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Tabaristan or Tabarestan (; ; from , Tapur(i)stān) was a mountainous region located on the Caspian Sea coast of northern Iran. It corresponded to the present-day province of Mazandaran, which became the predominant name of the area from the 11th century onwards.
His son Baduspan I was granted control over Ruyan (a district that encompassed the western part of Tabaristan) in 665, thus forming the Baduspanid dynasty, which would rule the region until the 1590s. Rule in the mountains of Tabaristan was maintained by two Dabuyid vassal kingdoms, the Qarinvandids and Bavandids. In 716, the Dabuyid ruler Farrukhan the Great () successfully contained a large-scale invasion by the Umayyad general Yazid ibn al-Muhallab. Farrukhan's son and successor Dadhburzmihr () may have temporarily lost control of Tabaristan to the Arabs, as indicated by his lack of coinage. However, this may also mean the Dabuyids lacked funds to circulate throughout their realm. The last Dabuyid ruler Khurshid () managed to safeguard his realm against the Umayyads, but after its replacement by the Abbasid Caliphate, he was finally defeated in 760 by Abbasid general Abu al-Khaṣīb Marzuq. Tabaristan was subsequently made a regular province of the caliphate, ruled from Amul by an Arab governor, although the local dynasties of the Bavandids, Qarinvandids, the Zarmihrids and Baduspanids, formerly subject to the Dabuyids, continued to control the mountainous interior as tributary vassals of the Abbasid government. These rulers were largely if not completely autonomous.
Abu al-Khaṣīb Marzuq was the first Abbasid governor of Tabaristan, who constructed a great mosque in Sari. The second governor, Khalid ibn Barmak, had attempted to build towns and befriend the Qarinvand ruler Wandad Hurmuzd () in order to increase Abbasid influence there. After he left the region, however, the Bavandid ruler Sharwin I () destroyed his constructions. Although Wandad Hurmuzd and Sharwin I had reassured their pledge to the caliph al-Mahdi in 781, they mounted a threatening anti-Muslim rebellion with the Masmughan of Miyanrud two years later. According to local accounts, the rebels massacred all the Muslim inhabitants of Tabaristan in one day. The modern historian Wilferd Madelung considers it exaggerated, and suggests that the massacres only took place in the highlands and segments of the lowlands that the rebels where able to penetrate. The rebels were initially successful, defeating the Muslim forces and their leaders. This alarmed al-Mahdi, who in 783/4 sent his son Al-Hadi with "a huge army and equipment such as no one previously had been equipped, to Gurgan to direct the war against Wandad Hurmuzd and Sharwin, the two lords of Tabaristan."
The following year, a force of 40,000 soldiers under Sa'id al-Harashi finally defeated the rebels. Wandad Hurmuzd was wounded and captured, but he was soon pardoned and allowed to return to his lands. Following this, relations between the Muslim governors and local rulers of Tabaristan became friendly for a period. Wandad Hurmuzd bought considerable amounts of land outside of Sari from the governor Jarid ibn Yazid. Tensions arose once again at the end of the reign of caliph Harun al-Rashid (). The Bavandids and Qarinvandids disallowed any Muslim to get buried in Tabaristan, and the soldiers of Sharwin I had killed the caliphal deputy of the region, who was the nephew of the governor Khalifa ibn Sa'id. In 805, Wandad Hurmuzd's brother Vindaspagan killed a Muslim tax collector who had been sent to inspect his villages.
Harun al-Rashid, who was at the city of Ray to address an issue with the governor of Khurasan, summoned the two rulers. There they both guaranteed their loyalty to the caliph, promising him to pay the land tax. On the request of Wandad Hurmuzd, Harun al-Rashid replaced the governor of Tabaristan. However, the new governor was instructed to confine the power of the local rulers to the highlands. Wandad Hurmuzd's son Qarin, as well Sharwin I's son Shahriyar, were taken to Baghdad as hostages as proof of their loyalty. After Harun al-Rashid's death in 809, they were returned to Tabaristan. Shahriyar (now known as Shahriyar I), after succeeding his father sometime before 817, expelled the Qarinvand ruler Mazyar (a grandson of Wandad Hurmuzd) with the help of the latter's uncle Vinda-Umid ibn Vindaspagan.
Islam was first properly established in Tabaristan (as well as Gilan and Daylam) with the advent of Zaydi Shi'ism in the 9th and 10th centuries. Christian tribes also inhabited Tabaristan, and fought the Arabs around 660, but were defeated after heavy resistance and either killed or enslaved if they did not convert to Islam. The tradition of using Pahlavi scripts for lapidary and monumental purposes, and possibly for chancery as well, endured longer in the Caspian region. The Bavandid ispahbads made use of Pahlavi legends as late as the early 11th century. Hunting, which had already been widely popular under the Sasanians, was particularly popular amongst the Iranians. Khurshid had parks filled with wild boars, hares, wolves and leopards, which he used as a hunting ground.
For a certain period, the Caspian shore of Iran served as a center for ancient Iranian national consciousness. In 783, during a rebellion in Tabaristan, the locals gave up their Arab husbands to the rebels. Dynasties such as the Bavandids and Ziyarids continued to commemorate their pre-Islamic background, with traditional Iranian festivals such as Nowruz and Mehregan continuing to exist in Tabaristan.
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