106 E. E. Oliver —Decline of the Sdmdnis and the Else of the [No. 2, 
Thus ended the dynasty of the Samanis, Muntasir being the last 
of his house. With him a family became extinct which for the space of 
nearly a century and a half had ruled over a large part of Central Asia, 
“ and whose members,” as Vambery writes, “ may therefore with truth be 
regarded as the founders of that religious and social polity which was 
regarded by the Muha*mmadans of three continents, as the nearest ap¬ 
proach to the golden age of Islam, and is in consequence still to this day 
held in high venemtion. Ba gh dad and other cities of Western Asia 
were open to all manner of free-thinkers, but Bukhara. Balkh, and 
Samarkand, were, under the Samanis, the special refuge of the Muham¬ 
madan scholars and zealots * * *. The political supremacy of Bukhara 
over the different tribes of Central Asia, which has been maintained up 
to modern times by the rulers on the Zarafshan, may be traced to a 
similar origin. The deference paid by the mighty Sabuktigin to Bu¬ 
khara, a deference imitated in later times by Af gh ans. Indians and ITzbegs, 
began during the period of the greatness of the Samanis. They repre¬ 
sented the last Iranian dynasty in the land of the ancient Iranian civili¬ 
zation and the importance of the legacy left by them to their Turko- 
Tartaric successors on the throne of Transoxania cannot be overrated.” 
Tlak Nasr at Bukhara 389--403 H. 
Abu-1-Hasan-i Nasr flak lOian, the son of ’Ali, who is described as 
the brother of Harun-i Bughra, now that the Samani family were re¬ 
moved, ruled unopposed in Mawara-un-Nahr, and not long afterwards, 
he wrote to Mahmud congratulating him on his inheritance of the king¬ 
dom of IQiurasan and proposing a friendly alliance, with a settlement of 
boundaries, all the trans-Oxus territory to appertain to him, and all 
Madtin-un-Nalir, or Cis-Oxus, to Mahmud. Tlak probably at this time 
was, at least nominally, acknowledged ruler of all the territory from the 
borders of China to the Caspian Sea. Mahmud’s ambition was in the 
direction of India, and some such treaty and alliance seems to have been 
made about 396 H. and for some time friendly relations to have been 
preserved. An embassy was sent by Mihiniid, consisting of Tughanjak 
Prince of Sarklias and Abii-l-Ta’ib Sahl bin Sulaiman, Sa’luki the Imam 
of the sacred traditions, who is described as one of the singular schohvrs 
of the age—“ sound in controversial tact, casuistical divinity and lunar 
calculations ”—to demand the hand of Tlak’s daughter for his son 
Muhammad, a young lady,—“ the unequalled pearl ” who was subse¬ 
quently married to another son Masa’ud, and the most valuable presents 
were interchanged on both sides. Such an alliance, however, proved but 
