Treasures of the Great Silk Road

by Edgar Knobloch

  The Greeks under Alexander arrived here before the collapse of the Achaemenid Empire in 329 BC. The leader of the Soghdians, Spitamenes, was defeated, and Alexander entered Marakanda, his capital, the Samarkand of today. From here he made contact with the ruler of Khorezm and sent his troops further north and north-east, to the Syr Darya as far as Khodzhend. The Greeks even crossed the river and moved towards Tashkent, fighting the Scythians, but as soon as the Greeks’ backs were turned, Spitamenes rebelled and they had to evacuate the whole area and retreat to Bactria. In the spring of 328, Alexander marched on Marakanda again and this time achieved a decisive victory.

  The Greeks held Central Asia for some seventy years. Around 250 BC Transoxania fell to the Parthians, whose main city was Nisa (Nesa) in present-day Turkmenistan, and who gradually became masters of the whole of Persia, squeezing out the Greek dynasty of the Seleucids. The Greeks, however, were able to hold Bactria for another 100 years, and lost it only when, between 140 and 130 BC, an invasion by another Barbarian people marked the end of Greek domination in this part of the world.

  This time the nomads were the Yue-che (Yüe-czi), who, according to one authority (Tolstov), could be the same as the Greater Getae or Massagetae.1 It was probably a group of tribes, undoubtedly of lndo-European origin, one of which was the Tokhars, who gave their name to Bactria (Tokharistan). The homelands of the Yue-che were pushed further west. They migrated through Kashgar and Ferghana, pushing the local tribes, the Saka, before them. The move then continued southwards, with the Yue-che occupying Soghd and Bactria and the Saka going still further, to southern Afghanistan, then called Sakastan, the present Sistan. Parthia, too, was nearly destroyed by this invasion and two of its Arsacid kings were killed in battles with the Yue-che. Mithridates II, however, contained them and even subordinated Sistan to his rule.

  This phenomenon appears again and again throughout the history of the country. The slightest activity at one end of the steppes brings about quite unexpected consequences, continuously subjecting this immense area to migratory movements. Bactria was divided between five clans of the Yue-che, one of whom, the Kushans, founded a powerful dynasty around the beginning of our era. The heyday of the Kushan Empire was the reign of King Kanishka, who ruled over Transoxania, Afghanistan and a considerable part of the Punjab. The date of his accession is disputed and varies between AD 78 and 144. The year 128 is generally considered the most probable, although 278 is also suggested by some.2 The question remains unresolved, however.

  It was at this time that the Chinese general Pan-Chao, wresting the Xinjiang oases from the domination of the Huns, arrived in Kashgar, and according to some sources, clashed with a Kushan army sent to give help to the local population in their struggle against the Chinese. The Chinese were victorious, and Kanishka allegedly had to recognise the suzerainty of the Chinese emperor. After the death of Pan-Chao, China was not strong enough to hold these remote areas, and most of the Tarim oases once again came under the suzerainty of the Kushans.

  The decline of the Kushan Empire coincides with that of Parthia. In the third century AD, Soghd and Bactria, but apparently not Khorezm, again became provinces of Persia, this time under the Sasanian dynasty.3 The rule of the Sasanians had lasted a century and a half when another steppe horde descended upon the eastern provinces. The Hephthalites, or White Huns, of Turco-Mongolian origin, lived in the region of the Altai mountains, and from there they moved into the steppes of western Turkestan. Towards the middle of the fifth century they occupied the area between the rivers Ili and Talas in the east and the Aral Sea in the west. Then they started moving south, across the Syr Darya, into Transoxania and Bactria. The entire eastern part of the Sasanian Empire fell to them, including the rich and important province of Khorassan. One of the shahs, Peroz, was killed in battle, but on the whole Persia managed to withstand the pressure.

  Within fifty years the Hephthalites became a formidable power. Their move southwards continued, and after replacing the last of the Kushans in Kabul they crossed the passes and invaded India, then ruled by the Gupta dynasty. They established their capital at Sialkot in East Punjab at the beginning of the sixth century, and from there they raided and terrorised India for fifty years. In the second half of the century they disappeared from history. This disappearance was mainly due to the arrival of serious opponents in the northern steppes – the Turks. The Turkish homelands, comprising Mongolia and eastern Siberia, were divided in the mid-sixth century between the eastern and western khanates. The western Turks invaded the territory of the Hephthalites in the Talas region. A simultaneous attack by the Sasanians crushed the Hephthalites, resulting in their final annihilation. The Persians and the Turks shared the Hephthalite possessions. The Turkish khan received Soghd, the shah, Khosroes Anushirvan, received Bactria.

  The arrangement was short-lived, for the Turks almost immediately invaded Bactria. The diplomacy of this period shows interesting political manoeuvring between the Turks and the Byzantine emperor, directed against Persia. The Turkish khan, or Yabghu, was obviously well informed about the political and geographical situation. As soon as he touched the Oxus, thus becoming an immediate neighbour of Persia, he approached Constantinople and suggested that all the silk trade with China could now bypass Persia. The emperor, Justin II, was interested in the idea, and sent his envoy, Zemarchos, to the Turks in AD 568. This resulted in an alliance that involved Byzantium in a war with Persia (572–91). Several embassies were exchanged between the two allies, but after the death of the khan the alliance broke down and the Turks, although still fighting Persia, invaded Byzantine territories north of the Black Sea and in the Crimea.

  Another ephemeral state, the Turkish Empire, disintegrated yet again under the pressure from the East. This time the migration was provoked by the reoccupation of the Tarim oases by the Chinese under Emperor T’ai-tsong of the Tang dynasty. The Chinese advance westward brought them as far as Lake Issyk-kul, where in 714 their army achieved an important victory over the Turkish tribes. Thirty years later, another victory established their possession of this region and of the entire valley of the Ili. This brought the Chinese into direct contact with the Arab forces advancing into this area from the opposite direction.

  The first incursions of the Arabs into Transoxania, after the collapse of the Sasanian Empire (642–51), were merely raids conducted with nothing more than plunder as their object. The Khorassan cities Merv and Balkh were used as bases for these raids, and it took another thirty years (until 681) before the Arabs first camped on the other side of the Amu Darya in winter. The first city they actually occupied on the right bank was Termez (689). Meanwhile, the native population of Khorassan rose against the Arabs, and their leader Peroz (Firuz), son of the last Sasanian shah, Yezdegerd III, sought help from the Chinese. After the death of Yezdegerd, Peroz fled to China and was received at the imperial court where he promised to accept Chinese suzerainty in return for military assistance against the Arabs. According to Tolstov, the result was a historical curiosity – Persia was established as a Chinese province (Po-S’), with its capital at Zaranj, near the present border between Persia and Afghanistan, and with the last descendant of the Sasanians as a Chinese viceroy. However, after some consolidation of the caliphate, the Arabs resumed their attacks, and in 667 Peroz was finally defeated. He spent the rest of his life in China.

  The permanent domination of the Arabs over the Land Beyond the River is linked with the name of Kutayba ben Muslim. In 705 Kutayba was appointed Viceroy of Khorassan; in 712 he led his army to Khorezm to ‘help’ the Khorezmshah to crush a rebellion. Skillfully exploiting the rivalries among the local princelings, in the same year he led a campaign against Samarkand, supported by the Khorezmians and the Bukharans. According to Barthold,4 there were no foreign governors or viceroys in Transoxania after the fall of the Kushans, and the oases therefore developed a strong feeling of independence, but were unable to realise their common interests and thus failed to unite when faced with the threat of foreign
domination.

  In Bukhara, Samarkand and other places, Kutayba built mosques and forced the inhabitants to evacuate parts of the cities, into which the Arabs then moved. In three years his armies reached Tashkent, occupied Ferghana, and, according to some sources, even crossed into Chinese territory near Kashgar. Kutayba was killed while trying to stir up a revolt against the caliph, and his death in 715 marked the end of the Arab advance. The Syr Darya frontier was soon lost and the Arabs were expelled from Ferghana. In Transoxania they were able to hold only a few fortified towns. It is worth noting that while steppe warfare presented no difficulty to the Arabs, they were far less successful in mountainous regions.

  The Turks, mentioned above, were at this time helping the Soghdians against the Arabs. Transoxania, described by the Arabs as ‘the Garden of the Commander of the Faithful’, was equally important to the Turkish khan, and the Turks and the Arabs contested the domination of the country for more than thirty years. At one stage, the rebellious Soghdians decided to abandon their country, but were intercepted through treason, forced to surrender to the Arabs, and were subsequently massacred.

  In 728 the Arabs decided to convert the entire population to Islam. In the general revolt that followed, only Samarkand remained in Arab hands, and it took the Arabs several years to re-establish their hold over the country. The succession in 749 of the Abbasids to the Umayyads as caliphs resulted in a further wave of rebellions aggravated by religious reformists and sectarian movements in both Khorassan and Mawarannahr. The Chinese once again tried to take advantage of the situation, and invaded Ferghana in 748, but were defeated in 751 by the Arab commander Ziyad ben Salih. This was perhaps the decisive event determining which civilisation, the Muslim or the Chinese, would predominate in the country. For 1,000 years the Chinese never attempted to penetrate west Turkestan.

  In spite of their firm hold on the territory, the Arabs never actually governed Transoxania. Their governor, or viceroy, of Khorassan, residing in Merv, was concerned only with military affairs and with collecting tribute from the local rulers. Under the Umayyads there was no policy whatsoever about such border lands, and naturally every governor was anxious to extract from the province as much money as quickly as he could. In fact, the only decision made about policy during that time was the enforced conversion of the population to Islam, accompanied by tax exemptions for the converts. The Abbasids, on the other hand, sought to create a state where provinces with a Persian or an Arab population enjoyed equal status. Transoxania was, as before, subordinated to Khorassan, but the governors, appointed on a hereditary basis from among the local aristocracy, were, as a rule, well acquainted with the situation in the locality, and enjoyed at the same time the confidence of the population. The result was, of course, that the governors acted in their own interests, and their dependence on the caliph rapidly became purely nominal. This was the origin of the powerful local dynasties, the Tahirids in Iraq and later in Khorassan, and the Samanids in Transoxania.

  After the defeat of the Chinese, two Turkish kingdoms were formed on the fringes of Transoxania. Semirechiye and the eastern Syr Darya came under the domination of the Karluks (Qarluqs), while the lower reaches of the river became the kingdom of the Oghuz (Ghuzz). Soghd, Ushrusana (upper Zarafshan valley), Ferghana and Khorezm were governed by local rulers who to some extent recognised the suzerainty of the caliph. The Samanids came to power under Caliph Ma’mun, when four brothers were appointed governors of Samarkand, Ferghana, Tashkent and Herat. In the middle of the ninth century they established themselves as hereditary rulers, and in 875 the head of the family obtained the administration of the whole of Transoxania from Caliph Mu’tamid. Detailed information on life in Transoxania under the Samanids is given by Barthold,5 including government offices, the tax system, trade, postal services etc.

  The Samanid dynasty remained in power for about 100 years, but at the end of the tenth century the country fell into complete confusion, partly due to internal dissent and partly to external pressure from the new rulers of Persia, the Buyids, who acquired a decisive influence over the caliphs of Baghdad. At this critical time a new conqueror approached the northern frontiers of Transoxania and the disintegrating kingdom became his easy prey.

  The Turkish dynasty of the Karakhanids established itself in the town of Uzgen (Uzkend), east of Ferghana, on the territory of the Karluks. In the second half of the tenth century the Turks began to press south-west, taking advantage of the situation in Transoxania. A family quarrel among the last Samanids provided a welcome pretext, and in 992 the Turkish khan entered Bukhara almost without opposition. In the confused situation that followed, the Samanids were meanwhile able to restore their possessions; a fresh invasion of the Karakhanids found them in an even weaker position. Hard pressed as they were, they had to apply for assistance to another Turkish ruler, Sabuktagin of Ghazna, in present-day Afghanistan. The result was that the Samanids ceded the entire Syr Darya basin to the Karakhanids and the lands south of the Amu Darya to Sabuktagin, retaining only a greatly reduced territory, centred on Bukhara.

  In the year 999, fighting broke out between the Samanid ruler of Bukhara and his nominal vassal, Mahmud of Ghazna, son of Sabuktagin, who at that time ruled Khorassan. Mahmud’s victory induced the Karakhanids to renew hostilities, and in October 999 the Karakhanid Governor of Samarkand, Ilak Nasr, entered Bukhara, putting an end to Samanid rule in Transoxania. As Barthold sees it, this was not only the downfall of a famous dynasty but also the end of the domination of the native Aryan (Iranian) element in the country.6

  The whole area was now divided between two Turkish dynasties, the Ghaznavids in the south and south-west, and the Karakhanids in the centre and north-east. The Turkicisation continued at a rapid pace. The Ghaznavids under Mahmud (998–1030) soon extended their domination as far as Iraq and Khorezm and, on the other side, to Punjab, Multan and Sind. It was under Mahmud that the famous Court Academy of the Khorezmshahs was disbanded and some of the scholars were taken to Ghazna. However, in the eleventh century, another Turkish tribe, the Seljuks, advanced into Transoxania from the lower Syr Darya. They crossed the Amu Darya, entered Khorassan, and changed the whole history of Persia by achieving a decisive victory over the Ghaznavid Sultan Masud (son of Mahmud). Before long they captured Baghdad, and all real power in the caliphate passed into their hands. The Ghaznavids were thus reduced to their possession in Afghanistan and northern India, and the Seljuks, undisputed masters of the enormous land mass between the Amu Darya and the Mediterranean, soon turned against the Karakhanids of Transoxania. In the second half of the century, the Karakhanids became vassals of the Seljuk sultans, while other branches of the family continued to rule their fiefs in the east, in Semirechiye and in Kashgaria, until the beginning of the twelfth century.

  In the west, the Seljuks continued their conquest of Armenia and Asia Minor. In 1071 they defeated and took prisoner the Byzantine emperor, Romanus Diogenes, and subsequently established the Turkish Sultanate of Rum in present-day Turkey, which, some two centuries later, became the root of the Ottoman Empire. In the east, Sultan Sanjar, the last of the great Seljukids and originally Governor of Khorassan, intervened successfully in the Ghaznavid territories in Afghanistan, Khorezm and the Karakhanid territories in Transoxania, but he was finally defeated and pushed back into Khorassan by a new wave of steppe nomads, the Kara-Khitai. The entire territory of Transoxania fell into the hands of these ‘pagans’, possibly of Mongol origin. Khorezm revolted and was again subdued by Sanjar, but in another revolt south of the Amu Darya the sultan was taken prisoner. He was released in 1156, but died a year later, his once powerful empire disintegrating completely.

  Fig. 2 The empire of Chingiz-Khan

  The Kara-Khitai had dominated the region of Beijing for 200 years, and were thus considerably influenced by China. Their offshoots now ruling in Transoxania regarded Islam and the Arabo-Persian civilisation as alien, and quite naturally were inclined to look more towards China. They attempted to introduce some admini
strative reforms on the Chinese pattern, and it is even possible that their administrative language was Chinese. The Kara-Khitai stayed in Transoxania, either as direct rulers or as overlords of the local Karakhanids, until the beginning of the thirteenth century. The shahs of Khorezm were upholders of the Muslim and Turkish traditions within the country, starkly contrasting with the Mongol, heathen world of the Kara-Khitai so much influenced by China. After the death of Sultan Sanjar, the Khorezmshahs, formerly vassals of the sultan and of the Seljukids, regained their independence and, exploiting the existing power vacuum, quickly expanded their possessions over most of Sanjar’s territories.

  Between 1207 and 1210 the Kara-Khitai were defeated in two campaigns, and their rule in Transoxania ended. The Khorezmshahs became, for a short while, the most powerful rulers of Islam, but their vast empire was hardly more than a conglomeration of recently conquered provinces and lacked the real backbone of an organised state. This was the situation when, in 1220, they were faced with a much more formidable invasion, of which the Kara-Khitai had been only a vanguard.