Читать книгу The Heart of Asia - Sir E. Denison Ross - Страница 21

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The struggles between Mahmūd of Ghazna and Ilik Khān of Kāshghar continued till the year A.H. 401 (1010), when the latter, owing to a quarrel with his brother Toghān, was obliged to withdraw his troops, and a long period of peace ensued, with but slight interruptions, during which the Oxus continued to be regarded as the frontier of their respective realms.

Before the actual downfall of the Sāmānides the province of Khwārazm,269 which lay between the states of the Turkish Khāns and the Ghaznavides, had become practically independent. On the final overthrow of the Sāmānides, the Khwārazm Shāh,270 as their ruler was called, had thrown in his fortunes with the Ghaznavides. In A.H. 407 (1017) the then ruler was murdered by rebels, whereupon Mahmūd marched into the country at the head of a large force and conquered it, setting up a governor of his own creation named Altuntāsh.

Great difficulties attend an attempt to define the ethnographic affinities of the Turks. A similarity of language forces one to associate the Tartars of Southern Russia, the Turkomans of the Oxus countries, and the Uzbegs of Transoxiana. This race, in the broadest sense of the word, may be divided into three groups:—

(1) The Northern Turks, comprising the Siberian nomads, such as the Yakuts, etc.

(2) The Eastern Turks, including those of Chinese Turkestān and the Uzbegs of Russian Turkestān, to whom are related the Tartars of the Crimea and the Volga.

(3) The Western Turks, comprising the Osmānlīs, or Ottoman branch, the Āzerbāyjānīs of Persia, and the Turkomans—in fact, what we commonly in Europe understand by the word Turk.

The habitat of the original Turks was in the Altaï, whence they migrated in large numbers at an early period towards China and Turkestān. It was in this latter direction that they met with least resistance, and thither, therefore, they wandered in the greatest numbers.

But, apart from these lesser migrations, two great Turkish waves poured, at an interval of two hundred years, over Western Asia and Southern Europe—the Seljūks and the hordes of Chingiz Khān.

The former, composed of what we now call Western Turks, of whom the Ghuz and the Turkomans were the predominant element, swept over the Oxus-lands into Armenia and Asia Minor. From them sprang, at a later date, the Osmānlīs, who finally overthrew the Byzantine Empire. A portion, however, of the Seljūks either remained in the Oxus country, or were pressed across that river by the advances of the Eastern Turks into modern Turkomania.

CENTRAL ASIAN TYPES

1. UZBEG WOMAN

2. UZBEG

3. UZBEG

4. UZBEG

The second great migration spread simultaneously in two directions. The larger body penetrated north of the Sea of Aral into Southern Europe, where they carried all before them until their progress was stayed by Western skill at the memorable battle of Leignitz (A.D. 1241). The smaller horde was composed of Eastern Turks, who, under Mongolian leadership, drove their Western cousins out of Transoxiana in the thirteenth century.

According to the Tārīkh-i-Guzīda271, the Turks of the tribe of Kabak, to which Seljūk belonged, passed in the year A.H. 395 (985) from Turkestān into Transoxiana, and settled in the neighbourhood of Samarkand and Bokhārā. They were a race of shepherds, and were prompted to cross the Jaxartes by the scarcity of pasturage on their own side.

They are said to have lived on peaceful terms with Sultan Mahmūd of Ghazna, who, not long afterwards, gave them permission to cross the Oxus and settle in the environs of Nisā and Abīverd. Their chief at this period was named Mikā´īl, and he had two sons named Toghrul and Chakir, who were the founders of the Seljūk dynasty.272

It is not within the scope of the present sketch to describe the wonderful campaigns of Sultan Mahmūd273 in India and elsewhere, and the brilliant circle of poets and writers which he had gathered round him at Ghazna. In the year before his death, A.H. 420 (1029), he conducted a successful expedition against the Seljūks, who had invaded his Persian territories. The last of his successes was the conquest of nearly the whole of `Irāk, which, together with Ray and some other territories, he formed into a government for his son Mas`ūd, declaring at the same time his other son Mohammad heir to his throne and the rest of his possessions.274

On the death of Sultan Mahmūd, in A.H. 421 (1030), Mas`ūd’s whole energies were absorbed in withstanding the Ghuz hordes which invaded his province of Khorāsān in ever-increasing numbers. He tried in vain to conciliate them by granting fresh pasture-lands. In A.H. 425 (1034), while he was engaged in quelling a rebellion in India, a formidable rising against the Ghaznavides took place in Khorāsān, whose inhabitants felt that they were deserted by their chief and left at the mercy of the Ghuz. At the same time the prince of Tabaristān and Jurjān, deeming the occasion favourable, reasserted their independence. In the following year Mas`ūd marched northwards, and succeeded not only in driving back the Ghuz beyond Tūs and Nīshāpūr, but in bringing to submission the rebellious prince of Tabaristān.

CENTRAL ASIAN TYPES

1. TURKOMAN

2. KIRGHIZ

3. TAJIK

4. SARI

Meanwhile events were taking place in the north which were to render these minor successes valueless,275 for in A.H. 425 (1034) Hārūn, the Ghaznavide governor of Khwārazm,276 profiting by the embarrassed position of Mas`ūd, threw off his allegiance. Although the immediate result of this step was an interval of disorder, during which Hārūn was murdered, his successor persisted in a policy of rebellion, and ceased to pay any regard to the court at Ghazna. This event in itself seemed of small importance, but it brought grave results in its train. We are told that the Seljūks, in A.H. 426 (1035), helped Mas`ūd to drive the rest of the Ghuz out of Khorāsān, but the alliance did not survive this campaign; and thus, while Mas`ūd was absent in Ghazna in the following year, we find his lieutenant in Khorāsān engaged in hostilities with the Seljūks. During the same year, A.H. 427 (1036), the Ghaznavide general suffered a severe defeat at the hands of Chakir Beg in the vicinity of Merv. From this event dates the rise of the Seljūks. In A.H. 428 (1037) Merv surrendered to Chakir, and in the following year Toghrul was declared master of Nīshāpūr. Khorāsān was now practically in the hands of the Seljūk brothers. Mas`ūd had been too busily employed with troubles in India to give due attention to the protection of his richest province. At length, in A.H. 431 (1040), he determined to make a final effort to retrieve his losses, and led an army in person against Merv, where he suffered a final and crushing defeat at the hands of Chakir and Toghrul.277 He still clung to Khorāsān with all the energy of despair. Leaving his son in Balkh, he hastened to India to raise a fresh army. But his influence with his troops had gone, and no sooner had he crossed the Indian frontier than his lawless soldiers began to plunder the treasures which had been accumulated by his illustrious father. When they recovered their senses they “were seized with a dread of punishment, and came to the sudden resolution of reinstating Mohammad,278 who was a prisoner in the camp.”279 Mas`ūd was captured, and in the following year, A.H. 433 (1042), murdered by his own nephew. The princes of Ghazna continued to reign until A.H. 555 (1160)—in fact, they outlasted the Seljūks of Central Asia—but no chief of the dynasty ever attained to the greatness of its earlier representatives. Their hostilities with the Seljūks were finally brought to a close by a treaty concluded in A.H. 451 (1059) between Chakir and Ibrāhīm, the then ruler of Ghazna, who thereby for ever lost the province of Khorāsān.280