Anushtegin dynasty explained

Anushtegin dynasty
Native Name:Persian: {{Nastaliq|خاندان انوشتکین, Khānedāne Ānushtegin
Country:
Region:Central Asia
Iran
Afghanistan
Egypt
Parent House:Begdili[1] or Qangli or other[2]
Titles:
Founded:1077
Founder:Anushtegin Gharchai
Final Ruler:Saif ad-Din Qutuz[3]
Dissolution:1260
Deposition:
  • 1231 (Khwarazmian Empire)
  • 1260 (Mamluk Egypt)
Traditions:Sunni Islam (Hanafi)

The Anushtegin dynasty or Anushteginids (English:, Persian: {{Nastaliq|خاندان انوشتکین), also known as the Khwarazmian dynasty (Persian: {{Nastaliq|خوارزمشاهیان) was a Persianate[4] [5] [6] Sunni Muslim dynasty of Turkic mamluk origin from the Bekdili clan of the Oghuz Turks.[7] [8] [9] [10] [11] The Anushteginid dynasty ruled the Khwarazmian Empire, consisting in large parts of present-day Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran in the approximate period of 1077 to 1231, first as vassals of the Seljuks[12] and the Qara Khitai (Western Liao),[13] and later as independent rulers, up until the Mongol conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire in the 13th century.

The dynasty was founded by commander Anushtegin Gharchai, a former Turkic slave of the Seljuq sultans, who was appointed as governor of Khwarazm. His son, Qutb ad-Din Muhammad I, became the first hereditary Shah of Khwarazm.[14] Anush Tigin may have belonged to either the Begdili tribe of the Oghuz Turks[15] or to Chigil, Khalaj, Qipchaq, Qangly, or Uyghurs.[16]

History

See also: Timeline of the Turkic peoples (500–1300). The date of the founding of the Khwarazmian dynasty remains debatable. During a revolt in 1017, Khwarezmian rebels murdered Abu'l-Abbas Ma'mun and his wife, Hurra-ji, sister of the Ghaznavid sultan Mahmud.[17] In response, Mahmud invaded and occupied the region of Khwarezm, which included Nasa and the ribat of Farawa.[18] As a result, Khwarezm became a province of the Ghaznavid Empire from 1017 to 1034. In 1077, the governorship of the province, which since 1042/1043 belonged to the Seljuqs, fell into the hands of Anush Tigin Gharchai, a former Turkic slave of the Seljuq sultan. In 1141, the Seljuq Sultan Ahmed Sanjar was defeated by the Qara Khitai at the battle of Qatwan, and Anush Tigin's grandson Ala ad-Din Atsiz became a vassal to Yelü Dashi of the Qara Khitan.[19]

Sultan Ahmed Sanjar died in 1156. As the Seljuk state fell into chaos, the Khwarezm-Shahs expanded their territories southward. In 1194, the last Sultan of the Great Seljuq Empire, Toghrul III, was defeated and killed by the Khwarezm ruler Ala ad-Din Tekish, who conquered parts of Khorasan and western Iran. In 1200, Tekish died and was succeeded by his son, Ala ad-Din Muhammad, who initiated a conflict with the Ghurids and was defeated by them at Amu Darya (1204).[20] Following the sack of Khwarizm, Muhammad appealed for aid from his suzerain, the Qara Khitai who sent him an army.[21] With this reinforcement, Muhammad won a victory over the Ghurids at Hezarasp (1204) and forced them out of Khwarizm.

Ala ad-Din Muhammad's alliance with his suzerain was short-lived. He again initiated a conflict, this time with the aid of the Kara-Khanids, and defeated a Qara-Khitai army at Talas (1210),[22] but allowed Samarkand (1210) to be occupied by the Qara-Khitai.[23] He overthrew the Karakhanids (1212)[24] and Ghurids (1215). In 1212, he shifted his capital from Gurganj to Samarkand. Thus incorporating nearly the whole of Transoxania and present-day Afghanistan into his empire, which after further conquests in western Persia (by 1217) stretched from the Syr Darya to the Zagros Mountains, and from the northern parts of the Hindu Kush to the Caspian Sea. By 1218, the empire had a population of 5 million people.[25]

Anushteginid Khwarazmshahs

Titular NamePersonal NameReign
ShihnaAnushtegin Gharchai
1077/1097 C.E.
ShihnaEkinchi ibn Qochqar
1097 C.E.
Shah

Qutb ad-Din Abul-Fath
Arslan Tigin Muhammad ibn Anush Tigin
1097–1127/28 C.E.
Shah

Ala al-Dunya wa al-Din Abul-Muzaffar
Qizil Arslan Atsiz ibn Muhammad
1127–1156 C.E.
Shah

Taj al-Dunya wa al-Din Abul-Fath
Il-Arslan ibn Qizil Arslan Atsiz
1156–1172 C.E.
Shah

Ala al-Dunya wa al-Din Abul-Muzaffar
Tekish ibn Il-Arslan
1172–1200 C.E.
Shah

Jalal al-Dunya wa al-Din Abul-Qasim
Mahmud Sultan Shah ibn Il-Arslan

Initially under regency of Turkan Khatun, his mother. He was a younger half-brother and rival of Tekish in Upper Khurasan
1172–1193 C.E.
Shah

Ala al-Dunya wa al-Din Abul-Fath
Muhammad ibn Tekish
1200–1220 C.E.
Jalal al-Dunya wa al-Din Abul-Muzaffar
Mingburnu ibn Muhammad
1220–1231 C.E.

Family tree of Anushtiginid Dynasty

Simplified Family Tree

Khwarezmian Empire
Mamluk Sultanate

See also

Further reading

Notes and References

  1. Book: Fazlallakh . Rashid ad-Din . Oghuznameh (in Russian) . 1987 . Baku . Similarly, the most distant ancestor of Sultan Muhammad Khwarazmshah was Nushtekin Gharcha, who was a descendant of the Begdili tribe of the Oghuz family..
  2. [Clifford Edmund Bosworth|C.E. Bosworth]
  3. Book: Amitai-Preiss, Reuven . Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War, 1260–1281 . 1995 . Cambridge University Press . Cambridge . 978-0-521-46226-6 . registration .
  4. [Clifford Edmund Bosworth|C. E. Bosworth]
  5. Homa Katouzian, "Iranian history and politics", Published by Routledge, 2003. pg 128: "Indeed, since the formation of the Ghaznavids state in the tenth century until the fall of Qajars at the beginning of the twentieth century, most parts of the Iranian cultural regions were ruled by Turkic-speaking dynasties most of the time. At the same time, the official language was Persian, the court literature was in Persian, and most of the chancellors, ministers, and mandarins were Persian speakers of the highest learning and ability"
  6. "Persian Prose Literature." World Eras. 2002. HighBeam Research. (3 September 2012);"Princes, although they were often tutored in Arabic and religious subjects, frequently did not feel as comfortable with the Arabic language and preferred literature in Persian, which was either their mother tongue—as in the case of dynasties such as the Saffarids (861–1003), Samanids (873–1005), and Buyids (945–1055)—or was a preferred lingua franca for them—as with the later Turkish dynasties such as the Ghaznawids (977–1187) and Saljuks (1037–1194)". https://web.archive.org/web/20130502180821/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-3034700041.html
  7. Negmatov, B. M. "ABOUT THE ARMY OF STATE OF JALOLIDDIN KHOREZMSHAH." CURRENT RESEARCH JOURNAL OF PEDAGOGICS 2, no. 09 (2021): 13-18. p.16. “The Khorezmshahs belonged to the Bekdili clan of the Oguzs. It is natural, therefore, that their black flag bears the seal of this tribe”
  8. Özgüdenli, Osman Gazi. "Hârezmşâh Hükümdarlarına Ait Farsça Şiirler/The Persian Poems of Khwārizmshāh Rulers." Marmara Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi 2, no. 2: 25-51. “The Khwārizmshāh rulers, descended from the Begdili clan of the Oghuz’s”
  9. Ata, Aysu. Harezm-Altın Ordu Türkçesi. Turkey: Mehmet Ölmez, 2002. p.11. “Anuştigin Garçai, Reşidü'd - din'in Cāmi'ü't - tevāriņ'ine göre Oğuzların Begdili boyuna mensuptur”
  10. [Clifford Edmund Bosworth|Bosworth]
  11. [Clifford Edmund Bosworth|C. E. Bosworth]
  12. Rene Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes:A History of Central Asia, Transl. Naomi Walford, (Rutgers University Press, 1991), 159.
  13. Biran, Michel, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian history, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 44.
  14. [Encyclopædia Britannica]
  15. Book: Fazlallakh . Rashid ad-Din . Oghuznameh (in Russian) . 1987 . Baku . Similarly, the most distant ancestor of Sultan Muhammad Khwarazmshah was Nushtekin Gharcha, who was a descendant of the Begdili tribe of the Oghuz family..
  16. [Clifford Edmund Bosworth|C.E. Bosworth]
  17. C.E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids:994-1040, (Edinburgh University Press, 1963), 237.
  18. C.E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids:994-1040, 237.
  19. Biran, Michel, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 44.
  20. Rene, Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes:A History of Central Asia, (Rutgers University Press, 1991), 168.
  21. Rene, Grousset, 168.
  22. Rene, Grousset, 169.
  23. Rene, Grousset, 234.
  24. Rene, Grousset, 237.
  25. John Man, "Genghis Khan: Life, Death, and Resurrection", 6 Feb. 2007. Page 180.