Naṣr ath-Thamali (Arabic language: نصر الثملي) was an Abbasid military commander and governor (wali or amir) of Tarsus and the borderlands with the Byzantine Empire in Cilicia (ath-thughur ash-Shamiya).
Life[]
As his nisba shows, he was a former ghulam of Thamal al-Dulafi, who was the governor of Tarsus and the borderlands with the Byzantine Empire in Cilicia in ca. 923–932.[1][2]
By 941, Nasr was himself governor of Tarsus. In winter of that year (December 941/January 942) he took advantage of a Byzantine expedition against Aleppo to raid Byzantine territory himself, returning with much plunder and prisoners, including senior Byzantine commanders.[3] In October 946 he supervised the prisoner exchange with the Byzantines—headed by John the Mystikos and the magistros Kosmas — on the River Lamos on behalf of the Hamdanid emir Sayf al-Dawla, who had in the meantime become the new overlord of the Cilician marches. 2,482 Muslims were exchanged for an equal number of Byzantine captives; as the Byzantines held 230 prisoners more, they had to be ransomed with money.[3][4]
References[]
- ↑ Stern 1960, p. 221.
- ↑ PmbZ, Ṯamal ad-Dulafī (#27558).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 PmbZ, Naṣr aṯ-Ṯamalī (#25494).
- ↑ Stern 1960, p. 223.
Sources[]
- Lilie, Ralph-Johannes; Ludwig, Claudia; Pratsch, Thomas; Zielke, Beate (2013) (in German). Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit Online. Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Nach Vorarbeiten F. Winkelmanns erstellt. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. http://www.degruyter.com/view/db/pmbz.
- Stern, S. M. (1960). "The Coins of Thamal and of Other Governors of Tarsus". pp. 217–225. Digital object identifier:10.2307/596170. JSTOR 596170.
The original article can be found at Nasr al-Thamali and the edit history here.