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Seljūqid Ziyārats of Sar-i pul (Afghanistan) 1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

A. D. H. Bivar
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Extract

The story of Yạhyā b. Zayd (in full, Yahyā b. Zayd b. 'Alī b. al-Husayn b. 'Alī b. Abī Ṭalīb) forms a well-known episode in the history of the closing years of the Umayyad Caliphate. The insurrection of Yaḥyā was in many respects a forerunner of the final rising under the 'Abbāsid emissary Abū Muslim, by which Umayyad government in Khurāsān was overthrown. The fullest early description of this episode is that given by the historian al-Ṭabarī in his account of the events of the year 125/742-3. After the rebellion and death of his father Zayd at Kūfa in 122/739–40, the young Yaḥyā had fled from Iraq with a few companions to Khurāsān. At Balkh he lived concealed under the protection of a man named al-ḥuraysh b. 'Amr. Eventually 'Uqayl b. Ma'qil, the prefect of the town for the Umayyad government, received instructions to track down the fugitive.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , February 1966 , pp. 57 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1966

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References

2 For the career of Yạbyā, b. Zayd, see Encylopaedia of Islam, S.V.

3 Ed. de Goeje, 1770–4.

4 For an account of the Baghli dirham see Walker, J., A catalogue of the Muhammadan, coins in the British Museum. [I.] A catalogue of the Arab-Sassanian coins, London, 1941, p. cxlviii. The term implies a pre-reform dirham of full Sasanian weight.Google Scholar

5 The name of the village does not appear in the text of al-Ṭabair, ed. de Goeje, 1773. This is, however, one of a number of additional details supplied by Abu 'l-Faraj 'Alī b. al-ḥusayn al-Isbahānī, Maqātil al-Ṭālibīyīn, Najaf, 1353/1934, 115, who names the scene of the fatal encounter as Arghūy. It is evident, therefore, that in al-Mas'ūdī, Murūj al-dhahab, VI, 2, the true reading of the corresponding name should be Arghūya.

6 Minorsky, V., ḥudūd al-'cilam, London, 1937, 335.Google Scholar

7 For a recent discussion of Ferrier's journey, see Maricq, André and Wiet, Gaston, Le minaret de Djam, Paris, 1959, 71–6.Google Scholar

8 op. cit., 75–6.

9 Ferrier, J. P., Caravan journeys. Second edition, London, 1857, 229.Google Scholar

10 However, Dr. S. M. Stern points out that no such person is listed by Jamāl Aḥmad b. 'Alī b. al-Husayn b. Muhanna, 'Umdat al-Ṭālib fi nasab āl Abū Ṭālib.

11 Pope, A. U. (ed.), A survey of Persian art, London, 1938, v, 265.Google Scholar

12 The first word of the inscription, mimmā, is in fact redundant. It helps to show that those who drafted these Arabic inscriptions were not native Arabic-speakers, and that their command of the language sometimes fell short of complete proficiency.

13 The reading is not entirely certain.

14 It is not possible to identify the patron of our work with any of the 19 personages listed s.v Šāoan, by F. Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch, 270. Nor is the builder Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Tirmidhī amongst the persons listed by Mayer, L. A., Islamic architects and their works, Geneva, 1956.Google Scholar

15 Godard, André, ‘Les tours de et de Resget’, Athār-é īrān, I, 1, 1936, 119 ff.Google Scholar

16 Diez, E., Churasanische Baudenkmäler, I, Berlin, 1918, 36–9.Google Scholar It is worth pointing out that the photographs at present available of the Rādkān-West tower leave something to be desired. Those reproduced by Diez have been printed with the negative reversed, and are on an insufficientlẏ large scale to show the inscription. The good reproduction in Pope, A. U., A survey of Persian art, v, 340, shows only a small portion of the inscription.Google Scholar

17 The present writer is puzzled by the tradition prevailing at Gunbad-i Qābas in Iran that the personage whose grave is marked by the large imāmzādeh there was Yaḥyā b. Zayd. This version is attested by Rabino, H. L., Māzandarān and Astarābād, London, 1928, 92, and is that current in local tradition at the present day. However, according to ḥamdullāh Mustawfī Qazwinī (Nuzhat al-qulūb-, tr. Le Strange, 156) the Sayyid whose grave was venerated at Jurjān (i.e. the modern Gunbad-i Qābūs) was Muhammad, the son of Ja'far al-Ṣādiq, who died in 203/818–19. Another Sayyid who was killed near Jurjan was Muhammad b. Zayd, known as al-Da'ī al-Kabīr, whose death occurred in 287/900.Google Scholar

18 The date of the introduction of naskhī script for inscriptions in Iran is discussed by G. C. Miles in his appendix to the article by Myron Bement Smith, ‘Material for a corpus of early Iranian Islamic architecture. in. Two dated Seljuk monuments at Sin (Isfahan)’, Ars Islamica, VI, 1939, 13–14Google Scholar. The first appearance of naskhī, is on the minār Čalled Dukhtarān at Iṣfahān, dated A.H. 501; the next is on the minār of Muḥammad b. Malikshah at Sāveh, dated A.H. 503, for which see Miles, G. C., ‘Inscriptions on the minarets of Saveh, Iran’, Studies in Islamic art and architecture in honour of Professor K. A. C. Creswell, Cairo, 1965, 174. The naskhi inscription at Sar-i Pul may thus be confidently dated after 500/1106–7.Google Scholar