A Sogdian clan in power at the Chaliphate’s Caucasian frontier: The Sajids. II — Abu-l-Qasim Yusuf (900s — 920s)

Abstract

The article analyses the main stages in the career of an influential family having sprung from Central Asian soil in the service of the Caliphate during the 9th– 10th centuries. The Sajids whose origins go back into the milieu of petty Transoxanian (Sogdian & Ferganian) aristocracy in the first age of Islam rose in the entourage of the powerful generals under the early Abbasids and gave three generations of masterful administrators and military chiefs who left an imprint in the historical memories of both the Muslim & the Christian contemporaries due to their functioning as governors (wulat) representing (often in a mostly formal way) the interests of Baghdad in South Eastern Caucasia and North Western Iran. Their destinies reflect the contradictory features in the formation, evolution and degradation of the provincial elite characteristic for the decades of Abbasid decline (860s–940s).