Yaʿqub, an Activist with Military Legitimacy

While the Tāherids and Sāmānids, by obeying the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, developed their power structures in Khorāsān and Mā Varā al-Nahr, some Iranian amirs, without serving the ʿAbbāsid caliph and only by relying on military force, were able to establish new dynasties in Iran. The establishment of the Saffārid dynasty was the beginning of the way for the Iranian amirs to create political structures independent of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate. The Saffārid government founded its structure on military force and far from the ʿAbbāsid power framework. By questioning the caliph's religious legitimacy, it provided the ground for the reproduction of successive Iranian local governments. The social changes brought about by the Saffārid dynasty paved the way for Iranian agents to take a different path to power from the Tāherids and Sāmānids and gradually gain a greater share of it.

Unlike the rule of the Tāherids and Sāmānids, which had been formed with the ʿAbbāsid caliph's approval, Saffārid rule was shaped in Sistān in the dust of conflicts among different rivals, none of whom had any mandate from the caliph. The historians’ accounts of the formation of the Saffārid government detail a number of conflicts before Yaʿqub eventually, after many years of co-operation and struggles with different amirs (such as Sāleh ibn Nazr and Derham ibn Nazr) and with a coalition of different religious and intellectual groups (namely, the Khārejites and the ʿAyyārs), was able to come to power in Sistān.