FARROḴZĀD, ABŪ ŠOJĀʿ, b. Masʿūd b. Maḥmūd, Ghaznavid sultan of Afghanistan and northern India (443-52/1052-59). He succeeded in Ḡazna after the traumatic events of the reign of his uncle ʿAbd al-Rašīd (q.v.; ca. 440-43/1049-52), whose power had been usurped by the slave commander Ṭoḡrel; Ghaznavid authority was restored only after a countercoup. Farroḵzād remains a somewhat shadowy figure in the sources, though praised by Abu’l-Fażl Bayhaqī (q.v.) for his just rule and charitable works (p. 114). It was during his reign that Bayhaqī emerged from prison and started writing his memoirs (mojalladāt).
Farroḵzād’s vizier was Ḥosayn b. Mehrān. Of the sultan’s external policy all that is known is that the earlier upheavals had tempted the Saljuq Čaḡrï Beg Dāwūd (q.v.) to invade Afghanistan at the beginning of Farroḵzād’s reign, but this incursion was repelled by the commander (ḥājeb) Ḵerḵīz. Toward the end of the reign the Ghaznavid sultan marched against the Saljuqs in Ṭoḵārestān but was defeated by Čaḡrï Beg’s son Alp Arslan (q.v.); peace was made, though whether by Farroḵzād himself or his successor, his brother Ebrāhīm (q.v.), is unclear. Farroḵzād died in April 1059 at the early age of thirty-four years. It was during his reign that the title al-solṭān al-moʿaẓẓam, apparently borrowed from Saljuq practice, first appeared on Ghaznavid coins (Bosworth, 1962, pp. 223-24, 231).
Bibliography (for cited works not given in detail, see “Short References”):
Bayhaqī, Tārīḵ-e masʿūdī, ed. Fayyāż. C. E. Bosworth, “The Titulature of the Early Ghaznavids,” Oriens 15, 1962, pp. 210-33.
Idem, Later Ghaznavids, pp. 47-49.
Idem, “The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (A.D. 1000-1217),” in Camb. Hist. Iran V, pp. 1-202 (esp. p. 53). Ebn al-Aṯīr, IX, pp. 584-85.
Ebn Bābā Qāšānī, Ketāb raʾs māl al-nadīm, tr. C. E. Bosworth in Later Ghaznavids, pp. 142-43.
Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt, I, pp. 236-37; tr. Raverty, I, pp. 100-102.
(C. Edmund Bosworth)
Originally Published: December 15, 1999
Last Updated: December 15, 1999
