ʿALĪ B. FARĀMARZ, ʿALĀʾ-AL-DAWLA or MOʾAYYED-AL-DAWLA ʿAŻOD-AL-DĪN B. ABĪ MANṢŪR FARĀMARZ B. ʿALĀʾ-AL-DAWLA MOḤAMMAD B. DOŠMANZĪĀR, member of the Deylamī dynasty of the Kakuyids, d. 488/1095. In the middle years of the 5th/11th century, under ʿAlī’s father, Abū Manṣūr Farāmarz, the Kakuyids of Jebāl had lost their former capital of Isfahan to the Saljuq leader Ṭoḡrïl Beg. They had been compensated for this by the grant of the towns of Abarqūh and especially Yazd, which became the family seat; according to Yazd’s local historian, Jaʿfar b. Moḥammad Jaʿfarī, and later historians of the town, it enjoyed a distinct cultural and material florescence in the later 5th/11th and the 6th/12th centuries under the Kakuyids as vassals of the Saljuqs. Although the establishment of the Saljuq empire is usually viewed as marking a distinct break in Persian history, since this strongly Sunnite Turkish dynasty replaced local Deylamī and Kurdish lines which had generally favored Shiʿite beliefs, the Saljuqs did not keep up vendettas against the fallen dynasties. Hence the Kakuyids of Yazd continued to enjoy high favor and prestige at the Saljuq court, even though their political power was now circumscribed.
ʿAlī b. Farāmarz had close relations with the Saljuq royal house; in 469/1076-77 (just a few years after his father’s death and his succession as head of the Kakuyid family), he married Čaḡrī Beg’s daughter, Arslan Ḵātūn, widow of the ʿAbbasid caliph Qāʾem. After the death in 485/1092 of Sultan Malekšāh, ʿAlī b. Farāmarz espoused the cause of the dead ruler’s brother Totoš, who considered his right to the Saljuq throne superior to that of Berk-yaruq (Barkīāroq) and who controlled all the western lands of the empire. ʿAlī was killed in the battle near Ray which ended Totoš’s bid for power.
ʿAlī b. Farāmarz has a place in Persian literary history as the first notable patron of the great Saljuq poet Moʿezzī. According to the historian Afżal-al-dīn Kermānī he endeavored to attract literary men and scholars to his court at Yazd; Neẓāmī ʿArūżī Samarqandī’s Čahār maqāla (ed. M. Qazvīnī, Tehran, 1336 Š./1957, p. 197) contains an anecdote describing how he was a great lover of poetry and introduced Moʿezzī to Malekšāh. The Dīvān of Moʿezzī contains three qaṣīdas dedicated to ʿAlī b. Farāmarz (ed. ʿA. Eqbāl, Tehran, 1318 Š./1939, pp. 121, 510, 522).
Bibliography:
We have only isolated scraps of information in general historical sources: Ebn al-Aṯīr (X, pp. 72, 312), the anonymous Moǰmal al-tawārīḵ, the Saljuq historian ʿEmād-al-dīn Kāteb Eṣfahānī, and the local historians of Yazd; these sources are utilized in the detailed study of C. E. Bosworth, “Dailamis in Central Iran: the Kakuyids of Jibal and Yazd,” Iran 8, 1970, pp. 73-95.
See also idem, The Islamic Dynasties, Edinburgh, 1967, pp. 97-98.
(C. E. Bosworth)
Originally Published: December 15, 1985
Last Updated: August 1, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. I, Fasc. 8, pp. 848-849
C. E. Bosworth, “ʿALĪ B. FARĀMARZ,” Encyclopædia Iranica, I/8, pp. 848-849, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ali-b-faramarz (accessed on 30 December 2012).
