CALIPHS OF BAGDAD. 31 



Persia, from being a province, became itself the 

 heritage of several petty dynasties, w^ho successively 

 threatened the capital and usurped the power of the 

 Abbassides. The earliest of these was that of the 

 Taherites, — the posterity of the valiant Taher, who 

 had taken an active part in the civil wars of the 

 sons of Haroun. His descendants, or successors, 

 reigned in Khorasan till the fourth generation, 

 when they were supplanted by the Sofferides, a 

 /name borrowed from the trade of their founder, 

 Jacob ibn Leith, who exercised the humble craft of 

 a brasier, and afterward the less honourable pro- 

 fession of a robber. This dynasty was overthrown 

 by the arms of the powerful Tartar chief Ismail 

 Samani, whom the caliph Motamed had invited to 

 Jiis assistance. In the year 873 he passed the Oxus 

 with 10,000 cavalry, so poor that their stirrups were 

 of wood, and so brave that they vanquished the 

 Soffarian army, eight times more numerous than 

 their own. For several generations the Samanides 

 exercised a turbulent and precarious rule over Kho- 

 rasan, Seistan, Balkh, and the Transoxian provinces, 

 including the cities of Samarcand and Bokhara ; but 

 they were at length swept away by more potent 

 usurpers. The Bowides or Dilemites, so called from 

 their ancestor Buiyah, a fisherman of Dilem, were 

 their rivals and their enemies ; and about the middle 

 of the tenth century the Persian throne and the 

 sceptre of the caliphs were usurped by three power- 

 ful brothers, Ali, Ahmed, and Hassan, on whom the 

 feeble Mostakfi bestowed the highest dignities, and 

 the pompous titles of Moezodowlah (Column of the 

 State), Amadodowlah (Pillar of the Throne), and 

 Rocnodowlah (Angular Stone of the Court) ; epithets 

 which discover the fallen majesty of the Saracen 

 emperors. Under this dynasty the language and 

 genius of Persia revived ; and the authority of the 

 Arabs beyond the Tigris may be said to have termi- 



