namely, the province of Khurasan. The caliph granted it, and this distressed Ismaʿil ibn Ahmad al-Samanid, the governor of Transoxiana (1). He wrote to ʿAmr, saying:
“You have been entrusted with a vast dominion; be content with that and leave alone the lands now in my hands.”
ʿAmr refused, so Ismaʿil advanced against him with exceedingly large armies. They met at Balkh; ʿAmr’s men were routed and ʿAmr himself was taken prisoner. When he was brought before Ismaʿil ibn Ahmad, the latter rose to greet him, kissed him between the eyes, washed his face, invested him with a robe of honor, and guaranteed his safety. Ismaʿil then wrote to the caliph about the matter, reporting that the people of those regions had grown weary and impatient with ʿAmr’s rule. The caliph’s reply instructed him to confiscate ʿAmr’s treasures and possessions, which he duly did. Thus the man whose kitchen once required six hundred camels was reduced to irons and imprisonment (2).
(3) It is astonishing that although ʿAmr had fifty thousand men with him, not a single one of them was killed or captured; he alone was taken.
The rise of Abu Saʿid al-Jannabi, the leader of the Qarmaṭīs—may Allah disgrace and curse them—who proved even more wicked and ruinous than the Zanj (4), began in Jumada al-Akhirah of this very year in the area around Basra. A great multitude of Bedouins and others rallied to him; his power grew enormously, and he slaughtered the inhabitants of the surrounding villages. He then advanced to al-Qatif, near Basra, and attempted to enter it. The caliph al-Muʿtaḍid wrote to the city’s deputy, ordering him to strengthen its wall, so they reinforced and restored it at a cost of roughly four thousand dinars (5). Thanks to this, Basra was spared from the Qarmaṭīs.
Abu Saʿid al-Jannabi and his fellow Qarmaṭīs then gained control of Hajar and the adjacent territories, spreading corruption far and wide.
As for Abu Saʿid al-Jannabi’s origins: he had been a grain broker, selling foodstuffs and keeping account of prices for the people. In the year 281 AH a man named Yahya ibn al-Mahdi arrived and summoned the people of al-Qatif to pledge allegiance to the Mahdi. A man called ʿAli (6) ibn al-ʿAlaʾ ibn Ḥamdan al-Ziyadi answered his call, assisted him in promoting allegiance to the Mahdi, and gathered the Shiʿa who were in al-Qatif; among those who responded was none other than this Abu Saʿid al-Jannabi.