life, she had a husbandcalled Abu Nasr, a man who roamed around at night (shab-raw). Both of them wereengaged in 'ayyarff' (11). In this context, the term probably is to be understood asrobbery. It is perhaps worth noting that it was considered possible for women to becayydran.
72. Their history is told in the Tarikh-i Sistan where their activities take up a goodportion of the text. See the article by C.E. Bosworth in this issue.
73. See for instance Balcami, Tdrlkh-i Bal'ami, 952, 1203. They became a plagueafter the Seljuq victory at Dandanaqan. (See Ibn al-Athir 9: 483.) Sometimes, theymay have been integrated into the "official" army, or at least such an integration mayhave been attempted, as shown in Bukhara in al-Qadi b. Zubair, Kitab al-dhakha'ir wal-tuhaf (Kuwait, 1959), 145. See also Bosworth's translation of this text in Analleged embassy from the Emperor of China to the Amir Nasr b. Ahmad: Acontribution to Samanid history," in M. Minovi and I. Afshar, eds., Yadnama-yiIranT-yi MTnurski (Tehran, 1969), 17-29. They participated in the defense of Balkhagainst the Seljuqs, this time at the command of the Ghaznavid governor (Bayhaqi,Tarikh-i Bayhaqi, 643). They fought at the side of the "last Samanid" against theQarakhanids at Samarqand, see Gardizi, Zayn al-akhbar (Tehran, 1347/1969), 176.These are just a few examples. See also my Herrscher, Gemeinwesen, Vermittler formore.
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Quhistan."74 In yet another instance, the "army of this region" is mentioned,implying Herat75 It is clear that Herat (the city and the region taken together)had its own armed force. This would not have been exceptional although it mayhave been more an auxiliary force than one destined for warfare in distanttheaters. Nevertheless, we have to conclude that these forces were sufficientlymotivated, trained, equipped, and numerous to face the Seljuqs and their dreadedarmy in combat over a period of several years. These forces certainly were notmade up of professional soldiers, and they probably did not receive regular pay.Moreover, they cannot have been military slaves—mis is evident from the termsused for them. We can thus add Herat to those cases, exceptional we are told,where there were armed citizens or else, citizen armies76 of real military—albeitlocal—significance. In my view, it is by no means accidental that such informa-tion is transmitted mainly in local rather than general histories, even if it is notaltogether absent from the latter type as well.
Who were the leaders of the city in its dealings with the central government,and, more particularly, who were the leaders of the city's armed forces? I haveonly been able to identify one of the local leaders. This comes from an episodethat took place in 491/1098 in which the Seljuq empire was shaken by a seriouscrisis. For a time, the pretender Barkyaruq was able to impose himself as sultan.But he was suspected of relying on the help of the Ismailis, the Batinis, whomevery good Muslim execrated. He appointed as amir to govern Herat a man whowas thought to be a Batini. The amir and his retinue (all believed to be Batinis)decided on a rather crude method of collecting taxes. No one was allowed to takehis grain home from the field before he had resolved his fiscal situation. In thisway he expected to divert most of the grain to the fortress and into the gov-ernor's granaries.77 At this point, the mihtarn of the city, cAbd al-Hadi b. cAbdAllah Ansari,79 took the initiative. He mobilized the townspeople, among whom
74. Gardizi, 165. On Abu cAli, see note 68.
75. See above, note 68
76. The question of military slavery cannot be addressed in this context. I amreferring here to a remark by Michael Cook that "[I]t is remarkably hard to find inIslamic history instances of what might be called citizen armies—armies locallyrecruited, by a state identified with the area in question, from a settled population thatwas not tribal" (Michael Cook, "Islam: A Comment" in Jean Baechler, et. al., eds.,Europe and the Rise of Capitalism [Oxford, 1988], 133). It seems to me that we are soused to placing all military activities within the realm of the state that such forces asthose mentioned for Herat are likely to escape our attention. The Herati "army" cer-tainly was not recruited by a "state," however identified, since it was at least occa-sionally actively engaged in fighting against men serving this very state (in the per-son of the Samanid ruler).
77. Isfizari, 2: 54.This was perhaps not as exceptional as we might think at first.Lambton tells a very similar story in Landlord and Peasant (Oxford, 1969), 307-308.
78. This term is usually used to denote the most respected person in a given place.No official appointment is necessary. The title shaykh al-islam, used for the father ofthe hero of the following story, cAbdallah Ansari, may be seen as the religiouscounterpart of mihtar.
79. Aside from this identification, we have little information on cAbd al-HadiAnsari. He is not mentioned in the biography devoted to his father in Jami's Nafahat
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he had great authority, and together they drove the governor out of town. Butafter a time, the movement degenerated into pillaging, and other notables askedcAbd al-Hadi to send somebody in order to calm the excited mob. When he did,people left the inner town (quhandiz) where they had been attacking the fortress(qalca), and in the stampede that ensued, more than one hundred people weretrampled to death. In the next few days, 'asablya confrontations took place80
which enabled the amir to re-enter the city. He tracked down cAbd al-Hadi andhanged a hundred or so rebels (javanan, literally "young men," a term close inmeaning to cayyar). When the amir's men arrested cAbd al-Hadi, they killedhim (at the beginning of 493/mid-November 1099). Some members of his fam-ily who had also been apprehended were released by Sultan Sanjar later the sameyear.
cAbd al-Hadi without doubt was a descendant, and perhaps a son of the well-known Herati shaykh cAbd Allah Ansari, the pir-i Harat*1 Although thisshaykh distanced himself from the cares of the world,82 cAbd al-Hadi evidentlyplayed a leading part in public life. In part this is shown by the religiouslegitimacy he was able to assign to the uprising on the one hand, and by hispersonal authority in the city, on the other. In this story we again find a kind ofpopular "militia" at the command (more or less) of a notable, followed by theexecution of "young men" after the movement had dissipated. This story may betaken as evidence that these groups had survived all through the Seljuq period.
At the beginning of the sixth/twelfth century, the leaders of mystical familiesactive in Khurasan had begun to take more interest in popular movements andpolitical affairs than their predecessors. It is no accident then that we find a mem-ber of such a family at the head of the uprising against the amir appointed toHerat by Sultan Barkyaruq.
In sum, the notables in Herat were able to maintain a certain measure of con-trol over local affairs throughout the Samanid, Ghaznavid, and Seljuq periods(fourth/tenth to the sixth/twelfth century, approximately). Rather than being
~al-uns. He is mentioned, though, in the Risala-yi mazarat-i Harat, where he is givenhis own entry that confirms the year of his death as 493/1099-1100. This shortbiography says, "When the Batinis ruled over Herat, they caused him much grief, andfinally killed him in the citadel. They buried him in the same spot but some dayslater, these disorders came to an end, and his body was exhumed from that burialground and transferred to Gazurgah" (34). It is difficult to tell whether the author isrelying here on material transmitted by Fami; another possible source could be afamily and/or a shrine tradition.
80. It is well known that in practically all cities of Khurasan (and in many otherplaces throughout Iran) during the pre-Mongol period, confrontations were continu-ous, often serious enough to cause bloodshed, between two, rarely three, parties inthe city. These parties were sometimes defined by religious markers such as a lawschool. The fights themselves are called ta'assub, 'asabiya being the term used forwhat united the fighting parties. The most prominent example is the city of Nishapur,which met an untimely end in struggles of this kind. See Bulliet, The Patricians ofNishapur.
81. The Risala-yi mazarat-i Harat states explicitly that cAbd al-Hadi is the son ofthe celebrated shaikh.
82. See S. Laugier de Beaurecueil, Khwadje 'Abdullah Ansari.
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entirely subject to their despotic rulers, they were prepared to fight the governorssent in by these rulers. According to our sources, during the entire period theyhad armed groups at their disposal, young men who formed a kind of urban mili-tia powerful enough even to hold out against the Seljuq army under Toghril. Allthe same, Herat does not seem to have aspired to "independence;" for the name ofsome ruler was always invoked during Friday prayers.83 With the ruler far away,the notables were the most perceptible influence in the city. The governor wasobviously better off maintaining a working relationship with them or, in case ofconflict, coming to terms with them. The overall impression is that the city wasself-assured, confident of its own means, its walls, and its men, and not about tobe pushed around.
On the eve of the Mongol invasion
From 536/1141 onwards, Seljuq power was breaking down in Khurasan.84 In545/1150-1, Ghurid troops took Herat. They had been called in, so we are told,by "the city people."85 This is not altogether impossible—it is reminiscent ofthe times when the notables elected their own amir during the Samanid period.Certainly, not all of the "city people" were involved in calling in the Ghurids.The Herati notables chose, in those troubled times, a power that they hopedwould be strong enough to fend off the Ghuzz (Seljuq) Turks, who had estab-lished themselves in the region.86 But apparently, the Ghurids were either unable
83. This probably is the background to the information that the Heratis stayedloyal to Sultan Mawdud b. Mas'ud. See above, notes 60 and 62
84. For roughly a century preceding the Mongol invasion, the Persian sourcesprovide little information about Herat. This is not surprising: Fami wrote his bookabout 1130 CE (if we presume that Samcani did not know it because it had not yet beenpublished), and other books, if they were ever written, did not survive the destructionof the city at the hands of the Mongols. The principal source for the followingsection is Ibn al-Athir who does not reveal his sources. Florian Schwarz has shownthat Ibn al-Athir must have used some "History of Nishapur" (a regional dynastichistory) for information about Ay Aba (a warlord of Nishapur and one of thecontenders for power in the second half of the sixth/twelfth century) and hissuccessors. See Florian Schwarz, Der Sultan von Hurasan (masters thesis, Tiibingen,1993). (I am grateful to Florian Schwarz for providing me with a copy of this work.) Iconsider 536/1141 to mark the beginning of the end for the Seljuqs because in thatyear, Sanjar was utterly defeated by the Qarakhitay (near Samarqand), and this lossseems to have done irreparable damage to his hayba (authority of rulership). Variousregional dynasties—at least in theory subservient to Seljuq overlordship—begantheir bid for independence at that moment, among them, of course, the Khwarazm-shah.
85. Ibn al-Athir, 11: 151. The Ghurids were a regional dynasty based in what isnow central Afghanistan and one of the major players in Khurasan in this period.Their history is best followed in Muhammad Abdulghafur, The Ghorids. History,Culture and Administation (Doctoral dissertation, Hamburg, 1960).
86. It is well known that some Ghuzz took Sultan Sanjar prisoner in 1153 CE; hespent three years in captivity. The questions surrounding these tumultuous years arebest described in Schwarz. The center of their activities and in the Badghis, too closeto Herat to be ignored.
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or unwilling to ensure the protection of the city in the long run, for only a fewyears later, in 552/1157-8, we find a "group of Turks" entrenched there, who inturn were driven out by a warlord called Sunqur al-cAzizi. The latter was told(probably by the Herati notables) to defer to die Ghurid sultan, but he rejectedthis advice and tried not to acknowledge any overlord. Consequently, Ay Aba,the warlord at Nishapur, appeared before the city. When the Heratis made a showof fighting him, the Turks (probably those previously under Sunqur's leadership)joined Ay Aba. Apparently Sunqur had disappeared from die scene.87 Some timelater, the Ghurids were once more in command in Herat—the Ghurid prince Sayfal-Din Muhammad b. al-Husayn was killed by Ghuzz in 558/1162-3,88 sug-gesting that he must have installed himself sometime earlier. Following him, aGhuzz leader named Aytegin took over.89 He in rum met his end while besiegingBamyan, which he was unable to take. (Bamyan was one of the principal Ghuridcenters; he was thus continuing the Ghuzz efforts to carve out a domain at theexpense of the Ghurids). At this point, an ally of the Ghuzz, another warlordcalled Athir al-Din, appeared before Herat. But the people of the city defendedthemselves and killed him. His successor likewise was unable to penetrate intothe city. Again the Heratis "elected" their own amir and sent to Ay Aba at Nisha-pur, offering him their allegiance. Ay Aba responded by dispatching a corpsunder Sayf al-Din Tengiz, and the Ghuzz were forced to lift their siege of Herat.
In the fifteen years between 545/1150 and 560/1164, the city changed mastersmany times, but did not undergo these changes passively. More than once, thenotables called in a military leader whom they expected to be strong enough toensure at least a certain measure of security. Their choice seems to have beeninformed by dieir assessment of the momentarily prevailing balance of powerwith a marked tendency to throw in their lot with die most powerful bidder.Moreover, a decided distaste for Ghuzz and other Turkish warlords (as well as tri-bal leaders) makes itself felt in the sources.
The notables believed themselves to be strong and important enough to adviseone of these military leaders, and it seems probable that they had a hand (or moreman that) in his ignoble end. But all die same, common sense would suggestthat tiiey were not satisfied widi what they were achieving for die city. Thesources never mention big losses, and it is possible that all these surrenders,sieges or pseudo-sieges, battles or pseudo-batdes did not take a large toll inhuman lives. However, mis is not to say that the situation was not painful forthe inhabitants of the region, since the economy—both trade and agricul-ture—must have suffered heavily from die marches and counter-marches of dievarious fighting forces.90
In the following years, Herat seems to have formed part of the Ghurid domainbut in the beginning of the seventfi/thirteenth century a new crisis descended onthe city. When the Ghurid Sultan Shihab al-Din died in 602/1198, his governor
87. Ibn al-Athir, 11: 227 (year: 552).
88. Ibid., 294.
89. Ibid., 311 (year: 559).
90. Such consequences are graphically described by Ibn Funduq, Tarikh-i Bayhaq,(Tehran, 1317/1939). See also Parvaneh Pourshariati's contribution to this volumeand my Herrscher, Gemeinwesen, Vermittler 118-121.
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in Herat, Ibn Kharmil, organized a meeting of the city notables. He invited theqadi, the mudarris (professor) of the Nizamiya madrasa, cAli b. cAbd al-Khaliqb. Ziyad; the shaykh al-islam, who is given the title ra'ls but is not mentionedby name; the head of the sayyids; and the representatives of the city quarters{jnuqaddamVl-mahall). The bargain he offered them is highly indicative of theinfluence they wielded. He wanted them to swear that they would follow himagainst any one who might pose a threat to him. To this, the qadi and themudarris of the Nizamiya madrasa replied that they would do so with oneexception: they would not support him against the person who legitimatelysucceeded the deceased sultan.
This shows that Ibn Kharmil knew full well that he could not make good hisbid for independence (which apparently is what he had in mind) without beingassured of the unconditional backing of the notables, which was just what theyrefused to give. We can assume that their main reason was that they could guesswhat the consequences of such a bid would be, at least for them and for thecity—once again, years of certain trouble and uncertain rewards.
The purpose of this study is not served by expanding upon the fights andtroubles that followed. In brief, Ibn Kharmil did try to establish himself as anindependent regional ruler in Herat, siding alternately with the Khwarazmshahand the Ghurid sultan. The notables remained loyal to the Ghurid sultan, and it istempting to think that this was because of the relatively long period of compa-rative security they had enjoyed under Ghurid dominion.
After two years of inconclusive fighting, Ibn Kharmil was killed by a generalsent against him by the Khwarazmshah, Jaldak b. Toghril, whose father had beengovernor of Sarakhs under Sanjar. The Heratis, however, did not surrender to theKhwarazmians (it appears that they did not expect to be treated well by thembecause of their known sympathy for the Ghurids). Ibn Kharmil's wazir con-tinued the fight, and the city held out even against substantial reinforcements.Eventually though, the situation inside the city walls became untenable, and thewazir promised to surrender if the Khwarazmshah came in person. But when theshah arrived, the wazir refused to honor his promise and continued fighting. Atthat point, the famished and exhausted Heratis decided to give in and come tosome agreement with the Khwarazmians. But the wazir was informed of theirplans, and the measures he took against them were enough to trigger an uprisingin the course of which the Khwarazmians entered the town.91
Conclusion
During the eighty years preceding the Mongol invasion, a change seems to havetaken place in the relationship between the city of Herat and the central govern-ment (or central governments since there were several contenders). The notablesstill tried to retain a measure of influence: they called in the Ghurids at first, but,as a matter of principle, did not take hostile stands against other powers, noteven against the main Ghurid rival, the Khwarazmians (even though a pro-Ghurid bias on their part is clear in the sources). The fate of the city was stillenviable; it enjoyed relatively long periods of calm (compared to other towns and
91. For the whole story, see Ibn al-Athir 12: 225-7, 260-5; see also cAta MalikJuvayni, Tarikh-i Jahan-gusha (London and Leiden, 1912-1937), 2: 62-65.
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regions, such as Nishapur and Sarakhs, which suffered much more). But thispolicy of siding with the power momentarily strongest and thus never declaringformal independence did not suit some of the more ambitious warlords, in par-ticular Ibn Kharmil, who tried to make Herat his base in a bid for independentpower. Instead he ended up caught in the middle. He had tried playing the Ghuridcard against the Khwarazmian and vice versa (and other cards as well), but, in theend, nothing worked. The notables never joined him in seeking independence or"autonomy;" they knew all too well what the price of independence would be.
The city, thanks to its renowned fortifications, was able to resist "nomad"armies for a long time, and the Khwarazmian army was no exception. But in thesources, no further evidence of urban militias or other armed forces is any longerdiscernible. We can only presume that they must still have existed in some formbecause it is difficult to see how the city could have resisted the Khwarazmiansin a long siege (more than a year) without its own fighting force. But there is nomention of them in the sources.
Internal struggles went on unabated. In 602/1197, violent fighting broke outbetween the blacksmiths' (haddadiri) and the coppersmiths' saffafiri) bazaars.92
It is also possible that the explicit invitation extended by Ibn Kharmil to thechiefs of the city quarters, who were thus elevated to the rank of notables, isindicative of a greater tendency to division within the city. The notables still fur-nished the city with leadership, but did the mudarris who acted as a spokesmanfor the notables still hold the same degree of authority as the mihtar cAbd al-Hadi had a century and a half earlier?
Thus, in the case of Herat, we can see the strength and weakness of a pro-vincial city. It was strong in its resistance toconquerors; it was by no means pre-pared to accept every one who just happened to come along. It was remarkablyconsistent in its desire, if not for peace, at least for non-aggression. It adhered toa defensive policy, taking the initiative only to confront grave danger. Its mainweakness was its failure to provide itself with a permanent kind of overall leader-ship except on these very rare occasions of need.
92. Ibn al-Athir, 12: 207.
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