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Sunday, August 30, 2020

Turkification of Mawarannahr

The first people known to have occupied Central Asia were nomads who arrived from the northern grasslands of what is now Uzbekistan sometime in the first millennium B.C. They began to build an extensive irrigation system along the rivers of the region. In time cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand began to appear as centers of government and culture. By the fifth century B.C., the Bactrian, Soghdian, and Tokharian states dominated the region. As te silk route these settlements took advantage of this commerce by becoming centers of trade and in time became known as Mawarannahr (a name given the region after the Arab conquest) >
The wealth of Mawarannahr was a constant magnet for invasions and numerous intraregional wars were fought in Mawarannahr. Alexander the Great conquered the region in 328 B.C., bringing it briefly under the control of his Macedonian Empire. In the same centuries, however, the region also was an important center of intellectual life and religion. Until the first centuries after Christ, the dominant religion in the region was Zoroastrianism, but Buddhism, Manichaeism, and even Christianity also attracted followers. The conquest of Central Asia by Islamic Arabs, which was completed in the eighth century A.D., brought to the region a new religion and culture that continue to be dominant. The Arabs first invaded Mawarannahr in the middle of the seventh century through sporadic raids during their conquest of Persia. The Arabs were led by a brilliant general, Qutaybah ibn Muslim, and were highly motivated by the desire to spread their new faith (the official beginning of which was in A.D. 622). The new religion brought by the Arabs spread gradually with the destiny of Central Asia as an Islamic region not being firmly established until the Arab victory over the Chinese armies in 750 in a battle at the Talas River.>
Under Arab rule, Central Asia retained much of its character, remaining an important center of culture and trade for centuries after the Arab conquest. However, until the tenth century the language of government, literature, and commerce was Arabic. Mawarannahr continued to be an important political player in regional affairs, supporting the Abbasid Caliphate in its struggle against the then-ruling Umayyad Caliphate.>
During the height of the Abbasid Caliphate in the eighth and the ninth centuries, Central Asia and Mawarannahr experienced a truly golden age. Bukhoro became one of the leading centers of learning, culture, and art in the Muslim world, its magnificence rivaling contemporaneous cultural centers such as Baghdad, Cairo, and Cordoba. Many of the greatest historians, scientists, and geographers in the history of Islamic culture were natives of the region. As the Abbasid Caliphate began to weaken and local Islamic states emerged as the rulers of Central Asia. the Persian language began to come intp the region as the language of literature and government. Under the Samanids and the Buyids, the rich culture of Mawarannahr continued to flourish.>
From the fifth to the ninth century AD Turkic tribes who lived in the great grasslands stretching from Mongolia to the Caspian Sea started to move permanently into the region. In the late tenth century, as the Samanids began to lose control of Mawarannahr and Turks started to come to positions of power eventually they established their own states. With the emergence of a Turkic ruling group in the region, other Turkic tribes began to migrate to Mawarannahr.>
The first of the Turkic states in the region was the Ghaznavid Empire, established in the last years of the tenth century. Their dominance was curtailed, however, when large-scale Turkic migrations brought in two new groups of Turks in the east the Qarakhanids and the west the Seljuks who conquered the Ghaznavid territory of Khorazm (also spelled Khorezm and Khwarazm).>
In the late twelfth century the Turkic leader of Khorazm united Khorazm, Mawarannahr, and Iran under his rule. Khorazmshah Kutbeddin Muhammad and his son, Muhammad II, Mawarannahr continued to be prosperous and rich. However, a new incursion of nomads from the north soon changed this situation. This time the invader was Genghis (Genghis) Khan with his Mongol armies.The Mongol invasion of Central Asia is one of the turning points in the history of the region leaving imprints that were still discernible in the early twentieth century.>
The Mongol conquest of Central Asia, which took place from 1219 to 1225, led to a wholesale change in the population of Mawarannahr. The conquest quickened the process of Turkification in the region because, although the armies of Chinggis Khan were led by Mongols, they were made up mostly of Turkic tribes that had been incorporated into the Mongol armies as the tribes were encountered in the Mongols' southward sweep. As these armies settled in Mawarannahr, they intermixed with the local populations.
Following the death of Chinggis Khan in 1227, his empire was divided among his three sons. Despite the potential for serious fragmentation, Mongol law maintained orderly succession for several more generations, and control of most of Mawarannahr stayed in the hands of direct descendants of Chaghatai, the second son of Chinggis. Orderly succession, prosperity, and internal peace prevailed in the Chaghatai lands, and the Mongol Empire as a whole remained strong and united.>
In the early fourteenth century, however, as the empire began to break up into its constituent parts, the Chaghatai territory also was disrupted as the princes of various tribal groups competed for influence. One tribal chieftain, Timur (Tamerlane), emerged from these struggles in the 1380s as the dominant force in Mawarannahr. Although he was not a descendant of Chinggis, Timur became the de facto ruler of Mawarannahr and proceeded to conquer all of western Central Asia, Iran, Asia Minor, and the southern steppe region north of the Aral Sea. >
Timur initiated the last flowering of Mawarannahr by gathering in his capital, Samarkand, numerous artisans and scholars from the lands he had conquered. By supporting such people, Timur imbued his empire with a very rich culture. During his reign and that of his immediate descendants, a wide range of religious and palatial construction projects were undertaken in Samarkand and other population centers. Timur also patronized scientists and artists; his grandson Ulugh Beg was one of the world's first great astronomers. It was during the Timurid dynasty that Turkish, in the form of the Chaghatai dialect, became a literary language in its own right in Mawarannahr--although the Timurids also patronized writing in Persian. >
The Timurid state broke into two halves after the death of Timur and an era of chronic internal fighting greatly destabilised the area. This instability attracted the attention of the Uzbek nomadic tribes living to the north. In 1501 the Uzbeks began a wholesale invasion of Mawarannahr and in 1510 the Uzbeks had completed their conquest of much of the territory of the present-day Uzbekistan. Of the states they established, the most powerful, the Khanate of Bukhara, centered on the city of Bukhara. The khanate controlled Mawarannahr, especially the region of Tashkent, the Fergana Valley in the east. A second Uzbek state was established in the oasis of Khorazm at the mouth of the Amu Darya. Near the end of the sixteenth century, the Uzbek states of Bukhara and Khorazm began to weaken because of their struggles among the khans in power and their heirs. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Shaybanid Dynasty was replaced by the Janid Dynasty. Another factor contributing to the weakness of the Uzbek khanates in this period was the general decline of trade moving through the region. This change had begun in the previous century when ocean trade routes were established from Europe to India and China, circumventing the Silk Route. As European-dominated ocean transport expanded and some trading centers were destroyed, cities such as Bukhoro, Merv, and Samarkand in the Khanate of Bukara and Khiva and Urganch (Urgench) in Khorazm began to steadily decline. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Khanate of Bukhara lost the fertile Fergana region, and a new Uzbek khanate was formed in Kokand. Source: http://factsanddetails.com/central-asia/
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