The Shaddadid Dynasty: The First Kurdish State in the Caucasus (951–1199)

Introduction

For nearly two and a half centuries, a Kurdish dynasty ruled the highlands and trade-cities of the South Caucasus. The Shaddadids — Sunni Muslim, Hadhbani Kurdish in origin, frontier kings and architects of one of the great surviving monuments of medieval Islamic architecture — were the first Kurdish state to govern the Caucasus, and one of the longest-lived Kurdish political entities of the medieval period. From their founder Muhammad ibn Shaddad's seizure of Dvin in 951 to the deposition of the last Shaddadid emir of Ani by Queen Tamar's Georgian armies in 1199, they ruled a hybrid kingdom of Kurds, Armenians, Georgians, Persians, and Turks at the meeting point of the Islamic and Christian worlds.

The Shaddadids were not simply a remote frontier dynasty. They built the Manuchihr Mosque in Ani — recognised by UNESCO as the oldest mosque within the modern boundaries of Turkey. They patronised the Persian poet Qatran of Tabriz, who composed the earliest body of New Persian poetry in the Caucasus. They intermarried with the Bagratid royal house of Armenia and produced rulers who bore Iranian, Arabic, and Armenian names within a single generation. They held Dvin, Ganja, and Ani — three of the great cities of the medieval Transcaucasus — against pressure from Byzantines, Georgians, Seljuk Turks, and Khwarazmians.

This is the story of a Kurdish dynasty that built a state at the northern edge of the Islamic world, ruled it for ten generations, and left behind monuments that still stand today.

Origins: A Hadhbani Kurdish Tribe in the Caucasus

The Shaddadids emerged from the Hadhbani — one of the great Kurdish tribal confederations of the medieval Islamic world. The Hadhbani had long inhabited the highlands south of Lake Urmia and the Zagros foothills, and from the ninth century onward, branches of the confederation pushed northward into the Aras valley and the South Caucasus, where political authority was fragmented between weakening Arab governors, declining Daylamite emirs, the Christian kingdoms of Armenia and Georgia, and the rising Byzantine Empire.

The dynasty took its name from a tribal patriarch, Shaddad, whose son Muhammad would establish the family's political power. The earliest Shaddadid sources — preserved by the Ottoman historian Münejjim Bashi, who drew on a now-lost local history called the Tarikh al-Bab — identify the family as Kurdish without ambiguity. Modern scholarship, including the standard articles in the Encyclopædia of Islam and Encyclopædia Iranica, accepts this identification. Although later generations of Shaddadids would adopt Iranian names and claim descent from the Sasanian shahs (a fashionable legitimisation strategy among medieval Iranian dynasties), their tribal base remained Kurdish. As Vladimir Minorsky observed of the dynasty's last great ruler, Abu'l-Aswar Shavur retained "the sympathy of the Kurdish tribes" even at the end of his reign, when Seljuk power was rising around him.

The Shaddadids were therefore part of a broader phenomenon: the rise of Kurdish dynasties across the medieval Islamic world during the tenth and eleventh centuries — a period sometimes called the "Kurdish Intermezzo." The same era produced the Marwanids of Diyarbakir, the Hasanwayhids and Annazids of the Zagros, and would later produce the Ayyubid empire of Saladin. The Shaddadids were the northernmost branch of this remarkable Kurdish political flowering.

The Founding: Muhammad ibn Shaddad and Dvin (951)

The dynasty's founder was Muhammad ibn Shaddad, who in 951 CE seized the ancient city of Dvin — the historical capital of Christian Armenia and one of the great commercial centres of the Caucasus. His seizure of Dvin took advantage of the collapse of Sajid and Musafirid authority in the region, and inserted a Kurdish power into the political vacuum that had opened up between Byzantium, Georgia, Armenia, and the disintegrating Daylamite emirates.

Muhammad ibn Shaddad's hold on Dvin was brief. Within a few years he was driven out by a counterattack from the Musafirid emir Abu'l-Hayja, and he fled to the Armenian Kingdom of Vaspurakan, where he died in exile around 955. But the seed had been planted. His three sons — Lashkari, Marzuban, and Fadl — would return to claim the political authority their father had briefly held.

The early Shaddadid story is one of refugees, alliances, and patient reconquest. The brothers found shelter with the lord of a Caucasian fortress (Farisos, in some sources), gathered a Kurdish tribal following, and bided their time until the moment came to strike. That moment came in 971.

Consolidation: Lashkari I and the Capture of Ganja (971)

Lashkari ibn Muhammad (also called Ali Lashkari I), Muhammad's eldest son, was the first true Shaddadid ruler. In 971 CE, he captured Ganja — the wealthiest Muslim city in Arran (modern western Azerbaijan) — and ended Musafirid authority in the region. From Ganja, Lashkari extended his rule north to Shamkir and east to Barda, building a territorial state that controlled the trade route along the Kura river and the religious centres of the Muslim Caucasus.

Lashkari's reign (969–978) established the Shaddadid pattern: Kurdish tribal cavalry as the dynasty's military backbone, an urban administration centred on Ganja and Dvin, and a foreign policy that played the Christian and Muslim powers of the region against one another. When he died in 978, he was succeeded briefly by his brother Marzuban ibn Muhammad ibn Shaddad, whose short reign (978–985) maintained the kingdom but did not significantly extend it.

The third brother — Fadl I ibn Muhammad — would prove to be the dynasty's true builder.

The Golden Age: Fadl I ibn Muhammad (985–1031)

The forty-six-year reign of Fadl I ibn Muhammad transformed the Shaddadid state from a frontier emirate into a regional power. He recaptured Dvin from the Armenian Bagratids in 1022, restoring Shaddadid control of the city his father had briefly held seventy years earlier. He extended Shaddadid authority over Syunik (a mountain region of southern Armenia), parts of Azerbaijan, and the trade towns of the Aras valley. He patronised mosques, defensive walls, and the famous Khodaafarin bridges across the Aras — engineering works that survive in fragmentary form today.

Fadl I's reign is the high point of the early Shaddadid state. Contemporary chronicles describe his building projects, his conflicts with the Byzantines and the Bagratids, and his patronage of poets and scholars. He created the political framework that his successors would inherit and gradually lose to the rising power of the Seljuk Turks. When he died in 1031, the dynasty was at its territorial peak.

His son Abu'l-Fath Musa succeeded him briefly (1031–1034) before being murdered by his own son. The early eleventh century saw a series of short, violent reigns — Lashkari II ibn Musa (1034–1049), and the brief succession crisis under Anushirvan ibn Lashkari — that exposed the structural weakness of the Shaddadid family system. Murder, usurpation, and civil war became distressingly common features of the dynasty's internal politics. Modern historians have noted that the prevalence of intra-familial violence among the Shaddadids was striking even by the standards of the medieval Islamic world.

Abu'l-Aswar Shavur I and the Seljuk Turn (1049–1067)

Stability was restored by Abu'l-Aswar Shavur I — the warrior-king whose long reign (1049–1067) is remembered as the second great age of the Shaddadid dynasty. Abu'l-Aswar (whose name "Shavur" is the Arabicised form of the Iranian "Shapur," reflecting the dynasty's Sasanian aspirations) had previously ruled Dvin as an independent appanage from 1022. In 1049 he seized Ganja from his nephew Anushirvan and reunified the Shaddadid state under his own authority.

His reign was extraordinary. He built fortifications around Ganja against the Alan raids from the north. He launched campaigns against the Shirvanshahs, capturing castles and treasure. He intervened in Armenian politics, conducted complex diplomacy with the Byzantine empire, and married into the Armenian royal house. He was also — fatefully — the first Shaddadid to formally submit to the rising power of the Seljuk Turks.

The submission took place in 1054/55, when the great Seljuk Sultan Tughril Beg accepted Abu'l-Aswar as a vassal. From this moment, the Shaddadid state operated as a Seljuk client kingdom rather than an independent power. The relationship had benefits — when Alp Arslan captured the former Bagratid capital of Ani in 1064, he transferred the city to Abu'l-Aswar's family as a Shaddadid appanage — but it also signalled the end of independent Kurdish power in the Caucasus.

The cultural achievements of the Shaddadid court reached their height under Abu'l-Aswar. Persian poetry flowered at his court, with Qatran of Tabriz writing panegyrics that still survive. The dynasty's hybrid identity — Kurdish in tribal base, Iranian in cultural orientation, Armenian in marriage politics, Arab in religious affiliation — found its clearest expression in his reign.

The Loss of Ganja (1075)

After Abu'l-Aswar's death in 1067, the dynasty entered its terminal decline. His son Fadl II ibn Shavur I inherited the state but quickly lost much of his authority. He was briefly captured by the Georgians in 1068, during which time his older brother Ashot ibn Shavur seized Ganja and minted coins in his own name — though only for eight months before Fadl II returned and restored his rule.

The pattern of internal succession conflicts continued. Fadlun ibn Fadl (also called Fadl III) ruled briefly during the early 1070s, but in 1075 the Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan ordered his general Sav Tegin to seize Ganja directly. The independent Shaddadid emirate of Ganja, which had endured for over a century, was extinguished. Fadl III made one last attempt to recover his throne in 1085, briefly retaking Ganja in revolt against Seljuk rule, but Sultan Malik-Shah I personally led the campaign that removed him from power again. He died in obscurity in Baghdad around 1091.

The main Shaddadid line in Ganja was finished. But a cadet branch had already been planted in Ani, and that branch would carry the dynasty for another century.

The Ani Branch: Manuchihr and the Mosque

The Shaddadid Ani branch was founded by Manuchihr ibn Shavur, a son of Abu'l-Aswar Shavur I who took possession of the ancient Bagratid capital around 1072 under Seljuk patronage. Ani had been the capital of the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia for over a century before its conquest by Byzantium in 1045 and its capture by Alp Arslan in 1064. By the time Manuchihr arrived, it was a battered but still magnificent city — a place of churches, palaces, walls, and trade.

Manuchihr's most enduring achievement was the construction of the great mosque that bears his name. Built around 1072 CE, the Manuchihr Mosque stands as one of the most important monuments of medieval Kurdish architectural patronage. UNESCO recognises it as the oldest surviving mosque within the present-day boundaries of Turkey. Its octagonal minaret — built in alternating courses of red and black basalt — towers over the ruins of the ancient city today, and is one of the few intact buildings of medieval Ani. The mosque is a Kurdish monument in an Armenian city, built by an Iranianised dynasty under Turkish overlordship, in a multi-ethnic frontier kingdom — a perfect emblem of the cultural complexity the Shaddadids represented.

Manuchihr's son Abu'l-Aswar Shavur II succeeded him as ruler of Ani in the early twelfth century, and was the last Shaddadid emir of Ani before the Georgian conquest of the city in 1124.

Decline Under Georgian Pressure (12th Century)

The twelfth century was a brutal one for the Shaddadid Ani branch. In 1124, King David IV of Georgia ("David the Builder") seized Ani from Abu'l-Aswar Shavur II as part of the great Georgian expansion that would, under his great-granddaughter Tamar, eventually create the largest Christian state in the medieval Caucasus.

The Shaddadids did not give up Ani easily. In 1125, Fadl IV — son of the deposed Abu'l-Aswar Shavur II — recovered the city, partly through an alliance with the Sultan of Ahlat. Fadl IV briefly extended his rule to Dvin and Ganja, but failed to hold them. He was murdered by his courtiers around 1130 after the fall of Dvin to the Turkish emir Qurti.

His brothers Mahmud and Khushchikr ruled briefly in succession before Fakr al-Din Shaddad, Fadl IV's nephew, took over the emirate. Fakr al-Din's long reign — historians describe him as the longest-ruling Shaddadid emir of the post-Ani period — kept the dynasty alive through the middle decades of the twelfth century, even as Georgian power continued to grow under Demetrius I, Giorgi III, and Queen Tamar.

By the late twelfth century, the Shaddadid emirs of Ani were reduced to vassals of the Georgian crown. Fadl V (Fadl ibn Mahmud) ruled in the dynasty's final era, followed by his son Shahanshah ibn Mahmud — whose royal name "Shahanshah" (Persian: "King of Kings") echoed the dynasty's Iranian self-image even as their actual political power had shrunk to a single city held in tribute.

End of the Dynasty: Sultan ibn Mahmud and the Fall of Ani (1199)

The last Shaddadid ruler attested in the historical record is Sultan ibn Mahmud — known from a single inscription dated 595 AH (1198–99 CE) on the walls of Ani. In 1199, Queen Tamar of Georgia launched a final, decisive campaign against the city, deposed Sultan ibn Mahmud, and granted Ani to the Mkhargrdzeli family — Christian nobles of Armeno-Georgian origin who would govern the city through the thirteenth century until its destruction by the Mongols.

The Shaddadid dynasty disappears from the sources after 1199. Two hundred and forty-eight years after Muhammad ibn Shaddad's seizure of Dvin, the first Kurdish state in the Caucasus came to an end. There are also two additional Shaddadid figures preserved in Kurdish-History.com's record — figures whose stories survive in fragmentary form: The Rise and Fall of Fadl ibn Shavur and The Reign of Al-Fadl ibn Shavur, both connected to the broader Shaddadid story of Ani.

Cultural Legacy: Architecture, Poetry, and Cross-Cultural Identity

The Shaddadids were not just military rulers. They were patrons of architecture, poetry, and Islamic learning whose monuments and texts have shaped the cultural memory of the Caucasus.

Architecture. The Manuchihr Mosque in Ani is the dynasty's greatest surviving monument, and one of the most important medieval mosques in the wider Islamic world. The Khodaafarin bridges across the Aras — built or expanded under Fadl I in the early eleventh century — connected the trade routes between Arran and Azerbaijan. The walls of Ganja that Abu'l-Aswar built against the Alan raids in 1063 are partly preserved, and the great bronze gates of Ganja (taken to Georgia by Demetrius I in 1139) still survive at the Gelati Monastery — an unusual case of medieval Islamic metalwork preserved in a Christian monastery.

Poetry. The Persian poet Qatran of Tabriz, who flourished in the mid-eleventh century, composed extensive panegyrics for the Shaddadid emirs. His verse is among the earliest surviving New Persian poetry from the Caucasus, and it preserves a window into the literary culture of the Shaddadid court — a culture that read Persian, prayed in Arabic, and ruled over Armenians, Georgians, and Kurds.

Cross-cultural identity. The Shaddadid family used names from at least four cultural traditions. The dynastic founder bore the Arabic name Muhammad. His sons were Lashkari (from the Persian for "army"), Marzuban ("frontier guardian"), and Fadl. Later generations bore Persian-Sasanian royal names — Shavur (Shapur), Manuchihr, Anushirvan — that proclaimed the dynasty's claim to Iranian royal heritage. Still later, Armenian names like Ashot appeared in the family, reflecting intermarriage with the Bagratid royal house. The Shaddadid court was a place where Kurdish tribal politics, Iranian high culture, Arabic religious authority, and Armenian local heritage all coexisted — sometimes uneasily, but for over two centuries.

Place in Kurdish History

The Shaddadid dynasty occupies a special place in the Kurdish historical record. It was the first Kurdish state to govern a major part of the South Caucasus — territory that lies today in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and eastern Turkey. Its founders came from the Hadhbani Kurdish tribal confederation, and its rulers are uncontroversially identified as Kurdish in both medieval and modern scholarship.

But the Shaddadids are also a reminder that medieval Kurdish dynasties did not rule "Kurdish" territories in any narrow ethnic sense. They governed mixed populations of Kurds, Armenians, Azeris, Georgians, and Persians. Their cultural orientation was profoundly Iranian — they patronised Persian poetry, claimed Sasanian descent, and bore Persian royal names. Their political alliances ran in every direction: they intermarried with Armenian Christians, submitted to Turkish Sunnis, and fought Georgian Christians.

This pattern — a Kurdish ruling house presiding over a hybrid state with strong Iranian and broader regional cultural elements — would recur across Kurdish history. The Ayyubid empire of Saladin would replicate it on a much larger scale a century later. The Marwanids of Diyarbakir, contemporaries of the Shaddadids, did the same thing in a different region. The Shaddadids stand as the first and northernmost example of this characteristic Kurdish political form.

For modern Kurds, the Shaddadid legacy is twofold. First, it is a reminder of the historical Kurdish presence in the Caucasus — a presence that long predates the modern political borders of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. Second, it is an architectural legacy: the Manuchihr Mosque in Ani still stands, a Kurdish-built monument in a now-Turkish ruin in formerly-Armenian territory, embodying the cultural complexity of the medieval Caucasus that the Shaddadids both shaped and inherited.

Timeline

c. 951 CE — Muhammad ibn Shaddad seizes Dvin, founding the dynasty. c. 955 — Muhammad dies in exile at Vaspurakan. 971 — Lashkari I captures Ganja, ending Musafirid authority in Arran. 978 — Marzuban succeeds his brother. 985 — Fadl I ibn Muhammad becomes emir; the dynasty's longest reign begins. 1022 — Fadl I recaptures Dvin. 1031 — Death of Fadl I; the dynasty enters a period of internal violence. 1049 — Abu'l-Aswar Shavur I unifies the dynasty; his reign begins. 1054/55 — Abu'l-Aswar submits to Tughril Beg as a Seljuk vassal. 1064 — Alp Arslan captures Ani; the city is granted to the Shaddadids. 1067 — Death of Abu'l-Aswar Shavur I. 1068–69 — Ashot briefly usurps Ganja. 1072 — Manuchihr ibn Shavur founds the Ani branch and builds the Manuchihr Mosque. 1075 — Alp Arslan annexes Ganja, ending the main Shaddadid line. 1085 — Fadl III briefly retakes Ganja before being suppressed by Malik-Shah. 1124 — David IV of Georgia captures Ani. 1125 — Fadl IV recovers Ani. c. 1130 — Fadl IV murdered after the fall of Dvin. 1139 — Demetrius I of Georgia raids Ganja and carries off the city's bronze gates to Gelati. 1161 — Georgian expulsion of Fadl V from Ani. 1174 — Georgian capture of Ani; brief Shaddadid restoration under Eldiguzid intervention. 1199 — Queen Tamar deposes Sultan ibn Mahmud, the last Shaddadid emir; Ani passes to the Mkhargrdzeli family.

Rulers of the Shaddadid Dynasty

Twenty Shaddadid emirs are documented in the historical record across two branches — the main Ganja line and the cadet branch at Ani. Kurdish-History.com hosts biographies of each.

Ganja main line (951–1075): Muhammad ibn Shaddad, the founder; Lashkari ibn Muhammad, conqueror of Ganja; Marzuban ibn Muhammad ibn Shaddad; Fadl I ibn Muhammad, the great builder; Abu'l-Fath Musa; Lashkari II ibn Musa; Anushirvan ibn Lashkari; Abu'l-Aswar Shavur I, the warrior-king; Fadl II ibn Shavur I; Ashot ibn Shavur, the rival claimant; Fadlun ibn Fadl.

Ani branch (1072–1199): Manuchihr ibn Shavur, the architect of Ani; Abu'l-Aswar Shavur II; Fadl IV; Fakr al-Din Shaddad; Fadl V (Fadl ibn Mahmud); Shahanshah ibn Mahmud; Sultan ibn Mahmud, the last Shaddadid.

Two additional figures in the Shaddadid record are profiled at The Rise and Fall of Fadl ibn Shavur and The Reign of Al-Fadl ibn Shavur.

Q&A: Unraveling the Shaddadid Dynasty

Were the Shaddadids Kurdish? Yes. The dynasty's founder Muhammad ibn Shaddad came from the Hadhbani Kurdish tribal confederation, and the Kurdish identity of the family is documented in medieval sources (notably the Ottoman historian Münejjim Bashi, who drew on the lost Tarikh al-Bab) and accepted by all major modern reference works including the Encyclopædia of Islam and Encyclopædia Iranica.

Why did the Shaddadids claim Sasanian descent? Like many medieval Iranian and Kurdish dynasties, the Shaddadids sought to legitimise their rule by claiming descent from the pre-Islamic Sasanian shahs. This was a fashionable strategy among Iranian-cultural states of the tenth and eleventh centuries; the Shaddadids' adoption of Sasanian royal names like Shavur (Shapur), Manuchihr, and Anushirvan reflects this aspiration. The historian Andrew Peacock has noted that the Shaddadids "aspired to a more illustrious origin than that of Kurdish tribesmen" — a statement about their political ambitions, not their actual origins.

What was the Shaddadid relationship with Armenia? Complex and intimate. The Shaddadids ruled territory that had previously belonged to Christian Armenian kingdoms, and they intermarried extensively with the Armenian Bagratid royal family. Some Shaddadid rulers bore Armenian names (Ashot ibn Shavur is the clearest example). The eleventh-century Persian poet Qatran of Tabriz even called the Shaddadid emir Fadlun "the glory of the Bagratid family," reflecting how deeply the two royal houses were intertwined.

What is the Manuchihr Mosque? A medieval mosque in the ruins of Ani, in eastern Turkey, built around 1072 CE by the Shaddadid emir Manuchihr ibn Shavur. UNESCO recognises it as the oldest surviving mosque within the modern boundaries of Turkey. Its distinctive octagonal minaret in alternating red and black basalt is one of the most photographed monuments of Ani, and it remains a key Kurdish architectural legacy.

Why did the Shaddadid dynasty end? Multiple causes. Internal succession violence weakened the dynasty across multiple generations. The rise of the Seljuk Turks reduced the Shaddadids to vassal status from 1054 onward. The expansion of Christian Georgia in the twelfth century, especially under Queen Tamar, gradually encircled and absorbed the remaining Shaddadid territories. The fall of Ani to Tamar in 1199 ended the dynasty as a political force.

Where were the Shaddadid territories? The dynasty ruled Arran (the region between the Kura and Aras rivers, in modern western Azerbaijan), parts of Armenia (including Dvin and later Ani), and at various times extended influence over Syunik, Shamkir, Barda, and other territories. Their three main capitals — Dvin, Ganja, and Ani — were among the most important cities of the medieval South Caucasus.

How did the Shaddadids relate to Georgia? Mostly hostilely. Georgian armies under David IV captured Ani in 1124 and again under Demetrius I, and Georgia gradually absorbed Shaddadid territory through the twelfth century. The bronze gates of Ganja, taken by Demetrius I in 1139 and now at the Gelati Monastery in modern Georgia, are a tangible reminder of this long Georgian-Shaddadid conflict.

What is the legacy of the Shaddadids in modern Kurdistan? The Shaddadids stand as one of the most important medieval Kurdish dynasties, alongside the Marwanids of Diyarbakir, the Hasanwayhids of the Zagros, and the Ayyubids of Egypt. They demonstrate the historical reach of Kurdish political authority into the South Caucasus, and they left behind a major architectural legacy in the Manuchihr Mosque of Ani. They are also a reminder that medieval Kurdish dynasties were cosmopolitan, cross-cultural, and Iranian-oriented in their high culture — not narrowly ethnic states in the modern sense.

Conclusion

The Shaddadid dynasty was the first Kurdish state in the Caucasus and one of the longest-ruling Kurdish political entities of the medieval Islamic world. From Muhammad ibn Shaddad's seizure of Dvin in 951 to the deposition of Sultan ibn Mahmud at Ani in 1199, ten generations of Shaddadid emirs governed a frontier kingdom at the meeting point of the Islamic and Christian worlds, the Iranian and Caucasian cultural zones, the Kurdish tribal heartlands and the Armenian-Georgian highlands.

They built the Manuchihr Mosque, which still stands. They patronised Persian poetry that shaped the literary culture of the medieval Caucasus. They intermarried with Armenian royalty and submitted to Turkish overlords and fought Georgian kings — and across all of it, they remained a Kurdish dynasty, a Hadhbani tribal house that became, for two and a half centuries, one of the great frontier powers of the medieval Near East.

For the modern Kurdish historical record, the Shaddadids are a monument in their own right: a reminder that Kurdish history is not confined to the modern political borders of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria, and that the medieval Kurdish presence in the Caucasus was deep, sustained, and culturally consequential.

References and Scholarly Sources

Primary sources: Münejjim Bashi, Sahayef al-Akhbar (Ottoman, c. 1700, drawing on the lost Tarikh al-Bab); Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi'l-Tarikh; Vardan Areweltsi, Universal History (Armenian, 13th century); Qatran of Tabriz, Diwan (Persian poetry).

Major academic sources: Vladimir Minorsky, Studies in Caucasian History (Cambridge, 1953) — the foundational modern study; C. E. Bosworth, "Shaddadids," Encyclopædia of Islam (2nd ed.); A. C. S. Peacock, "Shaddadids," Encyclopædia Iranica (online); Steven K. Ross, frontier studies of medieval Caucasus politics; the academic monograph series of the Encyclopædia Iranica project.

Kurdish-History.com biographies: the umbrella post links to all twenty individual Shaddadid bios, covering both the Ganja main line and the Ani cadet branch.