Ghurid dynasty
Ghurid Sultanate Shansabānī | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1148–1215 | |||||||
| Capital | Herat, Ghor, Ghazni, Lahore | ||||||
| Common languages | an Iranian language, perhaps Northeast Iranian or Middle Persian | ||||||
| Religion | Sunni Islam | ||||||
| Government | Sultanate | ||||||
| History | |||||||
• Established | 1148 | ||||||
• Disestablished | 1215 | ||||||
| |||||||
The Ghurids or Ghorids (Persian: سلسله غوریان; self-designation: Shansabānī) were a medieval (12th to 13th century) Muslim dynasty of Iranian origin in Khorasan[1] that was centered in Ghōr (now a province in Afghanistan). At its zenith, their empire stretched over a vast area that included the whole of modern Afghanistan, the eastern parts of Iran and the northern section of the Indian subcontinent, as far as Delhi.
Origins
The origins of the dynasty are obscure. According to legend, the Shansabānī family had ancestral lines to the Sassanian royal family who - led by Perōz II - fled with some hundred thousand of followers from Western Iran to Khorasan, following the Arabic conquest of Persia. It is also claimed by some that the inhabitants of Ghor were still Zoroastrians, isolated from all Arab-Islamic influence until the 11th century when they were eventually converted to Islam by the Samanid and Ghaznavid ghāzīs.
In the 19th century, some European scholars, such as Mountstuart Elphinstone, tended to classify them as a Pashtun tribe,[2][3][4] but this is generally rejected by modern scholarship, and, as explained by Morgenstierne in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, is for "various reasons very improbable".[5] Instead, the consensus in modern scholarship (incl. Morgenstierne, Bosworth, Dupree, Gibb, Ghirshman, Longworth Dames and others) holds that the dynasty was most likely of Tajik origin.[6][7][8] 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, perhaps hinting at a (Sassanian) Persian origin.[9]
Language
The language of the Ghurids is subject to some controversy. What is known with certainty is that it was considerably different from the New Persian literary language of the Ghaznavid court. Nevertheless, like the Samanids and Ghaznavids, the Ghurids were great patrons of the New Persian literature, poetry, and culture, and promoted these in their courts as their own. It´s possible they spoke originally the middle-Persian language or an eastern dialect of this language, such as Parthik-Palavi, very closely related with Choremsian and Sogdian dialect. That could be a reason why some experts categorize the language of the Ghurids as a southern sogdian dialect.
There is nothing to confirm the recent surmise (as claimed in the Paṭa Khazāna) that the Ghurids were Pashto-speaking[10], and there is no evidence that the inhabitants of Ghor were originally Pashto-speaking[6]. This adoption was the result of Pashtun nationalism that influenced Abdul Hai Habibi when he wrote his book Pata Khazāna, to create a deep root for Pashtuns in the modern state Afghanistan, since non-Pashtuns dominated historically the region today known as Afghanistan for many centuries without any tracks of Pashtuns before the 17th century.
History
Ghurids were bounded to Ghaznavids and Seljuks almost 150 years before 1148. Beginning in the mid-1100s, Ghor expressed its independence from the Ghaznavid Empire. In 1149 the Ghaznavid ruler Bahram Shāh poisoned a local Ghūrid leader, Quṭb ud-Dīn, who had taken refuge in the city of Ghazna after a family quarrel. In revenge, the Ghūrid chief ʿAlāʾ-ud-Dīn Ḥusayn sacked and burned the city of Ghazna and put the city into fire for seven days and seven nights. It earned him the title of Jahānsuz, meaning "the world burner".[11] The Ghaznavids retook the city with Seljuk help, but lost it to Oghuz Turk freebooters.[11]
In 1173, Shahabuddin Muhammad Ghori reconquered the city of Ghazna and assisted his brother Ghiyasuddin - to whom he was a loyal subordinate, - in his contest with Khwarezmid Empire for the lordship of Khorāsān. Shahabuddin Ghori captured Multan and Uch in 1175 and annexed the Ghaznavid principality of Lahore in 1186. After the death of his brother Ghiyas-ud-Din in 1202, he became the successor of his empire and ruled until his assassination in 1206 near Jhelum (in modern-day Pakistan). A confused struggle then ensued among the remaining Ghūrid leaders, and the Khwarezmids were able to take over the Ghūrids' empire in about 1215. Though the Ghūrids' empire was short-lived, Shahabuddin Ghori's conquests strengthened the foundations of Muslim rule in India. On his death, the importance of Ghazna and Ghur dissipated and they were replaced by Delhi as the Islamic capital for the Ghurid Sultans in India.[12]
The Ghurids were great patrons of Persian culture - language, identity, arts and literature were all of great importance to them, although many of the written works have been lost. They transferred the Khurasanian architecture of their native lands to India, several great examples of which can be seen in the Minars they built.
See also
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| History of Greater Iran |
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Notes
- ^ Kingdoms of South Asia - Afghanistan in Far East Kingdoms: Persia and the East
- ^ Elphinstone, Mountstuart. The History of India. Vol. 1. J. Murray, 1841. Web. 29 Apr. 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." p.598-599
- ^ A short history of India: and of the frontier states of Afghanistan, Nipal, and Burma, Wheeler, James Talboys, (LINK): "The next conqueror after Mahmud who made a name in India, was Muhammad Ghori, the Afghan."
- ^ Balfour, Edward. The Cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia, Commercial Industrial, and Scientific: Products of the Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal Kingdoms, Useful Arts and Manufactures. 3rd ed. Vol. 2. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1885. Web. 29 Apr. 2010. Link: "IZ-ud-DIN Husain, the founder of the Ghori dynaasty, was a native of Afghansitan. The origin of the house of Ghor has, however, been much discussed, - the prevailing opinion being that both they and their subjects were an Afghan race. " p.392
- ^ G. Morgenstierne (1999). "AFGHĀN". Encyclopaedia of Islam (CD-ROM Edition v. 1.0 ed.). Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV.
- ^ a b M. Longworth Dames, G. Morgenstierne, and R. Ghirshman (1999). "AFGHĀNISTĀN". Encyclopaedia of Islam (CD-ROM Edition v. 1.0 ed.). Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV.
{{cite encyclopedia}}: Text ""... there is no evidence for assuming that the inhabitants of Ghūr were originally Pashto-speaking (cf. Dames, in E I1). If were 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 ..."" ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Ghurids", C.E. Bosworth, (LINK): ". . . The Ghurids came from the Šansabānī family. The name of the eponym Šansab/Šanasb probably derives from the Middle Persian name Wišnasp (Justi, Namenbuch, p. 282). . . . The chiefs of Ḡūr only achieve firm historical mention in the early 5th/11th century with the Ghaznavid raids into their land, when Ḡūr was still a pagan enclave. 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. . . . The sultans were generous patrons of the Persian literary traditions of Khorasan, and latterly fulfilled a valuable role as transmitters of this heritage to the newly conquered lands of northern India, laying the foundations for the essentially Persian culture which was to prevail in Muslim India until the 19th 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 ..."
- ^ Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Ghurids", C.E. Bosworth, (LINK); with reference to Justi, "Namenbuch", p. 282
- ^ Encyclopaedia of Islam, "Ghurids", C.E. Bosworth, Online Edition, 2006: "... There is nothing to confirm the recent surmise that the Ghūids were Pashto-speaking [...] the Paṭa Khazāna “Treasury of secrets”, claims to include Pashto poetry from the Ghūid period, but the significance of this work has not yet been evaluated ..."
- ^ Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press 2002