—for twenty years, during which he mastered Azerbaijan and the surrounding regions and sought to revive the Magian creed. In those same days Māzyār likewise proclaimed Zoroastrianism in Ṭabaristān ⦗1⦘, and the affliction intensified.
Al-Muʿtaṣim and before him al-Maʾmūn had already spent vast, countless qintars of gold and silver on the war against Bābak. In the present year al-Muʿtaṣim sent fresh funds to his army under al-Afshīn—thirty million dirhams in all. Al-Badh, the accursed Bābak’s own city, was taken ⦗2⦘; he hid himself in a forest, while his household and children were captured, and the Khurramiyya were utterly cut off.
Thereafter a writ of safe-conduct from al-Muʿtaṣim reached Bābak. Al-Afshīn forwarded it to him with two envoys, and Bābak’s son also wrote, urging him to accept the pledge. When the two messengers entered al-Shaʿrāʾ ⦗3⦘, where Bābak lay concealed, he killed one of them and said to the other, “Go to that son of a wanton—my so-called son—and tell him: ‘Had he truly been my son, he would have come to me.’” Bābak then tore the writ to pieces, left the thicket, and ascended the mountain
(1) A district of Khurasan, pronounced with a short vowel (fatha) on its first two letters. It received this name because dense trees once surrounded it, so that the troops of Kisra could not reach the place until they had hacked their way through with axes. In Persian, tabar means “axe,” and estan means “tree.” See al-Rawd al-mi‘tar, p. 383.
(2) For detailed accounts, see Tarikh al-Tabari, 9/31–45, and al-Kamil, 6/462 ff. Al-Buhturi composed a qasida praising Abu Sa‘id b. Yusuf al-Thaghri—one of Hamid al-Tusi’s commanders in the war against Babak al-Khurrami; Diwan al-Buhturi, 2/1256, includes the following lines:
“By God, how splendid you were at Babak, a horseman—
a hero who flinched not before the gates of death.
Until you captured their fortress and left it humbled,
though once it had been impregnable.”
The same diwan, 1/9, also records:
“You kept striking at Babak’s gate with your lances,
visiting him in savage raids,
until, by the edge of your sword, you seized by force
what had wearied caliphs before you.
You emptied al-Badh—his stronghold—of him
and set him up as a spectacle in Samarra.”
See also Diwan Abi Tammam, 2/18, 24, 34.
(3) al-shu‘ara’ denotes land thick with trees.