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| 934 |
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| Ali ibn Buya took control of the region of Fars in western Iran, the first step in the building of the Buyid (Buwayhid) family's empire. An able military man from Daylam in northern Iran, he began as a mercenary for the local potentate Mardawij ibn Ziyar before assembling his own army. His brothers, Hasan and Ahmad, participated in what became a familial venture of expansion in which Hasan took central Iran and Ahmad occupied Iraq and Baghdad. | 1 |
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| 935 |
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| Death of Ali al-Ash’ari, the founder of Sunni theology (kalam) and author of a number of works on Islam. Kalam emerged with the Mu’tazili school, which attempted to apply rationalist argument, inspired by Greek philosophy, to theological problems. Al-Ash’ari started as a Mu’tazili theologian, but rejected this path as un-Islamic. He used Greek dialectic to establish his theological school and so, although asserting sure limits to logic in the discussion of the divine, established a place for speculative inquiry within the faith. | 2 |
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| 940 |
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| Death of Muhammad al-Kulayni, a Shi’ite theologian and the author of the first major collection of Shi’ite hadith, titled Usul al-Kafi (Foundations of the Compendium). | 3 |
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| 945, Dec |
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| BUYID OCCUPATION OF BAGHDAD. Ahmad ibn Buya, whose brothers, Ali and Hasan, controlled much of western and central Iran, entered Baghdad with his forces and was recognized by the caliph as amir al-umara (supreme commander) with the honorific title of Mu’izz al-Dawla. With the loss of its capital, the Abbasid Caliphate, which had already disintegrated into a number of independent provincial regimes, ceased to exist as a meaningful political entity. The Abbasid dynasty remained in place until 1258, but most of its caliphs were mere figureheads. The Buyid takeover marked the end of an era in Middle Eastern political history. | 4 |
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