Sayf al-Dawla's Aleppo: al-Mutanabbi and the Hamdanid emirate

Sayf al-Dawla, ‘Sword of the State’, a younger brother of Nasir al-Dawla, the Hamdanid master of Mosul, turned to Syria after the brothers' attempt to control the caliphate in Baghdad had failed. On 29 October 944 he entered Aleppo unopposed with the support of the Bedouin Banu Kilab. After two wars with the Ikhshidids of Egypt, who kept Damascus, his rule over the north was recognised, and from 947 he governed what Marius Canard called a ‘Syro-Mesopotamian state’, with two capitals, Aleppo and Mayyafariqin. He favoured Twelver Shi'ism in a largely Sunni land and endowed Aleppo with a great palace, gardens and an aqueduct.

War with Byzantium was his chief concern. He raided deep into Asia Minor — in more than forty battles, it was said — and, though ambushed with heavy losses in 950, he defeated Bardas Phokas near Marash in 953. From 956, however, Nikephoros Phokas and John Tzimiskes turned the tide: in 960 his army was almost annihilated in an ambush, in December 962 the Byzantines appeared before Aleppo and on 23/24 December stormed it, sacking all but the citadel and carrying off some 10,000 captives, and in 965 Cilicia and Tarsus were lost. Crippled by illness, Sayf al-Dawla spent his last years facing revolts by his own commanders and died in February 967; by 969 his son's diminished emirate had become a tributary of Byzantium.

His court was famous for its poets and scholars. Al-Mutanabbi spent nine years there (948–957) and wrote for him his most celebrated odes; his rival Abu Firas, the emir's cousin, composed his ‘Byzantine poems’ as a captive of the Byzantines; Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani dedicated to him his great Book of Songs; the grammarian Ibn Jinni and the preacher Ibn Nubata belonged to his circle, al-Farabi's last years in Syria were in some way connected with him, and the geographer Ibn Hawqal dedicated to him the first version of his book. Contemporaries also recorded the heavy taxes and confiscations that paid for his army and court. Hugh Kennedy calls him ‘the essential hero of the time’, the one ruler who tried to defend the faith, and Thierry Bianquis sees in him the Arab chivalrous ideal in its most tragic aspect.