Buyid Confederation

  General Description   The Buyid dynasty originated from Shahrud Valley in northwestern Iran. Ali b. Buya, a soldier in the Abbasid state, began taking territory by forced after being removed from his position as administrator of Karaj. By 934 CE, he had reached Fars. ^[1] In 945 CE the Buyids claimed Baghdad and Basra creating for themselves a stable base of power in Mesopotamia. ^[2]
The Buyid ruler was known as an amir or shahanshah, the latter "more a recognition of seniority within the family than an office with authority". ^[3] The Buyids were essentially a provincial military aristocracy with an army composed partly of Daylamite infantry and slave Turkish cavalry. The regiments of the Buyid Princes often fought one another while the central government increasingly became ineffectual. "The Buyid state was divided into several appanages, of which Shiraz and Baghdad were the most important, each held by a different member of the family." ^[4]
In theory the Buyid amirs were governors under the Abbasid caliph who remained in Baghdad with powers to appoint religious officials, ^[5] and continued to be symbolically important (in Iraq) appearing on coinage and grants of land. Although Baghdad was the most important political, economic and religious center, whose amir’s chief secretary of the bureaucracy was formally granted the title of vizier ^[6] , Fars was the heartland of the empire, with all civil servants being drawn from there. ^[7] The Buyids replaced previous established bureaucratic families with Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians.
The Buyids paid their military using iqta holdings whereby "in lieu of salary an amir would be granted the right to collect the taxes of a given area. An iqta could thus vary in size from a whole province to much smaller subdivision, to a single town or village." However, "Under the Buyids, this system was widely credited with economic disaster, as absentee amirs sought to reap the swiftest possible profits before their iqta was removed them." ^[8]

[1]: (Busse 1975, 253-254) H Busse. 1975. Iran under the Buyids. In Frye, R. N. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Iran. Volume 4. The period from the Arab Invasion to the Saljuq’s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.253-4

[2]: (Donohue 2003, 2-11) J J Donohue. 2003. The Buwayhid Dynasty in Iraq 334H./945 to 403H./1012. Leiden: Brill. p. 2-11

[3]: (Kennedy 2004) Hugh N Kennedy. 2004. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates. Second edition. Pearson Longman. Harlow.

[4]: (Peacock 2015, 43) A C S Peacock. 2015. The Great Seljuk Empire. Edinburgh University Press Ltd. Edinburgh

[5]: (Kennedy 2004, 216) Hugh N Kennedy. 2004. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates. Second edition. Pearson Longman. Harlow.

[6]: (Donohue 2003, 140) John J Donohue. 2003. The Buwayhid Dynasty in Iraq. BRILL

[7]: (Busse 1975, 271) H Busse. 1975. Iran under the Būyids. In Frye, R. N. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Iran. Volume 4. The period from the Arab Invasion to the Saljuq’s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.271

[8]: (Peacock 2015, 79) A C S Peacock. 2015. Edinburgh University Press Ltd. Edinburgh.