Sayn

The first counts of Sayn, named after Sayn Castle near Bendorf, appear in documents from 1139 and built up estates across the Westerwald and Lower Rhine. In 1233 Count Henry was accused of devil-worship by the inquisitor Conrad of Marburg before bishops at Mainz acquitted him; Conrad was killed on his journey back to Thuringia.

When Henry died without male heirs in 1246, the county passed through his sister Adelheid to the Sponheim family. Her grandson Gottfried I founded the second house in 1266. In 1294 his sons divided the lands between Sayn-Sayn and Sayn-Homburg, the latter inheriting Wittgenstein and calling itself Sayn-Wittgenstein from 1361.

A feud with Katzenelnbogen ravaged the county in 1462, and around 1560 the counts introduced the Reformation. Sayn-Sayn died out in 1608 and its inheritance passed to Sayn-Wittgenstein; after the Thirty Years' War the county split into Sayn-Altenkirchen and Sayn-Hachenburg.