Anushtegin dynasty

Anushtegin dynasty
خاندان انوشتکین, Khānedāne Ānushtegin
Parent houseBegdili[1] or Qangli or other[2]
Country
Current regionCentral Asia
Iran
Afghanistan
Egypt
Founded1077
FounderAnushtegin Gharchai
Final rulerSaif ad-Din Qutuz[3]
Titles
TraditionsSunni Islam (Hanafi)
Dissolution1260
Deposition
  • 1231 (Khwarazmian Empire)
  • 1260 (Mamluk Egypt)

The Anushtegin dynasty or Anushteginids (English: /ænuʃtəˈɡinid/, Persian: خاندان انوشتکین), also known as the Khwarazmian dynasty (Persian: خوارزمشاهیان) was a Persianate[4][5][6] Sunni Muslim dynasty of Turkic mamluk origin from the Bekdili clan of the Oghuz Turks.[7][8][9][10][11] The Anushteginid dynasty ruled the Khwarazmian Empire, consisting in large parts of present-day Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran in the approximate period of 1077 to 1231, first as vassals of the Seljuks[12] and the Qara Khitai (Western Liao),[13] and later as independent rulers, up until the Mongol conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire in the 13th century.

The dynasty was founded by commander Anushtegin Gharchai, a former Turkic slave of the Seljuq sultans, who was appointed as governor of Khwarazm. His son, Qutb ad-Din Muhammad I, became the first hereditary Shah of Khwarazm.[14] Anush Tigin may have belonged to either the Begdili tribe of the Oghuz Turks[1] or to Chigil, Khalaj, Qipchaq, Qangly, or Uyghurs.[2]

  1. ^ a b Fazlallakh, Rashid ad-Din (1987). Oghuznameh (in Russian). Baku. Similarly, the most distant ancestor of Sultan Muhammad Khwarazmshah was Nushtekin Gharcha, who was a descendant of the Begdili tribe of the Oghuz family.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  2. ^ a b C.E. Bosworth "Anuštigin Ĝarčāī", Encyclopaedia Iranica (reference to Turkish scholar Kafesoğlu), v, p. 140, Online Edition, (LINK)
  3. ^ Amitai-Preiss, Reuven (1995). Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War, 1260–1281. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-46226-6.
  4. ^ C. E. Bosworth: Khwarazmshahs i. Descendants of the line of Anuštigin. In Encyclopaedia Iranica, online ed., 2009: "Little specific is known about the internal functioning of the Khwarazmian state, but its bureaucracy, directed as it was by Persian officials, must have followed the Saljuq model. This is the impression gained from the various Khwarazmian chancery and financial documents preserved in the collections of enšāʾdocuments and epistles from this period. The authors of at least three of these collections—Rašid-al-Din Vaṭvāṭ (d. 1182-83 or 1187-88), with his two collections of rasāʾel, and Bahāʾ-al-Din Baḡdādi, compiler of the important Ketāb al-tawaṣṣol elā al-tarassol—were heads of the Khwarazmian chancery. The Khwarazmshahs had viziers as their chief executives, on the traditional pattern, and only as the dynasty approached its end did ʿAlāʾ-al-Din Moḥammad in ca. 615/1218 divide up the office amongst six commissioners (wakildārs; see İbrahim Kafesoğlu, pp. 5-8, 17; Horst, pp. 10-12, 25, and passim). Nor is much specifically known of court life in Gorgānj under the Khwarazmshahs, but they had, like other rulers of their age, their court eulogists, and as well as being a noted stylist, Rašid-al-Din Vaṭvāṭ also had a considerable reputation as a poet in Persian."
  5. ^ Homa Katouzian, "Iranian history and politics", Published by Routledge, 2003. pg 128: "Indeed, since the formation of the Ghaznavids state in the tenth century until the fall of Qajars at the beginning of the twentieth century, most parts of the Iranian cultural regions were ruled by Turkic-speaking dynasties most of the time. At the same time, the official language was Persian, the court literature was in Persian, and most of the chancellors, ministers, and mandarins were Persian speakers of the highest learning and ability"
  6. ^ "Persian Prose Literature." World Eras. 2002. HighBeam Research. (3 September 2012);"Princes, although they were often tutored in Arabic and religious subjects, frequently did not feel as comfortable with the Arabic language and preferred literature in Persian, which was either their mother tongue—as in the case of dynasties such as the Saffarids (861–1003), Samanids (873–1005), and Buyids (945–1055)—or was a preferred lingua franca for them—as with the later Turkish dynasties such as the Ghaznawids (977–1187) and Saljuks (1037–1194)". [1]
  7. ^ Negmatov, B. M. "ABOUT THE ARMY OF STATE OF JALOLIDDIN KHOREZMSHAH." CURRENT RESEARCH JOURNAL OF PEDAGOGICS 2, no. 09 (2021): 13-18. p.16. “The Khorezmshahs belonged to the Bekdili clan of the Oguzs. It is natural, therefore, that their black flag bears the seal of this tribe”
  8. ^ Özgüdenli, Osman Gazi. "Hârezmşâh Hükümdarlarına Ait Farsça Şiirler/The Persian Poems of Khwārizmshāh Rulers." Marmara Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi 2, no. 2: 25-51. “The Khwārizmshāh rulers, descended from the Begdili clan of the Oghuz’s”
  9. ^ Ata, Aysu. Harezm-Altın Ordu Türkçesi. Turkey: Mehmet Ölmez, 2002. p.11. “Anuştigin Garçai , Reşidü'd - din'in Cāmi'ü't - tevāriņ'ine göre Oğuzların Begdili boyuna mensuptur”
  10. ^ Bosworth in Camb. Hist. of Iran, Vol. V, pp. 66 & 93; B.G. Gafurov & D. Kaushik, "Central Asia: Pre-Historic to Pre-Modern Times"; Delhi, 2005; ISBN 81-7541-246-1
  11. ^ C. E. Bosworth, "Chorasmia ii. In Islamic times" in: Encyclopaedia Iranica (reference to Turkish scholar Kafesoğlu), v, p. 140, Online Edition: "The governors were often Turkish slave commanders of the Saljuqs; one of them was Anūštigin Ḡaṛčaʾī, whose son Qoṭb-al-Dīn Moḥammad began in 490/1097 what became in effect a hereditary and largely independent line of ḵǰᵛārazmšāhs[what language is this?]." (LINK)
  12. ^ Rene Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes:A History of Central Asia, Transl. Naomi Walford, (Rutgers University Press, 1991), 159.
  13. ^ Biran, Michel, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian history, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 44.
  14. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, "Khwarezm-Shah-Dynasty", (LINK)