INTRODUCTION

The precursor of this present book, The Islamic Dynasties: A Chronological and Genealogical Handbook, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 1967 as no. 5 in the Islamic Surveys series, and speedily established itself as a convenient reference work for the chronology of Islamic dynasties of the Middle Eastern and North African heartlands and of Central and South Asia and for their historical backgrounds. It has proved useful not only for Islamic historians but also for Islamic art historians and numismatists. Nevertheless, all these groups of scholars remain much less well provided with such Hilfsmittel as chronologies of events, genealogical tables, historical atlases, etc., than their colleagues in the fields of British or European history.1 Some of the subsequent writers of general histories of the Islamic world or its component regions and peoples, and writers of reference works covering the world in general or the Islamic lands in particular, who have given lists of dynasties and rulers, have obviously drawn upon the original Islamic Dynasties – sometimes with due acknowledgement,2 sometimes not.

To my knowledge, four translations into East European and Middle Eastern languages have been made. In 1971, there appeared in Moscow an authorised translation by P. A. Gryaznevich, under the overall editorship of I. P. Petrushevskiy, Musulmanskie dynastii. Spravochnik po khronologii i genealogii, Izdatel’stvo «Nauka» Glavnaya Redaktsiya Vostochnoi Literaturï, 324 pp., to which I contributed a Preface. The text is a straight translation, but the bibliographical indications at the end of each dynasty’s entry have been enriched by references to works in Russian, obviously valuable for such regions as the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Iranian world in general. In 1980, there appeared in Istanbul Islâm devletleri tarihi (kronoloji ve soykütüğüelkitabi), Oğuz Press, xxvii + 385 pp., an authorised Turkish translation by Erdoğan Merçil and Mehmet İpşirli. This has additional material in that Dr Merçil appended an additional, eleventh chapter ‘Anadolu beylikleri’ dealing in detail with the principalities of Anatolia during the interim between the decay of the Rūm Seljuqs and the rise of the Ottomans. I have, in fact, drawn upon this useful additional chapter for my own, widely expanded Chapter Twelve ‘The Turks in Anatolia’. In 1371/1982 there appeared Silsilahā-yi Islāmī, an unauthorised Persian translation by one Farīdūn Badra’ī, Mu’assasa-yi Mutāla’at wa Tahqīqāt Farhangī, 358 pp. In 1994, there appeared at Kuwait an authorised Arabic translation by the late Husayn ‘Alī al-Lubūdī, under the general supervision of Dr Sulaymān Ibrāhīm al-‘Askarī, al-Usar al-hākima fi ’1-Islām. Dirāsa fi ’1-ta’rīkh wa ’1-ansāb, Mu’assasat al-Shirā‘ al-‘ Arabī, 293 pp.

The original book is thus still proving useful in these parts of the world through translations, although the Edinburgh University Press original is now out of print in both the original hardback and the paperback versions (the latter, of 1980, contained some slight corrections, all that the process of largely verbatim reproduction allowed). But well before the book became finally out of print, I had been noting corrections and gathering fresh information for a new, considerably expanded version. It would be strange if the explosion of knowledge over the last thirty years had not brought much fresh information for the Islamic chronologist and genealogist, from such disciplines as historical research, epigraphy and numismatics. Much of the relevant information is, however, scattered, and, in regard to epigraphy and numismatics in particular, often appears in the local publications of the countries concerned and is not easily accessible in Britain and Western Europe. I have nevertheless endeavoured, with assistance and advice from specialist colleagues and friends (who are detailed and appropriately thanked at the end of this Introduction), to incorporate as much of this new information as possible, though certain periods and areas remain – and perhaps always will remain – dark.

Most obvious to the reader of this present book will be the fact that it is much bigger than the 1967 book. There are now seventeen chapters, covering 186 dynasties, whereas the original Islamic Dynasties had only ten chapters, covering 82 dynasties. The new or vastly expanded chapters include ones dealing with Muslim Spain, with much more detailed coverage of the Mulūk al-Tawā’if (Chapter Two); the Arabian peninsula, again with much greater detail (Chapter Six); West Africa, and East Africa and the Horn of Africa, both entirely new chapters (Chapters Seven and Eight); the Turks of Anatolia, now with detailed coverage of the Beyliks there (Chapter Twelve); Central Asia after the Mongols, a substantially new chapter which includes the Khanates arising there out of the Turco-Mongol domination of Inner Asia and persisting until the extension of Russian imperial power through Central Asia (Chapter Fifteen); Afghanistan and the Indian Subcontinent, with increased coverage of, for example, the Sultanates of the Deccan and the Indian dynasties of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Chapter Sixteen); and South-East Asia and Indonesia, again dealing with an entirely new region (Chapter Seventeen). But apart from these ones specifically mentioned, virtually all chapters are enlarged to some extent or other.

Thus the coverage of the new book approaches much more closely to coverage of the whole Islamic world, from Senegal to Borneo, than did the 1967 book, since it has often in the past been noted that works purporting to deal with Islam or the Islamic world have tended to concentrate on the Arab-Persian-Turkish heartlands to the neglect of the fringes, even though such peripheral regions as South and South-East Asia and Indonesia now contain the majority of Muslim peoples. Yet somewhat in extenuation of this concentration in the past on the heartlands, it must be admitted that the historian and chronologist of the peripheries is on much shakier ground. The heartlands have been long Islamised; many of their lands possess ancient historiographical traditions, with reliable dynastic histories and clearly-dated coins inscribed with a plethora of information on names and titulature. Whereas in regions far from the heartlands such as sub-Saharan Africa, South-East Asia and Indonesia, there may well be a care for local tribal or dynastic traditions, their recording in clearly-dated written form has nevertheless been patchy, and the task of making such records has often been complicated by attempts, of a mythic nature, to prove the ancient reception of the Islamic faith by families and classes ruling over lands and subjects which remained largely pagan for lengthy periods subsequently. The coinage of such ruling strata is nearly always much less complete in dated series, and in actual information on the coins, than for the Islamic heartlands and the Indian Subcontinent. The difficulties involved in constructing king-lists and chronologies in such circumstances may be discerned below, with reference to, for example, the kings of Songhay (no. 59), the rulers of Kanem and Bornu (no. 60), the Sultans of Kilwa (no. 62) and the Sultans of Brunei (no. 186).

Even so, the position in such a region, comparatively near to the heartlands, as early Islamic Central Asia is far from crystal-clear. Zambaur confessed seventy years ago regarding the Qarakhanids of Transoxania and eastern Turkestan that this was ‘la seule grande dynastie musulmane dont la généalogie est restée obscure’ (Manuel, 206 n. 1). Much elucidation has meanwhile come from such scholars as Omeljan Pritsak and Elena A. Davidovich, but significant problems remain, the substantially increased numbers of coins now finding their way from Central Asia and Afghanistan to the West since the demise of the USSR may possibly resolve some of these remaining obscurities.

In the Introduction to the 1967 book, I traced the development of Islamic chronological and genealogical studies and listings from Stanley Lane-Poole’s seminal The Mohammadan Dynasties (1893), through the more specific work of F. Justi in his Iranisches Namenbuch (1895) and the expansions and improvements upon Lane-Poole by W. Barthold in his Musulmanskiy dynastii (1899), E. Sachau in his ‘Ein Verzeichnis Muhammedanischer Dynastien’(1923), and Khalīl Ed’hem in his Düwel-i Islāmiyye (1345/1927), to E. de Zambaur’s almost entirely new and monumental Manuel de généalogie et de chronologie pour I’histoire de I’Islam (1927).3 It does not seem necessary to repeat here all these details, except to note that no-one has attempted since the publication of Zambaur’s work to update it as a whole; although a stupendous work for its time, its inaccuracies and erroneous renderings of names appear more and more obvious with the lapse of time.

I opined in 1967 that such an updating and rewriting could probably only be done as a cooperative effort by historians who are specialists in various sectors of the Islamic world, aided by epigraphists and numismatists. The prospects of such a collaboration seem no nearer in 1995 than they did twenty-nine years ago. Hence my New Islamic Dynasties, here presented to the scholarly world, does not aim at such overall completeness as Zambaur essayed (although he did not in fact achieve it; his attempts at covering dynasties in sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian Ocean islands and Indonesia were fragmentary and feeble to the point of uselessness); but I think I may venture to say that it represents as extensive a coverage of Islamic dynasties as one person is likely to achieve in our present day. I have endeavoured to cover what might be termed the first, second and third ranks of dynasties and to give as up-to-date and accurate information on them as possible. There remains the fourth rank and beyond, and readers may well have pet dynasties and ruling houses in which they are especially interested and which they consider ought to have been included. I can only plead that one must draw the line somewhere, and that I have left plenty of opportunities for other researchers; such readers might, for instance, care to get their teeth into elucidating the Sudūr of Bukhara, the Wālīs of Badakhshān, the Khāns of Sibir, the sultans of the Sulu archipelago and the Moro rulers of Mindanão in the southern Philippines, etc. Moreover, an extensive field remains open for future scholars, one which Zambaur tackled valiantly and to some extent successfully, namely that of elucidating the lines of viziers to the rulers of such dynasties as the Abbāsids, the Fātimids, the Būyids, the Great Seljuqs and their related branches, and the Ottomans. Zambaur also set forth the series of provincial governors in the amsar or military concentration-points of the Arab caliphate, and he tentatively envisaged a second edition of his Manuel (which never appeared, although the author did not die until 1941) in which he would tackle the local governors of a host of other cities of the east, such as Tabriz, Isfahan, Hamadhan, Marw, Bukhara and Samarkand. Certainly, in regard to the viziers, our increased knowledge of the ‘Abbāsid and Seljuq vizierates, for instance, and the chronological researches of such Turkish scholars as İsmail Hami Danişmendli in his İzahlı Osmanlı tarihi kronolojisi, Istanbul 1947–71, in regard to the Ottoman viziers, should enable fuller and more accurate lists to be compiled, above all, of the innumerable, rapidly-changing Ottoman viziers. Similarly, the publication of many texts out of the rich genre of local histories, which has flourished in the Iranian and Central Asian lands from classical times virtually until the present day, would enable us to reconstruct the history and chronology of the ruling strata in many of the cities mentioned above by Zambaur.

A feature of Lane-Poole’s The Mohammadan Dynasties was the short historical account of each dynasty prefixed to its relevant entry, accounts which, he said,

do not attempt to relate the internal history of each dynasty: they merely show its place in relation to other dynasties, and trace its origin, its principal extensions, and its downfall; they seek to define the boundaries of its dominions, and to describe the chief steps in its aggrandisement and in its decline, (p. vi)

Zambaur agreed that ‘Il eût été agréable de trouver, en tête de chaqué dynastie, un aperçu succinct de ses origines, de son développement et de sa fin’, but, for reasons of space and economy, renounced ‘ses introductions qui forment un attrait séduisant du livre de M. St. Lane-Poole’ [Manuel, p. vii). Nevertheless, the accounts here of Lane-Poole were most useful, especially in pre-Encyclopaedia of Islam days, and have still seemed to me eminently desirable for a work on Islamic dynastic chronology. A bare list of rulers and their dates would admittedly be of use to specialist Islamic historians and numismatists, who would know where to look for historical information on the dynasties in question (though this might well take them down some obscure pathways). But historical introductions to the dynasties seem to me essential for students and non-specialists. My own aim, as in 1967, has been similar to that of Lane-Poole: not so much to give a potted history as to place the dynasty in the broad context of Islamic history; to outline some of the major trends of its period; and, where relevant, to indicate some of the dynasty’s achievements. I have tried to make the bibliographical references at the end of each section fuller than in the 1967 book. As well as including works specifically useful for illuminating the chronology and titulature of the dynasty, I have given references to a series of general works dealing with the dynasty concerned, and to a selection at least of specific studies, where such general works and special studies exist. But the references here are not meant to be in any way exhaustive, nor are they meant to replace the detailed information available in the bibliographies to the various dynasties in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam entries, or set forth in the latest French version [Introduction à I’histoire du monde musulman médiéval VIIe-XVe siècle. Méthodologie et éléments de bibliographie, Paris 1982) of the late Claude Cahen’s refonte, expansion and updating of Jean Sauvaget’s Introduction à I’histoire de I’ Orient Musulman: éléments de bibliographie (with additions and corrections, Paris 1946) (English version, unfortunately with rather more cursory bibliographical references, Introduction to the History of the Muslim East: A Bibliographical Guide, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1965). Also, there has very recently appeared Etats, sociétés et cultures du monde musulman médiéval Xe-XVe siècles, Tome 1, Paris 1995, written by a team of specialists (Jean-Claude Gargin, Michel Ballivet, Thierry Bianquis, Henri Bresc, Jean Calmard, Marc Gaborieau, Pierre Guichard and Jean-Louis Triaud) and containing a very extensive section Les outils de travail with up-to-date bibliographical references, maps and genealogical tables (pp. vii-ccxi). For the more recent history of the Islamic lands, there are also bibliographical references in general histories such as Ira Lapidus’s A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge 1988) and in such encyclopaedic works as Francis Robinson, Atlas of the Islamic World since 1500, Oxford 1982; Trevor Mostyn and Albert Hourani (eds), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa, Cambridge 1988; Francis Robinson (ed.), The Cambridge History of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Cambridge 1989; and John L. Esposito (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, Oxford 1995. These are all recently published and contain presumably up-to-date bibliographical information. For the classical period of Islamic history, however, such works mentioned above as those of Lapidus, and of Robinson in his Atlas of the Islamic World (whose timespan covers both the later mediaeval and the modern periods), can profitably be consulted, but it is a matter of alphabetical chance whether the entry in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam dates from the late 1940s or 1950s, when the second edition was conceived and first published (as in the case of, for example, the ‘Abbasids and the Būyids), or from the last few years (as in the case, for example, of the Mamlūks, the Mughals, the Ottomans and the Safawids). If the former, then the bibliographical references are distinctly out of date, and I have endeavoured here to supply some more recent ones.

Since various numismatic colleagues have, over the years, told me how useful they have found the 1967 book, it has seemed to that more information might be included in this new book for the numismatist. The study of coins, and the information which their legends yield on titulature, accession dates, periods of power, extent of territories ruled over, etc., have long been recognised as constituting an invaluable ancillary discipline for the Islamic dynastic and political historian (and equally, for different reasons, for the economic and social one).4 I have tried to use, wherever possible, numismatic evidence in compiling the present lists of rulers and their dates, and have listed significant numismatic sources in the bibliographies for each dynasty where such sources exist. Also, as an innovatory feature of the present book, in the dynastic lists I have marked those rulers who issued coins, following the convention established by Zambaur in his Manuel of prefixing a small circle to their dates and name, in the hope that this will be a worthwhile extra feature for the numismatist and historian alike. In general, I have disregarded the numismatic information given by Zambaur, which was not free from coin misattributions, and have derived my own information, where possible, from coin catalogues, the various studies on the coinages of specific dynasties, such as exist, for example, for the Idrīsids, the Spanish Muslim dynasties, the Fāatimids, the Ayyūbids and the Mamlūks, and from the monthly lists of coins offered for sale by Mr Stephen Album of Santa Rosa, California. I am aware of the difficulties involved in deciding whether a specific dynasty or ruler issued its or his own coins, with personal names and titles on them, or whether a ruler was content to issue coins in the name of his suzerain, as were, for example, the Beys of Tunis up to the later nineteenth century, the Qaramānlī governors of Tripoli, and the rulers from the house of Muhammad ‘Alī in Egypt until the early twentieth century, all of which rulers for long minted coins in the names of their suzerains (however nominal this suzerainty might ultimately become), the Ottoman Sultan-Caliphs. On the whole, I have tended to regard only those coins with the full names and titles of the actual minting authority as evidence for the independent issue of coins by the dynasty or ruler in question, but am conscious that some inconsistencies may have crept in here.

Following Lane-Poole, I have given dates in both the Muslim Hijrī and the Christian eras. It should be noted by those unfamiliar with the Muslim system of dating that the pre-Islamic Arabs used a lunar calendar of twelve months (because observation of the moon’s phases was the only possible basis for time-reckoning in a desert environment) with intercalation (nasī’) of an extra month every two or three years in order to keep some relation with the solar year and with the rhythm of the agricultural seasons, and in order to fix the great annual fairs of Arabia at the same time each year. The Prophet Muhammad introduced a lunar year, forbidding intercalation and thus throwing the old Arabian system out of gear. It was the second caliph ‘Umar b. al-Khattāb who tactfully regulated the system. He decreed that the lunar year of twelve months should continue, beginning it now, however, on the first day of the Arabian year in which Muhammad had made his Hijra or migration from Mecca to Medina, namely 16 July AD 622. Furthermore, ‘Umar added days to the alternate lunar months, and also an additional day to the final month of the year every three years (such a leap year being called a sana kabīsa). Thus the lunar year normally consisted of 354 days grouped into twelve months alternately of twenty-nine and thirty days, but, in a kabisa year, it consisted of 355 days. The Hijrī months therefore do not correspond with the four seasons of the year, as do the Christian Gregorian or the Jewish months, but begin slightly earlier, by approximately eleven days each solar year. For instance, the month of Ramadān 1387 began on 3 December 1967. Because of the eleven days’ disparity, the next Ramadān began on 22 November 1968. It is taking about thirty-two and a half Christian-era years before Ramadān will begin again in early December (in fact, 9 December 1999 = 1 Ramadān 1420). In this way, the 100 years in a Muslim-era century are approximately equal to ninety-seven Christian years.

It has been difficult and tedious to convert quickly from Christian to Hijrī dates and vice versa by arithmetical means, so recourse has traditionally been made to conversion tables.5 (The present availability of instantaneous computer programs for converting dates now makes this easy for the scholar sitting in his study with a computer, but tables in book form will doubtless continue to be the most convenient way of finding equivalents for the traveller or the worker in the field viewing such epigraphic texts as inscriptions on tombstones or dedications on buildings.) In fact, a shifting lunar calendar has obvious disadvantages for the fixing of recurrent agricultural operations or financial transactions, and solar calendars soon came into use in the Islamic world for these practical purposes. Today, most of the Islamic world follows the European Gregorian calendar for purely secular and everyday purposes. Iran and Afghanistan, however, have since the earlier decades of the twentieth century used a solar Hijrī year, namely one having as its starting point the year of Muhammad’s Hijra (AD 622) but calculated thereafter on a solar basis. However, the primary records for Islamic history up to the nineteenth century (and, in certain regions, into the twentieth century), whether written in manuscripts and produced in the shape of early printed or lithographed books, or in numismatic and epigraphic legends, are almost invariably dated in the Hijrī system, so that dates of accessions, deaths, durations of reigns, etc., are here given in it.

Since the Christian and Muslim years hardly ever correspond, it follows that it is impossible to give equivalent Christian dates for historical events in the Islamic world with complete accuracy unless the month and day of the Hijrī year are known (strictly speaking, one needs also to know the exact time of day for an event, given the fact that Muslims, like Jews, calculated the beginning of a day not from midnight but from sunset on the previous evening). But although some mediaeval Islamic historians were remarkably accurate over the pinpointing of events, others were not, and might give only the year of an occurrence; inscriptions are usually exactly dated, but coins only occasionally give the month of their minting. Hence in this book, I have followed two basic principles in giving the Christian equivalent of Muslim dates (and in a very few cases – see below -when giving the Muslim equivalent of Christian dates).

First, where possible I have ascertained from my sources the exact day, or at least the month, of the event during the year in question, and have converted to the Christian era on this basis. Zambaur gave only Muslim-era dates, with citation of the exact day and month where possible, and did not give Christian-era equivalents; Lane-Poole gave dates in both eras, and explained that his basic principle was to cite the Christian year in which the Hijrī year in question began, except that when the Hijrī year began towards the close of a Christian year he gave the following AD year (The Mohammadan Dynasties, p. vii n. *), and this he regarded as adequate for practical purposes. Second, where exact information on the day or month is lacking in my sources, I have simply taken the equivalent Christian year as the one in which the greater part of the Muslim year fell; and if the Muslim year began halfway through the Christian year (i.e. at the end of June or the beginning of July), I have taken the Christian year as the one in which the first half of the Muslim year fell. As with Lane-Poole’s system, the equivalents arrived at this way are clearly not always going to be right, but this procedure seems to me in the present context preferable to the cumbersome citation of two Christian years. Thus I have written 741/1340 instead of the more exact 741/1340–1.

The difficulties of correctly setting forth the Christian- and Muslim-era dates are one thorny aspect of Islamic chronology. Another one arises from the often confused circumstances of rulers’ succession to power. The great Arabic chroniclers, such as al-Tabarī and Izz al-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr (on the latter of whom Zambaur relied heavily for his dating of pre-thirteenth-century dynasties of the Middle Eastern heartlands – cf. his Manuel, pp. v-vi), were often wonderfully exact in recording dates, on occasion down to the very time of day when events occurred; but, when one goes out beyond the major dynasties of the heartlands, sources often grow sparse and at times barely exist. Sometimes the literary evidence contradicts that of coin legends and of inscriptions; in this connection, it is well known that such monetary and epigraphic texts do not always reflect reality but might be struck or carved for tendentious, propaganda purposes, and hence be at variance with what was really happening. Even when all the relevant dates are known, it may be difficult to decide which one to choose as an exact accession date. In mediaeval Christendom, the actual accession of a monarch was usually followed by a formal coronation. In mediaeval England, it came to involve both the secular and religious sealing of approval (the Recognition and the Anointing, followed by the Crowning), and the whole act might take place several months after actual accession (in regard to Edgar of Mercia during Anglo-Saxon times, fourteen years later!). The Islamic equivalent of such a ceremony was the official offering by the great men of state and representatives of the religious institution of the bay’a, literally ‘hand clasping’ (cf. the mediaeval European manumissio), by which fealty was pledged (the act of mubāya‘a). Or such pledging might take place at the formal ceremony of julūs, the ruler’s ‘seating’ on his throne (‘arsh, sarīr), often accompanied by his publicly taking up and flourishing such insignia of royalty as a sword (al-taqlīd bi ’1-sayf, in Ottoman Turkish qïlïch qushanmasï), or a sceptre/rod (qadīb, khayzurān) or staff (‘asā), in the case of the Umayyad and ‘Abbāsid caliphs, with whom the rod or staff in question was assumed to be a legacy from the Prophet Muhammad himself.6 The date when a claimant first seized power, occupying the capital or a major part of the kingdom, would obviously be anterior to such ceremonies; is this, then, to be considered as the start of a reign? Also, among the early Ottomans, up to c. AD 1600, for instance, there was often a slight interregnum between the death of a sultan, during which the throne was technically unoccupied, and the new incumbent taking the throne. The demise of the previous ruler was meanwhile concealed from the public until the heir to the throne, the walī ’l‘ahd, could return from his provincial governorship and assume power in the capital, the great fear being of an outbreak of disorder and civil strife between rival claimants.7 Moreover, a first julūs might be followed by a second ceremony, as sometimes happened among the Il Khānids of Persia, when the Great Khān in distant Qaraqorum or Peking signified his approval and assent to the succession to power of the provincial Khāns, his theoretical subordinates; thus the 1l Khān Arghun was enthroned in 683/1284 after the execution of his uncle Ahmad Tegüder, but a second ceremony took place twenty months later in 685/1286 when a yarligh or document containing the Great Khan Qubilay’s agreement had arrived.8

Nor can one always rely on having Hijrī dates available for constructing a dynastic chronology. Several of the dates of the Nasrid kings of Granada during the last century of that dynasty’s existence, the fifteenth century, are known only from Castilian Spanish chronicles, coins being known for only a few of the rulers of that time. For the chronology of some of the minor states of the Indian Ocean shores, peninsular India, Malaysia and Indonesia, Portuguese and then Dutch and British historical information is important. West African dynasties like Mali, Songhay and the sultans in Hausaland often handed down king-lists which have to be correlated, as far as possible, with the Hijrī dates.

Yet another difficulty in setting down the names of rulers in a consistent yet intelligible form arises from the complex system of Arabic and Islamic nomenclature, especially where rulers and great men of state were concerned. As well as the given name (ism) - these names being rather limited in number – all Muslims (even children, before they could biologically become fathers or mothers) could have a patronymic (kunya), composed of Abū ‘father of …’ or Umm ‘mother of …’. They might further have a nisba, indicating profession, religious or legal affiliation, place of origin of the holder or of his family, etc., for example al-Sarrāj ‘the saddler’, al-Hanafī ‘follower of the law school of Abū Hanīfa’, al-Dimashqī ‘the man from Damascus’, etc. Any Muslim might also have a nickname (nabaz, laqab), such as Ta’abbata Sharran ‘he who carries an evil under his arm’, or al-Akhtal ‘having a fleshy and pendulous ear, a cauliflower ear’. Additionally, as time went on, the ruler himself, and members of the ruling classes, military or civilian, would almost certainly have an honorific title or nickname, also called a laqab, for example Dhu ‘1-Riyāsatayn ‘possessor of the two functions [civil and military]’ or Jalāl al-Dawla ‘exalted one of the state’. Any one or other of all these elements might be the one by which a person was generally or best known (his or her shuhra), and the shuhras of mediaeval times might not always be the ones by which a person is best known today; thus classical Arabic sources more often refer to the poet al-Mutanabbī by his kunya of Abu ‘1-Tayyib.9

From the tenth century AD onwards, honorific titles of this type began to proliferate among the holders of power, eventually extending to religious scholars and literary figures, with an inevitable cheapening of their significance. The study of this titulature is a fascinating one for the historian or epigrapher or numismatist, and can often throw significant light on historical events and trends.10 But the piling-up of increasingly grandiloquent honorifics in the titulature of a single ruler poses problems for the Islamic chronologer. Not infrequently, these titles become so long-winded and numerous that a choice has to be made: which one(s) to include in a book such as the present one? One factor involved is the question of the names by which a ruler was and still is best known. In some instances, the choice is easy; thus Mahmūd of Ghazna is best known as holder of the laqab Yamīn al-Dawla. For others, the choice is less obvious. In the 1967 Islamic Dynasties, I tended to give simplified versions of long strings of titles, setting down the one or ones which seemed to me the most familiar and the most significant for identification and differentiation purposes. In the New Islamic Dynasties, I have been more generous in recording honorifics; and, as well as giving the ism in the first place, I have always added the kunya, where known, and have endeavoured to display the nasab or string of filiation for at least one generation back, for example Ahmad b. al-Hasan, or for more than one generation back when this is necessary for clarity or identificatory purposes, for example Ahmad b. al-Hasan b. Ja‘far. This should in many cases enable the construction of a nasab for a dynasty, always assuming that there is father-son or grandfather-son or ruler-brother, etc., succession. Of course, such neat succession is far from general in Islam, and questions of succession might frequently be settled by the interposition of the sword. Also, at the outset of the new faith and society, there still survived the feeling that the inheritance of power should be by any capable male relative within a clan or family; only with the ‘Abbāsid caliphs did father-son succession beome more usual, though by no means universal. When Turkish and then Turco-Mongol dynasties appeared in later mediaeval times, tribal customs and a patrimonial conception of the sharing of power often led to succession not necessarily by a son but possibly by other members of the ruling family. When this occurred within a dynasty, I have tried to indicate the relationship of the new ruler to his predecessor by giving the kin connection, where this is known.

Clearly, the ideal would be to have genealogical tables, as had Lane-Poole, Barthold, Zambaur and Khalīl Ed’hem. Alas, the days when publishers were willing to lavish space and to swallow the typographical complications involved in the construction of genealogical stemmas, let alone to countenance hand-inserted fold-out tables, are now past. The attempt which I have made to show genealogical filiation by giving two or more terms in a nasab represents a second-best compared with the provision of spaciously set-out tables, but I hope that my practice here will go some way to obviate the sort of criticism made, with some justice, of the 1967 book, that it was a chronological handbook but not a genealogical one.

The Arabic-type names of the early lines of rulers in the Arabic heartlands of the Middle East and North Africa present the problems of arrangement and choice touched upon above. The Iranian names found among many of the Kurdish, Daylamī and Caucasian dynasties which rose to prominence during what the late V. Minorsky called ‘the Iranian intermezzo’ of the tenth to the twelfth centuries AD at times present problems where dialectical and hypocoristic forms of names are involved; here, recourse to such a work as Justi’s Iranisches Namenbuch is available. From the eleventh century onwards, dynasties of Turkish military slave or tribal origin, followed by Turco-Mongol ones from the thirteenth century onwards, rapidly spread across the northern tier of the Islamic world of Western and South Asia and of North Africa, so that rulers of Turkish origin eventually ruled most of the Islamic lands between Algiers in the west and Bengal and Assam in the east, extending as far south as Yemen in the Arabian peninsula and the Deccan in South India. The rendering of the Turkish names by which many of these holders of power were known involves yet more problems, for these names often appear in Arabic script in deformed, at times barely recognisable, versions. I have set down the correct Turkish and Mongol forms where this has been ascertainable; but, where there is considerable divergence between them and the Arabic orthography, this last is noted in parentheses, thus Hülegü (Hūlākū), Öljeytü (Ūljāytū), Negübey (Nīkpāy). However, I have left the familiar transliteration of the Turkish name Tīmūr as applied to the great conqueror, although the more correct rendering Temür is used for other possessors of this name, as in, for example, Toqay Temürids. Where Ottoman Turkish pronunciation of Arabic names produced forms somewhat divergent from the standard Arabic pronunciation of these names, these are likewise noted in parentheses, thus Muhammad (Mehemmed), ‘Uthmān (‘Othmān), Bāyazīd (Bāyezīd), Sulaymān (Süleymān). For the dynasties of sub-Saharan West and East Africa, the renderings of Arabic names in the indigenous languages have often been followed, thus Bukaru for Abū Bakr, Aliyu for ‘Ālī. A similar procedure for the names of some of the Malaysian and Indonesian dynasties has been adopted.

I have attempted to make the indexes as full as possible, in order to facilitate identifying rulers, with cross-referencing where necessary; and I have further given standard, Europeanised forms such as Saladin and Tamerlane.

There remains the pleasant task of thanking various colleagues who have patiently answered queries or provided information from their own special fields in Islamic history. They include Professor Barbara Watson Andaya (Indonesia and Malaysia); Dr Mohamed Ben Madani (the Beys of Tunis); Professor A. D. H. Bivar (West Africa); Dr Peter Carey (Java); Dr E. van Donzel (Harar); Professor Antonio Fernández-Puertas (Muslim Spain); Dr Greville Freeman-Grenville (East Africa); Dr Peter Jackson (the Delhi Sultanate); Professor Irfan Habib (the Nawwābs of Bengal); Professor Alexander Knysh (post-Mongol Central Asia); Dr David Morgan (the Mongols); Professor Giovanni Oman (Sicily); Dr C. E. R. Pennell (Indonesia and Malaysia); Dr Muhammad Yusuf Siddiq (Bengal); and Professor G. Rex Smith (the Arabian peninsula). For help on numismatics, I am equally indebted to Mr Stephen Album, Mrs Helen Mitchell Brown, Dr J. Leyten and Mr William F. Spengler. Such libraries as the John Rylands University Library at Manchester, the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, the Indian Institute Library, Oxford, and the Heberden Coin Room Library in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, have provided much of the background literature. Dr Freeman-Grenville has also provided much wisdom in the thorny field of eras and chronology. Finally, it is a pleasure to have this new version of an old book, which was part of the Islamic Surveys series, appear from Edinburgh University Press, and I am grateful for much general encouragement from the series adviser, Dr Carole Hillenbrand and for the skill of the Press staff and their typesetters in coping with such a complex manuscript.

NOTES

1.

See The Islamic Dynasties, Introduction, p. xi and n. 1.

2.

It is duly acknowledged in what are now the two fullest and most up-to-date, standard works on world rulers and governments, G. C. Allen (ed.), Rulers and Governments of the World, 3 vols, London 1978 (chronological arrangement), and Peter Truhart, Regents of Nations. Systematic Chronology of States and their Political Representatives in Past and Present: A Biographical Reference Book, 3 vols, in 4 parts, Munich 1984–8 (arrangement by areas; vol. II covers Asia and Australia-Oceania). It may be noted that these works replace the pioneer, but largely outdated, book by A. M. H. J. Stokvis, Manuel d’histoire, de généalogie et de chronologie de tous les états du globe, 3 vols, Leiden 1888–91, and also B. Spuler (ed.), Regenten und Regierungen der Welt, 2nd edn, Würzburg 1962.

3.

The Islamic Dynasties, pp. xi-xiii.

4.

The brief general study by Philip Grierson, Numismatics and History, Historical Association pamphlets, General series no. G19, London 1951, is still well worth consulting.

5.

These are accessible in several places, for example in C. H. Philips (ed.), Handbook of Oriental History, The Royal Historical Society, London 1951, 33–40; Sir Thomas W. Haig, Comparative Tables of Muhammadan and Christian Dates, London 1932; H. G. Cattenoz, Tables de concordance des ères chrétiennes et hégiriennes, Rabat 1954; V. V. Tsybulskiy, Sovremennye kalendari stran blizhnetsa i srednogo vostoka, Moscow 1964; G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville, AD 622–2222 (AHI-1650). A Complete Guide for Converting Christian and Islamic Dates and Dates of Festivals, Garnet Publishing, Reading 1995 (= a new version of his The Muslim and Christian Calendars, first published London 1963, including corrections which the author was not allowed to make to the first edition and its reprint). The fullest treatment, including not only the Hijrī calendar but also the various other eras in use in the Middle East and the Iranian lands at various times, is by F. Wüstenfeld and E. Mahler, Vergleichungs-Tabellen zur islamischen und iranischen Zeitrechnung, 3rd edn, revised by J. Mayr and B. Spuler, Wiesbaden 1961.

6.

Dr Freeman-Grenville has pointed out to me that, at Kilwa in East Africa (see below, no. 62), the formal Recognition was by mention in the Friday khutba.

7.

See A. D. Alderson, The Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty, Oxford 1956, 37–45.

8.

See EIr, art. ‘Argūn Khan’ (Peter Jackson).

9.

An excellent survey of the Arabic name and its component parts was begun by L. Caetani and G. Gabrieli in their Onomasticon arabicum ossia repertorio alfabético dei nomi di persona e di luogo contenuti nelle principali opere storiche, biografiche e geographiche, stampate e manoscritto, relative all ’Islām. I Fonti – Introduzione, Rome 1915, but unfortunately the project lapsed for over half a century. It has now happily been taken up again by an international team based in Paris, under the direction of Mme Jacqueline Sublet, who are producing fascicules of the new Onomasticon and a series of Cahiers d’onomastique arabe. For the most up-to-date, detailed and scholarly treatment of the name in Arabic, including the cultural, literary and historical aspects, see now Jacqueline Sublet, Le voile du nom. Essai sur le nom propre arabe, Paris 1991, and, in a rather briefer compass, Annemarie Schimmel, Islamic Names, Edinburgh 1989. For the laqab in particular, see the article s.v. in EI2 (C. E. Bosworth).

10.

Thus P. Guichard has recently suggested that the form of the favoured laqab of the ‘Āmirid hājib Ibn Abī Amir in late tenth-century Muslim Spain, al-Manṣūr tout court, and of the similar honorifics of the members of the ‘Āmirid family who followed him (see below, Chapter Two, no. 4), reflects their limited pretensions to fully legitimate sovereignty in the Umayyad caliphate; the later Spanish Umayyads, like their rivals the ‘Abbāsids, used honorifics of this type, but with such complements expressing divine help or dependence on God as bi ’llāh or alā ’llāh. See his ‘Al-Mansūr ou al-Mansūr bi llāh? Les laqab/s des ‘Āmirides d’après la numismatique et les documents officiels’, Archéologie Islamique, 5 (1995), 47–53.

Post-scriptum

A French translation of the original Islamic Dynasties by Yves Thoraval, Les dynasties musulmanes, has recently appeared from Editions Sindbad, Paris 1996, 340 pp., with some slight updating of the entries on dynasties surviving into the last third of the present century and some new bibliographical references, mainly intended for a Francophone readership.