Ghaznavid prince and briefly amir in Ḡazna in 997-98.
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Volume VIII, Fascicle 6, pp. 627
ESMĀʿĪL B. SEBOKTEGĪN, Ghaznavid prince and briefly amir in Ḡazna in 387-88/997-98. Esmāʿīl was one of Seboktegīn’s younger sons by a daughter of his old master Alptegīn. Seboktegīn had appointed him as his successor in Ḡazna and Balḵ, so that on his death in Šaʿbān 387/August 997, Esmāʿīl was able immediately to assume power there as the vassal of the Samanid amir, Manṣūr b. Nūḥ, and of the then deposed ʿAbbasid caliph, al-Ṭāʾeʿ. It is difficult to discern Seboktegīn’s motives for settling the succession on Esmāʿīl in preference to his elder son Maḥmūd, the commander of the Samanid forces in Khorasan; the reason adduced by C. E. Bosworth (1962) no longer seems tenable. At all events, the forceful and more experienced Maḥmūd refused to accept the situation. He demanded recognition as supreme overlord in the Ghaznavid dominions, enlisted the help of his brother Abu’l-Moẓaffar Naṣr, governor of Bost, and of his uncle Boḡrāčoq of Herat, and marched on Ḡazna, defeating Esmāʿīl outside the town in Rabīʿ I 388/March, 998. Esmāʿīl’s short reign of seven months thus ended, and he spent the last years of his life in captivity in Gūzgān under the tutelage of the vassal line of Āl-e Farīḡūn (q.v.). He is said to have been a man of culture and to have been literate in Arabic and Persian.
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