Kaleybar Azarbayjan-e Sharqi Iran

Al-Maqdisi observes of the Khurramites that "the basis of their doctrine is belief in light and darkness"; more specifically, "the principle of the universe is Light, of which a part has been effaced and has turned into Darkness".

They "avoid carefully the shedding of blood, except when they raise the banner of revolt".

They are "extremely concerned with cleanliness and purification, and with approaching people with kindness and beneficience".

Some of them "believed in free sex, provided that the women agreed to it, and also in the freedom of enjoying all pleasures and of satisfying one's inclinations so long as this does not entail any harm to others". (Their name is most frequently derived from the Persian word khurram "happy, cheerful" ).

Regarding the variety of faiths, they believe that "the prophets, despite the difference of their laws and their religions, do not constitute but a single spirit".

Naubakhti states that they also believe in reincarnation (metempsychosis) as the only existing kind of afterlife and retribution and in the cancellation of all religious prescriptions and obligations.

They highly revere Abu Muslim and their imams.

In their rituals, which are rather simple, they "seek the greatest sacramental effect from wine and drinks".

As a whole, they were estimated by Al-Maqdisi as "Mazdaeans... who cover themselves under the guise of Islam".

The region called Oshrusana, which lies to the south of the great, southernmost bend of the Syr Darya and extends roughly from Samarkand to Khujand, was inhabited by an Iranian population, ruled by its own princes who bore the traditional title of Afshin, at the time of the first Arab invasion of Transoxiana under Qutayba ibn Muslim (712-714).

During the reign of the third Abbasid caliph Al-Mahdi (775-85), Afshin of Oshrusana was mentioned among several Iranian and Turkish rulers of Transoxania and the Central Asian steppes who submitted nominally to him, but it was not until Harun al-Rashid's reign in 794-95 that al-Fadl bin Yahya al-Barmaki led an expedition into Transoxania and received the submission of the ruling Akin known as Kharākana.

This Karākana had never previously humbled himself before any other potentate.

Further expeditions were nevertheless sent to Oshrusana by Al-Ma'mun when he was governor in Merv and after he had become caliph.

Kavus, son of the Afshin Karākana who had submitted to Fadl bin Yahya, had withdrawn his allegiance from the Arabs; but shortly after Ma'mun arrived in Baghdad from the east (817-18 or 819-20), a power struggle and dissensions had broken out among the reigning family of Oshrusana.

According to most of the sources, al-Ma'mun's heir, Al-Mu'tasim, not only made Afshin governor of Azarbaijan and seconded high-ranking officers to serve under him, but also ordered exceptionally large salaries, expense allowances, and rations for him.

In 831-833, he had suppressed uprisings in Egypt from remote regions to Alexandria.

The news of his great success in taking Bima in Egypt, which had surrendered to Afshin's extension of al-Ma'mun's promise of safe conduct, had been proclaimed on June 2, 832.

Al-Mu'tasim had in 835 appointed Afshin as a governor of Azerbaijan to fight against Babak Khorramdin, leader of anti-Islamic neo-Mazdakite Persian movement of the Khurramites.

After a fierce resistance by Babak's army, Afshin eventually defeats it and captures Babak's castle of Bazz in August 837.

Ya'qubi (Tarikh II, 579) records Afshin freeing seventy-six hundred Arab prisoners from this fortress, and he destroys the castle.

The Khurramite leader escapes to take refuge in the mountains controlled by local Christian Armenian prince Sahl Smbatean.

Sahl Smbatean captures Babak in January 838 and surrenders him to Afshin, for which service Sahl receives one million silver dirhams as a reward.

Babak is soon executed by gruesome torture.

According to Movses Kaghankatvatsi, the Caliphate assigned Sahl sovereignty over Armenia, Georgia and Albania.