ABŪ KĀLĪJĀR GARŠĀSP (II), ʿALĀʾ-AL-DAWLA ʿAŻOD-AL-DĪN B. ʿALĪ B. ABĪ MANṢŪR FARĀMARZ B. ʿALĀʾ-AL-DAWLA MOḤAMMAD, member of the Dailamite dynasty of the Kakuyids (d. 536/1141?). Like his father ʿAlī and grandfather Abū Manṣūr Farāmarz, Abū Kālīǰār Garšāsp was head of the Kakuyid family in their fief of the town of Yazd, which had been granted by the Saljuq Toḡrïl Beg in 433/1051. After his father’s death in 488/1095, he became an honored figure at the Saljuq court. In the early years of the 6th/12th century, he enjoyed the favor of Sultan Moḥammad b. Malekšāh and, after 511/1118, of the latter’s son Maḥmūd; he married the sister of Moḥammad and Sanǰar. However, he soon lost the confidence of Sultan Maḥmūd, after enemies of the court at Isfahan had spread calumnies about him and his infrequent appearances at the court. Maḥmūd accordingly sent a military force to Yazd, which arrested Abū Kālīǰār Garšāsp. He was then jailed in Jebāl, Yazd being granted to the sultan’s cupbearer Qaraǰa. But he managed to escape and return to Yazd, seeking the protection of Sanǰar in Khorasan. He urged the latter to march westwards against his nephew Maḥmūd and provided strategic information about the roads through central Persia. During the battle fought at Sāva in 513/1119 between the two Saljuq monarchs, Abū Kālīǰār Garšāsp was one of the “five kings”—who included the Saffarid amir of Sīstān and the Ḵᵛārazmšāh Qoṭb-al-dīn Moḥammad—who fought at Sanǰar’s side. He was presumably restored to Yazd when the victorious Sanǰar was able to impose his own peace conditions on Maḥmūd. We have no information about the remainder of Abū Kālīǰār Garšāsp’s life, which was doubtless passed in Yazd. But there is a cryptic mention by the local historian of Yazd, Jaʿfar b. Moḥammad Jaʿfarī, that “the amir ʿAlī b. Farāmarz” was killed fighting with Sanǰar against the pagan Qara Ḵetāy at the battle of the Qaṭvān steppe in 536/1141. This can not refer to the real ʿAlī b. Farāmarz, who had died over forty years before, and may in fact refer to his son. At all events, the direct line of the Kakuyids died out with Abū Kālīǰār Garšāsp; he left no son but was succeeded in Yazd by his two daughters. The husband of one of these subsequently began the line of the atabegs of Yazd, the first atabeg being Rokn-al-dīn Sām.
Bibliography:
Ebn al-Aṯīr, X, pp. 312, 387.
Moǰmal al-tawārīk, p. 414.
Jaʿfar b. Moḥammad Jaʿfarī (and his successors), Tārīḵ-e Yazd, ed. Ī. Afšār, Tehran, 1338 Š./1959, pp. 21-22.
Bondarī, Zobdat al-noṣra wa noḵbat al-ʿoṣra, ed. M. T. Houtsma in Receuils de textes relatifs à l’histoire des Seljoucides II, Leiden, 1889, pp. 133-34.
C. E. Bosworth, “Dailamīs in Central Iran: the Kākūyids of Jibāl and Yazd,” Iran 8, 1970, p. 88.
(C. E. Bosworth)
Originally Published: December 15, 1983
Last Updated: July 19, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. I, Fasc. 3, pp. 328-329
C. E. Bosworth, “ABŪ KĀLĪJĀR GARŠĀSP (II),” Encyclopædia Iranica, I/3, p. 302; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abu-kalijar-garsasp-ii-ala-al-dawla-azod-al-din-b (accessed on 30 January 2014).
