Abū al-Aswār Shāwur (Shāwūr) b. Faḍl (d. 459/1067), one of the most outstanding kings of the (Persian) Shaddādid dynasty in Arrān and Armenia. The Shaddādids were most probably Kurds in origin, and ruled over Arrān and large parts of Armenia for more than a century (Munajjim-Bāshī, ‘Bāb fī al-Shaddādiyya’, 1; Madelung, 239).

Abū al-Aswār (or Abū al-Sawār = Abū al-Fawāris in Arabic) is a compound kunya of Arabic and Persian. In that period these were coined by analogy with Arabic kunyas, a …