Shirvan

Shirvan was the medieval realm of the Shirvanshahs, the kings of Shirvan in the eastern Caucasus, in what is today Azerbaijan. It stretched from the western shore of the Caspian up the Kura river, taking in the Shirvan plain, the eastern spurs of the Caucasus and the coastal towns from Quba down to Baku. The first ruling line, the Yazidids, were an originally Arab and later Persianised family that came out of the Abbasid military elite; when effective Abbasid authority weakened in 861, Haytham ibn Khalid began to rule Shirvan autonomously, and the dynasty held the throne until 1538. The Shirvanshahs were sometimes independent and often the vassals of greater empires, but they were among the longest lived dynasties of the Islamic world. Their realm reached a peak under Khalilullah I and Farrukh Yasar in the fifteenth century, and in the twelfth it was a centre of Persian literature, drawing poets such as Khaqani and Nizami Ganjavi. In 1500 Ismail I defeated Farrukh Yasar and turned the Shirvanshahs into Safavid vassals; Shah Tahmasp I finally dismissed Shahrukh in 1538 and made Shirvan a Safavid province.