Al-Sari ibn al-Hakam

Al-Sari ibn al-Hakam ibn Yusuf al-Zutti
Al-Sari ibn al-Hakam ibn Yusuf al-Zutti
السري بن الحكم الزطی
Governor of Egypt
	In office; 815–820
Monarch	Al-Ma'mun
Preceded by	Al-Muttalib ibn Abdallah al-Khuza'i
Succeeded by	Abu Nasr ibn al-Sari
Personal details
Born	unknown
Died	November 820; Egypt
Children	Abu Nasr ibn al-Sari; Ubaydallah ibn al-Sari

Al-Sari ibn al-Hakam ibn Yusuf al-Zutti (Arabic: السري بن الحكم الزطی) (died November 820), also known as Al-Sari ibn al-Hakam al-Balkhi served twice as the Abbasid Caliphate's governor of Egypt.

Career

Al-Sari ibn al-Hakam was of Zutt origins.^[1]^[2] According to al-Kindi, he was initially an unimportant member of the so-called abna’ al-dawla, the Khurasani troops that formed the mainstay of the Abbasid regime. He came to Egypt in 799 in the retinue of al-Layth ibn al-Fadl, and soon rose to a position of influence within the local abna’.^[3] The early years of the 9th century were a time of turmoil for Egypt, where the old-established elites of the original Arab settlers of Fustat losing power to the abna’ and their rivals, the Yemeni tribes of northern Egypt, grouped around Abd al-Aziz ibn al-Wazir al-Jarawi. Taking advantage of the collapse of Abbasid central authority due to the civil war between al-Amin and al-Ma'mun, Abd al-Aziz and al-Sari, with their respective factions, engaged in a vicious struggle for control of the province that by 813 had effectively divided Egypt between them, with the Yemenis holding the north and al-Sari Fustat and the south.^[4]

His first tenure as governor of Egypt was short, lasting from April to September 816, but he was reappointed to the post in March 817 and held it until his death in November 820. He was succeeded by his sons as nominal governors of the province. The north remained under Abd al-Aziz's son Ali ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Jarawi (Abd al-Aziz also died in 820), and a first Abbasid attempt at recovering control over the province by sending Khalid ibn Yazid al-Shaybani in 822 was thwarted. Al-Sari's son Ubayd Allah ruled as governor until mid-826, when Abdallah ibn Tahir was named governor of Egypt and re-established Abbasid authority.^[5]^[6]

According to the Arabist Thierry Bianquis, the succession of al-Sari by his sons signals the first attempt at creating an autonomous dynasty ruling Egypt, heralding the more successful Tulunids and Ikhshidids.^[6]

References

^ Walker (1995), "Persian and Arabic writers preserve for us the tradition that tribes of Jats (or Zuṭṭ) from the Pand̲j̲āb were conveyed westwards by command of the Sāsānid monarch Bahrām Gūr (420-38 a.d.)...Many of them are even said to have risen to high rank, e.g. al-Sarī b. al-Ḥakam b. Yūsuf al-Zuṭṭī, governor of Egypt (200-5/816-21)".
^ Beg, Muhammad Abdul Jabbar (1981). Social Mobility in Islamic Civilization: The Classical Period. University of Malaya Press. p. 71. ISBN 978-96-79-99006-5. However, the people of Zuṭṭ origin were not totally obscure in the social life. Some of them climbed in the social scale during the 'Abbāsid period in 'Iraq. For instance, "al-Sari b. al-Hakam b. Yusuf al-Zutti" was a governor of Egypt in 200–205 H./815–820 A.D.
^ Kennedy (1998), p. 80.
^ Kennedy (1998), p. 80–81.
^ Kennedy (1998), p. 81.
^ ^a ^b Bianquis (1998), p. 97.

Sources

Bianquis, Thierry (1998). "Autonomous Egypt from Ibn Ṭūlūn to Kāfūr, 868–969". In Petry, Carl F. (ed.). Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume One: Islamic Egypt, 640–1517. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 86–119. ISBN 978-0-521-47137-4.
Grohmann, A. (1997). "al-Sarī". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W. P. & Lecomte, G. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume IX: San–Sze. Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 55. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_6641. ISBN 978-90-04-10422-8.
Walker, J. (1995). "Nūrī". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W. P. & Lecomte, G. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume VIII: Ned–Sam. Leiden: E. J. Brill. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_5994. ISBN 978-90-04-09834-3.
Kennedy, Hugh (1998). "Egypt as a province in the Islamic caliphate, 641–868". In Petry, Carl F. (ed.). Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume One: Islamic Egypt, 640–1517. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 62–85. ISBN 978-0-521-47137-4.

Preceded by Muttalib ibn Abdallah ibn Malik	Governor of Egypt 816	Succeeded by Sulayman ibn Ghalib al-Bajali
Preceded by Sulayman ibn Ghalib al-Bajali	Governor of Egypt 817–820	Succeeded by Abu Nasr ibn al-Sari