BACKGROUND AND UPBRINGING

Abū Firās al-Ḥārith b. Saʿīd was a grandson of Abū ʾl-ʿAbbās Ḥamdān b. Ḥamdūn al-Taghlibī, founder of the Hamdanid dynasty. The Banū Ḥamdān were a distinguished Arab family of bedouin origin and Shīʿī inclination which played a leading role in the affairs of the declining ʿAbbasid caliphate from near the end of the third/ninth century until about the end of the following century; al-Thaʿālibī, in his Yatīmat al-dahr (written sometime before the close of the fourth/tenth century), calls them “kings and princes, comely of face, eloquent of tongue, liberal of hand, weighty of mind”, describing the amir Sayf al-Dawlah as “the centre-jewel of their necklace”. Into this princely and distinguished line Abū Firās was born in the year 320/932 or 321/933, at the time when the fortunes of his family were approaching their zenith; when he died in 357/968 their hour of glory had already passed. His mother was of Greek origin, and, although she would have been classed as umm walad (a slave freed on giving birth to her master's son), yet Abū Firās speaks of himself as the son of a free-born woman, ibn ḥurrah, showing his pride in his mother's origin in defiance of taunts and innuendoes from other kinsmen.