Medieval History of Iran Afghanistan and Central Asia

364 Pages·1977·18.25 MB·English

by  C. E. Bosworth

C. E. Bosworth
The Medieval History of Iran,
Afghanistan and Central Asia
VARIORUM REPRINTS
London 1977
ISBN 0 86078 000 7
Published in Great Britain by Variorum Reprints
21a Pembridge Mews London W1 I 3EQ
Printed in Great Britain by Kingprint Ltd
Richmond Surrey TW9 4PD
VARIORUM REPRINT CS56
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface i-iv
I The rise of the Karimiyyah in Khurasan 5-14
The Muslim World L. Hartford, 1960
II On the chronology of the Ziyirids in
Gurgin and Tabaristin 25-34
Der Islam XL. Berlin, 1964
111 Military organisation under the Bfiyids of
Persia and Iraq 143-167
Oriens X VIII-XIX. Leiden, 1 965-6
IV The Tiharids and Persian literature
Iran VII. London, 1969
V Dailamis in Central Iran:
the Kikuyids of Jibil and Yazd
Iran VIII. London. 19 70
VI The Banu Ilyis of Kirmin (320-571932-68) 107-124
Iran and Islam. In memory of the late
Madimir Minorsky, ed. C E. Bosworth.
Edinburgh, 1971
VII The heritage of rulership in early Islamic Iran
and the search for dynastic connections with
the past 5 1-62
Iran XI. London, 19 73
VIII The Kifichis or Qufs in Persian history 9-17
Iran XI K London, 19 76
AFGHANISTAN
IX The early Islamic history of Ghur
Central Asiatic Journal VI.
The Hague- Wiesbaden, 1961
X The titulature of the early Ghaznavids 21 0-233
Oriens X K Leiden, 1962
XI The imperial policy of the early Ghaznawids 49-82
Islamic Studies, Journal of the Central Institute of
Islamic Research, Karachi 113. 1 962
XI1 A Turco-Mongol practice among the
early Ghaznavids?
Central Asiatic Journal VII.
The Hague- Wiesbaden, 1962
XI11 Early sources for the history of the first
four Ghaznavid sultans (977 -1 041 )
The Islamic Quarterly VII. Oxford, 1963
XIV Notes on the pre-Ghaznavid history of
Eastern Afghanistan
The Islamic Quarterly IX. Oxford, 1965
XV An embassy to Mahmud of Ghazna recorded
in QHdi Ibn az-zubayr9sK itiib adh-dhdkhd 'ir
wa't-iuhaf 404-407
Journal of the American Oriental Society LXXXV.
New Haven, 1965
XVI Mahmiid of Ghazna in contemporary eyes and
in later Persian literature 85-92
Iran ICI: London, 1966
XVII The armies of the Saffirids 534-554
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London XXXI. London, 1968
XVIII The development of Persian culture under
the early Ghaznavids 33-44
Iran VI. hndon, 1968
XIX 'Ubaidallah b. Abi Bakra and the "Army of
Destruction" in Zibulistin (791698)
Der Islam L. Berlin, 19 73
CENTRAL ASIA
XX Al-Xwirazmi on the peoples of Central Asia 2-12
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. London, 1965
(with Sir Gerard Clauson)
XXI A propos de l'article de Mohamed Khadr:
"Deux actes de waqf d'un Qarabinide
d' Asie Centrale" (Journal Asiatique, 1967) 449-453
Journal Asiatique CCL VI. Paris, 1968
XXII An alleged embassy from the Emperor of
China to the Amir Nasr b. Ahmad:
a contribution to Siminid military history 1-13
Ydd-&me-ye irini-ye Minorsky, ed. M. Minovi and
I. Afshar. Tehran, 1969
XXIII Barbarian incursions: the coming of the
Turks into the Islamic world
Islamic civilisation 950-11 50,
ed. D. S. Richards. Oxford, 19 73
Index
This volume contains a total of 374 pages

INTRODUCTION
The studies here collected together relate to the geographically
very extensive world of eastern Islam and its outliers in the
mediaeval period, sc. the six centuries or so between the first
Arab conquests in Iran or Persia, Central Asia and Sind and the
cataclysm of the Mongol invasions, which affected almost the
entire span of the Old World, from Korea to Hungary. This eastern
Islamic world had the ancient crossroads of civilisation, Iran, as its
cultural and religious core, but its borders extended far to the
north and east of modern Persia into what are now Afghanistan,
Pakistan and northern India and into the Soviet and Chinese-held
domains of Central Asia.
These last comprised in part what is often referred to in the
classical and mediaeval context as "1'Iran extkrieure", the regions
of Transoxania and Khwirazm and even of Sin-kiang or Chinese
Turkestan, which were still at this time ethnically and culturally
Iranian or at least Indo-European. Beyond these regions lay the
steppe and forest lands sparsely populated by Turks, Mongols and
other splinters of Inner Asian peoples. Some of these in time came
to adopt the Islamic faith, though in much of Inner Asia this was
a slow process, with other faiths such as Buddhism and Christianity
contending for the regions' soul. The peoples that became Muslim
at the same time adopted something of the Perso-Islamic cultural
and artistic heritage which had evolved in Iran proper; but they
retained and were often able to extend their particular ethnic and
linguistic identity. Hence most of "l'lran extkrieure" was gradually
Turkicised, and today, only in the modern Tajikistan S.S.R. is
there any significant number of Iranian speakers north of the
Oxus, whilst considerable stretches of Iran itself are Turkish and
Turkoman.
Reflecting these ethnic complications - for Inner Asia has
always been one of the ethnic and cultural melting-pots of the
Old World, poorly endowed with creativity of its own, but always
receptive to outside influences and adept at absorbing them into
its own limited stock of ideas and customs one of the studies in
-
Part 3 Central Asia deals with the Iranian dynasty in Transoxania
of the Siminids, but for the most part they are concerned with the
Turkish tribes and peoples of the steppes beyond. The incursions
of these nomads culminated, for the pre-Mongol period, in the
establishment of the powerful groupings of the Qarakhanids in
Transoxania and the Seljuqs in Iran proper; from these population
movements and from the effects of their pastoral mode of life
there resulted important, long-term changes in land utilisation and
in the ethnic complexion of the regions involved.
Iran proper remained, during the first four centuries of Islam,
a land where the political control of the Damascus and Baghdad
caliphs, exercised through their Arab governors, gradually became
loosened and then slipped from their hands into the grip of
indigenous Iranian military leaders and soldiers of fortune. This
process is well seen in the annexation of Khurasan or eastern
Persia in the mid-ninth century by the local Sistan dynasty of the
Saffirids, for the previous line of governors there, the Tihirids,
although ultimately of Iranian stock, had become largely Arabised,
a prime example of symbiosis between the two cultures, the
religiously-inspired Arab-Islamic one and the secular ancient
Persian one. In the following century, sc. the tenth, we have the
phenomenon of the dynamic, but as yet ill-explained rise of the
Dailamis, a mountain people from north-western Iran who had
previously played hardly any noticeable r61e in the history of Iran.
It seems that the Dailamis, and other hitherto submerged peoples
like the Kurds, began to assert themselves as Arab political control
crumbled, adopting Islam in both its majority Sunni and its
minority Shi'i forms, and establishing their domination over the
whole of central and western Iran and extending into Arab lands
like Iraq, Diyirbakr and Oman. Hence various studies in Part 1
Iran deal with such Dailami dynasties as the BCiyids, the Ziysrids
and the Kikiiyids, whose political independence was in the
eleventh century to be sapped by the incoming Seljuq Turks, but
whose encouragement and patronage of New Persian culture and
literature was to show that the age-old concepts of Iranian self-
identity and distinctive self-expression had been only dormant
during the centuries of Arab domination and by no means
extinguished.
The political entity "Afghanistan" is hardly more than two
centuries old, and the name of the Afghan people themselves -
apparently the name of the forerunners of the modern Pashtuns -
is not attested before the tenth century, yet the geographical
compactness of this region of mountains and plateaux and its
historic part as a buffer-zone between the Inner Asian steppes and
the rich lands of ancient civilisation lying to the south, sc. Iran and
above all India, nevertheless justify using the term in a mediaeval
context. Arab raiders penetrated early into Afghanistan, yet apart
from slaves, the booty to be gained in this land of thinly-spread
population and meagre natural resources can hardly have been
tempting. In fact, the indigenous rulers of northern and eastern
Afghanistan (who seem to have included epigoni of the pre-Islamic
Hephthalites, long dominant in this region of Inner Asia) resisted
fiercely the Arabs' attempts at domination, and it was not until the
coming of the Turkish slave commanders of the Siminids to such
centres as Bust, Ghazna and Gardiz that Islam was implanted there;
even then, the inaccessible central province of Ghiir remained
pagan till the eleventh century, and it is less than a century now
that Kafiristan, modern Nuristan, had Islam imposed upon it.
Much of Part 2 Afghanistan is taken up with aspects of the rule
and culture of the Turkish Ghaznavid dynasty, which in the later
tenth and early eleventh centuries became the nucleus of a vast if
transient military empire in eastern Islam, stretching from western
Iran to northern India. These studies supplement and complete the
present author's two full-scale books devoted to this dynasty,
The Ghaznavids, their empire in Afghanistan and eastern Iran
994-1 040 (Edinburgh University Press, 1963) and The later
Ghaznavids in Afghanistan and northern India 1040-11 86
(Edinburgh University Press, 1977). The image which grew up of
the great Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna as hammer of the infidel
Hindus both he and his son Mastiid left a lasting impression on
-
the folk-consciousness of eastern Islam, seen in the popular
romances and epics in which they figure made him a Muslim
-
hero, and it was through his efforts that the orientation of the
Ghaznavid empire through almost two centuries of its existence
was turned primarily towards India. There thus began a new phase
in the close relationship of Afghanistan to northern India, one
which was eventually to make much of the latter land Muslim, so
that today Islam is the majority faith in Baluchistan, Sind, the