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al-Bab1 but only for a short time. In 360/970 the Kurdish Shaddadids
ousted the Musafirids from Arran, and thus Eastern Transcaucasia became
divided into three autonomous Muslim principalities:
(1) The Arab Hashimids (of the Sulaym tribe) of al-Bab, who became
strongly mixed with local Daghestanian influences and interests;
(2) The Arab Yazidids (of the Shayban tribe) of Sharvan, who gradually
became integrated in the local Iranian tradition2;
(3) The Kurdish Shaddadids of Arran.3
For this period of local awakening, which forms a kind of interlude
between the Arab dominion and the Turkish conquest, our History of
al-Bab is a source of outstanding importance.
For the convenience of the readers my translation of the relevant
passages from the TcfriKh al-Bab is accompanied by a detailed commentary
on the paragraphs into which I have divided the text. This will be
followed by special sections, in which I shall sum up the new facts on
the geography of Sharvan and Darband, and on the political and social
organisation of the two principalities, which we owe to the Ta'nkh al-Bab,
In Mimejjim-bashf s original, the history of the earlier sharvanshahs
(section I, subsection A] and that of the rulers of al-Bab (subsection B)
are immediately followed by an account of the later sharvanshahs (section
II, subsections A and -B). This meagre chapter, which is based on
entirely different material and needs only a very short commentary,
will form Annex I.
In Annex II, I give the resume of the scanty information we possess
on the later amirs of Darband.
Annex III contains a revised translation of Mas'udi's important
account of the Caucasus, Mwruj al-dhahab (332/934), ch. XVII, which
throws light on many points in the somewhat abrupt narrative of the
Ta'rikh al-Bab.
1 In 344/955 Marzuban b. Muhammad suppressed a revolt near al-Bab. See
below p. 71,
2 The founder of the dynasty was Khalid b. Yazid b. Mazyad and I myself
(Hudud al-*Alam, p, 405) have used for this dynasty the appellation Mazyadid.
This practice, however, should be discontinued as leading to confusion with the
totally different dynasty of the Shi'a rulers of Iraq (Hilla), who belonged to the
Banu-Asad tribe and among whom were such well-known princes as Sadaqa (417—
501/1086-1108) and his son Dubays (501-29/1108-35). Already Qatran in his
poems applies the term Yazldi to the dynasty of Sharvan.
3 See my Studies in Caucasian History, 1953,.