Khwarazmian Empire
Khwarazmian Empire خوارزمشاهیان Khwārazmshāhiyān | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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c. 1077–1231 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Historical era | Mongol conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire | 1219–1221 | |||||||||||||||||||||
1230 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
• Disestablished | 1231 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Area | |||||||||||||||||||||||
1210 est.[6] or | 2,300,000 km2 (890,000 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
1218 est.[7] | 3,600,000 km2 (1,400,000 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Population | |||||||||||||||||||||||
5,000,000 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Currency | Dirham | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Khwarazmian or Khwarezmian Empire
The Khwarazmian Empire eventually became "the most powerful and aggressively expansionist empire in the Persian lands", defeating the
The Khwarezmian Empire was the last Turco-Persian Empire before the
The date of the founding of the state of the Khwarazmshahs remains debatable. The dynasty that ruled the empire was founded by Anush Tigin (also known as Gharachai), initially a Turkic slave of the rulers of Gharchistan, later a Mamluk in the service of the Seljuks. However, it was Ala ad-Din Atsiz (r. 1127–1156), descendant of Anush Tigin, who achieved Khwarazm's independence from its neighbors.
History
Early history
The title of Khwarazmshah was introduced in 305 AD by the founder of the
In 1077, the control of the region, which previously belonged to the
Rise
Anushtegin Gharachai
Anushtegin Gharachai was a
Anushtegin was put in command together with his master
Ala ad-Din Atsiz
Atsiz gained his position following his father Qutb al-Din's death in 1127. During the early part of his reign, he focused on securing Khwarazm against nomad attacks. In 1138, he rebelled against his suzerain, the Seljuq sultan
Atsiz was a flexible politician and ruler, and was able to maneuver between the powerful Seljuk Sultan Sanjar and the equally powerful Kara Khitai ruler Yelü Dashi. He continued the land-gathering policy initiated by his predecessors, annexing Jand and
Territorial expansion
Il-Arslan and Tekish
Il-Arslan was the Shah of Khwarazm from 1156 until 1172. He was the son of
Sanjar died only a few months after Il-Arslan's ascension, causing Seljuq Khurasan to descend into chaos. This allowed Il-Arslan to effectively break off Seljuk suzerainty, although he remained on friendly terms with Sanjar's successor, Mas'ud. Like his father, Il-Arslan sought to expand his influence in Khurasan.
In 1158, Il-Arslan became involved in the affairs of another Qara Khitai vassal state, the
In 1172, the Qara Khitai launched a punitive expedition against Il-Arslan, who had not paid the required annual tribute. The Khwarazmian army was defeated, and Il-Arslan died shortly after. Following his death the state briefly became embroiled in turmoil, as the succession was disputed between his sons Tekish and Sultan Shah. Tekish emerged victorious and subsequently ruled the empire from 1172 to 1200.
Tekish stayed with the
In 1194, Tekish defeated the Seljuq sultan of
Maximum expansion and decline
Ala al-Din Muhammad
After his father
In 1218, a small contingent of Mongols crossed borders in pursuit of an escaped enemy general. Upon successfully retrieving him, Genghis Khan made contact with the Shah. Genghis was looking to open trade relations, but having heard exaggerated reports of the Mongols, the Shah believed this gesture was only a ploy to invade Khwarazm.
Genghis sent emissaries to Khwarazm to emphasize his hope for a trade road. Muhammad II, in turn, had one of his governors (Inalchuq, his uncle) openly accuse the party of spying, seizing their rich goods and arresting the party.[37]
Trying to maintain diplomacy, Genghis sent an envoy of three men to the shah, to give him a chance to disclaim all knowledge of the governor's actions and hand him over to the Mongols for punishment. The shah executed the envoy (again, some sources claim one man was executed, some claim all three were), and then immediately had the Mongol merchant party (Muslim and Mongol alike) put to death and their goods seized.
Turkan Khatun
On the eve of the Mongol invasion, a
In 1221, she was captured by the troops of Genghis Khan and died in poverty in Mongolia.
Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu
Jalal al-Din was the last of Khwarazmshahs, who ruled the remnants of the Khwarazmian Empire and northwestern
He attempted to flee to
State apparatus
The head of the central state apparatus (al-Majlis al-Ali al-Fahri at-Taji) of Kharazmshahs was a
An important position in the state apparatus of the Khwarazmshahs was also held by the senior or great hajib, who most of the time, was a representative of the Turkic nobility. The hajib reported to the Khwarazmshah on issues related to the shah and his family. The Khwarazmshah could have several hajibs, who carried out the "personal" instructions of the sultan.[46]
Capital cities
Initially, the main city of the Khwarazmian Empire was
Gurganj is a very beautiful city, surrounded by the attention of angels who represent the city in paradise just like a bride in a groom's house. The inhabitants of the capital were skillful artisans, especially the blacksmiths, carpenters and others. Carvers were famous for their products made of ivory and ebony. Workshops for the production of natural silk operated in the city.[47]
The cities of
Population
The population of the Kwarazmian Empire consisted mainly of sedentary Iranian and half-nomadic Turkic peoples.[48]
The urban population of the empire was concentrated in a relatively small number of (by medieval standards) very large cities as opposed to a huge number of smaller towns. The population of the empire is estimated at 5 million people on the eve of the Mongol invasion in 1220, making it sparse for the large area it covered.[8][note 1] Historical demographers Tertius Chandler and Gerald Fox give the following estimations for the populations of the empire's major cities at the beginning of the 13th century, which adds up to at least 520,000 and at most 850,000 people:[52]
- Samarqand: 80,000–100,000
- Nishapur: 70,000
- Rayy/Rey: 100,000
- Isfahan: 80,000
- Merv: 70,000
- Balkh: c. 30,000
- Bost: c. 40,000
- Herat: c. 40,000
- Otrar, Urgench, and Bukhara: unknown, but less than 70,000.[53]
Culture
Although the Khwarazmshahs had a Turkic origin, just as their
Language
During the Khwarazmshah era,
However, the dominant language of the era and the one spoken by the majority in the important Khwarazmian cities was
Ceramics in the Khwarazmian period
The finely decorated
-
Horsemen, Mina'i ware, early 13th century, Iran[60]
-
Mina'i Bowl with horserider, early 13th century, Iran[61]
-
Mina'i Lobed bowl, early 13th century, Iran[62]
-
Lusterware bowl with leopard, early 13th century, Kashan, Iran[63] Dated examplesare also known.
Military
It is estimated that the Khwarazmian army, prior to the Mongol invasion, consisted of about 40,000 cavalry, mostly of Turkic origin. Militias existed in Khwarazm's major cities but were of poor quality. With collective populations of around 700,000, the major cities probably had 105,000 to 140,000 healthy males of fighting age in total (15–20% of the population), but only a fraction of these would be part of a formal militia with any notable measure of training and equipment.[64]
Mercenaries
After the Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire, many Khwarazmians survived by employing themselves as mercenaries in northern
After taking Jerusalem, the Khwarazmian forces continued south, and on 17 October 1244 fought on the side of the Ayyubids at the
See also
History of the Turkic peoples pre–14th century |
---|
- List of Sunni Muslim dynasties
Notes
- ^ a b Additionally, the population of roughly the same area (Persia and Central Asia) plus some others (Caucasia and northeast Anatolia) is estimated at 5–6 million nearly 400 hundreds later, under the rule of the Safavid dynasty.[51]
- ^ Also known as Khwarazm (Persian: خوارزم, romanized: Khwārazm) or the Khwarazmshahs (Persian: خوارزمشاهیان, romanized: Khwārazmshāhiyān)
- ^ Medieval historians such as Hafiz-i Abru and Rashid al-Din believed that Anushtegin was of Begdili tribe of Oghuz Turks,[23][24] while Turkish historian Kafesoğlu states that Anushtegin was either of Khalaj or Chigil origin and the Bashkir historian
References
- ^ Babayan 2003, p. 14.
- ^ Katouzian 2007, p. 128.
- ^ Kuznetsov & Fedorov 2013, p. 145.
- ^ Gafurov, B.G. Central Asia:Pre-Historic to Pre-Modern Times, Vol. 2, (Shipra Publications, 1989), p. 359.
- ^ Vasilyeva, G.P. "Ethnic processes in origins of Turkmen people." Soviet Ethnography. Publishing house: Nauka, 1969. pp. 81–98.
- ISSN 1076-156X. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
- JSTOR 2600793.
- ^ a b John Man, "Genghis Khan: Life, Death, and Resurrection", February 6, 2007. p. 180.
- Merriam Webster. n.d. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
- ISBN 978-92-3-103467-1.
Mahm ̄ud and Masc ̄ud I of Ghazna had appointed Turkish slave commanders from their own army, Altuntash and his sons, as governors there with the ancient title of Khwarazm Shah." (...) "In order to secure these important regions, Malik Sh ̄ah had appointed the keeper of the royal washing bowls (tast-d ̄ar), his slave commander An ̄ush-tegin Gharcha' ̄ı, as titular governor at least in Khwarazm. During Berkyaruk's reign, the sultan appointed in 1097 another Turkishghul ̄am, Ekinchi b. Kochkar, with the historic title of KhwarazmShah. When, in that same year, Ekinchi was killed, Berkyaruk nominated in his stead An ̄ushtegin's son Qutb al-D ̄ın Muhammad as governor, and Muhammad's tenure of power there (1097–1127) inaugurates the fourth and most brilliant line of hereditary KhwarazmShahs
- Encyclopaedia Iranica, online ed., 2009: "Little specific is known about the internal functioning of the Khwarazmian state, but its bureaucracy, directed as it was by Persian officials, must have followed the Saljuq model. This is the impression gained from the various Khwarazmian chancery and financial documents preserved in the collections of enšāʾdocuments and epistles from this period. The authors of at least three of these collections—Rašid-al-Din Vaṭvāṭ (d. 1182–83 or 1187–88), with his two collections of rasāʾel, and Bahāʾ-al-Din Baḡdādi, compiler of the important Ketāb al-tawaṣṣol elā al-tarassol—were heads of the Khwarazmian chancery. The Khwarazmshahs had viziers as their chief executives, on the traditional pattern, and only as the dynasty approached its end did ʿAlāʾ-al-Din Moḥammad in ca. 615/1218 divide up the office amongst six commissioners (wakildārs; see Kafesoğlu, pp. 5–8, 17; Horst, pp. 10–12, 25, and passim). Nor is much specifically known of court life in Gorgānj under the Khwarazmshahs, but they had, like other rulers of their age, their court eulogists, and as well as being a noted stylist, Rašid-al-Din Vaṭvāṭ also had a considerable reputation as a poet in Persian." Norman M. Naimark, Genocide: A World History (Oxford University Press, 2017), 20 "The Persian-speaking and Islamic Khwarezmian empire, which was founded in Central Asia south of the Aral Sea around its capital of Samarkand, and included such remarkable centers of trade and civilizations as Bukhara and Urgench, ..."
- ^ Rene Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes:A History of Central Asia, Transl. Naomi Walford, Rutgers University Press, 1991, p. 159.
- ^ Biran, Michel, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian history, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 44.
- ISBN 978-92-3-103467-1.
This dynasty eventually built up, as the Seljuq empire in the east tottered to its close, the most powerful and aggressively expansionist empire in the Persian lands, in the end defeating their rivals for control of Khurasan, the Ghurids of Afghanistan, threatening western Persia and Iraq and the Abbasid caliphate itself, and only disintegrating under the overwhelming military might of the Mongol invaders in the opening decades of the thirteenth century.
- ISSN 1076-156X. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
- JSTOR 2600793.
- ^ David Abulafia (2015). The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume 5, c. 1198–c. 1300. p. 610.
- ^ C.E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids: 994-1040, Edinburgh University Press, 1963, page 237
- ^ Buniyatov, Z. The State of Khwarazmshah-Anushteginids. 1097—1231 М., 1986. pages 41-75.
- ^ Biran, Michel, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History, Cambridge University Press, 2005, 44.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, "Khwarezm-Shah-Dynasty", (LINK)
- ^ "Metropolitan Museum of Art". www.metmuseum.org.
- Muhammad Khwarazmshah was Nushtekin Gharcha, who was a descendant of the Begdili tribe of the Oghuz family.
- ^ Buniyatov, Z.M (1986). The State of Khwarazmshah-Anushteginids (1097-1231). Nauka. p. 80.
- ^ a b Bosworth 1968.
- ^ Bosworth 1968, p. 93.
- ^ Biran, 44.
- ^ Grousset, Rene, The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia, (Rutgers University Press, 2002), 160.
- ISBN 975-97256-0-6
- ^ "Metropolitan Museum of Art". www.metmuseum.org.
- ^ Bosworth, C.E (1968). The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (A.D. 1000-1217). Vol. V. Cambridge. pp. 181–197.
- ^ Juvaini, Ala-ad-Din Ata-Malik, History of the World Conqueror, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1997. p. 314.
- ^ Kafesoglu, Ibrahim (1956). The History of the State of Khwarazmshah (485-617/1092-1229) (in Turkish). Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu. pp. 83–146.
- ^ Keresztély, Kata (14 December 2018). Fiction Painting : a Medieval Arabic Tradition. p. 351.
- ISBN 978-0-87099-777-8.
- ISBN 978-81-7541-245-3.
In Uzgend , the capital of the largest principality of the Karakhanids and in Samarkand , the capital of the Karakhanid state were minted coins in 1213 with the name of Mohammad, Khwarezm Shah . This confirmed the complete annihilation of the dynasty of the Kharakanids
- ISBN 0-521-65704-0.
- ISBN 978-0-553-81498-9.
- ^ "Gebetsnische (Baukeramik) - Recherche | Staatliche Museen zu Berlin". recherche.smb.museum.
- ^ Bast, Oliver (11 August 2020). "GERMANY, Plate IV". Encyclopaedia Iranica Online. Brill.
- ISBN 9789759725600
- ^ Paul, Jürgen (2018). "Jalāl al-Dīn Mangburnī". Encyclopedia of Islam - 3. p. 142.
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 6 October 2008. Retrieved 1 March 2006.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ Buniyatov, Z.M. (1999). Selected works in three volumes. Vol. 3. Baku. p. 60.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Buniyatov 1999, p. 61.
- ^ Buniyatov 1999, p. 62.
- ^ Buniyatov 1999, p. 65.
- ^ Gafurov, B.G. Central Asia: Pre-Historic to Pre-Modern Times. vol. 2. Shipra Publications, 1989. p. 359.
- ISBN 978-90-04-23661-5.
- ISBN 978-90-04-20100-2.as markers of official status (...) the combination is standard, even being reflected in thirteenth-century Coptic paintings, and serves to distinguish, in Grabar's formulation, the world of the Turkish ruler and that of the Arab. (...) The type worn by the official figures in the 1237 Maqāmāt, depicted, for example, on fol. 59r,67 consists of a gold cap surmounted by a little round top and with fur trimming creating a triangular area at the front which either shows the gold cap or is a separate plaque. A particular imposing example in this manuscript is the massive sharbūsh with much more fur than usual that is worn by the princely official on the right frontispiece on fol. 1v.
P.126: "Official" Turkish figures wear a standard combination of a sharbūsh, a three-quarters length robe, and boots. Arab figures, in contrast, have different headgear (usually a turban), a robe that is either full-length or, if three-quarters length, has baggy trousers below, and they usually wear flat shoes or (...) go barefoot (...) P.127: Reference has already been made to the combination of boots and sharbūsh
- ISBN 978-0521525978. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
- ^ Tertius Chandler & Gerald Fox, "3000 Years of Urban Growth", pp. 232–236.
- ^ Chandler & Fox, p. 232: Merv, Samarkand, and Nipashur are referred to as "vying for the [title of] largest" among the "Cities of Persia and Turkestan in 1200", implying populations of less than 70,000 for the other cities (Otrar and others do not have precise estimates given). "Turkestan" seems to refer to Central Asian Turkic countries in general in this passage, as Samarkand, Merv, and Nishapur are located in modern Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and northeastern Iran respectively.
- ISBN 978-9004173279.
- ISBN 978-0-500-20305-7.
- ^ Vasilyeva, G.P (1969). Ethnic processes in origins of Turkmen people; Soviet Ethnography (in Russian). Nauka (Science). pp. 81–98.
- ^ Komaroff, 4; Michelsen and Olafsdotter, 76; Fitzwilliam Museum: "Mina’i, meaning ‘enamelled’ ware, is one of the glories of Islamic ceramics, and was a speciality of the renowned ceramics centre of Kashan in Iran during the decades of the late 12th and early 13th centuries preceding the Mongol invasions".
- ^ "While stonepaste vessels are often attributed to the Seljuq period, some of the most iconic productions in the medium took place after this dynasty lost control over its eastern territories to other Central Asian Turkic groups, such as the Khwarezm-Shahis" in Rugiadi, Martina. "Ceramic Technology in the Seljuq Period: Stonepaste in Syria and Iran in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries". www.metmuseum.org. Metropolitan Museum of Art (2021). Retrieved 1 February 2023.
- ISBN 978-0195189483.
- ^ "Metropolitan Museum of Art". www.metmuseum.org.
- ^ "Metropolitan Museum of Art". www.metmuseum.org.
- ^ "Metropolitan Museum of Art". www.metmuseum.org.
- ^ "Metropolitan Museum of Art". www.metmuseum.org.
- ^ Sverdrup, Carl. The Mongol Conquests: The Military Operations of Genghis Khan and Sube'etei. Helion and Company, 2017. pp. 148–150
- ^ Holod, Renata (1 January 2012). "The Freer Gallery's Siege Scene Plate". Ars Orientalis.
- ^ "Bowl". Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art.
- ^ Nicolle, David (1997). Men-at-arms series 171 - Saladin and the saracens (PDF). Osprey publishing. p. 36.
- ISBN 978-1-107-16756-8.
It has recently been proposed that the dish represents an attack on an Assassin stronghold in eastern Azerbaijan by Jalal al-Din Khwarazmshah in about 1225.
- ^ Riley-Smith The Crusades, p. 191
Sources
- Babayan, K. (2003). Mystics, monarchs, and messiahs: cultural landscapes of early modern Iran. Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
- ISBN 978-0415297547.
- Kuznetsov, Andrew; Fedorov, Michael (2013). "Late Drachms of the Khwārazmshāh Azkājvār and Imitations of such Drachms". Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies. 51 (1). Taylor & Francis: 145–149.
External links
- Media related to Khwarazmian Empire at Wikimedia Commons