Hamdanid Emirates

State · 936–1259 CE · at its largest around 1236 CE

Arab Shia emirates of the Hamdanid family based at Mosul and Aleppo. Sayf al-Dawla of Aleppo was famous for his wars against Byzantium and his patronage of poets.

On its lands while it lasted

Silk Road (c. 130 BCE – c. 1450 CE): A network of overland caravan routes linking China with Central Asia, Persia and the Mediterranean, along which silk, spices, horses, religions, technologies and diseases travelled for more than 1,500 years.
Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258 CE): The Abbasid dynasty, descended from Muhammad's uncle, took the caliphate from the Umayyads and ruled from Iraq, presiding over the Islamic Golden Age.
Samanid Empire (819–999 CE): Persian dynasty ruling from Bukhara whose court fostered a revival of the Persian language and literature within the Islamic world.
Isfahan (c. 936 CE): Capital of Ziyarid dynasty (936–979), Great Seljuk Empire (1040–1194).
Mahmud of Ghazni (971 CE – 1030 CE): Ghaznavid sultan who led repeated raids into northern India, including the sack of the Somnath temple, and made Ghazni a cultural capital.
Al-Biruni (c. 973 CE – 1050 CE): Scholar from Khwarazm who wrote on astronomy, mathematics and geography and produced a detailed study of India after travelling with Mahmud of Ghazni.
Avicenna (c. 980 CE – 1037 CE): A Persian physician and philosopher, author of The Canon of Medicine and The Book of Healing, one of the most influential thinkers of the Islamic Golden Age.
Shahnameh (1010 CE): Ferdowsi completed the Shahnameh ('Book of Kings'), an epic of about 50,000 couplets on the history and legends of Iran, a cornerstone of Persian literature.
The Canon of Medicine (1025 CE): Avicenna's five-volume medical encyclopedia, completed around 1025, became a standard textbook in the Islamic world and in European universities for centuries.
Nishapur (c. 1040 CE): Capital of Great Seljuk Empire (1040–1194).
Hamadan (c. 1040 CE): Capital of Great Seljuk Empire (1040–1194).
Omar Khayyam (1048 CE – 1131 CE): Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet who solved cubic equations geometrically, helped reform the calendar, and is famed for the quatrains of the Rubaiyat.
Battle of Manzikert (1071 CE): The Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan defeated and captured the Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes, opening Anatolia to Turkish settlement.
Mongols invade Khwarazm (1219–1221 CE): After the massacre of a Mongol trade caravan at Otrar, Genghis Khan invaded the Khwarazmian Empire, sacking Bukhara, Samarkand and other cities and pursuing Jalal ad-Din to the Indus.
Mongol sack of Baghdad (1258 CE): Mongol forces under Hulagu Khan captured and sacked Baghdad, killing the last Abbasid caliph in Baghdad and ending the Abbasid Caliphate there.