ĀL-E FARĪḠŪN, a minor Iranian dynasty of Gūzgān (Gūzgānān,
Jūzǰān; in what is now northern Afghanistan) which flourished
from some time before the beginning of the 4th/10th century
until the incorporation of Gūzgān into the Ghaznavid empire in
the early 5th/11th century. The Iranian name of the family,
Farīḡūn, may well be connected with that of the legendary
Iranian figure Farīdūn/Afrīdūn; moreover the author of the Ḥodūd
al-ʿālam, who seems to have lived and worked in Gūzgān (see
below), specifically says in his entry on the geography of
Gūzgān that the malek of that region was a descendant of Afrīdūn
(p. 95; tr. Minorsky, p. 106). Presenting less chronological
difficulty is an equation of “Farīḡūn” with the dynastic name of
the original family of Ḵᵛārazmšāhs, that of Afrīḡ, who ruled in
Ḵᵛārazm from the early 4th century A.D. until 385/995 (See Āl-e
Afrīḡ). The name is obviously a northeastern Iranian one, to be
localized in the Oxus basin. The geographer Maqdesī (Moqaddasī;
p. 347) mentions a place called