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Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

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• Muslim Arab dynasty of northern Iraq (Al-Jazirah) and Syria (890-1004)

• claimed to have been descended from the ancient Banu Taghlib Christian tribe of Mesopotamia and northern Arabia

• founded by Hamdan ibn Hamdun when he was appointed governor of Mardin in SE Anatolia by the Abbasid Caliphs in 890

• Ali Saif al-Daula 'Sword of the State' ruled (945-967) Northern Syria from Aleppo, and became the most important opponent of the Byzantine Empire's (Christian) expansion. His court was a centre of culture, thanks to its nurturing of Arabic literature

• To stop the Byzantine advance, Said al-Daula converted to Shiism in 969 and put Aleppo under the suzerainty of the Fatimids in Egypt, but in 1003 the Fatimids deposed the Hamdanids anyway