From the oasis of Khwarazm on the lower Amu Darya, a line of Turkic governors rose within a century to rule an empire stretching across Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran. The Anushtegin dynasty, whose rulers bore the old title of Khwarazmshah, held power between 1077 and 1231; it served the Seljuks and the Qara Khitai as a vassal before becoming independent around 1190. Its clash with Genghis Khan in 1219 opened the Mongol conquest of the Islamic world.
A slave commander's family
The dynasty's founder, Anushtegin Gharachai, was a Turkic slave soldier who rose in the service of the Seljuk sultans and was made governor of Khwarazm around 1077, its revenues paying for his post at court. After a brief interruption his son Qutb al-Din Muhammad received the province and became the first hereditary Khwarazmshah. The family's real independence began under his son Atsiz, who ruled from 1127 to 1156. Atsiz rebelled repeatedly against the Seljuk sultan Sanjar and was as often forced to submit, and after the Qara Khitai crushed the Seljuks near Samarkand in 1141 he also had to pay them tribute.
Expansion under Tekish
Sanjar's death, only months after Atsiz died in 1156, left Seljuk Khorasan in disorder, and the Khwarazmshahs moved into the vacuum. Tekish, who ruled from 1172 to 1200, threw off the overlordship of the Qara Khitai and recruited Turkmen and Kipchak warriors for campaigns in Iran. In 1194, allied with the caliph al-Nasir, he defeated the Seljuk sultan Toghrul III at Hamadan and took his lands, and after a tense standoff the Abbasid caliph recognised him as sultan in 1198.
Muhammad II at the summit
Tekish's son Ala ad-Din Muhammad II brought the empire to its greatest size. He ended the western Karakhanid khanate in 1213, subdued the Ghurids in Afghanistan around 1215 and by 1217 controlled western Iran, with Azerbaijan and Derbent as vassals. Estimates of its extent run from 2.3 to 3.6 million square kilometres, though its population, perhaps 5 million, was thin for such an area. Power was divided, however: the Shah's mother, Terken Khatun, kept her own court and officials, and her rivalry with her son weakened the state.
Persian culture, Turkic army
The rulers were Turkic by origin and Sunni Muslims, but their administration and high culture were Persian. Persian was the language of government and literature, Arabic of religious and scientific learning, and Turkic the language of the ruling family and the army, which was made up largely of Kipchak cavalry. The capital Gurganj, or Urganch, impressed visiting geographers with its wealth, and the period is known for fine Mina'i and lustre pottery made at Kashan.
The Mongol catastrophe
When one of the Shah's governors seized a trading party sent by Genghis Khan, and the Shah then put a Mongol envoy and the merchants to death, the Mongols invaded in 1219 with a force estimated at 100,000 to 150,000. Bukhara, Samarkand, Otrar and Gurganj were sacked, and the campaign of 1219–1221 was marked by mass killing of city populations. Muhammad II fled and died on a Caspian island in December 1220.
Jalal al-Din and the Khwarazmiyya
His son Jalal al-Din fought on, defeating the Mongols at Parwan in 1221 before being beaten on the Indus. Refused refuge in Delhi, he returned to Iran, took Azerbaijan in 1225 and sacked Tbilisi in 1226, but was defeated by the Seljuks of Rum in 1230 and died in 1231. His leaderless soldiers, the Khwarazmiyya, became mercenaries; in the service of the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt they took Jerusalem from the crusaders in 1244.
On our maps
Our 1200 map shows the Khwarazmian dynasty in Central Asia and Iran, beside Qara Khitai, the Seljuk Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate. Its fall to Genghis Khan is described under the Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire.
Sources
In pictures
2 images · scroll →From the atlas
Khwarazmian Empire on our maps
Borders of Time draws the Khwarazmian Empire on one of its 54 world maps, the one for 1200 CE. There it covers about 1,900,000 km² (735,000 sq mi), roughly the size of Mexico today. That figure counts everything the map assigns to it, including the Khwarazmian dynasty.
On that map it borders the Abbasid Caliphate, the Ayyubid Sultanate, the Byzantine Empire, the Ghaznavid Emirate, the Kara Khitai Khaganate and the Sultanate of Delhi.
On the map before it appears (1100 CE), the same area belongs to the Seljuk Empire. On the map after its last appearance (1279 CE), it belongs to Ilkhanate.
Measured from the historical-basemaps snapshots this atlas uses. Borders in those maps are approximate, especially for early periods.
Quick answers
- When did the Khwarazmian Empire exist?
- From 1077 to 1231, 154 years. The atlas draws it on its maps for 1200.
- Where was the Khwarazmian Empire?
- At its largest, on the 1200 map, its land lies in today’s Iran (65%) and Pakistan (23%), with smaller parts in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. On that map it borders the Abbasid Caliphate, the Ayyubid Sultanate, the Byzantine Empire and the Ghaznavid Emirate, among others.
- How big was the Khwarazmian Empire?
- The Khwarazmian Empire was largest on the 1200 map, at about 1,900,000 km² (735,000 sq mi).