The Tahirid Dynasty

¹ Tahir earned the epithet “Dhu’l-Yaminayn” (“Possessor of Two Right Hands”) for his generalship on behalf of Caliph Al-Ma’mun during the civil war against Al-Amin. As governor of Khorasan he quietly stopped mentioning the caliph’s name in the Friday sermon in 821 — a symbolic first step toward political autonomy that historians often treat as the true birth of an independent Persianate dynasty under nominal Abbasid suzerainty.

A separate Tahirid line, descended from Tahir’s son Muhammad, simultaneously held the powerful office of chief of police (shurta) in Baghdad itself on the caliphs’ behalf into the 890s — a distinct branch from the Khorasan emirs listed here. The Khorasan line ended in 873 when Ya’qub ibn al-Layth, founder of the Saffarid dynasty, captured Nishapur.