Buyid dynasty

The Buyids were a dynasty from Daylam, a mountainous region on the south-western shore of the Caspian Sea, who ruled most of Iran and Iraq from 934 to 1062. Shia Muslims, they took control of Baghdad in 945 and governed in the name of the Sunni Abbasid caliphs, who became their figureheads.

Daylam, in the forested mountains of today's Gilan and Mazandaran, was one of the last parts of Iran to accept Islam, mostly in the ninth and tenth centuries, often in its Zaydi Shia form. Daylamite men had a reputation as hardy infantry, fighting with short spears, javelins and large shields, and served as mercenaries across Iran and Iraq. In the early tenth century, as the Abbasid caliphate fragmented, Daylamite commanders such as Mardavij of the Ziyarid family carved out their own states.

The dynasty was founded by three sons of Buya, a fisherman according to tradition: Ali, Hasan and Ahmad. They served Mardavij and then seized territory for themselves in the 930s. Ali took Fars in 934, with Shiraz as his capital, and received the title Imad al-Dawla, "pillar of the state". Hasan, Rukn al-Dawla, "support of the state", took central Iran, ruling from Ray and Isfahan. Ahmad, Mu'izz al-Dawla, "strengthener of the state", entered Baghdad in December 945. The caliph al-Mustakfi was blinded and deposed soon after, and the Buyids controlled the caliphate.

The Buyids kept the Sunni Abbasid caliphs as religious figureheads, which gave their rule legitimacy among the Sunni majority. They promoted Shia practices, such as public mourning for Husayn at Ashura and the celebration of Ghadir Khumm, which sometimes led to clashes in Baghdad between Sunnis and Shia. They used both Daylamite infantry and Turkish cavalry, whose rivalry caused frequent conflicts. They paid their soldiers through iqtas, grants of tax revenue from land.

Fana Khusraw, known as Adud al-Dawla, "arm of the state", son of Rukn al-Dawla, united the Buyid realms and ruled from 949 to 983, the dynasty's height. He took the ancient Persian title shahanshah, "king of kings", and claimed descent from the Sasanian kings. He restored Baghdad, built the Adudi hospital there, with doctors in many specialities, built a great dam, the Band-e Amir, on the Kur river near Shiraz, and founded a library in Shiraz. He patronised scholars, such as the grammarian Abu Ali al-Farisi and the astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, who wrote the Book of Fixed Stars.

The Buyids belong to what historians call the Iranian Intermezzo, between the Arab conquest and the Turkish domination of Iran, when local Iranian dynasties such as the Samanids, Ziyarids and Buyids ruled and revived Persian traditions. Under the Buyids, both Arabic and Persian culture flourished: the vizier al-Sahib ibn Abbad, in Ray, was a great patron, and the scholar Miskawayh wrote histories and ethical works. Shia scholarship developed, with scholars such as al-Shaykh al-Mufid and Sharif al-Radi, who compiled the Nahj al-Balagha, a collection of Ali's sermons and letters.

After Adud al-Dawla's death, his sons and relatives divided the realms and fought each other. The Ghaznavid sultan Mahmud took Ray in 1029. The Seljuk Turks advanced from Khurasan, and in 1055 Tughril Beg entered Baghdad and arrested the last Buyid ruler there, al-Malik al-Rahim. The last Buyid principality in Fars fell in 1062. The Seljuks presented themselves as restorers of Sunni orthodoxy after the Shia Buyids.

Our maps show the Buyids on the 1000 map, with an outline of about 2.1 million square kilometres, two-thirds of it in today's Iran and most of the rest in Iraq. Baghdad, Tehran's site and Isfahan lie inside it. The basemap also uses the name on the 1200 map, long after the dynasty ended, for a region of Iran. On the 1100 map, the same lands belong to the Seljuk Empire.