'Ayyar

'Ayyar (plural 'ayyarun, in Persian 'ayyaran) was from the ninth to the twelfth century the name for warriors grouped in bands in 'Iraq and Persia, and gradually also in Transjordan. They were similar to the andath in Syria and Mesopotamia and to the akhis in Anatolia. The term was sometimes used with the same meaning as fityan (youths), and a leader might be called sar-'ayyaran or ra'is al-fityan. On some occasions they fought for the faith in the Inner Asian border regions; in towns they often formed an opposition party, and at times of weak government they ruled by terror against the wealthy part of the population, as in Baghdad in 1135-1144. ¹

The Kabus-nama, written in 475/1082, mentions a rivalry between the 'ayyaran of Marw and those of Kubistan over futuwwa, which was settled by juridical expedients. A Sufi called Nuh al-'Ayyar al-Nisaburi appears as a representative of futuwwa. Hujwiri (d. 465/1072) reports that he said the futuwwa of the 'ayyaran consisted in wearing the muraqqa' of the Sufis and keeping the holy law, whereas the futuwwa of the Malamatiyya lay not in outward marks but in keeping the mystical spirit. Nuh defined the difference in these words: the futuwwa of the 'ayyaran is faithfulness to the spoken word, that of the gnostics faithfulness to the spirit. ¹