Khwarazm

Khwarezmia was a state centred on the Amu Darya river delta of the former Aral Sea, in modern Uzbekistan, extending across the Ust-Urt plateau and possibly as far west as the eastern shores of the northern Caspian Sea. To the south it bordered Khorasan, to the north the kingdom of Alans, to the southeast Kangju and Sogdian Transoxiana, and on the northeast with the Huns of Transiaxartesia. Its capitals were Urgench and, from the 17th century on, Khiva when Khwarezmia became known as the Khanate of Khiva. Khwarezmia has been known also as Khwarezm, Khwarizm, Khwarazm, Khorezm, Khoresm, Khorasam, Chorezm, or Chorasmia. In Uzbek it is Xorazm, in Russian, Хорезм (Xorezm), in Persian, خوارزم (Khwārazm), and in Arabic, خوارزم (Khwārizm).

Early history

According to Ancient Khorezm (Moscow 1948), written by the head of the Soviet archaeological-ethnographic expedition of 1945 - 1948, Sergei Pavlovich Tolstov (1907-1976), the first inhabitants of the area were Hurrians from the area of Transcaucasian Iberia, and he explains the etymology of "Chorezm" as Hurri-Land. The first two names of rulers we have for the area are Sijavus c.1300 BC (synonymous with Afrasiab c.1100 BC) and Aurvat-Aspa, usually placed in the late 600s BC though dating is very difficult. Nonetheless, in the very early part of its history, the inhabitants of the area were from Iranian stock and they spoke an Eastern Iranian language called Khwarezmian. The area that was Khwarezmia now has a mixed population of Uzbeks, Karakalpaks, Turkmens, Persians, Tajiks, and Kazakhs.

Classical times

When the King of Khwarezmia offered friendship to Alexander the Great in 328 BC, Alexander's Greek and Roman biographers imagined the nomad king of a desert waste, but 20th century Russian archeologists revealed the region as a stable and centralized kingdom, a land of agriculture to the east of the Aral Sea, surrounded by the nomads of Central Asia, protected by its army of mailed horsemen, in the most powerful kingdom northwest of the Amu Darya (the Oxus River of antiquity). The king's emissary offered to lead Alexander's armies against his own enemies, west over the Caspian towards the Black Sea. Alexander politely refused.

The Pekhlevi script based on Aramaic alphabet was used by Persian bureaucracy alongside Old Persian passed into use in Khwarezmia to the north, where it served as the first local alphabet, about the AD 2nd century.

Middle Ages

According to Biruni the area was ruled by the Afrigid dynasty from the AD 4th century to the 8th century. The resurgent kingdom was established around Khiva in 410 by Avar tribes possibly under Hephthalites influence. The inhabitants were called Khwalis or Kaliz by the Magyars after the eastern-most Kabars of Hungary, who dwelt in Carpathian Galicia. They were also called Khalisioi in Greek, Khvalis (and often associated with Khazars) in Russian, and Huālázǐmó (花剌子模) or perhaps Guali or Helisimijia in Chinese. The etymology of the name is unknown but may pertain to a kingdom of the Aral Sea or the Hua people.

In the late 7th century, Khwarezmia was conquered by the Arab Abbasids and was the birthplace of the great Persian mathematician of the Abbasid period, al-Khwarezmi.

In the 11th century, Oghuz Turks founded the Khwarezmid Empire that, in the early 13th century, conquered all of Persia under the Shah Allah al-Din Muhammad II. From 1218 to 1220 Genghis Khan and his Mongols destroyed the empire and its capital, Old Urgench (Kunya).

Also see Khalyzians.

Modern Age

The region of Khwarezmia became part of the Jagatai Khanate, and its capital of Old Urgench was rebuilt and again became one of the largest and most important trading centers in Central Asia. However, Timur regarded Khwarezm as a rival to Samarkand, and over the course of 5 campaigns, he destroyed Old Urgench completely in 1388. This together with a shift in the course of the Amu-Darya caused the center of Khwarezmia to shift to Khiva and, in the 16th century, the area came to be known as the Khanate of Khiva, ruled over by a branch of the Astrakhans, a Genghisid dynasty..

The discovery of gold on the banks of the Amu Darya during the reign of Imperial Russia's Peter the Great, together with the desire of Russia to open a trade route to India, prompted an armed trade expedition to the region, led by Prince Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky, and consisting of 4,000 men.

Upon receiving the men, the Khivan khan set up camp under the pretense of goodwill, then ambushed and slaughtered the envoys, leaving ten alive to send back. Peter the Great, indebted after wars with the Ottoman Empire and Sweden, did nothing.

Tsar Paul I also attempted to conquer the city, but his expedition was woefully undermanned and undersupplied, and was recalled en route due to his assassination. Tsar Alexander I had no such ambitions, and it is under Tsars Alexander II and Alexander III that serious efforts to annex the city started.

A curious episode during The Great Game involved a Russian expedition, in name to free the slaves captured and sold by Turkmen raiders from the Russian frontiers on the Caspian Sea, but also as an attempt to extend its borders while the British Empire entangled itself in the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1839. The expedition, led by General Perovsky, the commander of the Orenburg garrison, consisted of 5,200 infantry, and 10,000 camels. Due to poor planning and a bit of bad luck, they set off in November 1839, into one of the worst winters in memory, and was forced to turn back on 1 February 1840, arriving back into Orenburg in May, suffering over 1,000 casualties without firing a single shot.

File:Vasili Vereshchagin Pust' Voidut.jpg

The painter Vasily Vereshchagin was present at the taking of Khiva by Russian forces.

At the same time, the British, anxious to remove the pretext for the Russian attempt to annex Khiva, launched its own effort to free the slaves - a lone officer stationed in Herat, now in Afghanistan. Captain James Abbott, disguised as an Afghan, set off on Christmas Eve, 1839, for Khiva. He arrived in late January, 1840, and although the khan was suspicious of his identity, he succeeded in talking the khan into allowing him to carry a letter for the tsar regarding the slave issue. He left on 7 March 1840, for Fort Alexandrovsk (Aqtau), and was subsequently betrayed by his guide, robbed, then released when the bandits realized the origin and destination of his letter. Yet his superiors in Herat, not knowing of his fate, sent another officer, Lieutenant Richmond Shakespear, after him. Shakespear was evidently more successful than Abbott in that he somehow talked the Khan into not only freeing all Russian subjects under his control, but also making the ownership of Russian slaves a crime punishable by death. The freed slaves and Shakespear arrived in Fort Alexandrovsk on 15 August 1840, and Russia lost its primary motive for the conquest of Khiva, for now.

The Khanate was graudually reduced in size from Russian expasion in Turkestan (including Khwarezmia) and, in 1873, after Russia conquered the neighbouring cities of Tashkent and Samarkand, General Von Kaufman launched an attack on Khiva consisting of 13,000 infantry and cavalry. The city of Khiva fell on 28 May 1873 and, on 12 August 1873, a peace treaty was signed that established Khiva as a quasi-independent Russian protectorate.

After the Bolshevik seizure power in the October Revolution, a short lived Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic (later the Khorezm SSR) was created out of the territory of the old Khanate of Khiva, before in 1924 it was finally incorporated into the Soviet Union, with the former Khanate divided between the new Turkmen SSR and Uzbek SSR.

The larger historical area of Khwarezmia is further divided. Northern Khwarezmia became the Uzbek SSR, in 1925 the western part became the Turkmen SSR, and in 1936 eastern Khwarezmia became the Tajik SSR. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, these became Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan respectively. Southern Khwarezmia is today a part of Iran. Many of the ancient Khwarezmian towns are situated currently in Xorazm Province, Uzbekistan.

See also

• Khwarezmian language
• Khorezm SSR

Reference

• Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great, pp 308ff etc.

External link

• E. Nerazik, on Central Asia in the Early Middle Ages