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Anushtegin dynasty خاندان انوشتکین, Khānedāne Ānushtegin
Parent house	Begdili or Qangli or other
Country	Khwarazmian Empire Mamluk Egypt
Current region	Central Asia Iran Afghanistan Egypt
Founded	1077
Founder	Anushtegin Gharchai
Final ruler	Saif ad-Din Qutuz
Titles	Khwarazmshah Shah Sultan
Traditions	Sunni Islam (Hanafi)
Dissolution	1260
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 Sunni Muslim dynasty of Turkic mamluk origin from the Bekdili clan of the Oghuz Turks. 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 and the Qara Khitai (Western Liao), 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. Anush Tigin may have belonged to either the Begdili tribe of the Oghuz Turks or to Chigil, Khalaj, Qipchaq, Qangly, or Uyghurs.

History

The date of the founding of the Khwarazmian dynasty remains debatable. During a revolt in 1017, Khwarezmian rebels murdered Abu'l-Abbas Ma'mun and his wife, Hurra-ji, sister of the Ghaznavid sultan Mahmud. In response, Mahmud invaded and occupied the region of Khwarezm, which included Nasa and the ribat of Farawa. As a result, Khwarezm became a province of the Ghaznavid Empire from 1017 to 1034. In 1077, the governorship of the province, which since 1042/1043 belonged to the Seljuqs, fell into the hands of Anush Tigin Gharchai, a former Turkic slave of the Seljuq sultan. In 1141, the Seljuq Sultan Ahmed Sanjar was defeated by the Qara Khitai at the battle of Qatwan, and Anush Tigin's grandson Ala ad-Din Atsiz became a vassal to Yelü Dashi of the Qara Khitan.

Sultan Ahmed Sanjar died in 1156. As the Seljuk state fell into chaos, the Khwarezm-Shahs expanded their territories southward. In 1194, the last Sultan of the Great Seljuq Empire, Toghrul III, was defeated and killed by the Khwarezm ruler Ala ad-Din Tekish, who conquered parts of Khorasan and western Iran. In 1200, Tekish died and was succeeded by his son, Ala ad-Din Muhammad, who initiated a conflict with the Ghurids and was defeated by them at Amu Darya (1204). Following the sack of Khwarizm, Muhammad appealed for aid from his suzerain, the Qara Khitai who sent him an army. With this reinforcement, Muhammad won a victory over the Ghurids at Hezarasp (1204) and forced them out of Khwarizm.

Ala ad-Din Muhammad's alliance with his suzerain was short-lived. He again initiated a conflict, this time with the aid of the Kara-Khanids, and defeated a Qara-Khitai army at Talas (1210), but allowed Samarkand (1210) to be occupied by the Qara-Khitai. He overthrew the Karakhanids (1212) and Ghurids (1215). In 1212, he shifted his capital from Gurganj to Samarkand. Thus incorporating nearly the whole of Transoxania and present-day Afghanistan into his empire, which after further conquests in western Persia (by 1217) stretched from the Syr Darya to the Zagros Mountains, and from the northern parts of the Hindu Kush to the Caspian Sea. By 1218, the empire had a population of 5 million people.

Anushteginid Khwarazmshahs

• Purple Row Signifies Seljuq Empire rule.
  • Pink Row Signifies suzerainty shifting between Qara-Khitai & Seljuq Empire
    • Orange Rows Signify suzerainty of Qara-Khitai

Family tree of Anushtiginid Dynasty

v t e Anushtiginid dynasty family tree

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message) Anushtigin Gharchai (r. 1077-1097) Shihna of Khwarezm Muhammad I (r. 1097-1127) Shah of Khwarezm Inaltigin Prince Atsiz (r. 1127-1156) Shah of Khwarezm Yusuf Prince Atliq Prince Il-Arslan (r. 1156-1172) Shah of Khwarezm Hitan-Khan Prince Suleiman-Shah Prince Tekish (r. 1172-1200) Shah of Khwarezm Sultan-Shah (r. 1172-1193) Shah of Khwarezm Yunus-Khan Prince Ali-Shah (b. ? -d. 1215) Prince Shah-Khatun Princess Muhammad II (r. 1200-1220) Shah of Khwarezm Toghan-Toghdi Prince Malik-Shah (b. ? -d. 1197) Prince Erboz-Khan Prince Hindu-Khan Prince Arslan-Khan Prince Ak-Shah (b. ? -k. 1221) Prince Uzlaq-Shah (b. ? -k. 1221) Crown prince Khan-Sultan Princess Qursanjdi (b. ? -k. 1222) Sultan of Persian Iraq Manguberdi (r. 1220-1231) Sultan of Khwarezm Pir-Shah (b. ? -k. 1229) Sultan of Kirman Kumakhti-Shah Prince Yahya Hur-Shah (b. ? -k. 1221) Prince Aysi Khatun Princess Qutuz (r. 1259-1260) Sultan of Egypt Manqatuy-Shah Prince Qaymaqar-Shah Prince Notes Ziya Bunyadov. In Russian, Государство Хорезмшахов-Ануштегинидов. 1097-1231. (State of the Khwarezmshahs-Anushtiginids. 1097-1231). Page 142. PDF

Simplified Family Tree

Gallery

• Mausoleum of Khwarazm Shah, Il-Arslan, Köneürgench, Turkmenistan
• Mausoleum of Khwarazm Shah Tekish, Köneürgench, Turkmenistan
• The fortress of Guldursun-Kala was last occupied by Muhammad II of Khwarazm (1169, 1200–20), before it fell to the Mongol conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire.

See also

• Full list of Persian Kingdoms
• Khwarezmia
• List of Sunni Muslim dynasties

Notes and references

1. ^ 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. ^ 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)".
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." (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)
15. C.E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids:994-1040, (Edinburgh University Press, 1963), 237.
16. C.E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids:994-1040, 237.
17. Biran, Michel, The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 44.
18. Rene, Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes:A History of Central Asia, (Rutgers University Press, 1991), 168.
19. Rene, Grousset, 168.
20. Rene, Grousset, 169.
21. Rene, Grousset, 234.
22. Rene, Grousset, 237.
23. John Man, "Genghis Khan: Life, Death, and Resurrection", 6 Feb. 2007. Page 180.

Further reading

• M. Ismail Marcinkowski, Persian Historiography and Geography: Bertold Spuler on Major Works Produced in Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, India and Early Ottoman Turkey, with a foreword by Professor Clifford Edmund Bosworth, member of the British Academy, Singapore: Pustaka Nasional, 2003, ISBN 9971-77-488-7.

• Anushtegin dynasty
• Khwarazmian Empire
• 1231 disestablishments in Asia
• States and territories established in 1077
• Former empires in Asia
• 11th century in Iran
• 12th century in Iran
• 13th century in Iran
• Medieval Khorasan
• Dynasties of Central Asia
• Sunni dynasties