Introduction

The dissolution and fragmentation of ʿAbbāsid power in the tenth and eleventh centuries led to the appearance of a number of small dynasties across many areas of the Muslim world. Various Kurdish groups formed principalities which were in practice autonomous from the Baghdad caliphate. Such Kurdish dynasties included the Shaddādids (c. 951–1174) in Armenia and Caucasian Albania, with their centre in Arrān, who waged jihad against Christian Georgians, Armenians and Byzantines, but also intermarried with them and ruled over them, and the Ḥasanwayhids (c. 960–1014) who flourished in the central Zagros area and supplied troops for the Būyid amīrs of Persia and Iraq. In northern Syria, Diyār Bakr and Armenia, territories which lay near or on the eastern borders of the Byzantine empire or the fringes of the Fāṭimid empire, small states, ethnically diverse, whose peoples spoke Arabic, Armenian, Kurdish, Persian or Turkish, clustered together in close proximity, sometimes forming temporary and volatile alliances, and at other moments engaged in fierce hostilities with each other. Some of these small dynasties, such as the Ḥamdānids of Aleppo, the Mazyadids of Ḥilla, the ʿUqaylids of Mosul and the Mirdāsids of Aleppo, depended on Bedouin Arab tribal support, whilst others such as the Ḥasanwayhids and the Marwānids relied on Kurdish nomadic groups (see Figure 9.1).

Ibn al-Azraq on the Marwānids

The historical sources dealing with the Marwānids include some information from well-known medieval Arabic geographical works, such as that of al-Muqaddasī, as well as more especially the Kāmil fīʾl-tāʾrīkh of Ibn al-Athīr. However, the major source for the study of the Marwānids of Diyār Bakr is without doubt the long section about them in the still little-used Arabic chronicle entitled Tāʾrīkh Mayyāfāriqīn wa Āmid of Ibn al-Azraq al-Fāriqī (d. after 1176–7). He worked as a scribe for the Artuqids of Mayyāfāriqīn and wrote this detailed history of his home town from early Islamic times. In this work Ibn al-Azraq provides detailed coverage of the Marwānid dynasty, 990–1085.