抄録
The Samanids are very famous for their important roles in the history of Iran. They ruled at Khurasan and Ma ward al-Nahr during the 3rd and 4th centuries A. H. Not only many great masters like Rudaki, Ferdousi, Ibn Sina and al-Beruni lived in those lands, but also they constituted the well-balanced political organization with the bureaucracy and the unique military system.
In spite of this fact there has been no special monograph on the Samanids, except W. Barthold, Turkestan down to the Mongol Invasion. Since I think the most obscure part of the dynasty is the family history in its early time, I made efforts to clarify its origin and the process of its assent to the rulership of the Eastern Muslim lands and the characters of its inner family relations.
For this purpose I refered not only to the many Arabic and Persian texts but also to the numismatic matrials supplied from The National Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. The numismatic sources are particularly essential for the study of the early Samanids.
I tried to show in this essay some interesting facts. The family originated in the village of Saman in the west suburb of the city of Balkh in Afghanistan. Jabba, father of Saman, was maybe of Turkish origin. Moreover, Tatar, father of Jabba, was evidently of Turko-Mongol origin. The family migrated to Ma ward al-Nahr at the time of Saman or Asad. Maybe they played important roles for the Arab subjugation of that area. On that occasion they gained the governorship of territories from the Arab governors and Caliph.
From then till the golden period in Nasr II's reigh there were always governors out of the family members in Farghana (Akhsiket) who minted kufic copper coins by their own right, and many family members had strong connections with Farghana. What does this fact mean? Although we still do not have key materials to solve the conditions of their reign in Farghana, according to E. A. Davidovic of Moskwa, Farghana was the territory that some Samanid members occupied gradually as the feudal investiture of compensation after their victories, and this kind of feudal estates spread since all over Central Asia during the next one hundred years under the Turkish Dynasties.
I made a preliminary supposition on this fact that, since Farghana was the eastern frontier territory of the Islamic World, it is possible to suppose that here they met many new-coming Turkish people and intermingled with some of them. We know the fact that in Farghana many Turkish people lived at the early Samanid time. So we may say that there are Turkish elements in this family, but I think this problem is very difficult to solve until we study the extent of the peaceful penetration of Turkish people, the origin and nature of the feudal estates, the social conditions of the medieaval Iranian family and the condition of the language and religion. After that we may be able to determine whether the Samanids are pure Iranian or Irano-Turkish or pure Turkish.
