ʿAbdallāh ibn Tāhir

ʿAbdallāh ibn Tāhir ( Arabic عبد الله بن طاهر, DMG ʿAbdallāh ibn Ṭāhir * around 798; † around 844) was governor of the Abbasids in Khorasan from 825 until his death . He can be seen as the most famous among the rulers of the Tahirids .

At the beginning of his reign, Abdullah and his father tried to pacify the unrest in the areas of the caliphate that followed the civil war between al-Amin and al-Ma'mun . He then succeeded his father as governor of al-Jazeera with the task of defeating the rebel Nasr ibn Shabath and forced Nasr to capitulate between 824 and 826.

He was then sent to Egypt , where he successfully put down a rebellion led by Abdullah ibn as-Sari. He also managed to regain Alexandria , which had been captured by Muslim refugees from al-Andalus seven years earlier. After their subsequent expulsion, the refugees set out for Crete , which had been controlled by the Byzantines until then , where they formed an Islamic government.

Although Abdullah was appointed governor of Khorasan after the death of his brother in 828, he did not reach Nishapur until two years later, in 830. Until then he was represented by his brother Ali. In the meantime he put down several revolts. In 829 he was briefly commissioned to put a stop to Babak (approx. 798-838), a leader of the Churramites ( pers . : those with the good faith ), a local peace movement that fought the Abbasid caliphate, but forced him to stop Another order from the caliph to Khorasan, where he was supposed to stop the Kharijites , an Islamic sect.

During his reign, Abdullah was mainly involved in power struggles to the west and east of his territory. In the east he tried to consolidate the supremacy of the Samanids , his vassals in Transoxania . The Samanids were important to him because they controlled the trade across Central Asia , which also included the trade in Turkish slaves.

In the west, too, there were conflicts with the local ruler in Tabaristan , the Ispahbadh Mazyar ibn Karin . As the ruler of the east, Abdullah claimed Tabaristan as his sanctuary and insisted that the tribute Mazyar owed the caliph be passed on through him, but this was far from Mayzar, who was trying to expand his dominion and insisted on paying the tribute directly to the caliph to pay.

In his fight (against Abdullah) Mayzar was supported by Afshin , a prince and general from Usrushana , who in turn tried to bring the Tahirid territories under his control.

Abdullah managed to incite the caliph against Mazyar and was commissioned in 839 to stop the Ispahbadh. Mazyar, who had just converted to Islam , relied on the Zoroastrians of his province for this power struggle , but was eventually captured and sent to what is now Iraq , where he was executed. Until the Ziyarid uprising in 864, control of Tabaristan was now the responsibility of the Tahirids.

Abdullah died in Nishapur in either 844 or 845. He was succeeded by his son Tahir II , who ruled from 845 to 862.

literature

• CE Bosworth : Encyclopaedia Iranica- -Article 'ABDALLĀH as Taher (1982)