The History of the Saffarids of Sistan and the Maliks of Nimruz (247/861 to 949/1542-3).

• Author: Savory, Roger M.

This book has its origin in a series of lectures given by Professor Bosworth at Columbia University. He is no stranger to the history of the Saffarids. His article on the armies of the Saffarids appeared in 1968, and in the same year he laid the groundwork for the present history with his monograph, Sistan under the Arabs, from the Islamic Conquest to the Rise of the Saffarids. More recently, he contributed the chapter on the Tahirids and Saffarids in the Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4 (1975). In the book under review, Bosworth has brought everything together into what Professor Yarshater rightly describes in his foreword as "the most comprehensive treatment of the history of Sistan published to date."

Bosworth rejects Zambaur's earlier division of the Saffarid dynasty into four separate dynasties, divided chronologically by the Samanid, Ghaznavid and Mongol invasions. Instead, after recapitulating what is known of the Saffarid dynasty in its heyday, under the brothers Ya qub (the founder) and Amr, sons of Layth (253-288/867-901), Bosworth follows the history of their descendants for six hundred years as sometimes independent and sometimes vassal rulers of Sistan, until the incorporation of Sistan into the Safavid empire after Shah Isma il's great victory over the Ozbegs at Marv in 916/1510. In so doing, he identifies and for the first time reconstructs the complex chronology of two dynasties, the Nasrids and Mihrabanids, whom he terms the "Maliks of Nimruz," the name increasingly used for the province of Sistan from the fifth/eleventh century onwards.

The importance of the Saffarid dynasty in post-Islamic Persian history lies not so much in its military successes, which were considerable, or in its political achievements, which lacked substance and permanence, as in its symbolic value. First, the Saffarid amirs and maliks were rulers of Persian stock who for centuries championed the cause of the underdog against the might of the Abbasid caliphs. It as they who made "the first major breach in the territorial integrity of the Abbasid caliphate" (p. 10). Second, they were the embodiment of the whole cycle of ancient Persian legends about the heroes of Zabulistan, of whom Rustam is best known in the West. In addition, the Saffarid rulers played a part in fostering the renaissance of Persian poetry (pp. 174ff.). All these considerations have led some Persian historians to view the Saffarids through rose-tinted spectacles, and to attribute to...