Seems like the Khmer, are more or less following their historical arc of ascent during the 9th, 10th and 11th century. They'll have their day in the sun for a while, and then probably decline for similar reasons as OTL; the growing strength of their neighbors, the decay of government institutions and also the strain of their resources and the changing environment.
The Rise of the White Huns
- Thread starter Practical Lobster
- Start date
If anything the stage is more stacked against them ITTL, given the complexities of the Khmer government structure when compared to it's OTL mandala equivalent. Plus, a more developed India has the knock-on-effect of developing the periphery of the Srivijayan Empire quicker.
So I haven't been posting here for a while since I've been busy working on...
A MAP OF THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS IN THE YEAR 1000
A MAP OF THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS IN THE YEAR 1000
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That's a fantastic map! The one niggling complaint I have is that I've associated the image of stars on a map with capitals, so having a star for every city shown throws me off a bit. And the last time we saw them the Anglo-Danes were in a few separate kingdoms. Had they unified in the meantime? I'm hoping that we can get a glimpse into this unified Angland sometime soon.
Ayep. Fear not, we'll be getting around to the British Isles soonish. I really do feel bad that I keep letting them be forgotten.
What's the captial of Angland? It'd honestly be interesting if it were somewhere other than London.
It's either going to be Winchester, Leicester, or Jorvik, one of the three Anglo-Danish kingdom's capitals. At least for the time being. I'd tell you which one but that would be a bit of a spoiler for how things are going to go.
Edit: I highly encourage people to check out the new link in my signature. Don't fear, I still plan to finish this timeline up to the Age of Discovery before putting it on temporary hiatus. However I've been mulling over this as a side project for some time, and I needed to get my urge to write it out of my system.
Are there any places, other than England and the Indo-Gangetic region, that people want to see a particular focus on in the next few updates?
Russia and Eastern Europe might be good. I'm eager to see when the Balts transition from tribes to Kingdoms. Not to mention how the presence of Buddhism has affected Eastern Europe. I'd like to know more about the development of Gardaveldi and the Hanates.
It'd also be interesting to see how Japan and Korea are doing nowadays. Like how any hypothetical Chinese refugees might have affected them.
It'd also be interesting to see how Japan and Korea are doing nowadays. Like how any hypothetical Chinese refugees might have affected them.
@Hobelhouse,
great map!
Just two tiny nitpicks about central Germany:
I think the cities of Kassel and Hannover are anachronistic here. OTL, the first signs of settlement and fortification around river crossings bearing such names were from the 12th and 13th centuries, and it would still take some time for them to grow into cities.
In the vicinity of Hannover, Brunswick (Bruinswiik at that time, probably) was already a town, and a little to the South-East of Kassel, Fulda is a likely candidate, too, especially if this TL is even more Franco-Catholic than OTL.
great map!
Just two tiny nitpicks about central Germany:
I think the cities of Kassel and Hannover are anachronistic here. OTL, the first signs of settlement and fortification around river crossings bearing such names were from the 12th and 13th centuries, and it would still take some time for them to grow into cities.
In the vicinity of Hannover, Brunswick (Bruinswiik at that time, probably) was already a town, and a little to the South-East of Kassel, Fulda is a likely candidate, too, especially if this TL is even more Franco-Catholic than OTL.
I'm hearing a lot of enthusiasm for Eastern Europe, and I'll make sure to deliver in the next couple posts.
As for Japan, I'm totally unqualified to comment, but I'll do some research and see if I can figure out what should be done differently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o
This will be foundational to my research.
As for Japan, I'm totally unqualified to comment, but I'll do some research and see if I can figure out what should be done differently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o
This will be foundational to my research.
I edited the map in the previous link to incorporate the suggestions about German cities. Also fixed what I realized was some wonky city placement in NE Germany, added alt-Lubeck and Hedeby, and tweaked the British Isles a bit. Leicester (or "Lexter" after a couple centuries of having "Laegeracaestra" being mangled by Danes) is now present since PL mentioned it might be the capital. Also, I tweaked the borders a bit to make the major kingdoms less major and the petty kingdoms less petty. There's now a new Norse petty state of Dunedin and the "Kingdom of Defena" in Devon is meant to represent the last Old English/Cornish holdout kingdom.
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I'm hearing a lot of enthusiasm for Eastern Europe, and I'll make sure to deliver in the next couple posts.
As for Japan, I'm totally unqualified to comment, but I'll do some research and see if I can figure out what should be done differently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o
This will be foundational to my research.
I suggested Japan since it's an area that would be affected by the events of the timeline that hasn't been directly talked about. Thanks for letting me know about the existance of that video. "How about sunrise land?"
Another good thing would be to write about the formation of the nation on Cape Watya. Plus I don't remember reading about West Africa, though Africa in general would be good.
Logging onto my account for the first time in a year just to comment.
First off, love your series, it's literally my favorite alternate timeline ever. The Iranian (let alone Eastern Iranian!) hype train is neglected a lot in alternate history. I'll be sure to give a more detailed wank in the future for it.
I'd really love to see an update focusing on the Tarim Basin. We haven't seen much of it other than "here be Kipchaks". I want to see what it's like there, what with Sogdians and Saka, what the state of Buddhism is like there considering it was a huge religious center there IRL. Considering it was also a big trading hub too, I'm wondering if the Kipchak state is prosperous.
I wondered initially if the Tai would come to resemble an alt-Tangut people, creating a culture that existed independently within the East Asian sphere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Xia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangut_script
However, it looks like they'll be identified as Southeast Asians in this TL. Does this hint at Indianization or even Khmerification, with an Indic-style script as opposed to a logographic system like the Tangut?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Xia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangut_script
However, it looks like they'll be identified as Southeast Asians in this TL. Does this hint at Indianization or even Khmerification, with an Indic-style script as opposed to a logographic system like the Tangut?
Hadrijezrade in Moravia sounds rather odd, not slavic at all. As it is located in where Bratislava now stands, I'd suggest to rename it as Preslava or Braslava (9th century Preslavaspurc/Brezalauspurc and 10th century hungarian coins Braslava/Preslava).
Also, Bernau sound wrong, almost like a german placename. I guess its supposed to be archaised Brno, in which case, Brnen or Brnie would work far better. Alternative could be a Lesczen (nowadays Líšeň), which was a place in Brno, which was a site of Great Moravian fortified settlement.
Broslaua sounds a lot out of place, as it sounds like just randomly corrupted Breslau, which is just a germanized Vratislav. Vratislav was first attested in 10th century as a Vratislavia (latinised), so Vratislav would be best name.
I would aslo suggest to add town/city to where now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikulčice stands, as it was one of the most important OTL Great Moravian towns, located in the center of power center of moravian tribe, likely even a capital city. Perhaps it could be called Veligrad (its an attested name of Moravian capital, but its location is not 100% known, but very likely it was located very close to nowadays Mikulčice).
Thanks! You're right that the Sogdians, Saka, etc. have been neglected of late as I've sent this timeline sprawling across the world. They'll go on my list.
The Tai take as much influence from the Srivijaya and the Khmer as they do from the Chinese people, and thus accordingly will be considered by future historians to be "Southeast Asian" which is not to say that there aren't huge Sinic influences on their society.
I'm not sure about the script they'll use. However, the Han Chinese population of the far south is significantly smaller in ITTL, to the point that places like OTL Guangdong can be mostly dominated by a migration of Tai speakers.
Watya and West Africa can get more coverage, sure.
Huh, this is very cool to know. I'm woefully unprepared when it comes to Slavic phonetics to comment or indeed to recognize these sort of things, so it's good to have someone who can.
The only thing I can think with Bernau is that Hobelhouse might have assumed that the Germanic settler population left their linguistic mark on Moravia, but I like your names.
(Also it's very fortunate that there's no living speakers of any Hepthalite language or they'd probably be very mad at me for viciously butchering their linguistics.
)Bernau is supposed to reflect a Germanized pronunciation/spelling of Brno, yes. As is Broslaua. Hadrijezrade is supposed to be "Hadrian's Fort/town" (Hadrije + zradec). I think it's been founded on the site of a village or town taken from the Xasars so it would have been given a new, suitably Votive name (St Hadrian converted the Moravians and would be its patron saint TTL). All my knowledge of Czech comes from Wikipedia so I'm open to suggestions.
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from tarim to old sugd
From the Tarim to Sugd - independent states and the rise of the Khardi
As with many areas of the world isolated from regular rainfall and oceanic influence, the fortunes of the Tarim basin states were dependent on water and water supply. Throughout its history, the city-states there have despite sporadic ascents and descents in prosperity controlled by the fickle supply of life-giving water nevertheless always benefitted from their remarkable position at the crossroads of east and west. Chinese travelers to the region as early as the Liang dynasty spoke of a remarkable seat of scholarship, art, and perhaps most remarkably enormous agricultural wealth. Travelers recorded “short haired women dancing in ochre turbans” and “a country of pomegranates and apricots, peaches and wheat.”
The native people were a mixture of Saka and Tocharian natives, and possessed a long and antique history which until the coming of the Kipchak was relatively undisturbed by outside threats. Part of the broader cultural Indosphere, they had absorbed Buddhism and Hindu religion from Gandhara. They had been dominated of course by a succession of foreign dynasties, most notably the Eftal and the Bod Empires, but the hand of both of these powers was exceptionally light, and those who tried to strengthen their dominion over the vast and arid country often met with defeat, as did the Aghatsaghids. The Eftal made little effort to enforce Sogdian Buddhism on them, and the Tibetan peoples who came to the great oasis cities were frequently converted to the Sarvastivadin school which was popular in the region.
Civilization in the Tarim basin exists in a rough horseshoe of sorts around a vast and arid center in which no life is possible. Despite this remarkable aridity, several major kingdoms, based around oasis cities, had survived in varying states since the 3rd century. Perhaps the greatest of these was Khotan or Hvamna, a long-suffering vassal of the Bod Empire whose rule by the Viasha dynasty was never in doubt even as the Viasha bowed to tax collectors and administrators from far Rhasa. Despite being reduced to figurehead vassals and sending their children as hostages to the Imperial court, the Viasha retained the covert allegiance of many notables, and in 931 broke from the Bod Empire permanently.
In 876, the arrival of Kipchak refugees in the Turfan oasis region would upset the delicate balance of steppe life. At the time, certain oases were actually overflowing, a crisis which damaged critical irrigation canals and left many Tocharian cities vulnerable to the carefully mediated threats and intimidation of the Kipchak. However, the Kipchak presence itself was wholly unsustainable – as we have seen, they were incapable of supporting their herds and ultimately continued to move southwards until they met their end in Gandhara.
By 940, there was essentially no sign of the Kipchak people as an independent civilization. Their notional hegemony might have endured beyond their defeats in India, but if it did, it was not for long. The Tarim basin indeed would continue to cultivate a reputation as a place which swallowed up invaders – several Bod dynasty invasions to reconquer the Hvamna kingdom were repulsed between 930 and 950, and indeed the Hvamna kingdom was never assimilated or annexed by the Kipchak, whose westward journey avoided their power. While Kipchak ethnic markers remained a part of the Tarim basin civilization, they were unable to survive the transition from nomadic to sedentary people – the rapid shock proved fatal.
As the Tarim basin recovered from invasions and the water crisis, there was a fresh blossoming of Buddhist philosophy and missionary activity. The writing of the Red-Gold Sutras, and the Book of Received Awareness represent significant literary and cultural achievements of the era. Monks travelled as far East as the Fujiwara Regency in Japan and as far West as the Xasar Shahdom, where their teachings were translated and propagated. Their teachings represented a “purer” philosophy, closer to the historical roots of the religion, and in general were treated with a mix of xenophilic reverence by some and suspicion by traditional priestly elites in particular.
For all their prestige and wealth, Hvamna, Kashgar, and the other powers of the Tarim basin had difficulty asserting hard power beyond their own cities. One of the few exceptions would prove to be the Khardi wars of the 11th century, where they supported the Ferghana kingdom of Khujand against encroachment from the west. Hvamna mercenaries would fight in these wars and bring back from them some of the first handguns, where they became a curiosity which was studied in detail in several manuals published in Khotan.
Just to the west, the Ferghana valley represented another region relatively untouched by the changes happening in the wider world, and spared also significant raids from the steppes by nature of its geographic isolation. However, it remained a trade lane, and a significant source of high-quality horses for foreign rulers wishing to make an impression. Ruled since the fall of the Aghatsaghids by a petty dynasty known as the Mihirkulids or the Khujand Shahdom, the Ferghana valley was dominated by a mixture of Indo-Iranian peoples of which the Eftal were no small percentage, although their dynasty called themselves Saka. In 986, after a Khardi raid, the capital was moved from Khujand into the valley, to Akhsikat. In the reign of Shah Indradata, fortifications were built across the valley, and the Shahs were ultimately able to keep their title and pay a small tribute to the distant Eranshahr.
Ferghana was thus able to preserve its unique culture and material traditions. Selling red lacquerware and horses and maintaining their key position on vital trade routes despite Khardi pressure was not easy, especially as the Khardi began their resettlement projects and resistance to Khardi rule on the steppes began to grow. Alliances between the Ferghanans and petty satraps in Khuttal and Chach were necessary to preserve their independence, and as time wore on it was increasingly a matter of when, not if, the hammer would fall against these satraps and thus by extension Akhsikat. The royal court feared quite reasonably that if the Khardi ever became distracted in their conquests of the west and turned their attention back east, Ferghana and her petty allies, the Mihirkulid kingdom would almost certainly be annexed. Fortunately for Indradata however, rapidly changing circumstances would ensure that scenario would not come to pass.
Meanwhile, to the north of the Khardi Empire lay the great Oghuz Khaganate. With their seat of power in Khorasem, the Oghuz were a force to be reckoned with, if for no other reason than their center of gravity lay far closer to Sugd and many other newly-conquered provinces. To compete with this local threat, the Khardi were forced to cooperate with the remaining Aghatsaghid elites, who had settled and fortified the vast frontier against Oghuz raids. As fellow Turks, these Aghatsaghid grandees had a familiarity with steppe warfare which the Iranian armies lacked, and backed by the generous support of wealthy Khardi provinces along the interior, the balance of power shifted in favor of the Khardi.
This was only a temporary shift. Various officials in Susa[1] recognized that Khardi rule along the vast steppe frontier depended upon settlement. Khardi, especially former soldiers, were offered large landholdings for themselves and their families. However, there were two major problems with this policy which have often been overlooked by those who describe how the land-grant system allowed Khardi dominion to endure across a wide swathe of the east and contributed to the homogenization of culture in a way which was ultimately favorable to the stability of the region. The first is that it alienated the Aghatsaghid elites, meaning that when the Oghuz Turks invaded the Khardi in 1022, it was at the invitation of Aghatsaghid nobles and said nobles defected en masse, fearing the confiscation of their vast estates. The second is that these policies would indirectly lead to the loss of Sogd and the rise of the Mihirkulid dynasty to renewed prominence. It is often forgotten that for a brief moment the Khardi actually held Sugd directly and might, had they been more willing to compromise, have retained it indefinitely. Instead, all they did was alienate and terrify their subjects by committing wholly to a project which would only see long-term results.
The Gandharan Equal-Kingdoms also had every reason to be nervous about the rise of the Khardi. Aghatsaghid rule was a memory but it was not a distant enough one for comfort, and with the fall of Kabul in 984, the Gandharans were once more staring down a titanic Asian power whose borders fell far too close to Purushapura. They too would embark on the construction of a series of fortifications, and send ambassadors to the Oghuz Khaganate seeking an alliance. The Gandharans would make potent allies. They benefitted from a professional military based in the recruitment of hill tribes from the foothills of the Himalayas and the traditional heavily-equipped guild cavalry, and had a brilliant strategist in the form of the Gandharan commander Vallabha Kalasha. If they had been able to coordinate better with the Oghuz Khagan, the Khardi might have been pushed out of Central Asia altogether. But instead the various powers would attack piecemeal and be defeated one by one.
Distracted by the Dauwa to their south, it was not until 1029 that the Gandharan army would attack Kabul, and they would immediately struggle to gain a foothold. The local Afghan tribes were torn between collusion with the Iranians and aiding the Gandharans. Promises of independence and autonomy swayed many Afghan groups to join their side, and vicious intertribal battles in the mountains and valleys around Kabul preoccupied the Gandharans – preventing meaningful advance, especially as the Tokhari “sun-worshipping clans”[2] aligned themselves with the Khardi in exchange for promises of lands in Gandhara. Two years later, the Gandharans made a white peace without having gained any territory. This border clash is mostly notable for the proliferation of firepowder weapons, including some of the first primitive handguns, first used as an anti-elephant weapon but a few years prior against the Dauwa. The Gandharans turned firepowder against the walls of Kabul, using massed volleys of shrapnel fired from siege towers at close range to clear the walls. Despite their ultimate failure to take the city, these weapons made a distinct impression on the defenders, and over time were copied and refined.
By contrast, the Oghuz invasion in 1022, led by the Khagan Tughrul Yavuldar, was a much greater success initially. Tughrul did not have the allegiance of all of the “twelve tribes” that traditionally made up the Oghuz hegemony, but he did have the backing of several of the strongest, including the Kinek, the Imur, and the Afsar, as well as an alliance with Ferghana and her satrapal allies. His ace in the hole, however, was convincing the Salir Turks, who had come under pressure from the East, to migrate into Sugd in great numbers, ensuring they would come under attack by representatives of the Iranshahr. From there it was easy to motivate a large portion of his confederation to follow him into battle.
The Khardi forces were light on the ground and frequently betrayed by their Aghatsaghid auxiliaries. Sugd was lost almost immediately, and Tughrul wasted little time fortifying the Iron Gates and leading raids as far south as Balkh. By the time significant Khardi reinforcements could be deployed, the Shah of Balkh, Mihirevanda, had been slain along with almost an entire army of twenty thousand. This defeat inspired the Padishah’s direct attention, and Artaxser sent as large of an army north under his cousin Surkhab as he could, given the large commitment of men to Palestine and Egypt.
Surkhab, however, proved to be utterly incompetent, and while that might have been remedied by veteran subordinates who knew how to creatively interpret poor orders and salvage his atrocious campaign, most of these veterans were absent. Only one officer in his army distinguished himself notably, and that was Sepandiar, an Iranian who claimed descent from both the Oadhya and the Aspahbadh house from Sassanian times. As Surkhab blundered into a feigned retreat which saw much of his army destroyed, Sepandiar distinguished himself in spite of the debacle, turning a disaster into a stalemate.
Artaxser dispatched a fresh army under Sepandiar in 1023, and the Iranian proved his quality as much on the battlefield as by turning some of the lesser Turkic tribes against Tughrul, causing the Khagan to turn back and ride north to deal with the rebellion. Sensing victory, the Shah encouraged Sepandiar to march north and retake Sogd, but Sepandiar instead entered into negotiations with several of the clans while Tughrul was away – offering them Sogd in exchange for an alliance. Sepandiar felt that he had the loyalty of his troops, and that his successful campaign would inspire them to turn on Artaxser and proclaim him Shah.
The clans turned on Tughrul and ensured his defeat against the rebels, at which point Qutalmish Afsar became Khagan and the Yavuldar were almost entirely annihilated. Once his power was secure, Qutalmish expected to march on Susa with Sepandiar and replace the Mitradharmid dynasty, and he hoped that Sepandiar’s victory would of course mean more concessions to the tribes which had granted him power. But it was not to be. Sepandiar underestimated the degree to which the Khardi revered Artaxser, and overestimated the clout of his own noble background, and was simply arrested by his subordinates after declaring himself Shah.
Qutamish Afsar was the only true victor of the conflict. He arranged the division of Sugd between his vassal tribes and had managed to elevate his clan to the Khaganate. The Khardi, exhausted and seeking to consolidate their position in the east, allowed him to retain Tughrul’s conquests and were more concerned with prosecuting Sepandiar and any potential allies he had within the army. After 1030, the powers who ruled Central Asia were increasingly forced to accommodate the Khardi presence.
[1] Indicative of Khardi attempts to create a civilian bureaucracy. However, they would never wholly be able to shake their clannish origins. The bureaucracy was very much a nepotistic organization at its upper levels, with local talent finding an invisible ceiling arresting any particularly capable individual in his tracks.
[2] It is unclear what group this refers to, but it is worth noting that many of the prominent tribal groups who aligned with the Iranians in Afghanistan were actually Turkic. Unlike along the steppe frontier, here the Khardi settlement was substantially lighter.
As with many areas of the world isolated from regular rainfall and oceanic influence, the fortunes of the Tarim basin states were dependent on water and water supply. Throughout its history, the city-states there have despite sporadic ascents and descents in prosperity controlled by the fickle supply of life-giving water nevertheless always benefitted from their remarkable position at the crossroads of east and west. Chinese travelers to the region as early as the Liang dynasty spoke of a remarkable seat of scholarship, art, and perhaps most remarkably enormous agricultural wealth. Travelers recorded “short haired women dancing in ochre turbans” and “a country of pomegranates and apricots, peaches and wheat.”
The native people were a mixture of Saka and Tocharian natives, and possessed a long and antique history which until the coming of the Kipchak was relatively undisturbed by outside threats. Part of the broader cultural Indosphere, they had absorbed Buddhism and Hindu religion from Gandhara. They had been dominated of course by a succession of foreign dynasties, most notably the Eftal and the Bod Empires, but the hand of both of these powers was exceptionally light, and those who tried to strengthen their dominion over the vast and arid country often met with defeat, as did the Aghatsaghids. The Eftal made little effort to enforce Sogdian Buddhism on them, and the Tibetan peoples who came to the great oasis cities were frequently converted to the Sarvastivadin school which was popular in the region.
Civilization in the Tarim basin exists in a rough horseshoe of sorts around a vast and arid center in which no life is possible. Despite this remarkable aridity, several major kingdoms, based around oasis cities, had survived in varying states since the 3rd century. Perhaps the greatest of these was Khotan or Hvamna, a long-suffering vassal of the Bod Empire whose rule by the Viasha dynasty was never in doubt even as the Viasha bowed to tax collectors and administrators from far Rhasa. Despite being reduced to figurehead vassals and sending their children as hostages to the Imperial court, the Viasha retained the covert allegiance of many notables, and in 931 broke from the Bod Empire permanently.
In 876, the arrival of Kipchak refugees in the Turfan oasis region would upset the delicate balance of steppe life. At the time, certain oases were actually overflowing, a crisis which damaged critical irrigation canals and left many Tocharian cities vulnerable to the carefully mediated threats and intimidation of the Kipchak. However, the Kipchak presence itself was wholly unsustainable – as we have seen, they were incapable of supporting their herds and ultimately continued to move southwards until they met their end in Gandhara.
By 940, there was essentially no sign of the Kipchak people as an independent civilization. Their notional hegemony might have endured beyond their defeats in India, but if it did, it was not for long. The Tarim basin indeed would continue to cultivate a reputation as a place which swallowed up invaders – several Bod dynasty invasions to reconquer the Hvamna kingdom were repulsed between 930 and 950, and indeed the Hvamna kingdom was never assimilated or annexed by the Kipchak, whose westward journey avoided their power. While Kipchak ethnic markers remained a part of the Tarim basin civilization, they were unable to survive the transition from nomadic to sedentary people – the rapid shock proved fatal.
As the Tarim basin recovered from invasions and the water crisis, there was a fresh blossoming of Buddhist philosophy and missionary activity. The writing of the Red-Gold Sutras, and the Book of Received Awareness represent significant literary and cultural achievements of the era. Monks travelled as far East as the Fujiwara Regency in Japan and as far West as the Xasar Shahdom, where their teachings were translated and propagated. Their teachings represented a “purer” philosophy, closer to the historical roots of the religion, and in general were treated with a mix of xenophilic reverence by some and suspicion by traditional priestly elites in particular.
For all their prestige and wealth, Hvamna, Kashgar, and the other powers of the Tarim basin had difficulty asserting hard power beyond their own cities. One of the few exceptions would prove to be the Khardi wars of the 11th century, where they supported the Ferghana kingdom of Khujand against encroachment from the west. Hvamna mercenaries would fight in these wars and bring back from them some of the first handguns, where they became a curiosity which was studied in detail in several manuals published in Khotan.
Just to the west, the Ferghana valley represented another region relatively untouched by the changes happening in the wider world, and spared also significant raids from the steppes by nature of its geographic isolation. However, it remained a trade lane, and a significant source of high-quality horses for foreign rulers wishing to make an impression. Ruled since the fall of the Aghatsaghids by a petty dynasty known as the Mihirkulids or the Khujand Shahdom, the Ferghana valley was dominated by a mixture of Indo-Iranian peoples of which the Eftal were no small percentage, although their dynasty called themselves Saka. In 986, after a Khardi raid, the capital was moved from Khujand into the valley, to Akhsikat. In the reign of Shah Indradata, fortifications were built across the valley, and the Shahs were ultimately able to keep their title and pay a small tribute to the distant Eranshahr.
Ferghana was thus able to preserve its unique culture and material traditions. Selling red lacquerware and horses and maintaining their key position on vital trade routes despite Khardi pressure was not easy, especially as the Khardi began their resettlement projects and resistance to Khardi rule on the steppes began to grow. Alliances between the Ferghanans and petty satraps in Khuttal and Chach were necessary to preserve their independence, and as time wore on it was increasingly a matter of when, not if, the hammer would fall against these satraps and thus by extension Akhsikat. The royal court feared quite reasonably that if the Khardi ever became distracted in their conquests of the west and turned their attention back east, Ferghana and her petty allies, the Mihirkulid kingdom would almost certainly be annexed. Fortunately for Indradata however, rapidly changing circumstances would ensure that scenario would not come to pass.
Meanwhile, to the north of the Khardi Empire lay the great Oghuz Khaganate. With their seat of power in Khorasem, the Oghuz were a force to be reckoned with, if for no other reason than their center of gravity lay far closer to Sugd and many other newly-conquered provinces. To compete with this local threat, the Khardi were forced to cooperate with the remaining Aghatsaghid elites, who had settled and fortified the vast frontier against Oghuz raids. As fellow Turks, these Aghatsaghid grandees had a familiarity with steppe warfare which the Iranian armies lacked, and backed by the generous support of wealthy Khardi provinces along the interior, the balance of power shifted in favor of the Khardi.
This was only a temporary shift. Various officials in Susa[1] recognized that Khardi rule along the vast steppe frontier depended upon settlement. Khardi, especially former soldiers, were offered large landholdings for themselves and their families. However, there were two major problems with this policy which have often been overlooked by those who describe how the land-grant system allowed Khardi dominion to endure across a wide swathe of the east and contributed to the homogenization of culture in a way which was ultimately favorable to the stability of the region. The first is that it alienated the Aghatsaghid elites, meaning that when the Oghuz Turks invaded the Khardi in 1022, it was at the invitation of Aghatsaghid nobles and said nobles defected en masse, fearing the confiscation of their vast estates. The second is that these policies would indirectly lead to the loss of Sogd and the rise of the Mihirkulid dynasty to renewed prominence. It is often forgotten that for a brief moment the Khardi actually held Sugd directly and might, had they been more willing to compromise, have retained it indefinitely. Instead, all they did was alienate and terrify their subjects by committing wholly to a project which would only see long-term results.
The Gandharan Equal-Kingdoms also had every reason to be nervous about the rise of the Khardi. Aghatsaghid rule was a memory but it was not a distant enough one for comfort, and with the fall of Kabul in 984, the Gandharans were once more staring down a titanic Asian power whose borders fell far too close to Purushapura. They too would embark on the construction of a series of fortifications, and send ambassadors to the Oghuz Khaganate seeking an alliance. The Gandharans would make potent allies. They benefitted from a professional military based in the recruitment of hill tribes from the foothills of the Himalayas and the traditional heavily-equipped guild cavalry, and had a brilliant strategist in the form of the Gandharan commander Vallabha Kalasha. If they had been able to coordinate better with the Oghuz Khagan, the Khardi might have been pushed out of Central Asia altogether. But instead the various powers would attack piecemeal and be defeated one by one.
Distracted by the Dauwa to their south, it was not until 1029 that the Gandharan army would attack Kabul, and they would immediately struggle to gain a foothold. The local Afghan tribes were torn between collusion with the Iranians and aiding the Gandharans. Promises of independence and autonomy swayed many Afghan groups to join their side, and vicious intertribal battles in the mountains and valleys around Kabul preoccupied the Gandharans – preventing meaningful advance, especially as the Tokhari “sun-worshipping clans”[2] aligned themselves with the Khardi in exchange for promises of lands in Gandhara. Two years later, the Gandharans made a white peace without having gained any territory. This border clash is mostly notable for the proliferation of firepowder weapons, including some of the first primitive handguns, first used as an anti-elephant weapon but a few years prior against the Dauwa. The Gandharans turned firepowder against the walls of Kabul, using massed volleys of shrapnel fired from siege towers at close range to clear the walls. Despite their ultimate failure to take the city, these weapons made a distinct impression on the defenders, and over time were copied and refined.
By contrast, the Oghuz invasion in 1022, led by the Khagan Tughrul Yavuldar, was a much greater success initially. Tughrul did not have the allegiance of all of the “twelve tribes” that traditionally made up the Oghuz hegemony, but he did have the backing of several of the strongest, including the Kinek, the Imur, and the Afsar, as well as an alliance with Ferghana and her satrapal allies. His ace in the hole, however, was convincing the Salir Turks, who had come under pressure from the East, to migrate into Sugd in great numbers, ensuring they would come under attack by representatives of the Iranshahr. From there it was easy to motivate a large portion of his confederation to follow him into battle.
The Khardi forces were light on the ground and frequently betrayed by their Aghatsaghid auxiliaries. Sugd was lost almost immediately, and Tughrul wasted little time fortifying the Iron Gates and leading raids as far south as Balkh. By the time significant Khardi reinforcements could be deployed, the Shah of Balkh, Mihirevanda, had been slain along with almost an entire army of twenty thousand. This defeat inspired the Padishah’s direct attention, and Artaxser sent as large of an army north under his cousin Surkhab as he could, given the large commitment of men to Palestine and Egypt.
Surkhab, however, proved to be utterly incompetent, and while that might have been remedied by veteran subordinates who knew how to creatively interpret poor orders and salvage his atrocious campaign, most of these veterans were absent. Only one officer in his army distinguished himself notably, and that was Sepandiar, an Iranian who claimed descent from both the Oadhya and the Aspahbadh house from Sassanian times. As Surkhab blundered into a feigned retreat which saw much of his army destroyed, Sepandiar distinguished himself in spite of the debacle, turning a disaster into a stalemate.
Artaxser dispatched a fresh army under Sepandiar in 1023, and the Iranian proved his quality as much on the battlefield as by turning some of the lesser Turkic tribes against Tughrul, causing the Khagan to turn back and ride north to deal with the rebellion. Sensing victory, the Shah encouraged Sepandiar to march north and retake Sogd, but Sepandiar instead entered into negotiations with several of the clans while Tughrul was away – offering them Sogd in exchange for an alliance. Sepandiar felt that he had the loyalty of his troops, and that his successful campaign would inspire them to turn on Artaxser and proclaim him Shah.
The clans turned on Tughrul and ensured his defeat against the rebels, at which point Qutalmish Afsar became Khagan and the Yavuldar were almost entirely annihilated. Once his power was secure, Qutalmish expected to march on Susa with Sepandiar and replace the Mitradharmid dynasty, and he hoped that Sepandiar’s victory would of course mean more concessions to the tribes which had granted him power. But it was not to be. Sepandiar underestimated the degree to which the Khardi revered Artaxser, and overestimated the clout of his own noble background, and was simply arrested by his subordinates after declaring himself Shah.
Qutamish Afsar was the only true victor of the conflict. He arranged the division of Sugd between his vassal tribes and had managed to elevate his clan to the Khaganate. The Khardi, exhausted and seeking to consolidate their position in the east, allowed him to retain Tughrul’s conquests and were more concerned with prosecuting Sepandiar and any potential allies he had within the army. After 1030, the powers who ruled Central Asia were increasingly forced to accommodate the Khardi presence.
[1] Indicative of Khardi attempts to create a civilian bureaucracy. However, they would never wholly be able to shake their clannish origins. The bureaucracy was very much a nepotistic organization at its upper levels, with local talent finding an invisible ceiling arresting any particularly capable individual in his tracks.
[2] It is unclear what group this refers to, but it is worth noting that many of the prominent tribal groups who aligned with the Iranians in Afghanistan were actually Turkic. Unlike along the steppe frontier, here the Khardi settlement was substantially lighter.
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