Sarbadarids

Sarbadarid is the name given to the rulers of Bayhaq, the Sabzawar region of western Khurasan, and to a section of their followers, in the half century between the death of Abu Said and the conquest of Persia by Timur. ¹ The name is often also given as Sarbadal, meaning refractory. ¹ Writers have called the regime a robber state, a social revolutionary movement driven by a strong Mahdist impulse, and a kind of Shi'i republic. The article suggests it is most usefully seen as an attempt at self-government by the indigenous population of western Khurasan, faced with the disintegration of Mongol rule. ¹

The revolt started at Bashtin, in the district of Sabzawar, on 9 Sha'ban 737/13 March 1337. Abd al-Razzaq, son of a respected local notable, murdered a tax official and then rose in revolt to forestall the consequences. ¹ The readiness of others to follow him, and later his more sophisticated brother Wajih al-Din Mas'ud, has been explained by the financial oppression of the wazir of Ala' al-Din Muhammad. His exactions were driven by the need to pay for the ambitions of the Chingizid pretender Tugha Timur, whose vain efforts to claim the Ilkhanate drained Khurasan and made the Mongol leaders neglect the uprising until it was too late. ¹ Abd al-Razzaq took Sabzawar on 12 Safar 738/9 September 1337, and several members of Ala' al-Din's family were killed. ¹

The article says Abd al-Razzaq's behaviour led to his death in 738/1338 at his brother Mas'ud's hands. Mas'ud represented the wider ambitions of the rural landowners, who were anxious to throw off Mongol rule. The soldiers, young men and ayyars who joined him were rewarded with an egalitarian division of the spoils from a series of raids, which ended in the capture of Nishapur. ¹ To broaden his authority Mas'ud involved Shaykh Hasan-i Juri, a disciple of the Mazandarani Shi'i dervish Shaykh Khalifa. This began the uneasy alliance between the Sarbadarids and the Shaykhis, which gives the regime its distinctive character. ³ The article doubts that Juri had become master of a radical underground movement, and says rather that he saw the grievances of his adherents and of oppressed Muslims in Khurasan could best be voiced by joining the protests of the Sabzawar outlaws. ³

Tugha Timur could no longer ignore them. His army was routed near the Gurgan river, and his wazir Ala' al-Din Muhammad was pursued and killed on 23 Sha'ban 742/1 February 1342. ³ The Sarbadarids then struck coins in the name of Tugha Timur's rival Sulayman, the protege of the Chubanids, and sought to expand at the expense of the Karts of Herat. ³ Hasan-i Juri was killed in battle near Zawa on 13 Safar 743/18 July 1342, allegedly on Mas'ud's orders. Mas'ud himself died in Dhu 'l-Qa'da 743/April 1343 after a disastrous invasion of Rustamdar and Mazandaran. ³

Mas'ud's commander Muhammad Aytimur then led, acknowledging Tugha Timur's sovereignty again, and was murdered in Muharram 747 at the instigation of the dervishes. Soldiers broadly loyal to Mas'ud's family and the dervishes then vied for power. ³ The dervishes' spokesman Khwaja Taj al-Din Ali ibn Shams al-Din Chishumi finally agreed to rule on 16 Sha'ban 748/21 November 1347. He issued the first independent Sarbadarid coinage in 748/1348, Sunni in type, and followed a programme of economic and moral reform meant to appeal to the range of opinion in the state. ³ In 752/1351, after Herat came within the Chaghatayid sphere, he judged it prudent to mint again in Tugha Timur's name, and this appeasement of the Mongols, together with his autocratic methods, led to his murder on 28 Shawwal 752/18 December 1351. ³

One of the assassins, Yahya Karrabi, resumed hostilities against Tugha Timur, whose camp was weakened by the Black Death. He pretended to make peace and murdered the last of the Chingizids there on 16 Dhu 'l-Qa'da 754/13 December 1353. Karrabi was himself killed on 10 Muharram 759/23 December 1357. ³ The article calls the next period another stretch of coups and political murders, whose chronology remains elusive because the most reliable sources are inconsistent. One of the contenders, Lutf Allah son of Wajih al-Din Mas'ud, was the last of that family to rule. ³

With the accession of Khwaja Ali ibn Mu'ayyad, the Shi'ism of the Sabzawaris found explicit political expression for the first time. He announced his rule with coins bearing a Shi'i formula and led a horse out twice daily for the expected arrival of the Sahib-i Zaman, the awaited Imam. Late in his reign he invited the Imami scholar Muhammad ibn Makki al-Amili to Sabzawar to establish Twelver Shi'ism there. Ibn Makki could not accept, but wrote a work on Imami fiqh for him. ³ The article judges that Khwaja Ali's own commitment was lukewarm: within a year he had removed the dervish leader Darwish Ali and driven out the Shaykhiyya, even desecrating the tombs of Shaykh Khalifa and Hasan-i Juri. ³ The flight of Darwish Ali's successor Rukn al-Din to the court of Shah Shuja' the Muzaffarid led to an invasion of Sarbadarid territory with Muzaffarid support, and Sabzawar was captured in 778/1376. Khwaja Ali took refuge with Amir Wali, who helped him regain the city, but his realm was greatly reduced. ³ Two years later, in 783/1381, he took the opportunity of preserving himself by entering Timur's service. ²

After Khwaja Ali's death the article says Sarbadarid realms were divided among several leaders, who also served Timur, particularly in the administration of lower Iraq. In 808/1405 an attempt by a relative of Khwaja Ali to claim his hereditary rights ended in his execution and the sack of Sabzawar, and another member of the family later became known as the poet Amir Shahi. ²

According to the article, the regime channelled several currents of fourteenth-century Khurasan: the aspirations of the rural population and their leaders, the futuwwa organisations, the growing role of Sufi shaykhs in political life, and the hesitant emergence of Shi'ism as an expression of local particularism. It points to the poet Ibn Yamin, who praises the building works of Taj al-Din Ali and Yahya Karrabi, and calls Karrabi's restoration of the qanats at Tus a sign of the Sarbadarids' vain but heroic attempt to counter the effects of Mongol rule. ²

The article notes that the sources are inconsistent on the order of the rulers between 759/1358 and the rise of Khwaja Ali, so the sequence of coups in those years is not given here in detail. ³