Ruyan (district)

Ruyan (Persian: رویان), later known as Rustamdar (رستمدار), was a mountainous district that encompassed the western part of Tabaristan/Mazandaran, a region on the Caspian coast of northern Iran.

[a] In Iranian mythology, Ruyan appears as one of the places that the legendary archer Arash shot his arrow from, reaching the edge of Khorasan to mark the border between Iran and Turan.

Gil Gavbara's son Baduspan I was granted control over Ruyan in 665, thus forming the Baduspanid dynasty, which would rule the area until its conquest by the Safavids in the 1590s.

According to the medieval Iranian scholar al-Biruni (d. after 1050), it was from Ruyan that the legendary archer Arash shot his arrow to the edge of Khorasan to mark the border between Iran and Turan.

[13] 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.

[2] Due to the regional prominence of the Baduspanids, Ruyan became known as Rustamdar in the Mongol era, a deformed form of their regnal title, ustandar, which they had used since the rule of Shahriyar III ibn Jamshid (r. 937–949).