Ghurids
| Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R) |
Ghurid dynasty was a culturally Persianate dynasty of eastern Iranian Tajik origin, which ruled from the 8th-century in the region of Ghor, and became an Empire from 1175 to 1215.[1]
Variants
- Ghurid dynasty
- Ghurid Dynasty
- Ghorids
- Persian: دودمان غوریان, romanized: Dudmân-e Ğurīyân;
- self-designation: شنسبانی, Šansabānī)
Origins
In the 19th century some European scholars, such as Mountstuart Elphinstone, favoured the idea that the Ghurid dynasty was related to today's Pashtun people[2][3] but this is generally rejected by modern scholarship.[4]
Contemporary scholars state that the dynasty was of Tajik origin.[5]
Later, due to intermarrying, the Ghurid princes were distinguished by their significant blending of Tajik, Persian, Turkic, and native Afghan ethnicities.[6]
Encyclopædia Iranica states: "Nor do we know anything about the ethnic stock of the Ḡūrīs in general and the Šansabānīs in particular; we can only assume that they were eastern Iranian Tajiks". Bosworth further points out that the actual name of the Ghurid family, Āl-e Šansab (Persianized: Šansabānī), is the Arabic pronunciation of the originally Middle Persian name Wišnasp.[7]
The Ghurids originated from Ghor Province in central Afghanistan.
Historian André Wink explains in The New Cambridge History of Islam.[8]
The Shansabānī dynasty superseded the Ghaznavids in the second half of the twelfth century. This dynasty was not of Turkish, nor even Afghan, but of eastern Persian or Tājīk origin, speaking a distinct Persian dialect of its own, like the rest of the inhabitants of the remote and isolated mountain region of Ghūr and its capital of Fīrūzkūh (in what is now central Afghanistan).
When the Ghurids started to distinguish themselves through their conquests, courtiers and genealogists (such as Fakhr-i Mudabbir and al-Juzjani) forged a fictive genealogy which connected the Ghurids with the Iranian past. They traced the Ghurid family back to the mythical Arab tyrant Zahhak, mentioned in the medieval Persian epic Shahnameh ("The Book of Kings"), whose family had reportedly settled in Ghur after the Iranian hero Fereydun had ended Zahhak's thousand-year tyranny.[9]
Additionally, nothing is known of the pre-Islamic religious beliefs of the Ghurids.[10]
History
The Ghurids were centered in the hills of the Ghor region in the present-day central Afghanistan, where they initially started out as local chiefs. They gradually converted to Sunni Islam after the conquest of Ghor by the Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud of Ghazni in 1011.
The Ghurids eventually overran the Ghaznavids when Muhammad of Ghor seized Lahore and expelled the Ghaznavids from their last stronghold.
The Ghurids initially ruled as vassals of the Ghaznavids and later of the Seljuks. However, during the early 12th-century the long-standing rivalry between the Seljuks and Ghaznavids created a power vacuum in eastern Afghanistan and Panjab which the Ghurids took advantage of and began their territorial expansion. Ala al-Din Husayn ended the Ghurid subordination to the Ghaznavids, ruthlessly sacking their capital, although he was soon defeated by the Seljuks after he stopped paying tribute to them. The Seljuk imperial power, however, was itself swept away in eastern Iran with the contemporaneous advent of the Khwarazmian Empire.
During the dyarchy of the Ala al-Din Husayn nephews – Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad and Muhammad of Ghor, the Ghurid empire reached its greatest territorial extent, holding encompassed territory from eastern Iran through easternmost India. While Ghiyath al-Din was occupied with the Ghurid expansion in the west, his junior partner in the dyarchy, Muhammad of Ghor and his lieutenants were active east of the Indus Valley as far as Bengal and eventually succeeded in conquering wide swaths of the Gangetic Plain, while in the west under Ghiyath al-Din, engaging in a protracted duel with the Shahs of Khwarazm, the Ghurids, reached as far as Gorgan (present-day Iran) on the shoreline of the Caspian Sea, albeit for a short time.
Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad died in 1203 of illness caused due to rheumatic disorders and soon after the Ghurids suffered a crushing defeat against the Khwrezmians aided by timely reinforcements from the Qara Khitais in the Battle of Andkhud in 1204. Muhammad was assassinated soon after in March 1206 which ended the Ghurid influence in Khurasan. The dynasty became extinguished all together within a decade when Shah Muhammad II uprooted the Ghurids in 1215. Their conquests in the Indian subcontinent nevertheless survived for several centuries under the evolving Delhi Sultanate established by Qutb ud-Din Aibak.
References
- ↑ Barisitz, Stephan (2017). Central Asia and the Silk Road: Economic Rise and Decline over Several Millennia. Springer. p. 94. ISBN 978-3-319-51213-6.
- ↑ Elphinstone, Mountstuart. The History of India. Vol. 1. J. Murray, 1841. Web. 29 April 2010. Link: "...the prevalent and apparently the correct opinion is, that both they and their subjects were Afghans. " & "In the time of Sultan Mahmud it was held, as has been observed, by a prince whom Ferishta calls Mohammed Soory (or Sur) Afghan." pp. 598–599
- ↑ A short history of India: and of the frontier states of Afghanistan, Nipal, and Burma, Wheeler, James Talboys Archived 9 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine, (LINK): "The next conqueror after Mahmud who made a name in India, was Muhammad Ghori, the Afghan."
- ↑ M. Longworth Dames; G. Morgenstierne; R. Ghirshman (1999). "AFGHĀNISTĀN". Encyclopaedia of Islam (CD-ROM Edition v. 1.0 ed.). Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. "... there is no evidence for assuming that the inhabitants of Ghūr were originally Pashto-speaking (cf. Dames, in E I1). If we are to believe the Paṭa Khazāna (see below, iii), the legendary Amīr Karōṝ, grandson of Shansab, (8th century) was a Pashto poet, but this for various reasons is very improbable ..."
- ↑ Richard Eaton (2000). Essays on Islam and Indian History. Oxford University Press. p. 100. ISBN 978-0-19-565114-0. The dynamics of north Indian politics changed dramatically, however, when the Ghurids, a dynasty of Tajik (eastern Iranian), origin arrived from central Afghanistan towards the end of twelfth century; Encyclopaedia of Islam, "Ghurids", C.E. Bosworth, Online Edition, 2006: "... The Shansabānīs were, like the rest of the Ghūrīs, of eastern Iranian Tājik stock ..."; Wink 2020, p. 78; Cynthia Talbot, The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Chauhan and the Indian Past, 1200–2000, (Cambridge University Press, 2016), 36.
- ↑ Avari, Burjor (2013). Islamic Civilization in South Asia: A History of Muslim Power and Presence in the Indian Subcontinent. Routledge. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-415-58061-8.
- ↑ Bosworth, C. Edmund (2001b). "Ghurids". Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, Vol. X, Fasc. 6. New York. pp. 586–590.
- ↑ Wink, André (2010). "The early expansion of Islam in India". In Morgan, David O.; Reid, Anthony (eds.). The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 3: The Eastern Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 96. ISBN 978-0-521-85031-5.
- ↑ Bosworth, C. Edmund (2001b). "Ghurids". Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, Vol. X, Fasc. 6. New York. pp. 586–590.
- ↑ O'Neal, Michael (2015). "Ghūrids". In Fleet, Kate; Krämer, Gudrun; Matringe, Denis; Nawas, John; Rowson, Everett (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam (3rd ed.). Brill Online. ISSN 1873-9830.