Introduction

This chapter is an attempt to create a narrative of the history of Iran, ‘Iraq, and Syria, defined in their historical sense, from the establishment of Islam to the waning of the ʿAbbāsid power, roughly 600– 900 CE. The narrative, despite its regional focus, is set within a broader context of global history, highlighting issues of regional geopolitical formation that led to its emergence, indeed ascendance, as a world region in the early medieval period. While “contacts,” the most superficial of “world historical” tropes, are assumed and not emphasized, means of “connection” and mutual influence, as well as paths of integration, are indeed considered and emphasized throughout.

The period of 600– 900 is a crucial one for the history of West Asia. In a common periodization of history, “the end of late antiquity” comes at 602, the assassination of the Byzantine emperor, Maurice. Similarly, the rise of the Tulunids of Egypt, the Bagratunis of Armenia, and the Samanids of Khurasan at the end of this period in some sense ushers in the beginning of the Islamic Middle Ages and the end of the so-called “Golden Age of Islam.” Obviously, historical periodization works more as a tool of modern historians seeking to define specializations and zones of research and influence, and it reflects less the historical events per se. Be that as it may, the Byzantine-Sasanian Wars that preceded, and even occasioned, the Islamic conquests are as good as any event to start this narrative, and the aftermath of the crisis in Samarra and the disintegration of the ʿAbbāsid empire is an apt moment to end it. Within this period, the face of West Asia, already in transformation since the early sixth century, changed significantly. The first significant event, the unification of Syria with al-‘Iraq/ Asuristan, was what engendered the creation of the “heartland” of the Islamic empire and its cultural and political centre. The reorientation of West Asia in its entirety towards Baghdad was the direct consequence of this unity. The reorientation by itself brought peripheral populations and powers into contact, exchange, and competition, resulting in the instability of the late Umayyad period.

INTRODUCTION

The first encounter of the Sasanians with the east took place in the initial stages of the dynasty's foundations, during Ardashir's eastern campaigns, sometimes after his defeat of Artabanus IV (c. ad 224), the last major Arsacid authority (Daryaee 2009: 3–4; Grabowski 2011: 207–33). Ardashir probably took a northeastern route first (Alram 2007: 227–42), conquering the important town of Marw, which henceforth became the most secure Sasanian base of activities in the northeastern parts of their territories. It was after this success that Ardashir turned his attention further south and headed to the region of Sistan (MP Sīstān, from Sakistan, *Saka-stan, ‘the land of the Sakas’). Various members of the so-called Indo-Parthian dynasty (Fröhlich 2004) had ruled Sistan since the time of Gondophares in the first century ad. However, this Indo-Parthian ‘empire’ was effectively divided, following Gondophares’ own demise, into two parts, with different successors ruling either part and occasionally trying to control the whole domain, as indicated by their coinage. Sistan proper, the former satrapi of Drangiana and the neighbouring Arachosia (to emerge as Zabulistan in the later periods) and the most important western possession of the Indo-Parthian dynasty, eventually fell to a successor, and perhaps a usurper, named Sanabares. It is with the descendants of Sanabares in Sistan that Ardashir first had to compete over control of the eastern flank of his nascent empire.

THE ORIGINS OF THE SASANIANS IN PERSIS

Before describing the encounter between Ardashir and the Indo- Parthians, we must understand the origins of the Sasanians in Persis itself and the importance of the rule of the east in the formation of Ardashir's empire. The most common narratives of the foundation of the Sasanian dynasty provide a semi-legendary background for the Sasanian founder and often highlight certain parts of his career in order to suggest a divine providence for his conquests. This was, in reality, essentially a usurpation of the throne of his father and brother, and ultimately that of the local Persis authorities.

Oriental studies in general, and Iranian studies in particular, has been a stronghold of micro-specialists for much of its history. Scholars in the tradition of European ‘classics’, concentrating on primary sources and trained vigorously in ancient and modern languages and other methods of source analysis, scrutinise sources that are ‘recovered’ from the east, looking for details of the lives of the distant Orientals. This is much the same way that scholarship has long been conducted for European history itself, going back to what sources were available and trying to reconstruct how things might have been. In this approach, ‘history’ was something that emerged from the convergence of knowledge created by philologists, archaeologists, scholars of religion, numismatists, and other scholars concerned with ‘primary’ sources.

However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ‘history’ also emerged as an independent field, establishing its own methodology and approach to the past. This ‘new history’, quite apart from the idea of history as chronography and concern with events, has in a sense become the framework for most other means of producing ‘historical knowledge’. The devices used by this new history are varied and borrowed mostly from social sciences rather than ‘humanities’ – as much as the division is an artificial one mostly valid in the Anglophone world. This is an approach to the past that takes into consideration not only the evidence of the past – ‘the sources’ – but also the idea of the past, the ‘narrative’ which gives each of these sources a purpose and a place within a larger framework. The conflict between the two types of history, the two approaches, has never made for a very smooth result, but at least in the case of European history, it seems to have been accepted that a (new) historical approach is a valid form of inquiry, and it has in fact become the primary form of historical research in the ‘European’ context, defined broadly.

MEDIEVAL EAST IRAN AND ITS LATE ANTIQUE ROOTS

Around ad 1000, when Ferdowsi was composing his famous Shahnameh and narrating an idealised history of the kings of Iran, Tūs, his native city in the northeastern territories of Khurasan, seemed a natural place in which to undertake such task. It was in the heart of the Samanid lands, between Neishabur, Balkh, and Bukhara. Samanids, the masters of Transoxiana and much of the adjoining lands, were great patrons of Persian literature and all manners of learning, and presided over a brilliant period of cultural production that was to affect the rest of the history of the greater region. The first great Persian poet, Rudaki, was a retainer at their court, and great scholars of the Islamic world such as Avicenna or al-Biruni spent their early careers at the Samanid court. Bal‘ami, a Samanid minister, translated the great history of al-Tabari into Persian, and al-Tabari's famous Tafsīr was also translated into Persian at the Samanid court. At that moment in time, the Samanids embodied the concept of Iran, the Ērānšahr of the Sasanians, even more than their rivals in the west, the Buyids. Yet, 400 years before, Samanid Khurasan did not exist as a unit. Ferdowsi's native Tūs was a border town of the Sasanian Empire, and Bukhara was a rich merchant city of Sogdiana. Balkh, the ancestral homeland of the Samanids, was the dilapidated former capital of the Kushans and the Hephthalites. In ad 650, Sistan and Zabulistan, the centres of the newly emerging Ghaznavid power which succeeded the Samanids in the early eleventh century, were border regions ruled by little-known local chiefs whose names could not even be clearly comprehended by Muslim historians.

What had happened that allowed the Samanids and other ‘Khurasani’ powers that followed them to turn this peripheral region into a centre? What turned the ‘cleavage’ of Central Asia into the important region of Khurasan, a cradle of the new Persianate civilisation and the cultural world of Eastern Iran? The fact is, not many knew at the time, and not many more have cared to know ever since.

Edinburgh Studies in Ancient Persia focuses on the world of ancient Persia (pre-Islamic Iran) and its reception. Academic interest with and fascination in ancient Persia have burgeoned in recent decades and research on Persian history and culture is now routinely filtered into studies of the Greek and Roman worlds; biblical scholarship too is now more keenly aware of Persian-period history than ever before; while, most importantly, the study of the history, cultures, languages, and societies of ancient Iran is now a well-established discipline in its own right.

Persia was, after all, at the centre of ancient world civilisations. This series explores that centrality throughout several successive ‘Persian empires’: the Achaemenid dynasty (founded c. 550 BCE) saw Persia rise to its highest level of political and cultural influence, as the Great Kings of Iran fought for, and maintained, an empire which stretched from India to Libya and from Macedonia to Ethiopia. The art and architecture of the period both reflect the diversity of the empire and proclaim a single centrally constructed theme: a harmonious world-order brought about by a benevolent and beneficent king. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Persian Empire fragmented but maintained some of its infrastructures and ideologies in the new kingdoms established by Alexander's successors, in particular the Seleucid dynasts who occupied the territories of western Iran, Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Asia Minor. But even as Greek influence extended into the former territories of the Achaemenid realm, at the heart of Iran a family of nobles, the Parthian dynasty, rose to threaten the growing imperial power of Rome. Finally, the mighty Sasanian dynasty ruled Iran and much of the Middle East from the second century CE onwards, proving to be a powerful foe to Late Imperial Rome and Byzantium. The rise of Islam, a new religion in Arabia, brought a sudden end to the Sasanian dynasty in the mid-600s CE.

The present volume leaves the scene of East Iran around the moment that Muhammad Abdulhayy Shaban's book on the Abbasid Revolution starts, sometime in the first half of the eighth century ad. In that sense, it also hopes to be a complement, and a tribute, to that great scholar and his work. The region in which the present book ends, and whence Shaban's Abbasid Revolutionaries emerge, is called Khurasan. It is a region that is developing a coherent identity out of the ancient regions of Bactria, Arachosia, Gandhara, and Parthia, and is slowly integrating Sogdiana, its most effective centre. Khurasan eventually rose as a centre in its own right, dominating the eastern regions of the Islamic world up to the rise of the Safavids in 1501. Even after the physical uprooting of the Timurid court from its Khurasani base in Herat, the influence of East Iran continues to shine through the culture of Mughal India, the political inheritor of Tamerlane and his empire.

During the 800, or perhaps even 1,000, years of East Iranian dominance, the region also emerged as a centre of culture for most of the Iranian world. Most of what is attributed to the ‘medieval’ culture of Iran, invariably considered the ‘Persianate world’ or something similar, is owed to Khurasan and the political powers that controlled it. Even the development of ‘Persian’ as the lingua franca of this Persianate world is due more to East Iranian/Khurasani efforts than those of its ‘homeland’ of Persis, or the Mesopotamia of the Middle-Persian-speaking Sasanians. The Samanids, emerging from Bactria and taking power in Sogdiana, chose Persian, the ‘Second Language of Islam’ and the administrative language of Bukhara, as their official language. It was under their rule that al-Tabari's great history and his Quranic Tafsīr were translated into Persian. It was under their patronage that Persian literature was also allowed to develop. The legacy of Samanid patronage of Persian art and letters, in a distinctily East Iranian garb named Khurasani, was continued by all their successors, including the Turkic Ghaznavids and the Seljuks.

INTRODUCTION

The Kushan Empire was the most noteworthy power that came to existence in East Iran in the pre-Islamic period. Through their conquest of Tokharistan and eventual crossing of the Hindu Kush and invasion of northern India, the Kushans established a pattern that was followed by almost all their successors, from the Kidarites to the Alkhans, Turks, and early Islamic powers. By adopting the local cultural offerings of their territories, from the Bactrian language to Buddhism, and through engendering new ideas such as their gold coinage, they for the first time unified both sides of the Hindu Kush and created a coherent empire. Their influence lasted for many centuries after their demise, and their empire became a blueprint for many succeeding states that continually strove to control both north and south sides of the Hindu Kush, even down to the Ghaznavid period. The Kushan power, and their creation and dominance of East Iran, made them the greatest challenge to the Sasanians, and possibly their greatest influence as well.

THE KUSHAN EMPIRE IN EAST IRAN

In his description of the career of Ardashir I, al-Tabari mentions that after the conquest of Sistan and Khurasan up to Khwarazm, the Sasanian founder received envoys from the kings of ‘the Kūshan, of Tūrān, and of Makrān’ (al-Tabari I.820). Ardashir's son, Shapur I, in his famous inscription at Ka‘aba-īaZardušt (ŠKZ) also claims to be the master of ‘Kushanshahr, up to Pushkabur’, the region of modern Peshawar in ancient Gandhara and the traditional stronghold of powers which controlled northwestern India. Most scholars now would agree that while Shapur's claim might be just an exaggeration, al-Tabari's suggestion is a case of historical anachronism and a factual impossibility.

But what was Kushanshahr and who were the Kushans, about the control of whose lands Shapur boasted and the tribute of whose king was of such importance? In the usual narratives of Iranian history, whether traditional or modern, Kushans do not feature significantly, if indeed at all. The name is nearly unknown to Islamic historians, who appear to have only a vague idea of the Kushans’ identity and possibly only knew of the term as a geographical designation rather than a historic dynasty.

INTRODUCTION

The fall of the Kushano-Sasanians probably came as the result of nomadic invasions from the steppe and the imperial Sasanian response to this invasion. Characterised by the Chinese sources as an invasion of the Xiongnu, these nomads were called the Chionites by the Byzantine sources, possibly under the influence of Middle Persian Xyoan. Upon conquering Tokharistan from the Kushano- Sasanians, these Iranian Huns – as scholars call them – fought against and eventually allied themselves with the Sasanians. Their political power, taking advantage of the power vacuum left after the demise of the Kushano-Sasanians, was manifested in the foundation of the Kidarite Kingdom. Following the pattern established by the Kushans, these Kidarites also passed the Hindu Kush and conquered Gandhara. Like the Kushans, and the Kushano-Sasanians, they considered themselves to be the kings of the Kushan and issued coins that showed Kushan and Sasanian influences. Their century or so of power, from the late fourth to late fifth centuries, was a continuation of the order established by the Kushans.

ARRIVAL OF THE CHIONITES

The general invasion of nomadic tribes that came to overwhelm East Iran starting in the fourth century is attributed to tribal confederations originating from the Central Asian steppe. As usual, conflicting evidence about their origin, as well as their tribal designations, is given by the Chinese and non-Chinese sources. A prominent question concerns the circumstances of the invasion of East Iran by these tribes – the Chionites, Kidarites, Alkhans, and Hephthalites. Scholarly opinion differs as whether we are to consider them part of the same wave of invasions or whether the rise of each tribe to political power should be considered a new wave of movement from the steppe to Sogdiana and Tokharistan. From Chinese sources, it appears that different waves of invaders came via the same route, crossing the Syr Darya into Transoxiana, then invading Bactria/Tokharistan, and eventually crossing the Hindu Kush into the Kabul Valley and ultimately Gandhara.

INTRODUCTION

The sixth century proved to be transformative for all the political and social groups involved in the history of East Iran. The Hephthalite defeat of Sasanian Iran in the late fifth century and the loss of the eastern territories forced the Sasanians to undergo a major restructuring of their empire. This was reflected in historical sources as the reforms of Khosrow I and the rebellion of Mazdak, in fact betraying political, social, and religious changes. This successful restructuring, including the creation of autonomous military zones, rejuvenated the Sasanians, and in ad 560 allowed them to crush the Hephthalites with the help of the Western Turk Empire. The power vaccum left in the southern Hindu Kush after the deafeat of Pērōz in ad 484 had allowed for the rise of an independent dynasy in Kabulistan and Zabulistan, known as the Nēzak. The Nēzak Shahs, despite never being as hegemonic as the Kidarites, Alkhans, or Hephthalites, in fact at one point dividing their territories between the two branches of Kabul and Zabul, did manage to create local cohesion and establish an influential coin style. This local cohesion was highly useful in creating a resistance to the Muslim invasions of the mid-seventh century, with widespread political and culture repercussions, including a pivotal role in forming early Islamic Persianate culture.

The Western Turk, however, having left Tokharistan in the hands of a Yabghu of Tokharistan, benefitted greatly from the integration of the robust Sogdian society into their ranks. While the Turk–Sogdian milieu created the golden age of Sogdiana, in Tokharistan, traditionally among the stronger and more sophisticated of the societies of East Iran, experienced a period of economic decay, demonstrated in a demographic decline and the abandonment of urban sites. This was indeed a continuation of the situation from the Kidarite and the Hephthalite periods, where archaeological records show the decline of the population in traditional urban settings. Tokharistan, however, did not leave the historical scene, as new research and findings show.

INTRODUCTION

The fame of the Hephthalites in the history of Central Asia is quite disproportionate to what we actually know about them from historical records. The debate on whether they are to be considered a separate entity from the Alkhans, as promoted by numismatists, is among the most important issues surrounding the identity of the Hephthalites. On the other hand, their reputation as the mighty enemies of the Sasanian King of Kings Pērōz and the benefactors of his son Kavad is already quite notorious – and indeed forms the basis of our familiarity with them. In contrast, we know very little about them and what they did prior to their control of Tokharistan/Bactria, and also very little about the period of their power in the region and their fate after their defeat in ad 560. The period of their ascendance in Tokharistan and Transoxiana between ad 470 and 560 – when we hear of them in the context of their interactions with the Sasanians – has been dubbed the period of the Imperial Hephthalites (Grenet 2002b: 209). Following their defeat at the hands of the joint Sasanian–Western Turk confederacy, their remaining ‘principalities’ form autonomous small authorities, which survived under Sasanian and Western Turk rule.

HEPHTHALITES AND SASANIANS

In textual sources, the Hephthalites are first mentioned in the context of their interaction with the Sasanians. So it seems appropriate to provide a summary of this encounter before detailing what else can be said about the Hephthalites themselves outside the context of their relations with their western neighbours. Following the defeat of the Kidarites in 466, the Hephthalite confederacy appears to have set about expanding its power over the rest of Tokharistan from an eastern base, possibly in the Badakhshan region. The Hephthalite control of Tokharistan must have been complete by 260 of the Bactrian Era (260 + 223: ad 483)002C1 since this is the time when we first hear of a Hephthalite Tax being imposed on the region where the Bactrian Documents were written, namely the area of Rō b and Madr in the mountainous region to the north of Bamiyan and in southern Tokharistan (Sims-Williams 1997c; 2002).

INTRODUCTION

‘Kushano-Sasanian’ is the name given by scholars to a dynasty of rulers who followed the Kushans in the area of Tokharistan, and eventually in Kabulistan and Gandhara. Its Sasanian connection is suggested through its use of imperial Sasanian names such as Ardashir, Wahram, and Pērōz, and some Sasanian titulature such as ‘Great Kushan King’. In one case, the name Pērōz is used among the Kushano-Sasanians even before a Sasanian emperor uses it, and the title of kay was probably used by the Kushano- Sasanians before its adoption by the Sasanians under Yazdgerd II (ad 438–57). The Kushano-Sasanians called themselves by the name Kushanshah and its Bactrian equivalent, showing both continuity with the Kushan dynasty and also possibly the beginning of a geographical designation of the area of their control. As a dynasty, they appear to have been a Sasanian cadet branch, possibly descendants of one of the Sasanian Kings of Kings, who founded an autonomous, and perhaps independent, dynasty ruling over the former Kushan territories in Bactria/Tokharistan. The history of the Kushano-Sasanians is known less through written sources, which are quite scarce, and more through material culture. What can be said, on the other hand, is that despite their modern appellation and the assumptions behind it, we find little ground for classifying them as governors, or ‘local viceroys’, of the Sasanians over the Kushan territories, alongside other such viceroys as the Mešanšah or the Sakanšah. The Kushano-Sasanians, in many senses, appear too significant to have been simply Sasanian governors, and may well reflect an early Sasanian continuation of the Arsacid imperial setting, acting as an allied, but autonomous, cadet branch of the Sasanian royal house.

SASANIANS IN TOKHARISTAN

The beginning of the Sasanian presence in Bactria/Tokharistan and the early foundations of a Sasanian dynasty in the region are best observed through the famous inscription of Shapur I.

INTRODUCTION

Following the division of the territories of the Hephthalites between the Turks and the Sasanians, the region to the south of the Oxus, Tokharistan, seems to have fallen to the Sasanians (Harmatta 1999: 359–60). However, this does not seem to be a period of prosperity in this area. Xuanzang describes Balkh, the ancient capital of the region, as follows: ‘This city, though well [strongly] fortified, is thinly populated’ (quoted in Litvinsky 1999: 152), although it did possess the important Buddhist monastery of Nau-bihar (Litvinsky and Safi 1999: 182). Bactria, ‘the Land of a Thousand Cities’ (Leriche 2007), was in decline, and lost most of its importance to Kapis´a/Gandhara (Harmatta 1999: 362), and probably to Sogdiana (see de la Vaissière 2005b: 199ff.). Archaeological excavations barely show a town in the Termez regions between the fifth and seventh centuries, and Chaghanian, the important Hephthalite territory, could boast only a very limited area (Litvinsky 1999: 152–3).

Sasanian control of the former Hephthalite imperial domains appears to have lasted only a few decades following the Battle of Gol-Zarriūn and the destruction of the Hephthalite Empire in ad 560. The most widely discovered coins in the region are the issues of Hormizd IV (579–90) and Wahram VI (591–2). Coins of year 11 of Hormizd IV – that is, his final year – appear to have been the most imitated. Hormizd himself issued coins in Khulm (mint signature hlm), as well as in Samarkand (sml) in his years 3–5 (ad 582–4) and in Čāč/Šā š (č’č) in his year 6, ad 585 (Vondrovec 2014: 525). This must have been the northernmost extent of Sasanian power, extending beyond the Syr Darya/Jaxartes.

Among all the Sasanian rulers, it is Wahram VI whose associations and physical presence in this region and in the context of his relations with the Western Turks we know best. The Samanid historian and vizier Abu-Ali Bal‘ami presents a complete résumé of the career of Wahram VI in his partial translation of al-Tabari's universal history (Bal‘ami 1386: 938–49).

INTRODUCTION

Alkhan is the name given to a dynasty of ‘Hunnic’ rulers of the southern Hindu Kush who followed the Kidarites in this region. This name is taken from the Bactrian legends of their coins and most likely designates a tribal or dynastic identity. These rulers, originating from the northern Hindu Kush region, initially occupied the Kabul Valley and then Gandhara, following the pattern set by the Kushans and followed by the Kidarites. Their further conquests took them eastward to Kashmir and central India, probably as far as Malwa, where they were stopped by local Indian dynasts. Their distinctive coin style distinguished them immediately from other Hunnic authorities and is the basis of the mostly numismatic convention of separating them from the Hephthalites. On the other hand, in their initial stages, they may have been closely related to both the Hephthalites and the Kidarites, indeed issuing coins with the latter. Their rule in northern India left an important memory in Hindu literature, particularly the misrule of one of their most significant kings, Mihirakula. While never really showing a strong presence in Bactria/Tokharistan, Alkhan rule in the Kabul region and Gandhara was fundamental in the formation of a coherent region in the southern Hindu Kush and is crucial in the formation of the units of Kabulestan and Zabulestan, both important regions in the history of East Iran. The Alkhans’ artistic production, including their iconography, was remembered for a long time and influenced painting styles as far north as Panjikent (Marshak 2002). Despite the near-silence of historical sources about them, the Alkhans were an important political and cultural force in East Iran, and we should assign many of the historical events previously attributed to the ‘Hephthalites’ to them.

THE IDENTITY OF THE ALKHANS

The quest to recognise the Alkhans as a separate entity has been a long and arduous one. Traditionally, most historians have considered them part of the Hephthalites, with even some numismatists taking the same view.