67-654: Tarikh-i Dost Sultan (named for Dost Sultan, son of Bujugha khan, who briefly ruled the Khanate of Khiva in 1557-1558, apparently the patron of the work) is a work of Ötemish Hajji bin Mawlana Muhammad Dosti [ ru ] , an historian of Khwarezm . It is a narrative account of the history of the Ulus of Jochi , including the conversion of Uzbeg Khan , leader of the Golden Horde , to Islam in
134-654: A Khwarezm 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 Khwarezm 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
201-479: A few surviving to tell the tale. In 1801 an army was sent toward Khiva but was recalled when Paul I was murdered. In the Khivan campaign of 1839 Perovsky tried an attack from Orenburg . The weather was unusually cold and he was forced to turn back after losing many men and most of his camels. Khiva was finally conquered by the Khivan campaign of 1873 . The Russians installed Sayyid Muhammad Rahim Bahadur Khan II as
268-541: A native Khwarezmian Iranian dynasty which ruled as the Shahs of Khwarezm from 305 to 995 AD. At times they were under Sassanian suzerainty. In 712, Khwarezm 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
335-495: A peace treaty was signed that established Khiva as a quasi-independent Russian protectorate . The conquest ended the Khivan slave trade . After the conquest of what is now Turkmenistan (1884) the protectorates of Khiva and Bukhara were surrounded by Russian territory. The first significant settlement of Europeans in the Khanate was a group of Mennonites who migrated to Khiva in 1882. The German-speaking Mennonites had come from
402-479: A researcher in early Indo-European history, believes 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 Hawaii historian Elton L. Daniel believes Khwarazm to be the "most likely locale" corresponding to the original home of the Avestan people, and Dehkhoda calls Khwarazm "the cradle of
469-535: 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
536-574: Is declared to be part of the Persian Empire . Some of the early scholars believed Khwarazm to be what ancient Avestic texts refer to as Airyanem Vaejah ( Airyanəm Vaēǰah ; later Middle Persian Ērān-wēz ). 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 ,
603-703: Is further divided. Northern Khwarezm became the Uzbek SSR , and in 1925 the western part became the Turkmen SSR . Also, in 1936 the northwestern part became the Kazakh SSR . Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, these became Uzbekistan , Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan respectively. Many of the ancient Khwarezmian towns now lie in Xorazm Region , Uzbekistan . Today, the area that
670-523: Is limited to Togan's own publications, and publications such scholars as have consulted the manuscript in Togan's library. Khanate of Khiva The Khanate of Khiva ( Chagatay : خیوه خانلیگی , romanized: Khivâ Khânligi , Persian : خانات خیوه , romanized : Khânât-e Khiveh , Uzbek : Xiva xonligi , Хива хонлиги , Turkmen : Hywa hanlygy , Russian : Хивинское ханство , romanized : Khivinskoye khanstvo )
737-506: Is said to have been the last proper Arabshahid. Khan Ilbars (1728–40) was a Shibanid ruler, son of Shakhniyaz khan who unwisely killed some Persian ambassadors. In a repeat of the Shah Ismail story, Nadir Shah conquered Khiva, beheaded Ilbars and freed some 12,000–20,000 slaves. Next year the Persian garrison was slaughtered, but the rebellion was quickly suppressed. Persian pretensions ended with Nadir's murder in 1747. After 1746,
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#1732773224296804-975: Is that the Iranian compound stands for 'lowland' from kh(w)ar '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 khwar/khar/khor/hor 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
871-714: The Afrighid line of Khwarazmshahs, having placed the ascension of Afrighids in 616 of the Seleucid era, i.e. in 305 AD. 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 BC. Early Iron Age states arose from this cultural exchange. List of successive cultures in Khwarazm region 3000–500 BC: During
938-605: 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 BC , 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 BC. Al-Biruni starts giving names only with
1005-662: The British Empire in the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1839. The Khanate of Khiva was gradually reduced in size from Russian expansion in Turkestan (including Khwarezm) and, in 1873, a peace treaty was signed that established Khiva as a quasi-independent Russian protectorate . In 1912, the Khiva Khanate numbered up to 440 schools and up to 65 madrasahs with 22,500 students. More than half of
1072-514: The Kalmyks , who left laden with plunder. Disorder was ended by Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur (1643–1663) who twice defeated the Kalmyks and wrote a history of Central Asia. His son Anusha (1663–1685) presided over a period of urban growth until he was deposed and blinded. From 1695, Khiva was for some years a vassal of Bukhara which appointed two khans. Shir Gazi Khan (1714–1727), who was killed by slaves,
1139-524: The Khorezm SSR ) was created out of the territory of the old Khanate of Khiva, before it was finally incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1924, with the former khanate divided between the new Turkmen SSR and Uzbek SSR . Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, these became Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan respectively. Today, the area that was the khanate has a mixed population of Uzbeks , Karakalpaks , Turkmens , and Kazakhs . Data on
1206-965: The Kyzylkum Desert , on the south by the Karakum Desert , and on the west by the Ustyurt Plateau . It was the center of the Iranian Khwarezmian civilization, and a series of kingdoms such as the Afrighid dynasty and the Anushtegin dynasty , whose capitals were (among others) Kath , Gurganj (now Konye-Urgench ) and—from the 16th century on— Khiva . Today Khwarazm belongs partly to Uzbekistan and partly to Turkmenistan . Khwarazm has been known also as Chorasmia , Khaurism , Khwarezm , Khwarezmia , Khwarizm , Khwarazm , Khorezm , Khoresm , Khorasam , Kharazm , Harezm , Horezm , and Chorezm . In Avestan
1273-578: The Qongrat tribe became increasingly powerful and appointed puppet khans. Their power was formalized as the Qongrat dynasty by Iltuzar Khan in 1804. Khiva flourished under Muhammad Rahim Khan (1806–1825) and Allah Quli Khan (1825–1840) and then declined. After Muhammad Amin Khan was killed trying to retake Sarakhs on March 19, 1855, there was a long Turkmen rebellion (1855–1867). In the first two years of
1340-773: The Russian conquest at the second half of the 19th century. In 1873, the Khanate of Khiva was greatly reduced in size and became a Russian protectorate . The other regional protectorate that lasted until the Revolution was the Emirate of Bukhara . Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 , Khiva had a revolution too, and in 1920 the Khanate was replaced by the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic . In 1924,
1407-980: 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 . Sultan Ahmed Sanjar died in 1156. As the Seljuk state fell into chaos, the Khwarezm-Shahs expanded their territories southward. In 1194,
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#17327732242961474-563: The Syr Darya . The Empire's military superiority was such that Khiva and the other Central Asian principalities, Bukhara and Kokand , had no chance of repelling the Russian advance, despite years of fighting. In 1873, after Russia conquered the great cities of Tashkent and Samarkand , General Von Kaufman launched an attack on Khiva consisting of 13,000 infantry and cavalry. The city of Khiva fell on 10 June 1873 and, on 12 August 1873,
1541-593: The Volga region and the Molotschna colony under the leadership of Claas Epp Jr. The Mennonites played an important role in modernizing the Khanate in the decades prior to the October Revolution by introducing photography, resulting in the development of Uzbek photography and filmmaking, more efficient methods for cotton harvesting, electrical generators, and other technological innovations. After
1608-805: The vassal ruler of the region. The conquest of Khiva was part of the Russian conquest of Turkestan . British attempts to deal with this were called the Great Game . One of the reasons for the 1839 attack was the increasing number of Russian slaves held at Khiva. To remove this pretext Britain launched its own effort to free the slaves. Major Todd, the senior British political officer stationed in Herat (in Afghanistan ) dispatched Captain James Abbott , disguised as an Afghan, on 24 December 1839, for Khiva. Abbott arrived in late January 1840 and, although
1675-552: 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
1742-517: The 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power in the October Revolution , anti-monarchists and Turkmen tribesmen joined forces with the Bolsheviks at the end of 1919 to depose the khan. By early February 1920, the Khivan army under Junaid Khan was completely defeated. On 2 February 1920, Khiva's last Kungrad khan, Sayid Abdullah , abdicated and a short-lived Khorezm People's Soviet Republic (later
1809-576: 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 the 480 BC, 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
1876-684: The Islamic " amir of Khwarezm" ( امیر خوارزم ), or even the Khwarezmid Empire , sources such as Al-Biruni and Ibn Khordadbeh and others clearly refer to Khwarezm as being part of the Iranian (Persian) empire. During the reign of Khosrow II , extensive areas of Khwarezm were conquered. The fact that Pahlavi script which was used by the Persian bureaucracy alongside Old Persian , passed into use in Khwarezmia where it served as
1943-551: The Khan was suspicious of his identity, he succeeded in talking the Khan into allowing him to carry a letter for the Tsar regarding the slaves. He left on 7 March 1840, for Fort Alexandrovsk , and was subsequently betrayed by his guide, robbed, then released when the bandits realized the origin and destination of his letter. His superiors in Herat , not knowing of his fate, sent another officer, Lieutenant Richmond Shakespear , after him. Shakespear had more success than Abbott: he convinced
2010-473: The Khivan Khans is sparse and sometimes contradictory, especially for the minor khans. Names and dates from Bregel/Muniz which probably gives the best modern scholarship. Short biographies are from Howarth's 1880 book which is old but has biographies of most of the khans. According to Howorth, the ancestors of Ilbars were Arabshah, Haji Tuli, Timur Sheikh, Yadigar Khan, Bereke, Ilbars. Arabshah's brother
2077-659: The Kushan rulers Vima Kadphises and Kanishka . From the 2nd century AD, 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 Khwarezm. Yaqut al-Hamawi verifies that Khwarezm was a regional capital of the Sassanid empire. When speaking of the pre-Islamic " khosrau of Khwarezm" ( خسرو خوارزم ),
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2144-719: The Mongols near the Caspian Sea, while his son Jalal ad-Din , after being defeated by Genghis Khan at the Battle of Indus , sought refuge with the Delhi Sultanate , and was later assassinated after various attempts to defeat the Mongols and the Seljuks . In 1360 there arose in Ḵwarazm an independent minor dynasty of Qunghrat Turks, the Ṣūfīs, but Solaymān Ṣūfī was crushed by Timur in 1388. The Islamization of Khwarazm
2211-711: The Qara Khitai who sent him an army. With this reinforcement, Muhammad won a victory over the Ghorids at Hezarasp (1204) and forced them out of Khwarizm. The Khwarezmid Empire ruled over all of Persia in the early 13th century under Shah ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muhammad II (1200–1220). From 1218 to 1220, Genghis Khan conquered Central Asia including the Kara-Khitai Khanate , thus ending the Khwarezmid Empire. Sultan Muhammad died after retreating from
2278-431: The Timurids and the Golden Horde, but in 1511 it passed to a new, local Uzbek dynasty, the ʿArabshahids. This, together with a shift in the course of the Amu-Darya, caused the center of Khwarezm to shift to Khiva , which became in the 16th century the capital of the Khanate of Khiva , ruled over by the dynasty of the Arabshahids . Khiva Khanate is the name of Khwarazm adopted in the Russian historical tradition during
2345-434: The area was formally incorporated into the Soviet Union and today it is largely a part of Karakalpakstan , Xorazm Region in Uzbekistan , and Daşoguz Region of Turkmenistan . The terms "Khanate of Khiva" and "Khivan Khanate", by which the polity is commonly known in Western scholarship, are a calque that derive from the Russian exonym : Хивинское ханство , romanized : Khivinskoe khanstvo . The term
2412-416: The banks of the Amu Darya during the reign of Russia's Peter the Great , together with the desire of the Russian Empire to open a trade route to the Indus (modern day Pakistan ), prompted an armed trade expedition to the region, led by Prince Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky , which was repelled by Khiva. During the reign of the Uzbek Khan Said Muhammad Khan (1856–1864) in the 1850s, for the first time in
2479-487: The capital to be moved south to Khiva from Konye-Urgench . Although based in the Oxus delta, the Khanate usually controlled most of what is now Turkmenistan . The population consisted of agriculturalists along the river, the Turkic Sarts , and nomads or semi-nomads away from the river. It is arbitrary to anachronistically project modern ethnic and national identifications, largely based on Soviet national delimitation policies, on pre-modern societies. The settled population
2546-454: The coinage of the Greco-Bactrian ruler Eucratides I . Parthian artistic influences have also been described. From the 1st century BC, Chorasmia developed original coins inspired from Greco-Bactrian, Parthian, and Indo-Scythian types. Artav (Artabanus), a Chorasmian ruler of the 1st–2nd century AD, whose coins were discovered in the capital city of Toprak-Kala, imitated the type of the Kushan Heraios and were found together with coins of
2613-423: The collective name for its inhabitants. See Khwarazm , the local name of the region. After the capital was moved to Khiva , Khwarazm came to be called the Khanate of Khiva (the state had always referred to itself as Khwarazm, the Khanate of Khiva as a name was popularized by Russian historians in honor of its capital, Khiva). Some time around 1600, the Daryaliq or west branch of the Oxus dried up causing
2680-406: The early 14th century. The "Tarikh-i Dost Sultan" also served as the foundation for the early historical sections of 'Abdulgaffar Qirimi's Umdet üt-tevärih , a history of the Crimean Tatar people written in 1744. The work survives only in a single complete manuscript, formerly owned by Turkologist and Bashkir nationalist Zeki Velidi Togan (d. 1970). It has not been edited, and scholarly discussion
2747-409: The final Saka phase, there were about 400 settlements in Khwarezm. Ruled by the native Afrighid dynasty , it was at this point that Khwarezm entered the historical record with the Achaemenid expansion . An East Iranian language, Khwarezmian was spoken in Khwarezm proper (i.e., the lower Amu Darya region) until soon after the Mongol invasion , when it was replaced by Turkic languages . It
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2814-449: The first local alphabet about the AD 2nd century, as well as evidence that Khwarezm-Shahs such as ʿAlā al-Dīn Tekish (1172–1200) issued all their orders (both administrative and public) in 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
2881-429: The history of Khwarazm, a general population census of Khwarazm was carried out. It was under Tsars Alexander II and Alexander III that serious efforts to annex the region started. One of the main pretexts for Russian military expeditions to Khiva was to free Russian slaves in the khanate and to prevent future slave capture and trade. Early in The Great Game , Russian interests in the region collided with those of
2948-408: The khan to free all Russian subjects under his control, and also to make the ownership of Russian slaves a crime punishable by death. The freed slaves and Shakespear arrived in Fort Alexandrovsk on 15 August 1840, and Russia lost its primary motive for the conquest of Khiva, for the time being. A permanent Russian presence on the Aral Sea began in 1848 with the building of Fort Aralsk at the mouth of
3015-423: 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). Following the sack of Khwarizm, Muhammad appealed for aid from his suzerain ,
3082-499: The lower delta was increasingly populated by Karakalpaks and there were Kazakh nomads on the northern border. The Turkmen nomads paid taxes to the Khan and were a large part of his army, but often revolted. Since the heart of the Khanate was surrounded by semi-desert the only easy military approach was along the Oxus . This led to many wars with the Khanate of Bukhara further up the river (1538–40, 1593, 1655, 1656, 1662, 1684, 1689, 1694, 1806, and others). Before 1505, Khwarazm
3149-518: The madrasahs were in the city of Khiva (38). After the Bolshevik seizure of power in the October Revolution , a short-lived Khorezm People's Soviet Republic (later the Khorezm SSR) was created out of the territory of the old Khanate of Khiva, before in 1924 it was finally incorporated into the Soviet Union , with the former Khanate divided between the new Turkmen SSR , Uzbek SSR and Karakalpakstan ASSR (initially part of Kazakh ASSR as Karakalpak Oblast). The larger historical area of Khwarezm
3216-405: The modern city of Urgench some distance away) again became one of the largest and most important trading centers in Central Asia. In the mid-14th century Khwarezm gained independence from the Golden Horde under the Sufid dynasty. However, Timur regarded Khwarezm as a rival to Samarkand , and over the course of five campaigns, destroyed Urganch in 1388. Control of the region was disputed by
3283-426: 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 ). Khwarezm was largely independent during the Seleucid , Greco-Bactrian and Arsacid dynasties. Numerous fortresses were built, and the Khwarazm oasis has been dubbed
3350-775: The name is Xvairizem ; in Old Persian 𐎢𐎺𐎠𐎼𐏀𐎷𐎡𐏁 u-v-a-r-z-mi-i-š or 𐎢𐎺𐎠𐎼𐏀𐎷𐎡𐎹 u-v-a-r-z-mi-i-y (/ Uvārazmī-/); in Modern Persian : خوارزم Xārazm ; in Arabic : خَـوَارِزْم Khawārizm ; in Old Chinese * qʰaljɯʔmriɡ ( 呼似密 ); in Modern Chinese Huālázǐmó ( 花剌子模 / Xiao'erjing : خُوَلاذِمُوْ); in Tajik : Хоразм , Xorazm , خوارَزم; in Kazakh : Хорезм ( Xorezm ), حورەزم; in Uzbek : Xorazm , Хоразм , خورەزم; in Turkmen : Horezm , Хорезм , خوْرِزم; in Azerbaijani : Xarəzm , Харәзм ; in Turkish : Harezm ; in Greek language Χορασμία ( Chorasmía ) and Χορασίμα ( Chorasíma ) by Herodotus . The Arab geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi in his Muʿǧam al-Buldan wrote that
3417-432: The name was a Persian compound of khwar ( 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, believed the Persian name to be made up of xor ( 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
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#17327732242963484-405: The period of its existence (1512–1920). The Khiva Khanate was one of the Uzbek khanates . The term "Khiva Khanate" was used for the state in Khwarazm that existed from the beginning of the 16th century until 1920. The term "Khiva Khanate" was not used by the locals, who used the name Khvarazm. In Russian sources the term Khiva Khanate began to be used from the 18th century. The rumors of gold on
3551-435: 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 Khwarezm 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
3618-413: The pressure of Turkic infiltration from northern Khwarezm southwards, leading to the disappearance of the original Iranian character of the province and its complete Turkicization today. Khwarezmian speech probably lasted in upper Khwarezm, the region round Hazarasp , till the end of the 8th/14th century. The Khwarezmian language survived for several centuries after Islam until the Turkification of
3685-449: The rebellion, two or three Khans were killed by Turkmens. Russians made five attacks on Khiva. Around 1602 some free Ural Cossacks unsuccessfully raided Khwarazm. In 1717 Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky attacked Khiva from the Caspian Sea . After he won the battle, Shir Ghazi Khan (1715–1728) made a treaty and suggested that the Russians disperse so that they could be better fed. After they dispersed they were all killed or enslaved, only
3752-458: The region, and so must some at least of the culture and lore of ancient Khwarezm, 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 BC). And the Persian poet Ferdowsi mentions Persian cities like Afrasiab and Chach in abundance in his epic Shahnama . The contact with
3819-431: 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 Khwarezm-Shah was maintained well up to the 13th century. The date of the founding of the Khwarazmian dynasty remains debatable. During
3886-401: Was Ibrahim Oghlan, ancestor of the khans of Bukhara. Khwarezm Khwarazm ( / x w ə ˈ r æ z ə m / ; Old Persian : Hwârazmiya ; Persian : خوارزم , Xwârazm or Xârazm ) or Chorasmia ( / k ə ˈ r æ z m i ə / ) 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
3953-420: Was Khwarezm has a mixed population of Uzbeks , Karakalpaks , Turkmens , Tajiks , Tatars , and Kazakhs . Khwarezm and her cities appear in Persian literature in abundance, in both prose and poetry. Dehkhoda for example defines the name Bukhara itself as "full of knowledge", referring to the fact that in antiquity, Bukhara was a scientific and scholarship powerhouse. Rumi verifies this when he praises
4020-413: Was a Central Asian polity that existed in the historical region of Khwarazm from 1511 to 1920, except for a period of Afsharid occupation by Nader Shah between 1740 and 1746. Centred in the irrigated plains of the lower Amu Darya , south of the Aral Sea , with the capital in the city of Khiva . It covered present-day western Uzbekistan , southwestern Kazakhstan and much of Turkmenistan before
4087-522: 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,
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#17327732242964154-431: Was composed of aristocrats and peasants bound to the land. During the mid-1600s many Persian slaves were captured by Turkmens and a few Russian and Turkic slaves. Before and during this period, the settled area was increasingly infiltrated by Uzbeks from the north, with their Turkic dialects evolving into what is now the Uzbek language , while the original Iranian Khwarezmian language died out. The swampy area of
4221-409: Was expelled and power passed to Ilbars, who founded the long-lived Arabshahid dynasty. Around 1540 and 1593, the Khans were driven out by the Bukharans. In both cases they fled to Persia and soon returned. In 1558, Anthony Jenkinson visited Old Urgench and was not impressed. Following Arap Muhammad (1602–23), who moved the capital to Khiva , there was a period of disorder, including an invasion by
4288-435: Was first used by the Russians in the second half of the 17th century, or in the 18th century. Locals of the polity did not use this term, and instead referred to it as the vilayet Khwārazm ("country of Khwārazm"). Prior to the 17th/18th centuries, the polity was often called "Urgench" (or "Iurgench" in Russian sources). This name was also sometimes used in Iran and Bukhara, with the designation "Urganji" often being used as
4355-463: Was involved in the conquests of Alexander the Great in Central Asia . When the king of Khwarezm offered friendship to Alexander in 328 BC, 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
4422-487: Was nominally dependent on the Timurid Sultan Husayn Mirza Bayqara based in Khorasan . From 1488 Muhammad Shaybani built a large but short-lived empire in southern Central Asia , taking Khwarazm in 1505. At nearly the same time, Shah Ismail I was building a powerful Shiite state in Persia . The two consequently clashed in 1510 near Merv with Muhammad killed in the battle and Khwarazm shortly occupied. The Shah's religion provoked resistance and in 1511 his garrison
4489-470: Was reflected in the creation of literary, scientific and religious works and in the translation of Arabic works into the Turkic language. In the Suleymaniye Library in Istanbul, the Koran is kept with an interlinear translation into Turkic, written in Khwarazm and dated (January – February 1363). The region of Khwarezm was split between the White Horde and Jagatai Khanate , and its rebuilt capital Gurganj (modern Kunya Urgench , "Old Gorganj" as opposed to
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