46 Facts About Sayf al-Dawla

The most prominent member of the Hamdanid dynasty, Sayf al-Dawla originally served under his elder brother, Nasir al-Dawla, in the latter's attempts to establish his control over the weak Abbasid government in Baghdad during the early 940s CE.

Sayf al-Dawla died in early 967, leaving a much weakened realm, which by 969 had lost Antioch and the Syrian littoral to the Byzantines and had become a Byzantine tributary.

Sayf al-Dawla raised troops for the caliph among the Taghlib in exchange for tax remissions, and established a commanding influence in the Jazira by acting as a mediator between the Abbasid authorities and the Arab and Kurdish population.

The Baridis, a local family of Basra, who desired control over the caliph, continued to resist, and Nasir Sayf al-Dawla sent Ali against them.

Henceforth, Nasir Sayf al-Dawla would be tributary to Baghdad, but his continued attempts to control Baghdad led to repeated clashes with the Buyids.

The Abbasids were able to retain a tenuous control over the province, until the authority of the Abbasid government collapsed in the civil wars of the 920s and 930s, where Nasir Sayf al-Dawla played a prominent role.

In 942, when Nasir Sayf al-Dawla replaced the assassinated Ibn Ra'iq, he attempted to impose his own rule over the region, and particularly Ibn Ra'iq's own province of Diyar Mudar.

Al-Ikhshid reacted, and sent an army north under Abu al-Misk Kafur to confront Sayf al-Dawla, who was then besieging Homs.

Homs then opened its gates, and Sayf al-Dawla set his sights on Damascus.

Sayf al-Dawla briefly occupied the city in early 945, but was forced to abandon it in the face of the citizens' hostility.

Sayf al-Dawla then retreated to Damascus, and from there to Homs.

Sayf al-Dawla, who returned to Aleppo in autumn, was now master of an extensive realm: the north Syrian provinces in a line running south of Homs to the coast near Tartus, and most of Diyar Bakr and Diyar Mudar in the western Jazira.

The latter were held ostensibly in charge of his elder brother Nasir al-Dawla, but in reality, the size and political importance of Sayf al-Dawla's emirate allowed him to effectively throw off the tutelage of Nasir al-Dawla.

Sayf al-Dawla benefitted from the fact that he was an ethnic Arab, unlike most of the contemporary rulers in the Islamic Middle East, who were Turkic or Iranian warlords who had risen from the ranks of the military slaves.

Sayf al-Dawla was able to resolve the situation quickly, initiating a ruthless campaign of swift repression that included driving the tribes into the desert to die or capitulate, coupled with diplomacy that played on the divisions among the tribesmen.

Sayf al-Dawla was affected by this atmosphere, and became deeply impregnated with the spirit of jihad.

Sayf al-Dawla entered the fray against the Byzantines in 936, when he led an expedition to the aid of Samosata, at the time besieged by the Byzantines.

Furthermore, the cities of the were fractious by nature, and their allegiance to Sayf al-Dawla was the result of his charismatic leadership and his military successes; once the Byzantines gained the upper hand and the Hamdanid's prestige declined, the cities tended to look out only for themselves.

Sayf al-Dawla nevertheless rejected offers of peace from the Byzantines, and launched another raid against Lykandos and Malatya, persisting until the onset of winter forced him to retire.

Sayf al-Dawla's victories brought about the replacement of Bardas by his eldest son, Nikephoros Phokas.

In spring 956, Sayf al-Dawla pre-empted Tzimiskes from a planned assault on Amida, and invaded Byzantine territory first.

Later in the year, Sayf al-Dawla was obliged to go to Tarsus to help repel a raid by the Byzantine Cibyrrhaeot fleet.

In 957, Nikephoros took and razed Hadath, but Sayf al-Dawla was unable to react as he discovered a conspiracy by some of his officers to surrender him to the Byzantines in exchange for money.

Sayf al-Dawla executed 180 of his and mutilated over 200 others in retaliation.

In 960, Sayf al-Dawla tried to use the absence of Nikephoros Phokas with much of his army on his Cretan expedition, to re-establish his position.

Once again, Sayf al-Dawla managed to escape, but his military power was broken.

Sayf al-Dawla now needed time, but as soon as Nikephoros Phokas returned victorious from Crete in summer 961, he began preparations for his next campaign in the east.

Sayf al-Dawla began to rebuild Anazarbus, but the work was left incomplete when Nikephoros recommenced his offensive in autumn, forcing Sayf al-Dawla to depart the region.

Sayf al-Dawla sent his army north under Nadja to meet the Byzantines, but Nikephoros ignored them.

In 963, the Byzantines remained quiet as Nikephoros was scheming to ascend the imperial throne, but Sayf al-Dawla suffered the loss of his sister, Khawla Sitt al-Nas, and was troubled by the onset of hemiplegia as well as worsening intestinal and urinary disorders, which henceforth confined him to a litter.

Sayf al-Dawla himself travelled to Armenia to meet his former lieutenant.

Sayf al-Dawla destroyed an Arab army at the 'Field of Blood' near Adana, and unsuccessfully besieged Mopsuestia before lack of supplies forced him to return home.

In early 966, Sayf al-Dawla asked for and received a short truce and an exchange of prisoners with the Byzantines, which was held at Samosata.

Sayf al-Dawla ransomed many Muslim captives at great cost, only to see them go over to Dizbar's forces.

Sayf al-Dawla resolved to confront the rebel: carried on his litter, he returned to Aleppo, and on the next day defeated the rebel's army, helped by the defection of the Kilab from Dizbar's army.

Sayf al-Dawla was still unable to confront Nikephoros when he resumed his advance.

Sayf al-Dawla was succeeded by his only surviving son, the fifteen-year-old Abu'l-Ma'ali Sharif, better known as Sa'd al-Dawla, to whom Sayf al-Dawla ordered the oath of allegiance to be sworn before his death.

Sa'd Sayf al-Dawla's reign was marked by internal turmoil, and it was not until 977 that he was able to secure control of his own capital.

Sayf al-Dawla surrounded himself with prominent intellectual figures, most notably the great poets al-Mutanabbi and Abu Firas, the preacher Ibn Nubata, the grammarian Ibn Jinni, and the noted philosopher al-Farabi.

Al-Mutanabbi's time at the court of Sayf al-Dawla was arguably the pinnacle of his career as poet.

Sayf al-Dawla paid special favour to poets, but his court contained scholars versed in religious studies, history, philosophy and astronomy as well, so that, as S Humphreys comments, "in his time Aleppo could certainly have held its own with any court in Renaissance Italy".

Sayf al-Dawla was unusual for 10th-century Syria in his espousal of Twelver Shi'ism in a hitherto solidly Sunni country.

Sayf al-Dawla erected a mausoleum to one of al-Husayn's sons, Muhassin, outside the city walls of Aleppo and close to a Christian monastery, called the Mashhad al-Dikka.

Sayf al-Dawla's choice raised them from obscurity to the status of major urban centres; Sayf al-Dawla lavished attention on them, endowing them with new buildings, as well as taking care of their fortification.

Sayf al-Dawla has remained to modern times one of the best-known medieval Arab leaders.

Sayf al-Dawla was succeeded by Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Sulayman ibn Fahd, and finally by the celebrated Abu'l-Husayn Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Maghribi.