Khurasan before the Mongols

Khurasan was governed by the Khwārazm-Shāhs, an ancient regnal title adopted by the sovereign of Khwārazm—the Achaemenid satrapy of Khorezmia: Central Asian lands east of the Caspian. Since the Black Sands (Qara-Qum) desert occupies space between the Caspian Sea and the Oxus River (Amū Daryā, Jayhūn), and the Red Sands (Qizil-Qum) desert does the same between the Aral Sea and Jaxartes River (Syr Daryā, Sayhūn), settlements tended to be located along the banks of the Oxus and Jaxartes.

Khwārazm-Shāhs acquired territories from the fragmented empire of the Great Seljuqs of Persia (r. 431–552/1040–1157) and the Ghurids—the Shansabānī dynasty from the highlands of eastern Persia (r. from before c. 401/1011 to c. 610/1213). They wrested Transoxiana from the Qara Khitai/Xi Liao (r.c. 1141–1218), a dynasty straddling China and the Islamic world. The Khwārazm-Shāh and Chingiz Khan had, in effect, divided the territories of the Qara Khitai between themselves. The Khwārazm-Shāh’s domains at the cusp of the 615/1218 Mongol invasions were extensive and wealthy, and linguistically and ethnically heterogeneous. His realm included Bukhara and Samarqand, and Balkh, Herat, Marw, and Nishapur in Khurasan.

Sultan ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn (Abū al-Fatḥ) Muḥammad (r. 596–617/1200–21), the penultimate Khwārazm-Shāh, incurred the wrath of Chingiz Khan (d. 1227) through gross provocations. In 615/1218, a merchant caravan from Mongolia to the “Silk Road” oasis town of Utrār (east of the Jaxartes, 195 km/121 miles northwest of Tashkent), was plundered and the merchants massacred by a Khorezmian governor. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn’s culpability is uncertain. Rather than apologizing to Chingiz Khan and executing his subordinate, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn exacerbated the crisis by executing a Mongol ambassador, and shaving the beards of two ambassadors to humiliate them, thereby affronting Chingiz Khan. The breach of the steppe tradition of the inviolability of envoys terminated Chingiz’s quest for a diplomatic solution. He had shown remarkable restraint, but was pushed into war by ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khwārazm-Shāh.

The Mongol Irruptions

Chingiz Khan mobilized his armies in 615/1218. After consolidating his control in Mongolia, from c. 1205 he had followed the nomadic practice of attacking Chinese states.

The Fading Ilkhanate and the Kartids

The Kartid kingdom bequeathed by Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kart to his son and heir, Shams al-Dīn Kart (III) (r.c. 729–30/1329–30), was stable, prosperous, and encompassed (more or less) the lands itemized in Möngke’s yarlīgh of 649/1251. Shams al-Dīn had been appointed qāʾīm-i maqām (locum tenens) by his father during sundry absences. He was the anointed heir despite his alcoholism. Ghiyāth al-Dīn had tried to curtail the crown prince’s alcoholism, but once the father died, his drinking spun out of control. He died of “ill-health,” surely, alcohol abuse. During his fleeting reign, security slipped. His successor was Ghiyāth al-Dīn’s second son, Ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad (r.c. 730–32/1330–32). He was of artistic bent and averse to governing. Ghurid amirs ran roughshod over him and ultimately assassinated him inside Herat’s citadel.

The next successor was Ghiyāth al-Dīn’s third son, Muʿizz al-Dīn. He was instated by Ghurid power brokers. He secured for himself the customary robe of honor and diploma from sultan Abū Saʿīd. The youthful malik worked diligently and diplomatically to pull the support of the royal retinue and Kartid army’s diverse constituents to his person—namely, the army’s non-Ghurid elements (Herati, Baluch, Khalaj, Sijzī, Pashtun, Nikudari, Mongol)—to balance putative Ghurid opposition. He quelled the civil unrest that had gripped Herat and its environs consequent to the rebellion of Ghurid units and regicide of his brother in 732/1332. He co-opted ulama to help impose a sense of direction and normalcy within the populace, by imposing, for instance, the Islamic duty “to promote the good and forbid the reprehensible” (al-amr biʾl maʿrūf waʾl-nahy ʿan al-munkar), through the hand of Shaykh al-Islam Niẓām al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Mābīzhān-Ābādī (Khwāfī) (d. 738/1337f.).

The fraying of the Kartid state was not entirely the result of ineffectual leadership by Shams al-Dīn (III) or Ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad Kart. The Ilkhanate had been disintegrating in the last years of sultan Abū Saʿīd’s reign. This impacted upon the Kartid state at a critical juncture: the phase bracketed by the death of Ghiyāth al-Dīn and accession of Muʿizz al-Dīn.

Khurasan and Herat

Geography and Topography

Iran-zamin, ‘the land of Iran,’ means more than a place of habitation and extends beyond the present political entity.” For the multifarious peoples of Persia, this is the area where they “have maintained their special way of life through centuries of invasion, social change, and political turmoil. [It] is the birthplace and home of an unique Iranian culture—the product of an ancient relationship between diverse peoples and their homeland.” An integral geo-graphical, political, cultural, and economic constituent of Iran-zamin is the vast geographical expanse called Khurasan.

Geographical Khurasan is a long and narrow tract—somewhat like a trapezoid (the northern and southern limits are nearly parallel)—whose ill-defined boundaries stretch from the southeastern littoral of the Caspian Sea to the Hindu Kush. The limits of political-cultural Khurasan are nebulous, but generally admitted to includ e territories influenced by Persian culture: parcels in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. The tract is bounded in the north by the River Oxus (Amū Darya, Jayhūn) and the Black Sands (Qara-Qum) desert; in the southwest/south by two salt deserts: Dasht-i Kawīr and Dasht-i Lūt. Quhistān, Sistān, Bamiyān, and Ghūr are at Khurasan’s southwestern/southern limits; Qandahar and Ghazni, the southeast. Khurasan’s forbidding topographical features were eloquently described by Edmund Bosworth:

The land is ostensibly inhospitable; however, water originating in mountains, and held in underground water basins, is plentiful. Three millennia ago, the ingenious Iranian mind conceived a scientific marvel, the kārīz, which transports water from subterranean reservoirs to thirsty farmers and farmlands. It is costly and labor-intensive to excavate a kārīz, more so the farther the mother-well (chāh-mādar) is from the outlet. A kārīz requires frequent maintenance to prevent silting/collapse.

It was inevitable that once Chingiz Khan’s armies crossed the Oxus into Persia that the Mongols would eventually have to administer the land. Charles Tilly discerned:

The obligations of administering an ancient sedentary civilization such as Persia’s would have distracted the Mongols from the pursuit of portable wealth. Settling could have been perceived as sedentarization, and antithetical to steppe ethos. Pillaging and returning to Inner Asia to enjoy the social, political, and economic fruits of expeditions were possibly preferable to settling and ruling. An alternative to settling and governing is (1) to deport to Inner Asia certain captives of economic or social value (craftsmen, artisans, women, etc.); and (2) to slaughter the remaining population. This calculus, conceivably, undergirded the mass deportations and exterminations perpetrated by the Mongols in Persia.

The roving bandit/stationary bandit thesis as propounded in Chapter Three should be qualified for the Mongol circumstances. In its early years, Chingiz Khan’s polity “was in its essence a booty distribution system.” After “endemic civil war,” peace came to the steppe; therefore, “the only permissible objects of plunder lay beyond the confines of Mongolia,” its sedentary neighbors. Mongols, with conquests near home (bits of North China, Qara Khitai, and such), and Chingiz Khan’s establishment of the structures of law and administration for his nascent polity, had become acquainted with the instruments of administration. Employment of Chinese and Persian bureaucrats in conquered lands would become the norm. Mongols acquired Persia in unplanned circumstances: Chingiz Khan was compelled to conquer the Khwārazm-Shāh’s realm sooner than he would have wanted to because of the Utrār massacre. He died in 1227 without leaving a plan for Persia, which was considered joint imperial property; not part of a patrimony or princely appanage. “Joint ‘satellite’ administration” became the practice.

In 630/1232f., Ögödei (r. 1229–41) appointed Chin-Temür (d. 633/1235f.) as the governor of Khurasan, in part due to prevailing anarchy.

It is imprudent to venture into the winding alleys of Karl Wittfogel’s theses on hydraulic and hydro-agricultural societies, especially since he did not examine Persia; but a comment on bureaucracy and centralized control of water is unavoidable. There is no evidence the Mongol Empire, Ilkhanids or Kartids created a bureaucracy—a water authority (dīwān-i āb)—to manage Herat’s hydrological network. Kartids occasionally engaged in excavating canals (Jūy-i Naw), constructing dams (Band-i Salūmad), cisterns (Ḥawż-yi Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kart), and water-control boxes (Naṭarah-i Malik), but could not offer sustained financing. Bureaucracies and large-scale infrastructure projects demand cash, which Kartids infrequently possessed.

Ilkhanids could not afford to throw money at infrastructure projects either. The policy established by Ghāzān and Rashīd al-Dīn was to seminally change the fiscal and legal environment that had deterred potential investors. They aimed to foster a climate where individual and institutional investors had incentives to reclaim fallow lands and restore derelict hydrological assets. Il-Khan and vizier were appealing to economic self-interests of investors. The pair transformed the immeasurable uncertainties that had deterred potential investors into measurable uncertainties (that is, manageable risks). Fiscal-legal reforms eliminated by fiat all legal claims over thirty years, and nullified ancient property deeds. The occupiers of farmlands and pastures, and possessors of watermills, kārīzs, and jūys in Herat and its purlieus, irrespective of whether their tenancy was legal or illegal, no longer feared eviction or loss of capital improvements to farms and hydrological assets. State and private lands were declared fallow by fiat and available for cultivation, which permitted institutional and individual investors with political networks to acquire the best lands and hydrological properties.

Leaders of Islamic institutions will have taken advantage of Ilkhanid fiscal and legal reforms to secure for their institutions—and for themselves— prime real estate and hydrological assets. Moreover, institutions would have received farmlands, aqueducts, watermills, income-producing properties (rent-paying tenants; shops in the bazaars) and cash as waqf. Surplus cash is frequently invested in agricultural and hydrological projects. Islamic institutions—more than Kartid policies and officials—were responsible (by my estimation) for the revivification of agriculture in Kartid Herat.

Herat lay prostrate before the Mongol corps that had crossed the Oxus into Persia. Inhabitants of Herat and its environs had more than an inkling of the horrors that awaited them: the Mongols’ reputation for barbarism, rapine, enslavement, and mass murder had preceded their vanguards. Indeed, Mongols relied on tales of horror to spur capitulations. Balkh, Bukhara, Marw, Nishapur, and Samarqand lay ravaged. Herat was besieged (twice) and suffered terribly. Herat remained desolated for years (Chapter One).

Immediate successors of Chingiz Khan took steps to revitalize Herat (Chapter Two). But Herat was a prize in Chinggisid internecine struggles for supremacy, with factions vying for influence. Möngke created the Kart dynasty to advance the Mongol Empire’s aspirations for order and administration in Khurasan. Shams al-Dīn Kart’s stewardship was undermined by the political machinations of Chinggisid factions; and his absences from Herat campaigning against the Ilkhanate’s enemies, including the Golden Horde.

Shams al-Dīn Kart was assigned vast tracts in Möngke’s patent, but had to negotiate and fashion alliances with local lords in those region. If they failed to become his bondsman (sgl. banda; pl. bandagān), he fought them. His spent years battling recalcitrant local lords in Khurasan, Afghānistān, and Sīstān, and the Golden Horde; but left to his heirs a rudimentary state bound together by a mosaic of bandagān.

Ilkhanid Land Reforms

It behoves us to recognize the influence of Rashīd al-Dīn (d. 718/1318), an erudite and perspicacious Persian, in the crafting of Ilkhanid agricultural reforms. Between 1295 and 1312, Rashīd al-Dīn was in dialogue with a Mongolian amir, Bolad Chʾeng-Hsiang (Pūlād Chīnksānk; d. 1313), who had served Qubilai Qaʾan (d. 1294) and helped to reform the Yüan government. Bolad became the vizier’s interlocutor on scientific knowledge from China and India. A subject on which Bolad and Rashīd al-Dīn collaborated was agronomy. Rashīd al-Dīn subsequently compiled an agronomical treatise.

“Revitalization of fallow lands” (iḥyāʾ al-mawāt) became a pillar of Ilkhanid policy. Although Rashīd al-Dīn gives credit for the fiscal-legal reforms to Ghāzān, the reforms vis-à-vis hydrology and agronomy, agricultural and land taxes, will have originated with the Ilkhanate’s Persian bureaucrats. They will have impressed on the Il-Khan the decrepit state of hydrological systems; and the indispensability to state and society (namely, the Ilkhanid fisc) of improving agricultural production and stimulating tax inflows. The Ilkhanid camp was divided: Mongol elements wanted to continue with their pursuit of violent theft; while other elements recognized the logic of gentle theft over the long term. Ghāzān embodied the latter class. He supported the Persian bureaucrats.

Rashīd al-Dīn writes, “there has never been a realm more devastated than this one was recently, particularly places visited by the Mongol army.” Uncertainties arising from arbitrary and capricious laws, regulations, and imposts were thwarting new investments in agriculture and hydrology: “If anyone wants to make improvements, he doesn’t even begin for fear that it is state property or somebody’s property […]” and could be confiscated after “great expenses” were paid by him. A reasonable fear among potential investors was that a Mongol amir or local warlord, observing the success of a project funded by an investor, would swoop down and seize the asset, or extort some portion of the project’s incomes. Hence the twinned imperatives of establishing security and enforcing property rights.

The Economic Theory

“Property,” Adam Smith wrote, is “the grand fund of all dispute”:

This period of Ilkhanid-Kartid control at Herat began inauspiciously. It ended with the Ilkhanate nearing dissolution; the Kartid state politically and financially ascendant; and the economy of Herat flourishing.

Political, social, and economic conditions in Khurasan (generally), and in Herat (specifically), were impacted by events beyond Kartid control: Jochid-Toluid, Chaghataid-Toluid, Chaghataid-Ögödeid, and Chaghataid-Jochid hostilities on Persia’s frontiers. The Ilkhanid center (Tabriz) and the Mongol imperial center (Qaraqorum) were not focused on Herat. The Chaghataid-Ögödeid alliance under Qaidu challenged Qubilai Qaʾan in Mongolia and Uighuristan in 1268, 1275, 1286, and 1290. The Ilkhanate was pressured by the Golden Horde in the northwest in 1288 and 1290. The Golden Horde, under the leadership of Berke Khan (r. 1257–66), had allied with the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (r. 1250–1517). Mamluks and Ilkhanids battled in the west, from 1260, until a peace accord was instituted in 1323. Shaken loose in the Ilkhanid-Jochid, Ilkhanid-Ögödeid, and Ilkhanid-Chaghataid struggles were consortia that became principal actors in Khurasan: (1) Jawni-Qurban, (2) Nikudaris, (3) Qaraunas.

Conflict Ecosystem is a concept that emerged with the Pentagon’s misadventures in the Middle East. It may prove helpful toward visualizing the shifting complex of competing or cooperating elements that constitute a specific conflict. Elements within this ecosystem included the Jawni-Qurban, Nikudaris, and Qaraunas (Chapter Three).

The Roving Bandit v. Stationary Bandit concept, about how predators settle and establish nascent polities that become the kernel of government, is also articulated in Chapter Three.

The administration of Herat and its surroundings was in disarray with the death of the first Kartid. Shams al-Dīn’s son, Rukn al-Dīn (r. 677–705/1278–1305), was installed by Abāqā as successor. He took the regnal name, Shams al-Dīn Kihīn (“the Younger”). He was an absent king who preferred the safety of the Kartids’ Ghurid homestead, Fort Khaysār, to administering his domains from Herat (Chapter Three).

Fakhr al-Dīn Kart was installed at Herat by Nawrūz (d. 696/1297), a Mongol amir who became instrumental in the accession of Il-Khan Maḥmūd Ghāzān. The Nawruzid-Kartid union, which had fused two headstrong men, was dissolved (Chapters Three and Four).

The Ephemeral Sultanate at Herat

Muʿizz al-Dīn’s subsequent political choices, fueled by hubris, belied the strength and prudence reflected by the above episode, and precipitated his temporary deposition from office and social-political upheaval within and without Herat.

Muʿizz al-Dīn’s woes stemmed from his violation of Chinggisid diplomatic protocols. The political arrangement under which the Kartids had ruled until the death of Abū Saʿīd Bahādur Khān in 736/1335 was as banda of the īlkhān; and the Il-Khan had the Grand Qaʾan as his liege-lord. (The Qaʾan’s status in the later years of the Mongol Empire with respect to the Il-Khan was nearer to nominal than actual.) Hence the installation of Ṭaghā-Temür, who acknowledged submission to the Grand Qaʾan, Toghan-Temür (r. 1332–70). Protocols were publicly respected. Coinage (sikka), and the announcement of the ruler’s name in the Friday sermon (khuṭba), are two symbols of legitimacy. The Sarbadars found it expedient to publicly express fealty to Ṭaghā-Temür by striking coins in his name.

Independence by Sikka

Not so Muʿizz al-Dīn Kart. He reached for the mantle of sulṭān, and adapted for his circumstances the symbolic language found in Islamic and Ilkhanid coins. He portrayed himself as the leader of (Sunni) Muslims, and “the Strengthener of the [True] Faith” (muʿizz al-dīn). He minted coins, probably as early as 749/1348f., one year before his independence proclamation, in which he identified himself as sultan. Two coins from the independence period are available, both minted at Herat.

Figure 6.1 shows no date, but the inscription indicates that the coin, a “half-tanga,” was “minted in the times (ayyām) of the government of the exalted sulṭān, the watchful king (mālik riqāb) of the peoples (al-umam), [and] the Strengthener (muʿizz) of the Truth and the Faith (al-ḥaqq wa al-dīn). May God perpetuate his kingdom!”

Figure 6.2, a dīnār, bears the same inscription, but has a date, partially effaced, of “74x.” Muʿizz al-Dīn’s choice of inscription followed Ilkhanid patterns (namely, al-sulṭān al-aʿẓam and khallad Allāh mulkahu), especially Abū Saʿīd’s inscriptions. The obverse has the Muslim profession of faith (kalima), a common feature.

The table is derived primarily but not exclusively from Terry Allen’s Catalogue (1981). The column “Cat. No.” refers to Allen’s catalogue numbers; and since his sources are in the corresponding entry in Catalogue, they are not reproduced. Only supplemental references are supplied. Allen’s Timurid Herat (1983) should be read alongside Catalogue for his amendations and clarifications.

In addition to Kartid projects for which evidence exists, tentative sponsorships are included and identified by the letter “T”; for example, Madrasa-yi ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿUmar Marghānī is listed because if it had survived the Mongol attacks, it would have been patronized by the Kartids: Marghānī was an ancestor of Rukn al-Dīn Marghanī (d. 643/1245), the castellan of Khaysār. Madrasa-yi Niẓāmiyya was sponsored by Seljuq vizier, Niẓām al-Mulk (d. 485/1092). It survived into the Timurid era and was refurbished by ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī (d. 906/1501). It was probably not neglected in the Kartid era.

The table is not dispositive or exhaustive.