EBN MORSAL, LAYṮ b. Fażl, a client (mawlā) and governor of Sīstān 199-204/815-19. Previously governor of Egypt in 182-87/798-803 (Kendī, pp. 139-41), he was appointed governor of Sīstān by the caliph Maʾmūn in place of the discredited Moḥammad b. Ašʿaṯ. Facing stiff opposition from the outgoing governor and a local ʿayyār leader, he took up his post by making an alliance with the Kharijite leader Ḥamza b. Āḏarak. Once in contol in Zarang, the provincial capital, he kept himself in power by conciliating both Kharijites and ʿayyārs, giving Sistan four years of prosperity until the new governor of Khorasan, Ḡassān b. ʿAbbād, replaced him by Aʿyan b. Harṯama b. Aʿyan.
Bibliography:
Tārīḵ-e Sīstān, pp. 174-76; tr. Gold, pp. 138-40 (which gives his name wrongly as Ebn Tarassol) is the sole source for his governorship.
C. E. Bosworth, Sīstān under the Arabs, Rome, 1968, pp. 101-02.
Abū ʿOmar Moḥammad Kendī, Tasmīat wolāt Meṣr, ed. R. Guest, Leiden and London, 1912.
(C. Edmund Bosworth)
Originally Published: December 15, 1997
Last Updated: December 6, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. VIII, Fasc. 1, p. 43
