Rayy

The 6 Ws of Rayy

The 6 Ws of Rayy
What: Rayy, also known as Ragha, was considered a city by the third millennium BCE; thus, it was
one of the first established cities in Iran.
Who: Unstable control and leadership haunted Rayy throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries.
The Samanid dynasty established authority over Rayy at the beginning of the tenth-century, but were
overthrown by the year 945 and the Buyid dynasty took control. The Buyid dynasty maintained Rayy
as one of the three main capitals of the state, the other two being Baghdad and Shiraz. Interestingly,
although known for Shii tendencies, the Buyids did not remove the Abbasid caliph. This strategy did
not protect Rayy from outside attacks; in 1029 Mahmud of Ghazna conquered the city and placed it
under Ghaznavid authority. However, in 1042 this new leadership was ended by the Saljuqs, a
nomadic, Turkish tribe. The final Saljuq sultan was killed in 1194 just outside of Rayy.
When: The history of Rayy has several noteworthy periods. Rayy was the royal residence of the
Parthian dynasty from about 250 to 224 BCE. By 640 CE, Muslim Arabs entered the scene and
designated Rayy as the residence for the governor of Khurasan. Rayy was regarded as one of the
most celebrated cities of the tenth-century, but, by the thirteenth-century, it suffered the same fate as
most Iranian cities. The Mongols swept through the city in 1221, but it was not until Timurs fury in
1384 that completely destroyed what had once been a capital region.
Where: It is now a suburb of Tehran, the modern capital of Iran. Although very little survives of the
ancient city it was extensively excavated in the early twentieth century, particularly by Erich
Schmidt.
Why: One reason for the popularity of Rayy was the tomb of Shah Abd al-Azim (d. ca. 864). Another
reason was a tower built between 1139 and 1140 commemorating the founder of the Saljuqs, Tughril
Beg.
Wow: Book culture of the Buyids. In tenth century, Rukn al-Dawla, ruler of Rayy, employed several
historians some of whom owned libraries large enough to require professional librarians. For
example, the historian al-Sahib Ibn Abbad (d. 995) had 206,000 volumes of theological works.
However, invasions of the Ghaznavids and Saljuqs caused great destruction to the book collections of
the Buyid elite and their scholars.

Bibliography:
Frye, Richard. Ibn Fadlans Journey to Russia: A Tenth-Century Traveler from Baghdad to the Volga
River. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2005.
Meri, Josef W., Editor. Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, 2 vols. New York: Routledge,
2006.
"Rayy" The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture. Jonathan M. Bloom and Sheila S. Blair.
Oxford University Press, 2009. University of Victoria. 25 November 2010
http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/views/ENTRY.html?
subview=Main&entry=t276.e778
Saunders, John Joseph. A History of Medieval Islam. London: Routledge, 1972.