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Fall of Khwarazmian Empire
former empire in Central Asia
- 1231
- Middle East
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former empire in Central Asia
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The Khwarazmian Empire, or simply Khwarazm, was a culturally Persianate, Sunni Muslim empire of Turkic mamluk origin, ruled by the Anushtegin dynasty. The Khwarazmian Empire ruled large parts of present-day Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Iran from 1077 to 1231; first as vassals of the Seljuk Empire and the Qara Khitai (Western Liao dynasty), and from circa 1190 as independent rulers up until the Mongol invasion in 1219–1221.
The date of the founding of the state remains debatable. The dynasty that ruled the empire was founded by Anush Tigin (Gharachai), initially a Turkic slave of the rulers of Gharchistan, later a Mamluk in the service of the Seljuks. However, it was under Ala ad-Din Atsiz (r. 1127–1156), a descendant of Anush Tigin, that Khwarazm became independent from its neighbors.
The Khwarazmian Empire eventually became the most powerful state in and around Persia, defeating the Seljuk Empire and claiming territory from the western regions of the Ghurid Empire, and even threatening the Abbasid Caliphate. It is estimated that the empire spanned an area of 2.3 to 3.6 million square kilometres. The empire, which was modelled on the preceding Seljuk Empire, was defended by a huge cavalry army composed largely of Kipchak Turks.
In 1219, the Mongols under their ruler Genghis Khan invaded the Khwarazmian Empire, conquering most of it in just two years. The Mongols exploited existing weaknesses and conflicts in the empire, besieging and plundering the richest cities, and putting its citizens to the sword in one of the bloodiest conquests in human history. A Khwarazmian rump state survived in western Iran until 1231; it was conquered by the Mongols only after the death of Jalal al-Din Mangburni, the last Khwarazmshah.
The title of Khwarazmshah was introduced in 305 by the founder of the Afrighids and existed until 995. After a short interval, the title was reinstated. During the uprising in Khwarazm in 1017, rebels killed Khwarazmshah Ma'mun II and his wife Khurra-ji, the sister of Ghaznavid sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. In response, Mahmud invaded the region to quell the rebellion. He later installed a new ruler and annexed Khwarazm. As a result, it became a province of the Ghaznavid Empire and remained so until 1035.
In 1077, control of the region, which had previously belonged to the Seljuqs from 1042 to 1043, passed into the hands of Anushtegin Gharchai, a Turkic mamluk commander of the Seljuqs. In 1097, the Turkic governor of Khwarazm, Ekinchi ibn Qochqar declared independence from the Seljuqs and proclaimed himself the Shah of Khwarazm. After a short time, however, he was killed by several Seljuq amirs who had rebelled. He was replaced by Anush Tigin Gharachai's son, Qutb al-Din Muhammad, by the Seljuqs, who had reconquered the region. Qutb al-Din became the first hereditary Khwarazmshah.
Anushtegin Gharachai was a Turkic mamluk commander of the Seljuqs and the governor of Khwarazm from approximately 1077 until 1097. He was the first member of his family to rule Khwarazm and the namesake for the dynasty that would rule the province in the 12th and early 13th centuries.
Anushtegin was put in command together with his master al-Taj Gümüshtegin in 1073 by the Seljuq sultan Malik-Shah I to retake territory in northern Khorasan that the Ghaznavids had seized. He was subsequently made the sultan's tasht-dar (Persian: "keeper of the royal vessels"), and, as the revenues from Khwarazm were used to pay for the expenses incurred by this position, he was made governor of the province. The details of his tenure as governor are unclear. He died by 1097 and the post was briefly given to Ekinchi bin Qochqar before being transferred to his son, Qutb al-Din Muhammad.
Atsiz gained his position following the death of his father, Qutb al-Din, in 1127. During the early part of his reign, he focused on securing Khwarazm against nomadic attacks. In 1138, he rebelled against his suzerain, the Seljuq sultan Ahmad Sanjar, but was defeated in Hazarasp and forced to flee. Sanjar installed his nephew Suleiman Shah as ruler of Khwarazm and returned to Merv. Atsiz returned, however, and Suleiman Shah was unable to hold on to the province. Atsiz then attacked Bukhara, but by 1141 he again submitted to Sanjar, who pardoned him and formally returned control of Khwarazm to him. The same year that Sanjar pardoned Atsiz, the Kara Khitai under Yelü Dashi defeated the Seljuqs in the Battle of Qatwan, near Samarqand. Atsiz took advantage of the defeat to invade Khorasan, occupying Merv and Nishapur. Yelü Dashi, however, sent a force to plunder Khwarazm, forcing Atsiz to pay an annual tribute. In 1142, Atsiz was expelled from Khorasan by Sanjar, who invaded Khwarazm in the following year and forced Atsiz back into vassalage, although he continued to pay tribute to the Kara Khitai until his death. Sanjar undertook another expedition against Atsïz in 1147 when the latter became rebellious again.
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 Mangyshlak to Khwarazm. Many nomadic tribes were dependent on the Khwarazmshah. Towards the end of his life, Atsiz subordinated the entire northwestern part of Central Asia, and in fact, achieved its independence from its neighbors.
Il-Arslan was the Shah of Khwarazm from 1156 until 1172. He was the son of Atsïz. Initially, Il-Arslan was made governor of Jand, an outpost on the Syr Darya which had recently been reconquered by his father. In 1156, Atsiz died and Il-Arslan succeeded him as Khwarazmshah. Like his father, he decided to pay tribute to both the Seljuk sultan Sanjar and the Qara Khitai gurkhan.
Sanjar died only a few months after Il-Arslan's ascension, causing Seljuq Khorasan 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 Khorasan.
In 1158, Il-Arslan became involved in the affairs of another Qara Khitai vassal state, the Karakhanids of Samarqand. The Karakhanid Chaghri Khan had been persecuting the Qarluks in his realm, and several Qarluk leaders fled to Khwarazm and sought Il-Arslan's help. He responded by invading the Karakhanid dominions, taking Bukhara and besieging Samarqand, where Chaghri Khan had taken refuge. The latter appealed to both the Turks of the Syr Darya and the Qara Khitai, and the gurkhan sent an army, but its commander hesitated to enter into conflict with the Khwarazmians.
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 expansionist policies of his father, Il-Arslan. Despite gaining his throne with the help of the Qara Khitai, he later shook off their suzerainty and repulsed the subsequent Qara Khitai invasion of Khwarazm. Tekish maintained close relations with the Oghuz Turkmens and Turkic Qipchak tribes from the vicinity of the Aral Sea, and recruited them at times for his conquest of Iran. A great number of these Turkmens were still pagan, and they were known in Iran for their barbarism and intense ferocity.
In 1194, Tekish defeated the Seljuq sultan of Hamadan, Toghrul III, in an alliance with Caliph al-Nasir, and conquered his territories. After the war, he broke with the Caliphate and was on the brink of a war with it until the Caliph accepted him as the sultan of Iran, Khorasan, and Turkestan in 1198. Tekish died of a peritonsillar abscess in 1200. and was succeeded by his son, Ala ad-Din Muhammad. His death triggered spontaneous revolts and widespread massacre of the hated Khwarazmian Turkic soldiers stationed in Iran.
On the eve of the Mongol invasion, a diarchy developed in the Khwarazmian Empire. After his father Tekish died, Ala ad-Din Muhammad succeeded him, becoming known as Khwarazmshah Muhammad II. Muhammad was legally considered the absolute ruler, but the influence of his mother Turkan Khatun (Terken Khatun) was also great. Turkan Khatun even had the laqab: "the Ruler of the World" (Khudavand-e Jahaan), and another one for her decrees: "Protector of peace and faith, Turkan the Great, the ruler of women of both worlds." Turkan Khatun had a separate Diwan, separate palace and the orders of the Sultan were not considered to be effective without her signature. This fact, coupled with her conflicts with Muhammad II, might have contributed to the impotence of the Khwarazmian Empire in the face of the Mongol onslaught.
Initially, Muhammad led the maximum expansion of the Khwarazmian Empire, extinguishing the Western Kara-Khanid Khanate in 1213, and sweeping aside the Ghurids in 1215, whom they vassalized after the assassination of Muhammad Ghuri. The coins of Muhammad were minted in the Kara-Khanid capitals of Uzgen and Samarkand from 1213. Muhammad then turned his attention to an invasion of Persia, and by late 1217, he controlled all of Persian Iraq, with Arran, Azerbaijan, and Derbent becoming his vassals.
Meanwhile, the Mongol Empire was expanding closer and closer to Khwarazm. In February 1218, the Mongols defeated and killed Kuchlug Khan, bringing the strategically located cities of Kashgar and Khotan under the control of Genghis Khan, and bringing the Mongols right up to the border of Muhammad's realm. Genghis sent emissaries to Khwarazm to emphasize his hope for a trade road, but having heard exaggerated reports of the Mongols, Muhammad believed this gesture was only a ploy to invade Khwarazm, and rebuffed them.
Muhammad, in turn, had one of his governors (Inalchuq, his uncle) openly accuse the party of spying, seizing their rich goods and arresting the party.
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. These events led Genghis to retaliate with a force of 100,000 to 150,000 men that crossed the Jaxartes in 1219 and sacked the cities of Samarqand, Bukhara, Otrar, and others. Muhammad's capital city, Gurganj, followed soon after. The Shah fled and died of illness in December 1220 on the island of Ashur-Ada in the Caspian Sea.
Meanwhile, Muhammad's mother, Terken Khatun, took the royal treasury, drowned 26 hostages (the sons of different conquered rulers), and fled northward with the harem and children of Khwarazmshah, taking refuge in the Ilal fortress on the coast of the Caspian Sea. But the Mongols besieged and captured the fortress in 1221, taking its inhabitants prisoner. The sons of the Shah were killed, his women and daughters were distributed to the sons and associates of Genghis Khan, and Terken Khatun was taken back to the Mongol homelands, where she died in a state of destitution in 1233.
Jalal al-Din was the last of the Khwarazmshahs, who ruled the remnants of the Khwarazmian Empire and northwestern India from 1220 to 1231. He was reportedly the eldest son of Ala ad-Din Muhammad II, while his mother was a Turkmen concubine named Ay Chichek. Due to the low status of Jalal al-Din's mother, his powerful grandmother and Qipchaq princess Terken Khatun refused to support him as heir to the throne, and instead favored his half-brother Uzlagh-Shah, whose mother was also a Qipchaq. Jalal al-Din first appears in historical records in 1215, when Muhammad II divided his empire amongst his sons, giving the southwestern part (part of the former Ghurid Empire) to Jalal al-Din.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Khwarazmian Empire”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.