The Marwanid realm in the Diyar Bakr region of Upper Mesopotamia (present day northern Iraq/southeastern Turkey) and Armenia, centered on the city of Amid (Diyarbakır).

In 992, after Badh's death and a series of Byzantine punitive raids around Lake Van, Emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025) was able to negotiate a lasting peace with the Kurdish emirate.

When Basil learnt of the murder of the Georgian potentate David III of Tao, who had left his kingdom to the Byzantine Empire by testament, he stopped the campaign that he had begun in Syria to ensure the Arabian emirs' obedience and crossed the Euphrates.

In 1000 when Basil II travelled from Cilicia to the lands of David III Kuropalates (Akhlat and Manzikert), Mumahhid al-Dawla came to offer his submission to the emperor and in return he received the high rank of magistros and doux of the East.

A clever politician, he skilfully navigated between the surrounding great powers: the Buyid emir Sultan al-Dawla, the Fatimid caliph of Egypt al-Hakim and Basil II.

The renown of this Kurdish Muslim prince grew so much that the inhabitants of al-Ruha (Edessa, present-day Sanli Urfa), at the west, called him to free them from an Arab chief.

The Kurdish commander Bal took the city and killed the Arab tribal chief, then he wrote to his lord, asking for reinforcements, "if you want to save your Lordship on Kertastan (Kurdistan)".

He built a new citadel on a hill of Mayyafariqin where the Church of the Virgin stood, and also constructed bridges and public baths, and restored the observatory.

He invited well-known scholars, historians and poets to his royal court, among them Ibn al-Athir, Abd Allah al-Kazaruni, and al-Tihami.

There, he convinced the Seljuq sultan Malik Shah I (1072–1092), a grand-nephew of Toghrul Beg, and the famous vizier Nizam al-Mulk, to allow him to assault Mayyafarikin.

The last emir, Nasir al-Dawla Mansur, kept only the city of Jazirat Ibn ‘Umar (present-day Cizre in south-eastern Turkey).

[24] The Marwanids based their Military on Kurdish tribesmen, they never needed to employ Turkic Ghilmans like their Buyid Predecessors, because they provided mounted soldiers from their own ranks.