A literary history of Persia

DECLINE OF THE CALIPHATE" " Occultation or Disappearance of the Twelfth Lnm of theShCite " "Sect of the Twelve ; (2) the beginning of the Propagandaof the Shf'ite " Sect of the Seven," orThe rA 'H '2&, Isma'flis, which led directlyto the rise of theCarmathians (armatly pi. ^aramita] and thefoundation of the Fatimid Anti-Caliphate of North Africa andEgypt ;and (3) the establishment of the Samanid dynasty inKhurasdn. In this year also the great Sufi saint Bayazfd ofBistam died, and the theologian Abu'l-Hasan al-Ash'ari wasborn ;he who was destined to give the coup de grace to theMu'tazilite ascendancy in Islam, and to give currency and formto that narrower and more illiberal doctrine which has givento the Muhammadan religion its rigid and stereotyped characwill beter. The religious phenomena of this critical periodmore fullydiscussed in the following chapter, and here weshall continue to speak chiefly of external and politicalevents.The rise of the Sdmanid dynasty coincided with, andindeedbrought about, the fall of the short-lived power of the Coppersmith'ssons Ya'qub and 'Amr, and marks theT1 d nidDyLaTtyreally active beginning of the Persian Renaissance.Samdn, after whom the dynasty is called, claimeddescent from Bahrain Chubfn (see p. 181 supra), and thegenuineness of this pedigree is admitted bythe learned andexact Abu Rayhan al-Birunf. 1 He was converted from theZoroastrian faith to Islam by Asad b. 'Abdu'llah, the governorof Khurasan, after whom he named his son. His four grandsonsall had provincial governments in Khurasan in theCaliphate of al-Ma'mun (about A.D. 819), but Ahmad, thesecond of them, was most successful in extending and consolidatinghis dominions, and his two sons, Nasr I and Isma'fl,succeeded in overthrowing the Saffarid power, taking 'Amr b.Layth (who succeeded his brother Ya'qub in A.D. 876) captive1See p. 48 of Sachau's translation of his Chronology ofAl-Biruni died in A.D. 1048.Ancient Nations.