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Fall of Khwarazm
region in Uzbekistan and the capital of the Khwarazmian Empire was Urgench
- 1924
- Khiva
- Central Asia
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region in Uzbekistan and the capital of the Khwarazmian Empire was Urgench
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Khwarazm, or Chorasmia, is a large oasis region on the Amu Darya river delta in western Central Asia, bordered on the north by the (former) Aral Sea, on the east by the Kyzylkum Desert, on the south by the Karakum Desert, and on the west by the Ustyurt Plateau. The Iranian Khwarezmian civilization had its center here until the 9th century CE, when Turkic tribes moved into and ruled the lands. Cities such as Kath, Gurganj (now Konye-Urgench) and Khiva served as capitals for a series of dynasties, such as the Afrighids and the Anushtegin. In the 21st century, around two-thirds of Khwarazm belongs to Uzbekistan, while around a third forms part of Turkmenistan.
Khwarazm has been known also as Chorasmia, Khaurism, Khwarezm, Khwarezmia, Khwarizm, Khwarazm, Khorezm, Khoresm, Khorasam, Kharazm, Harezm, Horezm, and Chorezm.
In Avestan the name is 𐬓𐬁𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬰𐬆𐬨, Xvairizəm; in Old Persian: 𐎢𐎺𐎠𐎼𐏀𐎷𐎡𐏁, romanized: u-v-a-r-z-mi-i-š or: 𐎢𐎺𐎠𐎼𐏀𐎷𐎡𐎹, romanized: u-v-a-r-z-mi-i-y (/hUvārazmī-/); in Later Middle Persian: 𐭧𐭥𐭥𐭦𐭬, romanized: ḥʿʿzm (/Xwārazm/); in New Persian: خوارزم, romanized: Xwārazm; in Arabic: خَوَارِزْم, romanized: Ḵawārizm; in Old Chinese *qʰaljɯʔmriɡ (呼似密); in Modern Chinese Huālázǐmó (花剌子模 / Xiao'erjing: خُوَلاذِمُوْ); in Tajik: Хоразм, Xorazm, خوارزم; in Kazakh: Хорезм, romanized: Xorezm, حورەزم; in Uzbek: Хоразм, romanized: Xorazm, حورەزم; in Turkmen: Хорезм, romanized: Horezm, خورزم; in Azerbaijani: Харәзм, romanized: Xarəzm, خارزم; in Turkish: Harezm; in Ancient Greek: Χορασμία, romanized: Chorasmía as well as: Χορασίμα, romanized: Chorasíma by Herodotus.
The Arab geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi in his Muʿjam al-Buldan wrote that the name was a Persian compound of xwār (خوار), and razm (رزم), referring to the abundance of cooked fish as a main diet of the peoples of this area.
C.E. Bosworth, however, thought the Persian name to be made up of xwar (خور 'the sun') and zam (زم 'earth, land'), designating 'the land from which the sun rises', although a similar etymology is also given for Khurasan. Another view is that the Iranian compound stands for 'lowland' from xwār 'low' and zam 'land'. Khwarazm is indeed the lowest region in Central Asia (except for the Caspian Sea to the far west), located on the delta of the Amu Darya on the southern shores of the Aral Sea. Various forms of xwar/xar/xor are commonly used in the Persian Gulf to stand for tidal flats, marshland, or tidal bays (e.g., Khor Musa, Khor Abdallah, Hor al-Azim, Hor al-Himar, etc.)
The name also appears in Achaemenid inscriptions as Huvarazmish, which is declared to be part of the Persian Empire.
Some of the early scholars assumed Khwarazm to be what ancient Avestic texts refer to as Airyanem Vaejah (Avestan: 𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀𐬥𐬆𐬨⸱ 𐬬𐬀𐬉𐬘𐬀𐬵, romanized: Airiianəm Vaējah; Late Middle Persian: Ērān-wēj; New Persian: ایرانویج, romanized: Erān-wēj; Parthian: Aryānwēžan, 'the Arya Expanse'). These sources claim that Old Urgench, which was the capital of ancient Khwarazm for many years, was actually Ourva, the eighth land of Ahura Mazda mentioned in the Pahlavi text of Vendidad. However, Michael Witzel, a researcher in early Indo-European history, claims that Airyanem Vaejah was in what is now Afghanistan, the northern areas of which were a part of ancient Khwarazm and Greater Khorasan. Others, however, disagree. University of Hawaiʻi historian Elton L. Daniel thinks Khwarazm to be the "most likely locale" corresponding to the original home of the Avestan people, and Dehkhoda calls Khwarazm "the cradle of the Aryan tribe" (مهد قوم آریا).
The Khwarezmian scholar Al-Biruni (973–1048) says that the land belonging to the mythical king Afrasiab was first colonised 980 years before Alexander the Great (thus c. 1292 BCE, well before the Seleucid era) when the hero of the Iranian epic Siyavash came to Khwarazm; his son Kay Khusraw came to the throne 92 years later, in 1200 BCE. Al-Biruni starts giving names only with the Afrighid line of Khwarazmshahs, having placed the ascension of Afrighids in 616 of the Seleucid era, i.e. in 305 CE.
Like Sogdia, Khwarazm was an expansion of the Bactria–Margiana culture during the Bronze Age, which later fused with Indo-Iranians during their migrations around 1000 BCE. Early Iron Age states arose from this cultural exchange. List of successive cultures in Khwarazm region 3000–500 BCE:
Kokcha-3 kurgans, belonging to Tazabagyab culture are located in the Tórtkúl District of Karakalpakistan in Uzbekistan. It is the largest burial ground of this archaeological culture and it provides much information on this period of Khwarazm.
During the final Saka phase, there were about 400 settlements in Khwarazm. Ruled by the native Afrighid dynasty, it was at this point that Khwarazm entered the historical record with the Achaemenid expansion.
An Eastern Iranian language, Khwarezmian was spoken in Khwarazm proper (i.e., the lower Amu Darya region) until soon after the Mongol invasion, when it was replaced by Turkic languages. It was closely related to Sogdian. Other than the astronomical terms used by the native Iranian Khwarezmian speaker Al-Biruni, Our other sources of Khwarezmian include al-Zamakhshari's Arabic–Persian–Khwarezmian dictionary and several legal texts that use Khwarezmian terms to explain certain legal concepts.
For most of its history, up until the Mongol conquest, the inhabitants of the area were from Iranian stock, and they spoke an Eastern Iranian language called Khwarezmian. The scientist Al-Biruni, a Khwarazm native, in his Athar ul-Baqiyah, specifically verifies the Iranian origins of Khwarezmians when he wrote (in Arabic):
أهل خوارزم [...] کانوا غصناً من دوحة الفرس ("The people of Khwarezm were a branch from the Persian tree.")
The area of Khwarazm was under Afrighid and then Samanid control until the 10th century before it was conquered by the Ghaznavids. The Iranian Khwarezmian language and culture felt the pressure of Turkic infiltration from northern Khwarazm southwards, leading to the disappearance of the original Iranian character of the province and its complete Turkicization today. Khwarezmian speech probably lasted in upper Khwarazm, the region around Hazarasp, till the end of the 8th/14th century.
The Khwarezmian language survived for several centuries after Islam until the Turkification of the region, and so must some at least of the culture and lore of ancient Khwarazm, for it is hard to see the commanding figure of Al-Biruni, a repository of so much knowledge, appearing in a cultural vacuum.
The Achaemenid Empire took control of Chorasmia during the time of King Darius I (ruled 522–486 BCE). And the Persian poet Ferdowsi mentions Persian cities like Afrasiab and Chach in abundance in his epic Shahnama. The contact with the Achaemenid Empire had a great influence on the material culture of Chorasmia, starting a period of rich economic and cultural development.
Chorasmian troops participated in the Second Persian invasion of Greece by Xerxes in t80 BCE, under the command of Achaemenid general and later satrap Artabazos I of Phrygia. By the time of the Persian king Darius III, Khwarazm had already become an independent kingdom.
Chorasmia was involved in the conquests of Alexander the Great in Central Asia. When the king of Khwarazm offered friendship to Alexander in 328 BCE, Alexander's Greek and Roman biographers imagined the nomad king of a desert waste, but 20th-century Russian archeologists revealed the region as a stable and centralized kingdom, a land of agriculture to the east of the Aral Sea, surrounded by the nomads of Central Asia, protected by its army of mailed horsemen, in the most powerful kingdom northwest of the Amu Darya (the Oxus River of antiquity). The king's emissary offered to lead Alexander's armies against his own enemies, west over the Caspian towards the Black Sea (e.g. Kingdom of Iberia and Colchis).
Khwarazm was largely independent during the Seleucid, Greco-Bactrian and Arsacid dynasties. Numerous fortresses were built, and the Khwarazm oasis has been dubbed the "Fifty fortresses oasis". Chorasmia remained relatively sheltered from the interests of the Seleucid Empire or Greco-Bactria, but various elements of Hellenistic art appear in the ruins of Chorasmian cities, particularly at Akchakhan-Kala, and the influence of the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, reflecting the rise of Kushan Empire, appears at Toprak-Kala. The early rulers of Chorasmia first imitated the coinage of the Greco-Bactrian ruler Eucratides I. Parthian artistic influences have also been described.
From the 1st century BCE, Chorasmia developed original coins inspired frbyreco-Bactrian, Parthian, and Indo-Scythian types. Artav (Artabanus), a Chorasmian ruler of the 1st–2nd century, whose coins were discovered in the capital city of Toprak-Kala, imitated the type of the Kushan Heraios and was found together with coins of the Kushan rulers Vima Kadphises and Kanishka.
From the 2nd century CE, Chorasmia became part of the vast cultural sphere corresponding to the rise of the Kushan Empire in the east.
Under Shapur I, the Sasanian Empire spread as far as Khwarazm. Yaqut al-Hamawi verifies that Khwarazm was a regional capital of the Sassanid empire. When speaking of the pre-Islamic "Khusraw of Khwarazm" (خسرو خوارزم), the Islamic "Emir of Khwarazm" (امیر خوارزم), or even the Khwarazmid Empire, sources such as Al-Biruni and Ibn Khordadbeh and others clearly refer to Khwarazm as being part of the Iranian (Persian) empire. During the reign of Khosrow II, extensive areas of Khwarazm were conquered.
The fact that Pahlavi script, which was used by the Persian bureaucracy alongside Old Persian, passed into use in Khwarazmia where it served as the first local alphabet about the 2nd century CE, as well as evidence that Khwarazm-Shahs such as ʿAlā al-Dīn Tekish (1172–1200) issued all their orders (both administrative and public) in the Persian language, corroborates Al-Biruni's claims. It was also a vassal kingdom during periods of Kushans, Hephthalites and Gokturks power before the coming of the Arabs.
Per Al-Biruni, the Afrighids of Kath (آفریغیان آل آفریغ) were a native Khwarezmian Iranian dynasty which ruled as the Shahs of Khwarazm from 305 to 995 AD. At times they were under Sassanian suzerainty.
In 712, Khwarazm was conquered by the Arab Caliphate (Umayyads and Abbasids). It thus came vaguely under Muslim control, but it was not till the end of the 8th century and the beginning of the 9th century that an Afrighid Shah first converted to Islam, appearing with the popular convert's name of ʿAbdullah ('slave of God'). In the course of the 10th century—when some geographers such as Istakhri in his Al-Masalik wa-l-mamalik mention Khwarazm as part of Khorasan and Transoxiania—the local Ma'munids, based in Gurganj on the left bank of the Amu Darya, grew in economic and political importance due to trade caravans. In 995, they violently overthrew the Afrighids and themselves assumed the traditional title of Khwarazm-Shah.
Briefly, the area was under Samanid suzerainty before it passed to Mahmud of Ghazni in 1017. From then on, Turko-Mongolian invasions and long rule by Turko-Mongol dynasties supplanted the Iranian character of the region although the title of Khwarazm-Shah was maintained well up to the 13th century.
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. In response, Mahmud invaded and occupied the region of Khwarazm, which included Nasa and the ribat of Farawa. As a result, Khwarazm 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 Anushtegin 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 Khitai.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Khwarazm”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.