Mazanderani

The Mazanderanis were the indigenous Iranian people of the Caspian coast of Tabaristan, between the Alborz and the sea around Sari, Amol and Astarabad. They spoke Mazanderani, known to medieval geographers as Tabari, and descended from the ancient Tapuri and Amardi.

Their coastal plain resisted the Arab conquest: the Dabuyid ispahbad Farrukhan the Great threw back an Umayyad invasion in 716. Although the last Dabuyid fell to the Abbasids in 760, mountain dynasties kept the interior autonomous for centuries. Zaydi Shiism took root in the ninth and tenth centuries, and Tabari literature began with the Marzban-nama, composed by a Bavandid prince around 1000.

The ispahbads preserved their semi-independence through the Ilkhanid and Timurid years. In 1596 Shah Abbas I incorporated Mazandaran into the Safavid Empire, ending the rule of the Baduspanids.