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The Islamization of Central Asia in the Sāmānid era and the reshaping of the Muslim world*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2009

D. G. Tor
D. G. Tor*
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

The Sāmānid-era drive to Islamize Central Asia led not only to increased Islamic influence within the steppes, but, concomitantly, to the transformation of internal Muslim political life. Developments within the Muslim oecumene that were shaped or influenced by this Drang nach Osten range from the legitimizing of the political fragmentation of the Persianate Dynastic period to changes in Muslim military culture and practice, the successful religious conversion of the Turkic steppe; and growing Turkic influence inside the Sāmānid realms, culminating not only in the downfall of the Sāmānids, but in the end of the era of Iranian political and military dominance and the beginning of a millennium of Turkic political hegemony.

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 279 - 299
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2009

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Footnotes

*

This article was first presented at the conference “L'Islamisation de l'Asie centrale: Pratiques sociales et acculturation dans le monde turco-sogdien”, at the Collège de France, November 2007. The author is grateful to Étienne de la Vaissière for having elicited the writing of it, and to all those who commented upon it, particularly Jürgen Paul. Additionally, the author thanks David Morgan for his comments upon the article draft.

References

1 On the establishment of Muslim rule in Transoxiana, see Barthold, W., Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, third edition, tr. Minorsky, T., ed. Bosworth, C. E. (Taipei: Southern Materials Center, 1968), 180–93Google Scholar.

2 In the words of Golden, Peter: “The Arabs, however, did not seek to establish themselves deep in the steppe. Instead, they retired to the ribāṭs (border forts), oasis city-states and rich, urban trappings of the Khorasanian towns”, “The Karakhanids and early Islam”, The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. Sinor, Denis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 344Google Scholar. On the course and significance of the clashes of the 730s with the disintegrating Türgesh kingdom see Gibb, H. A. R., The Arab Conquests in Central Asia (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1923), 59–85Google Scholar, especially 84–5. On the earlier and later decades see Barthold, Turkestan, 187–96. For a succinct discussion of the significance of the Battle of Talas, see Golden, “The Karakhanids and early Islam”.

3 E.g. the laconic remark in Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Ta'rīkh al-umam wa'l-mulūk, ed. Ibrahim (Beirut: Rawā'iʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 8: 580: “The Tokuz Ghuzz came to Ushrūsana”.

4 The term proto-Sunni is borrowed from Juynboll, G. H. A., “An excursus on ahl al-sunna in connection with Van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. IV”, Der Islam 75, 1998, 318–30Google Scholar.

5 On the religio-political significance of the caliphate until al-Ma'mūn's time, see Crone, Patricia, God's Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 21–3Google Scholar. On the loss of the early religious authority of the caliphate, ibid., 130–33. For the consequent political crumbling of the caliphate resulting from this process see Tor, D. G., “Privatized Jihād and public order in the pre-Seljūq era: the role of the Mutaṭawwiʿa”, Iranian Studies 38/4, 2005, 555–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 On this problem see Paul, Jürgen, The State and the Military: The Sāmānid Case (Papers on Inner Asia 26. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1994), 6–7Google Scholar; and Mottahedeh, Roy P., Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society, revised ed. (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), 180–81Google Scholar.

7 Scholars such as Julie Meisami and Elton Daniel have correctly noted the Sāmānid need to legitimize their rule, while paradoxically not attributing their stringent adherence to an “ideologically ‘correct’ version of Islamic history and doctrine” to this need, but rather to what they describe as a wholly unrelated aim: “to counter the teachings of various heterodox and sectarian groups”, Meisami, Julie, Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 24Google Scholar. The present author concurs with their analysis, but believes that Daniel overlooked how integral a part of the legitimizing project the Persianate dynastic militant proto-Sunni stance was; this is why we find it so conspicuously displayed by all three of the major Persianate dynasties – Ṣaffārids, Sāmānids and Ghaznavids.

8 In Bosworth's words, “Campaigns against the Khārijites and the infidels of eastern Afghanistan gave the Ṣaffārids prestige in the eyes of the orthodox …”, Bosworth, C. E., “The Ṭāhirids and Ṣaffārids”, The Cambridge History of Iran. Volume 4: The Period from the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs, ed. Frye, R. N. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 112Google Scholar.

9 See Tor, D. G., Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry, and the ʿAyyar Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World (Istanbuler Texte und Studien 11. Würzburg: Orient-Institut Istanbul, 2007), ch. 5Google Scholar, “The ʿAyyār and the Caliph”, 159–83.

10 Obviously, it is the Sāmānids rather than the Ṣaffārids who managed to appropriate the status of militant Sunni Persianate dynastic paradigm to themselves. While it is outside the scope of this paper to delve into this question, we can note briefly that the reason the Sāmānid jihādī dynastic state became the paradigm rather than the Ṣaffārid one on which they were modelled was due to three main factors: 1) greater Sāmānid dynastic longevity, coupled with the fact that they were the victors over the Ṣaffārids, and could therefore perform a thorough damnatio memoriae; 2) Their far lower level of tension with the ʿAbbāsids, which in turn was the outcome of the twin happy facts that: a) they shared no common border with the caliphs; and b) the latter were most satisfactorily neutralized during the course of the early tenth century by their own precipitous political decline; 3) above all, the Sāmānid mobilization of historical writing in service of their own legitimating project. On this last point, see Meisami, Julie, “Why write history in Persian? Historical writing in the Sāmānid period”, Studies in Honour of Clifford Edmund Bosworth. Volume II: The Sultan's Turret: Studies in Persian and Turkish Culture, ed. Hillenbrand, Carole (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 348–74Google Scholar.

11 Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Ḥayy b. Ḍaḥāk b. Gardīzī, Maḥmūd, Tārīkh-i Gardīzī, ed. Ḥabībī, ʿAbd al-Ḥayy (Tihrān: Dunyā-yi Kitāb, 1363/1984), 322Google Scholar; ʿIzz al-Dīn Abū'l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. al-Athīr, Muḥammad Ibn, al-Kāmil fī'l-tā'rīkh, ed. Tornberg, (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir [reprint of the Leiden 1863 edition], 1399/1979), 7: 279Google Scholar; Abū'l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Bayhaqī, Zayd (Ibn Funduq), Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, ed. Bahmanyār, Aḥmad (Tihrān: n.p., 1361/1942), 68Google Scholar; Ḥamdallāh b. Qavīnī, Abī Bakr Mustawfī, Tārīkh-i Guzida, ed. Navā'ī, ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn (Tihrān: Amīr-i Kabīr, 1362/1943), 377Google Scholar; Mīrkhwānd Muḥammad b. Khavāndshāh, Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn, Tārīkh Rawḍat al-ṣafā' (Tihrān: Markazī Khayyām Pīrūz, 1339/1959), 4: 30Google Scholar, although it grossly aggrandizes the Sāmānid position after the death of Ṭāhir b. al-Ḥusayn.

12 According to al-Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, ed. Mudarris Raḍavī (Tihrān: Sanā'ī, 1351/1973), 93 (repeated again on 94), Yaʿqūb b. al-Layth's name was recognized in the khuṭba until the latter's break with the caliph in 874–875; that is, the Sāmānids, even in the early period of Ismāʿīl's rule, recognized the governor of Khurāsān as their overlord.

13 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī'l-tā'rīkh 7: 282. On the same page Ibn al-Athīr also bolsters Ismaʿīl's religious credentials by describing how he was honoured by seeing the Prophet in a dream, and by depicting the great respect Ismāʿīl showed towards a Shafiʿite ʿālim.

14 Barthold notes this change in policy without, however, drawing the present author's conclusions regarding its purpose and function: “As we have already seen, the Sāmānids renounced the defensive policy of the previous governors of Khurāsān and Transoxiana. They ceased maintaining the walls that served to defend the cultivated lands from the nomads, and commenced … military expeditions into the steppe regions”. Barthold, , Histoire des Turcs d'Asie Centrale, French, tr. by Donskis, M. (Paris: Librairie d'Amérique et d'Orient, Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1945, 48)Google Scholar. Serguey Kliachtorniy (“Les Samanides et les Karakhanides: une étape initiale de la géopolitique impériale”, Cahiers D'Asie Centrale 9, 2001, Études Karakhanides, 39), however, comes to the same conclusion as the present author regarding this campaign: “Aux yeux du monde musulman, Ismâʿîl devint le grand combattant pour la foi; celui qui propagea l'islam loin à l'est. En fait, cette campagne prépara politiquement et matériellement la guerre du Khorassan qui commença cinq ans plus tard”.

15 Al-Ṭabarī, Ta'rīkh al- Ṭabarī, ed. Muhammad Ibrahim (Beirut: Dār al-Turāth, n.d.), 10: 34, repeated almost verbatim in Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 7: 464–5, and Mīrkhwānd, Rawḍat al-ṣafā' 4: 32; described independently in al-Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, 102, mentioning the Islamization of Ṭarāz as its objective. This raid was described by Bosworth (s.v. “Sāmānids”, EI 2 8: 1026) as follows: “One role which Ismāʿīl inherited as ruler of Transoxiana was the defence of its northern frontiers against pressure from the nomads of Inner Asia, and in 280/893 he led an expedition into the steppes against the Qarluq Turks, capturing Talas and bringing back a great booty of slaves and beasts”.

16 Anon, . (attr. al-Qāḍī al-Rashīd b. al-Zubayr), Kitāb al-dhakhā'ir wa'l-tuḥaf, ed. Ḥamīdallāh, Muḥammad (Kuwait: al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1959), 42Google Scholar. On comparable Ṣāffārid behaviour, see D. G. Tor, Violent Order, chapters 3, 4 and 6.

17 Thus, for instance, Ismāʿīl took care to write to ʿAmr and his court beforehand, publicizing his efforts in pious warfare: “God is between you and me. I am a border man, drawn up in battle array against the Turk; my clothing is coarse, my men are rabble without pay, thus you wrong me [by not leaving me to my pious occupations]”. Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. al-Dhahabī, ʿUthmān, Siyar a’lām al-nubalā', ed. al-Arna'ūṭ, Shuʿayb et al. (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Risāla, 1419/1998), 12: 517Google Scholar.

18 Anon, ., Tārīkh-i Sīstān, ed. Bahār, M. (Tihrān: Kitābkhānah-i Zuwwār, 1314/1935), 256Google Scholar.

19 In the words of Mustawfī Qavīnī, Tārīkh-i Guzida, 347, “pādshāhān-i jihān”.

20 Soucek has also noted this phenomenon: “The Arabs subsequently transmitted this zeal to the converts of the newly conquered Central Asian territories, so that when the caliphate began to lose its youthful vigor, the jihād was no longer led by them but by a new Iranian dynasty of Transoxania, the Sāmānids”. Soucek, Svat, A History of Inner Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Found in Ibn al-ʿAdīm's Bughyat al-talab, cited and translated in Cook, D., “Muslim apocalyptic and Jihād”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 20, 1996, 98Google Scholar. For similar traditions on the superiority of fighting the Byzantines rather than pagans see Abū Dā'ūd Sulaymān b. al-Sijistānī, al-Ashʿath, Kitāb al-Sunan: Sunan Abī Dā'ūd, ed. ʿAwwāma, Muḥammad (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Rayyān, 1998), 3, 205Google Scholar, in the section “Kitab al-Jihād”, chapter 8, “In praise of fighting the Byzantines above all other nations”, traditions #2482–83.

22 Quran 9: 123. The source of the anecdote is Abū'l-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn al-Baghdādī al-Ḥanbalī, Abī Yaʿla, Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahā' al-Ḥanabila, ed. ʿUmar, ʿAlī Muḥammad (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqāfa al-Dīniyya, 1419/1998), 1: 87Google Scholar.

23 Pace Golden's, Peter assertion, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State-Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992), 211–12Google Scholar: “Muslim sources often depict the entire frontier as the scene of Jihād. Strictly speaking, this was undoubtedly an exaggeration … Jihād, in Central Asia as in Southeast Asia and Africa, when practiced was more often the domain of the newly Islamicized local populations pursuing political goals than of foreign Muslims”. Golden adduces no evidence, however, to back this assertion. Cf. the contrasting analyses of Paul, Jürgen, Herrscher, Gemeinwesen, Vermittler: Ostiran und Transoxanien in Vormongolischer Zeit (Beiruter Texte und Studien 59. Beirut: Orient-Institut, 1996), 103–05, 108–13Google Scholar, and Bosworth, C. E., The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 994–1040 (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1973), 31–2Google Scholar.

24 Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. al-Dhahabi, ʿUthmān, Ta'rīkh al-Islām, ed. Tadmurī, ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1412/1992), 18: 33Google Scholar; al-Amīr al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Naṣr ʿAlī b. Mākūlā, Hibat Allāh Ibn, al-Ikmāl fī raf'il-irtiyāb, ed. Muʿallimī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Yaḥyā (Hyderabad: Dā'irat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1967), 1: 21Google Scholar, referring to the late third/ninth century.

25 In Bayhaq, Ibn Funduq, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 51, referring to the year 378/988; in Bukhārā, Gardīzī, Tārīkh-i Gardīzī, 361.

26 Najm al-Dīn ʿUmar b. Muḥammad b. al-Nasafī, Aḥmad, al-Qand fī dhikr-i ʿulamā'-i Samarqand, ed. al-Hādī, Yūsuf (Tihrān: Mir'āt al-Turāth, 1999), 329Google Scholar.

27 E.g. al-Nasafī, ibid., 65, 281, 329, 386, 400 (referring to an organized group of muṭṭawwiʿa), 569; Abū Saʿd ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Muḥammad b. al-Samʿānī, Manṣūr, al-Ansāb. Ed. ʿAṭā, M. ʿA. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1998), 5: 213Google Scholar. On the flow of eastern Iranian warriors to Tarsus in order to engage in volunteer Jihād activities against the Byzantines, see Bosworth, C. E., “The City of Tarsus and the Arab-Byzantine Frontiers”, reprinted in The Arabs, Byzantium and Iran: Studies in Early Islamic History and Culture (Variorum Collected Studies Series. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996)Google Scholar, article XIV, and D. G. Tor, Violent Order, chapter 2. The present author is not trying to assert that the stream of eastern Iranian volunteers ceased; rather, that the eastern limes began to compete in importance with the western one, and probably to surpass it.

28 Jürgen Paul, The State and the Military, 20–22, has noted the close relations between the earlier Sāmānid rulers and the religiously motivated warriors and religious leaders, and even that the loss of this support “was instrumental in [the Sāmānid] downfall”, without, however, drawing the present author's conclusions regarding the central legitimizing role of these groups in the actual establishment of Sāmānid rule. For a closer examination of the composition of the Sāmānid amies see Tor, D. G., “The Mamluks in the military of the autonomous Persianate dynasties”, IRAN: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 46, 2008, 213–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Al-Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, 98. The anonymous Sāmānid-era geographical work, Ḥudūd al-ʿālam, tr. V. Minorsky (Cambridge: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series, 1982 reprint), 112, also notes the ubiquity of ghāzīs in the Transoxianan Sāmānid dominions.

30 Al-Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, 100.

31 Attr. Ibn al-Zubayr, Kitāb al-dhakhā'ir, 141, 142. Bosworth correctly notes in his evaluation of the historicity of this reported incident, “Here, then, lies the main value of … [this] story. We see the importance of the ghāzī and volunteer contingents of the Sāmānid army, stationed in various strategically-placed towns and regions of the empire's northern fringes, where they could always be sure of opportunities for jihād against the pagans”. Bosworth, C. E., “An alleged embassy from the Emperor of China to the Amir Naṣr b. Aḥmad: a contribution to Sāmānid military history”, Yād-nāme-ye Irāni-ye Minorsky, ed. Mīnuvī, M. and Afshār, I. (Tihrān: Tihrān University, 1969), 26Google Scholar. Sāmānid muṭṭawwiʿa are also found e.g. in Allāh, Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, ed. Ātesh, Aḥmad (Tihrān: Dunyā-yi Kitāb), 1362, 1: 17Google Scholar.

32 Jürgen Paul, The State and the Military, 16–17.

33 Blankinship, Khalid Yahya, The End of the Jihād State: The Reign of Hishām Ibn ʿAbd al-Malik and the Collapse of the Umayyads (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), chapter 1Google Scholar, “Jihād and the caliphate before Hishām”, 11–36.

34 D. G. Tor, “Privatized Jihād and public order”.

35 Thus, as Frye notes (R. Frye, “The Sāmānids”, Cambridge History of Iran. Volume IV: The Period from the Arab Invasions to the Saljuqs, 150), the jihādic warriors constituted a significant factor in Sāmānid military forces: “On [military] expeditions the ghāzīs or warriors for the faith were an important factor in Sāmānid successes”. This was true of the Sāffārid armies as well, although that fact has been obscured by the uncertainty and controversy surrounding the meaning of the term ʿayyār; see e.g. Bosworth, , “The armies of the Sāffārids”, BSOAS XXXI/3, 1968, 538–9Google Scholar; idem., The History of the Saffards of Sistan and Maliks of Nimruz (247/861 to 949/1542–3) (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 1994), 340–5; and Tor, Violent Order.

36 According to Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad b. Miskawayh, Muḥammad, Tajārib al-umam, ed. Amedroz, (Baghdad: al-Muthanna, n.d. [reprint of the 1915 Egyptian edition]), 2: 181Google Scholar:“In [the year 344/955] around 200,000 tents of Turkmen converted to Islam”. Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 8: 396, places this event six years later, in 349/960. The issue of dates and catalysts is extremely problematic; it has been discussed most recently by Paul, Jürgen, “Nouvelles pistes pour la recherche sur l'histoire de l'Asie centrale à l'époque karakhanide (Xe–début XIIIe siècle)”, Cahiers D'Asie Centrale 9, 2001, Études Karakhanides, 19–22Google Scholar. This kind of national conversion, mandated by political rulers is, of course, well-known in the Christian context from both the Anglo-Saxon and the Frankish examples; on Clovis's conversion and its attendant political considerations see Wood, Ian, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (London: Longman, 1997), 41–8Google Scholar; for the famous conversion of the Northumbrians under King Edwin at a royal council of 627, see Bede, , A History of the English Church and People, tr. Sherley-Price, Leo, rev. R.E. Latham (London: Penguin Books, 1968), 126–9Google Scholar, and also Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, third edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 114–5Google Scholar. The question always arises in the case of mass conversions of the depth of the actual religious commitment of the converts. While this is to a certain extent unanswerable – particularly in the present case, in light of the extreme paucity of information on the Qarakhanids – at least in the Frankish context there have been several convincing attempts to argue for genuine “barbarian” intellectual sophistication and religious conviction; see Moorhead, John, “Clovis' motive for becoming a Catholic Christian”, Journal of Religious History 13/4, 1985, 329–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Shanzer, Danuta, “Dating the baptism of Clovis: the bishop of Vienne vs the bishop of Tours”, Early Medieval Europe 7/1, 1998, 29–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Barthold, Turkestan, 255–6. Note also the example of an alleged itinerant Muslim preacher cited by de la Vaissière, Étienne, Sogdian Traders: A History, tr. Ward, James (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 315–6Google Scholar.

38 al-Samʿānī, al-Ansāb, 4: 641. Paul, at the aforementioned conference, pointed out that this text is corrupt – but that in any case none of the manuscripts supports Barthold's reading.

39 Usbānīkath or Subānīkath was in the tenth century a heavily-fortified border town lying north-east of the Jaxartes river; see Strange, G. Le, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate (London: Frank Cass, 1966), 485Google Scholar.

40 al-Samʿānī, al-Ansāb, 1: 131–2.

41 al-Samʿānī, al-Ansāb, 1: 132.

42 Paul, “Nouvelles pistes”, 22, does not fall into the trap of the assumed Sufi missionaries; rather, he notes the various empirically verifiable factors that went into aiding Islamization: “Car on distingue très nettement les vecteurs culturels qui aident à l'Islamisation de la region de Kachgar: le commerce d'abord, la supériorité culturelle (supposée) de Mavarannahr sur le Turkestan oriental et l'intensité des contacts et échanges entre les deux regions…, [et] les guerriers de la guerre sainte…”.

43 Barthold, Histoire des Turcs, p. 49. La Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, 314 has also drawn attention, in a different context, to the description in Ibn al-Nadīm's Fihrist of the numerous Muslim colonies in pagan Turkestan during the Sāmānid era.

44 See e.g. Kovalev, Roman K., “Dirham mint output of Samanid Samarqand and its connection to the beginnings of trade with northern Europe (10th century)”, Histoire et Mesure 17/3–4, 2002, Monnaie et Espace, 197–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem., “The mint of al-Shash: the vehicle for the origins and continuation of trade relations between Viking-age northern Europe and Samanid Central Asia”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 12, 2002–2003, 47–79.

45 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 7: 522.

46 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 7: 533.

47 Another possible motive may have been the threat of a Ṣaffārid revanche in eastern Khurāsān at this time, and his consequent need to strengthen his religious credentials; Ismāʿīl finally had to conquer the Bust area again from the Ṣaffārids soon after this campaign took place (see Anon., Tārīkh-i Sīstān, 291–3) – particularly if the later date for this raid given by Mīrkhwānd in the following footnote is correct.

48 Mīrkhwānd, Rawḍat al-ṣafā', 4: 36 (who, however, places this raid in 295); Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 7: 547. Although, as Barthold, Histoire des Turcs, 33, has correctly noted, these campaigns, for all the fanfare that accompanied them, contained more public relations than substance: “The Sāmānids decided to adopt an offensive policy. But their attacks for the most part bore the character of incursions, and the conquests made in the name of Islam under these sovereigns were insignificant: nothing was added to the Muslim possessions except the regions extending from the valley of the river Tchirtchiq up until the river Talas”.

49 On this problem see Golden, An Introduction, 198–9 and 214–16.

50 Pritsak, O., “Von den Karluk zu den Karachaniden”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 101, 1951, 277Google Scholar; also “Die Karachaniden”, Der Islam, 31, 1953, 22–4.

51 In the delightful understatement of one scholar: “Thus, by the mid-9th century, these Eastern neighbors of the Sāmānids claimed a hegemony over the steppe peoples. The extent to which this was translated into real power beyond the confines of the Karluk confederation and its allies is open to question” (Peter Golden, “The Karakhanids and Early Islam”, 351). Neither Golden nor Bosworth, s.v. “Īlek-Khāns or Ḳarakhānids”, EI2, ed. B. Lewis et al., III: 1113–17, addresses the even thornier question of borders. Kotchinev, Boris D., “Les frontières du royaume des Karakhanides”, Cahiers D'Asie Centrale 9, 2001, Études Karakhanides, 41–8Google Scholar, identifies this problem but, unfortunately, proceeds to address the issue only from the very end of the Sāmānid period.

52 Pritsak, O., “Two migratory movements in the Eurasian steppe in the 9th–11th centuries”, reprinted in Studies in Medieval Eurasian History (London: Variorum Reprints, 1991), Article VI: 157Google Scholar. In another work he states that “Despite [the Qarakhanids' being near neighbors to Muslim territory] the information in the Islamic historiography regarding their eastern neighbors is very incomplete, meager, and confused”, O. Pritsak, “Von den Karluk zu den Karachaniden”, 278. Similarly, Kliachtorniy, “Les Samanides et les Karakhanides”, 39, writes: “Nous sommes confrontés à toute une série de questions embarrassantes. Premièrement, on ne sait rien sur les diverses invasions des Turcs dans le Mavarannahr au IXe siècle, bien que les sources témoignent des confrontations armies avec les Turks aux frontières d'Isfijab, de Chach, et du Ferghana. Du même, il reste à élucider qui furent les initiateurs de ces hostilités, des ghâzîs ou des pillards Turcs”.

53 We have empirical evidence that the omitting of inconvenient historical facts was indeed practised in Sāmānid historiography from works such as Balʿamī's “translation” of Ṭabarī, where, for instance, he discreetly cuts Ṭabarī’s entire section on the devout holy warrior background of the Sāffārids; see D.G. Tor, Violent Order, 90–91.

54 The cartographers of the Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1977–c.1993), Map B VII 8, for instance, dealt with the problem by simply straddling the fence: they marked the relevant debatable areas as both Sāmānid and Qarakhanid.

55 Thus, for instance, Bayhaqī, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 68, states, referring to the period around 891, that “[Sāmānid] rule stretched/spread from Kāshghar all the way to Rayy”. Obviously, by the tenth century, Sāmānid rule did not extend anywhere near to Kāshghar.

56 What Bosworth calls “the assemblage of territories making up the Sāmānid empire”, Bosworth, , “The rulers of Chaghāniyān in Early Islamic times”, Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies 19, 1981, 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This was true of the border areas even from the earliest times; thus, for instance, after the conquest of Isfījāb in 840, “Significantly, [the city] remained a largely independent possession of the local Turkish dynasty, which owed only three obligations to the Samanids: military service, the presentation of symbolic gifts, and the inscription of the name of the Samanid suzerain on their coinage”. Davidovich, E.A., “The Karakhanids”, History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Volume IV: The Age of Achievement, AD 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century. Part I: The Historical, Social, and Economic Setting, ed. Asimov, M. S. and Bosworth, C. E. (Paris: UNESCO, 1998), 120–21.Google Scholar

57 This episode is summarized in Bosworth, “The rulers of Chaghāniyān”, 5–8, without drawing the present author's conclusions.

58 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil 8: 459–60; Mīrkhwānd, Rawḍat al-ṣafā’, 4: 47.

59 Gardīzī, Tārīkh-i Gardīzī, 344.

60 The strikingly good terms accorded to Abū ʿAlī have been noted by Bosworth, “The rulers of Chaghāniyān”, 8.

61 “Naṣr gathered an army, and sent a letter to Farghāna, to his brother Abūl-Ashʿath, asking him to come with a large army. He sent another letter to Shāsh, to another brother, Abū Yusuf Ya'qub b. Aḥmad, that he come with his army, and that he also bring the Turks of Isfījāb…” al-Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, 97.

62 Al-Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, 111–12; Gardīzī, Tārīkh-i Gardīzī, 330–31; and Mīrkhwānd, Rawḍat al-ṣafā', 4: 40.

63 As Barthold notes, “We have no information by which we may solve the question whether the ‘dihqān’ of Kāshghar, Tughān-tagīn, had any connexion with the Qarā-Khānid dynasty” Barthold, Turkestan, 256. On the other hand, Grenard, M. F., “La légende de Satok Bughra Khān”, Journal Asiatique 15/1, 1900, 34Google Scholar, has no doubt that this was a Qarakhanid governor, and even draws the conclusion that “From this name and title we see that the khān did not reside in Kāshghar; and that, in effect, the capital of the Turco-Qarluq was Balāsāghūn …”.

64 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 8: 133–4. This intriguing revolt has been noted only by M. F. Grenard, “La légende de Satok Bughra Khān”, 34–6, and Barthold, Turkestan, 241, albeit only very briefly in passing. Perhaps equally revealing is Jūzjānī's (surely deliberate) omission of any mention of the Turkish role in these revolts, which he chronicles in some detail; he attributes the pardoning of the rebels to Naṣr's clemency alone; Jūzjānī, Minhāj-i Sirāj, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, ed. Ḥabībī, ʿAbd al-Ḥayy (Tihrān: Dunyā-ye Kitāb, 1363/1944), 208Google Scholar.

65 Note that this sanctuary policy is apparent as early as the year 301/914, when the slaves who murdered the Sāmānid amīr, Aḥmad b. Ismaʿīl, fled to Turkestan; Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, 111.

66 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 8: 415.

67 On the discrepancy in dates see Barthold, Turkestan, 254–5. For a strange and poetic account of the circumstances surrounding this conversion, see Grenard, “La légende de Satok Bughra Khān”, 5–79. The story itself is found on pp. 6–10.

68 Although the Mongols succeeded in accomplishing such a feat several centuries later, they had a great deal more strength at their disposal than did the Qarakhanids; the latter failed throughout their pre-Islamic phase to overcome the Sāmānids. Moreover, when the Sāmānids tried to rally the military support of the Transoxanian populace when faced with the eventual Qarakhanid conquest, their failure to do so was directly attributable to the fact that the latter were Muslims; as Frye remarks, “The Sāmānid amir tried to rouse the people of his domains against the invaders but he failed. The people of Bukhārā would not listen … especially when their religious leaders assured them that the Qarakhānids were good Muslims like themselves and there was no need to fight for the discredited Sāmānids against them” (“The Sāmānids”, 159).

69 Frye, Richard, Bukhara: The Medieval Achievement (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 1997), 147Google Scholar. Or, in Soucek's words, “Once they entered the community of the Dār al-Islām as Muslims, these Turks reversed the trend of actual conquest and themselves conquered Transoxania” (Inner Asia, 76).

70 Despite Frye's admirable attempt to harmonize the conflicting versions into one narrative; R. Frye, Bukhara: The Medieval Achievement, 141–7. Frye similarly avoids entering into the issue of the divergent accounts in his “The Sāmānids”, 157, where he notes merely that “The course of events is unclear…”.

71 And according to some accounts, foolishly summoned by Sāmānid political players; Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, 1: 47.

72 Gardīzī, Tārīkh-i Gardīzī, 368.

73 Gardīzī, Tārīkh-i Gardīzī, 369. Rashīd al-Dīn's version, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, 1: 45–51, though much more detailed and differing in a few points, for the most part corroborates Gardīzī's.

74 For present purposes, it is immaterial which version is correct: both show the same growing encroachment of the newly-Islamized Turks upon the Sāmānid realms.

75 “Shihāb al-Dawla Hārūn b. Sulaymān Īlig, known as Bughrā-Khān the Turk, ruler of Kāshghar and Balāsāghūn to the borders of China”, Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil 9: 98. On this Qarakhanid title and other titulature see Pritsak, “Die Karachaniden”, 23–4, and Golden, “An Introduction”, 215.

76 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 9: 95. Cf., for instance, the account of unmitigated Sāmānid defeat, in only one campaign, in Ḥamdallāh b. Abī Bakr b. Aḥmad b. Qazvīnī, Naṣr Mustawfī, Tārīkh-i Guzīda, ed. Navā'ī, ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn (Tihrān: Intishārāt-i Amīr-i Kabīr, 1339/1960), 385Google Scholar.

77 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 9: 98–9.

78 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 9: 100. Yet a third version is offered by al-ʿUtbī (in Jarfādhqānī's Persian translation): Abū'l-Sharaf Nāṣir b. Jarfādhqānī, Ẓafar, Tarjamah-i tārīkh-i yamīnī, ed. Shiʿār, Jaʿfar (Tihrān: Bungāh-i Tarjamah va Nashr-i Kitāb), 1345, 94–98Google Scholar; it is closer to Gardīzī's than to Ibn al-Athīr's.

79 ʿUtbī/ Jarfādhqānī, Tarjamah-i tārīkh-i Yamīnī, 184–99; Ibn Funduq, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 69–70; Jūzjānī, Tabaqat-i Nāṣirī, 216; Gardīzī, Tārīkh-i Gardīzī, 376–8; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 9: 148–9; Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, 1: 108–19.

80 On the agreement of these two Turkic powers on dividing the spoils see Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 39–41; ʿUtbī/ Jarfādhqānī, Tarjamah-i tārīkh-i Yamīnī, 249–50; Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, 1: 142–4. Maḥmūd also married the Īlig-Khān's daughter at this time; see Nāẓim, Muḥammad, The Life and Times of Sulṭān Maḥmūd of Ghazna (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1971), 47–8Google Scholar.

81 Thus, the Qarakhanids have been termed the “première dynastie turk musulmane d'Asie centrale à avoir gardé son caractère tribal”. Jürgen Paul, “Nouvelles pistes,” 13.

82 Note that the sources view the Ghaznavids as the true heirs of the Sāmānid mantle; Mustawfī Qazvīnī, for instance, Tārīkh-i Guzida, 351, declares that “In [the Caliph al-Qādir's] time Sāmānid rule [dawla] ended, and their dominion fell to the Ghaznavids”.

83 On Sebuktegin's background see e.g. ʿUtbī/ Jarfādhqānī, Tarjamah-i tārīkh-i Yamīnī, 19–20.

84 On Mahmud's mother see Yaḥyā b. al-Qazvīnī, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, Lubb al-tawārīkh (Tihrān: Intishārāt-i Bundād ū Gūyā, 1363/1984), 142Google Scholar. Bosworth, Ghaznavids, 43, notes that a Hindu dynasty had ruled in the Kabul valley until Alptegin, Sebuktegin's master, had conquered the area.

85 As Bosworth notes, Ghaznavids, 44: “Judging by Sebuktegin's last wishes, he did not envisage that his family should set up an independent dynasty, despite the evident decay of the Sāmānids”. At least one chronicler clearly felt queasy about the Ghaznavid complicity in the downfall of their overlords: Ibn Funduq, uniquely, portrays Maḥmūd as having retained at least nominal allegiance to the Sāmānids until the end, and as having played no part in the Sāmānid downfall: see Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 70.

86 Therefore the Ghaznavids in particular mark a transition between the old individual Mamlūk, assimilationist model and the new one of entire Turkic peoples invading large swathes of the Islamic world.

87 Although his son has drawn more attention as a holy warrior, Sebuktegin was occupied with ghāzī activities as well, and began the Ghaznavid drive in India; note that according to al-ʿUtbī, the very first thing that Sebuktegin takes care to do upon his ascent to power, after distributing fiefs, is to fight Infidels: “Sebuktegin took all [necessary measures] in preserving his rule, and attended to the affairs and prosperity of all … Then he turned his face to Jihād against the Infidels and the humbling of the enemies of the faith, and the country of Hindūstān, which was the dwelling of the enemies of Islam and the worshippers of idols he made into the abode of religious warfare for the faith [Dār al-Ghazw]”. ʿUtbī/ Jarfādhqānī, Tarjamah-i tārīkh-i Yamīnī, 20. See also Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, 1: 11; Mustawfī Qavīnī, Tārīkh-i Guzida, 389; Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, 225–6, terms Sebuktegin “al-amīr al-ghāzī”. In Rashīd al-Dīn's echoing of ʿUtbī/ Jarfādhqānī in Jamiʿ al-tawārīkh, 1:6: “He set his face toward Jihād against the Infidels and the enemies of religion”.

88 See e.g. Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, 228, where he is referred to repeatedly as “Maḥmūd al-Ghāzī” and “Sulṭān ghāzī”; also Niẓām al-Mulk, Abū ʿAlī Ḥasan Ṭūsī, Siyar al-mulūk, ed. Darke, Hubert (Tihrān: Intishārāt-i ‘Ilmī va Farhangī, 1378), 74, 75Google Scholar; and Qazvīnī, Lubb al-tawārīkh, 142: “Maḥmūd b. Sebuktekīn was a famous ruler; he continually performed ghazwas against the Infidels in India…”. According to Mustawfī Qavīnī, Tārīkh-i Guzida, 392, it was on the campaign in India in 392/1002 that “Yamīn al-Dawla … obtained the title of ‘Ghāzī’”.

89 An exception to this is Nāẓim, The Life and Times of Sulṭān Maḥmūd of Ghazna, 41–85. Note that this is an oversight to which most of the primary sources do not fall prey: the Indian and the Central Asian conquests and ghazi raids are given equal mention in e.g. Anon, ., Mujmal al-tawārīkh wa'l-qiṣaṣ, ed. Najmābādī, S. and Weber, Siegfried (Neckarhausen: Deux Mondes, 2000), 313Google Scholar. One explanation for this relative neglect of the Central Asian conquests has been noted by Paul, “Nouvelles pistes”, 17: all post-Barthold studies “portent l'empreinte de l'approche de Barthold. Cela est vrai surtout pour la délimitation du champ de recherche”. Although Paul was referring to the dynastic and political approach, his observation is equally valid regarding the geographical area under consideration; in Barthold's wake, most “Central Asianists” tend to limit their geographical purview of Central Asia to the area that accords with what Kotchnev calls “the traditional Soviet definition” of the term – in effect, to Inner Asia; Kotchnev, Boris D., “La chronologie et la généalogie des Karakhanides du point de vue de la numismatique”, Cahiers D'Asie Centrale 9, 2001, Études Karakhanides, 50Google Scholar.

90 See e.g. his campaigns in 391 in Peshawar, Gardīzī, Tārīkh-i Gardīzī, 385; 401/1011 in Ghūr: Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 9: 221–2; mentioned briefly in Gardīzī, Tārīkh-i Gardīzī, 391; ʿUtbī/Jarfādhqānī, Tarjamah-i tārīkh-i Yamīnī, 312–4; Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, 1: 167–9; Mustawfī Qavīnī, Tārīkh-i Guzida, 393; and Bosworth, , “The early Islamic history of Ghūr”, Central Asiatic Journal 6/2, 1961, 122–8Google Scholar; in Kashmir in 406/1015, together with 20,000 volunteer warriors, Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 9: 265–8.

91 Mention of large numbers of jihādic volunteer warriors accompanying Mahmud's armies can be found in e.g. Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 9: 343; Gardīzī, Tārīkh-i Gardīzī, 385; and so forth.

92 E.g. Gardīzī, Tārīkh-i Gardīzī, 388; Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, 1: 146–54; implied obliquely in Qazvīnī, Tārīkh-i Guzida, 393. For an account of the history of Qarakhanid-Ghaznavid relations during Mahmud's time, see Nāẓim, The Life and Times of Sulṭān Maḥmūd of Ghazna, 48–56.