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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 October 2010
In the previous issue of BSOAS we published an edition and translation of an account of the war against al-Muqannaʿ (BSOAS 73/2, 155–77). Here we offer a detailed commentary and an analysis of what we can learn from it, mostly relating to the beginning of al-Muqannaʿ's revolt and his conquests of Samarqand. The value of the account lies mainly in the fact that its first half is focused on Samarqand rather than Bukhārā. We also offer some thoughts on how the narrative may have originated and how it relates to the Tārīkh-i Bukhārā and other sources.
1 Since it is impossible to follow discussions of chronology with double dates, in what follows we only give hijrī dates where chronology is the issue.
2 Noted already by Meisami, J. S., Persian Historiography, Edinburgh, 1999, 33Google Scholar (treating the narrative as Balʿāmī's). Even the occasional references to religion are missing in the Vienna manuscript printed in Rawshan, on which her account is based.
3 IA vi, 38f.
4 YB 303; Tab. iii, 484.
5 Zaryāb, “Nukātī”, 91. He knew it from Ṣadīghī's Vienna manuscript printed in Rawshan.
6 This possibility was put to us by the anonymous reader.
7 Tab. iii, 354. This possibility was also mentioned by the anonymous reader.
8 Tab. iii, 328. This too was put to us by the anonymous reader.
9 Tab. iii, 773; al-Jahshiyārī, K. al-wuzarā' wa'l-kuttāb, ed. M. al-Saqqā and others, Cairo 1938, 277; IA vi, 224.
10 TB 64f./90ff. = 66f.
11 Ḥamza, 221/163; Gardīzī, 277f.; Tab. iii, 369.
12 Abū 'l-Maʿālī, 60. Compare G.-H. Ṣadīghī, “Baʿzī az kuhantarīn āthār-i fārsī”, Dānishkada-yi adabiyāt, 13/4, 1345, 61, where the outbreak is placed in either 152 or 158, clearly on the assumption that it was the violence in Sogdia which caused Ḥumayd to try to arrest him (compare Ṣadīghī, G.-H., Les mouvements religieux iraniens au IIe et au IIIe siècle de l'hégire, Paris, 1938Google Scholar, 164n = Junbishhā-yi dīnī-yi irānī dar qarnhā-yi duvvum va sivvum-i hijrī, Tehran, 1375, 169f.
13 TB 65f./92f. = 67; Abū 'l-Maʿālī, 58.
14 Gardīzī, 279.
15 TB 67/93f. = 68. Even Bolshakov, “Khronologiya”, 95, opts for 159 as the date by which the revolt had broken out, without taking Gardīzī into consideration.
16 IA vi, 39; Gardīzī, 279.
17 Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ, Ta'rīkh, ed. S. Zakkār, Damascus 1967–68, 676f., 696.
18 Tab. iii, 459.
19 Ḥamza, 222/163; Gardīzī 278.1, 280.1. The first passage is interestingly corrupt here: Ḥumayd “died in the reign of al-Manṣūr” (bi-rūzigār-i Manṣūr bimurd), it says; but it continues by saying (as does Ḥamza) that al-Mahdī confirmed him in his position, so the editor quite reasonably inserts a ū, to make the phrase read “in his time al-Manṣūr died”.
20 Tab. iii, 459, 470, 477.
21 Tab. iii, 459.
22 Khalīfa, Ta'rīkh, 676. Both he and others also have Abū ʿAwn as governor of Khurāsān under al-Manṣūr before Ḥumayd b. Qaḥṭaba, but this does not appear to be relevant: it was as governor for the second time that he succeeded Ḥumayd, as Ḥamza explicitly says.
23 B. Kochnev, “Les monnaies de Muqannaʿ”, Studia Iranica 30, 2001, 143–50.
24 TB 69/98 = 71.
25 Gardīzī, 281.
26 Gardīzī, 281; Tab. iii, 484; YB 304.
27 Gardīzī, 281; IA vi, 51.
28 Bolshakov, “Khronologiya”, 90f., 96, also accepts that Samarqand fell and was reconquered twice, but without discussing the problems.
29 Cf. Tab. iii, 477; IA vi, 46: Abū ʿAwn was dismissed because the caliph was angry with him.
30 Cf. TB 65/91 = 66.
31 Gardīzī, 282.
32 TB 65/92 = 67.
33 TB 69/97 = 71.
34 IA vi, 39; Gardīzī, 279.1.
35 IA xi, 178 (year 548), adding that they had done the same to al-mulūk al-khāqāniyya, presumably meaning the Türgesh.
36 al-Masʿūdī, al-Murūj al-dhahab, ed. C. Pellat, Beirut 1966–79, i, §226, note 12; ii, §1119; iii, §2063, note 1.
37 Baghdādī, Farq, 243. Īlāq is written Ablaq, Sughd as Sʿd, and similar scribal errors or editorial misreadings abound in the book.
38 TB 67/93 = 68; Abū 'l-Maʿālī, 59.
39 EI2, s.v. “Ḳarluḳ”. Bolshakov, “Khronologiya”, 93, col. 2, assumes them to be Qarluqs.
40 Golden, P. B., An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples, Wiesbaden 1992, 138–41Google Scholar; Golden, P. in Sinor, D. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Inner Asia, Cambridge 1990Google Scholar, 349f.
41 Baghdādī, Farq, 243.
42 EI 2, s.v. “Ḳarluḳ”, col. 658. Here we are told that they never adopted it, but Masʿūdī expressly says that fīhim kāna 'l-mulk wa-minhum khāqān al-khawānīn (Murūj, i, §313) (cf. Golden, P., “Imperial ideology and the sources of political unity amongst the pre-Činggisid nomads of western Eurasia”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2, 1982, 56Google Scholar), where their adoption of the title in its full imperial sense is dated to after 840.
43 YT ii, 479.
44 For such splinter groups, see EI2, s.v. “Ḳarluḳ”.
45 Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-fihrist, ed. R. Tajaddud, Tehran 1971, 408.7.
46 Baghdādī, Farq, 243; Niẓām al-Mulk, Siyāsatnāma, ed. H. Darke under the title Siyar al-mulūk, second edition, Tehran 1985; tr. Darke, H., The Book of Government or Rules for Kings, London 1960Google Scholar, ch. 46, 22; al-Shahrastānī, K. al-Milal wa'l-niḥal, ed. W. Cureton, London 1842–46, i, 194.
47 Farq, 243.
48 Seiwert, H. and Xisha, Ma, Popular Religious Movements and Heterodox Sects in Chinese History, Leiden 2003, 151–3Google Scholar.
49 Cf. P. Crone, “Moqannaʿ”, in Encyclopaedia Iranica (forthcoming), summarizing P. Crone, The Nativist Prophets and Iranian Religion: The Nature of Khurramism (in preparation).
50 Bīrūnī, 
thār, 211.
51 TB 64.1/89.ult = 65. Sadeghi, Mouvements 164n, 165 = Junbishhā; 209, 210.
52 Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist, ed. R. Tajaddud, Tehran 1971, 408.9. Noted by Sadeghi, Mouvements, 165 (omitted in the translation).
53 It is usually assumed to be Qubāvī who is speaking here, and it certainly seems most likely. Much of what he says, however, is close to the account of Abū 'l-Maʿālī (wrote 484/1082) in terms of al-Muqannaʿ's career and his preaching alike, and this raises the suspicion that Abū 'l-Maʿālī found it in the Tārikh-i Bukhārā, then still in Narshakhī's Arabic version. But as a heresiographer, Abū 'l-Maʿālī is more likely to have used Ibrāhīm directly.
54 Zaryāb, “Nukātī”, 88f.
55 TB 64/90 = 65f.
56 TB 66/93 = 67f.
57 TB 66/93 = 68. For Mahdī's second visit to Nishapur, in connection with Ustādhsīs revolt in 150/767f, see Tab. iii, 355.
58 TB 64/90 = 65f.; cf. Zaryāb, “Nukātī”, 89.
59 TB 72/102 = 102.
60 He too has the revolt lasting for fourteen years; he places the end of the revolt in 169, which could be a misreading of TB's 167, and his statement that “the Mubayyiḍa and the Turks gathered around him, so he declared women and property to be lawful to them” is close to TB's “al-Muqannaʿ called in the Turks and declared the blood and property of the Muslims lawful for them” (Bīrūnī, Āthār, 211; TB 64, 66, 72/90, 93, 101 = 65, 68, 74). He also says that al-Muqannaʿ burnt himself, but so do many other sources, and he clearly used more than one (since he also says that the Muslims cut off his head and sent it to al-Mahdī at Aleppo).
61 Mujmal al-tavārikh va'l-qiṣaṣ, ed. S. Najmabadi and S. Weber, Wiesbaden 2000, 262.
62 It has a brief account of his beliefs and says that al-Muqannaʿ heated the oven for three days, as we are also told in TB 73/102 = 74.