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111-549: The Khwarazmian Empire ( English: / k w ə ˈ r æ z m i ən / ), or simply Khwarazm , was a culturally Persianate , Sunni Muslim empire of Turkic mamluk origin. Khwarazmians 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

222-590: A biography of Süleyman the Magnificent . At the end of the 17th century, they gave up Persian as the court and administrative language, using Turkish instead; a decision that shocked the highly Persianized Mughals in India. The Ottoman Sultan Suleyman wrote an entire divan in Persian language. According to Hodgson: The rise of Persian (the language) had more than purely literary consequence: it served to carry

333-706: A counterpoise to the rigidity of formal Islamic theology and law, Islamic mysticism sought to approach the divine through acts of devotion and love rather than through mere rituals and observance. Love of God being the focus of the Sufis' religious sentiments, it was only natural for them to express it in lyrical terms, and Persian Sufis , often of exceptional sensibility and endowed with poetic verve, did not hesitate to do so. The famous 11th-century Sufi, Abu Sa'id of Mehna frequently used his own love quatrains (as well as others) to express his spiritual yearnings, and with mystic poets such as Attar and Iraqi , mysticism became

444-614: A currency as a lingua franca; and at its widest, about the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the Christian Era, its range in this role extended, without a break, across the face of South-Eastern Europe and South-Western Asia from the Ottoman pashalyq of Buda, which had been erected out of the wreckage of the Western Christian Kingdom of Hungary after the Ottoman victory at Mohacz in A.D. 1526, to

555-409: A great extent. An autographed note of both Jahangir and Shah Jahan on a copy of Sa’di's Gulestān states that it was their most precious possession. A gift of a Gulestān was made by Shah Jahan to Jahanara Begum , an incident which is recorded by her with her signature. Shah Jahan also considered the same work worthy enough to be sent as a gift to the king of England in 1628, which is presently in

666-464: A historical source on two levels: firstly, for its contribution to the store of basic factual knowledge of a period, and secondly, for the light it sheds, intentionally or otherwise, on contemporary thought and politics. Iranian and Persianate poets received the Shahnameh and modeled themselves after it. Murtazavi formulates three categories of such works too: poets who took up material not covered in

777-490: A legitimate, even fashionable subject of lyric poems among the Persianate societies. Furthermore, as Sufi orders and centers ( Khaneghah ) spread throughout Persian societies, Persian mystic poetic thought gradually became so much a part of common culture that even poets who did not share Sufi experiences ventured to express mystical ideas and imagery in their work. As the broad cultural region remained politically divided,

888-587: A library of 3,000 volumes), and patronized "Men of the Pen" The Safavids introduced Shiism into Persia to distinguish Persian society from the Ottomans , their Sunni archrivals to the west. At the beginning of the 14th century, the Ottomans rose to predominance in Asia Minor. The Ottomans patronized Persian literature for five and a half centuries and attracted great numbers of writers and artists, especially in

999-481: A new overall cultural orientation within Islamdom. Henceforth while Arabic held its own as the primary language of the religious disciplines and even, largely, of natural science and philosophy, Persian became, in an increasingly part of Islamdom, the language of polite culture; it even invaded the realm of scholarship with increasing effects. It was to form the chief model of the rise of still other languages. Gradually

1110-631: A prime example). One may call these traditions, carried in Persian or reflecting Persian inspiration, ‘Persianate’ by extension. This seems to be the origin of the term Persianate . The Iranian dynasty of the Samanids began recording its court affairs in Persian as well as Arabic, and the earliest great poetry in New Persian was written for the Samanid court. The Samanids encouraged translation of religious works from Arabic into Persian. In addition,

1221-668: A profusion of mosques , palaces, and tombs unmatched in any other Islamic country. The speculative thought of the times at the Mughal court, as in other Persianate courts, leaned towards the eclectic gnostic dimension of Sufi Islam, having similarities with Hindu Vedantism , indigenous Bhakti and popular theosophy . The Mughals , who were of Turco-Mongol descent, strengthened the Indo-Persian culture , in South Asia. For centuries, Iranian scholar-officials had immigrated to

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1332-532: A result of the Western impact. According to Gibb in the introduction (Volume I): the Turks very early appropriated the entire Persian literary system down to its minute detail, and that in the same unquestioning and wholehearted fashion in which they had already accepted Islam. The Saljuqs had, in the words of the same author: attained a very considerable degree of culture, thanks entirely to Persian tutorage. About

1443-740: A result, it became a province of the Ghaznavid empire and remained so until 1035. In 1077, the control of the region, which 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 Khwarazm governor of Turkic origin Ekinchi ibn Qochqar declared independence from the Seljuqs and proclaimed himself

1554-531: A similar Sufi spirit, thus following the norms of any Persianate court. The tendency towards Sufi mysticism through Persianate culture in Mughal court circles is also testified by the inventory of books that were kept in Akbar's library, and are especially mentioned by his historian, Abu'l Fazl , in the Ā’in-ī Akbarī . Some of the books that were read out continually to the emperor include the masnavis of Nizami,

1665-566: A synthesis of Sufism and Sharia , which became the basis for a richer Islamic theology. Formulating the Sunni concept of division between temporal and religious authorities, he provided a theological basis for the existence of the Sultanate , a temporal office alongside the Caliphate , which at that time was merely a religious office. The main institutional means of establishing a consensus of

1776-455: A third "classical" tongue emerged, Turkish, whose literature was based on Persian tradition. Toynbee's assessment of the role of the Persian language is worth quoting in more detail, from A Study of History : In the Iranian world, before it began to succumb to the process of Westernization, the New Persian language, which had been fashioned into literary form in mighty works of art...gained

1887-455: A way, along with investing the notion of heteroglossia , Persianate culture embodies the Iranian past and ways in which this past blended with the Islamic present or became transmuted. The historical change was largely on the basis of a binary model: a struggle between the religious landscapes of late Iranian antiquity and a monotheist paradigm provided by the new religion, Islam. This duality

1998-936: Is a neologism credited to Marshall Hodgson . In his 1974 book, The Venture of Islam: The expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods , he defined it thus: "The rise of Persian had more than purely literary consequences: it served to carry a new overall cultural orientation within Islamdom.... Most of the more local languages of high culture that later emerged among Muslims... depended upon Persian wholly or in part for their prime literary inspiration. We may call all these cultural traditions, carried in Persian or reflecting Persian inspiration, 'Persianate' by extension." The term designates ethnic Persians but also societies that may not have been predominantly ethnically Persian but whose linguistic, material or artistic cultural activities were influenced by or based on Persianate culture. Examples of pre-19th-century Persianate societies were

2109-545: Is little else than Persian poetry in Turkish words. But such was not consciously their aim; of national feeling in poetry they dreamed not; poetry was to them one and indivisible, the language in which it was written merely an unimportant accident. In general, from its earliest days, Persian culture was brought into the Subcontinent (or South Asia) by various Persianised Turkic and Afghan dynasties. South Asian society

2220-600: Is symbolically expressed in the Shiite tradition that Husayn ibn Ali , the third Shi'ite Imam, had married Shahrbanu , daughter of Yazdegerd III , the last Sassanid king of Iran . This genealogy makes the later imams, descended from Husayn and Shahrbanu, the inheritors of both the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and of the pre-Islamic Sassanid kings. After the Arab Muslim conquest of Iran, Pahlavi ,

2331-506: Is the author of the standard A Literary History of Ottoman Poetry in six volumes, whose name has lived on in an important series of publications of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish texts, the Gibb Memorial Series . Gibb classifies Ottoman poetry between the "Old School", from the 14th century to about the middle of the 19th century, during which time Persian influence was dominant; and the "Modern School", which came into being as

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2442-662: The Caucasus endured until the loss of Azerbaijan , Armenia , eastern Georgia and parts of the North Caucasus to Imperial Russia following the Russo-Persian Wars in the course of the 19th century. The culture of peoples of the eastern Mediterranean in Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt developed somewhat independently; India developed a vibrant and completely distinct South Asian style with little to no remnants of

2553-617: The Chester Beatty Library , Dublin. The emperor often took out auguries from a copy of the diwan of Hafez belonging to his grandfather, Humayun . One such incident is recorded in his own handwriting in the margins of a copy of the diwan , presently in the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library, Patna . The court poets Naziri , ‘Urfi , Faizi , Khan-i Khanan , Zuhuri , Sanai , Qodsi , Talib-i Amuli and Abu Talib Kalim were all masters imbued with

2664-638: The Jaxartes in 1219 and sacked the cities of Samarqand , Bukhara , Otrar , and others. Muhammad's capital city, Gurganj , followed soon after. The Shah Muhammad II of Khwarazm fled and died some weeks later on an island in the Caspian Sea . On the eve of the Mongol invasion, a diarchy developed in the Khwarazmian Empire. Khwarazmshah Muhammad II was considered the absolute ruler , but

2775-577: The Kara Khitai under Yelü Dashi defeated the Seljuqs in the Battle of Qatwan (1141) , 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

2886-519: The Mediterranean Sea . Under their rule, many pre-Islamic Iranian traditional arts like Sassanid architecture were resurrected, and great Iranian scholars were patronized. At the same time, the Islamic religious institutions became more organized and Sunni orthodoxy became more codified. The Persian jurist and theologian Al-Ghazali was among the scholars at the Seljuq court who proposed

2997-624: The Mongol conquest in 1219–1221. The date of the founding of the state 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. The Khwarazmian Empire eventually became

3108-529: The Mongol invasion of Persia in 1219, at a time when the Khwarazmian Empire ruled the area, initially under the suzerainty of the Seljuk Empire , and independently from 1190. Some of the "most iconic" productions of stonepaste vessels can be attributed to the Khwarazmian rulers, after the end of Seljuk domination (the Seljuk Empire itself ended in 1194). In general, it is considered that Mina'i ware

3219-585: 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

3330-525: The Seljuk sultan Sanjar and the Qara Khitai gurkhan. 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

3441-467: The Seljuq , Timurid , Mughal , and Ottoman dynasties. Persianate culture flourished for nearly fourteen centuries. It was a mixture of Persian and Islamic cultures that eventually underwent Persification and became the dominant culture of the ruling and elite classes of Greater Iran , Asia Minor , and South Asia . When the peoples of Greater Iran were conquered by Islamic forces in

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3552-472: The Shahnameh was viewed as more than literature. It was also a political treatise, as it addressed deeply rooted conceptions of honor, morality, and legitimacy. Illustrated versions of it were considered desirable as expressions of the aspirations and politics of ruling elites in the Iranian world. The Persianate culture that emerged under the Samanids in Greater Khorasan , in northeast Persia and

3663-581: 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

3774-399: The madrasas . As the result of the impacts of Persian literature as well as to further political ambitions, it became a custom for rulers in the Persianate lands to not only commission a copy of the Shahnameh , but also to have his own epic, allowing court poets to attempt to reach the level of Ferdowsi: Thus, as with any piece of historical writing, the Shahnameh can be evaluated as

3885-528: The ulama on these dogmatic issues was the Nezamiyeh , better known as the madrasas , named after its founder Nizam al-Mulk , a Persian vizier of the Seljuqs. These schools became the means of uniting Sunni ulama , who legitimized the rule of the Sultans. The bureaucracies were staffed by graduates of the madrasas, so both the ulama and the bureaucracies were under the influence of esteemed professors at

3996-458: The 11th-century Garshāspnāmeh by Asadi Tusi . This tradition, chiefly a Timurid one, resulted in the creation of Islamic epics of conquests as discussed by Marjan Molé. Also see the classification employed by Z. Safa for epics: milli (national, those inspired by Ferdowsi's epic), tarikhi (historical, those written in imitation of Nizami's Iskandarnamah ) and dini for religious works. The other source of inspiration for Persianate culture

4107-527: The 16th century. The Ottoman Empire's undeniable affiliation with the Persianate world during the first few decades of the sixteenth century are illustrated by the works of a scribe from the Aq Qoyunlu court, Edris Bedlisi. One of the most renowned Persian poets in the Ottoman court was Fethullah Arifi Çelebi , also a painter and historian, and the author of the Süleymanname (or Suleyman-nama ),

4218-596: The 7th and 8th centuries, they became part of an empire much larger than any previous one under Persian rule. While the Islamic conquest led to the Arabization of language and culture in the former Byzantine territories, this did not happen in Persia. Rather, the new Islamic culture evolving there was largely based on pre-Islamic Persian traditions of the area, as well as on the Islamic customs that were introduced to

4329-601: The Arab conquest to the Mongols and is longer than Ferdowsi's work. The literary value of these works must be considered on an individual basis as Jan Rypka cautions: "all these numerous epics cannot be assessed very highly, to say nothing of those works that were substantially (or literally) copies of Ferdowsi. There are however exceptions, such as the Zafar-Nameh of Hamdu'llah Mustaufi a historically valuable continuation of

4440-506: The Arab world to the west, the dividing zone falling along the Euphrates . Socially the Persianate world was marked by a system of ethnologically defined elite statuses: the rulers and their soldiery were non-Iranians in origin, but the administrative cadres and literati were Iranians. Cultural affairs were marked by a characteristic pattern of language use: New Persian was the language of state affairs, scholarship and literature and Arabic

4551-621: The Basin of the Oxus and the Jaxartes; and in the heyday of the Mughal, Safawi, and Ottoman regimes New Persian was being patronized as the language of literae humaniores by the ruling element over the whole of this huge realm, while it was also being employed as the official language of administration in those two-thirds of its realm that lay within the Safawi and the Mughal frontiers. E. J. W. Gibb

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4662-671: The Christian population of the city was expelled. This triggered a call from Europe for the Seventh Crusade , but the Crusaders would never again be successful in retaking Jerusalem. After being conquered by the Khwarazmian forces, the city stayed under Muslim control until 1917, when it was taken from the Ottomans by the British . After taking Jerusalem, the Khwarazmian forces continued south, and on 17 October 1244 fought on

4773-510: 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

4884-514: The Khwarazmshah era had a dual character, reflecting both its Turkic origin and Persian high culture. During the Khwarazmshah era, Central Asian society was fragmented, unified under one banner only recently. The Khwarazmian military mostly consisted of Turks, while the civilian and administrative element was almost exclusively Persian. The spoken language of the Turkic population of Khwarazm

4995-555: 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

5106-467: The Kwarazmian Empire consisted mainly of sedentary Iranian and half-nomadic Turkic peoples . 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

5217-552: The Middle-Persian of pre-Islamic times, but enriched by Arabic vocabulary and written in the Arabic script. The Persian language, according to Marshall Hodgson in his The Venture of Islam , was to form the chief model for the rise of still other languages to the literary level. Like Turkish , most of the more local languages of high culture that later emerged among Muslims were heavily influenced by Persian ( Urdu being

5328-472: The Mongols caught up with him before he got there, and he was defeated at the Battle of Indus . He escaped and sought asylum in the Sultanate of Delhi . Iltumish however denied this to him in deference to the relationship with the Abbasid caliphs . Returning to Persia , he gathered an army and re-established a kingdom. He never consolidated his power, however, spending the rest of his days struggling against

5439-648: The Mongols, the Seljuks of Rum , and pretenders to his own throne. He lost his power over Persia in a battle against the Mongols in the Alborz Mountains. Escaping to the Caucasus , he captured Azerbaijan in 1225, setting up his capital at Tabriz . In 1226 he attacked Georgia and sacked Tbilisi . Following on through the Armenian highlands he clashed with the Ayyubids , capturing the town Ahlat along

5550-443: The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his Iranian bride. Iranian poets, such as Sa’di , Hafez , Rumi and Nizami , who were great masters of Sufi mysticism from the Persianate world, were the favorite poets of the Mughals. Their works were present in Mughal libraries and counted among the emperors’ prized possessions, which they gave to each other; Akbar and Jahangir often quoted from them, signifying that they had imbibed them to

5661-521: The Muslim "successor-states" which had been carved, after the victory of the Deccanese Muslim princes at Talikota in A.D. 1565, out of the carcass of the slaughtered Hindu Empire of Vijayanagar. For this vast cultural empire the New Persian language was indebted to the arms of Turkish-speaking empire-builders, reared in the Iranian tradition and therefore captivated by the spell of the New Persian literature, whose military and political destiny it had been to provide one universal state for Orthodox Christendom in

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5772-421: The Oxus to the southern territories of the Persian Gulf. Shah Isma'il's successors went further and adopted the title of Shāhanshāh (king of kings). The Safavid kings considered themselves, like their predecessors the Sassanid Emperors, the khudāygān (the shadow of God on earth). They revived Sassanid architecture, build grand mosques and elegant charbagh gardens, collected books (one Safavid ruler had

5883-467: The Persian language and Persianate culture was brought deep into India and carried further in the 13th century. The Seljuqs won a decisive victory over the Ghaznavids and swept into Khorasan; they brought Persianate culture westward into western Persia, Iraq, Anatolia, and Syria. Iran proper along with Central Asia became the heartland of Persian language and culture. As the Seljuqs came to dominate western Asia, their courts were Persianized as far west as

5994-435: The Seljuq lands of Jazira and Syria for the next several years, calling themselves the Khwarazmiyya . Ayyubid Sultan as-Salih Ayyub , in Egypt, later hired them against his uncle as-Salih Ismail . The Khwarazmiyya , heading south from Iraq towards Egypt, invaded Crusader -held Jerusalem along the way, on 11 July 1244 ( Siege of Jerusalem (1244) ). The city's citadel, the Tower of David , surrendered on 23 August, and

6105-426: The Shah-nama" and the Shahanshahnamah (or Changiznamah ) of Ahmad Tabrizi in 1337–38, which is a history of the Mongols written for Abu Sa'id. Second, poets versified the history of a contemporary ruler for reward, such as the Ghazannameh written in 1361–62 by Nur al-Din ibn Shams al-Din. Third, heroes not treated in the Shahnameh and those having minor roles in it became the subjects of their own epics, such as

6216-478: 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. Trying to maintain diplomacy, Genghis sent an envoy of three men to

6327-659: The Turkic Ghaznavids and Seljuks (11th and 12th centuries), the Timurids (14th and 15th centuries), and the Qajars (19th and 20th centuries). The Ghaznavids, the rivals and future successors of the Samanids, ruled over the southeastern extremities of Samanid territories from the city of Ghazni . Persian scholars and artists flocked to their court, and the Ghaznavids became patrons of Persianate culture. The Ghaznavids took with them Persianate culture as they subjugated Western and Southern Asia . Apart from Ferdowsi, Rumi , Abu Ali Sina , Al-Biruni , Unsuri Balkhi, Farrukhi Sistani , Sanayi Ghaznawi and Abu Sahl Testari were among

6438-403: 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

6549-406: The affairs of everyday life and in the business of government, they preferred their own ideas; but in the sphere of science and literature they went to school with the Persian, intent not merely on acquiring his method, but on entering into his spirit, thinking his thought and feeling his feelings. And in this school they continued so long as there was a master to teach them; for the step thus taken at

6660-401: The borderlands of Turkistan exposed the Turks to Persianate culture; The incorporation of the Turks into the main body of the Middle Eastern Islamic civilization, which was followed by the Ghaznavids , thus began in Khorasan; "not only did the inhabitants of Khurasan not succumb to the language of the nomadic invaders, but they imposed their own tongue on them. The region could even assimilate

6771-464: The centers of the Islamic world eastward. The institutions stabilized Islamic society into a form that would persist, at least in Western Asia , until the 20th century. The Ghaznavids moved their capital from Ghazni to Lahore in modern Pakistan , which they turned into another center of Islamic culture. Under their patronage, poets and scholars from Kashgar , Bukhara , Samarkand , Baghdad , Nishapur , Amol and Ghazni congregated in Lahore. Thus,

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6882-425: 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. The cities of Samarqand , Ghazna and Tabriz also served as the capital of the later Khwarazmian Empire. The population of

6993-415: The cost of sustaining the Arab caliphs , the Umayyads , and in the 8th century, a general Iranian uprising—led by Abu Muslim Khorrasani —brought another Arab family, the Abbasids , to the Caliph's throne. Under the Abbasids, the capital shifted from Syria to Iraq , which had once been part of the Sassanid Empire and was still considered to be part of the Iranian cultural domain. Persian culture, and

7104-417: The customs of the Persian Barmakid viziers , became the style of the ruling elite. Politically, the Abbasids soon started losing their control over Iranians. The governors of Khurasan , the Tahirids , though appointed by the caliph, were effectively independent. When the Persian Saffarids from Sistan freed the eastern lands, the Buyyids , the Ziyarids and the Samanids in Western Iran, Mazandaran and

7215-565: The early part of his reign, he focused on securing Khwarazm against nomad 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 over to him. The same year that Sanjar pardoned Atsiz,

7326-493: The epic, poets who eulogized their patrons and their ancestors in masnavi form for monetary reward, and poets who wrote poems for rulers who saw themselves as heroes in the Shahnameh , echoing the earlier Samanid trend of patronizing the Shahnameh for legitimizing texts. First, Persian poets attempted to continue the chronology to a later period, such as the Zafarnamah of the Ilkhanid historian Hamdollah Mostowfi (d. 1334 or 1335), which deals with Iranian history from

7437-542: The far-flung cities of the Persianate world, from Anatolia to India . Persianate culture involved modes of consciousness, ethos, and religious practices that have persisted in the Iranian world against hegemonic Arab Muslim ( Sunni ) cultural constructs. This formed a calcified Persianate structure of thought and experience of the sacred, entrenched for generations, which later informed history, historical memory, and identity among Alid loyalists and heterodox groups labeled by sharia -minded authorities as ghulāt . In

7548-443: The formation of Anjuman-i Ma’arif, an academy devoted to the strengthening of Persian language as a scientific language. From about the 12th century, Persian lyric poetry was enriched with a spirituality and devotional depth not to be found in earlier works. This development was due to the pervasive spread of mystical experience within Islam. Sufism developed in all Muslim lands, including the sphere of Persian cultural influence. As

7659-453: The great Iranian scientists and poets of the period under Ghaznavid patronage. Persianate culture was carried by successive dynasties into Western and Southern Asia, particularly by the Persianized Seljuqs (1040–1118) and their successor states, who presided over Iran , Syria , and Anatolia until the 13th century, and by the Ghaznavids, who in the same period dominated Greater Khorasan and parts of India . These two dynasties together drew

7770-415: The hands of the Shia Ismailis . 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. Initially,

7881-404: The idiom of administration and literature. The Tahirid and Saffarid dynasties continued using Persian as an informal language, although for them Arabic was the "language for recording anything worthwhile, from poetry to science", but the Samanids made Persian a language of learning and formal discourse. The language that appeared in the 9th and 10th centuries was a new form of Persian, derivative of

7992-555: The impotence of the Khwarazmian Empire in the face of the Mongol onslaught . In 1221, she was captured by the troops of Genghis Khan and died in poverty in Mongolia . Jalal al-Din was the last of 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

8103-708: 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

8214-526: The language of Pre-Islamic Iran , continued to be widely used well into the second Islamic century (8th century) as a medium of administration in the eastern lands of the Caliphate . Despite the Islamization of public affairs, the Iranians retained much of their pre-Islamic outlook and way of life, adjusted to fit the demands of Islam. Towards the end of the 7th century, the population began resenting

8325-605: The language of religion. The Safavid dynasty ascended to predominance in Iran in the 16th century—the first native Iranian dynasty since the Buyyids . The Safavids, who were of mixed Kurdish , Turkic , Georgian , Circassian and Pontic Greek ancestry, moved to the Ardabil region in the 11th century. They re-asserted the Persian identity over many parts of West Asia and Central Asia, establishing an independent Persian state, and patronizing Persian culture They made Iran

8436-660: The large area it covered. 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. Although the Khwarazmshahs had a Turkic origin, just as their Seljuq predecessors, they adopted Persian culture , adhered to the Sunni branch of Islam and had their richest and most populous cities in Khorasan. Thus,

8547-526: The learned authorities of Islam, the ulama , began using the Persian lingua franca in public. The crowning literary achievement in the early New Persian language was the Shahnameh (Book of Kings), presented by its author Ferdowsi to the court of Mahmud of Ghazni (998–1030). This was a kind of Iranian nationalistic resurrection: Ferdowsi galvanized Persian nationalistic sentiment by invoking pre-Islamic Persian heroic imagery and enshrined in literary form

8658-467: 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. He attempted to flee to India , but

8769-434: The main city of the Khwarazmian Empire was Urganch or Gurganj. A prominent Middle Eastern biographer and geographer, Yaqut al-Hamawi , who visited Gurganj in 1219, wrote, "I have not seen a city greater, richer and more beautiful than Gurganj." Al-Qazvini , a Persian physician, astronomer, geographer and writer of Arab ancestry, states: Gurganj is a very beautiful city, surrounded by the attention of angels who represent

8880-466: 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. After the Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire, many Khwarazmians survived by employing themselves as mercenaries in northern Iraq . Sultan Jalal ad-Din's followers remained loyal to him even after his death in 1231, and raided

8991-672: 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. 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

9102-688: The middle of the eleventh century they [that is, the Saljuqs] had overrun Persia, when, as so often happened, the Barbarian conquerors adopted the culture of their civilized subjects. Rapidly the Seljuq Turks pushed their conquest westward, ever carrying with them Persian culture...[s]o, when some hundred and fifty years later Sulayman's son [the leader of the Ottomans]... penetrated into Asia Minor, they [the Ottomans] found that although Seljuq Turkish

9213-529: The most powerful state in the lands around Persia, defeating the Seljuk Empire and 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 . The Khwarezmian Empire

9324-466: The most treasured folk stories. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh enjoyed a special status in Iranian courtly culture as a historical narrative as well as a mythical one. The powerful effect that this text came to have on the poets of this period is partly due to the value that was attached to it as a legitimizing force, especially for new rulers in the Eastern Islamic world: In the Persianate tradition

9435-483: The north-east respectively, declared their independence. The separation of the eastern territories from Baghdad was expressed in a distinctive Persianate culture that became dominant in west, central, and south Asia, and was the source of innovations elsewhere in the Islamic world. The Persianate culture was marked by the use of the New Persian language as a medium of administration and intellectual discourse, by

9546-514: The official state language of the Khwarazmshahs and served as the language of administration, history, fiction and poetry. The Turkic language was the mother tongue and "home language" of the Anushteginid family, while Arabic served primarily as the language of science, philosophy, and theology. The finely decorated Mina'i ceramics were mainly produced in Kashan , in the decades leading up to

9657-470: The once patronized Indo-Persian culture by the Mughals. Ekinchi (Khwarazm Shah) Ekinchi ibn Qochar (died 1097) was the Seljuk governor of Khwarazm briefly in 1097, bearing the traditional title of Khwarazmshah . Unlike the Khwarazmshahs that succeeded him, he was not a descendant of Anushtegin Gharchai . Following the death of Anushtegin, Ekinchi was given the position of Khwarazmshah by

9768-438: The outset developed into a practice; it became the rule with the Turkish poets to look ever Persia-ward for guidance and to follow whatever fashion might prevail there. Thus it comes about that for centuries Ottoman poetry continued to reflect as in a glass the several phases through which that of Persia passed...[s]o the first Ottoman poets, and their successors through many a generation, strove with all their strength to write what

9879-492: The region by the Arab conquerors. Persianate culture, especially among the elite classes, spread across the Muslim territories in western, central, and south Asia, although populations across this vast region had conflicting allegiances (sectarian, local, tribal, and ethnic) and spoke many different languages. It was spread by poets, artists, architects, artisans, jurists, and scholars, who maintained relations among their peers in

9990-743: The region where their expertise in Persianate culture and administration secured them honored service within the Mughal Empire. Networks of learned masters and madrasas taught generations of young South Asian men Persian language and literature in addition to Islamic values and sciences. Furthermore, educational institutions such as Farangi Mahall and Delhi College developed innovative and integrated curricula for modernizing Persian-speaking South Asians. They cultivated Persian art, enticing to their courts artists and architects from Bukhara, Tabriz , Herat , Shiraz , and other cities of Greater Iran. The Taj Mahal and its Charbagh were commissioned by

10101-497: The rise of Persianised-Turks to military control, by the new political importance of non-Arab ulama and by the development of an ethnically composite Islamic society. Pahlavi was the lingua franca of the Sassanian Empire before the Arab invasion, but towards the end of the 7th and the beginning of the 8th century Arabic became a medium of literary expression. In the 9th century, a New Persian language emerged as

10212-534: 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 his father Qutb al-Din's death in 1127. During

10323-488: The shah of Khwarazm. After a short time, however, he was killed by several Seljuq amirs who had risen in revolt. He was replaced with 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

10434-442: 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

10545-666: The shape of the Ottoman Empire and another for the Hindu World in the shape of the Timurid Mughal Raj. These two universal states of Iranian construction on Orthodox Christian and on Hindu ground were duly annexed, in accordance with their builders' own cultural affinities, to the original domain of the New Persian language in the homelands of the Iranian Civilization on the Iranian plateau and in

10656-514: The sharp antagonisms between empires stimulated the appearance of variations of Persianate culture. After 1500, the Iranian culture developed distinct features of its own, with interposition of strong pre-Islamic and Shiite Islamic culture. Iran's ancient cultural relationship with Southern Iraq ( Sumer / Babylonia ) remained strong and endured in spite of the loss of Mesopotamia to the Ottomans. Its ancient cultural and historical relationship with

10767-565: The side of the Ayyubids at the Battle of La Forbie , as the Crusaders used to call Harbiyah , a village northeast of Gaza , destroying the remains of the Crusader army there, with some 1,200 knights killed. It was the largest battle involving the Crusaders since the Battle of the Horns of Hattin in 1187. ( Tokhara Yabghus , Turk Shahis ) Persianate society The term "Persianate"

10878-526: The spiritual bastion of Shi’ism against the onslaughts of orthodox Sunni Islam , and a repository of Persian cultural traditions and self-awareness of Persian identity. The founder of the dynasty, Shah Isma'il , adopted the title of Persian Emperor Pādišah-ī Īrān , with its implicit notion of an Iranian state stretching from Afghanistan as far as the Euphrates and the North Caucasus, and from

10989-423: 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

11100-568: 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. After his father Tekish died, Muhammad succeeded him. Muhammad led

11211-567: The western shores of Lake Van , which sought the aid of the Seljuq Sultanate of Rûm . Sultan Kayqubad I defeated him at Arzinjan on the Upper Euphrates at the Battle of Yassıçemen in 1230. He escaped to Diyarbakir , while the Mongols conquered Azerbaijan in the ensuing confusion. He was murdered in 1231 by Kurdish highwaymen. The head of the central state apparatus (al-Majlis al-Ali al-Fahri at-Taji) of Kharazmshahs

11322-615: The works of Amir Khusrow , Sharaf Manayri and Jami, the Masnavi i-manavi of Rumi, the Jām-i Jam of Awhadi Maraghai , the Hakika o Sanā’i , the Qabusnameh of Keikavus , Sa’di's Gulestān and Būstān , and the diwans of Khaqani and Anvari . This intellectual symmetry continued until the end of the 19th century, when a Persian newspaper, Miftah al-Zafar (1897), campaigned for

11433-412: Was Kipchak Turkic and Oghuz , the latter being the legacy of the previous masters of the area, Seljuq Turkomans . However, the dominant language of the era and the one spoken by the majority in the important Khwarazmian cities was Persian . The language of the sedentary diwan was also Persian, and its members had to be well versed in Persian culture, regardless of their ethnic origin. Persian became

11544-583: Was a vizier , the first adviser to the head of state. He was the head of the diwan officials (askhab ad-dawawin), who appointed them and established salaries, pensions (arzak), controlling tax administration and the treasury. The most prominent vizier of the Khwarazmian Empire was Al-Harawi, who built a mosque for the Shafi'is in Merv , a huge madrassah, a mosque and a repository of manuscripts in Gurganj. He died at

11655-422: Was another Persian poet, Nizami , a most admired, illustrated and imitated writer of romantic masnavis . Along with Ferdowsi's and Nizami's works, Amir Khusraw Dehlavi 's khamseh came to enjoy tremendous prestige, and multiple copies of it were produced at Persianized courts. Seyller has a useful catalog of all known copies of this text. In the 16th century, Persianate culture became sharply distinct from

11766-508: Was enriched by the influx of Persian-speaking and Islamic scholars, historians, architects, musicians, and other specialists of high Persianate culture who fled the Mongol devastation. The sultans of Delhi , who were of Turko-Afghan origin, modeled their lifestyles after the Persian upper classes. They patronized Persian literature and music, but became especially notable for their architecture, because their builders drew from Irano-Islamic architecture, combining it with Indian traditions to produce

11877-517: 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

11988-425: Was manufactured from the late 12th century and the early 13th century, and dated Mina’i wares range from 1186 to 1224. Extensive lusterware also belongs to this period. 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,

12099-562: Was the everyday speech of the people, Persian was the language of the court, while Persian literature and Persian culture reigned supreme. It is to the Seljuqs with whom they were thus fused, that the Ottomans, strictly so called, owe their literary education; this therefore was of necessity Persian as the Seljuqs knew no other. The Turks were not content with learning from the Persians how to express thought; they went to them to learn what to think and in what way to think. In practical matters, in

12210-491: 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 Greater Khorasan that the Ghaznavids had seized. He was subsequently made the sultan's tasht-dar ( Persian : "keeper of

12321-511: Was the last Turco-Persian Empire before the Mongol invasion of Central Asia . In 1219, the Mongols under their ruler Genghis Khan invaded the Khwarazmian Empire, successfully conquering the whole of it in just two years . The Mongols exploited existing weaknesses and conflicts in the empire, besieging and plundering the richest cities, while putting its citizens to the sword in one of the bloodiest wars in human history. The title Khwarazmshah

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