Ya'qub bin Laith as-Saffar

Ya'qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar (Persian: یعقوب لیث‎‎)
Amir of the Saffarid dynasty
Statue of Ya'qub in Dezful, Iran
Reign	861-879
Successor	Amr ibn al-Layth
Born	840 Karnin, modern-day Afghanistan
Died	June 5, 879 (aged 39) Gundeshapur, Khuzestan, Iran
House	Saffarid
Father	Laith
Religion	Sunni Islam

Ya'qūb ibn al-Layth al-Saffār (يعقوب بن الليث الصفار), or Ya'qūb-i Layth-i Saffārī (یعقوب لیث صفاری), born Rādmān pūr-i Māhak (Persian: رادمان پور ماهک‎‎) (October 25, 840 – June 5, 879), a Persian coppersmith, was the founder of the Saffarid dynasty of Sistan, with its capital at Zaranj (a city now in south-western Afghanistan). Under his military leadership he conquered and liberated much of the eastern portions of the Greater Persia consisting of modern day Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan as well as portions of western Pakistan and a small part of Iraq. He was succeeded by his brother, Amr ibn al-Layth.

Ya'qub was born in 840 in a small town called Karnin (Qarnin), which was located east of Zaranj and west of Bost, in what is now Afghanistan. Information about his genealogy and social background is lacking. Clifford Edmund Bosworth explains that a number of Sunni sources were invariably hostile to Ya'qub because of the disrespect he showed toward the Abbasid caliph. "Some sources accused Ya'qub of being a Khariji, Ibn Khallikan labelled him a Christian, and Nizam al-Mulk claimed that he converted to Ismailism". However these claims come roughly a century after Yaqub's death, most sources agree on Ya'qub's ascetic lifestyle.